Quote Originally Posted by Nedkel View Post
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.