FFXIV Biggest Disease....Parsing

[Cheremia]

I personally am not a big fan of parsing; mostly because there is no easy way to stop people from being dicks about it.

There is.

Report them and it probably gets them banned because being mean to others because of it and mentioning parsers can absolutely get you banned.

It's LITERALLY don't talk about it or else you risk a ban?
They're doing themself no favor in mentioning it and being a dick about it, you just have to report them.


So anybody saying "can't stop people being mean about mentioning it" apparently doesnt know that this game has a pretty strict "you can parse but dont dare mention it ingame" policy for a long long time? Even i know of it...
I have NEVER seen anybody being bullied about their numbers.

What i have seen is... as i would call it "absolutely toxic casuals", but might just be a me thing? Can't talk for everybody, but i doubt it's as bad as people say because it still can get you banned if you mention parsing lol.
But being toxic about not wanting any help and stuff is fine so that's what more people are in my experience.

[IckeDerTyp]

Some people's mentality is the disease :3

Nothing wrong with having access to data.

[Jin-]

Class fantasy and unique tools won't go together with the balance / parsing. Square chose the worse side

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I have NEVER seen anybody being bullied about their numbers.

And the rare times when I did see this happening in public chats? People will actively report it. I will too if they're an absolute a$$hat about it. It really takes a special kind of players to warrant themselves a report and this one is not an exception.

[Larirawiel]

Class fantasy and unique tools won't go together with the balance / parsing. Square chose the worse side

Yes, that is so weird, IMHO. They say, that no one should use parsers but their job/class design is optimized for parsers.




Cheers

[Cheremia]

And the rare times when I did see this happening in public chats? People will actively report it. I will too if they're an absolute a$$hat about it. It really takes a special kind of players to warrant themselves a report and this one is not an exception.

As you should because anybody being .... rood to others kind of deserves a slap on the fingers.

This isn't meant to be mean but sometimes, being a "Karen" about things is for the greater good. The rude people win if you get hurt by it, make them face the consequences of their actions instead.
Sometimes it's just needed and perfectly fine to not look at something and be like "well yeah this isnt cool but whatever" but instead report it

Sadly, the report system kinda sucks but you still can and should do it.

[Johners]

Class fantasy and unique tools won't go together with the balance / parsing. Square chose the worse side

There is a balance that can be found but that ultimately means accepting you can't add too much to the game either. The balancing situation in this game is an interesting balance of keeping existing jobs interesting, adding new jobs that are interesting, adding 10 levels every expansion and keeping previous scaling points balanced (for old ultimate, savage and extreme content synced). At some point they'll need to rethink this approach of just adding new jobs, more levels and trying to keep it all balanced for every scaling point.

Square Enix definitely get things wrong as we can see with people unequipping gear to do 15 minute Crystal Tower runs instead of 30-40 minute runs of any other alliance raid (although that's more on scaling changes than any specific class/job design changes). There is a duty to keep the game balanced otherwise you'll end up in situations in which the fun classes could be the worst to play and players have to choose between enjoyment or doing/clearing content.

[Kaurhz]

The act of parsing in itself is not a disease, it is a very good tool utilised for self-reflection.

The disease in itself actually manifests in parsing with what many people do with that statistic, how it influences the manner with which you treat individuals, and whether you essentially force a mentality upon other people. I would go out of my way to say that a lot of players do in fact use parses in a very toxic way. Be it in attempt to dismiss others' opinions on the forums, or just general belittling other people when in party or just overall, really. I think the whole treatment surrounding low parsing in general is a testament to this idea. Not that it is completely and entirely rampant, but it definitely does exist, and in quite a heavy manner, no less. -- and in a wide range of forms/attitudes.

I could hide my parses, right now or I could make them public, if I parse low, arguably I could get accused of buying or paying for a clear, which has been an accusation lobbed around here on occasion. If people see parses hidden they make some dodgy leap in logic that there's some active effort to disguise low level play, or low effort mentality, when in fact the parses ultimately just comes down to the ability to self-reflect. If anyone needs to see a parse, they can request an unlisted parse, of which there is plenty. Not that I do this, but it is a very real mentality, and often than not one that is just as rampant as people hiding them as a means of disguise whilst subsequently trying to spin a malice intent behind it.

A lot of people definitely do have a disease-like mentality behind parsing, in one form or another, really.

[Saraide]

The game uses DPS checks in form of enrages. Because of that logs are good for transparency. If all you are doing is getting carried it will show with the help of logs in one way or another. Past that logs only matter as much as you yourself care about it.

Pointing at what dumb optimization strats people do to get the top log is not very useful. The system just falls apart at the top end, clear time becomes a more useful metric even though individual contribution becomes less clear to that. But if someone is consistently pulling in 0s across the board then it is healthy for the community to be able to gate them out. They are simply not ready to engage in group content with enrage timers.

[Liam_Harper]

there is only bigger disease in f14 than parsing and that is people complaining about it despite being literally unaffected by it. Bonus points if those players dont even do the content where the parsing happens.

Basically this. For every 1 person who is toxic because of parsing, there are 20 people who rant about how toxic parsers are to the point of obsession.

I personally find logs are good for countering toxicity too. For example someone telling the healers they suck, ranting about "dps healers not healing" when they are, raging at the group for hitting enrage, blaming someone else for their mistake, ranting about how content is too hard ...and it's all their on their log. 0 Mitigation tanking, missing core parts of their rotations, their uptime, exactly what killed who, healing done and so on. You can point out clearly that they're at fault and being toxic towards someone who is at no fault.

Of course in this game highlighting that information is forbidden and you're supposed to grit your teeth and keep quiet when Mr Medica announces in party chat that they had to solo heal when you actually took the bulk of the heals, 4 clutch saves and did 4x their damage. If you do bring it up that someone's logs completely contradict what they're saying and they're at fault, for example on the forums, they immediately switch to "hardcore toxic elitist" rants, which in my opinion is far more toxic behavior because they both hinder their teams and blame other players for it who just want to help and do their best.

Logs are also great for confidence. I'd hate to play without them, because I do care about contributing to the team and it's easy to fall into a mindset of "was that wipe my fault?", "is my damage bad?" and the log will either set your mind at ease, or give you exactly the information you need to improve if you need so it doesn't happen again.

I feel the obsession over parsing being "evil" is just that some players hate when performance is visible. They want to be in their bubble where they can pretend they're doing well, attack someone else for their faults and no one can do a thing about it.