An Alternative? to parsers..

[thegreatonemal]

After reading all the people's opinion here, I think the best is just to have a parser. It accomplishes the same goal but with more details. Ultimately, they can remove the feature if it backfires, like they told us they were going to do with the skill reset in raid content and the bard's performance.



So? Who isn't proud of their performance? Were you a victim of people with ACT by any chance? Let them be happy with their numbers.

the personal attacks man but to play along I've never had anyone complain about my dps you can check fflogs if you wish. being proud of your performance is one thing attacking other people for your own preconceived view of them doing bad is another thing. and again how many times must I say this a 4 digit number at the end of a fight with no context does not help anyone ever. there are way too many variables a big one being party comp and the competency of those party members. Who cares if you had a nin in your party if you didnt get any of your major attacks and buffs off during trick attack because they did it at awkward times or missed it for whatever reason.

[Bobs]

If you need a parser to tell you how good or bad you are playing then you probably suck. There are plenty of things in game to let you know when you are doing well.

This isn't a MOBA with second by second feedback. It's a casual MMO who's only real endgame is glamor; because we all know that in a few months that item(s) you worked so hard to get will be obsolete.

Currently I'm kicking myself for trying to get all i340 gear now that i350 will be the new big thing. Most people know that this is going to happen so they don't try that hard.

Or they are trolling you, until you feel the need to shout into an echo chamber.

[akaneakki]

If you need a parser to tell you how good or bad you are playing then you probably suck. There are plenty of things in game to let you know when you are doing well.

I will gladly ask you for a RDM opener at lvl 80, since people who used parser to find a optimized opener sucks. So why not ask you instead? I'll bookmark this thread and make sure I come back to you.

[Miracle_Diva]

If you need a parser to tell you how good or bad you are playing then you probably suck. There are plenty of things in game to let you know when you are doing well.

Like what?

This isn't a MOBA with second by second feedback. It's a casual MMO who's only real endgame is glamor; because we all know that in a few months that item(s) you worked so hard to get will be obsolete.

Glamour is real *end game* in any game that has glamour.

Currently I'm kicking myself for trying to get all i340 gear now that i350 will be the new big thing. Most people know that this is going to happen so they don't try that hard.

Some people never try hard cuz there will be a new patch someday so they will have to grind for new gear and they just afk in limsa.
What do you even do in this game?

[Squintina]

The one thing about grading overhealing...
Depending on your party (and what content you are running) it might be part of the overall strategy to get a successful run.

If you have a party full of really good players this is probably not going to be the strategy. However if you are in a party full of people who seem to have terrible gear, or not know how to dodge, or try but still fail because they have high ping or whatever, and you're a healer who decides not to just quit right there and then, that group might need things that lead to some overhealing.

That big aoe that good players dodge (but this particular party can't?) Maybe a pre-casted medica ii might be a good idea, it'll do some overheal but the regen will help once half the party decides to stand in the bad. Same with Succor. This leads to overhealing at first, but is done in anticipation.

The increased healing in such parties would also mean less dps because of the increased need for mana preservation and because of the constant need to make up for other people's errors (aka Larrizaur's "Healers adjust").

Another example was a POTD run I had the pleasure to watch (literally. I was watching someone else's monitor). The healer kept waiting until about 25% left on the tank to heal. Normally this is ok, but in POTD, where hidden traps might exist and some of the monsters do a lot of damage for a 4-man party to handle, that was a recipe for disaster.

Instead of anticipating the fact that the tank was taking almost 35% damage per hit from the mobs on this particular floor and topping off (which is a general no-no in high end content because of the overhealing that often comes with it), several times the tank died because the healer was playing "correctly" rather than playing to the party's needs at that time. In this run a "topping" strategy, even with some overhealing, would have led to a more successful run overall.

The formula would therefore also need to account for a lower DPS output when more healing has been done.

So sometimes you have to play "incorrectly" to increase a party's chances of winning depending on the party composition and how they are playing, relying less on meta and more on knowing the actual skills and when they are useful. This would be unbelievably difficult to grade.

A similar dilemma would exist for tanks (or dps that pick up more slack by rezzing, mana shifting, and other support things).

I'm not against the idea but this would be really hard to make it truly balanced.

[Oscura]

If you need a parser to tell you how good or bad you are playing then you probably suck. There are plenty of things in game to let you know when you are doing well.

If everyone who uses a parser sucks because they use them, then please help us.

Explain to us what in game let's us know, without a doubt, with absolutely no room for error, how well we are doing in game.

Please go through the mental gymnastics to prove this to anyone.

[Kyuuen]

Over exaggeration and anecdotes based on heresay that people like to constitute as facts. That's all it is. People can't prove it because it isn't happening to the degree that they claim it is.


They get off on making baseless claims and anecdotal evidence into facts, saying things like "The game will implode with toxicity like the bubonic plague and destroy all we hold dear" if SE releases official parsers.


It's hard to take anything people that are antu-parser seriously anymore.

Yes, here say most likely from people who got to experience the toxic environments that Skada and Recount (parsers) brought with them during the heydays of WotLK (Wrath of the Lich King (WoW)) or some other game. You can hand wave peoples experiences as anecdotal evidence till you're blue in the face, but it does nothing to diminish their experiences and concerns of what parsers could potentially bring into XIV.

And seeing as Yoshi has expressed equal concern about parsers, I'd say he's all to familiar with the concerns that people keep bringing up; considering he himself has played WoW for some time, that you dismiss as anecdotal.

[Urthdigger]

If you need a parser to tell you how good or bad you are playing then you probably suck. There are plenty of things in game to let you know when you are doing well.

Well, I was going to used parsed data to help figure out if I should go for Direct Hit or Critical on my MNK, but clearly that's wrong and only liable to make me utterly fail at this game. Yes, surely I shall just go with what feels better rather than use data, that's the way to go!

[Selova]

snip.

We can argue hypotheticals all day long, it's still not going to support the over exaggerated claims of the anti-parser crowd.

Its naive to think that there won't be people that will abuse them, people already do with the unofficial parser we have access to. Its the hilarious highly exaggerated scenarios people against parsers like to claim as undisputed fact and how it would tear apart the FFXIV community.

I've played wow for over 10 years, I'm quite familiar with what happens in scenarios of people grieving others with parsers and the game is fine.

People just don't want to accept any kind of responsibility in endgame group content so they spin their little what if scenarios and anecdotes as fact to try to make their point. Which needs to stop.

[SenorPatty]

It's a similar situation to getting fired IRL in some places. By law they can fire you 'for any reason' as per your contract, yet they still need a reason to fire you, and there's certain reasons that, even with a contract, they CANNOT fire you over, such as your race/religion/other protected status. So if one day you get up and fired without a word, and upon investigation it appears to be some minor infraction, the proof is on the fired to explain if they were fired for an illegal reason.

Fortunately and unfortunately this is near impossible to do. If there was wrong doing it's unfortunate, but if there was none on the employers part, then it protects them from the fired's attempts and legal response.

Unfortunately for all of us, this sort of situation just BREEDS fear mongering and paranoia. Any situation where the information is unknown is ripe for that sort of mentality and social grooming.

This is why I'm not fond of real world analogies for gaming comparisons. There's some key bits that just don't fare well. First, in the real world, each country and/or state has its policies when it comes to firing an employee. I'd delve further but there's too many variables to go on about this. What's important here is this game, silent kicking is not an offence. SE puts emphasis on how things are terminated (as in, was there harassment on the way out? did anyone verbally assault anyone after the kick, etc). The most likely response from SE if someone were to report someone else for just being dropped without a word is "sorry it happened. best of luck".

Which brings me to the parser harassment part of this. As I mentioned, due to SE's policy, no one in their right mind-especially in a pug-would tell someone they got kicked related due to parser reasons. Look at the Tales of DF thread. Notice how every time someone goes out of their way to explain what someone else is doing wrong WITHOUT a parser, they still get shit on so I can assure you its not gonna be the use of a parser that's gonna make someone test their chances to point out the obvious. So the natural recourse is either disband the party or kick after the run, both done in silence to avoid getting slapped by SE.

And so here we are, Anti-Parsers voicing that parser harassment happens on a regular basis and yet, what I have seen so far are suspicions. Lots and lots of suspicions. I remember on these forums, there was this one guy who was not gonna take any chances with anyone and report at the mere suspicion and/or mention of a parser. It was the most flabbergasting thing I had ever read to that point but that's how crazy the paranoia goes.

The anti-parser crowd don't want to get kicked silently from a party but at the same time, they don't want to hear the truth because in both cases for them, its toxic and its harassment.

Damned if the pro-parser do, damned if they don't.