They Should Add An Official Damage Meter With One Condition

[TaleraRistain]

The good argument is that the developers don't want it in their game.

They know people use them for hardcore content. They don't design the content around that assumption. They don't and will never officially allow them. That's not the type of game they want this to be.

[Klytania]

The good argument is that the developers don't want it in their game.

They know people use them for hardcore content. They don't design the content around that assumption. They don't and will never officially allow them. That's not the type of game they want this to be.

That's not an argument, it's an appeal to authority.

[TaleraRistain]

That's not an argument, it's an appeal to authority.

This game isn't designed by committee. The developers have control over what they want to put in. This has come up multiple times. Their answer has been the same every time. They give players who feel they need these tools an out with the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy but they're exactly right. Any official endorsement of this sort of thing in the game will lead to bullying. "Just private" would not stay private. Others would find a way to force those who want to do things to show those numbers or be ostracized. And they remove the teeth from the harassment part of their own ToS by implementing a tool by which others could be bullied.

[Semirhage]

This game isn't designed by committee. The developers have control over what they want to put in. This has come up multiple times. Their answer has been the same every time. They give players who feel they need these tools an out with the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy but they're exactly right. Any official endorsement of this sort of thing in the game will lead to bullying. "Just private" would not stay private. Others would find a way to force those who want to do things to show those numbers or be ostracized. And they remove the teeth from the harassment part of their own ToS by implementing a tool by which others could be bullied.

I have only -ever- seen bullying come from the toxic casual portion of the playerbase.

[VelKallor]

That's not an argument, it's an appeal to authority.

Its a fact. The entire dev team agree on this matter, as they are the ones who took this game from the disaster that was 1.0 to the current masterpiece, I have full confidence in their judgement in the matter.

I have seen firsthand what parsers can do when used widely ingame, and I have zero wish to see that here.

[ForteNightshade]

The good argument is that the developers don't want it in their game.

They know people use them for hardcore content. They don't design the content around that assumption. They don't and will never officially allow them. That's not the type of game they want this to be.

Except that is the type of game it's become. FFlogs has an incredible sway over the raiding landscape because there's literally nothing else to care about besides damage in this game. You aren't rewarded for being a good healer or a good tank. You're rewarded for how high your damage is. The secondary part of your job role has a bigger influence than the primary. And that isn't due to a parsing mentality but the design of content in FFXIV. Healers, in particular, have nothing to actually heal. The outgoing damage is laughably low even at the Savage level. In fact, even Dragonsong isn't healing intensive for the most part but rather a mitigation check. Missed Reprisal? The Caster died. Missed Samba? Half the party died. It's massive hit followed by nothing followed by massive hit.

Going back to my earlier point, if FFlogs changed the current ranking requirements to allow for groups to swap a healer out and run five DPS. That would immediately swing the entire meta into focusing more on solo-healing. Eventually, it would trickle down just like everything always does.

With all that said, we don't really need an "official" damage meter. Frankly, it could never be anywhere near as suffocated as the unofficial alternatives. However, it's already in their game and absolutely dominates the raid scene. The devs trying to pretend it doesn't exist won't change that.

I agree they need to design content with random mechanics that force downtime on random players. That way people won’t be able to validate their scores because obviously players who didn’t have to deal with a certain mechanic forced on them would always do more damage. The goal should be to foster teamwork and clear fights. Not to have fights designed to be giant target dummies you can hit with no downtime if you know where to move at X moment in the fight.

Forced downtime is not fun, especially nowadays with how rigid most jobs are designed. Several rotations simply fall apart, making the jobs incredibly weak and unfun to play if they're constantly forced to peel off the boss. This wouldn't change the perception of FFlogs and numbers as a whole. People would simply dismiss that particular fight or FFlogs itself would find a way to cut out whatever portion of the fight has this excessive downtime mechanic. In the later case, P3S' entire add phase isn't counted to discourage padding.