They Should Add An Official Damage Meter With One Condition

[Jaquan]

Damage is already the goal. Square has seen fit to delete nearly all useful systems that you could work toward otherwise. CC basically never works in any remotely difficult group content. Heal checks are a joke. Tank mitigation is a breeze. Damage is the only thing that actually matters in most parties.

In fact, -not- having meters is one of the things that led us to current healer design; back near the end of Heavensward, YoshiP stated that they were stripping some DPS abilities off Scholar because it would free their focus up for healing. Something something "The White Mage would do all the healing while the Scholar would DPS away". Except that wasn't true. Now, if you were a DPS main just looking at cast bars and the Medica 2 buff uptime on your own character, you'd think the WHM was doing extra heavy lifting. Parses told us otherwise. The SCH was doing more healing through their oGCDs AND outdamaging the WHM at the same time. The healing landscape was plain as day if you looked at The Forbidden Website. Square has made some factually incorrect statements over this lack of information.

I did never deny that this statement is factual in High end content not once. Even if I sincerely doubt that it's as rigid as "if every single one of us won't output our absolute theoretical best we're doomed". I Was talking about content where damage checks and mechanics are somewhat more lenient. Dungeons first and foremost. Trials at less than Savage level. Raids on regular level. Situations where messing up is not fatal. How I know it? Because I've been a part of groups that cleared this kind of content and I factually know at least one person fucked up more than it should and that was me. I am improving slowly but steadily as I get more and more hang of my abilities but it's still far from absolute perfection. Yet alongside some friends and absolutely random people we cleared 2nd coils synced. Was it a total mess? Sure. Did we wipe more than we should? Good lord we did. Do I still have no idea how the hell did we make it through Turn 4 Last Phase? Yep. And yet it's cleared with much less than perfect results. That's just what happens below High end. And I wouldn't want to lose it over pointless prattle about DPS

[MintnHoney]

I did never deny that this statement is factual in High end content not once. Even if I sincerely doubt that it's as rigid as "if every single one of us won't output our absolute theoretical best we're doomed". I Was talking about content where damage checks and mechanics are somewhat more lenient. Dungeons first and foremost. Trials at less than Savage level. Raids on regular level. Situations where messing up is not fatal. How I know it? Because I've been a part of groups that cleared this kind of content and I factually know at least one person fucked up more than it should and that was me. I am improving slowly but steadily as I get more and more hang of my abilities but it's still far from absolute perfection. Yet alongside some friends and absolutely random people we cleared 2nd coils synced. Was it a total mess? Sure. Did we wipe more than we should? Good lord we did. Do I still have no idea how the hell did we make it through Turn 4 Last Phase? Yep. And yet it's cleared with much less than perfect results. That's just what happens below High end. And I wouldn't want to lose it over pointless prattle about DPS

Damage checks being more lenient still means that damage is the endgoal, because they are still damage checks.
In the end, because you want enemy HP to drop to 0 before yours does, damage is always the endgoal. This game doesn't support/utiliize other methods or an alternative focus for clearing an encounter.

[Jaquan]

Damage checks being more lenient still means that damage is the endgoal, because they are still damage checks.
In the end, because you want enemy HP to drop to 0 before yours does, damage is always the endgoal. This game doesn't support/utiliize other methods or an alternative focus for clearing an encounter.

Right my bad I wasn't clear enough. Or you just missed some fragments of my first post because I clearly stated what I'm not comfortable is the idea of players putting their PERSONAL damage above else. It's an extreme case but I wouldn't put it above some people to actively ignore mechanics or damage just so they can pump out their numbers even if that would make entire experience less fun for others and then act as if the fact they hit the highest damage absolve them from critique. I'm aware it's a stretch for some and fortunately never seen it happen here. But I've seen it enough times.

[Rolder50]

There's also one risk I can't properly overlook. That damage will become goal in itself. Even in cooperative experience there are more than enough players willing to treat it as competition. And while I see nothing wrong with two teams competing in things like World First Clear of content or later the fastest clear I don't think there should be anything that incentives players in same group competing with one another and I'm afraid that this is what would happen if damage tracker would become widespread in the less punishing content. So yeah personally I see to many risks and really not enough rewards.

But this is already the case? Should be obvious with how much emphasis people put on things like doing uptime strats in Party Finder. You only do those if you want maximum DPS.

[Juyira]

In Shadowbringers, I had a friend who ran the meter all the time and that was around the first time I was finally getting into hardcore content. There wasn't really any toxicity, and instead, I really appreciated when our fights got run through XIV analysis just so I could see what I was doing wrong and where I could improve my playstyle, reminded me about skills I needed to press more, etc.

Those are what myself and plenty of others want, just a self-improvement metric. Stuff like The Balance is great for learning your rotations and everything else, but combining it with something like XIV Analysis is just such a handy way to improve your own gameplay, nevermind any console friends who might want to undergo similar improvements.

I see it as less "tryhard/toxic" and more wanting to pull my own weight better in farm parties and the like because honestly, who doesn't like a faster clear? I'm aware the toxic parsers exist out there, but more often than not, I've seen people just wanting to improve themselves.

[DBriggs304]

Nah.
Not needed.

[Klytania]

Nah.
Not needed.

There's no way no quantify if you're getting better at your rotation without something like it.

[LyraleiManagem]

Just going to throw my (maybe unpopular) two cents here: insulting or harassing people because of their dps is toxic, but not wanting raid certain content with people because of their dps is not.

I wont scream “that’s toxic!” when i cant join a pf because it’s “lala only 24 man”, so why do so people get triggered when they see a “barse party”?

[LisSquid]

Exhausting when the argument is about the dps number itself and not the log attached to it. That's the juicy information you want.

[Semirhage]

So I ask again, whence comes this attitude where we can see health bars and boss positions and mitigation buffs, but damage numbers are BadWrongEvil that must never ever be visible? Is it maybe...because low numbers are embarrassing, and instead of wanting to learn anything about how to play one's job the toxic casual GCBTW would rather screech that statistics should be hidden on purpose instead?

But I don't muse, because that's always been the argument for no parsers. Because expecting, nay ASKING people to improve is cruel harassment that has no place in Hello Kitty 14 Adventure, while being snide toxic casuals about "tryhards" and "elitists" is good positive behavior that should be encouraged.