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

[Genoreaper]

I'd like everyone opposed to answer this question not pick and choose little bits to strawman. In regards to me having a personal parser, that I can see built into my hud for fights, what about that offends you or bothers you. Why can't I have it? Maybe if nothing else whIle I'm running the same roulette dungeons every day I want to beat my Previous skills so tell me why my personal parser is such a bother to you

[Lambdafish]

I'd like everyone opposed to answer this question not pick and choose little bits to strawman. In regards to me having a personal parser, that I can see built into my hud for fights, what about that offends you or bothers you. Why can't I have it? Maybe if nothing else whIle I'm running the same roulette dungeons every day I want to beat my Previous skills so tell me why my personal parser is such a bother to you

I'm very pro-parser and can give you an answer to that. Having a parser is your choice, but parsers promote poor play if you don't already have the fundamental skill to play the game (hint: how many people in duty finder have this skill?). We would see personal parsers being read wrong, and we would see players who want to inflate their DPS take unnecessarily high risks which may hinder the party more than low DPS. We may also see the opposite problem than we have now, wherein players will think they are playing well just because they have high DPS ("but muh parsers says...") when in fact they have that DPS because they stood in all the AOEs, got all the damage buffs, and had an amazing healer.

Parsers are great for end game raiding, some would even say necessary. But for casual content it would be overwhelming and people would misunderstand and misuse them. Parsers are NOT a teaching tool, they are an optimising tool, and people need to stop treating them like they can teach newer or more casual people how to play.

[KaivaC]

I'm very pro-parser and can give you an answer to that. Having a parser is your choice, but parsers promote poor play if you don't already have the fundamental skill to play the game (hint: how many people in duty finder have this skill?). We would see personal parsers being read wrong, and we would see players who want to inflate their DPS take unnecessarily high risks which may hinder the party more than low DPS. We may also see the opposite problem than we have now, wherein players will think they are playing well just because they have high DPS ("but muh parsers says...") when in fact they have that DPS because they stood in all the AOEs, got all the damage buffs, and had an amazing healer.

Parsers are great for end game raiding, some would even say necessary. But for casual content it would be overwhelming and people would misunderstand and misuse them. Parsers are NOT a teaching tool, they are an optimising tool, and people need to stop treating them like they can teach newer or more casual people how to play.

I'd have to second this. We already have a huge amount of people who already don't understand that parsers are meant for more than just having huge DPS numbers, and the immediate side-effect is not understanding how to read it when it is transferred over to fflogs. Take a gander at reddit to see that on a near-daily basis, there's a request for somebody to read parser information. Turning this over to players in an official capacity in MSQ content, before a lot of players even have a working foundation on their jobs, would spell some trouble.

[PyurBlue]

Parsers are great for end game raiding, some would even say necessary. But for casual content it would be overwhelming and people would misunderstand and misuse them. Parsers are NOT a teaching tool, they are an optimising tool, and people need to stop treating them like they can teach newer or more casual people how to play.

When I was a new player I really wanted something to help me measure my damage. As I progressed through levels I just never knew if I was doing well. Parsers certainly could have taught me a lot with regards to my rotations. I feel like this would have been especially true for DoT's which I underestimated and didn't really focus on keeping up. I might have also realized that things like Swiftcast aren't actually a DPS gain unless your spell has a longer cast time than recast time. Parsers can certainly be helpful at every level of gameplay. One might even argue that they would be more helpful at low level than at high level just because a newer player will make larger mistakes which would be more obvious in their DPS numbers.

[Lambdafish]

When I was a new player I really wanted something to help me measure my damage. As I progressed through levels I just never knew if I was doing well. Parsers certainly could have taught me a lot with regards to my rotations. I feel like this would have been especially true for DoT's which I underestimated and didn't really focus on keeping up. I might have also realized that things like Swiftcast aren't actually a DPS gain unless your spell has a longer cast time than recast time. Parsers can certainly be helpful at every level of gameplay. One might even argue that they would be more helpful at low level than at high level just because a newer player will make larger mistakes which would be more obvious in their DPS numbers.

The number of players who can actually benefit from parsers as a teaching tool is incredibly low. You say that it would have helped you with your rotations, but it's not actually the parser doing that, it is you teaching yourself (presumably on a dummy) by experimenting and theorycrafing and seeing which rotations deal higher damage. The parser isn't actually teaching you how to play your job, it's just giving you a bit of additional information. Wanting to theorycraft is fine and all, but people have already done that extensively and you can find the resources online in job guides and job discussion. As I said, you are the 0.1% and 99.9% of new players would be completely tripped up by a number they shouldn't be looking at at that point in their learning process.

[Ilan]

The number of players who can actually benefit from parsers as a teaching tool is incredibly low. You say that it would have helped you with your rotations, but it's not actually the parser doing that, it is you teaching yourself (presumably on a dummy) by experimenting and theorycrafing and seeing which rotations deal higher damage, the parser isn't actually telling you how to play your job, it's just giving you a bit of additional information. Wanting to theorycraft is fine and all, but people have already done that extensively and you can find the resources online in job guides and job discussion. As I said, you are the 0.1% and 99.9% of new players would be completely tripped up by a number they shouldn't be looking at at that point in their learning process.

Practicing rotations on a dummy doesn't bring you anywhere because you don't see which rotation deals more dps. You can hit a dummy to get your rotation into your head but not to see if its good if you don't see any numbers.

[Lambdafish]

Practicing rotations on a dummy doesn't bring you anywhere because you don't see which rotation deals more dps. You can hit a dummy to get your rotation into your head but not to see if its good if you don't see any numbers.

Practising rotations on a dummy with a parser open, that was the argument being made in regards to learning by theorycrafting

[Nixxe]

When I was a new player I really wanted something to help me measure my damage. As I progressed through levels I just never knew if I was doing well. Parsers certainly could have taught me a lot with regards to my rotations. I feel like this would have been especially true for DoT's which I underestimated and didn't really focus on keeping up. I might have also realized that things like Swiftcast aren't actually a DPS gain unless your spell has a longer cast time than recast time. Parsers can certainly be helpful at every level of gameplay. One might even argue that they would be more helpful at low level than at high level just because a newer player will make larger mistakes which would be more obvious in their DPS numbers.

A parser actually seems like it would be a distraction because the issue here is that your grasp of what goes into doing good DPS was so completely lacking that you couldn't even do basic quantitative reasoning on your own. You were new, so that's understandable, but a number utterly deprived of context is unlikely to yield any great insights, especially because whether it's higher or lower than last time doesn't strictly depend on whether you played better or worse. Even if you log whatever it is you intended use as a test, without a solid understanding of how the game works, it's just going to be rows upon rows of data and is more likely to overwhelm the rookie than anything. For instance, should you happen to crit a bunch the time you didn't use dots and end up doing more damage, what then? Are you just going to conclude that dots are a waste of time? You obviously shouldn't, but that relies on understanding that dots are higher damage per cast time than many of your other spells, in addition to whatever other higher damage opportunities they may open up. A parser really isn't a teaching tool until you have a solid grasp of the game in order to make sense of the information it provides you. Someone still at the level of wondering if dots are a good idea doesn't need a parser. They need an understanding of what potency is, what their stats do, and the fundamentals of DPS.

[PyurBlue]

A parser actually seems like it would be a distraction because the issue here is that your grasp of what goes into doing good DPS was so completely lacking that you couldn't even do basic quantitative reasoning on your own. You were new, so that's understandable, but a number utterly deprived of context is unlikely to yield any great insights, especially because whether it's higher or lower than last time doesn't strictly depend on whether you played better or worse. Even if you log whatever it is you intended use as a test, without a solid understanding of how the game works, it's just going to be rows upon rows of data and is more likely to overwhelm the rookie than anything. For instance, should you happen to crit a bunch the time you didn't use dots and end up doing more damage, what then? Are you just going to conclude that dots are a waste of time? You obviously shouldn't, but that relies on understanding that dots are higher damage per cast time than many of your other spells, in addition to whatever other higher damage opportunities they may open up. A parser really isn't a teaching tool until you have a solid grasp of the game in order to make sense of the information it provides you. Someone still at the level of wondering if dots are a good idea doesn't need a parser. They need an understanding of what potency is, what their stats do, and the fundamentals of DPS.

You're absolutely right in pointing out that parsers have their own limitations and issues, but I still think having the extra data would end up being a net gain in many situations. I learned fairly quickly that there was damage variance in the game, although I didn't really know how it worked. I definitely didn't know that there were two kinds of damage increasing hits (DH and Crit) and I think this information escaped me until I started looking at endgame guides. Simply by having a parser that recorded what kinds of hits were occurring I would have been made aware of them and perhaps looked them up to better understand them. As far as damage variance as a whole goes, recording that variance in numbers over a long period of time is better than trying to guesstimate what the variance is. You don't need to account for the variance if you can just do the theoretical average math like you suggest, but the game is lacking in this area too. Some of the damage increasing skills don't give you numbers but instead just describe the effect. For example PLD's Spirits Within doesn't tell you how much the damage drops with HP so the only way to figure it out would be through measurement. There is a similar issue with BLM's Astral Fire as I don't think the game ever explicitly tells you what the damage multipliers are.

A parser will not magically make a new player perform better, sometimes it will take work on their part to make use of the data. If these players are really looking to improve though, then I think having more data available rather than less will be beneficial for them. Also consider that having a parser available for all probably means that a good chunk of the player base would be familiar with it. Players could help each other understand how to use the tool, just as they do with the rest of the game.

[Nixxe]

You're absolutely right in pointing out that parsers have their own limitations and issues, but I still think having the extra data would end up being a net gain in many situations. I learned fairly quickly that there was damage variance in the game, although I didn't really know how it worked. I definitely didn't know that there were two kinds of damage increasing hits (DH and Crit) and I think this information escaped me until I started looking at endgame guides. Simply by having a parser that recorded what kinds of hits were occurring I would have been made aware of them and perhaps looked them up to better understand them. As far as damage variance as a whole goes, recording that variance in numbers over a long period of time is better than trying to guesstimate what the variance is. You don't need to account for the variance if you can just do the theoretical average math like you suggest, but the game is lacking in this area too. Some of the damage increasing skills don't give you numbers but instead just describe the effect. For example PLD's Spirits Within doesn't tell you how much the damage drops with HP so the only way to figure it out would be through measurement. There is a similar issue with BLM's Astral Fire as I don't think the game ever explicitly tells you what the damage multipliers are.

A parser will not magically make a new player perform better, sometimes it will take work on their part to make use of the data. If these players are really looking to improve though, then I think having more data available rather than less will be beneficial for them. Also consider that having a parser available for all probably means that a good chunk of the player base would be familiar with it. Players could help each other understand how to use the tool, just as they do with the rest of the game.

I'm not saying parsers are not helpful. I'm saying that in the situation you outlined it's putting the cart before the horse.