Would you like an in-game parser?

[Lambdafish]

I'll keep thinking that the best way to do it it to allow each player the option to show or don't show his/her numbers, so no one can enforce the choice on them.
And strike with a real banhammer those who would use a parser that could bypass this option.

This goes against your logic to not have numbers, players would be bullied into showing their numbers if your argument is correct. I'm ok with a personal parser to a certain extent, but if it is global it needs to be global, we can't have half and half.

A better idea would be to have a personal parser for all content, and the option of a global parser exclusively for raiding. This could be shown in PF, and can be specified within raid finder, so that everyone is aware.

[Kaurie]

This goes against your logic to not have numbers, players would be bullied into showing their numbers if your argument is correct. I'm ok with a personal parser, but if it is global it needs to be global, we can't have half and half.

Personally, I feel both the half-and-half and personal parser would do little to help the game. Both situations could result in bullying to report numbers, but more importantly the issue of DPS not receiving appropriate feedback wouldn't be addressed. You'd still only have the players who are actively trying to do well opt in to it, with the average player perhaps not even realizing it is an option. What we need is DPS feedback that shows very clearly to DPS when they are performing sub-optimally, because the average player has 0 incentive to improve until they know they are doing poorly.

This really needs to start in the leveling process, when one is learning how to play - so that they can form good habits while they are learning skills. It is detrimental to learn how to use a skill and play a class for hundreds of hours and then find out way in late game that you've been doing it wrong all along. It's hard to break those bad habits.

Again a personal parser, while leveling, wouldn't help as much. When you see that you are doing 50 DPS, you have 0 idea if that is good or not. If you saw that your tank was doing 60, your other DPS doing 120 and you were doing 50 - then you know something is wrong. That said, a personal parser could at least show you how making adjustments to your rotation and skill use affect your DPS, it just won't show if that is actually very good or not.

[Reynhart]

This goes against your logic to not have numbers, players would be bullied into showing their numbers if your argument is correct.

My initial logic is to not focus on numbers. Removing them would be fine, for me, but maybe a little extreme to all of those who like seeing and playing with numbers.
This is a middle ground, because I don't see why we should enforce only one idea on everyone. Like filters, glamour, or hiding helmet, everyone should be able to customize their UI as they want.

Besides, pro-parser defend their idea by saying that having a parser could personaly help a player improve. If that's their real motivation, why would they "bully" someone into showing their numbers ?
And bullying is a valid reason for a report.

However I do find it fishy people would hide.

It's not because I have nothing to hide that I always want to show you.

I look at the positive sides of a parsers, looking at the negative sides is like saying we shouldn't interact with people because yeah, they can be bad, bad as a person for example.

Since there are both positive and negative sides, depending on the person, the day, your mood or whatever, an option could fill any situation. Like sometimes, I like to change my status to busy because I don't want people to bother me. In FFXI, there was the /anon option, to hide your job and level. I also used it to not receive party invitation, and not because my subjob wouldn't be at the appropriate level