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

[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.

[Atelier-Bagur]

The real truth about why savage is hard does not involve DPS, as I can illustrate with this nameless discussion...

"Okay, you're DPS is not the problem. The problem is you got 4 damage downs during p1s that I still have no idea how you managed to survive. Additionally, you also had to get rezzed twice during p2s because you tried to soul sow during Kampeos Harmaa for "big numbers", and then proceeded to get face planted into a wall by standing too close to an exploding Lalafellen white mage wearing a bright pink piggy suite so people would not miss seeing him. Don't worry, you just need more practice."

Nameless person: "Okay I'll go practice on the target dummy!"

So much this! again its not about optimal dps. Its about everyone knowing the fight and making sure to do mechanics properly. This already causes enough drama llama on the community, I dont need to have people telling me "your damage sucks dude" thrown in when its really not the main issue with these fights.

[Ronduwil]

I mean, if a “casual” player:

-Still doesn’t know their job’s basic 1-2-3s by Lv. 90.
-Still gets ganked by every single mechanic, even simple ones introduced way back in ARR, at Lv. 90.
-Outright refuses to get better and instead throws a tantrum on the forums and demands for content to get nerfed the moment they get walled by literally anything in the MSQ.
-Responds to any form of criticism or feedback with nonsense like “YOU DON’T PAY MY SUB!” or “Help GMs! I’m being harassed!!!”

Then despite then things listed above, said player still sneaks into a Savage Clear/Farm PF thinking he’s entitled to a carry, then plays victim the moment he’s vote kicked by his seven other party members for wiping the raid over and over...

Then who’s really being the toxic one here? The casual, or the raiders? Really makes you think.

How many players do any of those things, let alone all of them? Is it fair to cast the entire vast casual community as "toxic" because a handful of players (the bottom 1% of the bottom 1%) misbehave like this? Most casuals don't even set foot in a Savage clear, let alone demand a carry.

[Lium]

I assume OP is talking about savage/ex content? Because there's no need for parsers in normal content. I would even go as far as saying this thread (and the many other weekly threads about parsers) are evidence to why we DON'T need them. Look at the toxicity it brings just in discussions.

[Packetdancer]

The real truth about why savage is hard does not involve DPS, as I can illustrate with this nameless discussion...

"Okay, you're DPS is not the problem. The problem is you got 4 damage downs during p1s that I still have no idea how you managed to survive. Additionally, you also had to get rezzed twice during p2s because you tried to soul sow during Kampeos Harmaa for "big numbers", and then proceeded to get face planted into a wall by standing too close to an exploding Lalafellen white mage wearing a bright pink piggy suite so people would not miss seeing him. Don't worry, you just need more practice."

Nameless person: "Okay I'll go practice on the target dummy!"

There are times I wish that instead of the Hall of the Novice and Stone, Sea, Sky, we had something akin to the original Secret World's "Gatekeeper".

To explain a bit: in the original pre-reboot version of the Secret World, if you wanted to do Nightmare content (more or less TSW's equivalent to savage), there was an NPC entity called the Gatekeeper who would force you to complete a challenge first. The challenge always had to be done solo, and while it wasn't ever too complex, it definitely was less forgiving than the general non-Nightmare content.

The challenge could be tackled for DPS, Tank, or Healer. The DPS challenge required you to beat an enrage timer while also executing mechanics (some of which could one-shot you), including (if I recall correctly) ones that involved things like dealing with buffs on the boss or debuffs on yourself, not just ground AoEs and whatnot. I think the tank challenge required you to hold aggro to protect bystanders and withstand damage while executing mechanics, but as I hated tanking at the time I admit I never did that one.

The healer challenge -- which still amuses me to reflect back on -- gave you a party of NPC avatars the Gatekeeper created who were deliberately designed to be the worst sort of PUG. They would stand in the bad in the name of uptime, they would do mechanics completely wrong, etc. And as the healer, you had to keep these complete jackasses alive -- and of course you had do it it while also executing said mechanics correctly yourself, and (if I recall correctly, though I may be wrong on this) still doing enough damage to ensure you and the NPC Disaster Team could beat the Gatekeeper's enrage timer.

I don't know that FFXIV needs a Gatekeeper that you have to pass in order to queue into savage. But I do think something like that -- something that forced you to do more than just hit a stationary training dummy -- would be a far more valuable tool for self-improvement than what we have now. Like, you have to beat the calculated DPS check for this fight while also moving out of the bad, or keeping this obnoxious NPC alive, or whatever.

[Saraide]

Why yes, I'm a gray parser who dunks on other gray parsers, why do you ask?

Jokes aside though, that's another reason why I support an official in-game performance meter.


EW is actually the first time I've dove into Savage (before, I only tackled Extreme at most), and it's going pretty well so far.

For what it's worth, I did enough practice runs of P1S/P2S to execute all the fight mechanics perfectly, and managed to squeeze out just enough DPS to avoid hitting enrage.
Yet, my results could be much, much better despite me already clearing, and my only options right now for real-time evaluation is ACT, which I cannot get to work on my computer for the life of me, and even if I did, it's still a gray area at best, meaning the chances of getting a crackdown for it isn't exactly zero.


I know FFlogs is a thing, but it only seems to record performances after a clear of a certain boss, meaning that there's no way to know how your personal results were during a wipe, or when you're just wailing on a striking dummy. If there is a way to see that in FFlogs, I don't know how. I'm not good with these things. Regardless, SE should just give us an official in-game performance checker of sorts, so that I can finally have more real-time feedback of my performance without resorting to sketchy third-party tools that are technically still against ToS. If I get kicked from a party for not meeting their desired parses, oh well. To me, that's just a sign that I need to practice more, so I'll just get better until I'm good enough for said party. Or I'll make my own. No big deal. :/

Check out xivanalysis, you can load up fflogs on there and it will tell you quite a bit about that pull like if you overcapped resources, weaving errors, etc. Open up that site, copy paste the link from fflogs and then select your name. It has information based on your job like bloodweapon usage for example and a general timeline over the fight.

[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.

[Kanella]

I assume OP is talking about savage/ex content? Because there's no need for parsers in normal content. I would even go as far as saying this thread (and the many other weekly threads about parsers) are evidence to why we DON'T need them. Look at the toxicity it brings just in discussions.

Think OP is talking about savage. Extremes have such a long enrage timer, if your seeing it multiple people mustve been fresh with a bunch of deaths or people afk mid run. Which doesnt require a parser to understand why you couldn't beat enrage.

P1S and P2S are similar in that regard having a low DPS check thus invalidating a parser. As long as your group is alive and is not taking multiple damage downs you should be able to clear without much need of a parser even with people who dont understand their class and people who play overally safe. It's only when you start getting into P3S + where the dps check becomes more demanding and the realization that not every clear party is capable of clearing the instance even with near "perfect play" (deathless no damage downs). 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. Bad players will learn to blame the system for their inability to clear higher content. And any ingame criticism could be labeled as harassment depending on how the person perceives it.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Think OP is talking about savage. Extremes have such a long enrage timer, if your seeing it multiple people mustve been fresh with a bunch of deaths or people afk mid run. Which doesnt require a parser to understand why you couldn't beat enrage.

P1S and P2S are similar in that regard having a low DPS check thus invalidating a parser. As long as your group is alive and is not taking multiple damage downs you should be able to clear without much need of a parser even with people who dont understand their class and people who play overally safe. It's only when you start getting into P3S + where the dps check becomes more demanding and the realization that not every clear party is capable of clearing the instance even with near "perfect play" (deathless no damage downs). 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. Bad players will learn to blame the system for their inability to clear higher content. And any ingame criticism could be labeled as harassment depending on how the person perceives it.

and at the end of the day, nobody wins. Its better to keep parsing as an outside game thing where the option is there for those who reeeeally care about dps performance. I heard SE doesnt actively go around searching for people who have that add-on as long as you dont bring it up anyway. Its fine the way it is.

[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.