An Alternative? to parsers..

[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.

[Nedkel]

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.

No its not.
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php

1.6 mln active characters over 20 lvl comparing to over 3 mln just 2 years ago on this one site with statistics.
Its not doing well, since the game is not welcoming to the new playerbase, guess why.
People dont want to take responsibility of a red-heated guys, who need to make something 10% faster. For the game developers as long as you make the content withing the given time, you are doing ok. The game will not be succesful with the parsers, because these doesnt add any value to the game that will attract newcomers. Its not in SE policy to cater parsers and their high score hard trying, they are not doing any money out of it, the hard truth to be spoken. The game will and is focused to gather as many new players as it is virtually possible, either by releasing fun to play classes or more dungeons focused more on the mechanics and not dps. The simple fact is you are NOT welcoming them by blasting numbers in their face and showing them how much they sock in a PVE, thats stupid. Its afterall just a PVE you are talking about, you just get some gil and some items at the end of the day, its not pvp where there is an actual ground for implementing ranking system.
If one want to grind PVE as fast as possible, he has the opportunity to play it with the ones he know they are doing super well. Expecting doing the same from Pug's is as absurd as expecting Russia or China to give up their nuclear warheads, you just never do it.
Do i sound reasonable as a diamond tier League of legends player, to shout out at the pug's in the casual game mode they dont know how to play and they sock and they need to git gut? No, i would me asked where is my common sense gone for holidays, since what i have expecting? Newbies or causals that play 1 game a day to be good?
Eat it or leave it.

[Tridus]

1.6 mln active characters over 20 lvl comparing to over 3 mln just 2 years ago on this one site with statistics.
Its not doing well, since the game is not welcoming to the new playerbase, guess why.

1.6 million active characters in a 13 year old subscription game when the last expansion was in 2016 is "not good"? Anyone else in the MMO market would take that in a heartbeat.

[DeaconMoore]

1.6 million active characters in a 13 year old subscription game when the last expansion was in 2016 is "not good"? Anyone else in the MMO market would take that in a heartbeat.

It's actually pretty damn terrible when you consider they stood at 10+ million active players at the beginning of the expansion previous to that.

Not that I would attribute damage meters to its decline. Those were in WoW pretty early on during its rise to fame in the first place.

[Tridus]

It's actually pretty damn terrible when you consider they stood at 10+ million active players at the beginning of the expansion previous to that.

And far less than that by the end of said expansion. WoW's been on a cycle for years where people come back with a new expansion, play it for a while, and quit. WoD gained and subsequently lost five million subscribers in six months, which is when Blizzard stopped putting out official subscriber numbers. Nobody knows for sure just how low it got before Legion spiked it up again, but the pattern started in Cataclysm.

AFAIK, Warcraft Census also only includes EU and NA. The Chinese operation is entirely excluded, but it's included in the "10 million active players" number that Blizzard put out. So those numbers are not reliably comparable because they don't measure the same thing.

An actual apples to apples comparison is to compare the WarcraftRealms.net numbers with itself from the past.
Active characters right now: 1,705,559
Active characters on January 9, 2017: 1,939,909 (via the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20170109...com/census.php )
Active characters on January 2, 2016: 2,111,349 (via the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160102...com/census.php )
Active characters on January 3, 2015: 4,284,715
Active characters on January 9, 2014: 3,127,056
Active characters on January 21, 2013: 664,013 (no idea what's up with this number, because on Feb 10, 2013 it was 1,155,764)
Active characters on January 16, 2012: 3,352,153
active characters on January 8, 2011: 4,816,671
Active characters on Nov 25, 2010: 5,384,340 (compare to 4,668,736 on December 10, 2010 to see just how swingy these numbers are)
active characters on March 17, 2010: 5,956,356
Active characters on January 12, 2009: 8,096,731
Active characters on August 15, 2008: 6,619,804
Active characters on Sept 28, 2007: 312,095 (again, no idea what's up with this number, because on July 6, 2007 it's 6,560,407. Sometimes this data just doesnt make sense.)
Active characters on March 28, 2006: 4,538,166
Active characters on February 15, 2005: 1,263,640 (one of the earliest captures)

The Wayback machine has fewer captures once you get into 2008 and earlier. But you can see from this that it's never shown 10 million active characters, and usually shows nothing close to that even after Blizzard was saying they had 10 million active accounts. Anyone with alts that count as active would show up at least twice in these numbers, too.

Hell, if you compare to exactly a year ago, the census number has barely changed. With Legion being a year older this year and basically over, and no release date for the already announced next expansion, that number looks pretty solid.

Not that I would attribute damage meters to its decline. Those were in WoW pretty early on during its rise to fame in the first place.

Yep.

[Selova]

snip.

Yet it still remains the king of MMO's. Also, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make regarding the population of the game in correlation to parsers/combat logs. WoW's population declining has nothing to do with combat logs/parsers, that hasn't been a thing since wrath. Nice try though. I also, never said anything about blasting or griefing other people, I have never once done that nor do i intend to, so once again I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

Your entire post makes no sense whatsoever. The game will be fine with parsers, all you're doing is proving my point in how certain members of this community like to over exaggerate when it comes to parsers/combat logs with this hilarious "The sky is falling" mentality. Also, when you are trying to debate a point don't resort to comparing a video game to Real-life scenarios, It just makes you look foolish. I honestly have nothing more to say at this point.

[Nedkel]

Yet it still remains the king of MMO's. Also, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make regarding the population of the game in correlation to parsers/combat logs. WoW's population declining has nothing to do with combat logs/parsers, that hasn't been a thing since wrath. Nice try though. I also, never said anything about blasting or griefing other people, I have never once done that nor do i intend to, so once again I have no idea what point you are trying to make.


Your entire post makes no sense whatsoever. The game will be fine with parsers, all you're doing is proving my point in how certain members of this community like to over exaggerate when it comes to parsers/combat logs with this hilarious "The sky is falling" mentality. Also, when you are trying to debate a point don't resort to comparing a video game to Real-life scenarios, It just makes you look foolish. I honestly have nothing more to say at this point.

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.

[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.