How would an optional, official parser be toxic?

[thegreatonemal]

No, because back before Googling was a thing to do, we had Bradley Strategy Game guides for almost every type of game which might be news to you. Whether you google information or read it in a book/tutorial, it gives you the same end results. The means on how to achieve the result shouldn't matter here.

There were strategy guides for FF7 as well.

Your argument that people didn't use guides on how to play video games is a poor one. It's not just an MMO issue.

You literally need a guide to play Final Fantasy X-2 or you're not getting that 100% completion ending.

And all of those games had in game tutorials on the major game mechanics you brought those guides so you could find all the hidden optional items not how to play the game. knowing your rotation is the single most important thing when it comes to doing the end game content in this game. that IS an mmo issue.

[Vidu]

And all of those games had in game tutorials on the major game mechanics you brought those guides so you could find all the hidden optional items not how to play the game. knowing your rotation is the single most important thing when it comes to doing the end game content in this game. that IS an mmo issue.

And its not like this game would be hiding your rotations from you - actual melee-combos light up for example and for jobs without them, like bard, blm or smn you get an explantion what the special "trick" to that job is. The game might not highlight the perfect opener for you, but I dare say that someone who looks at all their skills can actually figure a pretty decent one out without looking at a guide.

Is your Street Fighter game not only telling you how to use a combo - but also when? Do you the button-combination for Hadokuen along with "Oh, btw, you should use this in that sort of situation"? I know very little about fighting games like that, but the last time I saw a menu in one, it did tell me how to use certain combos, but it didnt tell me if I should use that punch when the opponent was knocked to the ground or had his back turned to me or something like that - thats left for me figure out... OR to consult a guide outside of the game.

And personally I dont only use guides to look up hidden objects - recently my boyfriend and I were playing FFIV: TAY and we had hard time with some demon walls. They didnt kill us constantly or anything like that, but the fights were so long and annoying that we were sure someone must have found a better way to handle them, so we googled it. Someone had found a better way to handle them - sadly it involved spells our casters didnt have yet.
But I have looked up plenty of stuff before thats not only looking for hidden treasures.

[thegreatonemal]

And its not like this game would be hiding your rotations from you - actual melee-combos light up for example and for jobs without them, like bard, blm or smn you get an explantion what the special "trick" to that job is. The game might not highlight the perfect opener for you, but I dare say that someone who looks at all their skills can actually figure a pretty decent one out without looking at a guide.

Is your Street Fighter game not only telling you how to use a combo - but also when? Do you the button-combination for Hadokuen along with "Oh, btw, you should use this in that sort of situation"? I know very little about fighting games like that, but the last time I saw a menu in one, it did tell me how to use certain combos, but it didnt tell me if I should use that punch when the opponent was knocked to the ground or had his back turned to me or something like that - thats left for me figure out... OR to consult a guide outside of the game.

And personally I dont only use guides to look up hidden objects - recently my boyfriend and I were playing FFIV: TAY and we had hard time with some demon walls. They didnt kill us constantly or anything like that, but the fights were so long and annoying that we were sure someone must have found a better way to handle them, so we googled it. Someone had found a better way to handle them - sadly it involved spells our casters didnt have yet.
But I have looked up plenty of stuff before thats not only looking for hidden treasures.

Yea they give you the barest of bones in this game but that isn't enough for ex and savage which we agree needs to change. The difference being I guess you think a parser is the answer. I don't think so as this game even at the highest levels doesn't really need that much detail to kill anything again unless your speed running or testing theories.

[HyoMinPark]

Yea they give you the barest of bones in this game but that isn't enough for ex and savage which we agree needs to change. The difference being I guess you think a parser is the answer. I don't think so as this game even at the highest levels doesn't really need that much detail to kill anything again unless your speed running or testing theories.

Ultimate says hi.

Ultimate is content where you do need that much detail to clear. It’s the only content in this game where 7 people literally cannot carry an 8th who refuses to contribute. They can’t even carry an 8th who doesn’t have a decent understanding of the job they’re playing—my UwU static’s first NIN decided to go MNK for two weeks, and we actually missed DPS checks on some of the primals because he did not have a decent understanding of how MNK functioned compared to his understanding of NIN, and the rest of us just could not push enough personal damage to make up for his massive shortcoming. We did a V6S weekly to help one member get some pieces for SMN (since it was determined that we actually needed a caster for caster LB3), and our NIN - on MNK - did 200 more DPS than me... a BRD. And we were equally geared, except they had an i370 weapon where as I had an i375. Other than that, we were both BiS.

Clearly there was an issue with regards to their performance, and what told us that? A parser.

Parsers can’t force people to improve, but guides and handholding can’t force them to improve either. This game literally holds the hands of every player through most content, yet people still make threads complaining that MSQ instances are “too unforgiving”. The only ones who can make a player improve are themselves - they have to have the motivation to do so.

At least with a parser, determining exactly who is being a burden in weekly clear parties for Savage or primal mount farms would be a lot more obvious, and could be instantly addressed rather than wasting several pulls trying to guess who the problem is (for those that aren’t already parsing the encounter, anyways - not like we’re allowed to say anything though; we’re apparently expected to just grin and bear it). And it would also be nice to have so that the problem player cannot spin the situation around, and try to blame another player - because, boy, I’ve seen that a lot: you call out the underperformer for underperforming, and they either try to blame you or another party member for their shortcomings.

[Vidu]

Yea they give you the barest of bones in this game but that isn't enough for ex and savage which we agree needs to change. The difference being I guess you think a parser is the answer. I don't think so as this game even at the highest levels doesn't really need that much detail to kill anything again unless your speed running or testing theories.

I dont think its the answer - I think its one of many answers, including stuff like better job-guides and stricter gates for endgame content, like a requirement to beat SSS for certain content before you can enter it, aswell as betetr overall feedback.

[Daibunnie]

Yea they give you the barest of bones in this game but that isn't enough for ex and savage which we agree needs to change. The difference being I guess you think a parser is the answer. I don't think so as this game even at the highest levels doesn't really need that much detail to kill anything again unless your speed running or testing theories.

Don't see how you reached that conclusion when 95% of the community never even cleared any savage content, let alone ultimate. Again, the parser shows how many times you used a specific skill, which itself can give a general idea of what a person is doing. If you're a pld at o11s, your only combo should not be just the halone combo and spamming shield lob. Nor should you be spamming cure 1 142 times at The Burn as a whm. The only reason why we even know they did this is because of the parser.

[Penthea]

If you're a pld at o11s, your only combo should not be just the halone combo and spamming shield lob. Nor should you be spamming cure 1 142 times at The Burn as a whm. The only reason why we even know they did this is because of the parser.

To be fair you can easily catch a lot of stuff like that just from watching the players and your ui.

If you know a class you'll recognise skill animations, especially anything flashy. You can see on the enemy targets if they're missing dots or debuffs they normally should have with the current classes in the fight. You can see on your own buffs if you're lacking a party buff that should be there. You can look at the party ui to see if the tank uses defensive cds. It's especially easy to see what a caster is doing because you can see hardcasts in the party ui. You don't need a parser to see if the whm is spamming cure 1.

Of course having a parser makes it easier to spot these things in a more indepth manner, and it can show you things you maybe didn't see at the time. But let's not suggest that parsers are the only way of seeing whether someone is pressing the right buttons or not, because that is simply not true.

[Daibunnie]

To be fair you can easily catch a lot of stuff like that just from watching the players and your ui.

If you know a class you'll recognise skill animations, especially anything flashy. You can see on the enemy targets if they're missing dots or debuffs they normally should have with the current classes in the fight. You can see on your own buffs if you're lacking a party buff that should be there. You can look at the party ui to see if the tank uses defensive cds. It's especially easy to see what a caster is doing because you can see hardcasts in the party ui. You don't need a parser to see if the whm is spamming cure 1.

Of course having a parser makes it easier to spot these things in a more indepth manner, and it can show you things you maybe didn't see at the time. But let's not suggest that parsers are the only way of seeing whether someone is pressing the right buttons or not, because that is simply not true.

I don't see how you're going to catch all that while fighting anything in savage as well as how much dps each player did. Several people also have special effects from other players turned off to prevent fps drops mid fight. Also, you shouldn't have to be monitoring every single player at this level of content when they're expected to at least know how to play their class. And you're right, you don't need a parser to see a whm cast cure 1 once, but it will point out that the whm casted cure 1 way more than average while cure 2 is under 10 uses.

No one is suggesting that a parser is the only way to see if someone is playing correctly, but its an easy solution to get players to understand what they're doing wrong from the start without taking any risks or wasting time, because in the end, most people don't want to teach a player how to play their class during savage and would rather just kick and replace them.

[Penthea]

No one is suggesting that a parser is the only way to see if someone is playing correctly

You'll find that in the below quote from your previous post you did exactly that. Perhaps this isn't what you meant, but this is how it appears.

If you're a pld at o11s, your only combo should not be just the halone combo and spamming shield lob. Nor should you be spamming cure 1 142 times at The Burn as a whm. The only reason why we even know they did this is because of the parser.

I don't see how you're going to catch all that while fighting anything in savage as well as how much dps each player did.

No of course you will not catch every single thing, especially in savage as sometimes your attention is demanded so much that you can't keep watching every combat detail that is presented to you. I even said parsers make it easier to access this information. I was merely correcting you when you said the only reason people know that someone did something wrong is because they could see it in a parser, and I was stating examples of how you can see poor performance without one.

but its an easy solution to get players to understand what they're doing wrong from the start without taking any risks or wasting time, because in the end, most people don't want to teach a player how to play their class during savage and would rather just kick and replace them.

I completely agree that parsers are an easy solution to get more indepth combat information. While a lot can be spotted from personal observational skills and experience, a lot of what players do wrong is sometimes too subtle to see in the heat of battle or you simply haven't the time to look. But this doesn't change that you can spot quite a lot on your own. Very often if someone is really bad at the game it will be obvious without a parser.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

To be fair you can easily catch a lot of stuff like that just from watching the players and your ui.

If you know a class you'll recognise skill animations, especially anything flashy. You can see on the enemy targets if they're missing dots or debuffs they normally should have with the current classes in the fight. You can see on your own buffs if you're lacking a party buff that should be there. You can look at the party ui to see if the tank uses defensive cds. It's especially easy to see what a caster is doing because you can see hardcasts in the party ui. You don't need a parser to see if the whm is spamming cure 1.

Of course having a parser makes it easier to spot these things in a more indepth manner, and it can show you things you maybe didn't see at the time. But let's not suggest that parsers are the only way of seeing whether someone is pressing the right buttons or not, because that is simply not true.

Give this a try in Savage. You're almost guaranteed to mess up yourself or get killed because things happen quickly enough you aren't going to catch everything unless it's blatantly obvious. Furthermore, most people don't have intimate knowledge of jobs they don't consistently play nor should they. I only need to know the basics of Black Mage and that it can deal upwards of 7,000 DPS. I won't be able to tell said Black Mage is doing 4,500 DPS as I'll only notice the boss taking much longer to die or we're seeing a mechanic we could otherwise phase. A parse highlights precise who is holding the group back. Depending on the group, they may be able and/or willing to offer some advice, but that shouldn't be expected in a farm party where you're expected to know the fight and your rotation.