The Real Problem with Parsers

[Viridiana]

Someone tell me how I'm supposed to know who to give Balance and Arrow to without a parser.

Clearly the answer is to flail in the dark, even though your utility, if it's balanced remotely appropriately, is balanced around giving it to someone performing at a high standard.

[LunaHoshino]

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.

A parser helped my friend learn the proper rotation for his class and increase his DPS by almost 200. The two of us (both DRGs in gear of the same ilvl) had been running Odin with my FC, and one of my other FCmates noticed that his DPS was significantly below mine, which shouldn't be the case in a fight where the only mechanics to deal with are AoEs that both of us had to dodge. So we decided to go check out his rotation on our striking dummy, and sure enough, he was doing several things wrong. Once those were pointed out and he looked up the proper DRG rotation, his overall DPS increased significantly-- a win-win situation for everyone.

He had no idea he was doing anything wrong rotation-wise until it was pointed out to him; had my FCmate not said something, he would never even have had the chance to improve because he didn't realize there was room to improve in the first place.

[pandabearcat]

The real problem is people still don't, after 55 pages of this thread, know how to separate players from tools.

Or tools from tools.

You know what I mean.

And that the problem is players and not parers. Also a lot of playing the victim lol.

[Anze-chan]

That just took me forever to read, but it seems like a lot of people are arguing with nothing but based assumptions on how the community will be reacting to parsers when they are out. I've been playing this game for a while now and I can't believe how SE is spoon-feeding their playerbase on every single level. And if I have learned anything from the past year, it's that SE doesn't meddle when it's a player/player perception issue, they only care when it's game/player issue. Right now this parser thing seems like a player/player issue and the only reason why SE would do something about parsing when reported isn't because it's being used to confront people or whatever, it's because of the third party tool and that breaks their rules. Once parsers are a part of this game officially, people will have to learn to deal with it.

[Almalexia]

Someone tell me how I'm supposed to know who to give Balance and Arrow to without a parser.

Well, NIN doesn't Goad any more with visual TP data than without.

In any case, the correct answer is

me.

[Stupiduglytaru]

I had a case the other day in DD, pulls were taking ages to die. I noticed the blm was single AF building then using transpose, I politely pointed out he should use fire III then fire II and finish up with a blizzard III. The healer immediately responses with "your just being a dick, I'm sure he knows the basics.

I responded " I have been watching his casts to see why things aren't dieing" to which I was called a stalker lel

The blm mentioned he was highest dps (second dps was a ninja not following positinals) I had a little chuckle to myself.

Even with a parser it won't make you a better player but I'm sure once he comes across another blm and sees the major dps difference he will realise hes doing it wrong.

[Archaell]

Full fledged group parsers could do more harm than good, but there could be some sort of middle ground.

I think that the best solution would be to give everyone personal parser, so they can see their own performance, and the rest of the group should see only icons similar to enmity.

Something like: Bellow 70% of average dps of the class red icon, <80% orange, <90% yellow, 90-110% green, 110%+ blue.

Of course that would require some work on developers' part to determine what the average is and how it is calculated.

[TheMax1087]

snip

Considering the players were better at ninja than the devs believed was possible, a metric of average dps determined by them would be a bit suspect.

[ForbiddenMonk]

When your lowest dps is doing +400 below the 3rd place dps and 50 below tank, it gets pretty frustrating, especially when you're broke and cant afford xpots and with the tight dps checks in a3 and a4 savage. Having a personal parser here would help make the player aware of his shortcomings.

And help him "git gud"

[RiceisNice]

I had a case the other day in DD, pulls were taking ages to die. I noticed the blm was single AF building then using transpose, I politely pointed out he should use fire III then fire II and finish up with a blizzard III. The healer immediately responses with "your just being a dick, I'm sure he knows the basics.

In this situation it would've been nice to quantify numbers to prove your point. It's an example of where regardless of having a parser (the BLM comparing himself to a NIN, both being subpar) or not (the blm is never keeps AF), you can still tell people are playing less than ideal and it won't stop them (or their perception of others) being a douche.


On a side note, I ran into a BLM last night that would never keep AF either. Would always do fire II to drop UI stacks, then blizzard x2 to get UI2, and fire II. On a single target. Not responsive either and would always follow closely to the healer, so the rest of us in the party assumed he was a bot and got removed around the second boss.