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.

[Beckett]

It's the koike incident

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.

[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.

[Vejj]

Behaviour that disrupts the game balanceSquare Enix strictly prohibits the use of third-party programs or tools – including programs and tools that permit automated or “absentee” play – in Final Fantasy XIV. Accordingly, the following activities are prohibited:


- Modifying, analysing, integrating, and/or reverse engineering game software or data.


This, parsers should not be allowed anymore. No grey zone.

[Beckett]

Behaviour that disrupts the game balanceSquare Enix strictly prohibits the use of third-party programs or tools – including programs and tools that permit automated or “absentee” play – in Final Fantasy XIV. Accordingly, the following activities are prohibited:


- Modifying, analysing, integrating, and/or reverse engineering game software or data.


This, parsers should not be allowed anymore. No grey zone.

3rd party parsers have never been allowed. That's not what this thread is about.

[Satarn]

The problem with this is doing it requires things called time, effort and knowledge. Most players just glance at the numbers to make a judgement either because they don't realise mere dps/hps numbers are often not enough to give an accurate picture, or they're too lazy to upload and start digging. On top of that in order to dig in parse results to find an answer you often need to know about far more than just your main class. Only players who are very knowledgeable about the game can be counted on to use parsers correctly and upload them if they need more in-depth information. You only need to look at the threads venting about bad DF experiences to get an idea as to how many people who play this game that wouldn't be qualified as knowledgeable. It's not an insignificant number.

On top of that parsers still don't tell you everything. They don't tell you where someone was standing. You can sometimes guess if lets say a person with an aoe marker killed another player. But all that tells you is someone stood in the wrong place. It doesn't tell you exactly who or where. Sometimes my static has had to resort to looking over a visual recording to find out what happened if the issue we had was potentially due to positioning.

Edit: turns out uploading logs can tell you about positioning

Lack of knowledge and laziness makes people act shitty without parsers. There's situations when people will give you crap because they think you're doing something wrong based on their lack of knowledge, while checking ACT would immiedietly prove them wrong - but you can't talk about it so have fun with them talking shit.

That is irrelevant however, as I wasn't advocating for in-game parser in my post. Yoshi P shares your opinion on this and that will not change, so trying to argue for it is utterly pointless. There's also no way they'd spend resources to make something that actually gives all information ACT with Logs provide, so again, why bother.

I am simply annoyed with people who have no idea how the resource works and still talk crap about anybody who uses it, as well as general misinformation that it's "just an elitist dps leader-boards that provides no context". I mean you've even claimed the logs don't show positioning, in a reply to the very post in which I've already said they do. You've corrected yourself once called out, but still.

[Penthea]

Lack of knowledge and laziness makes people act shitty without parsers. There's situations when people will give you crap because they think you're doing something wrong based on their lack of knowledge, while checking ACT would immiedietly prove them wrong - but you can't talk about it so have fun with them talking shit.

There is something to be said about giving people less tools to be horrible to one another. WoW's community was quite a lot like FFXIV's before parsers were commonly used; most people only cared if things died and if they got loot. The atmosphere in WoW changed for the worse after everyone and their mother got a parser. I fail to see how it would be any different in FFXIV.

I am simply annoyed with people who have no idea how the resource works and still talk crap about anybody who uses it as well as general misinformation that it's "just an elitist dps leader-boards that provides no context". I mean you've even claimed the logs don't show positioning, in a reply to the very post in which I've already said they do. You've corrected yourself once called out, but still.

The reason why I am not super familiar with FFlogs is frankly I don't feel qualified to look through it in the depth that my team sometimes requires. I know a lot about healer classes and that's kind of it. There are players in my static who have played significantly more classes at a higher level than I have and they're far better at theorycrafting as well, so I trust them to look for the information. Furthermore, I don't know what it is about ACT, but if anyone in my house uses it everyone gets horrendous lag so I have no access to a parser, which means I can't upload logs.

I will be asking why they don't look at FFlogs for positioning, though in our defence we have had confusion about positioning only around three times in more than a year. So the option to -see- where everyone is standing from a log is something we rarely needed. I can't even remember the last time we needed that information. I can only recall that we did at some points.

But I don't think me being unaware that you could look at positioning in FFLogs automatically makes every argument I have made against introducing parsers irrelevant. It is true most people don't have the knowledge to use them properly, it is true many are too lazy to upload logs to get a clearer picture, and it is true that while it can be a useful and helpful tool it can also be used for the exact opposite with ease.

[Dualgunner]

A parsing thread? What is this, January 2018?

The debate's kind of been run dry several times over. To this day I haven't seen more than anecdotal evidence supporting the claim that parsers make a community more toxic. So far the only good point I've seen posted has been "There's something to be said about not giving people more tools to be toxic to each other," but that gets turned around to the point I can easily say the chatbox should be removed from the game with the exact same logic. I would even wager that chatboxes are a much stronger tool for toxicity than parsers ever have been or will be.

Saw a claim that FFLogs is just contextless e-peen flexing also. Some people do use it as that. My group uses it to gauge a lot of things; where healing and mitigation would be optimal based on outgoing boss damage and the best times to line up dps burst windows to name a few key team coordinations that FFLogs worked great as a tool to allow us to do.

[Penthea]

The debate's kind of been run dry several times over. To this day I haven't seen more than anecdotal evidence supporting the claim that parsers make a community more toxic.

By the same vein a person could say they haven't seen more than anecdotal evidence that the presence of parsers wouldn't fuel toxicity.

This is one of the reasons why this debate is endless. Everyone's argument is anecdotal. And those that aren't are dismissed as an irregularity by those who oppose the argument. We're doomed to go in circles.

[Dualgunner]

By the same vein a person could say they haven't seen more than anecdotal evidence that the presence of parsers wouldn't fuel toxicity.

This is one of the reasons why this debate is endless. Everyone's argument is anecdotal. And those that aren't are dismissed as an irregularity by those who oppose the argument. This debate is never ending.

That's when we get into burden of proof. I want a parser; the answer is no, because they make communities toxic.

The burden of proof then lies on the answerer in this situation to prove that parsers make communities more toxic. Or in other terms, I can't prove a negative (Parsers don't fuel toxicity) but you must prove the positive (parsers do).