They Should Add An Official Damage Meter With One Condition

[Shurrikhan]

enabler
[ɪˈneɪblə, ɛˈneɪblə]
NOUN
a person or thing that makes something possible

But, again, did the parser enable that?

It took some serious stress to one's team back in TBC for them to go to the trouble of exiting, shouting, inviting, summoning, and reentering to replace you. It seems unlikely that a parser would uniquely enable a group to (want to) kick someone stressing out their team to that degree.

[Klytania]

If you want to see a similar conversation at Lost Ark forum, the mods responded and are more forward about the game's stance on dps meter:

"In terms of our rules, any app that modifies the game and/or interacts with it in a way that provides information that is otherwise not available to players is not approved"

Lost Ark forum: Hints for Damage meter

.......ok?

[SwingLifeAway]

Literally just ignore VelKallor
They and their opinions are entirely irrelevant in this conversation
They just post emotional and nonsensical garbage to derail threads until their post count is done for the day and then log off

[Sebazy]

Player reports went unanswered or ignored, and instead of actually doing anything to deal with the situation, the ingame mods chose to sit there and allow it to continue in this fashion.

See, that's the immediate and obvious difference that you're either missing or wilfully overlooking.

SE don't tend to ignore player reports at least from what I've seen. I had friends literally eat a ban for asking to be kicked from a party so they could raid.

Adding a DPS meter doesn't automatically change that stance and I don't get why you would suggest that it would.

[VelKallor]

Literally just ignore VelKallor
They and their opinions are entirely irrelevant in this conversation
They just post emotional and nonsensical garbage to derail threads until their post count is done for the day and then log off

Thats your opinion. Little more.

My reasoning on the issue, my logic behind it, based on literally decades of gaming experience in all kinds of MMO's, is quite sound. That a brand new game like Lost Ark has chosen to either follow, or to be in accordance with, the FF 14's dev team, is in itself a telling factor.

What many of you dont see..or choose not to see, is that the social factors in such "tools" have been shown to enable toxicity, to encourage bad and antisocial behaviour as can be witnessed elsewhere. That a new game that seems to be enjoying a measure of success, has decided that they too will not allow "officlal" parsers may indeed be a trend we will see in later developement of other MMO's.

Certainly, as can also be seen by the comments on that forum thread alone, not to mention the devs actual intent, they too have deduced that enabling such behaviour is not something they wish to see in their communities.

Games and the paradigms under which they work have advanced in many areas since the early days of MMO design, with the lessons of the past not only learned, but heeded. Games developement of its own accord is both iterative, in working upon current trends, as well as looking at how other MMO's have also progressed...or more to the point, REGRESSED.

I am intrigued as to how they came to this decision..and I approve and agree with their specific intent. One must look at WHY they have chosen this path in managing their communities, as well as what they have done.

No issue in game developement is ever cut and dry, black or white, look more to the myriad of factors which drove that decision. This in fact may be an ongoing trend, I will be interested to see how Lost Ark evolves over the next few years.

Times change, and gaming, as both a pastime and a social construct, must change with it.

To borrow a line from one of my tutors:

"Adapt...or perish"

[Semirhage]

Do you.. Do you think this attitude is helping your case? Even a little bit?

Let's take three hypothetical scenarios.

1. A party wipes. Someone pipes up, screaming obscenities at someone for doing low damage and posts logs.
2. Party wipes. Someone asks if the low damage player wants some pointers. Doesn't say how they know the damage was low, but asks if they can help anyway.
3. Party does a run. Someone in that party streams for friends. They forget to turn their EVIL ILLEGAL PARSER off. They say nothing, and don't spit negativity at any player at all, in game chat or on voice.

Which of these scenarios would you report? In the past, it sounded like the community would rightly report the first, probably not the second and why on earth the third?

The forums over the last week have given me the impression they'd happily, zealously report all three. Which suggests to me that harassment isn't what they dislike. It's facts. Math. Statistics. Numbers is what they hate, and by God you'd better not even SMELL like you're collecting them because not only do You Not Pay My Sub, but I'm going to keep my eagle eye on everyone else's sub like a nosy litigious old lady.

So let's have a new scenario.

4. A party wipes. Someone asks if they can give advice on how to do mechanics, since they saw a few missteps.

Why isn't this against the TOS? Sure it's not damage numbers. Which are freely available in the combat log, BTW. But you just saw someone's performance. You just analyzed it. In your eyes and your brain. You just...JUDGED someone for messing up. And worse still, you dared to call them out on it. Doing mechanics correctly is just as important as dealing damage, and both are performance metrics. One is just really easy to spot unaided.

Tell me how this is qualitatively different from reading their damage and making suggestions on that. Because I've already given my stance on the TOS-encouraged naked hypocrisy that toxic casuals revel in.

[Hoodcat]

Lost Ark used as an example again, the game that ranks a person as MVP with dmg and bascially has a damage meter with the % dmg done after the fight.

[VelKallor]

Lost Ark used as an example again, the game that ranks a person as MVP with dmg and bascially has a damage meter with the % dmg done after the fight.

I am simply referring back to that forum thread, which I note with amusement, seems to mirror this one.

Plus ca change.....

[VelKallor]

Adding a DPS meter doesn't automatically change that stance and I don't get why you would suggest that it would.

As has been said earlier, the SOURCE of a lot of that behaviour has been dps meter harassment and bullying. Remove that and a lot of problems go away.

Cause = effect.

It would be VERY interesting to see what would happen if Blizzard adopted the same idea. Get rid of dps meters..I confess I would be VERY curious to see how that would pan out. What was it Mustapha Mond called it?..

Oh yes: "An experiment in rebottling"

[Semirhage]

See, that's the immediate and obvious difference that you're either missing or wilfully overlooking.

SE don't tend to ignore player reports at least from what I've seen. I had friends literally eat a ban for asking to be kicked from a party so they could raid.

Adding a DPS meter doesn't automatically change that stance and I don't get why you would suggest that it would.

Authoritarians never give a crap about the implications of what they want. If they dislike something, then it *will* cause problems. Any justification will do. It's not just that they don't want it themselves. You must also be banned from having it. It's for the Greater Good after all.

Pathologically incapable of minding their own business. What's on your computer is their business if they don't like it, after all.

I was on the live and let live bandwagon until the frothing anti-parser crusaders decided to cross a line. What the hell more did they want? It's bannable to harass them. It's bannable to tell them their numbers. It's bannable to tell them *your* numbers. It's bannable to speak to them in basically any way that annoys or upsets them. But now they're weaponizing the rules to attack people they're not even interacting with, who aren't speaking to them, about them, or even doing content they'd touch in a million years. That's crossed too close to trying to control people's thoughts, which is literally something cackling cartoonishly evil people do.

Now it's not a don't ask don't tell scenario. FFXIV has a bunch of Puritanical witch burning killjoys, and they can bite me.