Would you like an in-game parser?

[Kaurie]

Let me tell you a story, even though you are clearly busy trying to improve the way others express their points... it's not gonna work so you can stop. ^^
Few months ago I decided to try out the dps classes. This was really surprising in itself because originally I did not plan to play something that can just sit back and get carried without much effort.

So I picked up the machinist. The main reason behind it being the "songs" so it still seemed somewhat supportive and useful.

I played it bit, looked up the rotation, leveled it to 60 and then got kinda curious how much useless I was - so here I installed the parser... and it was horrible. The MCH dps being a little bit lower in itself helped neither. Anyways, after the initial shock of trying to figure out where does the MCH dps stand in the comparison to the other jobs, I managed to get satisfied with my performance... which ended quite fast when I got matched with another MCH who was doing much more than I did. I was seriously baffled by it... how come someone can do so much even though my rotation was golden? It seemed too much even for the gear difference, as I was still gearing up. So I was pondering, hitting the dummy and pondering some more - till it hit me back.

Maybe that useless dexterity potion could contribute more than I expected? You know, waste of gil, the effect is too short, barely noticeable... it did not seem worth it.

Whelp, nope, it boosted my dps so much I was just looking at the screen unable to comprehend it.

Without the parser I would have no idea how much the potions improve your dps contribution.

You may like parsers, you may hate them, but even if they would cause all the toxicity as it is believed they still help you to get better which also makes the experience itself better. Pretty much the better you are the less likely you are to get attacked by the toxic players that you might fear.


Now question time:

How many players do you think use the potions in Ex primals etc. if they have no idea how much dps that one button does? How many enrages could have been stopped? How many players are willing to waste their gil for the sake of killing that primal?

(It would be easier to answer while looking at some parser logs of course :3 but feel free to guess.)

That is a good story =) I am happy to hear that a parser helped you in that way. It is a good thing, though, that having parsers be against the ToS has resulted in people not harassing one for their skill level.

ohh.. wait

So you needed a parser to "git gud" because you didn't think increasing main stat by x amount would result in X DPS gain?

Sorry, but if you need a parser to understand that boosting your main stat will boost your damage by a lot, you have another problem

The food literally tells you it increases stats in the description. If they can't read those, how are they gonna read a parser?

@ These responses, it's pretty fair to assume the effect would be minimal. You have ~1100-1200 DEX + CRIT/SkS/DET etc etc. You increase DEX by 100 (so maybe ~1/13th) for 20s every 5 minutes, that's a 0.4% increase every 5 minutes. It would not be inherently obvious that your damage changes that much in your opener to many, I am sure.

No hard feelings to him but since it's a pro-parser who used this comparison, it's only fair to talk about the possible bad outcome.
That's why, when I made such a comparison I used "baseball bat in a kindergarden", hurting once in a while is a real risk...death...not so much

But, to mix my view on the topic and the gun metaphor : I don't mind you having a gun, as long as you can't point it at me without my consent.

Both guns and bats are bad comparisons, as they both are actually what hits the person. In the case of a parser and harassment, what hits the person is words. The tool, in this scenario, is not a physical object that can cause pain, it is information which may fuel harassment.

When it comes down to it, all of our analogies suck, because there are very few things in this world which are similar. This is a digital tool used in an entertainment medium which is experienced in a cooperative environment for which we pay monthly. I don't know many other things that fit those criteria, outside of other MMO's, which do have parsers and all evidence of their effects are completely anecdotal ("well, when I played WoW, people were jerks with parsers!", "yeah, well I play WoW and i've never seen anyone be a jerk, but I've seen a lot of good come from it." "yeah well...")