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.

[SaitoHikari]

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.

That's because the performance gap between different players for that time period appears to have been quite small, so people did not care as much in those days. The encounter design in those days appear to have reflected this as well. Did hard enrages even exist in ARR either? I started playing at the beginning of HW, so I'm not sure. Parsers probably only exploded in popularity among the raiding scene precisely because of how absurdly strict the DPS checks in the Gordias tier was. Actually, a lot of things that caused problems in the raiding scene and the devs' responses to said problems can be traced back to that complete train wreck of a raid tier. (Necessitating the creation of the cross world party finder, for one.)

From what I've observed (and this may not be accurate due to skill changes since then), high DPS in level 50 content was considered to be around the 400-600 range with high end ilvl gear, and most people averaged 200-400. Meanwhile, in Stormblood, you see people with a massive range anywhere between 2k-7k+. The higher the stat/damage gap becomes between players, the harder it is for developers to properly balance new content, especially content tailored towards high-end players.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That's because the performance gap between different players for that time period appears to have been quite small, so people did not care as much in those days. The encounter design in those days appear to have reflected this as well. Did hard enrages even exist in ARR either? I started playing at the beginning of HW, so I'm not sure. Parsers probably only exploded in popularity among the raiding scene precisely because of how absurdly strict the DPS checks in the Gordias tier was. Actually, a lot of things that caused problems in the raiding scene and the devs' responses to said problems can be traced back to that complete train wreck of a raid tier. (Necessitating the creation of the cross world party finder, for one.)

From what I've observed (and this may not be accurate due to skill changes since then), high DPS in level 50 content was considered to be around the 400-600 range with high end ilvl gear, and most people averaged 200-400. Meanwhile, in Stormblood, you see people with a massive range anywhere between 2k-7k+. The higher the stat/damage gap becomes between players, the harder it is for developers to properly balance new content, especially content tailored towards high-end players.

Hard or soft enrages were in every single fight in coil. And then even normal mode Alexander had enrage timers.

When DPS is so low, people doing half is not insignificant, just as much as it is now. I remember PLD's being #1 in alliance raids during 2.0...

[ForteNightshade]

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.

Parsing was, indeed, around in Coil. It simply wasn't made public yet. You also have to factor in people were still learning how the game functioned. Back then, even top tier raiders were hugging tank stance and healers weren't DPSing the way they do now. It isn't about competition with other players. For many raiders, it's simply about seeing their own improvement and beating their previous best. It's a self-imposed challenge to make content more interesting. Does everyone care? Not necessarily. However, you would be very surprised at how many do.

First and foremost, SSS is almost worthless. A target dummy does not translate well into actual combat. Secondly, it's woefully inconsistent. A Bard, for example, will have a horrible time because their whole job is dependent on Crit procs which they will not have consistency solo. I know orange tier Bards who struggle on that dummy simply because RNG said no. Regardless, you've still made the recruitment a nightmare because now a group has to be at auto-pilot level and watch another player perform a rotation for a job they may not even play. To cite myself an example. I can parse whether a DRG or NIN is doing something wrong pretty quickly, especially if their Tricks aren't aligned. But I'm not going to notice a BLM messing up. Not to mention, it's much harder to pick up what's going wrong in the midst of a pull.

[SaitoHikari]

Hard or soft enrages were in every single fight in coil. And then even normal mode Alexander had enrage timers.

When DPS is so low, people doing half is not insignificant, just as much as it is now. I remember PLD's being #1 in alliance raids during 2.0...

It may not be insignificant, but it's still better than the massive range you see among players in SB. Next expansion, we're likely to end up seeing ranges as wide as 3k-10k. From a development standpoint, which range of DPS will the developers use as a good balancing point? The wider it gets in terms of actual numbers (percentage-wise may be seen as rather irrelevant in such balancing dilemmas), the harder it gets for the lower end of the population to catch up (or hide their performance even from people who don't parse, really).

Anyway, I'm also in the camp that thinks there's really more to this story. When you think about the actions the GMs took, it completely contradicts their 'no off-site/outside game evidence' policy. The only way OP would have been nailed is if the report was filed under 'harassment', as no other category fits. If this is indeed the full story, 10 days is huge for a simple harassment report based purely on parsing, I believe that's the maximum punishment short of an outright permaban. (Enforcement against parsing is mostly a he said/she said sort of thing on top of that - the only way this makes sense at all if we take the OP's words at face value is if the GM in question broke standard policy and accepted off-site evidence, which would be scary as hell because it would set precedent for certain trolls on these forums to get themselves uploaded on purpose and then ask the GMs to ban them afterwards.)

(It also says quite a lot about moderation practices when suspension length and exactly what they mean in terms of severity is common knowledge among the community.)

[McChaffee]

Its because its sniffing the game network traffic that it is against the rules.

I'm only replying to state that this post is incorrect as I'm reading through this thread. If someone has already pointed this out later in the thread I apologize.

Parsers look at a .log file text document which you're receiving from the server, they don't interact with server network traffic at all. They look at when incoming damage posted in the log and then do math to give you a slightly behind look at damage being done real time from the messages as they're added to the log. Technically anyone could do this without a parser if they wanted to open up a spread sheet and take the relevant information.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I'm only replying to state that this post is incorrect as I'm reading through this thread. If someone has already pointed this out later in the thread I apologize.

Parsers look at a .log file text document which you're receiving from the server, they don't interact with server network traffic at all. They look at when incoming damage posted in the log and then do math to give you a slightly behind look at damage being done real time from the messages as they're added to the log. Technically anyone could do this without a parser if they wanted to open up a spread sheet and take the relevant information.

They do that only in non-network mode. And even then, that is not accurate. They either read network data, or they read the system's memory. They do not go off log files.

[McChaffee]

They do that only in non-network mode. And even then, that is not accurate. They either read network data, or they read the system's memory. They do not go off log files.

That's not how it works at all for any game that doesn't have a built-in plugin or support interface. A program cannot ping the game servers for data if there is no system implemented to give a response. It can only read the data coming back from the servers which is sent to that log file.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That's not how it works at all for any game that doesn't have a built-in plugin or support interface. A program cannot ping the game servers for data if there is no system implemented to give a response. It can only read the data coming back from the servers which is sent to that log file.

I didn't say it was talking to the server, I said it was reading the network data. You do know how a packet sniffer works right? It reads the data without intercepting it.

[McChaffee]

They do that only in non-network mode. And even then, that is not accurate. They either read network data, or they read the system's memory. They do not go off log files.

Yes, they do and yes, you can make accurate calculations using a .log file because there's always a live file being generated whenever you log into the game. If you didn't realize it, the default battle tab records all combat including damage as it happens live, which is where most of the parser are getting their information from as all that information is dumped immediately into the log. It's why when I've seen people using something like ACT while streaming there is usually a few seconds delay on the damage adjusting after burst or on initial hits.