Stowaways in High-End Content?

[Vidu]

I don't know maybe your parse is better then mine but I have tried and failed on literally every attempt to even join new static parties because they are all looking for act. I've never had a problem with parser stuff in theory but ACT specifically is a very flawed program that is being over relied on and used in ways that aren't actually representative of anything people are looking for. It has grown rampant in this community and it shouldn't not just out of principle but out of all the flaws it has to not be relied on.

You say I could make a party but if one has problems joining any statics because of act what is the likelihood anyone would stay or respect a party you made either. People in this community use act almost as a social credit system, defining your quality as a person and a player and often just the percentage. Not 'if' you cleared or how much you did, but how well you did even if most people now are probably spending hours a day over-killing their bosses in parse parties to climb in % and dilute it for everyone else who didn't.

Biggest problem with act is that it doesn't bracket players when considering parse %.. based on ilvl I know wow at least does with its act.. That means someone who enters savage late, even if they did their job perfectly and with perfect uptime will get a stunted parse when the pool for their class is full of full bis savage geared players who have been pumping the same boss every day for the last month. That new player who just got their clear will never have a % as good as the bis players even if they performed exactly the same.

Quite frankly: I dont know how my parse looks like. I'm sure it could be better.

I'm raiding with a group of friends who care more about having fun together (we usually try to go as blind as possible into Savage fights and only look at guides when we get fed up with mechanics) than about parses or group-meta. Some of these people I've met during ARR while clearing Leviathan EX and added the nice (and semi-competent) ones to a linkshell for that purpose. Over the years, said linkshell grew, by now most of us are also in the same FC - and in a very casual static.
It might take a while to build a community like that, but that is most certainly an option - if one can look past raw numbers.

You claim that you have trouble finding groups because no one does that [=looking past numbers] - but from your post it sounds a lot like that "no one" includes" you. You want the gates to just close behind you, to set a bar you know you can reach right now - and then raise it to make others jump higher.
ACT is not your problem, the way you play is your problem - you got an analysis what you can do to improve, ACT just makes that easier to figure out. So... improve? Thats what you wanted from everyone else, isnt it? To only join parties once they've imrpoved enough to pass your standards?

[ItMe]

Considering even in Savage people not carrying their weight can get a full on clear, allowing "stowaways" into farm parties... I'm not sure the system you propose would have too much of an impact.

[ArchlordPie]

How do you even define progression points? Like, let's take P2S for example. There's a mechanic that most people are referring to as "Limit Cut" (which isn't its actual name, thanks PF...) that tends to be the biggest wall in the fight. How do you define whether or not someone's progressed past Limit Cut?

Have you progressed past Limit Cut if you're a PLD who popped Hallowed Ground and stood off to the side while the entire rest of the party ran around like headless chickens and got deleted?

Have you progressed past Limit Cut if most of the party died to it but there was a SMN still up who raised a healer who LB3'd and the party made it to enrage on that pull?

Likewise, have you not progressed past Limit Cut if you were slightly out of position and got clipped by something and killed while the rest of the party survived because all 8 people involved know the strat and were (roughly) in the right spots?

Progression is a very vague concept. We want it to mean "I understand every mechanic prior to X point in the fight and am capable of consistently executing all of them correctly." But there isn't really a way to define that in terms the game would understand without introducing other room for error. Even "first death = that's the prog point for the whole party" fails when someone derps on an early mechanic and the party hits enrage with only that death, because the party most certainly has progressed past that early mechanic.

I can tell you from experience that PF Hell is a real place and it sucks, and I definitely agree with you that having some better way to filter people than just listing your prog point in the description and praying you get 7 people at or after that point would be a massive help, but I just don't see it being feasible.

[JamieRose]

I don't think that will matter. People in PF will kill the party rather than suffer someone who is still having trouble with mechs, regardless of whether they have cleared or not.

That's just how screwed up PF is. They should rename it to Toxic Finder.

[iVolke]

I don't think that will matter. People in PF will kill the party rather than suffer someone who is still having trouble with mechs, regardless of whether they have cleared or not.

That's just how screwed up PF is. They should rename it to Toxic Finder.

???

If you're joining clear/farm parties when you don't have an understanding of the whole fight, regardless if you've cleared or not, people have the right to be annoyed with you.

You should be joining learning parties and even then, I rarely see anyone get roasted in those, since they're learning parties.

What are you considering "toxicity"? Because the strict ToS allows for none of that in chat. "Toxic Finder" comes off as overdramatic. The most toxic you can get in this game is passive-aggressiveness, yet even that somehow manages to make some people break down...

I wish I could see some of you 25 seconds in a Black Ops 1 lobby where everyone is mic'd up. For science.

[JamieRose]

???

If you're joining clear/farm parties when you don't have an understanding of the whole fight, regardless if you've cleared or not, people have the right to be annoyed with you.

You should be joining learning parties and even then, I rarely see anyone get roasted in those, since they're learning parties.

What are you considering "toxicity"? Because the strict ToS allows for none of that in chat. "Toxic Finder" comes off as overdramatic. The most toxic you can get in this game is passive-aggressiveness, yet even that somehow manages to make some people break down...

I wish I could see some of you 25 seconds in a Black Ops 1 lobby where everyone is mic'd up. For science.

I got dragged into PUBG, close enough. It still doesn't make people cursing me out any less toxic because they aren't dropping N-Bombs.

[iVolke]

I got dragged into PUBG, close enough. It still doesn't make people cursing me out any less toxic because they aren't dropping N-Bombs.

I don't believe you that you're getting cursed out in this game, honestly. ToS is too strict, so you could easily report them. Most people don't risk their accounts like that. How many posts in the "Horror stories from DF" threads are people getting randomly cursed out? Stop exaggerating.

There's no way you're getting cursed out in every single PF. If you are, then let's consider the common denominator.

I'm not saying there isn't toxicity. I'm saying that it doesn't take the usual form of blatant insults like in other games.

[JamieRose]

I don't believe you that you're getting cursed out in this game, honestly. ToS is too strict, so you could easily report them. Most people don't risk their accounts like that. How many posts in the "Horror stories from DF" threads are people getting randomly cursed out? Stop exaggerating.

There's no way you're getting cursed out in every single PF. If you are, then let's consider the common denominator.

I'm not saying there isn't toxicity. I'm saying that it doesn't take the usual form of blatant insults like in other games.

Another case of "It never happened to me, so it must have never happened to you."

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother...

[HemlockEvergreen]

I don't think that will matter. People in PF will kill the party rather than suffer someone who is still having trouble with mechs, regardless of whether they have cleared or not.

That's just how screwed up PF is. They should rename it to Toxic Finder.

No one should have to "suffer someone who is still having trouble with the mechs" when that person joined an enrage prog party and keeps messing up on the first two minutes. Wasting other people's time like this is incredibly disrespectful.

[Colt47]

Stepping into savage in this game takes effort and the PF is sort of the fallback in my mind when someone can't get a set group to come together. The problem with the PF is just that people have different commitment levels to the savage content, and the reality is that unfortunately, those with the largest sums of time on hand to dedicate to savage are the real benefactors of the PF.

This is why so many true statics are more so bending towards midcore or casual play. And to be frank there's just not enough people building statics right now to satiate the sheer volume of players wanting to participate.