On Ultimate Off Ultimate

[KisaiTenshi]

So say someone meets this criteria...

-Uses dps meter
-Uses it solely and exclusively for just seeing their own performance level IE: their own numbers
-Does not use it to kick, abuse, or harass anyone
-Does not use any other features or w/e else it has

Explain to me what would be wrong to you about this scenario.

If you're only ruining your own experience, then it's only the fact that it's against the Terms of Service, and exactly what Yoshi-P said, don't advertise the fact that you use it or that it exists at all.

There could be 1000 raiders using it this way, but the minute one of them they start talking about it being some kind of requirement is why these tools should not exist. Not every fight in the game is a DPS burn, and by giving the illusion that your DPS numbers matter like it was a competitive environment sucks the fun out of the game for others and players then shun the hard content because the raiders have given them the picture that the content is impossible and they will be kicked for even trying.

If you or someone you know is getting kicked maybe instead of blaming the tool some players use, they should use the tool to improve.

And this just proves what I said above. The tool should not exist. People using it should not assume others also use it, and the minute they do, they've crossed the line from "personal use" to destroying other players enjoyment of the game.

This is not a "guns kill people, people with guns kill people" semantics thing. The analogy is people being given loaded guns and people who don't recognize them as guns start shooting people and then don't want to be held responsible for the consequences.

I think everyone is in agreement if someone uses any tool to abuse or harasses another player then action should be taken, but why should all people that use the tool be treated in the same way as the one that abused it?

Because the people who develop the tool have no interest in preventing abuse. A tool is just a tool, and you just reduce adoption of if you try to prevent the bad actors from doing bad with it. The harassment isn't confined to the game either. Twitch, Discord, Twitter, Reddit and other forums that are below SE's radar are other means of harassment that SE won't do anything about.

History is rife with "It doesn't affect me, so I did nothing" stories about how small annoyances became large problems seemingly overnight because nobody spoke up when they saw a problem.

If someone released a "DPS meter" stand-alone from ACT, with no plugin capability and simply replicated the common popular parser overlay, do you think people would dump the ACT plugin? No. They won't because the ACT plugin lets them do things beyond it.

That is just human nature. People will not accept a replacement for something unless it does something "better" and a simple DPS meter is not "better" for these people.

So don't fool yourself into thinking people advocating for parsers would willingly give up any privilege once they've been accustomed to having it.

When it comes to things like FFlogs, I do wish they were opt-in instead of out, because due to my group not knowing that FFlogs were opt-out we caused some issues for a few members that were getting carried through content (for varies reasons) by uploading our logs to go over the data to improve our play. So I am all for having a system that is based around consent, but even so the current system is not inherently awful, sure some players treat the data as the end all be all and live and die by it. Still those players are few in the grand scheme of things. Though even if SE did release an official system that was opt-in most people would simply still use fllogs. While I do not agree that if fflogs switched over to an opt-in system it would ruin it due to the less overall data. That is for another topic.

I do have to say for someone that dislikes third party applications you sure bring them up a lot. :P

People won't give up a tool once they've discovered it, and instead will trade it for a better tool that offers more so they maintain their advantage over others. SE released the Duty Recorder. So far I've seen nobody use it, because it's not what the parser users want. The fact it doesn't persist past a maintenance also tells me that it's directly tied to replaying the combat data the server recorded, and hence the data is not compatible after a patch. SE needs to do better.

That Duty Recorder should be automatic for all synced duties, and the Opt-in/Opt-out should instead anonymize the players who haven't consented. eg Replace party members with the Scion NPC models. If you don't consent, then playing back your own fights will just not be available, and other players you play with will have your character replaced with a storyline NPC relevant to that content if played back. The server would have to do nothing more than replace your id number with the NPC id number.

All FFLogs would have to do to have a proper consent system would be to not display the names of players who haven't opted in. The actual parsing tools should be scrubbing player data that has no consent to it (eg replace the player ID numbers with random negative numbers to indicate they've been scrubbed.)

The person who runs the FFLogs site makes thousands of dollars from Patreon, and are also running ads. They're not a charity, it's a for-profit venture. They have no incentive to make it opt-in, because that just makes it less useful. Hence this is why you see a push in the EU to have EU citizens data strictly opt-in and the data brokers connected to advertising are having a fit. It's simply impossible to get consent and have meaningful data. They can scrub the identification info, but if the data broker isn't allowed to even log the activity in the first place, the entire dataset becomes useless.

[Rogatum]

If you're only ruining your own experience, then it's only the fact that it's against the Terms of Service, and exactly what Yoshi-P said, don't advertise the fact that you use it or that it exists at all.

There could be 1000 raiders using it this way, but the minute one of them they start talking about it being some kind of requirement is why these tools should not exist. Not every fight in the game is a DPS burn, and by giving the illusion that your DPS numbers matter like it was a competitive environment sucks the fun out of the game for others and players then shun the hard content because the raiders have given them the picture that the content is impossible and they will be kicked for even trying.




And this just proves what I said above. The tool should not exist. People using it should not assume others also use it, and the minute they do, they've crossed the line from "personal use" to destroying other players enjoyment of the game.

This is not a "guns kill people, people with guns kill people" semantics thing. The analogy is people being given loaded guns and people who don't recognize them as guns start shooting people and then don't want to be held responsible for the consequences.

Player enjoyment goes both ways. I do not see many outright assuming that every player should use FFlogs, but why do you feel it is okay to have one person hold a group back in effort of protecting their enjoyment at the expense of the rest of the group? Also I do not understand your bullet analogy, I am fairly certain that most people do understand that use parser data can cause harm if used in such a way. I do not think many people are blind to the fact if they tell another player they suck they will be confused as to why said player may have gotten hurt. Normally when people use the data to harass another player it is because that is their intent. So not sure why you feel as if people who use fflogs do not recognize that they can be used for harm if or that their actions do not bare consequences.

Just seems as if you want to punish everyone simply because of a few bad apples. Why in your view consequences seem to only be on those that use the tool instead of the players that are holding a group back. Everything you stated works both ways, the burden should not be only placed on one side in a game that revolves around teamwork If someone is getting removed from groups on the regular then maybe they should stop looking at others as to why it happens and look at themselves, and instead of vilifying certain resources they should use them. Not to say that it makes it right when people are wrongly removed from groups, but from personal experience if it happens frequently said player must be doing something wrong.

[Azbroolah]

If you're only ruining your own experience, then it's only the fact that it's against the Terms of Service, and exactly what Yoshi-P said, don't advertise the fact that you use it or that it exists at all.

How is trying to improve your own rotation and get better at your job ruining your own experience? A lot of people who play the game get enjoyment out of trying to get better at it, and it's essentially impossible to do that without having a metric for how well you're doing.

There could be 1000 raiders using it this way, but the minute one of them they start talking about it being some kind of requirement is why these tools should not exist.

This is kind of a strange mentality to have. Almost any tool can be abused by anyone. Should we ban baseball bats because even though a lot of people use them to have fun, some people use them to beat other people?

And this just proves what I said above. The tool should not exist. People using it should not assume others also use it, and the minute they do, they've crossed the line from "personal use" to destroying other players enjoyment of the game. Not every fight in the game is a DPS burn, and by giving the illusion that your DPS numbers matter like it was a competitive environment sucks the fun out of the game for others and players then shun the hard content because the raiders have given them the picture that the content is impossible and they will be kicked for even trying.

What about a group where 7 of the players are trying really hard to clear Savage and would get a lot of enjoyment out of doing so but can't because their BLM is pulling 2k DPS? Why does the BLM deserve to destroy the enjoyment of the other 7 players? As for not every fight being a DPS burn, it's undeniable that if the overall raid DPS is too low for a given fight it cannot be completed. If 7 people are performing at the required level, and one is performing significantly below, that person is harming the experience for everyone else in the group (intentionally or otherwise). The party leader has a right to kick anyone from the group for whatever reason, and I would argue that improving their game experience is a very good one.

Either way, you're right that the numbers from parsers aren't exactly correct; however, I don't think it's justified to say that they're meaningless. Very few fields of study rely on exactly correct answers, but rather on sufficiently accurate approximations.

[Rockette]

You know what's funny. I've been raiding since T4. I hang out in a community of veteran raiders. We talk about dps/parsers fflogs like I assume many raid communities do.

I'd never heard of half the stuff Kisai is saying the parsers can do nor had I heard of cactbot until his/her long-winded yet thorough explanations of 3rd party software in this thread.

So uh... Thanks?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

There could be 1000 raiders using it this way, but the minute one of them they start talking about it being some kind of requirement is why these tools should not exist. Not every fight in the game is a DPS burn, and by giving the illusion that your DPS numbers matter like it was a competitive environment sucks the fun out of the game for others and players then shun the hard content because the raiders have given them the picture that the content is impossible and they will be kicked for even trying.

And what of the fun for everyone else? You conveniently ignored my prior example. If I setup a farm party for Tsuki, I don't expect to see a SAM doing almost half the damage of a BRD. That means everyone else has to put in more work to carry this one individual. Ironically, for all your talks of parsers being the devil. That SAM in question was actually the toxic player who attacked me when I pointed out he was making repeatedly mechanic mistakes. But only raiders do that, according to you.

[Miste]

Not every fight in the game is a DPS burn, and by giving the illusion that your DPS numbers matter like it was a competitive environment sucks the fun out of the game for others

Sucks the fun out of the game for others....?

I mean it is funny you seem to advocate that you should have fun and not take the game seriously, but all of your parser rants just show that you are just the opposite end of being way too serious about a video game.

You're taking it too serious in how much you care what other people are doing with their game time, what they use, don't use, or how they clear content even when you aren't even playing with them at all.

Knowing how much damage you do in a video game is ruining everything according to you...I really don't get this kind of serious attitude towards it at all, that is no different than the players you are complaining about.

So in the end you are exactly the same as these other players you are railing against.

Some players like competition and it is okay if some players don't. All you have to do is simply play with the players who have the same mindset as you do. If they don't? Don't play with them. There is a huge amount of diversity in this game of people to play with.

And this just proves what I said above. The tool should not exist. People using it should not assume others also use it, and the minute they do, they've crossed the line from "personal use" to destroying other players enjoyment of the game.

You know what destroys my enjoyment of the game?

Players who don't want to be held accountable for their performance in content that requires a party to work as a team to succeed and requires a certain level of play, and players who simply don't care if they put stress on others in their groups by making other players deal with their lack of effort by having to carry it on their own shoulders instead.

And I don't mean that anyone should be harassed or abused, this is obviously wrong for any scenario and should be reported, but there should be free room for civil adult conversations. The fact is that savage and ultimate isn't right for everyone, and it requires more personal effort which some players simply aren't willing to give.

*from this point onwards I am speaking in general so any "you" is a general you.

If you wish to beat savage without being accountable for your own contribution then you need to find players who are okay with helping you in that way and don't mind that you might not be pulling your own weight to contribute to the success of the group or run.

You don't always need a parser to see if someone simply isn't ready for savage or is causing the mass majority of the problems for 7 other players. It is the group leader's decision whether or not this person needs to be removed or not. Do they always make the right decisions? Nope, but if it is their party then they have the right to remove anyone they wish from it.

I've been kicked from PF parties before. It is rare in my case, but it happens. Whether I think the kick was the right decision or not doesn't mean anything though since it is the party leader's decision, not mine, so I shrug and go join another group and that is how everyone else should be dealing with it.

You cannot force people to play with you if they don't want to just like we can't force you to play with us if you don't want to.

If you think you know they kicked you for no reason? Just laugh and move on.

But, you could also take a bit of time to analyze what might have gone wrong to make them kick you and maybe learn from it.
Did you die on the same mechanic multiple times?
Were you maybe failing to do something they asked you multiple times for?
Were you forgetting something that your role should be doing?
Think about everything and see if there is room for improvement on your end, then take that and move on and try again.

[swiss_Momo]

Good.
If 4.5 is the last patch before the next expansion again, then I'd rather have the devs put resources into content that can keep more than just a noisy 1% of the players busy

[Paladinleeds]

If you wish to beat savage without being accountable for your own contribution then you need to find players who are okay with helping you in that way and don't mind that you might not be pulling your own weight to contribute to the success of the group or run.

I'd also like to add that where things are caused by outside factors (e.g. disability reducing one's reaction times, or other similar issues that can't be helped), then almost all players are very willing to put in the extra effort. I have a disability that affects my co-ordination and dexterity, I have not had a single group that have had a problem with it once it came to light. They understand that a disability is causing it, so they will put in the extra effort so long as I do the best that I can. So I do, because it's only fair I put in my best efforts. Because of this, I've even been able to tackle and beat some savage (I got stuck on O7S though, but enough practice and I'd have probably nailed it). All because the group were willing to work around my disability.

[Theodric]

I just hope they divert the resources elsewhere. Deciding to not add any more for the duration of the expansion is one thing but it's another issue altogether if the scrapped development doesn't show elsewhere. It could be an excellent opportunity to focus on something that is more 'middle of the road' and aimed at a broader range of players.

[lulunami]

Hence why I said: please only speak for yourself.

Yet you are chastising me for doing so.