So this game has dps checks but we can't talk about our dps in game?

[Sylve]

I think that allowing people to use it but taking action against those using it to harass is an excellent compromise...

Uhhh. You know this is what they're doing as of now, right?

You will not be banned if you install a parser and check your numbers.
You WILL be banned if you speak up in game proclaiming that you have a parser running or harrass players with that information.

Its honestly the best compromise they can do.
The moment they make numbers available in an official capacity, players use it to harrass.

The devs don't want a player focus on raw numbers. Having those numbers shoved in your face in the UI is not useful anywhere outside of Savage.

The way it is right now, You can parse if you want to. There are communities in game that don't report each other for using or discussing parse numbers in their private channels.
The only way the devs can police the use of a parser to stop harrassment is to make them technically illegal.

The system works perfectly find as it is right now. Console players just need to find a friend or FC/LS to have the numbers revealed to them via discord.

What if your group's dps is just too low to clear even when you dont get damage downs or deaths? How do you plan on figuring out why you didnt clear then?

If you hit enrage, the total party DPS is too low.
Duty Recorder exists
Simple screen recordings exist.

DPS comes from item level combined with executing your rotation.
If your item level is appropriate for the content, but the team still hits enrage, the problem is your rotation.
SOmething as simple as aligning raid buffs all the way to just not missing GCDs while dealing with mechanics.

A simple video from your perspective to inspect (Duty Recorder etc) your play is enough to identify areas you can improve.
Things you miss in the moment can be seen when looking back on a video. ANd those things you identify as problem areas can be improved upon.

All a parser will do is tell you what the Enrage already told you. Not enough damage.

[Michieltjuhh]

Having those numbers shoved in your face in the UI is not useful anywhere outside of Savage.

So.. have it be available through the game once you enter high-end content? Remove the taboo of talking about it during high-end content?

The system works perfectly find as it is right now.

No. It does not. It has been explained plenty of times in this thread why it does not, and you yourself, within 9 lines of text, contradicted this already.

Duty Recorder exists
Simple screen recordings exist.

Self-improvement only, and even then it's merely speculation, since you don't actually know whether what you're doing is correct or not without a summary of total damage dealt, compared to others.

A simple video from your perspective to inspect (Duty Recorder etc) your play is enough to identify areas you can improve.
Things you miss in the moment can be seen when looking back on a video. ANd those things you identify as problem areas can be improved upon.

Ah yes, the good old "if you improve yourself, the 7 other players in your raid will automatically improve as well, I promise!" logic. What about the scenario where my personal play is pitch perfect and yet we're hitting enrage?

All a parser will do is tell you what the Enrage already told you. Not enough damage.

Yep. You know the beautiful part of it? It tells you WHERE that damage is missing. Since, you know, it's not a single player game, even if you seem to think it is.

[Rolder50]

All a parser will do is tell you what the Enrage already told you. Not enough damage.

Incorrect. You can upload the parse to XIV Analysis and it can look at your log and tell you exactly what you are doing wrong. For example, it will show you incorrect weaves, missed combos, unspent resources, cooldowns left inactive for too long, etc etc.

[Saraide]

Uhhh. You know this is what they're doing as of now, right?

You will not be banned if you install a parser and check your numbers.
You WILL be banned if you speak up in game proclaiming that you have a parser running or harrass players with that information.

Its honestly the best compromise they can do.
The moment they make numbers available in an official capacity, players use it to harrass.

The devs don't want a player focus on raw numbers. Having those numbers shoved in your face in the UI is not useful anywhere outside of Savage.

The way it is right now, You can parse if you want to. There are communities in game that don't report each other for using or discussing parse numbers in their private channels.
The only way the devs can police the use of a parser to stop harrassment is to make them technically illegal.

The system works perfectly find as it is right now. Console players just need to find a friend or FC/LS to have the numbers revealed to them via discord.



If you hit enrage, the total party DPS is too low.
Duty Recorder exists
Simple screen recordings exist.

DPS comes from item level combined with executing your rotation.
If your item level is appropriate for the content, but the team still hits enrage, the problem is your rotation.
SOmething as simple as aligning raid buffs all the way to just not missing GCDs while dealing with mechanics.

A simple video from your perspective to inspect (Duty Recorder etc) your play is enough to identify areas you can improve.
Things you miss in the moment can be seen when looking back on a video. ANd those things you identify as problem areas can be improved upon.

All a parser will do is tell you what the Enrage already told you. Not enough damage.

So you would record the entire fight and then specifically look at each player's rotation to see if they are doing a good rotation and aligning buffs correctly? You are describing a parser.

[Impulsikk]

Without parses/FF14 analysis, I wouldn't have known I was playing Dragoon wrong when I got to Savage. I discovered I wasn't being effective with timing my off-GCD's in my Lange Charge buff window, and was overcapping my GCD with double/triple weaves. Or that my Chaos thrust was falling off too soon and only had 70% uptime. It's a useful tool for getting better. It doesn't really make sense why Square Enix tunes their fights to have a DPS check, but doesn't allow groups to hold people accountable for their DPS. Are groups supposed to just bang their head on the boss until it falls hoping the bad player just discovers that he was playing wrong randomly?

[Packetdancer]

Are groups supposed to just bang their head on the boss until it falls hoping the bad player just discovers that he was playing wrong randomly?

I still think they could solve the problem by having a tool akin to XIVanalysis, but not (strictly speaking) a damage meter in the normal sense.

Because they are unfortunately most likely right that some people would go "Look, if the developers didn't want me to tell the black mage he's so bad at this game he should do us all a favor and go step into traffic, the devs wouldn't have let the game tell me just how much the black mage sucks at his job!" Adding an ACT-style damage meter into the game would almost certainly measurably increase toxicity, not because the damage meter itself is toxic but because some players would view the existence of an official parser as dev-granted permission to be complete jerks.

But that doesn't mean you can't get creative and provide tools that still allow for analysis of your gameplay and measuring self-improvement, while also not serving as a blunt weapon you can beat other players over the head with. Witness, again, my Google Doc with a hypothetical example of this system. It's hardly a perfect, or even really fleshed-out, design... but it does serve as an example of how you could provide a tool that allows folks to test their performance and measure their improvement, without unintentionally also encouraging toxicity from the inevitable non-zero number of jerks every online community of sufficient size will have.

[Michieltjuhh]

Because they are unfortunately most likely right that some people would go "Look, if the developers didn't want me to tell the black mage he's so bad at this game he should do us all a favor and go step into traffic, the devs wouldn't have let the game tell me just how much the black mage sucks at his job!" Adding an ACT-style damage meter into the game would almost certainly measurably increase toxicity, not because the damage meter itself is toxic but because some players would view the existence of an official parser as dev-granted permission to be complete jerks.

You can apply that selfsame logic to damage downs, vulnerability stacks, and literally just being able to see other players in the first place. "Look, if the developers didn't want to me to tell the <insert job> he's bad at the game, then the devs wouldn't have let the game show me he has a damage down/vulnerability/isn't in melee range as melee/isn't visually attacking correctly!"

One step further to combat all this perceived toxicity and we may as well remove other player characters from the game and just occasionally say "other people were with you on this boss fight!".

[Kacho_Nacho]

Yeah, it "rarely happens in game" cause there's a freaking rule against doing it.

Harassing people over DPS performance is like the official national sport of other MMOs. It's not allowed here, get over it. You can run it if you want for your own personal edification. You can't talk about it. Deal with it.

I cannot like this post enough. Well said, Atma.

[SieyaM]

A parser alone is not going to help someone who is playing poorly improve. Seeing that your numbers are low without knowing why they are low is useless. So no adding a parser alone is not going to help players improve, and given that the atmosphere right now seems to be "get gud or get out" I doubt adding a parser would encourage people to be helpful in game.

[Packetdancer]

You can apply that selfsame logic to damage downs, vulnerability stacks, and literally just being able to see other players in the first place. "Look, if the developers didn't want to me to tell the <insert job> he's bad at the game, then the devs wouldn't have let the game show me he has a damage down/vulnerability/isn't in melee range as melee/isn't visually attacking correctly!"

I feel like there's an important difference of degree in comparing "I can see that this player is having trouble executing mechanics because they're taking excessive amounts of damage, collecting vuln stacks, etc." which is a very general 'failure to execute mechanics' thing, versus "the game itself is giving me a supposedly-objective concrete numerical rating representing how good this player is at their job". Saying that because we have one it would make no difference to have the other feels 'off' to me; even if someone could be confrontational to a toxic/abusive degree over the first thing (mechanics failures) as well as the second (numerical rating of damage), the latter feels like it would encourage it more (or make people feel more free to really "rip into" folks).

I mean, this is without getting into the fact the supposedly-objective number isn't actually that objective. You could have someone in the baseline gear needed to start a raiding tier and doing their job correctly, while still doing less DPS than someone less-good at the job who happens to have just geared it up better. Witness how something that's a 60% parse in a fight during week #1 of the tier can drop almost by half percentage-wise when you suddenly have a much bigger potential gear ilevel gap in weeks #2 or #3. Moreover, things like healer DPS and suchnot can be highly dependent on how much avoidable damage the rest of the party is taking, and DPS overall can be highly affected by raid buffs -- since any in-game parser would be likely to measure what FFLogs calls aDPS versus the calculated-after-the-fact rDPS value that FFLogs favors.

Yet if you put a damage meter in game, folks will be likely to judge without regard for those factors.