How do you think Yoshida would react to the following hypothetical regarding parsing?

[Vnolan]

Have a hissy fit and punish everyone for it, as usual.

Gave me an idea lol. If SE is so against numbers, why not remove them and have the damage show up as "Good", "Great" (target hit while def is nerfed or player dmg is buffed) and "Poor" (target has def buffed or player has dmg nerfed)?

By 'anything wrong' you of course mean the bit that had a 40 minute long lecture about the usage of third party tools in the latest live letter, right? And how they're against the terms of service? All that jazz?

I mean morally wrong. Planned event or not, those players would still be parsing and unlike most other prohibited activities, parsing has no effect on other players, the game's code or game balance.

To be honest, until they start banning streamers they observe using parsers or mods that provide advantages, that lecture can be ignored.

i'd love to see all those people get reported and given suspensions.

Why? It would just be numbers. Would be interesting to see what percentage of parses would be reported or if there would be a surge in requests for a parser by those previously unaware of their performance.

It'd be a pretty interesting experiment to see unfold, since it's the sort of thing that would probably be picked up by the gaming media. Which, in turn, would cause the reaction to be scrutinised very carefully. Rival MMO's could also potentially exploit the situation for their own game by highlighting that they allow for the use of certain mods, too.

Also something to consider. Didn't another company receive bad press for enforcing their ToS against activity that was not morally wrong and did not affect the game's code or balance? Not the same by any means, but being against the ToS doesn't automatically make the company right (that's not to say they aren't allowed to enforce their ToS).

What is the purpose of that question exactly ?

Generating discussion.

If you wanna go public about using a third party system so that you can show your numbers to the world, I don't feel sorry if you're thrown a ban hammer. Game Over

In the hypothetical, posting the party's parse in chat would let the average player know about parsing and what knowledge it can provide. There would be no comments about the numbers being bad or good, so the harassment potential can be ignored.

Uploading the logs to a site, which SE has said nothing about, shows the world. Funny thing, isn't it? Letting the party know how much they did with no comments is bad, but letting everyone else but the party know is perfectly fine.