If running a parser makes you cynical and depressed, why do it?

[Raven2014]

I think you can kind of see the answer from some replies on this thread.

And did you actually read the thread yourself?

[LauraAdalena]

I see a lot of people complain about tank DPS or other people's DPS, why look at others numbers? or even your own if you think SAM or Ninja or BRD or DNC or RDM are now ruined? I really fail to see how people are enjoying the game when they complain about how numbers are so low or that their numbers aren't high enough compared to other people.

You can complain about how numbers are without a parser. Also, this is early expansion growing pains, there's gonna be a lot of people going "This needs improvement".

So really if looking that closely at numbers is hurting your enjoyment of the game, why do it? Does your numbers have to be X amount higher than someone else's for you to be having fun? I can understand running one for self improvement but it seems like this obsession over numbers is just ruining the game for people by causing them to be bitter and cynical.

That's fine then, if doing that isn't making you cynical or depressed then you aren't who this thread is addressing =)

Here's the thing. The title and this statement above sounds like you are specifically targeting anyone who does this and saying everyone who does is cynical and depressed. Entirely not true. You're taking comments about class improvement and lumping them in with parsing and then claiming that because you complain about something you're passionate about that you're cynical and depressed. I complain and ask for improvements on numbers for RDM because I love the class. I play it regularly and enjoy the way it plays but wish what I did had more impact. It's not ruined, in fact I really like where it is. It'll get better with the next patch for sure.

I agree with you 100%. I used ACT and spent the vast majority of my time comparing myself to other people and being generally very bitter. I stopped using ACT and my enjoyment of the game has greatly increased.

This sounds more like a you problem than an ACT problem. If comparing yourself to others gets you that bitter, then maybe you are correct in dropping ACT. You'll be happier if you drop it. That's fine.

People like to hide behind its just for self improvement. I am sure there are a select few that use it for this purpose. The vast majority use it for an ego boost. ACT should have been banned from the get go as it was part of the ToS anyway.

Generalization without evideeeeeeeeeence.

I don't have or need to prove anything to you. You stay on your ACT band wagon. That is a good way to be popular on the forums.

Translation: I don't have evidence to back up my case so instead of admitting that I'll just claim I don't need to prove anything to you so I can keep generalizing and generally lumping a majority of people into a group.

What a rebel.

You said it. Oh wait, that was aimed toward him? Wow irony.

[Lersayil]

We get cynical and depressed about people being lazy, and stuff dying slowly. The parser just puts that into numbers. Also helps to direct your gaze of disapproval. Not that I would ever say anything anymore, since feedback is frequently ill received, no matter how polite or mildly / vaugely worded.

[MrKusakabe]

I complain and ask for improvements on numbers for RDM because I love the class. I play it regularly and enjoy the way it plays but wish what I did had more impact. It's not ruined, in fact I really like where it is. It'll get better with the next patch for sure.

Now the question is: Are you using a parser or not? I mean, you "like the profession where it is" (at the bottom of the damage charts) but then you do not like it to be there. Then you love it despite the low damage again. Did you know all that without a parser, or do you need a parser for that?

To me it sounds like you like what you see and play, but then you see the parses and you don't like it anymore. You go back and forth. This is exactly what the OP means. I love Red Mage and I learned from my past decades of gaming that looking up patch notes or very direct numbers ends up in endless "The grass is greener on the other side" sort of thoughts that makes you wanna sort-of quit your profession over that. I do crunch the numbers about my beloved Red Mage too, but I also put other values in there (mostly the green dice in my signature) to even that up, and suddenly, allt he theorycrafting is being shoved into the background.

The "impact" you talk about is right now only measured in damage. And that is not all part of the truth, especially with our rich toolkit and possibilities we Red Mages have. And then, the (parsed) gap is not that high to begin with with the philsophy of RDM in mind. But still people get strange and mad and ask for buffs and nerfs and quit professions over parses instead of just enjoying the game and cope/work with it. It's called "rational game balance" to have charts with a gap. Else: Why pick A over B then? (I am sure you saw the other RDM thread, I won't pull my reasoning over here).

Mr. Lightbringer is pretty right with this assumption in the opening post.

What I was bringing up was merely the fact that Red Mage is not a top damage dealer, which does not requireany third party tool to realize. But here starts the real issue: This is just the profession's numbers. The vast majority use it to rate players, not professions, and now you have a critical mass of what the OP talks about when combined.

I am for sure that, if no numbers would be shown and no emnity bar existed, nobody would know how much people rank and just play and work together instead of monitoring and vote-kicking professioins or players they think underperform. Granted, it'd be a bland gameplay experience, but I am talking more of experiment regarding the mindset then. The obvious slackers still need to be kicked for sure.

Sincerely,

[Vidu]

I think you can kind of see the answer from some replies on this thread. Some people get their knickers in a twist if someone else, even in basic MSQ content, is not playing the way they think and want them to. Since they go in with expectations toward other people, they get upset by the data provided by the parser. Those who are using it for self improvement don't get upset, because they are going in with a mindset of using the data to enrich themselves in some manner.

For people who get depressed by the numbers X or Y class does, they sound like they aren't playing the class for the right reasons. If you love the class, don't let someone else's opinion or expectations make you hate it.

Yeah, because expecting people to perform reasonably well in any content is such a terrible and unreasonable thing to do... I dont want to turn this into another "Stories from the Duty Finder"-thread, but to illustrate what I mean I'll still share this story from yesterdays expert roulette, which was done parser-free btw but still left me quite annoyed, since I had the (obviously totally wrong and missplaced!) expectation that someone who's reached level 80 would know the basics of their class and someone who wasnt new to the dungeon would also be able to perform the simple boss-mechanics Amarout offers.
Not so the WHM in this case: Cure-spam, regen placed on between/during pulls while I'm at fullhealth, MedicaII-spam, I saw excatly one Holy being cast the entire dungeon, I never saw the bubble, he died during the first boss AND during the last boss - during the last boss because despite him spamming Cure the whole time he didnt heal himself up before raid-damage happend - at that point the boss was at 60% and we still made it, thanks to Clemency.
I dont need a parser here to be annoyed that someone whos reached level 80 with their job doesnt seem to have the faintest idea how to play it properly.

This "anti-paser" crowd likes to portrait people who uses parsers as people who'll yell at anyone who isnt pulling at the very least purple parses! But thats simply not true - I cant recall if I've ever seen someone being called out in DF over a parse at all, but I know that anything we share in our FC or amongst friends isnt "Oh, this samurai is only pulling a green parse, what a noob!" but rather "...guys, I have this samurai whos pulling something like 2k... that would have been okay-ish at the end of HW, right?"
In my experience is far more likely to run into someone who is severly underperforming, to a point when it feels to me that one can say hes not meeting the reasonable expectation we should have of someone whos doing max-level content than to meet someone who'll throw a fit over a BLM dealing 14k instead of 17k.

In regards to the job-dps: I love my bard and its the only dps I actually play (RDM only if I have a pretty mage-glamour I wanna show off). To me its the most fun and engaging dps to play, so I'm sticking with it. But based on the needs of a team I'll switch. Its not making me outright depressed (which is to big of a word to throw around in this context anyways), but it will leave me with a heavy sigh.

You guys are welcome to live in your little bubble where everyone is nice and nothing matters, so you dont need to care - about your performance, about your teammate, about job-balance... bursting this bubble is totally possible without parsers, though. You need to close your eyes to way more than ACT.

[SerLuke]

This "anti-paser" crowd likes to portrait people who uses parsers as people who'll yell at anyone who isnt pulling at the very least purple parses! But thats simply not true - I cant recall if I've ever seen someone being called out in DF over a parse at all, but I know that anything we share in our FC or amongst friends isnt "Oh, this samurai is only pulling a green parse, what a noob!" but rather "...guys, I have this samurai whos pulling something like 2k... that would have been okay-ish at the end of HW, right?"
In my experience is far more likely to run into someone who is severly underperforming, to a point when it feels to me that one can say hes not meeting the reasonable expectation we should have of someone whos doing max-level content than to meet someone who'll throw a fit over a BLM dealing 14k instead of 17k.

I'm not anti-parser, I'm anti people using a parser to beat people over the head with it to have some smug sense of superiority in a video game and obsessing over numbers. I've had good experiences with people uses parers, a friend of mine offered to help me clear Titania and Innocence ex even though I wasn't that much interested in them but they helped me with call outs and I got through it. Afterwards they went through some of the stuff they saw in my FF logs and politely showed me some areas why I could improve.

You guys are welcome to live in your little bubble where everyone is nice and nothing matters, so you dont need to care - about your performance, about your teammate, about job-balance... bursting this bubble is totally possible without parsers, though. You need to close your eyes to way more than ACT.

And there it is. I remember a thread here where people were talking about being patient with their teammates in their party because they might be having a bad day, or they might be sick, or maybe they have a disability, many, many people replied saying such people are a burden and shouldn't be playing or should only play with friends, lets be honest its not about you caring about your teammates, its about you getting done asap with a dungeon. I work 8 hours a day, drive typically 45 minutes both ways to and form work, yeah I love when EX roullete only takes 15 minutes but I can deal with a 25 minute run, its not that much of a freaking big deal I'm not that important to go on about people wasting my time.

And here's the thing, I've been the Paladin duoing bosses down from 50%+ with a DPS because the rest of the party wiped, I don't use that as a reason to look down on others though, I feel a sense of accomplishment sure but I'm not going to go on about how the other people were bad or sucked.

[Vidu]

I'm not anti-parser, I'm anti people using a parser to beat people over the head with it to have some smug sense of superiority in a video game and obsessing over numbers. I've had good experiences with people uses parers, a friend of mine offered to help me clear Titania and Innocence ex even though I wasn't that much interested in them but they helped me with call outs and I got through it. Afterwards they went through some of the stuff they saw in my FF logs and politely showed me some areas why I could improve.

I'll repeat myself by saying that this "beating someone over their head with their numbers"-thing is a something I dont ever recall seeing in a random DF-group. I'm not completly sure that it never happend, because I cant recall each and every one of the thousands of runs I did in the past 6 years, but it surely isnt something that happens frequently, at least not in my experience.
You seem way more obsessed with this idea that people use parsers as an ego-boost by putting other people down than people actually obsessing about numbers...

And there it is. I remember a thread here where people were talking about being patient with their teammates in their party because they might be having a bad day, or they might be sick, or maybe they have a disability, many, many people replied saying such people are a burden and shouldn't be playing or should only play with friends, lets be honest its not about you caring about your teammates, its about you getting done asap with a dungeon. I work 8 hours a day, drive typically 45 minutes both ways to and form work, yeah I love when EX roullete only takes 15 minutes but I can deal with a 25 minute run, its not that much of a freaking big deal I'm not that important to go on about people wasting my time.

And here's the thing, I've been the Paladin duoing bosses down from 50%+ with a DPS because the rest of the party wiped, I don't use that as a reason to look down on others though, I feel a sense of accomplishment sure but I'm not going to go on about how the other people were bad or sucked.

You're seeing what you want to see - you made up your mind about people who care about their performance and expect others to do the same. We might have different ideas about what "caring about your teammates" includes - for me it includes that you are trying your best and if that best is far from the reasonable expectation at your level, you show that you're trying to improve. Its not about wasted time for me, its about playing in a way that shows you're respecting your teammates time - thats a difference! I dont care if a dungeon takes 15 minutes or 25 as long as I see everyone put in an appropriate amount of effort, either with their performance or through communication if there is a problem to show that you care about the team. You can call me sensitive here, but it feels kinda "disrespectful" to play this game with people who have an attitude of "I dont need to learn/look up my rotation, I dont need to update my gear and I play how I want" - and in my experience those are far more common than the parser-jerks you're talking about or the people who are severly underperforming due to some sort of illness or disability.
You're reaching for extremes here again, while using those people as some sort of scapegoat - let me just tell you that I've seen quite a few threads from people with disabilities here and they were mostly asking what job would be best for them to play in order to not "hold back" their team - not because they were worried about being called out or kicked, but because they wanted to make sure to contribute as best as they could because they cared about the people they'd be playing with.

I would also like to point out that if you got your impression from the forums, and specially the "Share a DF story"-thread, that this is a place people come to to vent - often right in the moment when they're either still really upset or maybe feeling really good about themself, probably because they've got a reason to feel that way right now. I doubt that most of those people who vent run around with a god-complex. I can assure you that even after sharing that story I'm not having a god-complex and dont look down on people who are still trying to learn - as long as they do that. I am looking down on people who clearly show that they dont care at all - you know, the "You dont pay my sub!"-crowd. But not because of their performance, but because of their attitude.
...okay, I got slightly offtrack here, but what I was trying to say is this: You're probably looking at a glimpse of a persons experience with the game and draw conclusions from there that might simply not be true. People who share parser information in the DF-thread to point out how bad excatly that guy was doing. Someone whos sharing a story like that - and is rightfully annoyed by someones severe underperfomance (again, I want to make clear that I'm not talking about the difference between an orange and a purple parse but between "doing okay for level 80" and "doing okay if this was still level 60... at level 80") - isnt necessarly someone whos shaming that person over their numbers. Its also not necessarly someone whos getting "depressed" over parsers either - and since you brought up disabilities I'd like to mention again how bad that choice of a word there is...

In my experience it has a lot more to do with peoples attitudes and behaviour than just with pure parser-numbers. Those are often just what breaks the camels back.
It has a lot more to do with whos showing they care - and who doesnt. Numbers can be one indicator of that: Bad numbers show that you dont care enough about your performance to put in that little bit of effort to figure out how to play that job properly and by doing so you're accepting that every group you get paired with in DF will "suffer".
And I'm sorry, thats just not an attitude I find acceptable and I'll never understand why people do that. This idea that this is "just a game" always seems like an excuse to me that just doesnt work. Of course its just a game, but why does that prevent you from putting a minimum amount of effort and care into it? I'm rambling right now, because I'm at a total loss... when I spend time with something - be it a game or any other hobby - I care about that and make sure to do it "right" - I've thrown away 30 hours of a cross stitch project because I made an unfixable mistake, because I cared about getting it right instead of just going "well, whatever". So, I'm doing the same when I'm playing the game: Trying to get things right.
So thats why I cant see why its so unreasonable to expect other people to at least try to reach a minimum amount fo "getting it right".
I dont mean to look down on people who are obviously pretty oblivious of what they're doing, but I can absolutly not understand them. I suppose being ignorant of things that effect not only me but other people too is just not something I can relate to or sympathise with.

[CrimsonGunner]

Snip

please try to read what im saying to you with a calm and soothing tone of voice.


first of all calm down and release your rant ok?

second its our hobby and we play it during our spare time for fun so the amount of effort to it could be minimal cause again it is just a game.
that being said i do expect that at a proper level of content that does require certain amount of effort like raids,savages and extremes there should be a certain level of caring.
dungeons and normal trials are fairly low level of effort needed to clear them but i think we can agree there's minimal level and there is absolute 0 effort.
i believe your a person who will see a person under performing/making mistakes will offer him help and advice to improve him and make the gaming experience funner to him and everyone but if we do stumble upon a player that doesn't do anything on purpose(a.k.a leecher) you can always kick him from the party and if not we can always leave and join a different one with the ability to report them as well for ruining the experience.

i believe the OP is probably referring to those who care about big damage numbers and will first stomp at people and laugh at them cause they deemed them worthless because their numbers are a bit lower.
now i am sure most of the community(at least most people i met during my runs) aren't like that and probably used a parser during their runs to just improve themselves but as you mention the thread "share a DF story" and the venting going on does give the expression that those with parser judge and then laugh/dismiss you behind your back after the run was over which is essentially toxic.

as for my view on the point of this thread, i understand the OP point of view since i saw people complain not about the gameplay or mechanics of a job but rather about how much numbers the job does that the discussion of it reaches a point that on borderline obsession with it.
the only one who should care about a damage numbers professionally are DPS classes cause damage is their main thing to do and any discrepancy on it especially a wide gap leads to banning their jobs at parties for higher tier content.
the point of the OP ,i believe he is referring to those people who started taking those parser numbers to a level that it becomes worship and instead of using it to self improve, they start to use it as excuses or as the sole measurement of people and more importantly job and worse roles when that is simply not true(like you said your clemancy saved your party which is more important then damage).
i mean there's a thread about why tanks damage don't reach dps class damage levels, which their complain is seeing those numbers makes them feel bad for playing their role(which i find comparing between roles is really irrelevant) and that its ruining their enjoyment of the role which making you ask yourself why they do it then?

[LauraAdalena]

the question is: Are you using a parser or not?

Here's a better question: Should it matter? If we're only talking about how well classes do in performance it should not.

I mean, you "like the profession where it is" (at the bottom of the damage charts) but then you do not like it to be there. Then you love it despite the low damage again. Did you know all that without a parser, or do you need a parser for that?

To keep this short, since I know I can ramble on, I like it because of how it plays. I "like where it is" in a gameplay sense. It's "fine where it is" because I'm in a raid group and I get clears on a job I really enjoy playing. That's all, there's nothing complicated about it. We'll get to the numbers stuff later in this post, but that's why I love the job. The way it plays.

The "impact" you talk about is right now only measured in damage.

No, Impact is a Red Mage ability.

Jokes aside, no it's not. It's animations as well, The fast and fluid melee combo and Ver Holy and VerFlare feel so nice, and the way your character recoils when the Scorch animation goes off is great. And the way each spell ends with a pose by the character for flourish feels so great and the fast spell-into-instant-cast-spell feels great. And Red Mage was the first class I picked up in Stormblood and I immediately fell in love. After trying it out on a dummy and feeling that melee combo I knew I had to clear PotD and future content on it, and I did. It felt great.

And then, the (parsed) gap is not that high to begin with with the philsophy of RDM in mind. But still people get strange and mad and ask for buffs and nerfs and quit professions over parses instead of just enjoying the game and cope/work with it. It's called "rational game balance" to have charts with a gap. Else: Why pick A over B then? (I am sure you saw the other RDM thread, I won't pull my reasoning over here).

Mr. Lightbringer is pretty right with this assumption in the opening post.

I pick Red Mage over other casters because Black Mage has never been my thing and Summoner is the other one I love so much but with how many people were complaining I felt it would get changes in 5.1 (I was right) and so I decided to stick with what I knew best and what I loved more gameplay-wise. That being said, it is called "balance" to create it with a gap but the gap right now is a little skewed and that's fine. It's just because it's early expansion, this is how most of the jobs looked in Stormblood and it's kind of a growing pains of a new expansion. Asking for buffs isn't because you are displeased with a job, it's because you love it and want to see the best for it. And this is where I'm noticing a sort of misunderstanding between OP and you here.

I'm not asking for RDM to be the top. It is fine if it's not the top because of raise, Embolden, and especially VerCure with how well it can solo content with just VerCure on its own, what we're asking is to make the gap seem a little more reasonable because we love the job. Just because we say we want "buffs' doesn't mean we are furious and hate the class until it gets numbers, if that's the case we'd ask for it to be deleted... and I'm sure as hell not asking for it to get deleted.

Let me state this again. I love the way Red Mage plays. I'd really appreciate some buffs since it makes my decision to not go as a Black Mage not feel as much of a punishment on me as a player for choosing A as my main class over B (A being Red Mage in this case and B being Black Mage). And I don't use mains lightly, if I main a class its because I love the class a serious degree. I even put my favorite glamour on Red Mage! And ever since I made it I've not gone back! It's probably my most played class on its own if they had individual statistics for it, and this was long before it was even doing "well" by Stormblood Standards. Back when people would leave it alone because "it doesn't do enough damage" and stuff.

What I was bringing up was merely the fact that Red Mage is not a top damage dealer, which does not requireany third party tool to realize.

I agree. In fact, I think we both agree here.

But here starts the real issue: This is just the profession's numbers. The vast majority use it to rate players, not professions, and now you have a critical mass of what the OP talks about when combined.

And this is where I understand. I get that people do that. But that's not what OP said. OP was specifically targeting players who either ask for nerfs/buffs to the class or feel depressed/down when they don't do well enough which I, personally, have never heard of. If this was what we were addressing, then I'd continue further. However, this will derail us from the topic too much if I continue from here.

I am for sure that, if no numbers would be shown and no emnity bar existed, nobody would know how much people rank and just play and work together instead of monitoring and vote-kicking professioins or players they think underperform. Granted, it'd be a bland gameplay experience, but I am talking more of experiment regarding the mindset then. The obvious slackers still need to be kicked for sure.

First, emnity bar comment I must adress. The emnity bar is a very disingenuous way of gauging one's DPS. Even before the changes to tanks in 5.0, it was wildly inconsistant on what was actually doing good damage. Bards would be higher because of higher APM (if they were playing well) and constant buffs thanks to songs. So if someone told you you were doing worse than the bard over the emnity bar, you had every right to be upset. That's a completely unfair comparison regardless of how well you're doing since a good bard would always be 2. And now its even moreso because it's just numbers and a single Red Mage raise can immediately switch them to being #2 or 3.

Second, we have two very hard extremes that could happen without a way of knowing how well we are doing (let's just assume that striking dummies don't exist either just to be safe), the first extreme are people who watch cast bars and animations doggedly to make sure your rotation is perfect and doing that with every player (and yes, these people already exist. As someone who leveled every class just to find out what all the animations look like so I can help newer people who might be struggling at the game I know there must be people even worse than I who do this in raids and tell people to shape up or gtfo if they don't.) Or, we have so little feedback each group has no way of knowing who is messing up so they just kick whatever the unpleasant jobs are or people that disagree with them without ever knowing they are the ones who are bad or etc if we hit a DPS wall at all. And both are very hard extremes. I'm not saying that parsing is a great thing, or saying that people who harass based off of parses are good (I'd rather kick them from parties) but just figuring out how to do a good rotation and why is a lot easier when you have something telling you how much damage you are doing in the end. Even if it's just a dummy in Kholusia you practice on every now and then.

Let me end this with a TL;DR
I chose RDM because of style and gameplay
Wanting a class you like playing as to do better compared to other classes is not a bad thing and it's not disliking or being bitter about it, it's showing you love it.
Despite all that is said both positive and negative, it's what gives us our rotations and makes it so we can play better than what we have now now that we have rotations and openers and makes the game slightly more interesting.

I'm sorry for the long post, I try not to make long posts like this but this feels like it had a lot I needed to address int his post since it was quoting me.

[Vidu]

please try to read what im saying to you with a calm and soothing tone of voice.

first of all calm down and release your rant ok?

second its our hobby and we play it during our spare time for fun so the amount of effort to it could be minimal cause again it is just a game.
that being said i do expect that at a proper level of content that does require certain amount of effort like raids,savages and extremes there should be a certain level of caring.
dungeons and normal trials are fairly low level of effort needed to clear them but i think we can agree there's minimal level and there is absolute 0 effort.
i believe your a person who will see a person under performing/making mistakes will offer him help and advice to improve him and make the gaming experience funner to him and everyone but if we do stumble upon a player that doesn't do anything on purpose(a.k.a leecher) you can always kick him from the party and if not we can always leave and join a different one with the ability to report them as well for ruining the experience.

i believe the OP is probably referring to those who care about big damage numbers and will first stomp at people and laugh at them cause they deemed them worthless because their numbers are a bit lower.
now i am sure most of the community(at least most people i met during my runs) aren't like that and probably used a parser during their runs to just improve themselves but as you mention the thread "share a DF story" and the venting going on does give the expression that those with parser judge and then laugh/dismiss you behind your back after the run was over which is essentially toxic.

as for my view on the point of this thread, i understand the OP point of view since i saw people complain not about the gameplay or mechanics of a job but rather about how much numbers the job does that the discussion of it reaches a point that on borderline obsession with it.
the only one who should care about a damage numbers professionally are DPS classes cause damage is their main thing to do and any discrepancy on it especially a wide gap leads to banning their jobs at parties for higher tier content.
the point of the OP ,i believe he is referring to those people who started taking those parser numbers to a level that it becomes worship and instead of using it to self improve, they start to use it as excuses or as the sole measurement of people and more importantly job and worse roles when that is simply not true(like you said your clemancy saved your party which is more important then damage).
i mean there's a thread about why tanks damage don't reach dps class damage levels, which their complain is seeing those numbers makes them feel bad for playing their role(which i find comparing between roles is really irrelevant) and that its ruining their enjoyment of the role which making you ask yourself why they do it then?

I'll pass on your patronising tone, since I am feeling calm enough, thank you very much.

You seem to have missed a few important points here, though:
Yes, it is just a game but since its a game you're playing with other people a certain amount of consideration for them and therefor a certain amount of effort should be expected. I'm not sure if you actually meant that but "0 effort" isnt even okay for normal dungeons - since 0 effort would kinda be just standing at the entrance and moving your character every couple of minutes to avoid the auto-kick.
If we put effort on a scale from 0-10 with 10 being Savage/Ultimate level and 0 standing at a dungeon entrance, I'd expect something between 5 and 7 from your average DF-person in an expert and something from 4 to 6 during leveling runs (I'll drop to a 3 for a totally new person in the first few dungeons). That includes things like: knowing when to AoE and when to single target and how to make use of your full toolkit. A healer can probably heal someone through a dungeon by only spamming their very first healing spell, the group will still finish the dungeon, but that healer wasnt doing a level-appropriate job in most cases.
Vote kicking or leaving arent always feasible options and we all know how well even polite and friendly advice works with a lot of people. So often the best option for people is to grumble a little, finish the run and then rant about it somewhere, which might lead to a wrong impression of how much they actually care about numbers.

Thats why I'm assuming that the OP is blowing this way out of proportion - maybe I'm reading undertones here that arent there and if so, I apologise. But the way this sounded to me is if this is a widespread problem, affeting a majority of the population instead of just a niche-clientel. Pair this with the anti-parser-stance you'll find quite often here and you'll end up with the impression that this isnt a genuie question out of curiosity, but a stealthy anti-parser-thread. Again, if thats only me seeing things that arent there, I apologise. (I still feel that a term like "depressed", thats actually describing a mental illness, shouldnt be used so lighthearted)
I'll also repeat that in my opinion the problem often arent the numbers but the reason for the numbers, aka underperforming players, that cause the frustration - and that I've seen far more severly underperforming people in my time with the game than people rubbing those numbers in someones face.

Which kinda brings me to my third point, which might be a real answer to the question at hand - if it was made in the good faith of trying to understand why someones enjoying something you personally arent: As pointed out correctly this is a game that we all play for fun. "Fun" can mean something different to each and everyone of us, though and achieving something thats "fun" to you can be paired with a certain hardship or even cause other people to not understand you.
Glamour for example is fun to many people. Personally I'll never understand those who dress their catgirls in super sexy outfits, but if thats what they enjoy, who am I to question that? I'll also never understand people who Fantasia every other week or spend hours with Jandelaine (seriously, there are better looking Elezen). But thats fine, if that what brings them joy in the end - even if its paired with the frustration that Au Ra horns are bound to their faces.
To me caring about your numbers above all else is kinda in the same court: For some people seeing those big numbers is whats most fun to them, so they'll pick a job they can achieve that with even if it might not be their favorite job to play - compromisse, we all make them (To refer back to my glamour-example: I ultimatly picked FemRoe as race, because I could achieve whats most important to me about character apperance - long hairstyles - with that race. Now I actually love everything about her, but I made the switch because of that one thing).
People look and care about their numbers because ultimatly thats what brings them joy and makes them enjoy the game, even if the process to get there is a painful one - and even if they only/mostly share the painful experiences they had on that way.

So, to actually answer the OPs question, I'll once again doubt the assumption that in the end (most) people are only getting cynical and depressed about seeing those numbers and instead get a substantial amount of their enjoyment from the game by pushing themself here. Its not something I personally enjoy and if you want an answer from someone who does, I'd advice to create a new thread thats phrased a bit differently (for example by not assuming that someone whos looking at their numbers and cares about them must suffer from a mental illness) and hear from people why they enjoy that so much if you cant wrap your head around that (which is totally fine, btw - not everyone needs to understand why people might enjoy something different from what they enjoy).