Letter to MR Yoshi: Why parses system is destroying the ffxiv world.

[24spencer]

It kinda turned into one, but I still view EX parses as a meme, especially since there's no compitition with speed runners

Anyhow I am mostly neutral in the discussion of difficulty of tanking, I think it goes both ways with it being a role that is initially hard to get to but once you understand it it's incredibly simplistic

yeah fair enough i feel that as a role the difficulty of learning it is certainly probably higher than the other two but as far as min-maxing goes i feel it has an pretty low skill ceiling all things considered. I don't just think that because of the fact that the fights I've done are "easy", it just objectively seems like once you have a fight down there is very little you have to do to optimise your play for it compared to the other classes.

[Sir_Johni]

yeah fair enough i feel that as a role the difficulty of learning it is certainly probably higher than the other two but as far as min-maxing goes i feel it has an pretty low skill ceiling all things considered. I don't just think that because of the fact that the fights I've done are "easy", it just objectively seems like once you have a fight down there is very little you have to do to optimise your play for it compared to the other classes.

As you seem to be playing PLD, well here we have your issue, PLDs optimization outside of speed runs is use things on CD after opener lul

With Warrior I can manipulate gauge to be used on raid buffs (doesn't matter much sadly)and DRK can save resources for raid buffs, just look at I'm Raffter on fflogs, select a fight and see his MP over the raid, it's interesting stuff

[Ordoric]

just spend the time to math out the perfect rotaition and have 100% uptime and youl just beat everything mathmaticly

[Kazrah]

just spend the time to math out the perfect rotaition and have 100% uptime and youl just beat everything mathmaticly

Or let the theorycrafting nerds do that for you bearing in mind that no math can ever adequately factor in human error.

While that is bad bait, it does call to the fact that devs put far too much emphasis on the numbers for a job rather than how it feels to play it. While that may be a matter of opinion, it's still one that requires testing and (at least to me) shows little to no endeavor at times of having been tested well enough for a number of jobs in the game.

I'd also argue that it's because that there's far too much focus on numbers on the development side of the game that such an extreme obsession for numbers has been occurring among the playerbase. Sure, one could argue that this is prevalent in other games, but it's this one game where I have seen cause the highest degree of toxicity. It's why I avoid savage like the plague it is, and why I happily stand opposed to parsing tools not because of the fact that they violate the ToS, but because of the ugliness they can and always will bring into any game regardless of any positive intentions for such a tool.

That being said, there is a better workaround: give dodging mechanics to SSS dummies. Create more realistic circumstances to simulation fights like those since it's easy to max out your DPS just by standing still. Provide a grade system if the development intention is to hide the numbers. I'm not opposed to means of providing feedback to personal improvement, but when parsing becomes a requirement, you're no longer a name or even a person at times. You're just a job and a number. Nothing more.

[Jijifli]

The responsibility for either is not particularly hard. Healers only have it hard due to the meta of needing to fill in every cast with DPS when not healing. Tanks are really easy. If anything, its when DPS have that responsibility its worse. As a healer I can always just not do damage in a pinch; a tank can also err on the side of caution and stay in tank stance. But the DPS challenges have no downtime, and it can be harder for them to recover from one death due to slow wipe from enrage.

If you started making DPS responsible you're probably going to make the game very unpleasant, because DPS can't really recover like healers or tanks can. Like i can heal through a healer dying and have them raised in a second, and they can use mp replenishing abilities and can generally power through the stat loss. But A DPS dying is a straight penalty, and too many of those is a guaranteed wipe that often no one can compensate for.

In bare bones basics, a tank's job is to tank, a healer's job is to heal, and a dps's job is to dps.

When a tank can't tank, we can tell quickly, and it's fixed up. When a healer can't heal, we can tell quickly, and it's fixed up. But when a dps can't dps? Suddenly we gotta make it a pain to tell who and why. That's what I mean. Look at bare bones basics. If a tank mitigates properly, keeps threat, and stays alive, he's doing at least his bare bones basics. If a healer keeps everyone at enough health for mechanics, and quickly revives those that die due to mistakes on parts that they had no control over, they are at least doing their bare bones basics.

So I think it's okay if we can see if the dps can do their bare bones basics, since as you even pointed out, tanks and healers are expected to go above and beyond. We really shouldn't be expecting tanks and healers to go above and beyond, while also not considering seeing if the dps knows how to dps. It's one of the reasons my love for healing's completely gone now, even with the fact the healer dps factor was what got me interested, as I was used to traditional always heal never dps ideas.

[Dualgunner]

I guess I should have noted, I'm basing my statements without a third party parser messing with it. You can tell easily in game if a tank or healer is bad, but a dps? Run's just slower. It's harder to tell who/what is wrong when it's a dps, as they also take up half the group.

I don't disagree with any of this. I only took issue with your blanket statement that a DPS's job is the easiest to explain. It's goal is, but so are the goals of tanking and healing, as you say. How they achieve that goal is a long and complex series of optimizations throughout each individual fight that also include aid in mitigation and aggro management in the higher level fights.

But your tank pulls one too many groups for the healer to handle? Better cuss him out, follow him outside of the dungeon, and make him feel like crap for it. But considering I can still go into expert to see players that don't know how BLM's Blizz/Fire3 works...

This sounds really personal and really anecdotal, I'm not going to lie. I'm not against having a parser and holding DPS to task for their performance; if and when they do that, however, they also need to provide barebones rotational advice to the DPS at the very least, or link to user-made rotation guides somehow at best, as well as no longer obscure what the stats are meant to be.

[Jijifli]

I don't disagree with any of this. I only took issue with your blanket statement that a DPS's job is the easiest to explain. It's goal is, but so are the goals of tanking and healing, as you say. How they achieve that goal is a long and complex series of optimizations throughout each individual fight that also include aid in mitigation and aggro management in the higher level fights.

I didn't mean to make it feel like I thought you did. Sorry. I'll take the blame on that. I was mostly meaning that, on just the game alone, dps is the hardest to notice messing up unless it's extreme cases. There's always variables though.

[RiyahArp]

But when a dps can't dps? Suddenly we gotta make it a pain to tell who and why.

This is the thing. They can DPS fine. People are talking about optimization here mostly, in the same sense healers and tanks dps, and in the context of the hardest content in the game. It's not like you can't do anything in the game because we keep wiping due to dps, so we need parsers just so they can do normal content. People are complaining random dps aren't good in this game's hardest content. It's really only an issue in savage or ex, and mostly due to farm parties or the harder end content. People make this out to be a bigger issue than it is in game.

[Sigma-Astra]

Honestly, it shouldn't matter whether you're the tank, healer, or DPS. Everyone should take responsibility and feel the pressure for doing their job correctly or not correctly. That's all there is to it.

Take responsibility for your main job at the very least. If you're new towards playing a tank, healer, or DPS? Fine, we'll cut you some slack since everyone fumbles at things they're not comfortable with at the start. But, if you've been playing a job for how many years and you're still not using your toolkit properly or just doing the bare minimum to skirt by? #ByeFelicia.

People should just be held accountable for their jobs period. Everyone will say that their job class is harder than so and so, it never fails because the the degree of difficulty for someone else will not be the same for the next person in line.

Tanks can have a hard time, healers too, DPS as well when you're paired with a tank and/or a healer that doesn't know what they're doing. We all have hard times when no one takes responsibility for doing a poor job.

[KaivaC]

This is the thing. They can DPS fine. People are talking about optimization here mostly, in the same sense healers and tanks dps, and in the context of the hardest content in the game. It's not like you can't do anything in the game because we keep wiping due to dps, so we need parsers just so they can do normal content. People are complaining random dps aren't good in this game's hardest content. It's really only an issue in savage or ex, and mostly due to farm parties or the harder end content. People make this out to be a bigger issue than it is in game.

Pshhkohh...trading tongueflaps with uplander is busywork. Pointyfingers to the tongueflaps that kindly raidgoers are saying. Teachytime is lost on uplander. Pshhkohh.