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

[Nixxe]

Riddle me this. Ask yourself why there's a major shortage of tanks queuing up for content, and why there's such a misguided focus on demanding that healers need to DPS.

Hint: The average skill level of the playerbase in DF is considered quite bad, bad enough that many tanks I know will actively avoid using DF without a friend or two to take along. Bonus points if the crap DPS is demanding the healer to use DPS skills to speed up the run, when they themselves are in reality doing less DPS than the tank.

I actually made an effort this past week to try tanking in level 70 dungeons as a DRK. I just decided to nope back to Bard because a significant portion of the DPS I ran into weren't even trying.

Even with stellar DPS, healers "need" to DPS because there's zero point to the dungeon taking minutes longer just so the healer can twiddle their thumbs. I don't really think it has anything at all to do with how the DPS are performing as healer DPS is valuable for exactly the same reason no matter what the DPS are doing.

[SaitoHikari]

Even with stellar DPS, healers "need" to DPS because there's zero point to the dungeon taking minutes longer just so the healer can twiddle their thumbs. I don't really think it has anything at all to do with how the DPS are performing as healer DPS is valuable for exactly the same reason no matter what the DPS are doing.

There is that, but I find that with SB release, healer DPS doesn't contribute as much as it did during HW. Either way, I find that more healers these days are actually making an effort to attack, but their contribution to DPS is low compared to those that actually know how to play their DPS classes. They shouldn't be pressured to pick up the slack in the presence of lazy DPS.

Then again, healer DPS barely makes any noticeable difference when you're a Bard that can just slaughter everything with 5.5k+ DPS against bosses/8k+ on trash packs AND provide valuable mitigation to the tank on top of that.

[RiyahArp]

You can see it by how people react to getting certain duties in roulettes. Anything that's considered harder than average or not a guaranteed clear on the first pull no matter what usually results in someone bailing at the start. Generally the tank.

That's incentive. You get all of ten mendacity tomes and 60 creation tomes for 45 minutes of wiping. The raid roulette is similar, if you don't use it for leveling, you can spend an hour in an instance for tomes you are already capped on and gear you dont need. The game doesn't really reward failure or spending a lot of time on anything.

IDK, maybe its primal/aether or something, but i really do NOT see all the badness. I can barely remember the last time any run took long enough to be noticeable, and if people tend to be bad, its due to being new to a "casual" trial that you need to watch the video for increasingly or have all the mechanics explained. Mostly people forgetting "oh, he can knock me off the arena" because they havent done rav in forever.

[Remedi]

A while back, I had a NIN who I told no less than five times to please AoE large pulls. He started using Death Blossom... when we were running to the next pack, not on the actual mobs. When I finally got fed up and trolled him back with a Shirk, he died not to the boss—I actually took back aggro almost immediately, that's how awful his DPS was—he stood in an aoe after being dropped to 1% HP (Kugane last boss). He complained at the healer, calling her trash and called me trash.

Now I know that isn't everyone, or even the majority, but events like that are why people stay quiet. After all, I can't mention their damage because that'll be toxic~.

Told an ice mage once that he should be alternating ice and fire to get the most out of BLM and he started berating me for not paying his subs and then insulting all the max level players for beign elitists

I was also once berated for telling new ppl what to do on bosses (they were bonus) since that was spoiler and they wanted to learn it by doing it.

The last one I can partly understand but needlessly to say I don't spend time to say anything to anyone in dr anymore unless if asked, it's also why I'm not going around with a crown too

[Ilan]

I know how to play tanks thanks. I guess 90%iles dont count for anything, or it means i just don't understand what "real tanking" is all about because im a dps greeder or something.
Tanks are not complex, their responsibility boils down to "press a button to take less damage" and "sometimes press a different button so other people take less damage."
Tank DPS rotations are borderline brain-afk in their complexity. Healing in this game is not even remotely hard in any "normal" content unless you spend most of your time afk.

Can people stop treating tanks and healers like they're this magically difficujlt, stressful role? If i spent an entire dungeon pressing nothing but flash I could walk out with 3 comms because people seem to think that's hard and makes me "responsible". It's a joke.

Ah take less dmg. Guess what happens if healers and tanks are dpsing properly too? They mitigate damage because everything dies faster. So why again is someone a greeder if he just does everything in his power to mitigate damage that he or his complete group takes? Seems you and all the other "nay tanks and healers don't have to dps" sayers don't understand everything.

[Tsumdere]

IDK, maybe its primal/aether or something, but i really do NOT see all the badness. I can barely remember the last time any run took long enough to be noticeable, and if people tend to be bad, its due to being new to a "casual" trial that you need to watch the video for increasingly or have all the mechanics explained. Mostly people forgetting "oh, he can knock me off the arena" because they havent done rav in forever.

SMNs in level 70 dungeons still using Titan-egi. DRGs not using Heavy Thrust. Things like Keeper of the Lake taking an hour to complete because DPS is so low even with me on healer wailing on them as hard as I can. All DPS not using AoE. Me as a WHM sitting doing top DPS the entire dungeon even on bosses. Me as DRK doing top DPS in Ala Mhigo. A SCH who was only using Adlo and Physick in O5, did a whopping 100 DPS and still managed to heal only a fourth of what I did doing both healing and DPSing.

Last night, I was in Tsukuyomi EXTREME with a BRD who didn't know what Foe's Requiem was.

Stuff like this happens constantly. Rarely do I get a competent party and when I do, we're always all over each other lol.

[Ranetsu-Akagane]

The meme guides taught me if I'm a dragoon with 0 HP, then I'm a great dragoon.

[udubdave]

Parsers are a good way to track and improve your own skills. They absolutely should not be used to troll, degrade, or berate other players.

[Vstarstruck]

A while back, I had a NIN who I told no less than five times to please AoE large pulls. He started using Death Blossom... when we were running to the next pack, not on the actual mobs. When I finally got fed up and trolled him back with a Shirk, he died not to the boss—I actually took back aggro almost immediately, that's how awful his DPS was—he stood in an aoe after being dropped to 1% HP (Kugane last boss). He complained at the healer, calling her trash and called me trash.

So they can ignore me? Trust me, I’ve tried multiple times to instruct. People don’t listen.

Don't forget - they might also call you names and tell you that you don't pay their sub.

I am well aware, kick them after, they need to learn some way or another.

[Shurrikhan]

It's not metrics that causes them to do that, its understanding the mechanics. A parser will do absolutely nothing then. You do not wipe in casual content to low dps. You wipe because you are slow at perceiving and reacting to mechanics.

You can introduce a parser, nothing will change in casual to make people better.

Except that useful metrics of any sort encourage and provision reflection. True, at that point guildhests and mandatory mechanics-defined encountered may be the only likely solution, but very, very few players do not understand what an AoE does when you stand in it or that they should use their CDs at at least some point in a given fight, while many do not understand how to pace those CDs, nor realize the breakpoints between weaponskill decisions. Those people can be helped, with a far higher ceiling to effectiveness of aid and far lower cost to developing that aid than you'd see from crafted encounters, in-game guides, advanced UIs or the like. That's not to say we shouldn't try to have both. But you've the option of something that is cheap, (to most players) effective, and long-lasting. So why wouldn't one take it?

You have to add teeth to it by redesigning casual content to have far more focus on dps checks, if your goal is to make players be better at DPS. Thats what people suggest here, and thats what will ruin the game if introduced. Don't do this in casual, because a lot of people will not like having to become mini-raiders and focus on DPS output that way, even if they already give decent DPS now and never enter ex trials or savage.

It ruins the game if introduced via XIV's classically jarring jumps in difficulty, not if done properly. And it's not just DPS. Mechanical awareness and the like are identically open to forfeiture if not introduced smoothly. Difficulty curves, not cliffs, are design goals for good reason.

And let's be clear here: the people you're talking about have no idea what a "mini-raider" is, because the only ones who will have even discussed what a raider is, or actively step far enough off any path of improvement to think in those "us vs. them" terms will usually somehow end up prejudiced to the point that they have no desire even to breathe the same air as a "raider". Crafting a encounter that moves them through prepositioning, rapid response, memory checks, angles and the like would be every bit as vital to and useful for raiding. Are you suggesting that the simplest step of expecting someone to just keep doing that rotation he's been doing the whole time WHILE using WASD is suddenly going to switch his perception of content from comfortably casual to foreign and invasive "raider"-ness? If it's too much all at once... maybe. Maybe. But DPS is learned in small steps. And none of those steps in itself, unless someone pushes them towards bigotry, is going to force an average, or even relatively slow-to-learn player into surrender or a defeatist mentality.

Adding teeth, in due steps, does not kill off casual players. It empowers them.