How would an optional, official parser be toxic?

[Jijifli]

People will attempt to game the parser system for themselves and others, especially if said information can be looked up and the person judged for content outside of raids. Uploading a parser system will make people a hell of a lot more paranoid about the game and whether they can participate in content, or whether their attempting to learn, or the actions of their teammates, will affect their worth as a player.

They could do what WoW does, where they don't officially have one, but they allow them to exist.

This removes the feeling of requirement from it, while those who still want it have the option for it.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Sorry for the book - I don't check anything on the weekends.

There is a big difference between being able to clear the fight and performing to a degree someone else deems "worthy." Generally, the fights are tuned so if you know your rotation and can do mechanics, you can clear - even in savage (ultimate may be another story).

Yes, SE gave us tools to arbitrarily include and exclude people at our own leisure based on 'have you killed it before?' and 'we need this kind of party.' I'm sure you'd have been thrilled getting 3 samurai in ByakkoEX trying to use tank LB3 without such features. Or it might have forced people to do the fight the supposed intended way. Then again, I can't recall many co-operative games even telling you if someone is new to a fight to begin with.

I'm merely refuting your personal opinion here with direct examples of in game features designed to accomplish the same thing that you suggested they're against. Not only designed, but they've been expanded on over the years too. Citing the mitigation of anti-exclusionary practices as justification for avoiding parsers just doesn't make sense for that reason alone. It's directly contradictory and hypocritical.

*Shakes head.*

It has little to do with what I think is toxic. The developers said they wouldn't implement for their own reasons. People are always going to be jerks and the developers think parsers will give jerks more incentive to treat people poorly. What anyone thinks in this thread is irrelevant.

My major hangup on this - is the implication that the developers are always right. It's more than possible that Yoshi's P's stance on parsers is flat out bad the community or the health of the game. It's also just as possible that he's right. I'm ok with people taking a stance if they can logically defend their POV, but I don't subscribe to the notion that because Yoshi says it, it must be true, which I admit you didn't specifically state, but you VERY heavily implied it.

To answer the thread's title: the players are what would make the parser toxic, but inherently, it would not be.

Players can't make an objective tool into something it is not. A parser cannot be toxic. People can be toxic, but justifying that people who are not naturally toxic would suddenly become so or people who are toxic would become more toxic is an incredibly challenging endeavor.

Speaking personally I am for a fully unmitigated party wide official parser. I do very firmly believe that there will be a brief period of growing pains while the community acclimates, but it will be for the better in the long term.

I'm aware that Koike's incident was not about parsing, but that does not negate the fact that it was a tool that was used to help accomplish that group's goal. It comes down to jerks being jerks and giving them a tool to give them another way to be a jerk. It doesn't matter it was a "sideline" - it was there and it was used in a manner SE is trying to avoid be used.

So was chat, emotes, live streams, and actual in game content. Why are they excluded from being painted in a negative light?

Forums are actively enforced by moderators hired by SE. Chat is fixed with minimizing the chat window or blocking someone. Emotes simply need you to move away. Was this supposed to be clever? :thinking: I found it silly.

And in game is actively enforced by GMs hired by SE.

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.

It's not toxic to be called out for AFKing in LFR.
It's not toxic to be called out for not switching to an add.
It's not toxic to be asked to do more damage.

What kind of actual parser related toxicity did you experience in WoW and when?

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's quite LITERALLY the definition of coddling... LOL.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coddle

I find WoW to be considerably less toxic than FF14 at this point, which is saying a lot.

Agreed.

Some people come to the game to escape and/or relax.

Cool. I love that. Stick to non battle content if you want to relax. Battle should be engaging and you should be putting max effort in at all times (note that max effort =/= equal performance, I would never expect that), but push buttons please!

Sadly parsers are most of the time using as epeen/elitist meter than anything. Usually the rotations arent THAT hard that need a program to say to you "hey wrong rotation, last one was better " you can just use a dummy and practice, and fflogs high percentiles are bloated with those epeen meters by inflating their job focusing every possible buff of the raid on them to increase "muh dps". Even if overall fflogs give a general image of each job potential, some of their parses are heavily tampered favouring of the focused job in detriment of the rest

Even on WoW top raiders started to stop using those meters because players stopped caring about mechanics to not lose dps forcing the healers to go on overload healing damage that shouldnt be happening on the first place and covering for their intentional messes

So basically previous experiences show that they are more of a hassle than a help, and unless someone is really slacking off (sometimes really easy to spot when they have super low aggro despite not using their aggro tools), if people start using the "low dps meter" card to kick people they are free to report their asses.

Usually a single person is not a cause for a enrage unless its really slacking or not having low ilv. One is fixed by paying a minimun of atention during the fight and the other by using party finder and putting minimum ilv to join as a security blanket

The old "is X person fault we enraged" is quite rare and more like " almost half of the raid or more didnt use their damage tools properly" or "people kept dieing for not doing mechanics properly and our damage went to the garbage bin"

If there was a post on the forums that contained more hyperbole, blatant misinformation and inaccuracies I'd be genuinely surprised.

1) No Parsers are not epeen elitist meters more than anything.

2) FFlogs high percentiles are not bloated. Sure the very top ones are, but if you knew anything about log analysis, they're TRIVIAL to filter out when doing analysis. I get decently high %'s playing 2 hours a week, without putting an iota of effort into the game.

3) WoW top raiders still use parsers. Nearly every single one of them... Not sure where you got this idea from.

4) Contrary to your imagination - the best players in the world don't do better DPS by ignoring mechanics, they do it by managing their uptime efficiently.

5) How you can cite "Usually a single person is not a cause for a enrage unless its really slacking or not having low ilv" with no experience in actual difficult content is hilarious. Ask any person who pugs. This is a DAILY occurrence.

When I play my BRD, or another dps, I'm always looking at ways to make my damage go up. I examine my skills and try to come up with new rotations that will increase my dps. I don't need a parser to know if my damage is going up or not, since I know for a fact that it is due to the efficiency increase. I also don't need one to see if another player is performing poorly. Play the game enough and it's pretty clear most of the time.

I'm usually on the fence about parsers though as I don't like them, but do see the usefulness of them. However the more I see people try to give their reasons for having them, the more I lean to not wanting them at all. Your arguements aren't helping your case, they are hurting it.

Your logs strongly indicate that your feelycraft needs some actual math to feel better about itself.

So, apparently we need parsers partly due to bad players, so that we can point out that they're playing poorly, and so that they can't deny the data. Okay. Now tell me, how will a parser keep track of players doing the mechanics properly? What's preventing said bad players (and others that don't even fit in their same category of bad) to go all crazy on the meter's numbers and ignore everything else?

This is a common misconception that most non-raiders or poorly skilled players make (not calling you bad, simply stating the source I most frequently cite this statement). Not doing mechanics is not how you get better DPS. That's how you wipe. The best players do mechanics and do top DPS because they know how to manage uptime efficiently. To suggest anything otherwise is nothing short of blatant misinformation.

personally I'm neutral when it comes to parsers. I can see where they could help if the individual wants but I, myself, don't care to know numbers. I feel numbers do not reflect the instance or the fight since every fight in one way shape or form can be different. My parse was uploaded to fflogs without my knowledge or consent. That is something I have a problem with. If you use it to better yourself, cool, but when you parse and upload someone else's numbers without them knowing it, that isn't cool at all.

You dismissing numbers because you feel they don't provide context is factually inaccurate. The context is there if you look. The only thing logs don't show are fictional excuses.

Rather than be upset about it, why not use it to improve?

[Ilan]

Never ask a lady's age, and never ask me for my damage output/healing numbers. There's plenty of other reasons to cause drama during a run without dealing with a parser

You mean stuff like permanent enrages even when mechanics are done perfectly? Oh wait.

[ChaseNetwork]

Here's the thing. Parsers are not toxic. Parsers do not cause anything. Literally, all they do is parse.

This follows a similar conversation the gun debate. Guns do not kill people. Guns shoot bullets. That is specifically all that they do. It's how the gun is used, which is determined by the user - the human behind the gun.

Mmm. But I think I need an even closer analogy to that for parsers, as we're talking about people judging you based on information provided by these parsers, rather then something simple like bad people using guns to do bad things. This isn't exactly "bad" people using parsers to do bad things. It's shrewd (astute, or sharp in partical matters) people using parsers to generally make their own lives easier.

When I think about how that could be analogous to anything, I come up with this.

What if your school/college transcripts were public record? You apply for a job, the employer just plugs your name into a database, and boom, they see your academic transcript. They see you didn't make an A in a particular field. They don't even bother calling you or messaging you to give you the well known "We'll call you in two weeks" let down. Hell, it could be that they automated this, and no human ever saw your application. A machine that employers are finding popular for weeding out people quickly, and without their effort, has judged you unworthy.

Of course, the majority of people, the ones who don't have the greatest of transcripts, would hate this system, and thus demand that schools only issue them upon request by the transcript holder themselves. Something like the current system we have.

And the few who simply have supperb transcripts would be pleased without the hold on transcripts. less effort on their part to provide additional information to employers, and they are found by employers much easier.

This sounds a lot like the current parsing system, and the community at the end game using it, doesn't it?

Naturally, the argument exists that we should be able to view our own transcripts (parses). SE actually doesn't care if you do monitor your own parses. Colleges let you monitor your own transcript. However, because of the control of it, Colleges can actually say that only you can see your own transcripts, and you can not see anyone else's transcripts. SE could have this power quite simply. Have a toggle selection in the chat logs, automatically set to "off", that publishes your battle log information in other people's battle logs. Granted, those other people would be pissed that they can't use that to judge you, and demand you turn it on.

[Aerlana]

*snip*

I dont understand your point.

Because what you says (your logs are shown even if you dont want) is already the situation we have.

And for the battlelog lock to anyone else, yes it is an idea. Not sure a good one :-°

[Vahlnir]

Then why is ACT ok? The 5 year olds have been flying around in fighter jets for years and the game is in one piece.

This isn't about ACT, this is about parsers. I don't necessarily approve of it either since it's technically against the ToS as well. Until we get actual addon support from SE itself that will be my stance on all things related to addons. If they decided that certain things were permitted officially like ACT or parsers, then it's not really my call. My opinion on them would essentially be irrelevant. However, a public parser would do more harm than good imo. I'd probably be "fine" with something like ACT though since I've used DBM in WoW for years. But WoW has addon support and actually develops some content around things like DBM.

[ChaseNetwork]

I dont understand your point.

Because what you says (your logs are shown even if you dont want) is already the situation we have.

And for the battlelog lock to anyone else, yes it is an idea. Not sure a good one :-°

It's in response to the subject. "How would an optional official parser be toxic". Explained the nature of the situation, and then described what about that nature resulted in the current atmosphere.

[SleepyNeko]

What if your school/college transcripts were public record?

Its a nice analogy except it needs the caveat of the transcripts being taken from random surprise quiz that you did not know contributed to your final grade, or suddenly you are doing exams that were meant for students one year above you (iLvl difference)

As for the topic, I don't think having an official parser will be toxic in itself, but it will provide toxic players with an excuse to "officially" use it against others. Be it calling people out in a toxic manner or silently excluding players due to more availability to record logs and post them on fflogs.

[Dualgunner]

Its a nice analogy except it needs the caveat of the transcripts being taken from random surprise quiz that you did not know contributed to your final grade, or suddenly you are doing exams that were meant for students one year above you (iLvl difference)

As for the topic, I don't think having an official parser will be toxic in itself, but it will provide toxic players with an excuse to "officially" use it against others. Be it calling people out in a toxic manner or silently excluding players due to more availability to record logs and post them on fflogs.

And the players using it to be toxic can be reported and reprimanded just like they can now. As far as being exclusionary due to more availability...as it stands now there's 100% availability on all the logs people care about. So what would be the actual change here?

[SleepyNeko]

And the players using it to be toxic can be reported and reprimanded just like they can now. As far as being exclusionary due to more availability...as it stands now there's 100% availability on all the logs people care about. So what would be the actual change here?

Well the "silently" excluding people cannot be reported. You can argue that people are doing it already but it is still true that having an official parser will "promote" more people to use it leading this scenario to occur more often.

It is same as the WoW Addon, even though they don't support it, they also don't restrict it, therefore it is more accepted to drop "under performing" players and benching others.