They Should Add An Official Damage Meter With One Condition

[Ronduwil]

This is something that people will 99.99% forget whenever numbers are brought up into this discussion, it's almost baffling. Selectiveness is real.

Context matters. The point, in the statements leading up to it, is that harassment is easy to verify, so they ban more frequently for that. ACT usage is not so easy to verify for them because they don't want to invade your privacy and install detection software to determine what else is running on your computer. He never said that they don't ban for ACT. He said that it's harder to prove. In that same interview, he also explicitly said not to use ACT. The reason the streamers are being banned for their use of the software is because they provided video evidence that they're using it, so SE was able to verify that they were breaking TOS without having to infect anyone with spyware. Regardless of how you misinterpreted previous statements, there's a big difference between, "We're looking the other way, so go for it," and "We're not going to invade your privacy to verify that you're not doing it, but please don't do it anyway because it's not allowed."

[Saraide]

Context matters. The point, in the statements leading up to it, is that harassment is easy to verify, so they ban more frequently for that. ACT usage is not so easy to verify for them because they don't want to invade your privacy and install detection software to determine what else is running on your computer. He never said that they don't ban for ACT. He said that it's harder to prove. In that same interview, he also explicitly said not to use ACT. The reason the streamers are being banned for their use of the software is because they provided video evidence that they're using it, so SE was able to verify that they were breaking TOS without having to infect anyone with spyware. Regardless of how you misinterpreted previous statements, there's a big difference between, "We're looking the other way, so go for it," and "We're not going to invade your privacy to verify that you're not doing it, but please don't do it anyway because it's not allowed."

ACT used without harassment is also not a problem. It's the most victimless crime possible. Harassment on the other hand isnt. He is saying that you get banned for harassment before you get banned for using ACT is because the relevant part is the harassment not the third party tool usage. Additionally it covers non ACT related harassment over performance because lets be real, if someone is exceptionally dogshit at the game I dont need ACT to notice. ACT is entirely irrelevant in the conversation about harassment over performance.

[Ronduwil]

ACT used without harassment is also not a problem. It's the most victimless crime possible.

Except that he never said that. In fact, he explicitly said:

I'm aware that there will be people using it to calculate their personal numbers, but I know you'll see this in the Party Finder: "Only join if you can prove that you can DPS xxx amount." We never want that to happen.

That has nothing to do with harassment and everything to do with gatekeeping. WoW embraces it, and this game thankfully does not. That's why I'm playing this game and not WoW.

Don't take my word for it. See Yoshi-P say it for yourself: https://youtu.be/e_i6mjiGerU?t=280

[Saraide]

Except that he never said that. In fact, he explicitly said:

That has nothing to do with harassment and everything to do with gatekeeping. WoW embraces it, and this game thankfully does not. That's why I'm playing this game and not WoW.

A dubious reasoning as ilvl gating already exists and it's not only not a problem but also entirely avoidable by just making your own party. The higher you set expectations, the slower your party can fill but setting clear expectations is a benefit to everyone involved if people can accurately grasp and live with their own performance.

Ilvl gating can be very gatekeepy. When endsinger ex came out you could just set the min ilvl for your pf to 600 and only people who did savage were able to join. Did that cause issues? No, not only will not everyone set it that high but also everyone who hasnt done savage could just create their own PF. This to me proves that this fear yoship has stated is not well founded.

[Thi]

A dubious reasoning as ilvl gating already exists and it's not only not a problem but also entirely avoidable by just making your own party. The higher you set expectations, the slower your party can fill but setting clear expectations is a benefit to everyone involved if people can accurately grasp and live with their own performance.

Ilvl gating can be very gatekeepy. When endsinger ex came out you could just set the min ilvl for your pf to 600 and only people who did savage were able to join. Did that cause issues? No, not only will not everyone set it that high but also everyone who hasnt done savage could just create their own PF. This to me proves that this fear yoship has stated is not well founded.

Exactly all of this. You already have a bunch of filters you can have in a PF listing that act as "gatekeeping". Having one more won't cause any issues.

If you want to limit your party to only people who provide x DPS, you should have that right but making that choice also makes your party fill up slower because the higher you go the smaller and smaller the pool gets.

Likewise anyone who doesn't care can make their own PF listing, there isn't a limited number of listings available so it's not like they can keep you from doing content and gatekeep you, just form your own party.

[Saraide]

Exactly all of this. You already have a bunch of filters you can have in a PF listing that act as "gatekeeping". Having one more won't cause any issues.

If you want to limit your party to only people who provide x DPS, you should have that right but making that choice also makes your party fill up slower because the higher you go the smaller and smaller the pool gets.

Likewise anyone who doesn't care can make their own PF listing, there isn't a limited number of listings available so it's not like they can keep you from doing content and gatekeep you, just form your own party.

The idea that people will then use explicit DPS numbers is a dubious one at best and imo speaks more to what the people fearmongering from that would do than anyone else (remember, the only thing we can do is projecting). Walk me through the logistics of it, are you going to set individual numbers for every single job? While job balance is definitely a strength of this game, it's not perfect either. Remember that the damage numbers ACT shows when active is not entirely reflective of your contribution because of group buffs (both from you and from others). DPS also depends on the specific encounter down to the kill time.
Do you want to account for all that in your PF description and make an essay out of it? No, you wont. You'll just set an ilvl gate, kick people who are not up to your expectations and be done with it. Exactly like you can do now.

This is also assuming that SE does a good job at making an official damage meter that can account for group buffs and the likes. There is no reason to assume they will do a good job at that. This is honestly the reason why I think they shouldnt. The community already has a better solution than SE is able and willing to provide. Do we seriously believe SE would make the sensible decision and strike things like P3S add phase from the records?

[Thi]

The idea that people will then use explicit DPS numbers is a dubious one at best and imo speaks more to what the people fearmongering from that would do than anyone else (remember, the only thing we can do is projecting). Walk me through the logistics of it, are you going to set individual numbers for every single job? While job balance is definitely a strength of this game, it's not perfect either. Remember that the damage numbers ACT shows when active is not entirely reflective of your contribution because of group buffs (both from you and from others). DPS also depends on the specific encounter down to the kill time.
Do you want to account for all that in your PF description and make an essay out of it? No, you wont. You'll just set an ilvl gate, kick people who are not up to your expectations and be done with it. Exactly like you can do now.

This is also assuming that SE does a good job at making an official damage meter that can account for group buffs and the likes. There is no reason to assume they will do a good job at that. This is honestly the reason why I think they shouldnt. The community already has a better solution than SE is able and willing to provide. Do we seriously believe SE would make the sensible decision and strike things like P3S add phase from the records?

I agree on all fronts about this, you can't really set it by a raw number.

What I want is just a simple filter of did they clear SSS for this fight on the job they are joining on yes/no.

The raw numbers are just going to create a new "Skip soar or disband" but it is now "group DPS above x or disband."

[Shurrikhan]

Exactly all of this. You already have a bunch of filters you can have in a PF listing that act as "gatekeeping". Having one more won't cause any issues.

If you want to limit your party to only people who provide x DPS, you should have that right but making that choice also makes your party fill up slower because the higher you go the smaller and smaller the pool gets.

Likewise anyone who doesn't care can make their own PF listing, there isn't a limited number of listings available so it's not like they can keep you from doing content and gatekeep you, just form your own party.

I'd far rather have people filter for something that more directly correlates with performance than that they ask for the absolute maximum ilvl available for a given week such that alt jobs, or even any players who didn't get lucky with Savage drops, are effectively barred.

(Granted, logistically, that probably wouldn't be all that feasible unless the devs added a sharable high score system to one's SSS or the like. An in-game parser, useful as it is for learning and problem-solving once in the given content, does not in itself provide a shareable history/indicator of success useful to forming a group.)

[Klytania]

I'd far rather have people filter for something that more directly correlates with performance than asking for the absolute maximum ilvl available for a given week such that alt jobs, or even any players who didn't get lucky with Savage drops, are effectively barred.

I agree. It's kind of annoying when people lock stuff to 600iL

[Ronduwil]

A dubious reasoning as ilvl gating already exists and it's not only not a problem but also entirely avoidable by just making your own party.

Ilevel gating is not gatekeeping. Just like ilevel syncing, its purpose is to ensure that you are equipped to tackle the content at the intended difficulty. It's also an obstacle that's easily overcome in a matter of seconds with a trip to the market board. I have yet to see an ilevel requirement in the game that even required me to do as much as that. A bare minimum baseline for gear is very different from excluding you because you either haven't practiced enough with your current class or you're coming back from an extended break. Most players enjoy learning to play their class better through trial and error in group content. That's impossible to do when hardcore players who delusionally fancy themselves midcore players are complaining non-stop that someone queued for group content with them before having spent hours perusing discord, downloading addons, and/or beating on target dummies until their rotation became muscle memory. Just today I saw a toxic thread posted by someone complaining at a black mage in a level 30 dungeon was using an inefficient rotation. I'm willing to bet that if they weren't using ACT they wouldn't even know that. Yoshi-P is absolutely correct when he says that DPS meters are the root of in-game bullying.