The Real Problem with Parsers

[Aiselia]

the truth is the majority of players under perform by a HUGE amount ... which is why a GLOBAL parser would actually show them how they perform against others, they can either choose to improve or ignore it.

You're defeating yourself.

If the majority of players underperform, then a majority of players will be paired with people who underperform. That skews any information you get from a party parser. If someone doing 600 sees someone doing 550, they see they're beating them. They have no incentive to get better. If someone doing 550 sees someone doing 600, they might think they're lower, but it's not that much so they're okay.

There are several criteria that MUST ALL be met for useful data from a party parse, if we operate under the assumption that the person needing the data doesn't already go outside the game to figure out what they should be doing.

1. Same or similar class.

A BRD/MCH that knows they do inherently less damage than a DRG but doesn't go outside the game already to know the actual margin may chalk up 200 to 300 DPS difference as class disparity. They would only know useful data if the other DPS also contains a BRD/MCH. But then we go down to....

2. Same or similar gear.

So that BRD/MCH sees another BRD/MCH in the party, and are being out-DPSed by 200 to 300, then checks their gear, sees that they have some 210 accessories while they only have some 190 pieces and maybe an Eso item or two. Without going outside the game, they don't know the actual difference in DPS they should be doing with relative gear. They could just chalk up the DPS difference as the other person having better gear. So they only have useful data if the other person is the same class in comparable gear. So now we go down to...

3. Superior skill from the OTHER person.

As I said before, if someone is doing 600 while another is doing 550, the person doing 600 thinks they're doing fine. If all they ever seem to get are people who do equal or lower DPS, even when they're also very sub-optimal, which according to you seems plausible because "the majority of players under perform by a HUGE amount", then they're not going to think they need to get better. They'll more likely get complacent in what they do, because they don't know they could do better. If they're relatively equal, that's no good unless both of them are already optimal, because they're going to think that's where they should be, corroborated by another person. If the other person is worse, they think they're doing great, even if they could do double their DPS. They only know they're too low if the other person is BETTER, and by a wide enough margin that they can't chalk it up to...

4. Same or similar situation.

This encompasses more than the other three criteria because there's several aspects to "situation" to consider.

A. Latency. No explanation really needed, I hope. If someone's lagging, they're expecting to do lower DPS.
B. Avoidance mechanics. BLMs objectively get more punished on, say, last boss of Neverreap than more mobile classes. Avoiding a tornado on a BLM is far more punishing to DPS than on a BRD, especially if the BRD is any good. Even a SMN is less punished by movement than a BLM because their DOTs are still ticking while they're moving and they can Ruin II while running. And thanks to the human brain's propensity to block out things happening to other people, they may get tossed by 5 tornadoes during the entire fight and think "Well, all the tornadoes were coming for me, so of course I did lower DPS. I kept getting tossed!" They may not notice that the other person got tossed 10 times. Similarly, if the boss does frequent melee-ranged AOEs but few ranged ones, the melee could chalk up DPS difference to melee being bad for that fight.
C. Other mechanics. Think of Alexander 1. Ranged do not have to move as much to hit an add to get it to the beam. Melee do. That's another way melee could feel punished. But what if a DPS decides to ignore mechanics to artificially inflate their numbers by not interrupting their DPS stream? This could be done because of tunnel vision and not even noticing the adds, or figuring someone else will take care of them, or because they're scared that if they look too low, they might get kicked. That not only makes the fight harder for everybody, but skews the numbers by making it look like another person did more DPS than others. There's also things like being quarantined in A4 which pulls you away from fighting for a while as you tumble, or the Sanuwas in Bismarck EX if it keeps making you swap colours while someone else may happen to always get the same colour.
D. Encounter size. If you're in a fight with a lot of adds, a class with lots of AOE will inflate DPS numbers if the parser isn't set to only show the boss. To use Bismarck EX again, there are plenty of mobs to fight in that... which makes it perfect for a SMN to inflate their numbers with their AOE. Any NIN or DRG will not be able to match that on adds, but may actually do way more on the Sanuwa or Bismarck's back (see point 1). Any mainly ST class will also do less on something like Alexander 2.
E. Mechanic failure. A4, nobody blocks lasers, someone gets rekt. They get ressed and now have lower stats. Their numbers will be obviously lower than they could be.

But sure, some parsers will show things like deaths or what you've gotten hit by (it's arguable whether SE would put in something that in-depth under the argument of console limitations) and whatever to help explain some of that, but that requires...

5. Ability to mentally parse the parser.

If someone can't look at their skills and figure out that Fire 3 spam is bad or that MNKs have positionals or what have you, can we expect them to be able to look at all the data from an in-depth parse and be able to understand what happened? Can we expect them to be willing to bother? Can we expect them to actually look through all the data to find that yes, they got hit by 5 tornadoes, but the other DPS got hit by 10? Or that they died once but another died twice and still beat them? What if someone got taken out of a fight halfway through so they couldn't be ressed (Died in quarantine, knocked off Titan platform or Levi EX boats)?

6. Depth of parser.

Of course, that's operating under the assumption that something in-depth gets put in, instead of a potentially simple "You did this much DPS in that combat encounter" so that PS3 players are better accommodated with less being tracked. The argument for how useful a parser would be is quite contingent on what SE does for a parser, and most people seem to assume that they'll just basically merge existing ones into the game itself.


tl;dr: Random duty finder groups are the furthest from a controlled situation you could get, which makes parse data range anywhere from possibly useful to completely irrelevant to potentially detrimental.

And that's all whether it's useful for any single person. There's a whole extra argument about whether it's good for a group or the community as a whole, like for example if someone gets killed in Quarantine so they can't be ressed but then the group wipes, who's going to be the first person looked at as a problem? The one that is at 300 DPS because they died, even if they could have done 1,000 if they survived. It goes under the mental ability to parse the data and figure out what actually happened. And bearing in mind the number of people who say "Well, this one time this guy mouthed off about low DPS but he was actually the lowest," these are the people you expect to be able to read the data and understand reasons rather than looking at simple numbers.