Parsers add replayability for casual players

[Shurrikhan]

It's a pointless thing to get frustrated about. If I play a single player game on the hardest difficulty I still get the same ending as someone who facerolled it on easy. I play on hard to challenge myself, and I don't need it imposed on anyone else so I don't feel "cheated."

Save the frustration for if the content isn't getting cleared. Otherwise accept that you choose to push yourself because you enjoy it, not because it's necessary. If you don't like intermingling with people who choose to play the game on easy then then make your own party.

Your analogy here is precisely backwards, though.

All players matched together are necessarily using the same difficulty setting -- easy, for instance. You simply have a part of that group that'd likely otherwise fail that easy difficulty play-through (or take at least twice as long to complete it as a typical group to which easy mode at least holds some appeal) if the other members were as unengaged or unprepared as that part is.

And since XIV is, in fact, a multiplayer game, that does have an effect on others. Even if the party clear, that's still time lost specifically because either (A) someone who would not have otherwise cleared had to be carried through it, someone who has put an unfair burden on others or (B) someone chose to play at absolute minimum effort, disrespectful to other's time or modes of engagement.

Don't get me wrong, if the majority of a group wants to take things slow, even looking at each and every little lore tidbit strewn throughout a dungeon, that's okay -- that's what they decide and anyone who pulls mobs onto them in the middle of that can be rightly kicked for griefing. But if the majority of the group wants to actually engage with the combat as actual combat (rather than roleplay-fixture )or push themselves at least a little bit because that's when and where the combat really takes shape or stride for them, then it is disrespectful not to try to follow suit because your actions do have an effect on them. If one's uncomfortable with the typical speed, it only takes voicing up, but that should at least come from a point of one's limits for the moment, rather than one's preference somehow being worth as much as the rest of the party combined. Because, again, it is a multiplayer game and one's actions do therefore affect others.