In competition with myself: a request for PERSONAL parsers

[CosmicKirby]

I thought people wanted the parsers so they can hold underpreformers accountable for their bad play, a personal parser wont change this.

I think a good number of players will, without really even meaning to, start to play better if they notice that certain ways they play result in higher DPS.

Right now, without a parser it's like walking around with a sharp stone in your shoe, but no pain receptors in your foot.
Sure, you'll notice that you're walking funny (going slow), or possibly tripping and limping, (Wiping repeatedly), but unless you feel the stone in there, it's probably pretty difficult to tell the exact cause of why the foot isn't performing. Even if other people are pointing it out, they aren't gonna take off your shoe and remove it for you, you'll have to do it for yourself.

[Eight]

I see no problem with them, if you're on PC just download one and run it but be respectful and if people harass you report them and leave the run. I mean a large majority of PC players are using them now anyways and SE doesn't care unless you're abusing it or harassing people at that point those people can get a ban.

Some of our groups run parsers to improve themselves and honestly our rule is never say anything unless someone asks how they're doing and some of our ps4 players are always asking PC people to tell them because they don't have the option of one.

[BillyKaplan]

I dont want personal parsers because what will happen is that SE will design content assuming you are using personal parsers; i.e. "oh, we can add more dps checks and make them a lot tougher."

Unless the very next day after the addition of this hypothetical parser every last player has cleared UCOB (or a relevant equivalent piece of content) that's not going to happen. Furthermore, the day this thing will be announced is the day they're asked for an option to turn it off as they rightly should because this should be an option, not a mandate. Not everyone cares about their performance, even in casual group content, and this is ultimately a game. Many people would find the parser stressful. So between the average player being average and not suddenly a Savage raider by this addition, and it rightly needing to be optional, I doubt it'll be as grim as you make it out to be.

+1 on this, assuming SE absolutely protects the people who don't want to share their numbers. I think a lot of people will use it once they're free of both the knowledge other people will judge them (this parser's data is personal), as well as it being built-in and thus not a 3rd party utility the usage of which could get them banned as it's against the ToS.

[RichardButte]

If someone asks about your numbers, there's a good chance they will have ACT running. Now their reason for kicking shifts from low DPS to you lying.

Again, except that they have no grounds to kick you without admitting to running a bannable 3rd party program. :P

I'm not big on dishonesty, but either way, they're opening themselves up to being reported and banned if they say "This guy isn't doing the DPS he says he is".

I think a good number of players will, without really even meaning to, start to play better if they notice that certain ways they play result in higher DPS.

Right now, without a parser it's like walking around with a sharp stone in your shoe, but no pain receptors in your foot.
Sure, you'll notice that you're walking funny (going slow), or possibly tripping and limping, (Wiping repeatedly), but unless you feel the stone in there, it's probably pretty difficult to tell the exact cause of why the foot isn't performing. Even if other people are pointing it out, they aren't gonna take off your shoe and remove it for you, you'll have to do it for yourself.

This. Sooooo much this...

You'll see DPS players improving practically by accident as they look at their number going up and piece together what they're doing right.

[Hruodig]

Personal parsers would be a great first step to trying to improve this player base. People who don't care and want to remain blind will hide their personal parsers (I'm assuming there'd be an option to do so), but you can't force a horse to drink or whatever the saying is I guess.

[lulunami]

I do not think the FFXIV community is that competitive to care about parsers. Not many players are interested in numbers, so it will be less used than Stone, Sea, and Sky. Glamour, mounts, and minions give players a lot more enjoyment compared to parsers.

[AxlStream]

I dont want personal parsers because what will happen is that SE will design content assuming you are using personal parsers; i.e. "oh, we can add more dps checks and make them a lot tougher."

That'll never happen. Less than 10% of the community can even complete a savage tier while it's relevant and without Echo. They know very well the limitations of most.

[Tempest222]

I think a good number of players will, without really even meaning to, start to play better if they notice that certain ways they play result in higher DPS.

Right now, without a parser it's like walking around with a sharp stone in your shoe, but no pain receptors in your foot.
Sure, you'll notice that you're walking funny (going slow), or possibly tripping and limping, (Wiping repeatedly), but unless you feel the stone in there, it's probably pretty difficult to tell the exact cause of why the foot isn't performing. Even if other people are pointing it out, they aren't gonna take off your shoe and remove it for you, you'll have to do it for yourself.

This. I have no interest in top tier content and also know that I'm nowhere near skilled enough for it anyway. I'm not really interested in achieveing robot level perfection and being super competitive. I'm perfectly happy just running the main story stuff, but I would still enjoy a persona parser so I could easily see what works or what doesn't if I'm unsure about when I should be using a certain ability. It would be easier and more fun for people to learn to make improvements through immediatly seeing what's working the best vs having to go read some long winded explantion with charts and graphs about the best possible rotation they could be doing.

Not everyone who doesn't play really well is lazy/doesn't care. I'm sure there are many people who aren't aware they aren't doing well and who would start improving if they had some in game feedback. Of course there will always be some people who just don't care no matter what, but I still think a personal private parser would be benefitial and would help many people improve.

[SilverObi]

I dont want personal parsers because what will happen is that SE will design content assuming you are using personal parsers; i.e. "oh, we can add more dps checks and make them a lot tougher."

That's not how they tune content though. They already know the median and maximum range of dps per job and tune it around that and not around the fact that people know how much damage they're doing, hell they even tuned fights to not account for healer dps in a lot of cases even though that could make a fight much shorter and therefore easier. A parser, even one that shows the entire party's/raid's dps is a powerful tool for self improvement and while there will always be jerks who misuse the information we can't let that deter a useful feature.

Besides, if your dps truly is bad enough to get called out there may actually be a problem on your end that needs fixing.

[Shurrikhan]

A relative potency option would be even better, imo, as it removes the crit and 5% damage spread variation for a cleaner analysis.