Please add damage meters, Yoshi P.

[hagare]

Dude, you're not helping.

bold of you to assume he's trying to help xD

[erisdisqordia]

As much as I understand people's desire for this -- especially in terms of self-improvement -- having bounced between WoW and FFXIV a lot, I can confidently say I think the current system is the best way to go -- that is: let people do it on their own without talking about it, but don't make it official or a mainstream part of the game for most players.

Between the two MMOs, FFXIV is just known to be the friendlier and less toxic community, and part of that is the lack of expecting players to use damage meters unless its content where parsing is actually important (like I can understand it for Abyssos Savage, but not Tam Tara Deepcroft or Sastasha).

In WoW you're expected to have them at level 10 and to keep up on the meters no matter how wildly varied the levels are of those you're paired with. It means players aren't allowed to learn at their own place, and have to copy and paste cookie cutter builds that make their new talent tree system pointless. And players will regularly discuss this and criticize new players for a level 10 not keeping up with level 50s.

Having the meters in FFXIV is a Pandora's box that would open FFXIV up to losing its uniqueness as a friendly MMO.

The ability is there if you need it, don't make it official.

[Kyrj]

Having the meters in FFXIV is a Pandora's box that would open FFXIV up to losing its uniqueness as a friendly MMO.

The ability is there if you need it, don't make it official.

Losing its uniqueness as a friendly MMO? I guess we're just going to ignore Novice Network, Shout, and just about any other FC chat? FF14 is just as toxic as any other MMORPG we just cover our ears and close our eyes pretending it's not.

[Raoabolic]

Losing its uniqueness as a friendly MMO? I guess we're just going to ignore Novice Network, Shout, and just about any other FC chat? FF14 is just as toxic as any other MMORPG we just cover our ears and close our eyes pretending it's not.

You have to admit that it was a bit different during the HW/early StB era. PF and even DF parties were a lot more talkative and would throw "bantz" around more freely. Of course, there was always someone who took it too far but for the most part people were more than happy to talk to each other. Something happened though...

[erisdisqordia]

Losing its uniqueness as a friendly MMO? I guess we're just going to ignore Novice Network, Shout, and just about any other FC chat? FF14 is just as toxic as any other MMORPG we just cover our ears and close our eyes pretending it's not.

I completely disagree. In WoW everyone is angry, in FFXIV people actively want to help you. In WoW everything is a competition, in FFXIV we cooperate.

There's some bad apples in any game, but you definitely can't state that FFXIV's culture isn't more friendly than other MMOs, because it's night and day different. And I still like WoW and will continue to revisit it, but it makes me come back to FFXIV for the community here.

[SaitoHikari]

bold of you to assume he's trying to help xD

Some people grow.

Some people only get older.

:P

[Shurrikhan]

Though I do remember being heavily displeased with how rDPS became the default metric, because of how it ultimately contributed to the shitshow that was the Stormblood job meta.

To be fair, it didn't. People were already assuming buff contribution to be larger than it actually was until xivhiro introduced rDPS calculations and fflogs later integrated that directly. The largest factor behind the Stormblood job meta was quite simply weapon types. Its most common composition (Double Ranged), after all, was simply carried over from HW's period in which Bard wasn't undertuned.

[Ivtrix]

I completely disagree. In WoW everyone is angry, in FFXIV people actively want to help you. In WoW everything is a competition, in FFXIV we cooperate.

There's some bad apples in any game, but you definitely can't state that FFXIV's culture isn't more friendly than other MMOs, because it's night and day different. And I still like WoW and will continue to revisit it, but it makes me come back to FFXIV for the community here.

you sweet summer child....

[Shurrikhan]

Losing its uniqueness as a friendly MMO? I guess we're just going to ignore Novice Network, Shout, and just about any other FC chat? FF14 is just as toxic as any other MMORPG we just cover our ears and close our eyes pretending it's not.

You have to admit that it was a bit different during the HW/early StB era. PF and even DF parties were a lot more talkative and would throw "bantz" around more freely. Of course, there was always someone who took it too far but for the most part people were more than happy to talk to each other. Something happened though...

It was more talkative / social even between and among strangers, but also more confrontational back then. The two are correlative.

Or more simply put, under a given ToA, toxicity doesn't increase or decrease from anything but systems regularly putting together people with interests that cannot be simultaneously met. If the policies are the same and yet public/visible 'toxicity' has decreased, it's almost certain that friendly banter in those locations/situations will have decreased as well.

No increase or decrease in information is going to make a few people want to be wiped repeatedly to easy mechanics in the course of carrying a few others who don't want to wait until after knowing how to play their jobs before pursuing Savage gear. No increase or decrease in information is going to make one person in Anemos who wants to farm just their challenge logs as quickly as possible not be in conflict with a party who wants to follow the NM train.

Here, the difference between a conflict with a baseline parser or without one for a PuGed Savage raid, etc., is simply how many wipes it takes to determine whether there's something untenable, how efficient it would be to help repair the weak links through advice/accommodation (since that includes the time required to identify what to address), and whether a situation that cannot be fixed would require disbanding to further waste 8 people's time or to retain all but those who were taking advantage of the others (egregiously underprepared) or making it effectively impossible for others to improve (so excessively a downer as to border harassment, etc.).

But that's it. It's one more tool, atop your eyes, your ears, etc., for seeing what could go better as needed to let people do what they want to do.

In some PFs, that could literally be to remove the person who wants everyone to "Stop talking and just pull" if the point is the banter and wouldn't therefore be helped by a parser, but in most parties the primary intent of doing the content is... doing the content (or, the rewards for doing so), and as difficulty increases to the point that fewer and fewer line-skippers can be carried through it, the more conflicts will arise but also the more a parser would then help to resolve those conflicts at less toll to time and emotions by making it more efficient to help them and/or by retaining the best time-value for everyone else if the individual doesn't want to improve to that minimum threshold anyways despite expecting from others that clear and loot. Rather than wiping repeatedly and then disbanding outright for fear of reprisal if the unprepared person does not wish to improve (or silently kicking them in order to avoid risk for the 7 at cost to opportunities for the 1), the 7 could see the person either improve or be replaced with someone who isn't simply skipping ahead and unfairly expecting others to compensate for them.


I wish people would stop attributing to resources, tools, techniques, practices, etc... things that far predate them. They are responsible only for their increase. But there is no increase here to the conflicts that arise, only to perhaps the efficiency with which they're resolved. At most, it takes on a different form in which those who would rather take advantage of others are more likely to be called out so that when a party does not wish to be taken advantage of, they can do something about it with less time and stress involved. Let's not pretend, though, that being asked to do what one signed up for is toxic, or that expecting others to do one's work for you is not, or that maximizing lost time and tensions is somehow a good thing just because, despite the added boil, less spills into party chat.

More likely, a state of the game in which self-improvement and advice therefor is not vilified would create fewer conflicts overall, as it would seem less nebulous and large a hurdle to actually prepare oneself for whatever content they want the loot from.

[Zebraoracle]

As I said way earlier, I'm pretty done with this thread and not participating in the argument anymore because it's just beating my head against a wall. But fun little tidbit I just learned yesterday that I wanted to share, on the subject of toxicity, there's apparently alliances of venues in which basically a top venue enforces rules on how the venues operate and who to blacklist and whatnot and if you don't get on board your venue basically gets killed because the alliance will try to make sure no one visits it.

You know, for anyone who thinks 14's community isn't toxic.