Question about FFLogs

[Shougun]

Fair enough on the non-illegal invasion of your privacy feeling. In the post I made, I pretty much said people would feel this way. It's just that this thread is not the first nor will it be the last thread to discuss the website and many times have people propped up log information as being factually private when it isn't. It's what I wanted to clarify there.

That's fair, I just thought you might have had some of that directed at me and I just wanted to explain lol. There's no rage and on that website / discussion as long as I wasn't being harassed (it's not happened yet) and if not harassment then I'd not report anything (even if I had the ability to make something "happen" out of it- but I do encourage the don't ask don't tell as Yoshida does for everyone's smooth operating accounts, and well of course not to harass with it xD). I'm not even really against parsers (used them in WoW, where it's not against the ToS), personally I think SE should give every player an annoymized parser in game. Annomyized in that it'll rank you to other players of like gear set ups and such, and it'll give you full clarity of how you personally did in content (if you want it)- but it wont reveal you to others. With perhaps little goofy awards and stuff like FPS and MOBAs have, although that might encourage players trying to farm certain results so.. /shrug people are funny XD.

As to what I quoted there, well it basically comes down these three things: Possession, Trust and Usage, right? I mean, we can take the public scope by applying it to city you live. Cameras at intersection, cameras on buildings, cameras just about everywhere, etc. The thing is, most people don't think twice on it because there's inherent trust or faith that in the places they go, the usage of what they possess (i.e your face on camera) will not be misused. Obviously, this becomes a completely different thing when it comes to a total stranger snapping a picture of you and depending on where you live, either you'll just have to suck it up and go home in defeat or succeed in having the material surrendered.

I don't really like the cameras on every street corner with tracking + facial recognition idea (different than traffic light, more of what China uses), where I live (US non-main city) we don't have as many as say some places in Europe or other countries though. At the same time it's undeniable that some freedom and privacy lost means some safety gained. I'm just very cautious about what you lose and for what. Easy to lose hard to gain back and demands a revolution, a revolt, or something of intense scale to get things back. Not that people posting your logs in an online game is that serious of an issue lol, some really first world privacy issue haha (just tyring to explain my mindset, to me I loathe the "don't need privacy unless you have something to hide argument" because it can be used to strip us very bare and so I try to be consistent just to cultivate as much of that enviroment as I can).

Yeah for the total stranger snapping photos of you- for the players who uploaded their logs of course they wont see it that way because they're not doing it for "you" they're doing it for "them" (no harm or privacy breech meant). You photo bombed their image, in their mind. Well most of the people I assume. There are probably some less than well meaning people that are like "HAHAHA I CAUGHT THIS STREAMER SUCKING, TIME TO UPLOAD YEEEE". lol. But it is a little different here since you're also auto-tagging them in your photo (by feature of the tool). Just trying to explain that to someone who didn't accept the system, didn't accept a stranger "tagging them" in a public database that it begins to feel more creepy, even if they might have accepted it if asked or other things like traffic cameras that don't tag you in quite the same way. Like I block most scripts and cookies on the internet, it's not for some random website to know what other websites I've visited or whatever even if I personally might feel free to say it. But I've also allowed a number of tracking services, like so I can resume my videos where I last left off- which is super helpful when you're going to bed sleepy XD. Sort of a consent and purpose thing to me, and I don't even want to say consent like some great harm has been done but just that "it'd be nice if you had my consent to do that...". Since it's the day of data I don't send angry emails or whatever, but I do usually auto-pilot set the settings on social profiles to fairly dark unless some other reason needed (like my youtube or it's twitter, or my lodestone if certain websites need it to read off achievements for my own interest).

So what this means for users who finally become aware of FFlog's existence and don't like it? At this current time, seems like a "go home in defeat" scenario and like I mentioned in my post, there are still options. Options that obviously suck for those users but until SE decides to be actively aggressive about log information being publicly accessed without a user's awareness, never mind consent, and enables sanctions and restrictive in-game features and policies, there's very little can do. It'd be like when my friend's grandma lost her mind when she realized there's big satellite that took a picture of her house some...four-five years ago? Never mind the house is basically in total public view and any passerby could've taken a thousand pictures of it; she just didn't like the idea that a satellite could be taking pictures of her through her window while she's "indecent".

Oh yes, the whole satellite thing she became aware of? Google Earth >.>

It's definitely a losing battle (I carry a smart phone, for all google cares I might as well just run a daily vlog from my shower @_@ lol).. Like I said in my first post the website could anonymize everyone who doesn't volunteer to be part of it, but then you might just see a competitor website appear and people flock there because of the features (like certain invasive DRMs can make cracks look like a legitimate feature).

Google earth is creepy! lol, it's also very very cool :P.

Didn't mean to be like "NO U WRONG" but just trying to explain, because I see it often (haha like you see these sorts of threads), that wanting to have some sort of consent doesn't mean you have something to hide or whatever. Not that I feel like you've got any problem with me, nor I you , just trying to keep points clarified for a good conversation~! To try and explain some people are just naturally more private, and I guess I find it a bit disheartening to see when people have a hard time imagining that. (Again the whole if you have nothing to hide then why does it matter argument is probably a minor pet peeve of mine, not that you were saying that - just want to explain privacy just for the sake of privacy is good.. at least to some people).

[Blokeymon]

As a PS4 player I absolutely love FFLogs picking up my parses from other people's runs.

I get to see how well (or not) I'm doing, and where I can improve. It also gives me a sense of satisfaction when I see my numbers creep up.

If it wasn't for this site, I'd be the worst kind of healer - one who doesn't DPS.

So if you don't like your numbers being known, surely the question you have to ask is... why?

[EaMett]

I feel like the only people that have an issue with fflogs for the most part are those that parse low. So either people who are new to the game or people who don’t care about optimizing a minimum and pulling their weight. (You don’t need to accomplish a lot, just get around 50 percent to show you’re an average player/raider and no one will care anymore short of wanting to join a skilled static)

There are also no privacy concerns because your in game information is public. Privacy concerns your RL. I’d have to check the TOS but willing to bet your in game information doesn’t even belong to you in the first place.

[Makeda]

A tool that is merely reading the contents of a log file the game has saved to your harddrive and displaying that log graphically on your screen using its own executable wholly separate from other apps.

A website that lets you upload a text file on your hard drive is also... letting you upload a file on your hard drive to show to others or to just yourself.

The reason you don’t see action over these is... there is nothing that can be acted upon going on. This is very different from mods that do things like alter game graphics - those are actually changing game files... and so SE can choose to go after them aggressively.

Likewise, if you read something in your log that you have an opinion over it and then angrily bring that opinion to bare against someone IN GAME then SE can and will go after you...

But for some reason many fail to understand how this is wholly different from merely reading your own log files...

[aiqa]

A tool that is merely reading the contents of a log file the game has saved to your harddrive

Where does FF write a battle log to your harddrive?

[MariaArvana]

Where does FF write a battle log to your harddrive?

In your character data folder, you'll notice file(s) called 000000001.log or something similar to that. These files save EVERYTHING that would normally show up in any of your 3-4 chat tabs. They record basically everything by default, but they won't record anything that you manually disable.

That being said, the game is still parsing the info to these log files even if manually disabling things; just not writing it to them. ACT reads the parsed battle data, does math, and then spits out a readable number. So if someone had extreme time and patience, they could dive into these log files, grab every numerical value they do for the entire encounter, and then do the math themselves, as the game is saving an entire record of you & your party.

[Ladon]

We have been though this.

Privacy laws don’t extend to your character and you have no right to privacy of your character data as you do not own it.

[Nemmar]

Who cares if your performance is up there?

Are you afraid people are gonna go after you in case you are bad? Who cares? Cmon people, you need to stop caring about useless things.

If someone harasses you, you report them. This is simple. Don't need to go find excuses like external site's for people who are just nasty. Report them. The problem is the person. End of story.

[HakaseNyan]

Who cares if your performance is up there?

Are you afraid people are gonna go after you in case you are bad? Who cares? Cmon people, you need to stop caring about useless things.

If someone harasses you, you report them. This is simple. Don't need to go find excuses like external site's for people who are just nasty. Report them. The problem is the person. End of story.

Except in the situation where you're excluded from a group because your performance is up there and/or you have your logs hidden. This is technically harassment, is it not? However, you cannot prove this is the reason they are excluding you. Ergo, you cannot report them for harassing you.