fflogs and privacy

[CaedemSanguis]

Problem is, not everyone knows about fflogs, the site also shows logs on casual fights (normal raids and ARs) meaning there can be logs of a character that hasn't ever touched anything beyond EX trials and this solution places the burden of responsibility on users, who aren't really at fault. Also, ayone who looks to harrass people thrugh the logs will move to take the hidden logs as an admission of guilt of sorts as a hidden logs makes it obvious that the person knows about the page and has gone out of their way to hid the data. And it sounds like splitting hairs but, sadly, that's about how persistent people can get. This kind of mindset has even surfaced on the TalesFromDF subreddit.

They could, at the very least, set character logs to be hidden by default, instead of the other way around. The best way to deal with a problem is to prevent it from happening to begin with, rather than deal with it when it comes to the door.

who tf harass casuals doing their roulettes/24 man raid ? what the hell lol

[CaedemSanguis]

Using only statistics from fflogs to determine how a fight went and nothing else is a strange take, though.

oh you can see everything in fflog, except maybe for mech consistency/learning speed (as every upload is a kill, but if you get access to their prog logs then you can see how fast everyone learns/how consistent each person is)

[AmiableApkallu]

It's passing strange to see so much push-back against the idea that someone should have to opt-in to being searchable on FF Logs and having their name displayed.

If there exist people who would harass their fellow player's performance regardless of logs, then what does it matter if the site is opt-in by default? Might as well pick "privacy" as the default, in that case.

Or for people who care about openness, for example:

As someone who raids, having your logs hidden is just odd. It gives the impression that you either have something to hide, are defensive about your performance, or are self-conscious about the perception that you're being judged, all of which are very undesirable traits in static members and tend to lead to toxic raid environments. Most statics will want players who are open, honest and give & receive feedback well.

these people would surely appreciate a system where players have to opt-in and thus provide positive confirmation that they're "open, honest" rather than the current system which tells you nothing about all that.

In the end, FF Logs is a money data launderer. Whether or not the site itself violates FFXIV's TOS, it exists only because of data acquired via means that do violate the TOS. It's entirely reasonable that players should have to opt-in to that data laundering ecosystem.

[BokoToloko]

who tf harass casuals doing their roulettes/24 man raid ? what the hell lol

I already had someone harrass me in Zadnor, of all places, and come out of the blue with parses from E10N (they pretty much searched me on fflogs, looking for something to bash me with) about one or two years ago. And I'm saying this as someone who barely gets involved with anything beyond the occasional EX PF, let alone get involved with serious raiding circles, where a good chunk of the drama gathers (the other place being RP places).

You can be years here and still be surprised by the lack of inhibition some players have. Could make for a theorical law: "People always underestimate the amount of unhinged people circulating in FFXIV community".

[BigCheez]

I already had someone harrass me in Zadnor, of all places, and come out of the blue with parses from E10N (they pretty much searched me on fflogs, looking for something to bash me with) about one or two years ago.

You can be years here and still be surprised by the lack of inhibition some players have. Could make for a theorical law: "People always underestimate the amount of unhinged people circulating in FFXIV community".

What some people fail to realise, is that while this small minority of unhinged individuals does exist, they don't actually need FFLogs to be unhinged individuals. If someone wants to be an elitist weirdo in a videogame, they'll do it using whatever information they can get their hands on. If they couldn't find you on FFLogs, they'd search you somewhere else and find something else. There's plenty of information on Lodestone.

This doesn't have anything to do with FFLogs and unlike the data that's available through the stalker plogon, they can't actually use it to do anything that will directly affect your gameplay experience.

[BokoToloko]

What some people fail to realise, is that while this small minority of unhinged individuals does exist, they don't actually need FFLogs to be unhinged individuals. If someone wants to be an elitist weirdo in a videogame, they'll do it using whatever information they can get their hands on. If they couldn't find you on FFLogs, they'd search you somewhere else and find something else. There's plenty of information on Lodestone.

This doesn't have anything to do with FFLogs and unlike the data that's available through the stalker plogon, they can't actually use it to do anything that will directly affect your gameplay experience.

I am very conscious that person was part of a minority. The problem starts when the minority starts gathering up and become a more notable and noisy minority unless a line is drawn. And trying to ignore that doesn't end well.

Not to mention my example is just a random spillover from the raiding community, someone who just took it on a player that wasn't even related to raiding. I've heard and read enough from other about the raiding community that logs and parse have already been used time and again.

And I'll repeat what I said several pages before, making FFLogs character profiles private shouldn't really affect you in any way. If someone is hiding their progression, you have every right to refuse them in your group. Those who want to do serious raiding will want to leave verifiable data that proves they're competent enough to not get under other's feet. Just let those who don't out of it because we shouldn't be opting out of something that we never had a chance to refuse at the start.

[BigCheez]

I am very conscious that person was part of a minority. The problem starts when the minority starts gathering up and become a more notable and noisy minority unless a line is drawn. And trying to ignore that doesn't end well.

Not to mention my example is just a random spillover from the raiding community, someone who just took it on a player that wasn't even related to raiding. I've heard and read enough from other about the raiding community that logs and parse have already been used time and again.

And I'll repeat what I said several pages before, making FFLogs character profiles private shouldn't really affect you in any way. If someone is hiding their progression, you have every right to refuse them in your group. Those who want to do serious raiding will want to leave verifiable data that proves they're competent enough to not get under other's feet. Just let those who don't out of it because we shouldn't be opting out of something that we never had a chance to refuse at the start.

We don't need to worry about that because the line has already been drawn and is enforced. If someone is flaming you for having bad logs in-game, report them and a GM will action it.

I think there are better, less nuclear, ways to deal with this "random spillover", i.e. FFLogs not ranking logs for casual content. There's really no need for anything that doesn't fall under "high-end content" to be ranked, and that way casual players wouldn't need to worry about being caught up in people's logs. Although, under the current system there's still the option to opt out if you don't want to have searchable logs.

[Aravell]

Honestly, the reason some people tend to view hidden logs as a red flag now is because in order to hide your logs, you'd have to know about the website and take direct action in order to hide your profile, so some people do tend to assume that you have something to hide.

But if they made the website opt-in by default with the profile of someone who hasn't opted-in unavailable to view, hidden profiles are no longer suspect because there is no direct action that needs to be taken to hide a profile, the person with a hidden profile may just simply not know the site even exists.

Also, whatever anyone says, opt-in default with hidden profiles for anyone who didn't opt-in will not "make the site unusable", all the data will still be there, you just won't be able to see the name, world, datacenter and raiding history of that one guy that died 15 times in alliance C.

If someone intends to apply for your static, you can simply deny them if they don't have their profile public for you to check.

Also, saying that the numbers website doesn't affect someone's gameplay unlike the other thing is false. Even in this thread, you see people saying they kick people immediately for not meeting their standards after checking the site, so that person is being kicked immediately from a party that they wouldn't have been kicked from if the site didn't exist, I'd say that's affecting their gameplay.

[Archmortal]

The idea that FFLogs should be opt-in is perfectly reasonable. Every plug-in that tracks player data of any kind should be opt-in, period. Aravell is hitting the nail on the head. Opt-in won't change anything for the people that want it, and it's one less vector for the minority of jerks to treat others horribly. Win-win. I'll cry a river for the static that has to occasionally wait for a new recruit to voluntarily join the ecosystem.

[BelegErkhten]

I don't use any 3rd party tools because I am a good boy, but people seem to regularly upload logs of duties I'm in.
In my experience 99% of people who use FFlogs to shame people don't actually know how to read a graph, they just see the funny number change colours, and they usually don't understand the mechanics behind how that works either. 99% of the funny coloured number is dictated by gear item level and RNG Critical hits and whether or not you used a Damage boosting potion in a big burst window.

The site is like a public Pinball High Score tracker, so its actually meaningless to any human being with a real life, (doubly so because of how common cheating is in this game)
The real solution is to not care, "OH no but people will see that I died on my first clear." yeah and the people with those big pink 99's next to their names ALSO died on their first clears, so who cares?

I should also add that if (You) care about getting that shiny pink 99 or the elusive Orange 100 and want to brag about it, please actually uninstall and go touch grass.