Parsers add replayability for casual players

[Shurrikhan]

In fact, I've never known any parser to track literally "all of it".

It is objectively counting any and all throughput.

Mistakes will have a cost to, at minimum, one's own throughput, but how much so is still quantifiably measurable. The exact mistake -- e.g., that I flubbed a combo while you misaligned your CDs -- is irrelevant; how much they actually impacted our performance is all that will ultimately matter.

To me, that's the biggest problem with a parser; it doesn't track everything, which leads to some folks focusing on just specific aspects of gameplay rather than all.

Let's pretend for a moment that this wasn't already specifically regarding questions of whose throughput fell short, such as why a group is failing a dps check, or that such a question is somehow not most directly answered through metrics related to throughput.

You seem to be falling under the misconception that parsers can only measure DPS. ACT may call that satisfactory (though it includes more than that as well, just not via its mini display), as it was made only for those who particularly needed DPS metrics (for raids that are ultimately cleared or failed because of DPS), but that's far from from the limit of parsers.

Percent active time, enemy active time against you (a.k.a., kiting percentile), (de)buff uptime, specific (de)buff's uptime, specific (de)buff's uptime against a focus target, avoidable damage taken, number of instances of avoidable damage taken, vulnerability stacks acquired, deaths, raid time spent rezzing you, healer % uptime spent healing your avoidable damage taken, total mitigation, average percent mitigation, average %HP decrease per strike taken, average %HP decrease per strike taken above a set threshold, damage percentiles by source, incoming damage by source, effective healing done, overhealing done, average overhealing percentile, average overhealing cast as portion of total healing casts, damage dealt to specific targets, overkill percentage, and the like are all displayable in real-time through parsers. Heck, a parser can even run live comparisons between someone else's log over time or the time-charted events therein and one's current, allowing one to compare the actions cast and portions and running sums of damage from, say, the world's best ad-hoc build Samurai player in the exact same Savage raid even as you run it. The boundaries of parsers as a concept are far from barebone or basic.

The only relevant things a parser cannot calculate are those which requires mapping, such as whether one's movement was greater than the minimum distance by which they could have dodged a given AoE; granted, an official/integrated parser actually could do that. (There is no need to account for latency, a player's human response times, etc., separately from matters already tracked as average activity delays on non-casters.) So, what exactly is it that real-time data as a concept is so inherently reductive of?

Heck, look at the way WoW uses their logs: in addition to all we see already on fflogs, you can watch in-time replays of every player's and mob's positions, their health, their mana, their special resources, each cast made or aura/buff/debuff applied, pauseable, rewindable, fastforward-able, seekable, bookmarkable. We obviously don't need to go that far, but let's not pretend a parser is inherently some barebone "DPS box" alone.

[Alxyzntlct]

It is objectively counting any and all throughput.

Mistakes will have a cost to, at minimum, one's own throughput, but how much so is still quantifiably measurable. The exact mistake -- e.g., that I flubbed a combo while you misaligned your CDs -- is irrelevant; how much they actually impacted our performance is all that will ultimately matter.


Let's pretend for a moment that this wasn't already specifically regarding questions of whose throughput fell short, such as why a group is failing a dps check, or that such a question is somehow not most directly answered through metrics related to throughput.

You seem to be falling under the misconception that parsers can only measure DPS. ACT may call that satisfactory (though it includes more than that as well, just not via its mini display), as it was made only for those who particularly needed DPS metrics (for raids that are ultimately cleared or failed because of DPS), but that's far from from the limit of parsers.

Percent active time, enemy active time against you (a.k.a., kiting percentile), (de)buff uptime, specific (de)buff's uptime, specific (de)buff's uptime against a focus target, avoidable damage taken, number of instances of avoidable damage taken, vulnerability stacks acquired, deaths, raid time spent rezzing you, healer % uptime spent healing your avoidable damage taken, total mitigation, average percent mitigation, average %HP decrease per strike taken, average %HP decrease per strike taken above a set threshold, damage percentiles by source, incoming damage by source, effective healing done, overhealing done, average overhealing percentile, average overhealing cast as portion of total healing casts, damage dealt to specific targets, overkill percentage, and the like are all displayable in real-time through parsers.

Ah, no, I'm not falling under any misconceptions. I specifically denoted how I usually see others focusing on dps.

I see what you mean though; yes, technically, a parser can track a ton of variables. The problem I'm trying to flag stays the same though; it requires someone to go through that volume of information and parse it out into a usable context, which again, frequently devolves into human perspective. Over-selling the "data purity" of a parser doesn't remove humans from the equation, ultimately.

Either way, I see that the discussion is still moot though...

My statements at the start of this entire still hold true to me:
- I can see how a personal score or gauge could be fun
- I personally feel group or public formal parsers are a step in the wrong direction
- So ultimately, the current implementation seems fine as it is and Dev resources could likely be better spent elsewhere

[Shurrikhan]

My statements at the start of this entire still hold true to me:
- I can see how a personal score or gauge could be fun
- I personally feel group or public formal parsers are a step in the wrong direction
- So ultimately, the current implementation seems [to me] fine as it is and Dev resources could likely be better spent elsewhere

And (bold added) that's fair. Personally, I feel that the private/personal score is the essential portion, as my main interest is in making a powerful learning tool less exclusive.

Benefits of extending parsers to the group or public level are altogether separate: they mark a change to social dynamics, give opportunities for friendly competition, can socially center learning when people are willing to help, shop-talk, and provide more immediate redress or pertinent discussion when hitting a wall in content.

However, yes, they may also put points of conflict into view; it is up to you whether you wish to blame the glasses for how ugly your view now unarguably is, but personally I can hardly fault parsers for their added clarity, so long as due standards are met to keep the information contextualized (giving a more picture more indicative or gestalt than that provided by raw damage numbers alone).

I'd be happy even just giving a personal parser to PS players, though I do also think stopping there would be a tremendous waste, as it'd deny context and maintain certain paradigms I, personally, feel are far more toxic than what public information would effect. I would rather dispense with the blame games and move on to informed correction directly, if it's even seemingly necessary.

Perhaps you could say that I am naïve in my thinking that we're not typically so belligerent as to go off on each other the moment our blindfolds are removed. I'd offer instead, though, that we already have sufficient excuses, glimpsed from within that limited vision, but merely lack clarity; worse, lacking that clarity, we often want to fill the unknown with what guesswork, however poor or outright feigned, we can utilize, and often in a way more fixated on one's self than typically seen with well-contextualized public information.

Put another way, in the absence of information as public, plain, and incidental, questions of fault often dissolve into a me-or-them sort of false dichotomy. It too often turns to "Is it my fault?" and consequently "It's (one of) them! They're the problem!" as if "they" were somehow collective and/or interchangeable. When you are one among many, even if you happen to have performed the worse, granular "fault" or room for improvement still shows among all others and, assuming you are not so badly underperforming as to show the content an ill fit for you at present, the task thus appears more collective.