How would an optional, official parser be toxic?

[Legion88]

There's actually a serious problem with this.

Let's say its a new tier. It requires you to beat a gatekeeping battle that's harder than SSS (because a lot of people think the dummies aren't a good measure. So maybe a mock battle or something.)

One guy beats it on day one, and gets to work on the tier because he's a good player who already raids.

One guy can't beat it at all, and stops raiding.

One guy takes a week to beat it.

The problem though is the last guy is going to be delayed enough that it might matter for progression. The weaker or newer they are, the harder it will be to find people. I mean, the people who beat it day one will be ahead of them and less likely to get newbies because finishing later my be a sign that you had issues with the dps check. It might be more of a discouragement than people think. It's add more teeth to the "two week problem," that it's harder to progress in stuff 2 weeks after a patch.

So you say we also schould loosen the min ilvl, because some people could be behind in gearing up?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The problem though is the last guy is going to be delayed enough that it might matter for progression. The weaker or newer they are, the harder it will be to find people. I mean, the people who beat it day one will be ahead of them and less likely to get newbies because finishing later my be a sign that you had issues with the dps check. It might be more of a discouragement than people think. It's add more teeth to the "two week problem," that it's harder to progress in stuff 2 weeks after a patch.

Except good raiders are far more accommodating than you believe. A good player knows the difference between gear discrepancy and skill. This is among the reasons we laugh at bloated ilvl requirements in PF because that isn't a skill check. One of the first things I do whenever I see someone doing awful DPS is check their gear to see if that's an issue. If it proves to be significantly lower, I'm more accepting because that isn't necessarily their fault. See, this is the benefit of FFlogs and analysis. You can easily check what people are doing and see why their damage is so low. Likewise, it's what good groups do to check if someone's numbers are legit or balance padded. Many hardcore groups won't even look at you if you have nothing but balance padded oranges. Those parsers may have been 80% otherwise, which is still a good number, but they don't trust you since you weren't upfront about it.

What you've described is precisely why people want parsers. They allow us to analyse. Now that doesn't mean some people won't be idiots and look at a i350 Samurai and mock them, but that isn't unique to FFXIV or gaming. There will always be idiots in everything. You don't blame or ban the tool because someone misuses it. If we did, well, shut down the Internet because heaven knows that gets abused on a daily basis.

Of course, this doesn't mean you ca waltz into any party you fancy or that ilvl requirements are inherently bad. There comes a point where a bigger enough ilvl gap will be a hindrance. In such a scenario, it falls on the player to remedy this. If that means waiting several weeks to get Genesis gear, c'est la vie.

[RiyahArp]

Except good raiders are far more accommodating than you believe..

That's not my point. It can't be a gear check, because the issue people want gatekeeping fights for is not gear, but skill. And if they don't have the skill to beat it on launch, they need to practice till they can or they can't enter the instance. If they need to rely on better gear to beat the challenge, then it will be too late. You won't be able to be understanding, the gatekeeper will keep them out of the fight. The point is that with a gatekeeper like this, it will delay people from entering to prevent that. And by then, there won't be people who need newbies.

[Legion88]

That's not my point. It can't be a gear check, because the issue people want gatekeeping fights for is not gear, but skill. And if they don't have the skill to beat it on launch, they need to practice till they can or they can't enter the instance. If they need to rely on better gear to beat the challenge, then it will be too late. You won't be able to be understanding, the gatekeeper will keep them out of the fight. The point is that with a gatekeeper like this, it will delay people from entering to prevent that. And by then, there won't be people who need newbies.

You misunderstand what a gatekeeper is.
The gatekeeper makes sure noone can go further without the required skill, because people without this skill wont be able to do anything beyond that point.
The gatekeeper checks if you are skilled enough with this job to have a chance by your own and don't need someone else to carry you.

A gatekeeper has to check your knowledge of the jobs rotation by a simple DPS check, has to check your general knowledge of game mechanics, like telgraphed AoEs, one hit by them and you're out and he has to check your general skill by mixing this up over a couple of phases.

If you can't pass this simple checks you are in no way able to to anything beyond then participate but never contribute.

And don't forget, the content behind the gatekeeper is even harder then the gatekeeper himself.

[KaivaC]

That's not my point. It can't be a gear check, because the issue people want gatekeeping fights for is not gear, but skill. And if they don't have the skill to beat it on launch, they need to practice till they can or they can't enter the instance. If they need to rely on better gear to beat the challenge, then it will be too late. You won't be able to be understanding, the gatekeeper will keep them out of the fight. The point is that with a gatekeeper like this, it will delay people from entering to prevent that. And by then, there won't be people who need newbies.

...so if it's a matter of skill vs a gatekeeper, what's the issue?

[Guulu]

Parser in savage and ultimate is very welcomed. It's not fun carrying deadweight and see them roll 99. You don't pay others' sub so when you find out you should get good, you probably should and don't waste people's time. Content other than those just w/e.

[AriaXIV]

Tbh i dont agree with parsers because they annoy me, setting them up is a pain and after what parsers did to the WoW and Wildstar communities? Let em never be allowed.

[Dualgunner]

Tbh i dont agree with parsers because they annoy me, setting them up is a pain and after what parsers did to the WoW and Wildstar communities? Let em never be allowed.

What did parsers do to those games, and do you have anything other than anecdote as evidence?

[Shurrikhan]

What did parsers do to those games, and do you have anything other than anecdote as evidence?

I can't speak to much detail for Wildstar, but in WoW's case... very little, if anything. Unless progging a boss with an extremely tight enrage, players were generally only removed if they were putting out outlier level low numbers. It made people hit the training dummies a ton more, and sometimes the dps who made a heroic damn near impossible during early WotLK/Cata or a Challenge mode in WoD would be kicked, but beyond that... didn't provide exclusion except where exclusion was truly necessary.

[KaldeaSahaline]

As for the topic, "how would a parser be toxic?" Before SE pushed the 'don't ask, don't tell' mentality of parsers, people were kicking under performing players for not pulling arbitrary numbers in their parties. This is probably what SE is trying to avoid, because if they make, or otherwise acknowledge, an allowance of the tool, people will be excluded for ... reasons ... on a game they pay a membership for.

That being a concern is a big nothing burger though. If they were truly concerned about exclusion they wouldn't have created DF features that allowed you to only queue with people who cleared, or PF features that let you exclude jobs or ilvl, or fight status.

The fact that they've expanded on those features over the years is proof that it's nothing but a hypocritical stance.

Giving more tools to everyone to judge others will only end up in even more toxicity. "It will happen without a parser anyway" is a wrong argument. You are saying that like if having tons of players who actually dont even know what a parser is, getting suddenly access to one isn't gonna stir up even more trouble

If you actually read those posts you'd see that the issue wasn't actually the community. It was the individual players. In fact 7 other people found the person to be toxic by measure of his gameplay. Sometimes just being catastrophically disrespectful to a teammate is more toxic than a few empty words said later.

The anti parser crowd always falls back on the argument that opening them up causes more toxicity, but can never present data to support their cause. It's simply a tool. Harassment is still policed via reports, etc. That doesn't go away or change. In fact, if you were to present me with 2 options. Kicked without any feedback (like the one poster) or kicked and told why, one gives me a chance to fix it.

You know, like the real world works? If I'm fired from a job, they tell me why. I fix it. If I get expelled from school/uni they tell me why. I fix it. If I get benched in a sports team, the coach tells me why and I practice.

I've played enough WoW over the years to see the good, the bad and the ugly with parsers. It is simply abused too often. Not always, but still too often.

Ironic - I've played WoW for 14 years at this point. I can't cite a single example of parser abuse. Wonder why.

What reason is there that everyone has to complete the tiers as fast as possible?

if you've ever pugged Savage, you'd know the answer to this. The quality of players drops dramatically as better players clear early on and exclude those who haven't cleared.