Question about FFLogs

[Zekrin]

Hi~I'm a new player of FF14 & 1st post here.

The question is... I just found ACT & FFlogs last week, I'm a little confused about the FFlogs...
Isn't that webside kind of illegal or something like violating in-game privicy policy?

I mean...lots of logs been update there but most(or some) of them didn't get permission from the player who created the logs, right?
Some of these players don't even own a FFlogs account.

And more, the wedsite requires a player to create an account, upload your log, then you finally can choose NOT to show all your logs to everyone on the internet.

It seems like some "Force" to me, something like "You must use our service to protect your privacy", I don't know it just me(feeling WTF?!) or...

Just want to know how everyone think/feel about the FFlogs, not to bully or condemn the users.

[Ruinfeild]

Basically as long as you don't use it to harasse or bully other people, SE looks the other way.

[ZoLMiTRiPTaN]

You can easily add “flogs-hidden” (without the quotes) to your Lodestone profile to opt out without having to create an account on the website. However, you may end up blacklisted by PF groups and statics for doing so.

Personally, I don’t mind being parsed by someone else and having my data uploaded. You don’t need a parser to tell when someone isn’t playing well or contributing to DPS. I still don’t quite understand why people hide things like their achievements on Lodestone or their parses. Anyway, anyone that uses parsing or fflogs to harass other players is doing it wrong.

[Liam_Harper]

You can easily add “flogs-hidden” (without the quotes) to your Lodestone profile to opt out without having to create an account on the website. However, you may end up blacklisted by PF groups and statics for doing so.

Note this only counts for Savage and Ultimate, the hardest content in the game. As a new or casual player you won't be blacklisted by anyone for hiding your logs.

[HakaseNyan]

You can easily add “flogs-hidden” (without the quotes) to your Lodestone profile to opt out without having to create an account on the website. However, you may end up blacklisted by PF groups and statics for doing so.

I've no horse in this parsing race, but services, in which you don't voluntarily participate in, should be opt-in. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense having to opt-out of something you don't use. This opt-out situation has lead to a level of harassment with a neat little veil draped over it, and that makes it all the more obvious something is wrong with it.

[Solaires]

Lets be real. FFLogs was always great especially for newer players. They generally pair this with FF Analysis and Analysis will help tell the player the faults they had. The real issue is that people using parsers tend to harass people and they didn't want that. Yoshi stated in live letters back then that parsers were still illegal programs to the game but noted it as a grey zone and would look the other way if not used to harass other players.

This is the same back in HW for them implementing a lot of other things to reduce toxicity in the community like removing chat in the 4 v 4 PvP which people barely played til Feast and it was actually not even that toxic. The toxicity mostly came around with raiders and Mentors in the Novice Network. More modernly though it seems the toxicity has died down quite a bit. Well asides these healers that assume they're above you and tend to make a lot of toxicity in parties. I've done my share of kicking these toxic pests from the party over the person who made a mistake. LoL. Who wants angry healer noises. Just kick and get rid of that pest. LoL.

...Maybe the fuel was a horrible person who ran in the US at the time and everyone seemed to get aggressively toxic in general. LoL. Either way it was a huge thing for SE to promote friendly gameplay and support to new players at the time.

[RoyalBeef]

The only issue I can see with privacy is when you tell your girl you're at work and she sees on FFLOGs that you actually played FF14 at that time xD Or when you call in sick for work with migraine and your boss or co worker sees you have a ton of FFLOGs for that day. They'd have to know your character tho,and they could also see it on lodestone or ingame. But still, stuff like that is also why I never connect any gaming accounts to my social media and stuff like that ^^

[Shougun]

Might be fine but personally would recommend removing the name of all those tools and websites. Just in case (can't do too much about the title, but I'm thinking more on that other program's name).

As for an official sort of stance Yoshida has on record said that they wont go out of their way to punish the use of parsers, and have watched streamers who use them, but it is very much a don't ask don't tell situation when it comes to official channels (forums/game). Don't talk about it, at least in the stance of you're using it, and especially don't harass someone about it (which should be obvious lol).

As for the uploading of other people's data, it's sort of par course of the time but I'm not up with the times. I really dislike my privacy being breached (imo) without my consent. It's a dead fight in the era of mass data but still one that I'm uncomfortable with. I hid all my stuff (facebook, cookies, browser fingerprint-ish lol, etc) not out of shame or legal concern, but like when I first did the lodestone I blanked it all out just because I thought "none of your business". I've later opened it, like I'll do allowing certain scripts or cookies for websites, just because I found some websites or features that suited me (Apkallu Falls is pretty neat), but that's me deciding to release it then. I don't like others deciding that for me.. makes me.. something between uncomfortable and queer feeling. I'm not an intensely private person but I just like to decide my own sphere and not have unknown snippets of whatever be attributed without context or personal influence lol.

So my thought is the website that shall not be named shouldn't list people without permission granted, but I figure then the community in a general average sense, in hardcore portions, will make it non-optional. Alternately if they don't do it some other website probably would, potentially making that one become the new main source. Age of data /shrug.

[RoyalBeef]

Might be fine but personally would recommend removing the name of all those tools and websites. Just in case (can't do too much about the title, but I'm thinking more on that other name).

As for an official sort of stance Yoshida has on record said that they wont go out of their way to punish the use of parsers, and have watched streamers who use them, but it is very much a don't ask don't tell situation when it comes to official channels (forums/game). Don't talk about it, at least in the stance of you're using it, and especially don't harass someone about it (which should be obvious lol).

As for the uploading of other people's data, it's sort of par course of the time but I'm not up with the times. I really dislike my privacy being breached (imo) without my consent. It's a dead fight in the era of mass data but still one that I'm uncomfortable with. I hid all my stuff not out of shame when I first did the lodestone but just because I thought "none of your business". I've later opened it just because I found some websites that suited me but that's me deciding to release it then, I don't like others deciding that for me.. makes me.. something between uncomfortable and queer feeling. I'm not an intensely private person but I just like to decide my own sphere and not have unknown snippets of whatever be attributed without context lol.

So my thought is the website that shall not be named shouldn't list people without permission granted, but I figure then the community in a general average sense, in hardcore portions, will make it non-optional. Alternately if they don't do it someone else probably would, potentially making that one become the new main source. Age of data /shrug.

I don't mind my name being there, but I really don't understand why they don't just anonymize all names but the uploader's unless they agreed their named to be shown. Adding a #alias (mch#3145 or so) to mask the actual char name shouldnt be that hard to implement

[Enla]

Thing is you can go your entire in-game life without ever having someone upload logs of your performance on there. You'll almost never see it happen for dungeon or normal raids, for example. And even with Extreme content it's not as common as you might think. Sure, someone might be parsing in every group you get, but the number of people who actually upload are kinda low in comparison to the amount of people using the tool for personal reasons. It's really not until you start doing Savage that you'll find your logs going up with a good deal of consistency, and at that stage I'd argue it's kinda to be expected unless you're in a premade that doesn't care about numbers.

I personally don't think it's a big deal to log into the site and opt out given those circumstances. However I wouldn't be opposed to the system changing to 'opt-in' instead. It's not like it'll stop people from parsing your numbers, ACT itself doesn't care about opting in or out, it just provides raw data, it'll just stop them from being shown on the site. Though it also won't stop statics from turning you away for refusal to show your performance. But if you're of the opinion that you don't want to see your numbers you likely aren't the sort to be doing higher end content anyways, so it likely won't matter outside of a little piece of mind.