Quote Originally Posted by Viridiana View Post
it's possible to use one as an analogy for the other.
You can use pretty much anything as an analogy for anything else if you don't care if it's valid.

You originally asked if I can guarantee that everyone kicked has the potential to improve.
I then immediately qualified that with "Meaning no medical issues restricting them or anything like that?" You either missed that or chose to ignore it intentionally, neither of which does you any favours.

the gear treadmill will go on
Which will be irrelevant to anybody who gets repeatedly kicked from content for not doing enough DPS because they won't be able to get that gear. And, in fact, the problem will get comparatively worse as the people who DO get the higher end gear will increase their expectations of DPS to match because the higher gear increases everybody's. If someone doesn't accept 500 DPS now, they're not going to accept 550 DPS at i220.

I'm not even sure what you're arguing against here.
Then scroll back and look at what you said? It seems pretty straightforward to me. You said that joining a group is entering a contract to be able to do enough tanking/healing/DPS to clear it. So then as long as you can clear it, they're holding up their side, right? Even if the dungeon takes another 20 minutes or even another hour, if the content gets cleared, they are holding up their side of the contract?

But they haven't even asserted a rough estimate of how many people would harass others with a parser, much less how much of an increase that would be over the current state.
The problem with your thinking is that you think they owe you that. They don't. If I like to have my door locked because I'm afraid of people walking into my house and robbing me, I don't need to assert a rough estimate of how many people might rob me. Instead, the person trying to convince me to leave my door unlocked has to prove to me that I won't get robbed.

If their argument is then that "Yeah, you might get robbed, but those people might get caught and go to jail so that would clean up the streets," well, that's working even worse.

they'd be cracking down on all parser users because those people would inevitably be harassing people.
You're blatantly ignoring an important part, though, and that's their current policy regarding TALKING about the parsers. Yes, people are using parsers in-game now. But they're not allowed to call someone out on their DPS with it. If they put parsers officially into the game, then in order to maintain their CURRENT state, they'd have to continue to take the stance that you're not allowed to bring anybody else's DPS up, which would, of course, defeat what everyone seems to want. And remember, if their stance right now is "We won't outright stop you from using them, but we don't want you bringing it up to anyone", why do you think people going "Oh yeah, we'd totally call people out" would help move them from that stance?

This goes back to the whole "estimate" thing. Why should they give you an estimate of how many people would call others out on their DPS when you have a thread full of people here wanting desperately to call people out on their DPS?

Because if I get a single counter-example,
Is it only one time? If so, clearly this isn't an important problem.

I should immediately give up on the whole enterprise?
Didn't say that. Just that if you continue to make the conscious decision to not premake parties, that's your choice, not anybody else's.

If a bank has a single loan get skipped out on, they should stop handing out loans?
If people abuse banks, banks create policies to crack down on abuse. They exercise their options. Your analogy works against you.

You seem to be saying "Don't hold the bad guys accountable for their actions, just stop trusting anybody!"
Except what I'm actually saying is that you have options and it's nobody's choice but your own to not use those options.

Some people are extremely averse to going outside the game for help.
And some people are extremely averse to being spoken to in-game. What's your point?

According to you, clearing just as the boss enrages is the only objectively reasonable amount of DPS to require.
If you cleared it, you cleared it. Anything faster than that is obviously better, but not required.

Which all fall under doing DPS.
I'd consider it more under mechanics and teamwork since the DPS aren't the only ones that can use the cannons and DK. As well, having a parser isn't going to tell you anything useful if people aren't shooting cannons.

Did you ever queue original Amdapour Keep? Before they nerfed Demon Wall because so many people couldn't kill it, I mean. Or Ifrit Hard without a caster LB, when people actually had to put out some DPS in order to kill nails on time? Or Titan Hard in the first month or two, when the heart phase was nerve wracking for a lot of groups?
Sorry, how are these relevant to the state of the game now? Please try to keep your arguments centered on a time period that matters.

I recall at least one FC whose every player was on PS3/PS4; if they have an FC raid group, that would be a yes.
If the answer really is yes, that there are raid groups that clear, say, Savage content where everyone's on a PS3, then doesn't that mean that parsers aren't necessary for success? I mean, clearly those raid groups won't have a parser, but if they're clearing it, clearly they've figured out how to deal with that.

I can't recall with certainty if there were any other issues
Then your story is not very good proof of much, is it?

I'm reasonably sure there wasn't a more obvious issue contributing to our failure.
In my line of work, you learn that "This is what I specifically remember" doesn't have any reasonable bearing on the entirety of a situation. For example, if everybody's DPS was lower than it could be, then everyone contributed to it, not just the lowest person. Or you specifically remember that BECAUSE it was an obvious issue that stuck in your mind to look up while you tunnel visioned over other issues.

But what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
See above about doors being unlocked. I don't need evidence that someone will rob my house to know that leaving my door unlocked is a bad idea.

And since committing harassment seems to be corellated much more strongly to being a jerk than to running a parser
The difference, again, is the policy. Jerks can run parsers now, but they can't say anything. Adding in an official parser and maintaining the same policy that they can't say anything will not increase verbal harassment because they're still not allowed to say anything, but that defeats your purpose of wanting to be able to call people out on their DPS. Not adding in an official parser but rescinding the current policy about not talking about it will, clearly, increase the number of people calling others out on DPS.

Do you understand the difference here? You, seemingly, and apparently most people here, are not just talking about adding a parser in. They want the ability to call people out on the DPS. People who already use a parser but are arguing that they should add a parser are CLEARLY not concerned with adding the parser itself, but wanting the policy about not wanting people to call others out rescinded. So while it isn't the parser that will turn people into jerks, it's the rescinding of the policy that will open the door for them to be jerks.

the only people in a position to do so are also unwilling to do so.
You're so wrong on two counts. I mean, first of all, you expect SE is capable of proving a hypothetical, which is a completely unrealistic expectation. Secondly, look around you. This thread alone makes it pretty clear that if they rescind the policy that you can't talk about someone's DPS, they're going to get an increase in people being called out, just from the number of people who've shared stories about "Oh, this person was crap but I had to bite my tongue because I couldn't say anything and it was infuriating". Those people are the EXACT people who prove SE's point.

Since you love real world analogies so much, when people want certain drugs to not be restricted by law because they're not really harmful, the onus is on them to prove that they're not really harmful. They're the ones trying to change a law with their argument, so it's their job to prove their argument. So it's your job to prove that they won't be proven completely right and that rescinding their policy won't result in an increase in people being called out and an increase in harassment reports.