Going on 2 hours of radio silence after logging in to find my character in GM jail

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

This will never happen. Why? Because FFlogs ultimately keeps Savage alive and the devs know it. Without FFlogs, what purpose does clearing Savage multiple times have? Why even care about obtaining i400 gear? It's wholly irrelevant since it only helps clear an encounter faster yet you can longer actually see any improvements. So what's the point? Furthermore, if parses were somehow banned to the point literally no one could gather that information—a highly unlikely scenario—you effectively kill raiding. Why? How are statics supposed to recruit when they have no way of knowing your performance? Ultimate not only demands mechanical awareness but overall high DPS. Without a tool to read this information, people couldn't decipher whether that Black Mage they picked up was pulling 9,000 DPS or 5,000.

"Well, they boss isn't dying! That's how you know." Okay... but how do you know who isn't contributing enough? And therein lies the problem. You wouldn't, which makes recruitment a nightmare.

Regardless, the aforementioned will not happen because even if FFlogs were banned tomorrow. People will simply make an underground tool they don't publicly spread. I suspect the dev's approach is "better a devil you know than one you don't."



People would simply demand you post your numbers publicly, and refusal would be taken as a sign you were lying. Furthermore, as Valkrie said, you need a point of reference for a parse to matter. I cannot improve my DRG or WAR numbers without directly comparing them against better DRGs and WARs. I can't "trim" mistakes unless I know I'm making them, which a solo parse will not tell you.

To contest this, Coil was a pretty popular raiding cycle, and FFLOGS wasn't around for that, that I know of. Parsing wasn't even really a thing for much of it. I don't remember it being a big deal. Also, Most raiders I know don't raid for competing against other peoples numbers. They raid for the fun and enjoyment of it. The people competing for "speed clears" is a very small subset of the overall raiding community.

As for how you can determine how good a player is without a parse? Its pretty easy. When you are trialing players, you do content you know. That way you can put yourself mostly on autopilot so you can watch them. If all other players are a known quality, then you can judge how things go based on how long the fight takes. Also, SSS kill times. Theres lost of ways to judge a persons skill without parsing.