5 reasons why PS4 players need a parser in game

[SpookyGhost]

Any argument against personal parsers is, frankly, stupid.

It would literally harm no one to be able to see how much damage you, personally, are doing per second. Then you can just have a letter grade or w/e to tell you how good you are doing when you wipe or even as the fight goes on. This does nothing but give the player more information that will better help them improve as without a number they've no idea how far off they are from where they need to be.

I also don't buy the argument against parsers in general. We already have them, PS4 players just can't use them. People apparently don't realize it, but you don't need to say "you are being kicked because you are doing garbage DPS" - you can just say "you are being kicked because you are under performing" (or you can literally say nothing and kick them). We would literally gain no toxicity from adding parsers to the game, if the game were to be toxic with a parser then it already is. The only thing adding a parser would do is give everyone the same level of information and probably increase the skill of the playerbase since now people actually have useful information.

[YitharV2]

...

If you watch Yoshi-P's response (see clip), his argument is that people will ask you and it will lead to fighting. He's also worried that people will use it to figure out how to make it show party DPS. I'm not sure if I 100% agree with his arguments, but those are his arguments.

It's true people are already toxic without parsers, but I can see an actual parser just making the toxicity worse. I don't think the toxic PLD was parsing as he didn't seem to actually know who needed to be kicked, but if he knew he probably would've either kicked them or spewed vitriol at the person with the lowest DPS. And that's not exactly fair. I was crap at my job when I did Bismarck. OTOH, a parser would've probably shown that he and his ninja friend weren't as hot as they thought. The thing is not everyone parses because it's an add-on tool. But for the people who do parse, I think things wouldn't change that much.

[SpookyGhost]

If you watch Yoshi-P's response (see clip), his argument is that people will ask you and it will lead to fighting. He's also worried that people will use it to figure out how to make it show party DPS.

Only a fraction of the community would need to ask someone for their numbers (the ones on PS4), and then only a small fraction of that fraction would actually do it. I think that small percentile of people isn't worth denying the rest of us on PS4 useful information. Also if anyone's going to figure out how to make it show party DPS it's going to be the PC community and they won't because... they already have ACT.

[YitharV2]

Only a fraction of the community would need to ask someone for their numbers (the ones on PS4), and then only a small fraction of that fraction would actually do it. I think that small percentile of people isn't worth denying the rest of us on PS4 useful information. Also if anyone's going to figure out how to make it show party DPS it's going to be the PC community and they won't because... they already have ACT.

Well like I said, those are his arguments, not mine. To him he probably doesn't think it's worth it for the small percentage that would ask. And I agree as well.

[thegreatonemal]

Any argument against personal parsers is, frankly, stupid.

It would literally harm no one to be able to see how much damage you, personally, are doing per second. Then you can just have a letter grade or w/e to tell you how good you are doing when you wipe or even as the fight goes on. This does nothing but give the player more information that will better help them improve as without a number they've no idea how far off they are from where they need to be.

Again a paser in and of it does will help anything improve how are they supposed to improve if they don't even know what they are doing is wrong. using your letter grade system you get a D in a primal fight your next questions are why and how the game says nothing just gives you a 4 digit number and a letter grade but hey you all cleared the fight so you must of been doing something right. Without context numbers are useless letter grades are useless its either add an FFlogs type option to go along with it or its pointless

[Sebazy]

using your letter grade system you get a D in a primal fight your next questions are why and how the game says nothing just gives you a 4 digit number and a letter grade but hey you all cleared the fight so you must of been doing something right. Without context numbers are useless letter grades are useless its either add an FFlogs type option to go along with it or its pointless

The game literally gives you nothing but a pat on the back regardless of if you did world first grade DPS or just paid for a carry promptly sat on the floor for the entire instance. How is this any worse? The idea behind this is to give people a hint that 'hey, perhaps you're missing a trick there', going any further than that right out of the gate is going to get people's backs up so it's just not worth it yet.

[thegreatonemal]

The game literally gives you nothing but a pat on the back regardless of if you did world first grade DPS or just paid for a carry promptly sat on the floor for the entire instance. How is this any worse? The idea behind this is to give people a hint that 'hey, perhaps you're missing a trick there', going any further than that right out of the gate is going to get people's backs up so it's just not worth it yet.

Because that missing trick as you call it only applies to 10% of the gameplay ex primals and savage raids. Your little example does nothing to help those people who want to improve because they have no idea what they could have done differently because they have no context.

[Sebazy]

Because that missing trick as you call it only applies to 10% of the gameplay ex primals and savage raids. Your little example does nothing to help those people who want to improve because they have no idea what they could have done differently because they have no context.

If it gives them the nudge they need to to realise that they have room to improve then that's a win in my eyes, from there it's easy enough to simply ask people or look up info.

I guess my point is that 90% of the game can be cleared even with comically sub par play and at no point does the game even suggest that perhaps you could be playing to a higher standard if you choose. Taken in isolation this isn't really that big of a deal, but given the social and team side of things it eventually throws up issues when these fresh players come up against EX/Savage content and wonder why they are suddenly so far off the mark.

As for having no idea what to do next, we have mentors (lol), we have FCs, we have shells, we have a significant community of raiders many of which are happy to offer up advice if asked and of course we have a multitude of people who spend their time theory crafting and cooking up guides etc. Getting advice isn't the problem, knowing that you might want to seek that advice in the first place is.

*edit* Just to add, this wasn't nearly as big an issue back at ARR's launch when the game had a proper progression of difficulty. The level 49 and 50 instances were actually rather rough making for good practice content for Titan who in turn acted as a gatekeeper and trial of entry of sorts for both your relic weapon and the endgame aka Coil. As things are, the level 60 dungeons are actually easier than the low to mid 50s stuff. Vault is a minor bump in difficulty due to a couple of rough bosses but that's about it. The only challenging stuff is typically 8 man and forgiving enough that 1 or 2 deadweights won't prevent a clear =(

[thegreatonemal]

If it gives them the nudge they need to to realise that they have room to improve then that's a win in my eyes, from there it's easy enough to simply ask people or look up info.
As for having no idea what to do next, we have mentors (lol), we have FCs, we have shells, we have a significant community of raiders many of which are happy to offer up advice if asked and of course we have a multitude of people who spend their time theory crafting and cooking up guides etc. Getting advice isn't the problem, knowing that you might want to seek that advice in the first place is.

Parser aren't needed for that root problem the game teaching people how to play is. Its a problem in all mmos and every community falls into this trap of blaming the players and not the game. When I play street fighter I don't have to go and google Ryu's moveset I press pause and its right there they even have a mode where i can go practice in a live combat situation. That applies to every single other game genre out there why not this one?


As for your other point in ARR is plain wrong the reason it was "harder" was because everyone was closer to the minimum ilvl to get into the dungeon so you weren't over powered for them like you have been in every single endgame hw dungeon past the first two
as for extreme primals all of the hw ones demand much more of players since pretty much all of them have mechanics where if one person dies they kill another single person at best and wipe the group instantly at worst not to mention higher dps checks more complex rotations and mechanics

[Sebazy]

Parser aren't needed for that root problem the game teaching people how to play is.

Absolutely agreed there, this really is the other side of the coin of this issue and I'd certainly also argue that it's a more pressing issue than parsing, I see SSS mentioned in this thread and yet I wonder how many of the people I've pugged A12S with could or have killed the matching trial for it. Last time I had a go I failed and sadly there's no incentive for myself or anyone else to go have a proper crack at it.

As for your other point in ARR is plain wrong the reason it was "harder" was because everyone was closer to the minimum ilvl to get into the dungeon so you weren't over powered for them like you have been in every single endgame hw dungeon past the first two

Even in Darklight gear, both AV and AK's bosses were a stern challenge with fairly substantial DPS checks ahoy as well as punishing mechanics for the time. Fail the pushback and you die, fail to DPS the bees down in time and you die, fail to pick up a fruit and you die, use fruit inefficiently and you die, fail to hide behind an urn and you die, position yourself poorly infront or behind the boss and you die etc I could go on and on. By comparison, in Asura gear Neverreap and Fractal's bosses were annoying in places but never really caused repeat wipes like Demon Wall, Anantaboga or Miser's Mistress could back in the day.

The initial ARR bosses were significantly less forgiving than what we had in HW and it was fairly common to get a group that couldn't finish AV or AK right up until a good way into coil progression. I don't ever remember that being the case with Neverreap and Fractal, you'd see the occasional death to Final Sting, maybe an over ambitious tank on the first two pulls in Fractal and that was about it. Failing on bosses mechanics generally had annoying consequences but I certainly don't remember anything that would cause an outright wipe (Maybe curator's bombs could come close? I was always hot at dispelling those so I never personally saw them as a problem).

as for extreme primals all of the hw ones demand much more of players since pretty much all of them have mechanics where if one person dies they kill another single person at best and wipe the group instantly at worst not to mention higher dps checks more complex rotations and mechanics

Have you tried Titan Hardmode in min ilvl gear? It's a far greater test of throughput for both DPS and healers than either Bismark or Ravana. I'll definitely agree that Ravana was a more complex encounter, but from a healer's perspective, the fact that I was stood around DPSing for half the encounter right out of the gate wasn't a good start in my eyes. It wasn't until Thordan EX that HW's trials properly got going IMO.

Going to have to agree to disagree here then =(