How would an optional, official parser be toxic?

[DreameR7g]

Valid points, however what that 2 minutes saves some raid wide aoes no major mechanics were skipped or cut short. it varies from fight to fight A11s for example optimizing can lead you to skipping the entire add phase and a bunch of other things in between. Most fights are not this its my own opinion that if you aren't skipping anything major then whats the real benefit of doing other than because you can? There isn't one.

Well, if you consider that we all have a limited time on this Earth, it is not unreasonable to be the type of person who wants to optimize the time they have. This is especially true when you are constantly farming an EX primal for a certain mount or if you have a certain block of time set aside to raid. I personally only set aside 2 hours in 3 days of the week total to raid. Optimization to save that time is quite desirable by someone like me. Besides, even if it is a small time save, in this case 2 minutes, it can definitely add up over time and become a big save. As they say, all it takes is one step to determine a future.

As for a parser, I do not believe there is anything problematic with the tool itself. The problem, as I foresee it, lies in the maturity of the player base at large. Naturally, information is power, especially if you are given information about other people and not just yourself. How would you make sure that this power is in the right hands? I believe this is why SE is supremely hesitant to give us an official parser. Obviously, this doesn't mean -everybody- who'd use it would be immature with it but if there is enough immaturity, I can see it destabilizing the game all because of the information gathered.

[thegreatonemal]

Well, if you consider that we all have a limited time on this Earth, it is not unreasonable to be the type of person who wants to optimize the time they have. This is especially true when you are constantly farming an EX primal for a certain mount or if you have a certain block of time set aside to raid. I personally only set aside 2 hours in 3 days of the week total to raid. Optimization to save that time is quite desirable by someone like me. Besides, even if it is a small time save, in this case 2 minutes, it can definitely add up over time and become a big save. As they say, all it takes is one step to determine a future.

As for a parser, I do not believe there is anything problematic with the tool itself. The problem, as I foresee it, lies in the maturity of the player base at large. Naturally, information is power, especially if you are given information about other people and not just yourself. How would you make sure that this power is in the right hands? I believe this is why SE is supremely hesitant to give us an official parser. Obviously, this doesn't mean -everybody- who'd use it would be immature with it but if there is enough immaturity, I can see it destabilizing the game all because of the information gathered.

Sure if your in a set group speedrunning becomes useful and parser can speed of the process of optimization. No one here has any issues with that. The thing is unless all 8 of you do that you aren't saving any time that's just not how this game works.

[DreameR7g]

Sure if your in a set group speedrunning becomes useful and parser can speed of the process of optimization. No one here has any issues with that. The thing is unless all 8 of you do that you aren't saving any time that's just not how this game works.

I agree with you. This is why it is important to find like-minded individuals in order to further your goals. You cannot assume everybody will have the same goal as you. Aspects like the Duty Finder are not the place to force your ideals onto others. Simply adapt and work with what you have.

[van_arn]

I agree with you. This is why it is important to find like-minded individuals in order to further your goals. You cannot assume everybody will have the same goal as you. Aspects like the Duty Finder are not the place to force your ideals onto others. Simply adapt and work with what you have.

Or, if you have enough people that agree with you, kick the people that can't keep up.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I'd love to hear what these other places are because a huge chunk of the toxicity in WoW I encountered was related to parsers. It may even have been most of it.

The games change but players stay the same. If FFXIV gets an official parser I'll be shocked if the mentality towards it is different to WoW. Before parsers were commonplace in that game the community wasn't too different to how XIV is right now. I'd love to be proven wrong but it's unlikely.

I'd have to dig, but a few people in this very thread mentioned it. Regardless, you have to consider the enormous difference in population. And as per usual, negative news always travels faster than anything positive. You will always more about bad experiences than good even if said bad experiences are outnumbered a 100:1. In fact, look no further than people who generalize Balmung or Gilgamesh, claiming they always see shitty players from there, be it in terms of skill, attitude or both. Is it that both servers are awful, or that they dwarf every other server (or used to), thus making it far more likely to find a jerk from either?

And I disagree with calling it a coddle mentality. Since when is it coddling to want to reduce the chance of encountering harassment as a victim or observer? It's a bad thing now to want to minimise needless drama? What a depressing thought.

That is the very definition of coddling. A beneficial tool is being banned because some people may abuse it and say mean things. How is this any different than an equivalent "safe space?" Instead of rooting out the toxic individuals, you're shifting blame on the tool itself. Reducing encounters of harassment should not come with "ban every potential tool that may cause it even if said harassment will be in a distinct minority." The devs tried this approach with Feast chat. Ironically, it made Feast worse because now we can't properly communicate. All because some people were assholes. That is pretty much coddling 101.

And these threads exist because parsers have essentially become a boogeyman. There is no basis whatsoever the community would dissolve into anarchy if tomorrow the devs openly allowed ACT to be discussed publicly. Typically, you see exaggerated doom and gloom scenarios or people who aren't very good wanting to preserve the status quo lest they be called out for their lack of willingness to improve.

[Darkplanet]

I totally agree that if a player wants to improve they should have the resources available to them and I also agree that the striking dummies are not enough. But I also don’t believe that numbers will tell you if you are a good player or not, you might work out a better rotation but that doesn’t help you with awareness, working together, mechanics.

And fundamentally I think it comes down to this, with bosses and raids the creators want to evaluate a team of players, not individuals. It’s not YOUR dps check it’s the parties. And yes i know some people just are bad and they bring everyone down, and statics generally (in my experience) have far better total dps cause they all know and work together.

you already seem to be beating yourself up about it, would comparing your numbers to others really help? If there are official parsers people will be posting there numbers (which they already do post them) and always someone will be better then you, with higher numbers for a various different reasons least of all their rotation, I just imagine all the people telling *themselves* they suck cause their numbers are lower then someone under very specific conditions.

[Darkplanet]

and well i'll offer my suggestion to better the striking dummy system: instead of "kill this in a certain amount of time" you could simply switch it to it times how long you took to kill the dummy. you killed it in 1 min 30 seconds, well then you try a few different things and oh you killed it in 1 min 20 seconds this time, you can see that you improved. Would that be satisfactory for people? it could avoid all the numbers while giving you an indication of dps improvement.

and maybe you could set an option that there could be random aoe's you have to dodge or mechanics that could help you improve reflexes. Also a tank dummy would deal damage to you so you have to learn how to rotate cooldowns while dpsing, and maybe healer you have to heal a dummy while killing a different dummy to get the feel for managing both, basically making things more realistic to actual boss battles. idk there is a lot they could do with it and I think they definitely need to improve the striking dummy system.

[Jojoya]

and well i'll offer my suggestion to better the striking dummy system: instead of "kill this in a certain amount of time" you could simply switch it to it times how long you took to kill the dummy. you killed it in 1 min 30 seconds, well then you try a few different things and oh you killed it in 1 min 20 seconds this time, you can see that you improved. Would that be satisfactory for people? it could avoid all the numbers while giving you an indication of dps improvement.

Except killing the dummy 10 seconds faster on a random attempt doesn't necessarily mean you improved. It could just mean you had a lucky string of crits, direct hits, procs, etc. for a change. That's why a striking dummy is never the answer. It's not going to tell you why you ended up killing it faster that one attempt.

A parser will break down all the information and let you know if it was just that lucky string or if there was something else at work to increase your damage. Maybe you managed buff uptime better while getting the same number of crits as you usually do - that would be a true sign of improvement.

If you can't see the full breakdown of the numbers, you don't know what changed. As long as fights are tied to timers, those numbers are important.

There's also a lot more to a fight than just dealing damage. Parsers will track the other information as well.

Parser are not a bad thing. They're an excellent tool when it comes to improving your play. Taking them away because some people choose to use them the wrong way doesn't benefit anyone in a game where the numbers are important because you're limited by a timer.

[Penthea]

I'd have to dig, but a few people in this very thread mentioned it.

So in other words parser toxicity is the most common form of toxicity in WoW that you know of, given you can't even remember anything else.

That is the very definition of coddling. A beneficial tool is being banned because some people may abuse it and say mean things. How is this any different than an equivalent "safe space?"

Firstly it's very unlikely that's the only reason why its banned. Another but less mentioned criticism about parsers is that players often use them as the sole indication of a class's worth. While this may look harmless at a glance, this is something that actually threatens class identity.

It's well known among raiders that certain classes have lower dps potential to balance out having utility. Proper raiders usually understand this balance but outside of that playerbase it tends to be misunderstood. Some people automatically assume a certain class isn't worth playing if the damage output of another is higher, and they don't even give a thought to utility. As time went on in WoW utility became less and less relevant partially because the community began to prioritise damage far above everything else. This actually caused a lot of friction because players felt like their favoured classes/specs were being overlooked, and it was a major contributing factor to a lot of class homogenisation. If there was an official parser I'd be shocked if rdm would still be as popular as it is now. Right now it's mostly the raiding community who hesitate to take rdm on anything but progress. But if everyone could easily see how much lower their damage potential is than a smn, rdm would be significantly less popular even outside of raiding circles.

Secondly this beneficial tool is too easily abused, and thus it can become the opposite of a beneficial tool. I won't argue that it's beneficial to see your performance in a way that can be analysed, because it is. However the issue is quite a large amount of players don't know how to use this tool properly.

In WoW I got hassle on an alt because my dps was crap...but it was crap because most of my dps came from dots and mobs died well before they could have their full effect. I tried explaining this but all I got was "lol l2p". The funny thing is on my main I played the same class and I had among the highest dps in our raids even though it wasn't even my main spec. I definitely knew how to play it. But due to classes not being designed to be balanced in low lvl content, and encountering players who don't understand this, I got hassle over something completely out of my control. This was far from the first time I had seen something like this happen.

I already see this sort of thing in XIV. Every so often when I pug dungeons I see healers given snarky remarks over lack of dps even though the tank is obviously putting them in a position in which they can't do much dps or else there will be a wipe. This is already happening just from people watching hardcasts in the party ui. Can you imagine what that would be like if everyone had a parser?

Instead of rooting out the toxic individuals, you're shifting blame on the tool itself.

No I'm not, I'm blaming people who don't know how to use a parser correctly and people who intentionally misuse it. I think parsers are great tools, but I'm also painfully aware of how common it is for people to use them incorrectly. I don't think any amount of tutorials or in-game help messages would mitigate that. Parser misuse is still happening in WoW despite the fact it's been in the game for over a decade. If a lot of the community there still can't use it correctly after all this time, what makes you think XIV would be any better or different?

All this being said I think XIV should give better tools to allow players to access their own performance. At the very least the game should display personal dps. The stone sky sea dummies should also display dps instead of just giving players a timer to go on and forcing them to go to a third party tool to glean the true meaning behind their kill time. Additionally there should be more analytical utility given to target dummy furnishings, because right now their function is too basic. Currently pc players are at a distinct advantage when it comes to analysing personal dps and I think SE should address this in some manner.

But introducing a normal parser in which you can compare yourself to others at a glance? No I'm strongly against this because my time in WoW showed me the long-term ill effects from it. The gain doesn't outweigh the negative aspects.

[TaiyoShikasu]

I'd love to hear what these other places are because a huge chunk of the toxicity in WoW I encountered was related to parsers. It may even have been most of it.

Tooling around with the trial version, haven't even touched content. See plenty of rape apologists in trade chat among other gross behaviour.

Toxicity comes in many forms.