New ToS gives hope for official DPS meters?

[Granyala]

Still this doesn't solve the issue of people being too lazy to look for this info. Most people just want to glance at numbers and make a quick call.

Hmm so... do we ban chainsaws because many people are incapable of operating them safely?
Do we stop using hydrofluoric acid because most people can't handle the substance?

Parsers are a tool. Yep, as you said: most people do not have the knowledge to use more than the E-Peen numbers.
That's not the fault of the tool though.

[Penthea]

Hmm so... do we ban chainsaws because many people are incapable of operating them safely?
Do we stop using hydrofluoric acid because most people can't handle the substance?

This is an awful example because there is regulation on the purchase of these things.

In most countries you can't buy a chainsaw unless you're an adult. The quantity of how much hydrofluoric acid you can buy is regulated, and I would assume that similar to chainsaws the substances containing it can only be legally sold to people above a certain age. You can only legally buy it in large quantities if you have a licence for industrial use, or if you go to a lot of trouble of sourcing it from multiple areas to fly under the radar of the law.

The use of the above is regulated at the time of purchase. This would not be the case with parsers. At most SE could put in an entry in the ToS regarding their use, but the game doesn't look at how old you are, if you're qualified to use it, etc. SE won't act until there are reports of abuse which is after after the damage is done, and some people would consider this to be too late.

You would have been better off using cans of deodorant as an example.

Parsers are a tool. Yep, as you said: most people do not have the knowledge to use more than the E-Peen numbers.
That's not the fault of the tool though.

I completely agree. I did say in a previous post a few pages back that the problem isn't parsers. It's people. People are why we can't have nice or useful things.

I just looked this up and it's another very clear example of how parsers don't make players into dicks, players who are dicks use parsers as just one more tool to be dicks. The players in that incident did a bunch of horrible things, only one of which had anything remotely to do with parsers. Those asshole players would have still done all those other horrible things if parsers didn't exist.

While this is true you can't deny that parsers enabled these people to be horrible in a specific manner. If they didn't have access to parsers they couldn't have shamed that person for their numbers. They may not have spun the boss around to make her numbers worse if they didn't have any numbers they could see.

[Granyala]

This is an awful example because there is regulation on the purchase of these things.
In most countries you can't buy a chainsaw unless you're an adult.

Since you have to be above a certain age to be able to play FF-XIV, that is hardly relevant.
Also, chainsaws cause real, physical harm if mishandled to the point of being life threatening.
Being 18+ as the only barrier to owning one is very low indeed, which is why I chose the example.

A parser / DPS meter can't hurt anybody, it is neutral and only shows data. All that can happen is "muh feelingz" if s/o mishandles it.
Well, to be frank: grow a thicker skin. We are talking about a video game, and if your performance is holding the group back, you deserve to get called out for it.

I played WoW for a decade and I think I got dissed due to parsers maybe 3 times. Why? Because I don't play group content half AFK. Pull decent numbers and you won't have any problems.

[Penthea]

They should just let addons in the game it could fix all these problems...

This won't help. FFXIV is a cross-platform game. Add-ons that work on pc won't work on ps4 and vice versa. Furthermore Sony would have to approve the use of third-party add-ons and that's not likely to ever happen.

No, thanks. I want them to actually put features in game and not rely on third party and have users have to manage addons, case in point being WoW and lack of built-in map coordinates.

Blizzard are incredibly lazy when it comes to updating their ui because they just rely on third party developers to do it for them for free. For a very long time it's been at the point in which anyone who takes the game remotely seriously needs to use add-ons. A lot of basic stuff we take for granted in FFXIV's ui is missing from WoW. While the idea of add-ons looks good on paper, the fact is they can be very volatile. Because their quality isn't regulated they are prone to being very buggy to the point of affecting game performance for yourself and in some cases even other players.

If SE ever officially allow the use of parsers and tools like FFLogs, I would prefer them to be developed by SE themselves. I really do not miss the hassle of dealing with third party add-ons. I don't miss patch-day messing up my add-ons. I don't miss finding out a new update for an add-on has made another one decide to no longer work. I don't miss raids getting delayed because someone's add-ons are bugged. I love logging in and not even thinking about my ui because everything just works.

A parser / DPS meter can't hurt anybody, it is neutral and only shows data. All that can happen is "muh feelingz" if s/o mishandles it.
Well, to be frank: grow a thicker skin. We are talking about a video game, and if your performance is holding the group back, you deserve to get called out for it.

I don't know why you're telling me this. I agreed with you when you said people are the problem, not parsers. I even said that before you started posting in this thread. Unless you happen to think the mere act of not being a huge fan of parsers means I must be too sensitive. Well I'll repeat myself. I'm fine with parsers. I'm not fine with handing them to any idiot. But we can't remove idiots so...yea. Or maybe you're just saying this generally. Hard to tell.

I played WoW for a decade and I think I got dissed due to parsers maybe 3 times. Why? Because I don't play group content half AFK. Pull decent numbers and you won't have any problems.

Either you have weird luck or I have. I can't begin to count the amount of needless crap I saw because of parsers. From people being too harsh in low lvl content to raid team drama starting because of things like snide remarks being tossed at lesser geared players who obviously would do less dps, and players getting into arguments because someone who is supposedly lesser skilled got gear instead of them. And this was across multiple raid teams.

On a personal level I escaped most parser drama because I spent most of my time healing, and I was a pretty decent dps when I did moonlight as one. I very rarely had it directed at me, and when I did it was for stupid stuff like low lvl mobs dying too fast for my dots to do enough dps, which somehow meant I was a bad player. When I did get involved it was usually to tell someone to shut up as it was often completely needless criticism.

However just because I experienced most parser drama from afar didn't mean I was okay with it. I didn't enjoy being an audience to often needless arguments. I didn't enjoy the delays from these arguments.

The funny thing is, despite what many may think of me based on what I have said so far, I won't be affected much if the game got an official parser. I rarely pug ex and savage and when my team does it's two players at most. I have a team full of wonderful easy-going people who do pull their weight and are very understanding of others if they have a bad day or are playing a class with lower dps potential. As for casual content I often do it with fc mates, and I'm a decent enough player with a lot of mmo experience so I'm not likely to be a target unless someone is really searching for something to scrutinise.

But I know not everyone is in the same position that I am. Not everyone's raid team has players with the same mind-set as mine. Others are even more patient, but others are significantly less. Not everyone has a fc full of people they trust who are willing to do content with them even if they're learning a class. Not everyone is a very experienced mmo player who can pick up things quickly because it's very familiar.

When I argue against parsers I'm thinking of players who haven't yet found like-minded people to play with when they're learning a class or new content, who are new to mmorpgs so they may pick up things slower and make some mistakes, who haven't yet had the chance to get better ilvl gear and are afraid to endure the grumblings of the far better geared players the roulette matched them with.

The sad truth is these people are ripe for others to abuse with parse results, and the players who will dish out this abuse already exist. But they're mostly quiet now because most don't use parsers. Right now, generally only people who are remotely interested in ex and savage will bother getting one, and even then many can't because they're ps4 players. But if the game gets its own one then everyone will have automatic access to them. Including the tryhards who elevate themselves by putting others down.

I'm not worried about raiders giving people abuse over parsers. Sure some raiders think their progress gives them the right to act high and mighty, but the real problem when it comes to parsers are the tryhards. There is no specific skill level for them, they're everywhere. Some have impressive savage progress, and others think knowing the meta makes them a raider. They can't let their performance speak for itself, so if they can find a way to put someone else down, then they will. Often no matter how silly the criticism is. Someone with my experience can brush it off or refute it quickly, but a less confident, less knowledgeable or newer player could genuinely take it to heart and begin to believe they're as bad as they were told. The worst part about tryhards? They can fool people into thinking this is how raiders act, and it breeds more of them. Some people figure this out and grow out of it. Others don't.

All these massive walls (omfg) said, I do think SE need to give us more than the Stone Sea Sky dummies. At the end of a dungeon I'd like to see players be given a rating, only they can see, of their dps. The rating would not be based on how they performed compared to other players, but would instead be based on the dps they did with they gear they have equipped. This would let them know if their damage output is appropriate for the gear they're wearing. And of course the rating would show the same details a parser would, but just for one player. I think this would be a good middle ground.