How would an optional, official parser be toxic?

[Derio]

The real question is it really optional once you put it in the game?

I have played several F2P games that have a public parser for each instance and those games can be pretty toxic. But at the same time there are also other ones where you can choose to hide your numbers from the rest of the group, which in many cases you still get grief from others for not sharing.


The only way it could work in FFXIV is if they were personal parsers.

[RuleofThree]

And how would that harassment change?

Without (official) parsers:

"Dude, you know you're bad, right? And you should feel bad. Please put in some effort so you're not inconveniencing everyone else."
"Hey, I *was* trying, man."
"Hardly felt like it. Your threat was *really* low even without using Diversion."
"Uhh, maybe because I died. You dropped that freeze AoE on me, remember?"
"No, I didn't. And it was low even before that. And the Bard half his aggro, twice, after I rezzed you, and you still never got close to catching up."
"Whatever man."
"Whatever? Your rotation must be ****."
"And?"
"Learn your class. Before you queue into stuff. You've had 70 levels to learn it, so quit procrastinating."
"Dude, I know my class. Why don't you play your own?"
"Mate, I play mine and yours and all the others. And a lot better than you do. Probably most people can say as much."
"Prove it. I'm waiting with a GM ticket."
"I'm not about to get into that. Just.... please... learn your damn class."

With parsers:

"Dude, you know you're bad, right?"
"I mean, I have the same data you do, so... sure?"
"Please put in some effort so you're not inconveniencing everyone else?"
"Hey, I *was* trying, man."
"You shouldn't be getting such low numbers in that case... Your rotation has to be seriously off."
"And I'm working on it. But it's hard for me to open with my CDs still on... CD, from the AoE pull before boss."
"You've got other ways to ramp up quickly than PB, man."
"K, but it's still confusing for me. My damage is all over the place. I can't do anything with what's completely random based on the run."
"Look, just... look at your toolkit and breakpoints. The rest of us are making do just fine. You've got Form Shift and Riddle of Wind. Use em. If you can't get used to it in dungeons, pretend your cooldowns aren't ready yet when punching a dummy and check your numbers that way..."
"Yeah, screw you too, man."
"Screw you too."
[Message blocked.]

Tbh, people tend to be more dogged when there's a chance for ambiguity, either in the verity of their claim or in the target's knowing its "truth". All else being the same, people are less likely to start a conversation, berating or merely critical, with someone they can tell is underperforming by choice. Whether they suck themselves into harassment thereafter or not is probably much the same, but at least the frequency is reduced a bit. And let's not forget we already have parsers, and anyone likely to go off on an underperformer as enabled solely by a metric making detection more convenient is already going to be doing so.

That's not to say you can't have aggressors without parsers. Not remotely. I had someone go off for my rotational choices as Monk despite his being outperformed by every member of our 3-of-4 roulette premade (yes, the tank and healer, too).

Actually, every player who's ever gone off at me or a friend in my party has done so from... not a great standing. When a new healer thought he had screwed up and I said we simply didn't have the damage to do the pull (as evidenced by the fact that nothing was even half dead by the time I'd exhausted every single CD) and I shouldn't have bit off so much--that he was doing great and I just need to stop clinging to how I run with friends--the two dps bffs proceeded to harass me more than fight for the remainder of the run. And then for the ~20 minutes after the run until I blocked them.

I've yet to see numbers come up even in critical speech outside of raids. Where it's come up, it's either been about mechanics, complete lack of AoE skill usage in AoE situations, lack of external toolkit usage (Tactician, Refresh, Goad), or has gone so far as to mention exactly what's wrong whilst offering advice.

"Hey. How am I doing, if anyone's got a parser?" on the other hand? At least a dozen times. Usually each really friendly runs. Information and responsibility =/= toxicity. If anything... it tends to foster community. Just, a community that prides itself on helpfulness rather than the right to burden others (because their 1/n portion of the composition must surely be worth the rights of all n combined).

I agree with you, by and large, there would be no change. People are dicks, they always will be, this will never change. A dick with the power of a parser is going to be a dick regardless of if it is sanctioned by SE or not. My point is that I would much rather have the first alternative, hands down. I know I'm not an A rank tank, I know the numbers. My gear isn't valued at 14,000,000 and doesn't have 5 slots of materia. I mean, for god's sake, my 'main' is white mage....I'm tanking for the tank mounts...I know what I'm doing, but I don't know the finer points of dark knight...of course I'm not going to be putting out 5,000dps...I don't main the =censored= job in order to put the time and effort in to get 5,000dps

At least with the first option you have, I'm publicly shamed by verbal abuse. The other two allies sit on and watch like a circle gathering for a fight. Interesting to watch, but they aren't gonna get involved. The second options not only verbally abuses me, but publicly shames me with numbers as well. Now, the gathering crowd gets to side with the 'facts...' the numbers. Now...instead of potentially getting the griefer kicked for verbal abuse. The other two, are going to look at the numbers, and think 'Yea, he is bad...let's kick him.' Nevermind the fact that tank isn't my main. Forget the fact that I'm playing an off role that I don't often touch that much. Ignore the notion that all my money and gear goes to white mage, not dark night. Let's instead look at the numbers, and assume this is a dark knight main that is bad.

And all because I'm not an elite level, Teir 1, God moding O11S on Day two of release? I'm sorry I didn't learn how to godmode Dark Knight. All I wanted was the tank mounts...I didn't know I had to be an expert in all things tank now.

Also, I still want to know what the hell kind of world Shurrikan and Choir live in...because I guarentee you that is not how the second conversation would go down. Not with a stranger. It would be pretty much like the screenshot I gave in one of my posts, only with numbers generated from a legal parser. The saying 'Do something good, no one notices or cares. Do something bad, and the whole world will know.' comes to mind. If you aren't their expectations of tank/dps/healer, you will hear about it...and it will not be in the peacemaking combiya way you and other seem to like to fluff it.

[Legion88]

I agree with you, by and large, there would be no change. People are dicks, they always will be, this will never change. A dick with the power of a parser is going to be a dick regardless of if it is sanctioned by SE or not. My point is that I would much rather have the first alternative, hands down. I know I'm not an A rank tank, I know the numbers. My gear isn't valued at 14,000,000 and doesn't have 5 slots of materia. I mean, for god's sake, my 'main' is white mage....I'm tanking for the tank mounts...I know what I'm doing, but I don't know the finer points of dark knight...of course I'm not going to be putting out 5,000dps...I don't main the =censored= job in order to put the time and effort in to get 5,000dps

At least with the first option you have, I'm publicly shamed by verbal abuse. The other two allies sit on and watch like a circle gathering for a fight. Interesting to watch, but they aren't gonna get involved. The second options not only verbally abuses me, but publicly shames me with numbers as well. Now, the gathering crowd gets to side with the 'facts...' the numbers. Now...instead of potentially getting the griefer kicked for verbal abuse. The other two, are going to look at the numbers, and think 'Yea, he is bad...let's kick him.'

And all because I'm not an elite level, Teir 1, God moding O11S on Day two of release? I'm sorry I didn't learn how to godmode Dark Knight. All I wanted was the tank mounts...I didn't know I had to be an expert in all things tank now.

And if the rest of the party is at least not stupid they know how gear and experience works and what verbal abuse is.
So they schould side with you and not the abuser.
But hey, anonymity in the internet and all are jerks if they don't have to face responsibility, right?

[Penthea]

That's exactly how harassment tickets should be handled, though. You're not a hall monitor, so encourage people to file a harassment ticket but it's not your business to be offended on someone else's behalf.

Right so I should turn a blind eye to any form of harassment just because it didn't happen to me. Sounds like a wonderful healthy way to maintain a friendly community.

By the way it is my business if I'm in the group where the harassment happened. I have little choice but watch it happen. I have to endure the dungeon progress slowing down or coming to a standstill because of it. I have to wait for someone else to join the group if someone leaves over it. Or I could leave if watching it bothered me enough, in which case I do feel personally offended by it.

Two weeks ago I left a group because two players were harassing a sprout tank. I advised him to report them and I left because I couldn't stand being in their company anymore. I go to dungeons to kill things and get loot. Not to watch people be horrible to a sprout and troll him. This was not me being offended on the sprout's behalf. I was offended because I went in to get some xp and what I got was two people being bullies making the experience unpleasant.

But apparently I'm not allowed to find something unpleasant because I wasn't the primary target. Hmm.

[Liam_Harper]

I don't think people realize that right now public parsers are a thing and legal. People have and use ACT and Enix's stance on that is go for it as long as you don't use it for abuse. The only difference is that it requires downloading a third party program, not everyone knows about it and PS4 has no access at all.

This means a portion of the playerbase has access to your dps and has done for a long while. The difference with not having an optional ingame parser is that currently you don't have access to your own dps or theirs or any other info. I can't see how an optional parser hidden to other players would be more toxic than the current situation. Right now, the abusers have the tools and the rest probably don't even know ACT exists.

Enix really need to be consistent on their stance on this. Either ban ACT outright or embrace the fact that parsers exist and players like having data, instead of this clunky in-between where both they and we all pretend it's not happening and everything in ff14 is happy bunnies and cooperative friendly groups. And if they want friendlier groups, actually do something and crack down on harrasment reports.

[RuleofThree]

And if the rest of the party is at least not stupid they know how gear and experience works and what verbal abuse is.
So they schould side with you and not the abuser.
But hey, anonymity in the internet and all are jerks if they don't have to face responsibility, right?

You guys sure like to cling to the 'responsibility' argument a lot. I mean, I'm assuming you read the rest of the post, particularly the parts declaring that I am not a masterlist dark knight, and that while I drop tank stance, and follow proper rotation protocol, I don't have the finer nuances of weaving and optimization down to a fine toothed comb. This is, in effect, taking responsibility for me being a 'mediocre at best' dark knight.

But hey, I guess taking responsibility means accepting your are not raid level in every job, and until you are, you can not run anything because...well...you're bad, and no one wants a bad person. I mean...the numbers say so...you are just....bad. So take responsibility...and get out.

I mean I will state again, and will continue to do so ad nausea, because people seem to ignore this fact about me: I am for the use of parsers. I think the current stance SE has of "Don't ask don't tell. Out of sight out of Mind. As we don't see you abusing it, you can use ACT as a third party." is perfectly fine. People like numbers. To be honest, I don't mind them as well. The majority of the arguments here that numbers can be seen as a way to improve is TRUE. Again I know I'm an 'ok' dark knight. I see my numbers...it's good enough to do dungeons, but shit for anything else.

I don't need some asshat rubbing this flaw of mine in my face as well. This is why parsers should remain third party, behind closed doors, don't ask don't tell like it is now. Because legalizing them opens up the availability for people to rub those flaws into your face without reprimand.

[van_arn]

- The option to hide your numbers to other players (It appear as "Hide" or something in other people parser).
- Game masters who actually look at this and not fall in the "different playstyles" bullshit, because in this case does not apply, and punish players actually abusing it.
- Only available on premade parties and dummies.
- Heavily pursue any party finder with "Only XXX parser and must be active not hide or kick".

First, I appreciate your desire to see if there's a way to make this possible. However, what you've listed isn't actionable due to the player veto.

-The option to hide from the system means people will eventually be excluded from content merely for the act of hiding. Gms can't block this, simply because all it takes to veto this restriction is a silent, unexplained kick of the hidden player. Remove kick, and players would disband and reform without the hidden player. See where this is going? Hide yourself and you stigmatize yourself; you have something to hide.
-Gms are actually pretty wise to lean so heavily on playstyle differences, because that's exactly what happens so often. There's no sense in blocking someone from the game if oil and water didn't mix, but things were handled with the ingame tools like votekick or vote abandon. If GMs were to remove playstyle differences as a justification they could use, you would see the player veto manifest as a harassment report on the player that couldn't outdamage the healer because they were "obviously trolling, nobody can be that bad unless they try." "They turned our perfect run and they did it intentionally, ban pls"
-While we currently do not see numbers in pf, that doesn't mean even now people don't get mysteriously booted for no given reason because someone looked up their history online, or did a few runs and suddenly got kicked to the curb because they were doing half of the damage of a healer. Of the ones you listed, this one's probably the most vetoed on pf even now.

Furthermore, limiting any ingame tool through the terms of service only means more people will develop ESP, or find any hundred other ways to talk about things they're not talking about and sidestep any restrictions placed on the ingame tool: in effect this sidesteps any restrictions.

Of course, ask any of these players how they developed esp that gives them such precise information and they'd swear up and down they don't use third party utilities, because of course third party utilities aren't permitted.

[van_arn]

Right so I should turn a blind eye to any form of harassment just because it didn't happen to me. Sounds like a wonderful healthy way to maintain a friendly community.

By the way it is my business if I'm in the group where the harassment happened. I have little choice but watch it happen. I have to endure the dungeon progress slowing down or coming to a standstill because of it. I have to wait for someone else to join the group if someone leaves over it. Or I could leave if watching it bothered me enough, in which case I do feel personally offended by it.

Two weeks ago I left a group because two players were harassing a sprout tank. I advised him to report them and I left because I couldn't stand being in their company anymore. I go to dungeons to kill things and get loot. Not to watch people be horrible to a sprout and troll him. This was not me being offended on the sprout's behalf. I was offended because I went in to get some xp and what I got was two people being bullies making the experience unpleasant.

But apparently I'm not allowed to find something unpleasant because I wasn't the primary target. Hmm.

You're right, unless you're the one getting the harassment it's not your business. You did the right thing dropping from group and advising that tank to file a ticket.

[Maeka]

First, I appreciate your desire to see if there's a way to make this possible. However, what you've listed isn't actionable due to the player veto.

-The option to hide from the system means people will eventually be excluded from content merely for the act of hiding. Gms can't block this, simply because all it takes to veto this restriction is a silent, unexplained kick of the hidden player. Remove kick, and players would disband and reform without the hidden player. See where this is going? Hide yourself and you stigmatize yourself; you have something to hide.
-Gms are actually pretty wise to lean so heavily on playstyle differences, because that's exactly what happens so often. There's no sense in blocking someone from the game if oil and water didn't mix, but things were handled with the ingame tools like votekick or vote abandon. If GMs were to remove playstyle differences as a justification they could use, you would see the player veto manifest as a harassment report on the player that couldn't outdamage the healer because they were "obviously trolling, nobody can be that bad unless they try." "They turned our perfect run and they did it intentionally, ban pls"
-While we currently do not see numbers in pf, that doesn't mean even now people don't get mysteriously booted for no given reason because someone looked up their history online, or did a few runs and suddenly got kicked to the curb because they were doing half of the damage of a healer. Of the ones you listed, this one's probably the most vetoed on pf even now.

Furthermore, limiting any ingame tool through the terms of service only means more people will develop ESP, or find any hundred other ways to talk about things they're not talking about and sidestep any restrictions placed on the ingame tool: in effect this sidesteps any restrictions.

Of course, ask any of these players how they developed esp that gives them such precise information and they'd swear up and down they don't use third party utilities, because of course third party utilities aren't permitted.

These are the exact reasons why it must be personal-only WITHOUT any option to allow others to see your parses.

Yes, third-party parsers will still exist, but at least with an official personal-only parser, I could at least wail at dummies and experiment without breaking the ToS and/or satisfy my own curiosity/help myself perform better.

[RuleofThree]

Right so I should turn a blind eye to any form of harassment just because it didn't happen to me. Sounds like a wonderful healthy way to maintain a friendly community.

By the way it is my business if I'm in the group where the harassment happened. I have little choice but watch it happen. I have to endure the dungeon progress slowing down or coming to a standstill because of it. I have to wait for someone else to join the group if someone leaves over it. Or I could leave if watching it bothered me enough, in which case I do feel personally offended by it.

Two weeks ago I left a group because two players were harassing a sprout tank. I advised him to report them and I left because I couldn't stand being in their company anymore. I go to dungeons to kill things and get loot. Not to watch people be horrible to a sprout and troll him. This was not me being offended on the sprout's behalf. I was offended because I went in to get some xp and what I got was two people being bullies making the experience unpleasant.

But apparently I'm not allowed to find something unpleasant because I wasn't the primary target. Hmm.

That's exactly how harassment tickets should be handled, though. You're not a hall monitor, so encourage people to file a harassment ticket but it's not your business to be offended on someone else's behalf.

It's disgusting, but he's right. I mean, this is basically like the 'good Samaritan' laws in the US. A person that witness abuse on the street, or an accident, or someone seriously ill doesn't have to do anything to assist them. It's to protect them against any attempt the person who was abusing/in the accident/seriously ill to attempt to sue you for say...a bruised rib while doing CPR or the like. People are dicks, and they will turn a good deed against you in a flash if they think they can get something from it.

This is a very loose form of that. A third party observer witnessing the abuse might turn in said abuse with good intentions, but it would be relatively easy for the person you are defending to throw you under the bus as well, claiming you were 'egging on the bully' or 'were just as bad by not saying anything, and just watching.' It is again, disgusting, but better this way...this way It's the main victims own actions against the offenders, nothing else is in the way.