Parsers add replayability for casual players

[Puremallace]

IF Square Enix EVER EVER listened to this guy and made parses widely available I would quit tomorrow along with 3/4 of the rest of the community. For some reason you guys think this is our first MMO or something. I have been playing these things longer then some of you have been alive.

Every single MMO that has widely accepted parses has had a toxic community. Every single one. The only places we know they are all used is in Ultimate content where DPS checks matter in a big way. Outside of that it is pure toxicity because casuals start to use them to hate on other casuals and start excluding jobs for 0.0001% difference in dps output.

I trust some elite prick to understand that minor difference does not matter unless on bleeding edge content but give a casual a dps meter and they will destroy an MMO. Once those casuals start getting excluded from content or called pieces of crap they come to the forums and start screaming for buffs or unsubbing then when the developer caves the next job wants a buff as they are now 0.00001% bad and when they do not get it those people are now excluded so they unsub.

Swear to god I cannot put into words how many times I have seen this viscous cycle play out.

[WoW]

IF Square Enix EVER EVER listened to this guy and made parses widely available I would quit tomorrow along with 3/4 of the rest of the community.

Good. 10char

[Liam_Harper]

As opposed to the parser not existing; the Satasha "elitist" isn't emboldened to attack the new player by seeing just how severely he's struggling, and the new player gets to walk away from his first dungeon not feeling like crap.

Someone who is bold enough to harass and attack a new player in Satasha, despite knowing it's breaking ToS, is not going to be a shining example of the community because a parser doesn't exist. A parser does not turn kind hearted individuals into raving monsters.
The abuser will either have ACT on in the background anyway and simply harass the new player for being "bad" without mentioning numbers or be the type to hurl abuse at tanks for going too fast or slow or healers for doing dps or not doing dps or pretty much anything else. Those players exist, even if we put our fingers in our ears and pretend it's all flowers and sunshine because we banned performance tools.

The biggest difference from WoW and FF14 is the zero tolerance on harassment. From my experience in WoW, the GM's don't really care. You can hurl all sorts of abuse, corpse camp, grief or insult players without consequence. They've developed a "grow a thicker skin" attitude, where complaining about abuse is looked down on. This encourages toxic behavior more than any tool.

FF14 Devs have a good attitude on harassment. But the hand-holding safety bubble attitude of pretending everyone is a nice person by hiding away every tool or indication of performance isn't healthy. There is a lot of toxicity bubbling away beneath the surface in the community. It builds resentment. It's why parser topics always end up in a "casual vs elitist" argument. Things like:

your toxic elitist bullshit

I trust some elite prick to understand

...don't really help the case for the casual side either. The anti-parser policy ends up as a way to stifle many people with valid concerns, who get frustrated at being expected to shut up and do unpaid, thankless work carrying instances. Toxicity in ff14 definitely exists but ends up more subtle, silent kicks, rushing the tank in dungeons, dps pulling mobs, people ditching PF groups after a wipe or two, passive-aggressive comments, silently refusing to rez "bad" players, going afk or losing interest in trying, mentors rarely mentoring and so on. There's a lot of built up frustration.

[Goji1639]

Someone who is bold enough to harass and attack a new player in Satasha, despite knowing it's breaking ToS, is not going to be a shining example of the community because a parser doesn't exist. A parser does not turn kind hearted individuals into raving monsters.
The abuser will either have ACT on in the background anyway and simply harass the new player for being "bad" without mentioning numbers or be the type to hurl abuse at tanks for going too fast or slow or healers for doing dps or not doing dps or pretty much anything else. Those players exist, even if we put our fingers in our ears and pretend it's all flowers and sunshine because we banned performance tools.

The biggest difference from WoW and FF14 is the zero tolerance on harassment. From my experience in WoW, the GM's don't really care. You can hurl all sorts of abuse, corpse camp, grief or insult players without consequence. They've developed a "grow a thicker skin" attitude, where complaining about abuse is looked down on. This encourages toxic behavior more than any tool.

FF14 Devs have a good attitude on harassment. But the hand-holding safety bubble attitude of pretending everyone is a nice person by hiding away every tool or indication of performance isn't healthy. There is a lot of toxicity bubbling away beneath the surface in the community. It builds resentment. It's why parser topics always end up in a "casual vs elitist" argument. Things like:

It's not pretending everyone is a nice person; it's acknowledging that most of the people in this community aren't actually nice people. A lot of people don't use ACT in this game specifically because it's not convenient and not supported. What silences the majority of this games toxic players is ignorance, but once you make harassment based on hard data convenient it'll open the floodgate.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like parsers and think they're incredibly useful and fun. I just don't see SE as the reason we can't have them; I blame all of you. If you were better people we could have nice things.

[StriderShinryu]

The anti-parser policy ends up as a way to stifle many people with valid concerns, who get frustrated at being expected to shut up and do unpaid, thankless work carrying instances.

As I've said a ton of times before, this just does not happen with anywhere near the frequency that some people say it does. And, as has also been said a ton of times before, if those players really do feel that they're forced into the thankless job of carrying casual players through (casual) content then they already have all of the tools they need to avoid this. A parser is not going to help anything or change that. A "bad" player isn't going to get good just because they have numbers thrown in their face, either by the game or by another player. And, frankly, the game (which we're all playing) as designed by the developers (who are developing the game we're all playing) does not require a more dedicated/hardcore approach. If someone wants to complain about casual players ruining everything and making their life an endless slog of carrying bads through the game then they should speak to the developers instead of haranguing the more casual player base. It's the developer's game and this is the way they have designed it. It really is that simple.

[TaleraRistain]

IF Square Enix EVER EVER listened to this guy and made parses widely available I would quit tomorrow along with 3/4 of the rest of the community. For some reason you guys think this is our first MMO or something. I have been playing these things longer then some of you have been alive.

Every single MMO that has widely accepted parses has had a toxic community.

This, and Wavaryen's post as well.

One pattern I've noticed among a lot of us who don't want an official parser is that we've seen it before. And we've seen the mentality destroy things we love.

I played EQII (among other MMOs like EQ before it) from beta for many years. I was a ranger class. I played before parsers were in common use. Maybe some world first guilds were using them, but they weren't used in solo or group content at that time. We had great debates on the official ranger forums and other ranger sites about how to utilize our many skills. And there were different ways. Even if we did talk about the effectiveness of this or that from what we could see on the tooltips and damage given in game, there was still room for a wide spectrum of play.

That is, until parsers started to be used commonly. Then it was all debates based around numbers, not creatively using your skills to pull something off. I eventually went full solo and even that started to get infected by the mentality, because those who held to certain parsing standards in group content felt that the solo content should also be up to those standards because they were bored and it was too easy for them. i go back now and then because Norrath was a huge part of my life over the past 20 years. I really just keep to myself because it's just so toxic.

SE has a good balance here. They keep hard dps checks and enrages in optional content like harder EX trials, Savage, and Ultimate. So those who want that playground can have it. The know people use parsers for that content and so long as said people don't talk about it in game, there's no action SE is going to take against them.

But for MSQ, dungeons, and alliance raids (outside one or two random examples like Deathgaze), you don't have those hard dps checks or enrages. Sure, mechs might get a bit spicy if the fight continues on, but it's a much more forgiving environment. There's no game design reason in that content for parsers, just the desire of some players to do it as fast as possible. So there's no reason to have something official. Se "allows" them where they are relevant but maintains their ability to take strong action if they are used inappropriately. Yes, it leaves console players who enjoy that optional content out, but the inclusion would hurt the overall game more. SE is making the smartest decision for the health of the game.