DPS meters and why they're necessary

[Hiruke]

It's quite disheartening to see Yoshida and/or the dev team say they don't want to add dps meters to the game because they "don't want them to become necessary".

I don't understand this logic, because these meters, even if not available, are already "necessary".

Let's go by way of example:

Say you're doing Leviathan EX, and you wipe to the first set of spumes, because dps is too low. What do you do? Well, under the current paradigm, you'd disband the party, because there's no way to identify the problem. You just assume the entire PT is awful and quit.

Same thing for any dps check in the game. There's no real way to determine "Oh, Player X is not doing enough damage. We should find out if their rotation is bad, try to help them, or replace them." Instead, each dps thinks they are doing an amazing job and the other dps are bad, and tanks and healers all think all the dps are bad. This is now an even more toxic environment than the one we wanted to avoid by not having dps meters.

The problem just escalates the harder the content you're doing. Back in 2.1, you could have a terrible dps in your static, and consistently fail to kill Conflags in Turn 5... and it would take you a pretty long time to figure out who was the problem unless you had a trusted parser.

Beyond finding out if other players in the group are not doing as well as they should, how would you know how well you yourself are doing without a dps meter? How would you know if your accuracy in any given content was 100%? Because your dps takes a massive hit if you're missing, and the possibility of missing is extremely bad in general (I hope it's not your job to stun/silence!).

The fact of the matter is that there is some difficulty to this game, and without knowing how well you and others are doing in terms of accuracy/dps, you probably aren't going to complete the hardest content, because you probably don't know how to play very well. People know what the optimal rotation is for anything because of parsers. They didn't Rain Man the math.

Just because if we had dps meters person X would talk trash to person Y... Honestly, that already happens. We basically have all of the negative of dps meters, and none of the positive. If more people knew what kind of dps they were actually doing, they would have something to shoot for. Maybe they'd even get better. Or want to get better. Instead of thinking they're amazing when they're actually pretty awful.

We don't need a "dps check training dummy", we need real-time dps meters so we know how we're doing. It's very easy to find out if a tank or healer is doing their job properly or not. Why does the dev team feel the need to obfuscate whether or not dps roles are performing correctly?

[Noah_]

Just because if we had dps meters person X would talk trash to person Y... Honestly, that already happens. We basically have all of the negative of dps meters, and none of the positive.

and you want a meter to make it even worse?

another one of the DPS meter thread..... why do people keep beating the dead horse...

[AmyNeudaiz]

why do people keep beating the dead horse...

This topic isn't discussed that often. That said I have mixed feelings about a DPS meter. It would be a good utility but would be poor for the community.

[Mister-Wonderful]

Because it isn't a dead horse.

[Meta-Flare]

You know what I think is even more necessary? The option to hide your monk weapons so you fight with your bare hands. This is way higher up on my list of things that are necessary.

[Alistaire]

PVP has shown us the capability is there. SE probably won't do it because it really only has the potential to lose them some subs from bad players.

[subteraneanbird]

Often you don't even need a parser. Or any sort of metering. Observation and not being a dolt lets you see the person spamming only Full Thrust. Or the person always in UI. Or the person who never uses Bloodletter. Demanding you have tools to give you a better way to harass randoms isn't gonna happen. And if you're in a static, you're probably running a parser regardless because who is gonna ruin their static to tattle on someone using a parser?

[Atreides]

The thing is without parsers some people don't even have any idea how bad they perform. If they would see the HUGE difference between the numbers good players pull and their own they would actually want to improve themselves. But since we don't have any numbers they just asume they do perfectly fine because they stay alive durring the fight and attack every once in a while.
They are the ones who call players who pull aggro from a bad tank off and tell them how bad they perform when in fact they do 3 times the damage of the person calling them off.
No matter how I try to look at it, knowing your numbers only helps you to improve.
Not allowing parser actually only hurts the console players because they have no way to use any, even if they want to right now.
Of course there are also the people who use parse numbers to tell others how bad they perform but those people don't need parsers to do so because they are jerks and will do it anyway.

Because the stigma and usage of dps meters generally is, "Ooh look my numbers show I did 460 dps while the next best person only did 290 dps, and you bard did less then the tank" but mister 460 dps per second, did you survive the fight? did you dps the adds correctly? did you interupt like your suppose to? Doesn't matter, he did 460 dps, someone else should do those things because his numbers are too big

That a good DPS survives is a given, or else their DPS would drop because death players don't do any damage.
More often than not adds only mean even more DPS because depending on your class you can safe your AoE and finishing moves for the extra damage.
CC is something the tanks usually handle in that case, a DPS might wanna hold some of their cooldowns back like charges and some off-global cooldown stuns.
A bard on silence duty should also be able to do so without underperforming.
while I agree that the Stigma you mentioned before does exist in some games i.e. WoW it should not be the case in FFXIV.
But yeah like mentioned before jerks can be everywhere and they don't need a parser to piss people off.

[AdmiralPinkins]

The other roles being terrible is immediately obvious. Being in pairs it also makes it easy for the competent of the two to point the finger at the other.
>People dying to damage that is supposed to happen -> healer sucks ->tell them to be ready/replace
>Adds running wild, dropping enmity off boss, bad positioning, isn't swapping correctly -> tank sucks ->tell them what to do/replace
>Conflags not dying, not making dps checks -> all 4 dps are terrible -> disband group.

There is no barometer for easily telling if the dps is dpsing properly. DPS, as of now, are only responsible for watching mechanics (which everyone has to do) and that's it.

I had suspicions that my FCmate was a terrible dps player. I acquired parser information, analyzed it, and coached this player. Immediately there was improvement and they ended up enjoying the class/job even more. They would've gone on forever in ignorance of their terrible performance. Meters pls.

[givemeraptors]

Tell me how you observe 3 or 4 people's buff/debuff/dots while tracking boss's abilities when you're in a progression party (where dps numbers matter) and not an overgeared-for-content party. Some mistakes are more glaringly obvious than others but even your point of view limits you on what you can and cannot see.

I actually think it's the opposite. I tend to pay more attention to what my party is doing in difficult content than in easy content. This is because everyone needs to be way more up to speed for progression. With the exception of going in blind, most fights in this game have incredible easy mechanics. Whether the other 7 players can keep up with that while doing their job? Well... this is why I pay attention to my party members.

I had suspicions that my FCmate was a terrible dps player. I acquired parser information, analyzed it, and coached this player. Immediately there was improvement and they ended up enjoying the class/job even more. They would've gone on forever in ignorance of their terrible performance. Meters pls.

Nothing in this situation required a parser. It could just as easily be: you had suspicions, you coached them and saw an improvement i.e. things die faster.
I would also like to point out that these kinds of things are more relevant in FC/Progression parties where you're more likely to observe someone's playstyle over time and have a better sense of whether they need additional help.