Parsers add replayability for casual players

[Raelsar]

I mean I get your experience with WoW had a high use if harrassment and misuse. Though I am sure others had very different experiences. Like myself do not get me wrong I did see harassment and misuse though generally most of my experience would fall in the neutral or pleasant encounter.

Though I do get if one has had an overly negative experience with them in the past why they would be so against them.

It was far more than one incident... more like that sort of thing was normal behaviour, and the best you could hope for in a random group was one which was silent and nothing went wrong. Everything was on a knife edge, hoping that things went smoothly and was over with quickly before someone exploded.

The whole idea of "It can't happen here" fails to take into account that WoW was once a far more pleasant place to be, raising the question of what went wrong in the first place? I wouldn't place the blame solely on the misuse of parsing tools, but again, they do seem to be the longest-lasting means of propagating toxicity in that game.

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That being said, I've tracked down the "official response" on parsers; it was put in Live Letter LVII, to summary of which can be found here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/414393

And to pull a quick quote from the first post there:

However, calculating another player’s DPS and posting that information online to shame them is clearly harassment and warrants a penalty. That would be an issue even before we consider whether using tools is allowed or not. Additionally, we often receive requests for an official damage calculation tool, but we would never implement one. The reason for this is because it may become the root of many disputes within the community.

Calling people out for low DPS is considered harassment, full stop.
Parser or not, they don't want that happen under ANY circumstances.

[Awha]

It was far more than one incident... more like that sort of thing was normal behaviour, and the best you could hope for in a random group was one which was silent and nothing went wrong. Everything was on a knife edge, hoping that things went smoothly and was over with quickly before someone exploded.

The whole idea of "It can't happen here" fails to take into account that WoW was once a far more pleasant place to be, raising the question of what went wrong in the first place? I wouldn't place the blame solely on the misuse of parsing tools, but again, they do seem to be the longest-lasting means of propagating toxicity in that game.

---

That being said, I've tracked down the "official response" on parsers; it was put in Live Letter LVII, to summary of which can be found here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/414393

And to pull a quick quote from the first post there:



Calling people out for low DPS is considered harassment, full stop.
Parser or not, they don't want that happen under ANY circumstances.

I get that was your experience but for me the most part everyone was chill sure I ran into the asshole every so often though to say everything was a knife edge. If that was your common occurrence then one should examine why it happened so often.

Not to undermine your experience everyone probably has a different experience though I do think it is disingenuous to say everything was at a knfies edge.

[Raelsar]

I get that was your experience but for me the most part everyone was chill sure I ran into the asshole every so often though to say everything was a knife edge. If that was your common occurrence then one should examine why it happened so often.

Not to undermine your experience everyone probably has a different experience though I do think it is disingenuous to say everything was at a knfies edge.

There's many factors that could be at play there: faction, server, if you're doing it in a guild group, pick-up group, or random group, and sometimes just plain luck (good on your end, bad on mine). Another possibility is that the caustic behaviour of WoW has become so normalized that many of its players simply fail to recognize that their behaviour is considered problematic in nearly any other setting -- such as in FFXIV. Still, the "common wisdom" for WoW is avoid random groups and pick-up groups for a reason, which is most of where I encountered the issues. I should stress that I was a bystander in nearly all incidents, no one ever really complained about what I was doing; that doesn't mean I like to see one player berate another in my group, it dragged down my own experience just as much as their's.

Nevertheless, the current stance of Yoshi-P and Square Enix (as outlined in my previous post) is that they consider calling out players for poor performance harassment. They have explicitly stated that they will NEVER add in an "official parser" as it enables a certain group of players to misuse them and bother others; and once the cat's out of the bag, there's no going back. Based on my experience and observations in WoW, I agree with this position; after all, it's one of the big reasons I stopped doing group content in that game LONG before I left it completely, it simply wasn't worth putting up with those players.

So it doesn't really matter if you can convince me that parsers will be a net-positive for the game or not.
The once you have to get through to are Yoshi-P and Square Enix.

[Awha]

There's many factors that could be at play there: faction, server, if you're doing it in a guild group, pick-up group, or random group, and sometimes just plain luck (good on your end, bad on mine). Another possibility is that the caustic behaviour of WoW has become so normalized that many of its players simply fail to recognize that their behaviour is considered problematic in nearly any other setting -- such as in FFXIV. Still, the "common wisdom" for WoW is avoid random groups and pick-up groups for a reason, which is most of where I encountered the issues. I should stress that I was a bystander in nearly all incidents, no one ever really complained about what I was doing; that doesn't mean I like to see one player berate another in my group, it dragged down my own experience just as much as their's.

Nevertheless, the current stance of Yoshi-P and Square Enix (as outlined in my previous post) is that they consider calling out players for poor performance harassment. They have explicitly stated that they will NEVER add in an "official parser" as it enables a certain group of players to misuse them and bother others; and once the cat's out of the bag, there's no going back. Based on my experience and observations in WoW, I agree with this position; after all, it's one of the big reasons I stopped doing group content in that game LONG before I left it completely, it simply wasn't worth putting up with those players.

So it doesn't really matter if you can convince me that parsers will be a net-positive for the game or not.
The once you have to get through to are Yoshi-P and Square Enix.

You are mistaken man, I know we will never get official parsers, I have stated this much many times. That said I still think it is disingenuous to claim ones personal experience accounts for everyone that played. I get you had a negative experience, and I respect that though you failed to mentioned another reason maybe you were just objectively bad number wise for someone of your class, spec, and or ilvl. I get you feel that is harassment, and I get that. Though I am still a firm believer that if someone runs into an action on a frequent bases then it is time they look inwards instead of out.

Like I know I use the vote kick feature more then most, and I know it is not because I simply run into sub-par players more frequently it has more so to do with the fact I am an asshole. Once again do not get me wrong I understand the potential for harm exists and SE is taking a rather be safe then sorry approach, overall I do not agree but I get that is their choice.

That being said I do have a genuine question for those in this thread that seem to be against calling people out or removing players that are not causing a massive detriment to the group, was going to post this in the vent thread but got me thinking.

I landed in a Doma Castle run, my friend was healing (ast) and I was tanking, we had a Sam and a MCH DPS. My friend was feeding me cards, and the Sam spoke up and asked why were they not giving them any cards. The cited that Sam is a selfish DPS and they do the most damage and should get the cards to be more efficient and to speed things up. Though they were doing less then the damage even on single target.

Though the MCH did offer some tips and the Sam took the standard things are dying and still truly did believe they were doing the most damage just due to the class they were playing. Now this run was by no means slow, had no need to adjust the size of pulls everything was dying in a timely manner, but once I five min point hit we kicked the Sam, and unfortunately probably this man will think because he plays Sam and it is listed as a selfish dps and the community states melee dps will always be higher then ranged physical their words btw they will probably forever be like this.

When just one wave of the logs could have objectively shown they were doing it wrong instead of them telling my friend to learn to play and defending their free style Sam action. I will say Sam that ignore positional do trigger the shit out of me.

So out of curiosity would calling this person out for their damage really be considered harassment? Especially since some Rae feels that calling someone out for their damage is harassment full stop. The Sam in question never mentioned others personal damage just the fact that Sam in general does not damage then the other roles in the group.