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

[Euphares]

Even with it being against TOS I've seen plenty of PFs saying purple plus or requiring some sort of average to run with them, the moment they make it acceptable and official you will see a giant wave of gatekeeping and discrimination happening. I see it in private discords all the time.

While it is a useful tool, and I ALSO think the devs themselves use it to balance their classes (which would explain why they are always making adjustments after they release a new expansion and realize hmmmm that doesnt look good), I fail to see a better approach than the one they have taken. Yes, it creates pettiness and passive aggressiveness, but it does a better job of forcing everyone together and making everyone put up with each other.

Many players may not want that, but the devs sure do want their entire playerbase playing together. There's also a risk of the raiding scene becoming so divided the pools of people they are willing to do content with are too small and they may just get bored or quit. They have very legitimate reasons for fearing making a tool like that official. But either route they take will have assets and drawbacks.

I mean it is mostly a symptom of a bigger problem which is: The game has a terrible feedback loop.



You quite literally have zero way to tell if you are playing good or bad, the game doesn't help you or challenge you in a way that would make you rethink your rotation. Someone could play Ice-only BLM until max level because the game won't ever tell you that's wrong, or have you fail because you are spamming Ice spells only.


This is a serious problem, because the moment someone DOES tell you that you are playing wrong, its a big shock, and a lot of people don't handle this shock very well. But can you blame either person? It sucks having people who don't pull their weight constantly hold a group hostage because no one can say anything to them. And it sucks trying to learn and feeling lost/overwhelmed because you have to go off the game to learn how to be better in the game.


Yes having a public meter would lead to an increase in toxicity, but just crackdown on it more harshly. They can afford to hire more gm's/mods to do this, but making meters so convoluted and hush-hush to get is denying a lot of players, specifically console players from having any way to learn and/or improve. Which simply doesn't work in a game where there is very difficult group content.



If the devs don't want players curating other players, then they need to put in work to make the game do it instead.

Why would they use fflogs when they have the numbers

Numbers are useless unless meaning is put behind them. Seeing that most people are playing RPR/MNK right now won't really tell you the why behind it.


RDPS/ADPS/NDPS don't exist anywhere in the game or combat log. These are metrics that exist soley because of FFlogs, as such, the devs have the data on their end, but what can they do with it? There is nothing wrong with them using FFlogs to determine balance. I find it to be a good thing. But it is def a thing that happens, I'm like 90% sure of it.

[Ath192]

I mean it is mostly a symptom of a bigger problem which is: The game has a terrible feedback loop.



You quite literally have zero way to tell if you are playing good or bad, the game doesn't help you or challenge you in a way that would make you rethink your rotation. Someone could play Ice-only BLM until max level because the game won't ever tell you that's wrong, or have you fail because you are spamming Ice spells only.


This is a serious problem, because the moment someone DOES tell you that you are playing wrong, its a big shock, and a lot of people don't handle this shock very well. But can you blame either person? It sucks having people who don't pull their weight constantly hold a group hostage because no one can say anything to them. And it sucks trying to learn and feeling lost/overwhelmed because you have to go off the game to learn how to be better in the game.


Yes having a public meter would lead to an increase in toxicity, but just crackdown on it more harshly. They can afford to hire more gm's/mods to do this, but making meters so convoluted and hush-hush to get is denying a lot of players, specifically console players from having any way to learn and/or improve. Which simply doesn't work in a game where there is very difficult group content.



If the devs don't want players curating other players, then they need to put in work to make the game do it instead.





Numbers are useless unless meaning is put behind them. Seeing that most people are playing RPR/MNK right now won't really tell you the why behind it.


RDPS/ADPS/NDPS don't exist anywhere in the game or combat log. These are metrics that exist soley because of FFlogs, as such, the devs have the data on their end, but what can they do with it? There is nothing wrong with them using FFlogs to determine balance. I find it to be a good thing. But it is def a thing that happens, I'm like 90% sure of it.

Yes. I would support a score card at the end of every normal and savage raid only you can see about your performance alone with tips.

Like C+:
You clipped too much
You interrupted several spells!

No one would have to know but you and it would help a lot.

[Packetdancer]

Yes. I would support a score card at the end of every normal and savage raid only you can see about your performance alone with tips.

Like C+:
You clipped too much
You interrupted several spells!

No one would have to know but you and it would help a lot.

I actually wrote up a very basic system design for this about a year and a half ago. It will never be used. It will probably never even be seen by anyone at Square-Enix.

It was, however, very cathartic to put down on paper.

[ICountFrom0]

Yes. I would support a score card at the end of every normal and savage raid only you can see about your performance alone with tips.

Like C+:
You clipped too much
You interrupted several spells!

No one would have to know but you and it would help a lot.

I've always thought that this should actually be the function of the duty recorder.
You record your duty in the recorder. You wait an hour for them to parse the results. You get a complete breakdown of everything done right and wrong from your detailed score. If you want it faster, you pay a dollar for a 10 pack of tokens that get you instant results, no waiting.

[Ronduwil]

I mean it is mostly a symptom of a bigger problem which is: The game has a terrible feedback loop.

You quite literally have zero way to tell if you are playing good or bad

Pro tip: If you're inspecting the floor, you're playing bad. If you get vulnerability stacks, you're playing bad. Maximizing DPS is at the bottom of your priorities. You can't DPS if you're dead. Your healers can't DPS if they're constantly scrambling to keep you alive.

the game doesn't help you or challenge you in a way that would make you rethink your rotation. Someone could play Ice-only BLM until max level because the game won't ever tell you that's wrong, or have you fail because you are spamming Ice spells only.

I agree that this is an issue, but parsers aren't the solution to it. Someone who's gone out of their way to install/enable a parser has likely also read all their tooltips and worked out a proper rotation. A better solution, IMO, is to have some sort of in-game rotation tutor. Maybe have an Allagan dummy that analyzes your rotation and either suggests improvements or praises your efficiency. Make a mini-game of it and add it to the challenge log. Unless you're running extremes and savages (in which case you're likely on Discord and outside the scope of SE's enforcement), there's no reason to worry about anyone's DPS. I've never seen a DPS check fail in normal content that wasn't also accompanied by lots of dead bodies on the floor. I've never seen a group completely disband in this game. The vast majority of the time, the duty finder content is cleared without any wipes or echo stacks. On occasion, there's a wipe followed by some explanations, followed by success.

This is a serious problem, because the moment someone DOES tell you that you are playing wrong, its a big shock, and a lot of people don't handle this shock very well.

You're misunderstanding the source of the shock. The shock happens when someone who is playing a video game to relax and have fun encounters someone who is playing a video game as a substitute for IRL employment/achievements. No one expects a random player to suddenly start channeling their supervisor from work, and they certainly don't enjoy it. You don't have to tell anyone that they're playing wrong. More often than not, they know, and they don't care. If they cared about your opinion or wanted your tips, they would ask for it. If they ask, feel free to constructively pipe up. Better yet, if you want to educate players, create guides and post them on YouTube, Reddit, and/or Discord. The players who care will seek them out and thank you for it. There's no need to shock anyone.

[LittleImp]

You're misunderstanding the source of the shock. The shock happens when someone who is playing a video game to relax and have fun encounters someone who is playing a video game as a substitute for IRL employment/achievements. No one expects a random player to suddenly start channeling their supervisor from work, and they certainly don't enjoy it. You don't have to tell anyone that they're playing wrong. More often than not, they know, and they don't care. If they cared about your opinion or wanted your tips, they would ask for it. If they ask, feel free to constructively pipe up. Better yet, if you want to educate players, create guides and post them on YouTube, Reddit, and/or Discord. The players who care will seek them out and thank you for it. There's no need to shock anyone.

I'm pretty sure most people in this thread are speaking in the context of savage+ raiding. "Relaxing" and "having fun" are a bit of a diminished priority in that environment, and a lot of the behaviors exhibited by your hypothetical casual player would be considered extremely poor etiquette if not toxic in the context of that setting.

[Ronduwil]

I'm pretty sure most people in this thread are speaking in the context of savage+ raiding. "Relaxing" and "having fun" are a bit of a diminished priority in that environment, and a lot of the behaviors exhibited by your hypothetical casual player would be considered extremely poor etiquette if not toxic in the context of that setting.

But I was replying to this guy who specifically called out all max level players:

You quite literally have zero way to tell if you are playing good or bad, the game doesn't help you or challenge you in a way that would make you rethink your rotation. Someone could play Ice-only BLM until max level because the game won't ever tell you that's wrong, or have you fail because you are spamming Ice spells only.

This is a serious problem, because the moment someone DOES tell you that you are playing wrong, its a big shock, and a lot of people don't handle this shock very well. But can you blame either person? It sucks having people who don't pull their weight constantly hold a group hostage because no one can say anything to them. And it sucks trying to learn and feeling lost/overwhelmed because you have to go off the game to learn how to be better in the game.

My point was that they're projecting their own emotions onto the situations. The typical player doesn't feel "lost/overwhelmed" because their DPS is bad. The typical player doesn't even know their DPS is bad. There's the perception of a problem that doesn't exist. If a player feels bad about their DPS, they already have the resources to improve it if they want. Frustration is misplaced when it's leveled against a player who doesn't care. I agree that having such a player in a savage group is a source of frustration, but as I've said time and again, most casuals don't even touch savage+. If you're running savage content with players who behave that way, the problem lies in poor leadership, not in general player behavior. There are already remedies to address that situation that don't involve built-in parsers.

The problem with building the parser into the game is that the expectation of optimal performance creeps into all aspects of the game. In WoW, for example, you even see players kicked from the lowest level dungeons for underperformance. We don't need or want that in this game, too. Many have voiced their opinion that the point of the leveling experience should be preparation for savage content. I vehemently disagree. The point should be fun. Most players don't find savage content to be fun.

[Euphares]

-snip-.

1. Okay great, I'm playing a melee and I just sit at wall spamming my ranged attack until I know its SUPER SAFE then I use my buffs willy nilly and clip all my gcd's during burst windows. See how ridiculous that sounds?

I don't know why the idea that playing optimally = greedy is so common, its really asinine. Playing optimally just means that you don't completely waste your damage by doing very basic things such as buff alignment and proper GCD usage. If every player sandbagged to do mechanics, nothing high end in the game would be clearable until an egregious gear creep occured. To do high-end content while it is relevant, you need to be able to do both mechanics and decent damage, end of story.


2. How can there be an in-game tutor if the devs themselves have no idea what that optimal rotation is? A parser isn't inherently a toxic or malicious tool, it just displays data from the combat log visually.

And no, you don't need Discord for Extreme or Savages, a lot of players clear these through PF. Which is where the frustration comes from.

Normal raids and Alliance raids have DPS checks, hell even some dungeons have DPS checks. Its just apart of the game. And I've seen failure in all three. The problem isn't that its impossible to overcome terrible dps, the problem is that it happens at all for a very dumb reason. If the XIV commnuity really is one public meter away from becoming a cesspool, then it wasn't a very nice community to begin with and I think most people on this game need a reality check.


3. Everytime this topic comes up you guys like to project onto people who care about performance. If you don't care about how you perform when grouped with others, you aren't a casual, you're just negligent and selfish. I know people who play this game for < 8 hours a week that still asked me for help with practicing a basic rotation because they didn't want to be a drag on the group. The implication that someone can't both relax and enjoy the game AND perform at least on an acceptable level is asinine and makes you look really goofy.

If you are going to queue for group content that involves other random people and they're spending time to get the dungeon done, there is and should be an expectation to pull your weight and participate in an appropriate manner. That isn't hardcore or toxic, its just called being polite. If you fail to do this, you should be called out for it because anyone can meet this standard by just taking 10 minutes to think about their play.

The suggestion that someone can join a dungeon and just single-target/auto-attack their way through the entire thing, and that they're entitled to do so at the expense of three other people is quite frankly stupid as hell. If everyone played like that, things would be miserable. If you want to play like that, find three or seven other people to consent to that playstyle and leave the rest of us alone.

[Packetdancer]

Instances like this is why an ingame way to identify performance could be helpful, but given the state of the community the parser would the "source" of toxicity.

As I've said in other threads, I get the impression the devs believe that if they put a parser officially in-game, some people would take that as permission to harass people using said parser. Basically going "If the devs didn't want me to tell the black mage he sucks because his DPS is almost a negative number, they wouldn't have put a tool in the game that tells me exactly how bad the black mage sucks!"

Unfortunately, my own past experience in the games industry -- and, y'know, the whole "generally existing on the modern internet" thing -- suggests that the devs are also probably right.

Or, to put it another way, "Some players may be inclined to lob spitballs at each other regardless of what we do, but that doesn't mean we need to encourage it by handing them the paper and the straw."

I don't know why the idea that playing optimally = greedy is so common, its really asinine. Playing optimally just means that you don't completely waste your damage by doing very basic things such as buff alignment and proper GCD usage.

"Playing optimally" needs to account for situation, too. If you are doing your rotation correctly, managing solid damage, etc., that's great. If you do all that but, in order to avoid downtime (which is, obviously, not strictly speaking "optimal") you choose to ignore mechanics, then that crosses the line into greed.

I've seen some very high-DPS players in PF for current savage. I have also seen a number of players who, to use a very simple example mechanic, refuse to disengage from the boss for aetherial shackles in P1S and thus kill the entire party; it can be a black mage refusing to leave ley lines they still have a couple seconds left on, it can be melee refusing to leave the boss' butt long enough to go to their shackle spot, whatever. The first folks -- the ones with high DPS -- are playing optimally. The second folks, the ones who refuse to react to the mechanic in a timely manner, cross the line into greed; they value their 'optimal DPS' over the group's survival.

There is a non-zero overlap between those two groups; many of the folks I have seen greed in PF are doing impressive DPS... right up until they kill everyone. (Whether that's with P1S shackles or by dying in P2S right before Channeled Overflow or whatever.)

I think the reason "playing optimally" sometimes gets conflated with "greed" is that the latter group often justifies the behavior as "I'm not greeding, I'm just trying to keep uptime and play my job optimally! Healers should adjust!" (Side note: We cannot adjust if the failed mechanic basically one-shots the party, so please do the dang mechanic. We all want to play our jobs with at least moderate efficiency and skill in savage-level content, but all your DPS means nothing if you wipe the group and don't clear!)

2. How can there be an in-game tutor if the devs themselves have no idea what that optimal rotation is? A parser isn't inherently a toxic or malicious tool, it just displays data from the combat log visually.

To reference my old hypothetical design for a non-toxic in-game parser, you could easily have an NPC combat instructor associated with the Scions whose Echo gift is to perceive another's recent battles. On the server side, it would store off your recent runs of any higher-end content (extremes, etc.) and then you could go to P'ahrsurr Tia and he could tell you, "I can perceive that your combat efficiency was better than 57% of other adventurers who fought similar battles." (I.e., a parse percentage akin to FFLogs.) He could then also give you advice, akin to XIVanalysis, like "I also see that you rarely use your bubble of Asylum; it can be worthwhile to drop on the tank at your side in future adventures, even if it's not going to heal anyone else."

This gives people information which can help them measure their performance relative to others (akin to FFLogs) and a path to take towards improvement (akin to XIVanalysis). But since it's an NPC you would go to speak to after the battle and get the report personally, it would be less likely to be wielded for purposes of toxicity.

Obviously many people would still use ACT, FFLogs, and XIVanalysis -- especially as those tools are very useful for breaking down an overall fight timeline and seeing where a static can improve as a group -- but an approach like this would at least give folks on Playstation and such an option with an in-game tool.

[LittleImp]

I've seen some very high-DPS players in PF for current savage. I have also seen a number of players who, to use a very simple example mechanic, refuse to disengage from the boss for aetherial shackles in P1S and thus kill the entire party;

I'm guessing rather than not disengaging, they were just late to their position or someone else was improperly positioned. Could still be because they're tunneling on their rotation or something, but aetherial Shackles should be completely safe to resolve in melee range of the boss.