They Should Add An Official Damage Meter With One Condition

[Melichoir]

I used to PF in WoW all the time and never got asked to link my damage meter, nor did I have decent logs to show. I never got kicked from a group for low damage either, despite playing on a laptop with a touchpad for a mouse for 4 years, because I simply did the basics of my class and contributed, which was more than enough.

No, they often enough asked you to link your achieve when applying for groups or new content. Oh, and half the groups you did get into didnt need to ask for your meter logs, they had a meter themselves and could see your dps and kick accordingly. If you seemed halfway useful, theyd keep you until you were holding them back from clearing content.

Also, for the OP, stating that "there are no valid arguments" doesnt mean its a true statements. There are plenty of realistic and valid arguments why in game Parsers are a bad thing. You may not like those reasons or even agree, but the arguments are generally well formulated.

But lets humor the idea of an in-game parser, what can we expect?

- How good your damage numbers are is now softly endorsed by the Devs as a metric to judge another player by.

- An increase of players being greedy dps. There are already a lot of players who use a parser and behave stupidly in groups to get big numbers, then rage out when they get a junk parse because someone didnt DP them or use their buffs right.

- Failure Verification: I.E it is now reasonable to demand someone link their personal meter when a group hits enrage to check to see whos weakest link. Afterall, you cant call it harassment to see their numbers if SE makes that information available. Much like it is not harassment to kick someone from group if their gear is suboptimal for a fight. If there are no meteres (and assuming no parser), it becomes a lot harder to pinpoint whos coming up short with DPS. Blame is spread a bit more evenly. Furthermore, with no meters present, the Devs can justify banning people who kicked someone by their DPS numbers means youre using a tool to see that and that is against ToS. That argument becomes a lot harder to make when you provide a tool which shows that. Oh and for iLvL issue, I and many players almost always avoid people who set an iLvL with a lot of these fights because its usually someone looking to get carried by getting overgeared people in the group who usually have cleared the content. Also iLvL isnt an accurate metric of a players abilty or true gear potential. You can get 590 i lvl just by farming tomes, and you may end up doing less output than a player in 588 gear if theyre using crafted but optimized equipment.

- a DPS meter in of itself is actually somewhat useless. See how much DPS you do is contextual to a lot of factors: Fight, Group Composition, length of Fight, How well you know your rotation, how well others know their rotation, buff window allignment, etc. Just showing a DPS number can lead to a lot of misunderstandings of ones performance. Pair that with Verification issues that may (and probably will) crop up, you can have people getting mad at a player because they think theyre doing poorly when in reality there's a lot of other factors going on.

- The unforeseen trends: Online communities with anything that has a difficulty curve that limits who can do said content will always have some level of elitism, toxicity, and bragging, either from those with huge egos, or those envious of other players' successes. How they display this can vary from game to game. Adding in a DPS meter, even a personal one, is going to feed this issue in some capacity, that is almost a guarantee, because adding any tool or feature which allows people to measure their ability is going to contribute to competition, bragging, elitism, envy, and toxicity.

YoshiP is already meeting us halfway with this issue, and people still witch about it. The simple fact is addons and parsers are against ToS, but the Devs and GMs do not have any clue if youre using one unless you make it known. If youre concerned with your own performance, you could (*not saying you should*) easily run one yourself and keep that information personal. You dont need to upload it to websites or anything. They have generally turned a blind eye to it unless you harass other people using the tool OR youre just being so blatent in flaunting ToS like streaming to thousands of people that you are indeed using these addons in game.

[Sebazy]

If you seemed halfway useful, theyd keep you until you were holding them back from clearing content.

No offence but either you're paranoid AF or you suck to raid with if that's your actual experience.

- How good your damage numbers are is now softly endorsed by the Devs as a metric to judge another player by.

As opposed to judging a player by their ilvl, achievements, pets, mounts, glamour, choice of race etcetc?

- An increase of players being greedy dps. There are already a lot of players who use a parser and behave stupidly in groups to get big numbers, then rage out when they get a junk parse because someone didnt DP them or use their buffs right.

I suspect try hards like that already have numbers in front of them.

- Failure Verification: I.E it is now reasonable to demand someone link their personal meter when a group hits enrage to check to see whos weakest link. Afterall, you cant call it harassment to see their numbers if SE makes that information available. Much like it is not harassment to kick someone from group if their gear is suboptimal for a fight. If there are no meteres (and assuming no parser), it becomes a lot harder to pinpoint whos coming up short with DPS. Blame is spread a bit more evenly. Furthermore, with no meters present, the Devs can justify banning people who kicked someone by their DPS numbers means youre using a tool to see that and that is against ToS. That argument becomes a lot harder to make when you provide a tool which shows that. Oh and for iLvL issue, I and many players almost always avoid people who set an iLvL with a lot of these fights because its usually someone looking to get carried by getting overgeared people in the group who usually have cleared the content. Also iLvL isnt an accurate metric of a players abilty or true gear potential. You can get 590 i lvl just by farming tomes, and you may end up doing less output than a player in 588 gear if theyre using crafted but optimized equipment.

That's a lot of words to try and handwave away the responsibility of someone potentially holding back the rest of the group if they are hitting enrage. For the most part that's not really an issue in the overwhelming majority of Savage content and it certainly isn't in Extremes, but every now and again we get an E8S that really requires the entire group to be on the ball with damage. Being able to spot where the issue lays is the first step in solving it.

- a DPS meter in of itself is actually somewhat useless. See how much DPS you do is contextual to a lot of factors: Fight, Group Composition, length of Fight, How well you know your rotation, how well others know their rotation, buff window allignment, etc. Just showing a DPS number can lead to a lot of misunderstandings of ones performance. Pair that with Verification issues that may (and probably will) crop up, you can have people getting mad at a player because they think theyre doing poorly when in reality there's a lot of other factors going on.

A fair point, and the reason why I've often suggested that SE look at using Potency per second as a metric instead. However, DPS is still an important tool to learn the importance of 2 minute alignment etc.

- The unforeseen trends: Online communities with anything that has a difficulty curve that limits who can do said content will always have some level of elitism, toxicity, and bragging, either from those with huge egos, or those envious of other players' successes. How they display this can vary from game to game. Adding in a DPS meter, even a personal one, is going to feed this issue in some capacity, that is almost a guarantee, because adding any tool or feature which allows people to measure their ability is going to contribute to competition, bragging, elitism, envy, and toxicity.

It's been said a million times but I'll repeat it again, a toxic individual will use whatever tools they have to hand to attack their target. If it's not a parser, it'll be something else in the list.

[Elesh]

Also, for the OP, stating that "there are no valid arguments" doesnt mean its a true statements. There are plenty of realistic and valid arguments why in game Parsers are a bad thing.

You're ascribing morality to a tool. That's like saying 'knives are bad because someone killed someone with a knife'. Parsers are a tool. Full stop. They're a tool. They, themselves, are not good or bad.

What is good or bad is how they are used, and how they are moderated. Which is the real thing that needs to be considered.

But lets humor the idea of an in-game parser, what can we expect?
<snip>

You just described most of the 'bad use cases' - but those can be mitigated by messaging and moderation. Going back to the knife example... we don't allow people to bring sharpened knives to certain places because there's not a lot of justification for them in those places. We punish people for using knives in certain ways as a deterrent to keep people from abusing the tool.

Same thing with parsers. By having firm messaging about how you can and cannot use the parse tool, by designing the parse tool to be positioned appropriately(ie. with a focus on your own personal numbers rather than others) and by having rules with specific punishments to deter misuse... you can mitigate the negative impact of them.

You describe the worst case scenario as if it's impossible to prevent... but it IS preventable. Knowing that those are the 'worst case scenarios', the team can come up with solutions to mitigate them.

ex. If the team makes it clear that it is against the rules to press someone to show their parse and that such behaviour is punishable... they make it clear that you shouldn't do that. They could also add a 'report for parse abuse' option to the in-game reports that would submit the chatlog for review to make it easier to report... just as one possible option.

The tool itself is not bad. The tool is meant for people to self-evaluate to help themselves understand where they fit in the game and how well they're performing. It can be used for bad... but to believe we can't have a tool because it could be used for bad is a level of pessimism I'm not comfortable with.

[CosmicCoqui]

You're ascribing morality to a tool. That's like saying 'knives are bad because someone killed someone with a knife'. Parsers are a tool. Full stop. They're a tool. They, themselves, are not good or bad.

What is good or bad is how they are used, and how they are moderated. Which is the real thing that needs to be considered.



You just described most of the 'bad use cases' - but those can be mitigated by messaging and moderation. Going back to the knife example... we don't allow people to bring sharpened knives to certain places because there's not a lot of justification for them in those places. We punish people for using knives in certain ways as a deterrent to keep people from abusing the tool.

Same thing with parsers. By having firm messaging about how you can and cannot use the parse tool, by designing the parse tool to be positioned appropriately(ie. with a focus on your own personal numbers rather than others) and by having rules with specific punishments to deter misuse... you can mitigate the negative impact of them.

You describe the worst case scenario as if it's impossible to prevent... but it IS preventable. Knowing that those are the 'worst case scenarios', the team can come up with solutions to mitigate them.

ex. If the team makes it clear that it is against the rules to press someone to show their parse and that such behaviour is punishable... they make it clear that you shouldn't do that. They could also add a 'report for parse abuse' option to the in-game reports that would submit the chatlog for review to make it easier to report... just as one possible option.

The tool itself is not bad. The tool is meant for people to self-evaluate to help themselves understand where they fit in the game and how well they're performing. It can be used for bad... but to believe we can't have a tool because it could be used for bad is a level of pessimism I'm not comfortable with.

Because it has been used for bad in other games that have built in parsers already. It's the reason why Yoshi does not want it here because he has seen it in other games. That last bit of your statement "we can't have a tool because it could be used for bad is a level of pessimism I'm not comfortable with" completely ignores that fact. It always leads to toxicity no matter what. With one being officially added, parse harassment would result in a few day suspension versus the current possible instant ban.

[Sebazy]

Because it has been used for bad in other games that have built in parsers already. It's the reason why Yoshi does not want it here because he has seen it in other games. That last bit of your statement "we can't have a tool because it could be used for bad is a level of pessimism I'm not comfortable with" completely ignores that fact. It always leads to toxicity no matter what. With one being officially added, parse harassment would result in a few day suspension versus the current possible instant ban.

It's every bit as likely that Yoshida doesn't want to implement it because the community will do a better job of it, for free?

And no, having a parse tool doesn't always lead to toxicity no matter what at all. That's simply stretching the truth far beyond reality. There are plenty of people that parse purely for their own ends across a wide variety of content and have no interest in saying a word about it outside of their own private circles and statics. Where's the toxicity in using it purely for self improvement and optimisation?

And again no, SE officially adding one has absolutely no bearing on what penalties would be thrown for harassment for a couple of different reasons. Remember that this game has an exceptionally hard stance on verbal harassment, if SE were to make it very clear that this isn't acceptable with the release of a parsing tool then the reality is that the status quo really wouldn't change. You don't need to use third party tools to get account strikes which will rapidly lead into an instant ban, simply copying and pasting lines of NPC dialogue or asking to be kicked from a duty is enough to achieve that. There's no reason for parser related abuse to be treated any differently unless SE explicitly chose to which is incredibly unlikely to happen. This isn't FFXI or WoW.

[Saraide]

It's every bit as likely that Yoshida doesn't want to implement it because the community will do a better job of it, for free?

And no, having a parse tool doesn't always lead to toxicity no matter what at all. That's simply stretching the truth far beyond reality. There are plenty of people that parse purely for their own ends across a wide variety of content and have no interest in saying a word about it outside of their own private circles and statics. Where's the toxicity in using it purely for self improvement and optimisation?

And again no, SE officially adding one has absolutely no bearing on what penalties would be thrown for harassment for a couple of different reasons. Remember that this game has an exceptionally hard stance on verbal harassment, if SE were to make it very clear that this isn't acceptable with the release of a parsing tool then the reality is that the status quo really wouldn't change. You don't need to use third party tools to get account strikes which will rapidly lead into an instant ban, simply copying and pasting lines of NPC dialogue or asking to be kicked from a duty is enough to achieve that. There's no reason for parser related abuse to be treated any differently unless SE explicitly chose to which is incredibly unlikely to happen. This isn't FFXI or WoW.

People forget that to notice someone performing very badly you often do not need a parser at all, you just need to look at what they are doing. And already it's not allowed to be a mean about it.