An Alternative? to parsers..

[F_Maximillian]

The king of mmo who lost 80% of its original playerbase within few years, how does it compare to other online games available on the market like Lol, cs go, dota 2? These games are still growing and developing, i dont see them failing apart as fast as wow. The game is losing its playerbase for a reason, balancing and designing entire game around numbers and dps, this does not work well for the game. Instead of refreshing game mechanics and graphics, it boils in its own sauce in prior to cater the minority of the playerbase who use combat meters. And so, that minority is what they had left from being very first successful game to the king of the dying game genre.

FF xiv doesnt need a parser to became a successful game.
What does it bring to the gameplay? Literally nothing, it just opens the window for the mad players to blame the others when they dont meet their expectations, over a PVE. Its really stupid if you think about it, since the dps score overall is the sum of all factors in the game and its not the really clear indicator of someone ability to play the game.
Specific boss mechanics, trash mobs mechanics, support buffs from other party member, the job type, quality of the EQ, does tank pull a ton or just few at the time, does the tank died few times and dps had to run around, it all affects the dps, so calling each person over their poor performance is a big nonsense.
Some people will argue, how do i get better at game without the numberz? Well if someone is willing to get better at the game and learn, he still has to look for some guides online and could watch few guides on youtube from someone experienced with specific job, thats more than enough for the game. Maxing the build and rotation in order to pull 99.999% performance is not what you are asked for in this game by anyone, if you get bored and need some challenge, change the class to tank and stop playing ezy mode dps, simple lol.
Again, if you expect duty finder to give you a decent players with perfect EQ then you may as well try playing lotto, because these are the minority overall. The rest of the people are either mediocore, bad, dont care, dont have time to spend into the game or their item level just barely hits the requirement, its just the way it is, like in any other game, there is a half above average and the other below average.
Sure you could force them to get better at the game, and for sure you will fail on it, same as blizzard failed on their mmo. A parser will not encourage them to get better, a number is just a number, it still will be up to them if they are going to search the internet for some guides or not. More often, they will just get annoyed and experience calling on their performance from other party members for playing badly. Why should someone like that baddy bother being harrased for few numbers, when he could play Rsix or pubg?
Its all about maintaining enough playerbase, so the game will be alive for longer, we should care about this. Instead of a parse, the game should have the job quests explaining and showing how specific abilities works and how to mix them with other abilities, that would make much better work of improving playerbase overall skill than a parser and toxic behaviour.
The game has enough its own problems, SE doesnt need a toxicity to be overwhelming one, in other mmorpgs you could be straight away banned for combat meters, and you dont have to insult anyone over their performance.

May I just point out that all of those examples you put are games that have strict rankings and make results visible not only through the match but after the match ends? They also are highly competitive and are e-sport games. Did it ever occur to you that other changes to WoW are what caused the declining population, not to mention MMORPGs falling from popularity in favor of easy in-easy out mobile games or games like league etc;?

No FFXIV does not need a parser to be a successful game nor do I think we'll ever get one, or a ranking system, or any other in-game feature that may provide feedback that isn't "you're the hero of the realm here's your extra shiny loot". I recall reading an article from when ARR launched and some japanese idol (possibly, some woman hired to do pr at least) was harrassed harshly (sickeningly so from what I remember) because she was doing poor dps. That led to some massive backlash and I believe it was from then on that SE really buckled down on their parser stance. Those who were around at the time or better versed in the history of the game could probably find articles on the incident. It would be nice for all to have the opportunity to parse (specifically the ps4 players) but things work as is. If anything it's more unfair to those who are silently kicked without knowing why IMO.

[Tridus]

The king of mmo who lost 80% of its original playerbase within few years

WoW is over 13 years old and is still by far the largest MMO on the market. If that's failure, sign me up for some failure. Also, what are you basing that number on? I sure hope it's not a Blizzard subscriber count compared to Warcraft Census count that I already debunked.

how does it compare to other online games available on the market like Lol, cs go, dota 2?

It doesn't, since none of those are subscription MMOs.

These games are still growing and developing, i dont see them failing apart as fast as wow.

Almost like the market shifted and players moved on to different genres entirely. Shocking!

The game is losing its playerbase for a reason

Yeah, it's 13 years old, the current expansion is basically done, and the new one doesn't have a release date yet. Not exactly an abnormal market pattern for MMOs.

balancing and designing entire game around numbers and dps, this does not work well for the game.

As opposed to a mythical time when they didn't do that? You are aware that meters existed in vanilla, and thus were in use when the game rose to be as big as it was, right? One of the earliest usages was to notice people in 40 person raids going AFK on bosses (all of which were DPS and a lot of which were Hunters). They thought that was "toxic" too when they got called out on it. The rest of us who were carrying them felt their behavior was what was actually toxic, and that got stomped out when it became clear you couldn't get away with it anymore.

Instead of refreshing game mechanics and graphics, it boils in its own sauce in prior to cater the minority of the playerbase who use combat meters. And so, that minority is what they had left from being very first successful game to the king of the dying game genre.

Let me use the same logic you're using: WoW has a full glamour log system. WoW is in decline. Therefore the problem is catering to the minority of the playerbase that cares about glamour.

What does it bring to the gameplay? Literally nothing, it just opens the window for the mad players to blame the others when they dont meet their expectations, over a PVE. Its really stupid if you think about it, since the dps score overall is the sum of all factors in the game and its not the really clear indicator of someone ability to play the game.

If you're playing a DPS job, doing 160 DPS in Rabanastre is an extremely clear indicator of someone's ability to play the game. Either that or an indicator of their desire to watch Netflix and get carried.

Specific boss mechanics, trash mobs mechanics, support buffs from other party member, the job type, quality of the EQ, does tank pull a ton or just few at the time, does the tank died few times and dps had to run around, it all affects the dps, so calling each person over their poor performance is a big nonsense.

Except the tank here would get called out on poor performance. Why should DPS get a pass?

Some people will argue, how do i get better at game without the numberz? Well if someone is willing to get better at the game and learn, he still has to look for some guides online and could watch few guides on youtube from someone experienced with specific job, thats more than enough for the game. Maxing the build and rotation in order to pull 99.999% performance is not what you are asked for in this game by anyone, if you get bored and need some challenge, change the class to tank and stop playing ezy mode dps, simple lol.

And where do you think the guides come from? The people making them first have to figure out what the optimal rotation is. They do that by using parsers.

Again, if you expect duty finder to give you a decent players with perfect EQ then you may as well try playing lotto, because these are the minority overall. The rest of the people are either mediocore, bad, dont care, dont have time to spend into the game or their item level just barely hits the requirement, its just the way it is, like in any other game, there is a half above average and the other below average.

Would be cool if you said something of any substance here, but okay.

Sure you could force them to get better at the game, and for sure you will fail on it, same as blizzard failed on their mmo.

Your definition of failure is very unique. There isn't a MMO developer on the planet who wouldn't trade places with Blizzard this second. SE included. WoW is the most successful MMO ever made by such a huge margin that nobody else is in the same league.

A parser will not encourage them to get better, a number is just a number, it still will be up to them if they are going to search the internet for some guides or not. More often, they will just get annoyed and experience calling on their performance from other party members for playing badly. Why should someone like that baddy bother being harrased for few numbers, when he could play Rsix or pubg?

Someone playing badly in PBUG is going to just get themselves killed a lot, which is just fine. Someone playing badly on a CoD team is most definitely getting called out on it with language far worse than anything you'll find in XIV.

[Aomine1992]

Lol goodness can we lay this argument to bed...

Anti parsers say it will bring upon division and exclusion well sorry to say but this game has been divided since forever which is how most MMOs are their is your raid community and your casual and maybe that weird third party who are pvpers...also it will help some with their performance thus maybe boosting the raid community some..

Pro parsers, say this will help people get better when in actuality it won't lol you think telling someone their numbers suck will make them go get better? For some maybe for most no.....there are plenty of expierences with parser harassments since they did it in WoW, that have been brought up plenty, blame your idiot peers for messing that up.

The actions of the few affected the vast majority by the way I'm pro parser but for my own numbers only since I'm on PS4 now let's move on

[Bobs]

Wow, a lot of people don't like to be told they suck. Immediately it turns into an argument.

Maybe there is a lesson here we can apply to something.

[KaivaC]

Wow, a lot of people don't like to be told they suck. Immediately it turns into an argument.

Maybe there is a lesson here we can apply to something.

Oh damn...I honestly thought you were using an allusion to get a point across, or that you were trolling. You were being serious? Wow...well, what did you think would happen when you made that claim that people suck? Of course people are going to get defensive. Also, in regards to your comment, it's not necessarily an argument...it's just us calling you out on your bullshit assessment.

[Oscura]

Wow, a lot of people don't like to be told they suck. Immediately it turns into an argument.

Maybe there is a lesson here we can apply to something.

It has nothing to do with being offended.

I just hate stupid posts.

The lesson to be learned is to not post trash if you can't back it up or prove it.

[Lilseph]

Wow, a lot of people don't like to be told they suck. Immediately it turns into an argument.

Maybe there is a lesson here we can apply to something.

No, people are baffled by your nonsensical statement. You did what trolls pretty much do.

[Nedkel]

People will find the way to abuse the system and make highest score, and this will lead people to focus on the score instead of completing the dungeon, it will raise the level of toxicity in the game, since the end results will be all depending on with who you are playing. Everyone will be pointing fingers on tanks or healer, because they died and their score went down.

Rating classes by numbers will bring even more problems than that, the rating system like this will force severe balance changes, which will kill diversity and fun coming from each present and future classes and create even more balance issues than we have right npw. Since why should you play a bard, if MCH is doing tons of damage? Buff bard, and you end up with pick-or-go-away class, that will need some of his utility and support abilities stuff taken away.
What if SE would release skill-shoot based class thats really fun to play but performs badly, due to the playerbase not knowing how to hit their spells or use properly? SE will be forced to buff its damage, to cater parser users playerbase, ending up with OP class, anyway they will need to nerf it back or flat out the playstyle.

I believe Yoshi is much more happy today, because class design is not limited by the numbers like it is in the WoW.

[JunseiKei]

~snip~

Jeeze, all these people that make these suggestions, I swear, do so in a bubble.

- Some fights are spent more efficiently healing with Aspected Helios/ Medica II/Whispering Dawn and allowing some iota of overhealing to allow for other mechanics to be covered and/or allows healers to DPS; there's really no reason to penalize overhealing, just useless healing.
- There are fights where mechanics must be done, like soaking damage or taking meteors; having a scoring based on the amount of damage taken reduces your score will incentivize people to ignore mechanics. At the same token, certain mobs, like the diresaur, have completely dodge-able attacks; unless the system could point out where you took that unnecessary damage, it's worthless.
- As it is, people will sacrifice taking down a high priority target to DoT other monsters to increase their DPS (this was especially bad in Nidhogg and have been in parties where this has caused many a wipe from too many people doing this). And people trying to avoid overkilling because parse; yelled at my own raid team for this far too many times to count.
- Where would this be applied? You say "dungeons" but that is hardly content that matters. It's something generally done for grinding; be it levels or tomestones and where gear is not really required.

This grading system does not help it the game does not then hold your hand and tell you why you fell short in an area. IE: You did poor damage; will the system tell you it's because of your rotation, or because you've been unlucky and still have that i276 weapon in Castrum Abania? That's hardly on the player if it's the latter and wholly falls on the system with it's RNG nature because for some reason, weapon drops, despite having the most impact on your damage/healing/enmity, is the hardest thing to upgrade.

Basically, unless the system says why you fall short in certain areas, this is really moot. I'd equally be concerned on how much time and resources it'd take away from the team to create and implement to actually be useful. The last thing I'd want is for some system like this to be placed in and have my main story quality go down for a dumb personal ranking system that I couldn't give two fecal matter for.

[Dzian]

I'm not asking anyone to kneel. I don't brag about my DPS. Especially because I don't think anything over 90 percentile is worth bragging about. Even 99 percentile isn't worth bragging about. Knowing how to play your class is not worth bragging about. But that's the thing players in the 80-99 percentile have in common - they know how to play their class. If they're in the 50-80 range they probably do as well but might be having trouble with mechanics and/or dying.

Meanwhile you have people in the lower 30-40s. I call them "bad",l

I honestly think it's not quite that easy. Gear plays a massive part and the powercreep the game has is getting steeper and steeper.

What that then means is it's simply not possible for many players to reach the high percentiles. I'm incredibly casual at the minute .my highest job is my i334 paladin still rocking 320 susano weapons. My sam is i327 still sporting a 320 susano weapon. My blm is i323 stilll rocking a 310 verity weapon and couple of 310 accessories.

The point is then that it's going to be impossible for me to reach 80-90 percentile levels of dps. Simply because my gear isn't the best. My blm for might not even hit the 60th percentile rocking it's 310 weapon. It's just an impossibility. It Does not make me a bad player simply one with less time than others.

However if instead of measuring dps you were to measure for example pps potency per second. Then you might find my 60th percentile blm is actually up there in the high 80s maybe even 90s. It's not player skill that's the problem it's simply the power creep of gear.

You then have a scenario where great players appear bad simply because of there gear and available time to play.

It's another reason why my stuff is hidden on logs because people might look at that see me at like 60th percentile and think I'm crap at blm. But it might actually be a good performance with my gear because I'm whacking out a ton of pps and uptime. Just gear and power creep drags it down a lot.