An Alternative? to parsers..

[Tridus]

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.

It's impossible for many players to reach the high percentiles because it's a percentile. By definition, only 1% of players can be 99th percentile. If everyone improved to the point that everyone was within 200 DPS of each other, only 1% of players would be 99th percentile, but the gap between a 99th percentile player and a 25th percentile player's DPS would be ~5% and not a big deal unless fights are tuned extremely strictly, so only people going for world firsts would be concerned about it.

Obviously due to practice, skill, and gear, the gap will likely never narrow up that much. But you can't focus entirely on percentile as a measurement. It's a useful tool to see where you are relative to everyone else. It's not a useful tool to see if you have the required DPS to clear the content (whereas raw DPS measurements are). Half the playerbase will always be below 50th percentile. The aim should be to help bring everyone up so that the gap isn't as wide as it is now, because right now it's a huge spread.

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.

PPS can measure how effectively you're using your skills, but doesn't tell you "can I beat the enrage?", which is ultimately the result people care about. So long as gear is a factor, it'll be a thing. But yes, it's a useful measurement of how effectively you're using your skills.

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.

Part of this is a mentality issue. If you're measuring percentiles, 60th isn't crap. It's significantly above average. That goes back to how wide the spread between top and bottom is, though. 60th probably isn't going to be enough to do ultimate because it's meant to be super hard for top people, but if the gap is closed somewhat, it can be enough to do savage. That should be the goal, at least.