Quote Originally Posted by linay View Post
It's less about blaming tools and more about regulating what people can/should do with certain tools. Whether or not tools can make people behave in a certain way, they can certainly facilitate those behaviors.
But they don't?

When things go wrong, people check their existing information for the cause or causes for either of two reasons: (1) they feel they've been somehow cheated (e.g. someone did not meet the practical prerequisites to the fight or is purposely neglecting their tasks) or (2) they simply want to complete the content they've signed up for. You can call the first a more negative or defensive reaction to the situation, sure, but it's far from unwarranted.

The level of information each player possesses does not curb the conflict that will arise when things go wrong, nor the behavior occurring once that conflict incurs. Being aware of a failure triggers that conflict, not merely being aware of the causes for that failure. At that point, information only resolves the conflict more quickly and with fewer tangential factors (such as (1) how noticeable one player's mistakes were compared to others', based on (2) how much party members think they know about the jobs that have potentially made a mistake, (3) the visibility of their responsibilities, (4) how much time and attention others had to watch those mistakes unfold).

Note that there are other issues that make these conflict resolutions worse but no slower, such as how mistaken those players are in evaluating visual tells or how skewed their observations were in the first place.

Hiding a problem doesn't make it go away. Nor does resolving a inevitable conflict more quickly (and in a fairer, more informed manner) suddenly make a conflict where none would previously have existed. It's just a more informed decision that allows steps to be taken against the existing problem rather than against everyone.

Any group with even minimal awareness of enrage requirements isn't going to quit out of a fight uniquely because their parsers tell them the raid's doing about half the necessary damage; the amount of time spent thus far and the boss's %HP being only half as far drained as it should be does that just fine.