Would you like an in-game parser?

[Taliriah]

Potentially. But then the ToS would still apply regardless, so those that would use it as an outlet to be an even worse individual certainly wouldn't be around long.

Anything that would occur as a result of parsing being made official already does happen courtesy of third-party parsing. The only difference is that if they were to do it in-house and native to the game then they themselves would be able to moderate it, and it would give a basis for console players, and players that don't engage in third-party utilities to know how they are doing.

There's plenty of ways to be shitty without breaking the ToS. The ToS can't fix human behavior, but the game can avoid incentivizing bad behavior.
As for third party plugins, there are ways to crack down on that if they really want to.

[Mosha]

As for third party plugins, there are ways to crack down on that if they really want to.

There are, but practically plugins and mods are too entrenched in the community now so if SE tried to outright block them they would prune a good chunk of the user base. it's not just ACT, every group has plugins built for them these days.

I would add since SE chose not to regulate plugins its ironically left ffxiv with the most powerful modding and plugin framework in the MMO genre

[Kaurhz]

There's plenty of ways to be shitty without breaking the ToS. The ToS can't fix human behavior, but the game can avoid incentivizing bad behavior.
As for third party plugins, there are ways to crack down on that if they really want to.

Sure, but the point is those people would do it regardless of whether the tool exists or not. The only difference is that the tool would or would not give validation to a point being made. So it comes down to whether you feel 'threatened' by that reference or not. I suppose in this sense the proverb "Ignorance is bliss" fits well.

If I am honest, I would much rather they try and create valid alternatives to these tools before actually going after them in the first place, because they would lose a good customer base. Inherently a parser isn't bad, it's just entirely a people issue, frankly, and how websites, e.g., FFLogs deal with their data and present it to players/users. If they create alternatives to them, then they have a whole lot more control, and going after certain plugins would be a lot more pragmatic, granted, I personally don't think that would be entirely healthy because it just starts a witch-hunt in different facets of the game. Besides, [arsing, for example, provides a lot of competitive players, and/or those that enjoy pushing content to the boundary a good slice of replayable content, and they understand that much - They will never touch that, because ultimately they themselves benefit from it.