Built-in Parsers

[Dzian]

If people really want parsers for self improvement, I wonder why not more people have suggested personal parsers. You'll see how much damage and heals you're doing, just no one else.

Because knowing how much damage your doing us useless information if you don't know why.

And in order to know why you need to know what the rest of your party is doing. What ast cards you got what debuffs the boss has. We're party buffs used did the ninja use trick attacks as much as he could have.

All of these things the 7 other people in your group do but you have no control over have a very significant impact on your personal dps.

Personal parsers simply won't work because all 8 people in the party contribute to your dps in varying amounts based on there jobs and how well they are playing.

You could take a Joe average 50th percentile monk for example and put in an elite group with 7 99th percentile players. And practically guarantee that monk isn't gonna be 50th percentile any more but way up there maybe 75th or 80th percentile player. Just because of the 7 people he's grouped with even if his standard of play hasn't actually improved

[Neocamp]

As someone who played WoW for 8 years and raided heroic and then mythic for 4 of those years the idea that parsers lead directly to toxicity is utterly ridiculous. Were there instances of people using recount or skada to point out low dps and thus ridicule players? Yes, absolutely. However it was and is not common. I can probably count the amount of times toxicity was generated from one of those tools on one hand.

What is FAR more common is players being held ACCOUNTABLE for their mistakes. Are they interrupting spells? Attacking the right adds? Taking damage from avoidable AoEs? Maintaining a certain acceptable degree of dps to meet checks? That is what players were always removed for in my experience. I'm sorry but I simply don't feel there is a strong enough correlation between toxicity and the presence of a parser to warrant their absence.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

"Oh stop with the victim attitude. PvP is completely fine and never causes any issues ever except in every MMO ever that allowed it proving otherwise."

- Typical Pro-PvP argument

Allow me to step in on the PvP bit:

First, there ARE some players that take things to far, but that's hardly exclusive to PvP. I contend once more that with PvE comprising a larger portion of the game's content and community, one could argue that PvE effectively has more toxicity than PvP does. But no one wants to be lumped into such a broad statement, I'm sure.

Second, the PvP community, at least til 3.5, was rather small, and for that reason, we were pretty close knit. Sure we had our rivalries and whatnot, but due to how small we were, and more importantly, a respect for each other and the competitive spirit of the content we enjoyed, we were pretty civil. I fell back in love with PvP as I began to feel the raiding scene became very impersonal (where it was no longer about being part of a good team, but cherry picking and throwing away people based on whether they could get the job done or not). I made friends, not just teammates. FRIENDS. People I talk to outside of matches. People I flirt and joke with. People I help in PvE content, and even play other games with now. Don't demonize PvP based on negative stereotypes.

[kikix12]

Allow me to step in on the PvP bit (...)

I think you misunderstood me there. I have absolutely nothing against PvP. I just made an example out of it, because many people are either strong PvP or strong PvE players, so it would be understandable to the most people at once. I then said that the same blanket statement can be done about PvE and pretty much anything.

The fact that it is a ridiculous statement and should never be used for anything is the exact point I was trying to make with that.

There is one issue with this solution, effective healing is dependent on the performance of the rest of the group.

I know that. However, it was a "solution" to a specific problem, where players supposedly kicked the good healer for lack of their DPS, just because they didn't see that healer did their fair share, but in healing. If there is effective healing, then clearly there were people wounded. If a healer healed, let's say, 100 000HP in a fight where the tank have 25 000HP, then the tank would have died four times over if that healer wasn't there, and no one with a level of intelligence higher than a 1st grader would think they were kick-worthy just cause their DPS was 50% of the healer that healed 5 000HP.

Parser is just an advanced calculator and there is no going around the fact that as an advanced calculator, one needs to have basic level of awareness as to how it works. A poorly used tool is the users fault, not the tools. Hence the tool cannot be blamed for that.

The best suggestion I've seen is a personal parser. Since there's really no need to see what everyone else is doing, that would work perfectly for everyone.

It wouldn't for reasons that were stated no later than the second page. That being said, I never said whether the built-in parser would need to be party or personal. I couldn't care less, since the reason I want a parser to begin with is for me to get better at what I play. I could see other people?! Nice. I couldn't?! No loss there, really.

Here's another suggestion, worry about what you do and not everyone else. If you are that worried that someone will mess up your perfection, make a static of other people as good as you are and go.

Perfection doesn't exist hence I cannot be worried about it being messed up. Besides, I am too worried about not playing effectively enough and not having the time or patience anymore to do the time-consuming, boring work of calculating stuff as I did in the past in different games, hence I cannot really play as well as I'd like to make it easier on those others, to worry about their performance.

Also, by attacking Lazruz you are proving the point that this topic makes people act like jerks.

"Attacking" and "act like jerks". Sorry, but what am I supposed to say?! It was the ninth page and I had 11 posts before her (including the original one), clearly, quite exhaustively, explaining how I am making an attempt to deal with the issues of parsers, only for her to come out and imply that I'm an egoistical jerk for suggesting parsers implementation without caring about their negatives.

That is an extremely disrespectable thing to do in my eyes. And despite that, I provided arguments as to why his/her post is wrong. Something that person failed to provide to begin with.

Rather than grade people into "good" or "bad" based on whether they want something or not, consider their individual methods of making those points (or not, just writing whatever). As some people on both sides here have proven, disagreeing most certainly does not need to be offered in a disrespectable manner.

[Zarabeth]

*snip*

The problem is that this issue is a dead issue and bringing it up over and over isn't helping. SE is not going to add it. I'm sorry if you can't understand why they took this stance but there it is. Being angry at everyone who doesn't agree that a parser is needed just proves the point of why SE doesn't want it in their game. I'm sorry you feel disrespected but it doesn't change my opinion that while a personal parser could be somewhat useful, one that gives other people's info is definitely not good for anything but starting problems.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Parser is just an advanced calculator and there is no going around the fact that as an advanced calculator, one needs to have basic level of awareness as to how it works. A poorly used tool is the users fault, not the tools. Hence, the tool cannot be blamed for that.

I agree with you!

But, until the day comes when players stop looking for that magical one number which encapsulates a player's performance, parsers will remain a divisive topic amongst the FFXIV community.

Here's the thing. Not everyone is concerned with being as efficient as possible. A lot of players play FFXIV for fun.

Meanwhile, you have another group who desire to be the best they can be. They want to get through the content as fast as possible in order to play the game at its highest difficulty.

I like to call this the Casuals versus the Hardcore debate. Now, parsers are fine for players who are pushing difficult content. Players need to be in their top form in order to overcome the challenges placed in front of them by the developers.

However, what happens is when the hardcore players encounter casual players going through dungeons to complete quests, parsers become this weapon to use against the casuals and it ruins the casual's enjoyment of the game.

Boiled down, FFXIV was not designed to be a competitive game. It's a story driven MMORPG. Parsers don't comfortably fit the audience.

[Hruodig]

I agree with you!

But, until the day comes when players stop looking for that magical one number which encapsulates a player's performance, parsers will remain a divisive topic amongst the FFXIV community.

Here's the thing. Not everyone is concerned with being as efficient as possible. A lot of players play FFXIV for fun.

Meanwhile, you have another group who desire to be the best they can be. They want to get through the content as fast as possible in order to play the game at its highest difficulty.

I like to call this the Casuals versus the Hardcore debate. Now, parsers are fine for players who are pushing difficult content. Players need to be in their top form in order to overcome the challenges placed in front of them by the developers.

However, what happens is when the hardcore players encounter casual players going through dungeons to complete quests, parsers become this weapon to use against the casuals and it ruins the casual's enjoyment of the game.

Boiled down, FFXIV was not designed to be a competitive game. It's a story driven MMORPG. Parsers don't comfortably fit the audience.

It doesn't really matter what it was designed to be, me and lots of my friends play it as a competitive game because we like to be good and push each other to be better. For people like us, being as efficient as possible *is* fun. I'm so sick of seeing "lots of people don't care about their dps, they play for *fun*", as if people who do care about their performance don't have fun.

[Niwashi]

It doesn't really matter what it was designed to be, me and lots of my friends play it as a competitive game because we like to be good and push each other to be better. For people like us, being as efficient as possible *is* fun. I'm so sick of seeing "lots of people don't care about their dps, they play for *fun*", as if people who do care about their performance don't have fun.

It's not that people think *you* don't have fun that way. It's simply that a lot of people are sick and tired of others telling them that they *have* to play that way, whether they find it fun or not. Highly competitive top tier stuff is a niche. Some people like it and some people don't. With a personal parser, you and your friends could get all the fun out of it you want, but would simply have a harder time telling casuals you wind up in a leveling dungeon with that *THEY* have to meet standards that the game doesn't set, but only you yourself do.

You can go ahead and have fun that way. Just don't insist that other people do. If it's just about your own fun, then seeing your own stats should be all that you need. Seeing other people's stats is for taking over their game from them and insisting they play it your way.

[Aomine1992]

As a PS4 player I do feel disadvantaged lol I always have to get my friend to parse me before I go into some high end content because being that dps that's not performing is embarrassing....I'm always self conscious about sucking lol also telling people that they are under performing is sometimes what they need to actually get better instead of sliding through content

I'm not the best player by no means but it took a very rude person back in 3.0 to tell me I sucked for me to stop and take a look at how I was playing lol so I am for parsers for my own personal dps or what ever

[Niwashi]

They need to implement an in-game personal parser that gives all the details on your own performance and nothing about anybody else's. Along with that, they should remove enough of the details from the combat log so that the third-party parsers we're not even supposed to use won't work anymore.

That combination would give everyone the part that's actually useful to them, without giving them data that isn't useful but which can be abused for harassing others. Both aspects of that would be far better than the current pattern where those who follow the rules get neither while those who break the rules get both. Let's even the playing field while also providing everyone better data for improving their game.