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

[Goji1639]

Now you're learning lol.



And now you're resorting to strawmanning. No where did I say that SE doesn't care about parsers nor did I say parsers are legal. All I said was that Yoshi P is OK with people using them as long as they don't talk about it in-game or abuse others with it, which requires you to prove that they did that in-game. And in that case, they would ban the violating player. So I still don't see the signs of parsers being threatened as you stated earlier.

I never disagreed that Yoshi said they're OK if you don't talk about them, but they're still not legal to use. A lot of people want them to be legal, and don't want to see any pushback on their current level of legality. That's why they attack people who have opinions on parsers that could be interpreted as pushback.

[odintius]

You don't seem to know that the reason they're not hunting people down for them is because Yoshi P allowed it.

May allow it but just not enough too officially accept it to the public a middle ground approach when I look at it. /Shrugs not against paser nothing really will change a player performance if they don't care to begin with.

[Rilifane]

I never disagreed that Yoshi said they're OK if you don't talk about them, but they're still not legal to use. A lot of people want them to be legal, and don't want to see any pushback on their current level of legality. That's why they attack people who have opinions on parsers that could be interpreted as pushback.

It's completely understandable that they get defensive.
It's not even legal to admit that you're using one, even if you're not harassing others with it. So the ToS are already way more in favor of those against parsers then those for parsers. But more difficult content relies on having some sort of feedback of your own and the raid's performance while the game itself gives none except for "congrats, you wiped on enrage".
Seeing how people don't even want that tiny bit of grey area parser using left sounds nitpicky and bitter.
They are not fun for you and others who are of the same mind - not having any sort of feedback from the game is not fun for me and others who tackle more difficult content.
Whose fun is more important?
Right now I'd say SE found a good middle-ground with slight favor for those against them.

[Alucard135]

I never disagreed that Yoshi said they're OK if you don't talk about them, but they're still not legal to use. A lot of people want them to be legal, and don't want to see any pushback on their current level of legality. That's why they attack people who have opinions on parsers that could be interpreted as pushback.

You mean "A lot of raiders". Because the raiding community is not as large as the entire FFXIV community according to LuckyBancho's census. And personally, I'm against them being legal unless if they're for high end content or training dummies. And whenever Yoshi P was asked about making in-game parsers, he says "no". So it is highly unlikely that we would see an official parser in-game. so I'm not sure why you think people are attacking others of different opinions because they think it's going to affect them getting an official parser when the most likely scenario is that they won't get one.

May allow it but just not enough too officially accept it to the public a middle ground approach when I look at it. /Shrugs not against paser nothing really will change a player performance if they don't care to begin with.

Of course it's not official nor legal to use. His stance is "use it but don't talk about it or abuse others with it".

[Goji1639]

It's completely understandable that they get defensive.
It's not even legal to admit that you're using one, even if you're not harassing others with it. So the ToS are already way more in favor of those against parsers then those for parsers. But more difficult content relies on having some sort of feedback of your own and the raid's performance while the game itself gives none except for "congrats, you wiped on enrage".
Seeing how people don't even want that tiny bit of grey area parser using left sounds nitpicky and bitter.
They are not fun for you and others who are of the same mind - not having any sort of feedback from the game is not fun for me and others who tackle more difficult content.
Whose fun is more important?
Right now I'd say SE found a good middle-ground with slight favor for those against them.

Like I said, I really have no issue with them being used in end-game content to help beat enrage timers. Most of the people against parsers are the ones who see them in leveling or MSQ content, and there parsers generally end up being used to beat up on new players. I think the disconnect is that the pro and anti parser people are generally talking about completely different content when giving their opinions of parsers.

I think there's likely a better answer than the current setup, where they're illegal but only reactively punished.

Either way, getting defensive and attacking people on forums who have a different take on parsers than you isn't helping anyone. If anything it just reinforces the idea that parsers are toxic, and breed toxic attitudes.

[Chalbee]

I can somewhat understand OP's question, and I'll engage in good faith because I immediately thought of someone who might fit the bill.

I know someone who plays BLM. He only recently started doing savage with a static made up mostly of people in our FC. It was supposed to be a "just for fun, let's see how we do" type thing. Two of the people in the group are also in a different "hardcore" static, and their gameplay is at a pretty high level. They use a parser, and so my BLM friend started using it too because he wants to work toward that level. Fine! Good luck! But since he started using the parser, all he talks about are his numbers and how he's consistently behind top tier BLMs. He obsesses about it, tweets about it, talks about in in game etc. A few weeks ago he basically had a small breakdown about it because he isn't able to close the gap. IMO, he's a person who really shouldn't be using a parser because it's clearly making the game less fun for him.

As for the larger question of parsers in general, pretty much all there is to say has been said. For some people, seeing performance and tracking improvement are important. For others it is not. People using parsers should not affect your own enjoyment of the game, and if using one yourself is making the game less enjoyable, just stop! As for myself, I know I'm not pushing huge numbers, but I also don't care. It's not the parser's fault! I've had exactly one person ever tell me that my DPS was "bad" and I did not report them or respond with a bad attitude. I took a screenshot of their hideous glamour, and me and my friends roasted them for a good ten minutes. Them "informing me" about being "bad" had no effect on me because 1) I already know and 2) Even if it were new information, my time is limited and I'm not about to put much time into optimizing my gameplay because I've reached a level where I am "good enough" to consistently clear the content I like to do.

[Lambdafish]

I always like to roll out this video in topics like this:

https://youtu.be/3-WXYg-S05U (6:04)

FYI, the reason that 3rd party tools are outright banned and not allowed to be talked about is because they don't want to encourage a disparity between PC and PS4 players, the reason they don't want to add an in-game parser is because they don't want to take a stance on requiring high numbers in their easymode game.

Remember this is the same Dev team that were paranoid that resetting cooldowns on wipe would be highly exploited, and that setting an ilvl for levelling dungeons wasnt feasible. Yoshi P knows the value of parsers, and the rules are there to cover the Dev teams ass, not right a wrong.

I imagine this applies to things like client side glamour mods as well.

[Lambdafish]

I never disagreed that Yoshi said they're OK if you don't talk about them, but they're still not legal to use. A lot of people want them to be legal, and don't want to see any pushback on their current level of legality. That's why they attack people who have opinions on parsers that could be interpreted as pushback.

Many many people (you have seen a lot of them in this thread already) see this a different way. You seem to not have raided so have no context on how important and useful, and fun a parser can be in raid. FFLogs itself has added so many extra layers of metagaming to the endgame scene that I would go as far to say that some people wouldn't raid if it didn't exist. And thats on top of tools like FFXIV analyser that use your parse to tell you where you are going wrong in your rotation, which I know for a fact has helped people fix problems they didn't know existed (in itself fixing a fundamental problem this game has).

You say that people who are pro parser are attacking people who are anti parser when you have literally made a thread that does nothing but question the pro-parser crowd and call them bitter and cynical for using one, you then go onto have an attitude of sheer ignorance and an unwillingness to listen to why people disagree with you, and constantly flip flopping on "what you meant". Your thread alone shows that its the parser crowd who gets attacked by the anti-parser crowd because occasionally someone misuses one, and we are all labelled as villains.

So lets make it easy for you, the argument of someone who is pro-parser is "Parsers help understand my job better, adds more depth to the game, and allow me to push myself to a higher level of play. Harassment is still bad". Why do you have a problem with someone who holds this view?

[Saintly]

As long as we are allowed to kick those who don't pull their weight, i don't mind the current state.

If anything i'd expect them to finally give in and allow parser's rather than take a hard stance and forbid them.
As long as they release sav/ult content i doubt that they'll do anything that might piss off PC raiders.

[Goji1639]

Many many people (you have seen a lot of them in this thread already) see this a different way. You seem to not have raided so have no context on how important and useful, and fun a parser can be in raid. FFLogs itself has added so many extra layers of metagaming to the endgame scene that I would go as far to say that some people wouldn't raid if it didn't exist. And thats on top of tools like FFXIV analyser that use your parse to tell you where you are going wrong in your rotation, which I know for a fact has helped people fix problems they didn't know existed (in itself fixing a fundamental problem this game has).

You say that people who are pro parser are attacking people who are anti parser when you have literally made a thread that does nothing but question the pro-parser crowd and call them bitter and cynical for using one, you then go onto have an attitude of sheer ignorance and an unwillingness to listen to why people disagree with you, and constantly flip flopping on "what you meant". Your thread alone shows that its the parser crowd who gets attacked by the anti-parser crowd because occasionally someone misuses one, and we are all labelled as villains.

So lets make it easy for you, the argument of someone who is pro-parser is "Parsers help understand my job better, adds more depth to the game, and allow me to push myself to a higher level of play. Harassment is still bad". Why do you have a problem with someone who holds this view?

My thread was asking to ban parsers in leveling and MSQ content. My examples were people abusing parsers in MSQ and leveling content.

The people who decided they needed to attack in that thread were attacking me simply because I was anti-parser. So, let me make this easy for you... The pro-parser side of this basically attacks anyone who speaks up against parsers, regardless of context. Their attitudes definitely do a lot to support the idea that parsers create a toxic community.

I don't mind parsers existing for end-game raiding to help with enrage, but you people are really your own worst enemies on this issue. When you see an anti-parser sentiment being posted just take a Xanax, count to 10 and try to understand where the person is coming from before you go into blind panic attack mode.