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

[ForteNightshade]

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.

This... isn't true whatsoever. Vulnerability stacks became so laughable due to the lackluster amount of healing they had to change them to damage downs. In fact, it was JP PF that finally triggered that. Yes, even the hyper safety gamer JP pugs opted for uptime Soccer strat in E6S, which is what finally made the dev team realize nobody cared. Look at Zodiark. Melee and tanks collect vuln stacks for uptime because... why not? He barely does any damage. Obviously, Melee can't get away with eating everything the way tanks can but the point remains vulns weren't threatening. Hence why they were changed.

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.

Which is fine... within reason. Nobody is expecting top tier performance in every piece of content. Where this becomes a problem is when those same players are doing the absolute bare minimum yet still expecting the same results. Why should I put in extra work even in a dungeon so the healer can Nexflix and chill? Likewise, in Savage, why should the DPS have to push harder to compensate for tanks and/or healers who can't be bothered to push their buttons?

I get simply wanting to chill. But then do that with other people who have the same mindset. Don't queue into DF or join PF then get upset when someone else isn't thrilled they're having to do more work because you're lazy. They have every right to call you out for being selfish.

[RHarris1349]

As a console player, I'd like a way to check how well I was personally doing without having to join the random parse run in PF to check myself periodically. Dummy Testing only tells you so much after all.

Stone, Sea, Sky and a website. Find them. Do the timed test. Input the info. Viola. Easy peasy, just use the internet

[Packetdancer]

This... isn't true whatsoever. Vulnerability stacks became so laughable due to the lackluster amount of healing they had to change them to damage downs.

I mean, there was also the fact that in the cases where vuln stacks did make a significant difference, all it was doing was offloading the punishment for someone's mistakes onto the healer. If failing a mechanic didn't affect someone's DPS output (indeed, if failing the mechanic could increase their damage output -- as with uptime soccer), they didn't care. And I certainly saw some people who figured "If I have seven vuln stacks, that just means I'm really good at keeping uptime and it has no other effect!"

Meanwhile, as a healer main, my opinion on vuln stacks was "They're generally not a problem if you have one or two. But if they reach a point where I have to start spending any significant effort to counter the increasing number of vulns you have, it will be less hassle for me in the long run -- both in terms of GCDs spent on you and in terms of my general healing resource budget -- to just use the Nuclear Esuna and cleanse those vuln stacks by letting you die and then rezzing you."

[VelKallor]

Well, it's about time we changed that.

"We"?

Thats Yoshi and the team's call, and their position has been absolute and unequivocal. There will never be an "official" ingame parser. They have said so repeatedly.

[TaleraRistain]

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.

That's a really great idea. And they've already been playing with 8 man Trusts so they could build on that structure.

It would also help quell the belief that Ronduwil mentions a couple comments past this that some people think the MSQ is preparing you for Savage and needs to be harder. But the MSQ is only preparing you for more MSQ. The extra work someone puts in prepares them for Extremes and Savage. Something like this I think would help make that distinction clearer. People would probably complain if it's too hard, but that's the point of the harder optional content. It's supposed to be a challenge.

[VelKallor]

I don't know that FFXIV needs a Gatekeeper that you have to pass in order to queue into savage.

"In order to do content you must first pass this mandatory test"

WOW tried this. It was a massive failure.

So no.

[IdowhatIwant]

But the solution is already at hand in high end content (assuming you are running it through pf): look at ACT, deduce who is the problem member with the information ACT provides and what you saw yourself during the fight, kick the problem member. No words need to be exchanged there.

I think the new ToS you can get in trouble for this as well.

[elioaiko]

I'm all for damage downs being the new norm for punishing players for standing in bad and griefing healers.

However, E6S's soccer mechanic was super annoying to deal with, especially since they decided that arenas needed to aggressively hyper-colored and making things harder to see. Soccer was more or less annoying because it gives you less time to react since there's a lot going on. Eating a vuln stack is for one more consistent and gave dps more uptime. Healing through a vuln stack was nothing.

Personally I think that E4S, E8S, E12S (second half) were all perfect examples of mechanics that were fair and challenging (okay maybe not Light Rampant cause tether bs).

But DPS checks are the most important factor in a raid. If there's not enough damage, nothing else matters. Plenty of MMOs and even single player RPGS have this mentality that the best way to beat an encounter is to kill it faster it can kill you. I'm all for a personal parser but I can understand terrible people will weaponize it and bully others. But bad players cannot take advice at all, no matter how nice you put it. I get it, it's embarrassing to be told that your damage is less than what is expected of you but at the end of the day, you're playing an online video game requiring you to work with people constantly. That work tends to require competence and people don't want to carry you because you're getting credit for something you put little effort in.

No one is asking bad players to feel embarrassed with parsers. The tool is there to help you, not make you feel shame. And if people bully you for being low, just be the bigger person and prove them wrong with doing better. All this stomping around, asking SE to put spyware on PCs to prevent players from doing so will not only hurt the raiders, but the overall health of the game. And while a minority of the playerbase actually raids, it's one of the core reasons for people to log in and do anything past maxing out jobs. To get better gear and feel a sense of accomplishment for clearing a tier of diffcult content.

[Sarevok_Thordin]

Stone, Sea, Sky and a website. Find them. Do the timed test. Input the info. Viola. Easy peasy, just use the internet

SSS won't throw mechanics at you.

I think the new ToS you can get in trouble for this as well.

People will get creative with it. You don't need anything special to see if someone isn't acting the way they should even doing their basics. For example, a Black Mage that casts Fire 4 very little without Thundercloud popping on them or Xeno being shown on the boss, a Dragoon that never pops Blood of the Dragon etc.

A difference of gameplay from the rest of the group shouldn't result in ToS action for a kick anyway.

[Saraide]

I think the new ToS you can get in trouble for this as well.

How? Are you telling me as PF host I am not allowed to remove anyone from my group? I honestly doubt any GM would give someone complaining about getting kicked from pf the time of the day and if you really get asked you can just cite differences in playstyle which has always been a valid reason.