What is parsing?

[HyoMinPark]

I wonder what made parsing so popular in FFXIV. Surely lack of dps meters is to avoid bullying and gameplay compelling. And the increase demand in popularity is a result to off-FFXIV gamers such as WoW gamer's habits leaking into FFXIV? I hope not.
I understand the need for it, I am just concerned with the toxicity that gets generated from it :/

Likely because current encounter design focuses on damage and not much else.

There’s no such thing as debuffing the bosses anymore. Main stat debuffs like old Rage of Halone’s STR down and Dragon Kick/OG Delirium’s INT down were removed going into 4.0. DoTs are slowly being consolidated where they aren’t being outright removed. Enmity management died with 5.0. Healing requirements outside of early progression are not that strict. Even in the hardest content in the game, healers don’t spend 50% of their time healing. Crowd control hasn’t been an active thing in forever. Nowadays you have the occasional interrupt in a fight that is a must, but they aren’t that common.

In terms of design, gimmicks are few and far between. Most are not hard to grasp. Encounters are incredibly scripted. Some fights have some randomness to things like debuffs your character can get, but mechanically, the fights never deviate. Occasionally, you’ll have X mechanic pattern before Y mechanic pattern, but that’s not a normal thing.

A lot of emphasis is placed on pure damage. The developers have removed many of the other nuances from combat.


As for toxicity and gameplay compelling, that exists with or without a parser. It’s not tied exclusively to parser usage. You see it all the time in casual content where parsers aren’t necessary (and likely aren’t being used at all) in in the “slow pulls” versus “wall-to-wall pulls”/“dungeon speedrun” arguments. Somewhere, someone is being “toxic” and “forcing a playstyle” onto another person. Usually it’s the people who want to do small pulls/not rush the dungeon that claim “toxic speed runners” are forcing them to go too fast, but not always. That’s just the more often seen scenario that gets posted here.

[Katie_Kitty]

I wonder what made parsing so popular in FFXIV. Surely lack of dps meters is to avoid bullying and gameplay compelling. And the increase demand in popularity is a result to off-FFXIV gamers such as WoW gamer's habits leaking into FFXIV? I hope not.
I understand the need for it, I am just concerned with the toxicity that gets generated from it :/

That's not even remotely correct.

The playerbase of this game has a huge problem, they treat WoW like some boogeyman that is the cause of all the game's problems. That's simply not the case. And, in any case, there's nothing toxic about parsing. I recommend forming your own opinions instead of simply adopting the irrational nonsense you get from the people in this game about parsing and WoW.

[Naaura]

That's not even remotely correct.

The playerbase of this game has a huge problem, they treat WoW like some boogeyman that is the cause of all the game's problems. That's simply not the case. And, in any case, there's nothing toxic about parsing. I recommend forming your own opinions instead of simply adopting the irrational nonsense you get from the people in this game about parsing and WoW.

I am aware, that's why I made a question because I am not entirely sure. But a lot of people I know who were ex-WoW gamers are obsessed with dps meters and foam that they cant have it in FFXIV. It's just a pattern I picked up and wondered if was the case.

[Katie_Kitty]

Lots of haters here. It's for people who like seeing numbers, simple as that.

[FusionSamurai]

I never denied that the players who make the guides use parsers. Never denied it isn't helpful for new players etc. who maybe want to get into the endgame quick buy boosters and need to learn quick how to perform well.

But sorry to burst your bubble, the game is really straight forward when it comes to rotations. There isn't any variables like for example on world of warcraft where you can use differend specs or talents and all that stuff. In XIV there is one fix rotation made by the developers, there is one way how a job is meant to be played. And you don't need a guide to tell you that especially if you play from lvl 1 up to max level where you can get used with every new action to said action and new combo chains they give you.

And it still doesn't answer the question, how do you guys (and gurls) think they did it before parsers and guides? Guess fellas never cleared stuff before these people descended from the heavens to bless us with their wisdom cause we can't use our brains. Guess back then in ARR all our clears were just pure luck, especially when the game came fresh out. Weird.

I personally loved when the game explained that I needed to pool Ninki for trick. Oh, and the part about double raiton in trick was neat! Oh, I loved when the game told me that selene/eos had 64% of our scaling. Or when it told Me that DRK's pet scales better in potency than the player.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

After reading through your posts - I am left with the very strong feeling that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I even think that they might be just trolling, which I certainly hope not. We already have plenty of those.
/shrug

[Ariel_Valmont]

and yet, that's something that a concerning amount of players can't seem to do

A parser isn’t going to help them with that.

[Rinhi]

A parser isn’t going to help them with that.

a (hypothetical and "official" parser) would show them - and everyone else in the party - that they were the ones playing bad, though
it would show players that their damage is bad and that they'd need to improve it, it'd show arrogant players that boast about their insane damage - while they're doing less than the two healers - that they're in fact dragging everyone else down and hopefully make them rethink their behaviour and get them to improve their performance

[SturmChurro]

they're in fact dragging everyone else down and hopefully make them rethink their behaviour and get them to improve their performance

Yeah, there's a low chance of that happening. I just don't see it, with the majority of these players.

[Ariel_Valmont]

It’s interesting how a majority of folk who have harsh opinions against parsers and their general use are people who have either no experience in higher tier content or people who have deep, deep gray parses to show off.

Higher tier content isn’t hard, it just takes a group of people and time.