Would you be opposed to SE implementing a program to scan for addons/parsers?

[Kazhar]

uh? Sounds like cope. Here is how you know if you are failing because of dps: you cleanly handle all mechanics and understand fight, yet die to enrage timer. The enrage timer is literally the in game feedback that tells you you're not doing enough dps.

This is fallacious in a game with 8 players. People who say this have either no experience in high end content or are being willfully blind to the facts. You could be playing perfectly but still die to enrage timers if one or more people on your team are severly underperforming. Similarly, you could be one of the worst player in the game and still get carried hard. So no, beating enrage timers doesn't tell anything at all about your own performance, just the performance of your team. But in a game where a large portion of endgame content is done through pugging, at all level of play, one team's performance means absolutely nothing. You can't always count on others. And I certainly hope you have better standards as a team player than "I'm doing just enough dps so the enrage requires perfect play from everyone else."

Dps meters aren't "performance enhancers", they're feedback. You don't always need it especially if you happen to know how to play your job already, but personally I wouldn't leave it to chance and feelings. Logs are cold, hard, facts which can't be disputed.
I don't care that some people raid without it (most of my static don't use ACT and they're good players), but whenever someone says they're great at the game without once looking at any kind of feedback I'm asking myself "how would they even know?".

[Mcg55ss]

And then comes the fun part: you're in a group of 8 people. Now how are you going to tell who needs to work on their dps and who is already doing fine?
Aggro list is absolute shit for it and you know it.

Balance rotations are calculated with ACT. Everyone who ever looked up a proper rotation and uses it that is either directly posted on Balance or copy-pasted from there into some guide does in fact rely on ACT because that is how they are calculated in the first place. They don't pull them out of their arses, they calculate them with the help of parsing tools that give them accurate numbers instead of wild guesses and feelycraft which so many people here seem so fond of.
"Oh, I *think* I've been doing great just now, gonna post that on Balance as the new go-to rotation!" - not how it works, mate.

Uh EVERYONE needs work first doubtful everyone is in top 10% and as a outsider looking a fight RARELY comes from big DPS changes dps in this game is so straight forward ACT biggest contribution is probably mostly gemming and big cd usage. The way fights look designed (outside of ultimate) if you are failing generally is probably just people uncomfortable with damage windows between mechanics or failing mechanics and dieing which take time, practice and understanding to develop them. Now obv each person grows at different rates so you could clear and yea some might be carried but I feel as long as you can smile and find enjoyment with your group it will be ok in the end. You may not get to flex your epeen at the world in the end it seems like that is ok

[Rilifane]

Uh EVERYONE needs work first doubtful everyone is in top 10% and as a outsider looking a fight RARELY comes from big DPS changes dps in this game is so straight forward ACT biggest contribution is probably mostly gemming and big cd usage. The way fights look designed (outside of ultimate) if you are failing generally is probably just people uncomfortable with damage windows between mechanics or failing mechanics and dieing which take time, practice and understanding to develop them. Now obv each person grows at different rates so you could clear and yea some might be carried but I feel as long as you can smile and find enjoyment with your group it will be ok in the end. You may not get to flex your epeen at the world in the end it seems like that is ok

You completely, absolutely 100%... didn't get it.
But keep smiling bosses down.

[Mcg55ss]

This thread is embarrassing to read. Anyone trying to do Ultimate content without a dps meter will never beat it, let alone clear the Savage tier required for it.

There is no feedback from the game thay tells you that you aren't meeting the necessary damage to clear the content.

So why do people who don't care about their damage would be interested in raiding in the first place?

Most of these "3rd party tools should be banned" posters are witch hunting and looking for attention.

Also saw some console players getting salty? PC is an open platform, consoles are not. They are closed environments that don't allow modding or unofficial tools because they don't know if it'll effect their system's performance/platform being sold to children.

Well according to the lead developer the internal test team did just this so...idk maybe the testers he hired are just the best gamers ever.

[Kazhar]

It's extremely likely, considering how tightly the dps checks are tuned for week 1 savage and how they know precisely the impact of minor potencies change in the overall job balance, that the dev team uses internal dps meter tools.

[HikariKurosawa]

It's extremely likely, considering how tightly the dps checks are tuned for week 1 savage and how they know precisely the impact of minor potencies change in the overall job balance, that the dev team uses internal dps meter tools.

"The devs must be using dps meters since I can't do it without them" They said outright they did it without any third party tools. I know that you might think they used the wording "third party tools" to hide that they use "internal dps meter tools", but the point of that statement and test was to prove that it's possible for players to complete it with the tools they have access to by default. No player has access to any "internal dps meter tools", so for all intents and purposes in this context it is safe to assume that they didn't use their own official damage meters. I don't doubt that they have them, because they have to test the game balance, but I don't believe they were used when they were testing to see if the content could be cleared without third party addons. That would defeat the entire purpose of the test and statement that it can be cleared without third party addons.

[Kazhar]

"The devs must be using dps meters since I can't do it without them" They said outright they did it without any third party tools. I know that you might think they used the wording "third party tools" to hide that they use "internal dps meter tools", but the point of that statement and test was to prove that it's possible for players to complete it with the tools they have access to by default. No player has access to any "internal dps meter tools", so for all intents and purposes in this context it is safe to assume that they didn't use their own official damage meters. I don't doubt that they have them, because they have to test the game balance, but I don't believe they were used when they were testing to see if the content could be cleared without third party addons. That would defeat the entire purpose of the test and statement that it can be cleared without third party addons.

It's designed to be cleared without third-party tools. It's tested to be cleared without third-party tools. But you're living in a fantasy world if you think testers never have any kind of data on their performance, especially since they use that performance to tune the dps checks for a worldwide audience.

EDIT: btw you're putting a lot of words into my mouth. I never once said that damage meters were necessary to clear any fight (I even said something closer to the opposite a few posts ago), just that feedback is necessary to become a good player, and it's an incredibly good feedback tool. I don't think for a second the testers they selected for savage and ultimate dps checks never received any kind of hard data on their performance and learned their rotation with their intuition and feelings alone, like some of you seem to genuinely believe.

[Vahlnir]

It's designed to be cleared without third-party tools. It's tested to be cleared without third-party tools. But you're living in a fantasy world if you think testers never have any kind of data on their performance, especially since they use that performance to tune the dps checks for a worldwide audience.

They probably have their own program to use if it isn't already baked into their testing build. It would be impossible to tune anything if they didn't know the numbers themselves, yeah.

[caffe_macchiato]

This thread is embarrassing to read. Anyone trying to do Ultimate content without a dps meter will never beat it, let alone clear the Savage tier required for it.

As a member of the “PCMR”, I fully agree.

Except, one small problem. We still need a final solution to console players who can’t use ACT. Square Enix would panic if we ended support for PS4/5 players because they care about money. I know WE don’t care about revenue, but the suits do. So we need to implement enough social pressure to ostracize console players into not even trying endgame content. Problem is, Square Enix is working against that. Yoshida is pressuring people to play 100% vanilla as proof of authenticity for their clears. The JP community already feels very, very strongly about add-ons and parsing because of the association with cheating. People are working against you and this’ll be difficult for you to accomplish. Furthermore, ACT doesn’t have a feature like DBM that alerts party members that it’s on. The most people can do is kick those without logs, but…virtually everyone has logs.

How exactly can we fix the problem?

[Delis]

As a member of the “PCMR”, I fully agree.

Except, one small problem. We still need a final solution to console players who can’t use ACT. Square Enix would panic if we ended support for PS4/5 players because they care about money. I know WE don’t care about revenue, but the suits do. So we need to implement enough social pressure to ostracize console players into not even trying endgame content. Problem is, Square Enix is working against that. Yoshida is pressuring people to play 100% vanilla as proof of authenticity for their clears. The JP community already feels very, very strongly about add-ons and parsing because of the association with cheating. People are working against you and this’ll be difficult for you to accomplish. Furthermore, ACT doesn’t have a feature like DBM that alerts party members that it’s on. The most people can do is kick those without logs, but…virtually everyone has logs.

How exactly can we fix the problem?

Console players don't need ACT. You just need one person in the group that runs it. It is not ACT by itself that is most useful. When people talk about using ACT to improve, or using ACT to figure out dmg numbers for rotations or whatever, they are mostly talking about the logs that the ACT program generates. Running ACT you can see your dps numbers during the fight, sure, but that really does nothing for you in that moment. It's after the fight when the person running ACT uploads the logs and everyone can loom through them and break the fight down and see what they are doing second by second in the fight, that really matters. So along as one person in the group is on PC and running ACT, then the console players can also benefit from it.