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

[Midareyukki]

The only thing I don't like about ACT is it's presence in other content. If it were truly exclusive to people running savage or ultimate, or even EX, and used only to improve their performance then a lot of these arguments would be perfectly valid. The reality is it's used in nearly all content, the fact that my character has a number of logs despite having never done any savage or ultimate raiding nor having run ACT myself attests to that. It has been and will continue to be used to harass and belittle players in content where the kind of performance demanded by savage just isn't necessary. The current stance of the dev team trying to kind fo turn a blind eye to it while still keeping it against the TOS is what is allowing players pursuing savage and other raids to use it while prohibiting it's use in when it becomes in issue in other content, as long as the raiders at least make some attempt to keep it to themselves.

I don't understand why players use ACT on low-end content either. It's honestly daft, especially the ones who choose to plug them into FFLogs... like... honeys... what's the point of knowing how much damage someone did on one single Normal Raid? There's no point, and FFLogs enabling it is just as dumb.

But if anyone is actively using ACT to harass you, then report them.

Raiders generally don't use it to harass, especially not players where massive performance isn't necessary. And even raiders who do it among themselves are really just opening themselves up for retaliation. So yes, if that happens to you, hammer 'em.

...that said, are you accusing raiders of actually doing it with proof to the point of it actually being so widespread? Or are you saying this in the fear that it might be used that way? Because the way this topic is dealt with by Square Enix, especially when it's used for harassment directly, is a good enough deterrant, it usually isn't a thing that actively happens. And when it does, it's reprehensible; even raiders agree. But idk your experience, are raiders really being so overt with using these tools to discriminate against you and people you know?

[Zebraoracle]

I don't understand why players use ACT on low-end content either. It's honestly daft, especially the ones who choose to plug them into FFLogs... like... honeys... what's the point of knowing how much damage someone did on one single Normal Raid? There's no point, and FFLogs enabling it is just as dumb.

But if anyone is actively using ACT to harass you, then report them.

Raiders generally don't use it to harass, especially not players where massive performance isn't necessary. And even raiders who do it among themselves are really just opening themselves up for retaliation. So yes, if that happens to you, hammer 'em.

...that said, are you accusing raiders of actually doing it with proof to the point of it actually being so widespread? Or are you saying this in the fear that it might be used that way? Because the way this topic is dealt with by Square Enix, especially when it's used for harassment directly, is a good enough deterrant, it usually isn't a thing that actively happens. And when it does, it's reprehensible; even raiders agree. But idk your experience, are raiders really being so overt with using these tools to discriminate against you and people you know?

Anecdotal experience and all that, but I've literally never seen anyone attempt to harass anyone about their ACT/FFLogs numbers in any content, much less dungeons and trials, and I've been playing since 2.1.

[Midareyukki]

Anecdotal experience and all that, but I've literally never seen anyone attempt to harass anyone about their ACT/FFLogs numbers in any content, much less dungeons and trials, and I've been playing since 2.1.

Me neither, and I've been playing since 3.4. Not as long as you, but... pretty much, yeah.

[VeyaAkemi]

I don't understand why players use ACT on low-end content either. It's honestly daft, especially the ones who choose to plug them into FFLogs... like... honeys... what's the point of knowing how much damage someone did on one single Normal Raid? There's no point, and FFLogs enabling it is just as dumb.

Perhaps to gauge themselves? I can absolutely see the point of using low-end content as practice for your rotation, see how well you can do in slightly more stressful situations that a Dummy doesn't provide, and see how well you can recover should you drop your flow.

[Midareyukki]

Perhaps to gauge themselves? I can absolutely see the point of using low-end content as practice for your rotation, see how well you can do in slightly more stressful situations that a Dummy doesn't provide, and see how well you can recover should you drop your flow.

Oh I see. So it's like, because the training dummies and SSS don't have any mechanics or forced downtime, you plug those in to know if you're optimizing properly?

But you sure it's fine to do that? Raids are always super organized and people know how to align their buffs and whatnot. What you'll be parsing won't really be fair. If you haven't been getting proper buff alignment from your party, or if your AST singles you specifically and overfeeds you cards, won't the results be skewed? Considering, you know, you're also parsing randos. Randos you know won't be doing all that hot either :x

(You, in general, not you in specific)

[Troxbark]

Oh I see. So it's like, because the training dummies and SSS don't have any mechanics or forced downtime, you plug those in to know if you're optimizing properly?

Pretty much. While there are gear differences to consider, I normally ran it casual/ex content to see how I stack up to others of the same class. Doing this helped me refine my game play.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I don't understand why players use ACT on low-end content either[...]

Speaking from personal experience... is literally to just improve wherever & whenever I could regardless of what job I play.

I remember when I was still very new and just realized how bad my performance was. I started small, from the easiest content and make my way higher as time passes by. Being able to see my own ### gave me the affirmations I need rather than resorting a feelycraft which are more likely to be biased than not. I want to know that I'm doing something -right-. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I also don't want a vague metric that is the enmity order list.

EDIT
There were only few times I remember seeing people giving away the fact that they're using one:

1. That one NIN I was paired (as a RDM) in Heroes' Gauntlet back in 5.3. Homie complimented "Crazy dps RDM!" and literally wrote my number in party chat after the healer and tanks left. It wasn't a sour encounter but part of me surprised they just out'ed themselves like that.
2. Late 5.5 when I was helping a friend into DRn grind. Somebody in the party asked "How's that WAR doing so much dps???", which prompts the rest of the members to ask how did he know and jokingly questions "What's my number? lol".
3. Early in 6.05 when I was farming e8s unsync'ed as an AST. Several wipes happened because the PF couldn't meet the dps check. The party disbanded after the tank mentioned "We're not going to skip LR guys, the AST is doing more than two of the DPSes :/" and nothing else. Just gone like that.
4. Same, in early 6.05 when panda normal first drops. The tank forces a group wipe and refuses any raises whenever somebody ignores pull timer. When somebody asks "is this barse?", they weren't shy to admit it was. This was the only sour encounter I ever had because I was tired that day and just want to get my weekly loot ASAP. One of the DPS purposely ignoring pull timer didn't help neither.

[Midareyukki]

Speaking from personal experience... is literally to just improve wherever & whenever I could regardless of what job I play.

I remember when I was still very new and just realized how bad my performance was. I started small, from the easiest content and make my way higher as time passes by. Being able to see my own ### gave me the affirmations I need rather than resorting a feelycraft which are more likely to be biased than not. I want to know that I'm doing something -right-. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I also don't want a vague metric that is the enmity order list.

EDIT
There were only few times I remember seeing people giving away the fact that they're using one:

1. That one NIN I was paired (as a RDM) in Heroes' Gauntlet back in 5.3. Homie complimented "Crazy dps RDM!" and literally wrote my number in party chat after the healer and tanks left. It wasn't a sour encounter but part of me surprised they just out'ed themselves like that.
2. Late 5.5 when I was helping a friend into DRn grind. Somebody in the party asked "How's that WAR doing so much dps???", which prompts the rest of the members to ask how did he know and jokingly questions "What's my number? lol".
3. Early in 6.05 when I was farming e8s unsync'ed as an AST. Several wipes happened because the PF couldn't meet the dps check. The party disbanded after the tank mentioned "We're not going to skip LR guys, the AST is doing more than two of the DPSes :/" and nothing else. Just gone like that.
4. Same, in early 6.05 when panda normal first drops. The tank forces a group wipe and refuses any raises whenever somebody ignores pull timer. When somebody asks "is this barse?", they weren't shy to admit it was. This was the only sour encounter I ever had because I was tired that day and just want to get my weekly loot ASAP. One of the DPS purposely ignoring pull timer didn't help neither.

Yeah, that seems like a constructive use for it o:

Like I told VeyaAkemi, I don't know how much the fact you'd be with randoms that don't have the best optimization in mind would skew the results, but if that helped you do better, then it's a good thing :3

[Rilifane]

Yeah, that seems like a constructive use for it o:

Like I told VeyaAkemi, I don't know how much the fact you'd be with randoms that don't have the best optimization in mind would skew the results, but if that helped you do better, then it's a good thing :3

In most cases, randoms can't impact all that much.
Because the most important part is how well you kept dot uptime/ uptime, if you kept your cooldowns on cooldown, if you managed to use your strong skills during buffs - and while a tank can screw a bit of melee uptime from time to time by being terrible at pulling the boss or someone could screw your caster uptime by standing on you with a mechanic and you have a choice between cancelling the cast and moving or dying, the overall impact is fairly low.
While the parse number itself can give you a rough overview, the analysis is the more important part.
If you walk out with a 40 on DNC because nobody managed to do more dps than the AST but have a really clean xiva, you played well. Doesn't matter if you got a shiny number for it or not, you did well.
I've seen ASTs walk out with an orange in savage clears where the entire group was single digit grey. What matters most is still your personal performance and the better you are at that, the less something like a tank pulling a boss poorly or someone trying to make you into roadkill with spreadmarkers will impact your dps.

[VeyaAkemi]

Like I told VeyaAkemi, I don't know how much the fact you'd be with randoms that don't have the best optimization in mind would skew the results, but if that helped you do better, then it's a good thing :3

ACT and FFLogs don't just keep track of your raw numbers, that's just what the parser can show you on the fly, but it also logs input history, which FFLogs can make in an easily viewable format, this can be used to check your ability to keep your rotation going in stressful situations, regardless of the numbers you are actually outputting, the fact you didn't have Battle Litany or Dance Partner from your party will make your numbers tank, but that's probably not what you are looking for if you are looking to just practice.