What is parsing?

[Rinhi]

Unless they are purposely afking all simultaneously...How would you know that? You must use an addon to know they aren't doing well, no? 8) dumdum duum

red mages hardcasting spells such as verraise or verthunder (best when it's 2 rdm's hardcasting it simultaneously
healers afk-ing unless the tank takes a modicrum of damage and then they'll spam cure 1 or medica (mentor btw)
tanks not using mitigations unless they're at half health and then using all mitigations (also a mentor)
samurai or monks that don't have their buffs up at all etc etc

my friends use it to gauge their performances, to see if they have a decent grasp of the job they're currently playing and I really think that they'd never use it to put people down, instead, they'd probably use it to try and help people instead!
the addon just makes it easier for them to see the whole party's performance when they, say, wipe multiple times during easy trials because multiple people do next to no dps...

Such a pity its in a such sensitive grey zone of the game where it has its good but absolutely against ToS. Leaving the players to risk and wonder if its worth it. Gameplay wise? Absolutely, if snitched on...Then its game over. :S

acting like this isn't cute, fyi, it's pretty cringe
most of the people on this forum that argued for it have made multiple good points for it in the several threads we had about it, while the side against it's most frequent argument was 'muh toxic wow' 'muh harassing people' while the ignoring their own 'toxicity' that they showed again and again while arguing, like, case in point here, passive aggressively threatening people even if they haven't bothered anyone

you most likely didn't mean to come across like THAT with your post so I apologize for the tone of my post, but I'll let it stand because it's a valid point imo

[Naaura]

my friends use it to gauge their performances, to see if they have a decent grasp of the job they're currently playing and I really think that they'd never use it to put people down, instead, they'd probably use it to try and help people instead!

I absolutely love this.
Most of the time if I look like I am failing mechanics or something, is because I genuinely am struggling and I am still learning my job. Everytime I caught a mentor to try and point out the right direction, I always accepted it. More often than not, I completely missed out on a quest I had to do and wasn't even aware of!

I hope that FFXIV doesn't become dependent on the parsing addon and instead organically and intuitivelly evolves to work out for the players if they are doing well. Like a built in performance list without numbers but rather like "hey this player has been auto attacking only" in progression content. This way casual content doesn't get affected and newbs dont feel too scared!

[Rinhi]

I absolutely love this.
Most of the time if I look like I am failing mechanics or something, is because I genuinely am struggling and I am still learning my job. Everytime I caught a mentor to try and point out the right direction, I always accepted it. More often than not, I completely missed out on a quest I had to do and wasn't even aware of!

I hope that FFXIV doesn't become dependent on the parsing addon and instead organically and intuitivelly evolves to work out for the players if they are doing well. Like a built in performance list without numbers but rather like "hey this player has been auto attacking only" in progression content. This way casual content doesn't get affected and newbs dont feel too scared!

see, we're on the same page here, when I leveled up BLM the last weeks I've eaten quite a few mechanics, either knowingly or unknowingly, because I was struggling with the casting, moving and rotation part for the longest time

in an ideal world the game would have something like this, but we don't have an ideal world, instead we have plenty content where people don't have to do the bare minimum, or hell, where people can straight up do nothing, and the content will still get cleared - even if it took double the time and made the people that "carried" the bad player(s) feel bad (and once you've freestyle sam'd titania and were still by far the highest damaging dps according to your friend, you realize just HOW bad people can be - after we wiped the first time we, funnily enough, didn't wipe the second time because the other players in the party put a bit of effort into it :O)
many of the pro crowd were also in support of like a second hall of the novice thing, maybe something like a hall of the intermediate and a hall of expert that people have to clear at one point throughout their progression - or maybe make the job quests actually require them to do their job properly instead of allowing people to cheese through it or just turn it into... nothing by turning it to very easy
most of it is really just bad habits that they picked up or were even encouraged by others (including mentors) that could, imo, easily be changed if the game (or community :3) would require them to
but until then, you'll have people with multiple jobs at 80 and a mentor crown giving out bad advice, using cure 1 and medica in level 50+ content as if it's going out of style and never using any kind of DPS spells because that's what they learned

[Naaura]

I have hope that Yoshi P will think of something genius again that will bring the best of both worlds about this conundrum so that both learners and progression groups can reap its benefits.

I was hesitant to ask this question first for its sensitive issue, but I am glad that people here are still wholesome ♥

[Risvertasashi]

I have hope that Yoshi P will think of something genius again that will bring the best of both worlds about this conundrum so that both learners and progression groups can reap its benefits.

I was hesitant to ask this question first for its sensitive issue, but I am glad that people here are still wholesome ♥

This thread's already descending into dark places so I hope my post won't be lost, but I'll try to explain it all - some have already answered but a few points could be more complete, so.

1. These days there is really only 1 parser, but under SE's policies, we can discuss them in the general sense but naming the specific app/how to get it/etc is a no-no. It's most basic function is to measure damage and other statistics of other party members, but in truth these days it is more of a "mod platform" and people make many tools to enhance gameplay/information available. For example, you can look at the buffs and debuffs a person had, and the healing and damage they received leading up to a death. Or it can be used for noncombat stuff like collating and aggregating marketboard data, UI things like providing job gauge alternates, and so on.

2. There's also others that aren't really built around combat at all, for example if you acquire a stalker and the blacklist isn't cutting it and the GMs won't take action (a story that, alas, isn't so uncommon), there's a blacklist upgrade available. There's also clothing, graphical and hairstyle mods and so on. For example if you see a reddit screenshot of a pose or outfit not in game, that's probably mods at work.

3. All of these are forbidden. So the safest way the play is to not use any of them. But in practice, you have to talk about it in game for SE to care/take notice, most of the time. And the way the TOS is worded - and Yoshi-P himself noted during a live letter - technically even Discord is against the FF14 TOS. But obviously SE isn't going to ban everyone using Discord. So we're forever stuck in this weird grey area.

4. Back to parsing specifically - there's a fair few people here on the forums frothing at the mouth and dreaming of the day that SE takes more active enforcement. But it's not going to happen - it's so necessary that the raid community would largely die off without it, as the game lacks in-game feedback about performance and fights are designed around tight DPS checks, among other things. There's been many suggestions to improve the status quo, such as limited authorization of addons or adding better in-game feedback tools, but SE has continually refused to budge.

5. But lastly, it's worth noting that SE has lately started to, in very limited circumstances, accept evidence from outside the game. Namely when a streamer or reddit community harasses other players, or pictures of nude mods are found. So, even showing that oneself uses a mod or addon outside the game is not completely safe.

I hope this is a fairly a comprehensive answer?