An Alternative? to parsers..

[DeaconMoore]

This is an alternative idea to parsers, top raiders and the like will ofcourse still want/use parsers but for the general populace it can serve the same idea and keeps it in line with SE's way of doing things to help with inclusion and help those that underperform strive for that higher rank

It really doesn't though. Without seeing the actual numbers you don't really know why your rank is different between runs nor will you see any improvement or degradation if you keep hitting s rank in your example with changing gear or melds.

All this idea accomplishes is epeen stroking with participation trophies handed out at the end.

[VanilleFang]

This causes everything to be linked to DPS in a way I don't really care for. A tank would get a lower score the more damage they take, correct? Doesn't that mean that the tanks score is directly linked to the performance of the DPS? Same goes with healing done. I'm assuming that healing done would rank higher the more you do, so if a healer has to heal less because the DPS is really good, or the tank is good with CDs, or what have you then the ranking would say "healer need a to heal better" basically?

I understand what you are going for but this sort of ranking system is pretty much just "your ranks depend on how well the DPS do".

[Hruodig]

Just that the thing your talking about in no way helps anyone doing dungeon content and only helps other content if your looking to speed run. Yet none of you are talking about rotation guides in game explaining how DoTs work and why they are vital they are or otehr key gameplay mechanics that newer players and people new to mmos general won't know. I can't think of another game genre where you have to use goggle to find out how to play it properly. Yet I see no threads about this.

I would be down for all of the above. I don't think I'd necessarily want a ranking system though, a personal parser with detailed battle info available would be ok.

[CosmicKirby]

You're not gonna find any. Anyone who uses a parser is aware of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy so no one's going to hang themselves out to dry by announcing it in a pug setting. By that same turn, that's also why someone gets silently kicked or the party disbands and the bad player can't return to the party via blacklist. That's where the claims come from. They can't prove with hard evidence that they got kicked because of bad parse. They can only strongly guess that's the reason but this begs the question: if you got kicked without any jeer whatsoever, why call it harassment?

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.

[thegreatonemal]

I would be down for all of the above. I don't think I'd necessarily want a ranking system though, a personal parser with detailed battle info available would be ok.

Then we should be making thread after thread about that. instead its "gimme parser" like that is going to help anything. it will only help ps4 players see their number without any context and without context people will simply use it as a epeen measuring stick.

[Hruodig]

Then we should be making thread after thread about that. instead its "gimme parser" like that is going to help anything. it will only help ps4 players see their number without any context and without context people will simply use it as a epeen measuring stick.

Parsers would help people understand when they're doing better vs doing worse. See the number go up? Better. Lower? Worse. Lots of people simply don't know what kind of damage they're doing, and since it's so easy to get carried through content, they never think they have to improve. Parsers would help those people.

[Lilseph]

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.

Then we should be making thread after thread about that. instead its "gimme parser" like that is going to help anything. it will only help ps4 players see their number without any context and without context people will simply use it as a epeen measuring stick.

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. People will actually benefit from having a way to measure their performance. If they don't care, they can ignore it, but the feature is there.

[LloydShade]

A grade system with rewards attached to "being good" is not good design for a cooperative game.

You should not reward "good players" from "playing normally" or push players into "playing better" for the sake of a cookie. If we win, we all win together. If we lose, we all lose together. This is what a team means. Any team will have stronger and weaker players. That does not make it any less your team. As a player, you can either deal with your team or give up and find another team that better suits your style. A grading or ranking system will encourage players to put their needs (their grade) above the team (success of the mission). If the reward is meaningful, when a player knows he will get a bad grade due to the team, why continue? Why risk losing the good grade to help a player in need? Damage dealers have long queues, so they are less likely to give up too quickly, but a tank or a healer?

There is one real underlying issue going on, but it is not what the majority thinks. A player should never think about enforcing his playstyle upon other players. The real question is, why does it matter? If we go purely on a numerical damage output value and assume that every player are able to fulfill all the mechanics. Assuming that everyone has the adequate gear for the challenge. Assuming that encounters are failed due to a lack of damage output. Let say that one player doing bellow the needed damage is enough to make those encounters fail.

We have established that this player knows mechanics, has the proper gear, but still cannot provide the necessary damage to overcome the challenge. A grade system will reveal that this player is not good enough. A parser will reveal that this player does not match the numbers of the other players. Neither of which will allow the player to improve. Repeatedly saying: "you are bad" to a player will not magically transform this player into a good player. All it tells the player is that his or her playstyle is inappropriate.

This is a symptom of a bigger problem. Why is the gap between a "bad" player and a "good" player so large? There is a very simple solution to this damage output problem. It is to give each job an easy and effective pattern of attack that will do enough damage to meet those damage checks. Think repeatedly pressing 1-2-3. Make this pattern do 70% of the maximum damage of the job. Using the complete toolkit properly will make you go above 70% or lower if you screw up. The better you are, the closer to 100% you can reach. This is a design choice used in many competitive games (fighting). There are move sets that are intended for novice players, which can give them victories just by button mashing. This stops working at higher level, because advanced players are able to counter those obvious moves. Even if they are capable of countering the moves, they remain affected and if those advanced players lazy out on the fight, they can bite the dust. Once you start improving and get a better understanding of the game, you move on to the advanced move sets, but until you master them, you are vulnerable to the button mashing techniques.

Button mashing, or in a MMORPG, only pressing 1-2-3 is a boring strategy. For some players, that is all they want and they will be satisfied with that. Others will want to do the advanced techniques. It is actually much easier to ease players into playing their job properly if they have a safety net. If they are unable to use the complex abilities and their damage output starts dropping low, all they need is to go back to focus on 1-2-3 (or be advised to do so). Because this 1-2-3 will inevitably part of their rotation, their damage output will only be so low. Let say the worse they can do if they really try and fail is 50%. This would make them, at worst, only at most half the damage output of the best damage dealer of the party. This also means you only have 20% missing damage to compensate on the other 3 damage dealers.

All you need is an easy way for any given job to perform enough damage to meet the DPS checks, and all that is left are mechanics and gear. The greatest strength of that system is that a player can adjust on the fly to use the easy rotation. This means that you can effectively transform a player that is a burden into a player capable of carrying its weight mid-fight. No grading or parsing system in the world can achieve this. Ever.

[Selova]

snip.

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.

[Kewitt]

The issue with this system is overhearing contact tosses it out.
Better...
Local data collection, with a c,b,a,s score based on.
Calc on bosses only as fights are longer

Dps thing to take into data collection
Amount of proper rotation done
time global cool down timer up but no action happening
Dmg taken,
Aoe avoided

Tank
Dmg mitigated
Dmg taken
Aoe avoid
Time spent with hate in yellow zone ie more closely missing hate mean tank dosing more.
(Only time I miss hate on a boss is when I am in dps stance pushing my numbers higher so staying in yellow means you keeping hate but dps good too, yes I know this could be cheesed)

Healers
Aoe avoid
Dmg dealt
Dmg mitigated
over cure


But just base dps numbers do not work because of overhearing
Or in cases of tanks using STR crafted gear vs being 340