Quote Originally Posted by Reap00 View Post
They expect you to treat other players with respect in this game.
While this is true -- and given my own posts earlier in this thread, I think it's evident that I do firmly believe that people are more than capable of engaging in some really crappy behavior in wielding parsers like a weapon, and that introducing an ACT-style DPS parser directly in game would only encourage that and be really enabling to a subset of players I would define as "complete jerks" -- I'd point out that the respect here also needs to be a two-way street.

If you venture into endgame content -- say, savage raiding in PF -- then you're sort of implicitly agreeing to be part of some group content where everyone does actually need to do their part, even right at the beginning of a tier. Look at P1S: if one player screws up Aetherial Shackles or Intemperance, frequently the whole party dies.

If you've never set foot into P1S, but rather than going into a "Fresh Prog, learning the fight" party you go into a party that says "We're working on cleaning up second Shining Cells into enrage", that's not really being a good team player... nor is it being really respectful to the time and effort of the other players. Nor is it being respectful of their time if you consistently refuse to learn a specific mechanic, thus frequently killing the entire party.

I went to do savage reclears last night on my alt who isn't running with a static, and the first party I was in was, unfortunately, kind of a mess; one particular person did not get a mechanic in P1S, and -- as in the hypothetical above -- kept getting the whole group killed. Now, in a prog/learning party, I expect stuff like that. Heck, I've run learning parties for folks to get a start in savage -- I ran one this past weekend, and I'll do it again this weekend! -- and I'm more than willing to tolerate wiping to an early mechanic for 45 minutes when I do.

But in a weekly reclear party, when it was clear this person did not know how the mechanic worked -- and moreover, did not seem interested in learning how it worked -- it felt deeply disrespectful of the time of others. In the end, the party gamely tried for about 50-ish minutes with no one feeling willing to call this particular DPS out; folks tried to politely offer some corrections, before someone finally gave up and bailed, and then the party quickly dissolved after that.

(It took less time to successfully reclear the first two fights in a different group afterwards than was spent wiping to early mechanics in the first group.)

And I think that's what the argument being made from the pro-parser side is. Because while it's absolutely possible to be complete jerks to people by wielding a parser like a weapon, it's also possible to be disrespectful to the same degree -- albeit in a different fashion -- by adamantly refusing to attempt the necessary baseline to get through high-end content.

Because if you hurl yourself into a fight where your performance makes it demonstrably impossible for the group to clear -- whether that's due to limitations of mechanics (not executing them correctly and seemingly not being willing to learn) or mathematics (where you're making such little damage contribution that the rest of the group simply cannot make up the difference to cover a DPS check) -- then that seems to show a lack of respect for them as well; you're saying "I don't care enough about you or the value of your time enough to bother putting in the effort to make it possible for this group to get through this content."

And especially later in a tier, when there are in fact more strict DPS checks, not playing your job at a level sufficient to meet those DPS checks -- specifically, playing in a manner where you make it mathematically impossible for the group to clear the content -- is going to present a problem.

And just as there can be 'toxic elitists' ("Just so you know, a brain-dead squirrel could play your job better than you are; I think your DPS is actually negative, because you're doing more damage to the other players than the boss."), there can be 'toxic casuals' ("I don't want to no-life this game, and the way I play this job has always been fine for dungeons! So don't tell me how to play!"). The demonstrable existence of one does not somehow negate the possibility that the other exists as well.

And the problem there isn't the 'elitist' or 'casual' part of the terminology, but rather the 'toxic' bit. This is a multiplayer game; treating your fellow player with respect means not clubbing them over the head or taunting them with parses or whatnot... but it also means treating the time of others with some respect as well.