Built-in Parsers

[Javey]

Even if it was a personal parser, groups wanting to run high end content would ask for it and not sharing means no spot for you. An example would be deep dungeon runs that ask for something like a 90/90 min to join.

Also, since ACT is an unsupported third party program, people will stil use it. FFlogs compares your performance to others and that's what players are interested in as well.

[Dzian]

They need to implement an in-game personal parser that gives all the details on your own performance and nothing about anybody else's.

What would that tell you?

A massive amount of your personal dps at any given time is not down to you but down to the rest of your group.. in order to make any sense of your dps you need to understand where it came from and why it is what it is.

A parser that tells you nothing about the rest of the group is useless.

If you take trick attack for example. That one buff can have maybe a 2% increase on your dps.

Just having a bard in your party is an almost permanent 2% increase to crit rate. And that's before counting foe or battle voice.

The point is all those little things the rest of your group does can add up to be a very significant portion of your personal dps. And because of that a personal parser that removes any information about the rest of the party would be totally useless.

You could do a fight twice. First time you might get 5k fps.

Second time you might get 5.5k dps. That might suggest you played better. But the reality is you could have played worse just the 7 people you were grouped with the second time were better players in a better composition. That extra dps then is down to them and not down to you playing better..

So a personal parse wouldn't tell you anything useful at all. Knowing you did more or less dps than you did last time is absolutely useless if you can't account for why you did more. And to do that you need information about the rest of the party.

[BillyKaplan]

A parser that tells you nothing about the rest of the group is useless.

Knowing I had a BRD or an AST in my party is useless if it's a BRD that doesn't keep up songs or an AST that doesn't use cards. And even if they were performing adequately, what matters is that the boss had a debuff on it and that I had a buff on me, two entities whose data is relevant to the parsing. The problem with that is that it will arguably still give you too much information about how other people are performing (ok BRDs should rightly keep their songs up and that's easy to see if it drops even without a parser, but still) and that will net us right back where we started with people at each other's throats.

[Niwashi]

A massive amount of your personal dps at any given time is not down to you but down to the rest of your group.. in order to make any sense of your dps you need to understand where it came from and why it is what it is.

And a good parser should tell you where it came from. It should tell you all the damage you do (both damage you do directly and that you do by buffing other players' attacks). It should tell you everything that affects that damage, including splitting out what portion you're fully responsible for and what portion you only got because of someone else's buffs/debuffs.

That doesn't mean it has to tell you about other damage you're not even involved in.

All of these should be listed:

• You got X amount of damage directly
• You added Y amount of damage to other players' attacks with your buffs/debuffs
• You got Z amount of additional damage due to buffs/debuffs from other players
• The damage you were involved in was: (X+Y+Z)
• Your total damage contribution was: (X+Y)

But what should not be included is:

• Teammate So-and-So got W amount of damage

[Taika]

But what should not be included is:

• Teammate So-and-So got W amount of damage

What exactly would be the issue of seeing your team members' numbers as well? If a group is wiping to enrage, wouldn't everyone just ask for everyone's numbers anyway? And if the group isn't wiping, people aren't very likely to care that much about anyone else's numbers (unless someone clearly isn't pulling their weight, in which case it would be justified wouldn't it)? And if there's trouble with healing, for example, wouldn't it be useful to see if one of the healers is healing significantly more than the other? It should also of course show how much damage everyone's taking and how many times each party member has died, so people can't for example blame healers if they're standing in all AoEs and constantly dying.

I just don't see the downside for everyone seeing everyone's numbers, when everyone's playing in a team and aiming to reach a common goal, in content that requires certain numbers to be met. Again, this could be an optional feature available for premade parties, so groups could use it to their benefit if they wish to do so (of course there could also be an option to only see your own numbers and not let anyone else see yours either, but that's not really useful for stuff like Savage or Ultimate).

[AlexionSkylark]

What exactly would be the issue of seeing your team members' numbers as well?.

How about Which hunting and finger pointing? AKA harassment?

In the current situation people are FORBIDDEN to do it openly risking a report.

[Taika]

How about Which hunting and finger pointing? AKA harassment?

Harassment is and will be a reportable offense no matter if parsers are allowed or not. Also, it's important to separate discussing performance from harassing a player about their performance. Like I've said before in one of these threads:

Right now you can say "You're performing really badly!" and that's not considered harassment. Then you could say "You're performing really badly: your DPS is only 2500 when it should be 4000!". And again, if you add any personal insults or bad language to those, they'll turn into harassment, despite if numbers have been used or not. The main difference in my eyes is that when the numbers are used, the person receiving the critisism will know if it's based on facts or not.

[Dzian]

And a good parser should tell you where it came from. It should tell you all the damage you do (both damage you do directly and that you do by buffing other players' attacks). It should tell you everything that affects that damage, including splitting out what portion you're fully responsible for and what portion you only got because of someone else's buffs/debuffs.

That doesn't mean it has to tell you about other damage you're not even involved in.

All of these should be listed:

• You got X amount of damage directly
• You added Y amount of damage to other players' attacks with your buffs/debuffs
• You got Z amount of additional damage due to buffs/debuffs from other players
• The damage you were involved in was: (X+Y+Z)
• Your total damage contribution was: (X+Y)

But what should not be included is:

• Teammate So-and-So got W amount of damage

You've kind of proven my point which is. that all these people that ask for just a personal parser specifically say they don't want top see what the rest of the party is doing. and yet your list above only goes to prove that in order to get an accurate assessment of your personal DPS you DO need to know what the rest of the party is doing. because you need to know those important pieces of information you labelled as "Z" and a personal parse cannot tell you that because in order to get Z you need information about the rest of the party.

What you alos fail to realise is that even if you provide Z without providing the rest of the parties actual dps. it wont solve any of the issues your trying to fix by hiding there dps in the first place. because players will look at Z and call out the rest of the party.
"yo ninja you suck you only contributed 0.5% of my dps what the hell you playing at? do you even know what trick attack is?"
"yo ast you know what cards are right so why are you only accounting for 1% of my dps...."

that's really no different at all than " yo ninja your dps sucks"

You simply cannot in anyway have a personal only parse that doesn't tell you about the rest of the party because without "Z" any numbers you get are absolutely worthless and incomaparable.
and in asking for Z you are asking for information about the rest of the partys performance and as such that parse is no longer personal...

I think this is a big part of why Yoshi says no. because the player base doesn't have a clue what they're asking for . we want a personal parse but we want information about how the rest of the party contributes to be included.... total contradiction.

I fully agree with Yoshis stance. not because i'm anti parser. but because the general playerbase simply doesn't know how to use them and interpret the information correctly. which is proven by the sheer amount of people that believe they can make accurate assessments with only a fraction of the information.

[BigRed5392]

snip

yoshida said no 12 time already, and you don't need a parser to be good.

those who wanna learn will learn. those who don't, won't. Learning doesn't need a user made program (which is subject to margin of error) learning can be done by asking other players for times. Or going out in the world to practice.


also fyi, there is a search function this suggestion was made 40 times since ff14 launched the issue that comes up, would be other players demanding you turn on your numbers or be kicked.


the REAL reason they don't want to do a in game parser is so people dpn't reverse engineer it, use it to get true values and break the system with their user made parsers.

lil research goes a long way.

[Taika]

those who wanna learn will learn. those who don't, won't. Learning doesn't need a user made program (which is subject to margin of error) learning can be done by asking other players for times. Or going out in the world to practice.

How do you know how well you're doing without actual numbers to back it up? There are so many players out there who think they're doing alright but in reality don't have a clue. And if you say read and follow the guides for openers and rotations, you know they're all based on people utilising parsers to find that information, right?

What's so scary and wrong about actually knowing how you're doing and why in the content where certain numbers simply need to be met or the whole group will fail?

Also going to ask you the same question: are you even doing the content people need the parsers for? Seems like this thread is full of people saying "oh no you don't need a parser, you just have to X", while those people have no personal experience of the content where the parsers are used and needed... I'm all for implementing an official parser which is limited for the optional use of premade parties (and the content those do: extremes, savage, ultimate). In this case, having one in game doesn't in any way even concern those players who don't do that content in the first place (like many naysayers in this thread).