Built-in Parsers

[HyoMinPark]

You made more assumptions or hand-waves here than I care to shake a stick at. To top it off, you missed a lot of points. Here's a short list of quick responses to your post here:

So, because my points completely disagree with yours, they’re automatically considered assumptions or hand-waves? I went off exactly what you posted, and it sounded very black-and-white in terms of parsers to me. Your repeated use of calling raiders “toxic” and “elitist” didn’t really help your “arguments”, either. All it did was make it sound like one person personally wronged you in the past, and just happened to use a parser to do it.

I felt like I was extremely thorough in my responses to you—hardly the kind of dismissive “hand waves” behavior you’re claiming my responses to be. And while there my be assumptions and inferences in my posts, they are also present in yours.

1) Answering one anecdote with another is not a solid argument. At best, unreliable hearsay versus unreliable hearsay is politics. At worst... let's just not. For that matter, let's not assume everything is an anecdote just because we do not agree with it.

What you have stated is anecdote, unless you have raw data and numbers that can prove people “lord [parsers] over” other players, and that the implementation of a built-in parser in content where it matters will increase the amount of in-game harassment. You cannot do that, just how I cannot quantitatively prove that the harassment in this game via parser isn’t as high as people like to make it out to be, without relying on anecdotal experiences.

I raise to you your same argument: “let’s not assume everything is anecdote just because we do not agree with it.”

2) No, Ultimate has nothing to do with what I'm saying. Adding any actual content is nothing compared to what I'm saying, at all. I'm referring to a QoL level feature that I am opposed to having in-game, but don't mind the right people using in general. (My apologies that you see people cry about Ultimate or the like, for whatever reason, since I like the idea of it)

Then my apologies for thinking that you were speaking on behalf of Ultimate. I suppose you were trying to speak on behalf of a hypothetical situation that the developers were going to put in time and resources into making a built-in parser. However, I still don’t think it would actually take away from patch or expansion content.

To answer your Eureka wonderments, it was delayed for Patch 4.2 because the developers said they were having issues tuning the content. There have been more rumors that it may be delayed again to a 4.2 sub-patch for the same reasons. Same with SB relic stuff (something I’m particularly irked about, because I actually enjoy relic grinds), since it’s tied to Eureka.

3) I'm not saying a parser will be a jerk just for being a parser. Once again, and let me be perfectly clear right here, a parse is a tool. Bad people will use tools for bad reasons. Putting the tool inside of the game sends a signal to some, not all, such bad people that they are getting a thing that they want and thus must be right. Sounds like bad logic, right? The fallacy lies in those same individuals, not in the majority of parsers I have encountered.

You are saying exactly that though: you are assuming that, because a person has access to a parser, that he is going to act like a jerk just because he has such access, as if it’s going to be a direct cause of his jerk-ish-ness. Yes, bad people use tools for bad reasons, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to blame the tool, which is what it appears that you are doing with your posts. You place the blame on the person, not the tool they are using. This argument applies to a certain other...”tool”...that frequently shows up in real-life debates. The only difference now is that you replace the name of that particular other “tool” with “parser.”

If you remove the parser, the said jerk will still be a jerk regardless, just with other tools (we’ll use the vote kick system here as an example). Should the vote kick system be removed because a few people choose to abuse it? No. Because the vast majority do not act like complete twats, and use an in-game feature to do so. I firmly believe that parsers would act the same way. And, if they were limited to content where they actually matter (Ultimate, Savage, Ex trials), and were a toggable feature in PF, if a person doesn’t like the use of parsers, then don’t join a PF advertising parser use. Just like if a person doesn’t like “speed kills”, or a PF with a “minimum ilvl of 340” or something of the like.

4) Yes, there is more to Bard than Refulgent Arrow, just like there is more to the sky than being blue, or to water than being wet.

Then base your argument on how you “feel” you do more damage based on “HP bars” off of more than just Barrage + Refulgent, because that was all I really saw in that paragraph, aside from a mention of PP. The argument in and of itself is not an adequate, quantitative one anyways, and you cannot say with absolute certainty that you quantitatively know how much damage you are doing just by “watching HP bars when I get procs” versus “watching HP bars when I don’t get procs.” Like I said before, your “data” already falls apart because you don’t seem to consider the damage other players are dealing to said HP. So you cannot quantitatively say with absolute certainty that you are outputting sufficent damage without either using a parser, or hand-calculating your damage via Battle Log entries.

5) I'm well aware of theory-crafters. They play the game in their own way. Furthermore, my question was to Señor Deithwen (note: I say that out of respect) specifically since it was he who brought this up to me. Thank you, however, for trying to respond to a question meant for him.

The theorycrafters play this game “in their own way” to help other determined members figure out the best stats, and the best rotations. They are a prime example of using a parser for good, and while you claim to see all sides, you focus only on the bad. Which is why I consider your arguments to be very black and white.

Also, this is a discussion forum. I was unaware that I was not “allowed” to add in my two gil to a point that you clearly seem to be missing. Whether it be from another poster or not. You stated things that I disagreed with and/or found fault with, even if they were directed at another individual. I’m not really trying to explain anything on behalf of another poster—I’m just merely stating why I disagree with the things you have posted here.

6) One more time, because it keeps on getting missed no matter how much I keep saying it, I see the good in some people who use the tool as it stands outside of the game, I see the bad, and I see the gray area in between.

Then perhaps you should work on your debate skills, because a lot of your posts, like I said previously, come off as completely black and white: “parsers are bad”, “bad people will use parsers to harass”, “implementing parsers will give bad elitists the green light to harass the casual players”. Avoid using words just as “toxic” and “elitist”, because they just paint all of your arguments in an extremely negative light. Your arguments do not come off as particularly grey or neutral, in my opinion. You are entitled to your opinion as much as the next poster, but if you really are wanting to put parsers in a neutral light, and then argue against them in said neutrality, don’t use weighted words to try and back up your arguments like you did in one of your first posts in this thread.