The Real Problem with Parsers

[Aiselia]

some don't have a ton of gil coming in so they can buy a crafted HQ weapon.

Especially since they could realistically end up just replacing that weapon with a drop from Dusk Vigil itself, and is in all likelihood what they're counting on anyways. Some people just don't see the point of spending hundreds of thousands of gil on a weapon that realistically may not even last them past one level.

[Erim-Nelhah]

Which means what to the 10 years of complaints of elitism from the game?

I've stated that the video mirrors my own experience with WoW's LFD/LFR. My experience might not mirror that of many others, or it actually might. I don't know, and I don't have an active WoW sub anymore with which to go ask them. I do, howver, believe that it does.

... and still nobody has managed to state an objective benefit of having a party parser over a personal parser ...

You want objective benefits? Total Party DPS, total party DPS per phase, and the ability to see total party DPS at any given point in the fight (along with other statistics like HPS, Damage Taken, Mitigation, and Deaths, that a good parser can provide). You mention a share option for the personal parser: That works, provided that someone sharing their parse shares it live, not as a snapshot/total, and that the PS3 can also "share", regardless of its ability to actually show the parser. As for PS3 limitations....the PS3 may end up being limited to the "dummy parser" that's already being worked on because of that. 512M of shared ram just isn't enough - not even for a personal parser.

People should not be joining Dusk Vigil with a NQ 115 weapon (basically nq = i90 weapon or less) or ATMA (LOL U READ THAT RIGHT, AN ATMA WEAPON). They will be full 120 gear and using some garbage tier weapon because they dont understand how stats work in the game.

Ok, then what are they suppoed to be using?

• i110 Soldiery weapon? The easiest way to get one is through questing. A quick check of the quests on ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com reveals that you can get 3 such weapons while doing the story quests, which don't include options for the new classes, and further you have to choose 1 weapon each from 3 groups, which may not reflect the extra classes you want to play. And if you finished the MSQ before HW came out, the quests aren't an option. That leaves people with buying one. The i100 version (only slightly better than an i100 atma) costs 1300 Poetics plus an Unidentified Allagan Tomestone - which only drops from ST, T6, and T7, none of which are trivial to unlock for a newer player, much less run. Oh, and then you have to upgrade it to i110, which requires you to do Hunts or ST for the items, and isn't something a new player is likely to figure out how to do on his/her own.
• Poetics weapon? Those also cost 1300 Poetics, but instead of an Unidentified Allagan Tomestone they require an Encrypted one. Say hello to your choice of T11 or all of CT (twice if you're new, since you have to complete it once to unlock the weekly). Again, neither of these are trivial even to unlock, much less run.
• A decent Primal Weapon? Say hello to Leviathan and/or Shiva EX, both non-trivial fights even at 60. GL with the drop (maybe Ramuh as well, but he doesn't always even drop a weapon).
• HQ Crafted weapon? Last time I looked, the i115 HQ weapons, when crafters even put them up on the MB, cost as much as their i150 HQ counterparts, if not more.

Look at it this way: At least they visited the Crozier (or the Forgotten Knight in the case of DRKs) first, or bothered to get their relic weapon and upgrade it a bit, and didn't come in with just an i55 weapon (yes, I've heard of people running much harder content than DV with that kind of gear).

--Erim Nelhah

[bardaboo]

Yeah, with the recent expansion I've seen numerous players with only 1 job past 50 in tge new dungeons that don't know the basics of (most often) blm. Opening rotation fire 1 x5 transpose blizzard 1 x 4 rinse repeat. Now you can try and take time to teach them in dungeon, embarrassing them pissing off other players or sit through it and flame them at the end. Or boot them.


Which is why i would love personal parsers. So i and others can go into a dungeon knowing what numbers they can put out

[Malevicton]

So is there anyone besides Aiselia who has any reason not to implement regular parsers?

[Aiselia]

So is there anyone besides Aiselia who has any reason not to implement regular parsers?

So, when you said you were done, you didn't mean you were done with the thread, but that you were done trying to contribute any actual discussion?

But the answer to your question is yes, because I'm clearly not the only one who's given reason not to implement them. Most people who do, though, just get attacked for being bad, so it's no wonder they expect parsers to breed elitism.

[Malevicton]

So, when you said you were done, you didn't mean you were done with the thread, but that you were done trying to contribute any actual discussion?

Done trying to understand your definitions of vague and specific. :P

But the answer to your question is yes, because I'm clearly not the only one who's given reason not to implement them. Most people who do, though, just get attacked for being bad, so it's no wonder they expect parsers to breed elitism.

Maybe you shouldn't try to speak for other people after how the whole "I'm gonna make up SE's position" debacle went.

[Aiselia]

Heck, when battling the enrage we had to look at what a class is doing at X point because we could know who was slacking

Okay, and here's what I'm trying to get at. I'm not saying it's not useful to have the information at all. I just do not understand why it's inherently more useful at the time of, when you won't really be able to do much of anything about it until after the wipe. If you can get a breakdown of the fight after you've wiped, getting the same information as you would have during the fight, and now have the time to actually look at the data and talk to whoever it was that was slacking and make suggestions, why would it matter much if you saw it during the fight or after?

If your DRG is 200 DPS lower than they should be, which, for argument's sake, is definitely going to lead to a wipe because it's just too low, why does it matter whether you see that before you wipe or after? How often could you actually save a wipe by pointing out that the DRG is too low and they manage to pick up and make up for what they lost when you've already spent X amount of time being too low, as compared to you having to go another try but this time talking to the DRG beforehand?

Not to mention countless times we've wiped and looked into the healing/tanking side of things and found out what wiped us, who was slacking with CDs, and how to fix that with new CD timelines or an altered strat.

Which you would have generally looked into after the wipe, no?

you believe that info shouldn't be given to others unless they want it.

I believe that the information shouldn't be default available to everybody in every form of content. You don't need to know somebody's DPS in Fractal or Neverreap or a vast majority of dungeons because you're unlikely to wipe due to DPS. The worst that's going to happen is it's going to take a bit longer.

I do agree that there IS some content where knowledge of party contribution IS a big deal. It's a minority of the content in the game, though, and with optional sharing of information, you can limit when other people can see your output to the content where it actually matters if you want, and the people who fear that parsers will cause elitism don't have to worry when they queue for a dungeon that someone's going to look at their DPS and mock them because they can keep theirs private for that.

Your core belief is simply that it's a change that would create animosity from certain players to others. And that outweighs any potential usefulness in your mind.

No it isn't.

My core belief is that in a majority of the content in the game, such as dungeons and story trials, knowing how much DPS the rest of your party is doing is not a huge enough issue unless EVERYBODY is low, because there's little outside of EX trials and raids that will wipe you for not meeting a strict DPS check. In content like raids and EX trials, where you actually do have strict DPS checks, yes, I agree that being able to see what your party's putting out is useful and important. I disagree that it's important enough in anything outside that.

Which is why I don't think a forced-visible party parse is the way to go. By letting people choose when to share it, they can choose not to share it in unimportant content if they wish because it's unimportant, and show it in high end content where it IS important enough.

real time parse data isn't useful just seems silly - it most definitely is. I don't even think that's debatable.

Okay, so how is being able to see that someone's DPS is low 4 minutes into the fight more useful than seeing that it was low after a wipe due to low DPS? If it's not debatable, it should be easy to answer that.

That would work....but I don't think you realize quite how much data that is if it isn't already being stored by the client, which means that you have to hope that they allow each client to store parse data for all party members, just not show it unless allowed to by said party members. Otherwise they likely wouldn't allow you to see full parse data for others unless it's pre-shared.

Well, I mean, the data's already being shared between people now and essentially being stored in your chat. Effectively, an in-game parser, from the way I understand parsers, and I may be wrong because I've not exactly created one, would essentially be your combat log organized into specific people and sorted to a readable state with math pre-done for you when it comes to things like DPS calculations. The data is already "stored" in your chat log, it's just not in an organized state. Sharing the parse would essentially just be allowing your group's parse windows to put the already-stored data into a readable state.

Maybe you shouldn't try to speak for other people after how the whole "I'm gonna make up SE's position" debacle went.

I didn't make up anything. I repeated things that I've seen from other places. If you want to crap on someone for "making up SE's position", go talk to them. Also, start crapping on people who make up what others are saying when they're quoting things that clearly contradict it. I suggest starting with Elazu who keeps saying people who are good are all elitists.

Also, you shouldn't be the one acting smarmy over it when you didn't come up with the argument.

[Sleigh]

Okay, and here's what I'm trying to get at. I'm not saying it's not useful to have the information at all. I just do not understand why it's inherently more useful at the time of, when you won't really be able to do much of anything about it until after the wipe. If you can get a breakdown of the fight after you've wiped, getting the same information as you would have during the fight, and now have the time to actually look at the data and talk to whoever it was that was slacking and make suggestions, why would it matter much if you saw it during the fight or after?

If your DRG is 200 DPS lower than they should be, which, for argument's sake, is definitely going to lead to a wipe because it's just too low, why does it matter whether you see that before you wipe or after? How often could you actually save a wipe by pointing out that the DRG is too low and they manage to pick up and make up for what they lost when you've already spent X amount of time being too low, as compared to you having to go another try but this time talking to the DRG beforehand?

Mainly because sometimes total DPS isn't as important as what someone does in a particular phase or up to a particular spot, when learning. It's good to have a timeline as you see it, basically; the end result number isn't always one you can analyze and get some info out of, especially if someone dies or does a mechanic wrong which would destroy your results when otherwise you could get some info out of them during the fact.

Yeah you typically do just look at the information after the fact for tank/heal deaths. Main thing I was trying to say there was the group should have that info all the time, not privately attached to individuals or otherwise unavailable.

[Sidra]

If you just all of a sudden starting using a parser, aside from your own data it's not that useful. But the more you have it running and looking at what everyone is doing, the more useful it becomes as continued use helps gain context and comparisons. For instance, you'll be able to tell if your DRG replacement for the day is trending behind your normal DRG by the time the first jump happens in A1, or if someone else on your team is just having an off run. You will be able to tell at what point healer’s dps starts to drop, maybe to time your own Virus or Eye for an Eye use next time to give the healers and extra GCD or two to dps. To be honest, the usefulness is near endless and limited only by the mind and creativity of the user. It really is great data that can be used in so many good ways. Playing as an Astrologian for instance, it helps to know who to give buffs to even in a PUG, or what dps to raise first if both happen to be dead. It's never the be all end all, maybe you want to get the SMN up first for another raise...or give the Balance to someone who just put up Raging Strikes regardless if they seemed to be the strongest dps or not - but it's a data point to help you along in your decision making progress.

To be honest, at this point I really think you are arguing for the sake of arguing. Your core belief is simply that it's a change that would create animosity from certain players to others. And that outweighs any potential usefulness in your mind.

My personal belief is that in a game where you are part of a group, everyone in the group should see how everyone in the group is doing, and DPS is important enough to be a measure. Then, we as players should best decide how to utilize the info, make decisions, and interact with each other.

I may never agree with you and you may never agree with me. That's ok - variety is the spice of life. But arguing that real time parse data isn't useful just seems silly - it most definitely is. I don't even think that's debatable. You just weigh your fear of player reactions more heavily.

[Attarik]

Parsers have -never- lead to anything positive in an MMO, no matter what people claim their use and benefit is they are always used (almost exclusively) as an excuse to belittle and exclude other players over insignificant dips in DPS. A personal parser is fine, but the second you force others to show your their statistics, it becomes problematic.