Parsers add replayability for casual players

[linayar]

This game already allows players to kick others due to "difference in playstyles"

Actually, are you sure about that?

Anyway, I think a big thing here is though.. players aren't actually being "harassed", at least not at the level some might say.

That goes both ways and what I was talking about regarding complaints about "griefers." Not everyone is intentionally playing a certain way to grief someone else.

Many take any sort of criticism - constructive specifically - or even suggestions as personal attacks, and I have stated as much many times before. There is a difference between actual harassment, and constructive criticism. One player asking another to use more than cure 1, or to actually use AoE shouldn't even be an issue here.

See, if you truly believe that, then you should stop saying that people should be silent in random group content. If you're giving constructive criticism and actually saying it in a neutral and constructive manner, then you shouldn't fear people reporting you for it, if they even do.

It should be common sense, but such a community has been harbored here. Any form of self improvement - even the mere suggestion of a personal parser - is seen as such by many, in my opinion.

I think that goes back to individual experiences as I've seen plenty of people giving advice, and I doubt most of them, if any, were reported.

[SturmChurro]

Actually, are you sure about that?



That goes both ways and what I was talking about regarding complaints about "griefers." Not everyone is intentionally playing a certain way to grief someone else.

See, if you truly believe that, then you should stop saying that people should be silent in random group content. If you're giving constructive criticism and actually saying it in a neutral and constructive manner, then you shouldn't fear people reporting you for it, if they even do.

I think that goes back to individual experiences as I've seen plenty of people giving advice, and I doubt most of them, if any, were reported.

That has bothered me in terms of curation - but it is true according to people here. I tend to believe them. If it wasn't, I'd think it would actually be a punishable act - and that, frankly, doesn't seem to be the case.

I don't want to be silent in group content. I suggest users stay silent 'IN GAME', so they don't risk their account over some player they probably won't see ever again. Intentionally griefing or not. A warning even is a permanent mark on your account. It's just not worth it, and in not being able to speak up (EVER) due to everything being taken as a personal attack, it enables more of this sort of play.

Yeah, I'm not going to risk that, and I will never suggest anybody else risk their account over it. All it takes is one time for a GM to act on ANYTHING said, and that's a STRIKE on your account. Again, not worth it. It's better to keep chatter third party, and never risk having to deal with someone who thinks the whole world is out to get them, and you just popped on their radar after having the gall to suggest they use aoe or whatever.

[linayar]

That has bothered me in terms of curation - but it is true according to people here. I tend to believe them. If it wasn't, I'd think it would actually be a punishable act - and that, frankly, doesn't seem to be the case.

I think that's a matter of people not bothering to report potential misuse.

Either way, that goes back to what I say about how the community behaves when there is no enforcement in the game.

I don't want to be silent in group content. I suggest users stay silent 'IN GAME', so they don't risk their account over some player they probably won't see ever again. Intentionally griefing or not. A warning even is a permanent mark on your account. It's just not worth it, and in not being able to speak up (EVER) due to everything being taken as a personal attack, it enables more of this sort of play.

Yeah, I'm not going to risk that, and I will never suggest anybody else risk their account over it. All it takes is one time for a GM to act on ANYTHING said, and that's a STRIKE on your account. Again, not worth it. It's better to keep chatter third party, and never risk having to deal with someone who thinks the whole world is out to get them, and you just popped on their radar after having the gall to suggest they use aoe or whatever.

Fair enough, though I think, joking aside (because people have different sense of humor), you're still overblowing the potential risk. If everyone took your advice, this game would be dead as the community cannot live outside the game.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't want to be silent in group content. I suggest users stay silent 'IN GAME', so they don't risk their account over some player they probably won't see ever again. Intentionally griefing or not. A warning even is a permanent mark on your account. It's just not worth it, and in not being able to speak up (EVER) due to everything being taken as a personal attack, it enables more of this sort of play.

Yeah, I'm not going to risk that, and I will never suggest anybody else risk their account over it. All it takes is one time for a GM to act on ANYTHING said, and that's a STRIKE on your account. Again, not worth it. It's better to keep chatter third party, and never risk having to deal with someone who thinks the whole world is out to get them, and you just popped on their radar after having the gall to suggest they use aoe or whatever.

While I'd never try to push people towards danger of a strike against their accounts just to try to make the game a generally more friendly place (though I'd hope they'd consider that a benefit worth their consideration), I'm kind of the opposite in that I can't wholly forgo giving advice when it seems lucrative and the friendly, pleasant, sociable thing to do.

It feels bad enough that tactful, cheerful, or otherwise polite and well-intentioned advice is much more often met with hostility here than in the other MMOs I play, but to let that sort of letter-of-the-law (over its spirit) or conflations regarding player engagement to blanket any and all attempts to help others with something you've found engaging (and the excitement of which you have, many times past, successfully conveyed to others to their benefit)... that just seems too ominous, too pacifying, to continue playing. So, for me, it's either 'take the risk and shrug off the occasional disproportionate backlash' or just hop back to WoW where, oddly enough, my average experience in group content has been at least a bit more friendly and the occasional friendship formed from random matchmaking.



:: To be clear, my advice is still met with hostility at most a third of the time; it's not as if the whole game has gone sour. It's more a matter of comparison, as the same quality of advice (or even that which is less tactful), tends to be more readily absorbed in other MMOs I play; in WoW, for instance, other players seem more willing to give me advice (though perhaps that has much to do with how much Details, WoW's most frequently used parser addon, facilitates that process), and less than a tenth the time am I likely to encounter any hostility when giving advice or making a reasonable request (even as each of those tend to be more complex, as WoW's 'light party'-equivalent content simply tends to have a fair bit more going on).

[ForteNightshade]

And what would change in the experience? You'd still kick someone, right? You'd still not be able to say anything to them.

What does it matter if they can see? The key element there is that they have to give a damn about what they see. So what is really going to change?

Not necessarily. It also allows the group to actually discuss a DPS issue in say Savage PF. What you'll often seen nowadays is people leaving after a couple pulls because they know they can't comment on someone having low DPS.

It would also be a massive help to jobs like Astro whose entire gimmick is reliant on how other people perform. In fact, one could argue the dislike towards Astro's new card system is because people can't actually see the impact their cards have. You could directly feel a 10% defensive buff on a tank; see your MP ticking up, and etc. You can't really see if that extra 5% is better on the Samurai, Dragoon or Red Mage.

Actually, are you sure about that?

Yes.

[Shurrikhan]

(Above)

I can offer a counter-example to this, by way of personal anecdote.

Back in ARR (WP HM, iirc), I was running an Expert Roulette with a group of 3 German-queued players. There was a brief moment of confusion when I said hello and such in German only to get mute response, followed by "we only speak English", but the run went in quick and friendly fashion. That is, until just before the final boss, at which point they said something along the lines of "Sorry, but our friend needs his daily bonus." Dense as I am, I first thought they meant they had to leave just short of completion, which kinda sucked as it'd take a while to find both a tank and healer. Then, remembering that they were all queued as German only despite being English-only speakers and on a NA server, I thought one who'd already gotten their bonus was dropping to make room for a buddy who'd swap queues to German and in-progress join them. 5 seconds or so later, I knew better once they kicked me.

Given that it was a 20-or-so-minute queue to get in as DPS, I was pretty ticked and actually reported them, providing all that context in fair detail. I was assured that they would look over the party chat and, while I was told what would ultimately happen to that party was confidential (only that they took provable abuse of the kick feature seriously), I never received any word that this option, on their part, was secured by the categorical "different playstyles" clause.

So, more simply put: There appear to be real limits to that otherwise all-powerful leniency in kick categories.

But, yes, for the purposes by which any kick is likely to occur in a typical DF run... the kicker is pretty much immune to redress.

[linayar]

Yes.

How old is that message and would it hold for all GMs considering even that GM admitted to the limited/wrong text being used in the interface?

Regardless, it's an interesting wording there:

"...not constitute a breach of our rules, since they did not act with the sole purpose of disrupting your gameplay."

If being prevented from playing and clearing a duty because you were kicked is not a problem because it does not necessarily mean the ones who kicked you acted with the sole purpose of disrupting your gameplay, that reasoning could potentially be applied to other situations.

[ForteNightshade]

How old is that message and would it hold for all GMs considering even that GM admitted to the limited/wrong text being used in the interface?

Regardless, it's an interesting wording there:

"...not constitute a breach of our rules, since they did not act with the sole purpose of disrupting your gameplay."

If being prevented from playing and clearing a duty because you were kicked is not a problem because it does not necessarily mean the ones who kicked you acted with the sole purpose of disrupting your gameplay, that reasoning could potentially be applied to other situations.

Fairly old, admittedly. It predates the ToS update they did last year. However, said update is also incredibly nebulous, which allows someone to more or less justify anything. You can easily argue that a healer refusing to AoE is disrupting your gameplay. If I were to take a guess at their approach, the GMs likely lean towards the least problematic outcome. If someone is kicked, they see it as enough people didn't want to play with them so better they all part ways. Not a good stance for them to take, however it's the one I suspect as even today, you'll never hear anyone comment on being suspended for "vote kick abuse." Not even on reddit or discord, where people are more open about rules they've broke.

[linayar]

I never said you asked a question either.

I didn't ask anything, a question or otherwise.

But it seems you care a lot about my numbers...

Then you're blind, or delusional, because I don't.

Whilst skimming through some of the more recent posts, I read something that gave me a thought. I can't find it, however I think it was something along the lines of, we should add a parser and just see how the community reacts. I don't want to speculate into this area though, I want to, think of the reverse scenario. Take WoW as it is now and completely ban all parsers. Nothing officially supported, nothing unofficially supported, what would the community do? As an extra thought, what if they had the same policy as FFXIV, you can use it, just don't harass others with it. Again, how would the community react?

I cannot answer this question, I have never played WoW, so I have absolutely no idea how bad/good they are in terms of parsers except the anecdotal statement presented by other people. Obviously, there is going to be a range of answers to this, however, it could paint a picture of how ingrained the parser is on WoW and how much it does affect the community as a whole.

When you've built up a community on certain freedoms and then restrict it, there would be negative reactions to it.

Something interesting to note.

I lot of people laud FFXIV as a superior community.

Yet they say we can't be trusted with a parser.

Is the only thing that keeps our people in line the rigid rules that WoW players don't have to conform to?

Like, we're basically all a WoW community but just thoroughly muzzled in comparison?

A community includes rules and regulations and their enforcement. It's like a nation and its laws. You don't separate them.

Thus, it's hard to actually compare hypothetical situations when comparing different communities. That said, many MMORPG players do play multiple MMORPGs. And in as much as there are WoW players playing FFXIV (and/or vice versa), those would be shared commonalities between the two communities.

Fairly old, admittedly. It predates the ToS update they did last year. However, said update is also incredibly nebulous, which allows someone to more or less justify anything. You can easily argue that a healer refusing to AoE is disrupting your gameplay. If I were to take a guess at their approach, the GMs likely lean towards the least problematic outcome. If someone is kicked, they see it as enough people didn't want to play with them so better they all part ways. Not a good stance for them to take, however it's the one I suspect as even today, you'll never hear anyone comment on being suspended for "vote kick abuse." Not even on reddit or discord, where people are more open about rules they've broke.

Perhaps, though it kind of makes that "unjustified usage" warning a lie. Still, if anyone ever finds out the line that shouldn't be crossed when vote kicking, that'd be interesting to know.

From my personal experience, it's always been AFK/Offline that are used. Even when people disagree, very rarely do I see harassment used (actually, I don't even remember seeing it in FFXIV though I'm sure I must have since I have seen some heated disagreements from time to time, though thankfully not often, but I just can't remember). And cheating has never once showed up, though I suspect people who cheat would form their own group.