How would an optional, official parser be toxic?

[Mhaeric]

The issue with this is that it doesn’t give you anything to go on—it’s literally just a number with not a lot of context behind it.

Unless there were players sharing their numbers, general baselines could never be established when it came to performance. A BRD seeing that they are doing 12,000 DPS (random number) doesn’t tell them anything. Is that good for their item level? Is it bad? Could they use improvement, or are they doing well enough? You don’t know without other numbers to compare it to. They could think they’re doing well when the average could be 15,000 DPS (again, random number).

Easily solved with a rank attached to the number like a star system or a statistic like average dps for that content or something similar. It doesn't even necessarily need to be based on actual performance of other players and could just be threshold numbers that are set by SE. It doesn't even need to be ranked across the entire scale of players or have much granularity to it. E.g. a 3-star rank in a 1 to 3 star rating system might be achievable with what would be roughly a 75th percentile on fflogs.

It's not perfect to just see your number and relative rank, but it's at least informational. A full parse will always be better since it contains so much more information, but I would definitely approve of some sort of performance information being given out in-game.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

The issue with this is that it doesn’t give you anything to go on—it’s literally just a number with not a lot of context behind it.

Unless there were players sharing their numbers, general baselines could never be established when it came to performance. A BRD seeing that they are doing 12,000 DPS (random number) doesn’t tell them anything. Is that good for their item level? Is it bad? Could they use improvement, or are they doing well enough? You don’t know without other numbers to compare it to. They could think they’re doing well when the average could be 15,000 DPS (again, random number).

There could be a built in ranking table as far as how you performed against the rest of the group. And if people wanted to voluntarily share their data with others outside of the game then that's fine so long as it was just THEIR data. It's potentially a huge liability to the developers when data generated by other characters is able to be shared with people outside of the instance (because you can pretty much see everything in the battle log but you can't share it). Many people would consider that a huge invasion of privacy, especially if it was used in a negative way and you pretty much know it will be. Statics already use FFlogs to judge whether a person is worthy or not. I can't imagine what it would be like if everyone had access to everyone else's data. Someone could make a acerbic post on here and someone goes to look up their stats, sees that they're low or middling and comeback with 'ah your opinion doesn't matter because your trash'.

I like performing well enough to contribute to the team effort but I don't want that being a main quantifier as to my experience in the game and unfortunately a fairly large portion of the community would use it that way. I don't ever see an in game parser because of this but if they did make one it would fairly useless to anyone who uses them as they are now because it would be so regulated and strictly private that implemeting it would amount to...basically nothing. The same information you can already learn from things already in the game (Stone, Sky, Sea) only with an actual number attached.

[ICountFrom0]

Just as a general idea, how would you implement an official parser with a MINIMUM amount of grief and shame and horror?

I'm thinking, you'd record your run, and then submit it, and that would arrive back parsed after a waiting period based on load. Possibly with express that you could buy tokens for with crysta. So they give a service, and also get another way to make money.

And yes, you'd ONLY get your parse.

[Packetdancer]

Very sleepy, and writing on phone; forgive me if this gets rambling/lengthy or has typos...

So, the way I see it, vanilla FFXIV endgame is akin to being given a test at school and only being told whether you passed or failed. No marking up questions in red that were wrong, no comments from the teacher, not even a score. Just a "pass" or "fall". (Or in this case, "clear" or "wipe".)

Imagine getting a test like that back, with no explanation why there's a red F on it. Did you have your facts wrong on that multiple-choice section? Was it something in the essay portion? Did you write down the wrong date for that one battle where that guy got defeated because there was an unexpected snowstorm in May? Hey, why does it matter? You see that you failed, right? Do you really need to know why you failed and Jess over there passed?

If you assume you plan to retake the test (re-run the raid), then the answer is "yes, that would actually be pretty useful".

You could argue that the issue with a parser is the same as posting test scores publicly, or even posting the entire test; people can be judgemental jerks, and be cruel over someone else falling. This is doubly true when someone else's score affects their grade like in a group assignment, to carry this metaphor further.

But right now it appears if you want a "study guide" as to what you should focus on for the next test—what you need to do to clear—you are reduced to the equivalent of outside cram schools (in the form of parser tools, analysis websites, and so on). Which are almost certainly some of the most invaluable tools for improving your own performance... but I imagine also can also potentially lead to some folks being judgmental and/or gatekeeping, given the nature of how of of analysis sites for any game collect, process, and present that data.

(Mind you, the gatekeeping or cruelty is likely more because people are people, and some people are jerks, and that "jerks" circle overlaps to some extent with pretty much every other possible circle in the Venn diagram of human behavior; there is almost no community 100% free of jerks. Which is more about people and less about parsers...)

But if you want to do away with those tools and their ecosystem, that ability to analyze your performance to see what you can improve—to get your test marked up, not just a pass/fail—is crucial to add to the game itself in some manner.

As a hypothetical: imagine a parser in the game which would show a simple bar showing how much damage you've done, in relation to people playing the same job in the same content. Maybe without numbers, providing no actual DPS value, just a general visual relative indicator. If you see yourself with a low bar colored red then you know that you have room for improvement. If you see yourself with the bar towards the higher end, in green, then you know that you're doing pretty well.

Admittedly, that's not the most useful feedback. However, it would provide some measure by which people could actually track their own performance and improvement. Previously the bar was halfway full? Now it's more like 66%!

But honestly, why not do better than just that; imagine if your parser is an In-world thing, an actual little "aetherial entity" summoned and tasked to follow you and basically record/analyze the details of your battles. When done, you could optionally take the notes this "Parh'surr" summon brings back (it holding on to the past five or six duties you ran, presumably) to a "Hall of the Master" provided by the Scions for their members, and discuss it with a trainer there. This trainer could tell you things like, well, if you used Regen and Asylum more often you'd have more time free for DPS; you missed a lot of opportunities to use them. That if you keep your Higanbana DoT on the boss, the damage adds up to this much more than you're doing now. That you're not keeping your GCD rolling when repositioning during mechanics. That you aren't weaving abilities cleanly into your GCD. That you're consistently not completing a potential combo and losing out on damage.

Taking it even a step further, you could then have pre-made solo trials for certain things (at certain levels). A test that teaches a player to weave effectively. A test that teaches them to focus on uptime (lots of AoEs forcing a caster to keep moving, but a target you have a time limit to destroy). Etc.

Now you can take the report from your dungeon run, get advice from the NPC, and even be offered specific training exercises to help you work on those aspects of your performance. (Or choose to seek out those exercises yourself pro-actively, even without a report from Parh'surr.)

Tada, a parser tool that doesn't give concrete numbers to demand someone share—or become "toxic/elitist" over, if that's the root of people's concern—but which does give solid advice on how to improve your performance at a particular aspect of a specific job, or just in general.

Would that be useful? I suspect so! Would it help alleviate any instances of someone using another person's parser results to be verbally abusive in party chat? Maybe! Probably wouldn't make anything worse, at least. Would it be a ton of work for the devs? Almost assuredly, likely to the point other content would be cut or delayed, which isn't great . And they'd have to keep updating it, too, as jobs are re-balanced from patch to patch.

Would it be worth it in the end? I genuinely don't know; I think it would make it a lot easier and more approachable for players to work on that sort of self-improvement, which would probably be good.

But it wouldn't do a lot to handle rankings of fastest clears or help high-tier raid statics really optimize a fight by looking at the fight log afterwards and realizing this one buff should be used here but this one held another few GCDs, that if the AST uses Earthly Star here then the WHM has wings still up to pop for a bunch of raid-wide damage pulses twenty seconds later, etc. And that sort of analysis requires access to the parse of a group run as a whole. Similarly, folks who figure out BiS for a given job after a given patch adjusts said job probably need more detailed parsing to sort those out.

And no matter how good a built-in tool might be, without serving that presumed need for party optimization as well, I think we'd still see third party parsers and log analysis sites. Or else we'd see the Savage raid community die off.

(I, uh, got wordy. Sorry...)

[Mirau]

Easily solved with a rank attached to the number like a star system or a statistic like average dps for that content or something similar. It doesn't even necessarily need to be based on actual performance of other players and could just be threshold numbers that are set by SE. It doesn't even need to be ranked across the entire scale of players or have much granularity to it. E.g. a 3-star rank in a 1 to 3 star rating system might be achievable with what would be roughly a 75th percentile on fflogs.

It's not perfect to just see your number and relative rank, but it's at least informational. A full parse will always be better since it contains so much more information, but I would definitely approve of some sort of performance information being given out in-game.

I could see this in full premade groups, which I'm okay with. This shouldn't be in any party finder content, but in grouped up content where, sure, you CAN kick the poor performing DPS - it'll be more incentivized to teach them what to do or what they're doing wrong. And once they get up to 3/3 stars they'll be fine, the content can be passed.

[ICountFrom0]

Congrats on the worst official parsing method I've ever seen. You want me to pay money, and have to wait, for something I can technically do for both free and instantly? Brah.

Nha, I said "or" and yes, I'm being realistic, they won't do it, if they can't make money on it.

[ACE135]

The only ones people who would benefit from an in-game parser would be PS4 players. I doubt that anyone who uses ACT would uninstall it and just use the in-game parser instead.

[Violet_Galaxy]

Snip

It's not hard. People would just whine, whine and whine about it like they whine about everything else and SE knows this and doesn't want to put up with it. Players wanting to improve?!?! LMAO! The garbage that constantly flows in and out through DF is staggering. Listen, people that actually want to improve (rare) already know how. They're not the ones single targeting in ShB content. They're not the ones who don't know how to hold hate in ShB content. They seek the guides and read the tool tips already.

[ADVSS]

It really makes no sense that they couldnt add a timer function and an exact dps number on a striking dummy. SSS is still really obscure, As for any other purpose one uses it in game, its only really beneficial in preformed groups doing savage/ultimate content. Perhaps they could add a tracking function to entering as a premade(similar to undersize party option in DF) under these few instances/raid finder. People using parsers in dungeon runs and less impactful content, are really just abusing the purposes for self improvement, and rightfully deserve banning for harassment/etc if thats what theyre using it for, or to start unnecessary drama. Basically if you are using it in these instances, probably just shut your mouth or risk breaking ToS. For serious content, in premades, who are probably using third party programs like discord for voice, then its whatever, half of them probably using ACT anyway.

[FF16Necromancer]

Because people can be asses, and will use any tool to put others down. Do we need the ability to parse our damage built into the game? I'd say sure. Will some people use it to be jerks? Of course.

But we can't let that prevent necessary QoL additions. It's really simple as that

This pretty much. That's why it's in a grey area right now.