[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[8bithamster]

Right now players who do care will just run ACT, I guess I don't see the issue here.

I mean if you don't run ACT and don't look up some sort of guide on how to play your Job. I feel like you don't really care about your performance as is.

So glad that a person on the internet thinks I don't really care. Amazing really. Hint, I refuse to use ACT and i do read class guides. But hey, since I don't do one of your points, I don't care at all right?

Seriously, this is why I am so against parsers like that, because of the community acting like that, "omg if you dont have it you dont care!"

[Veluren]

Blergh. My role-play plans fell through due to some unexpected OOC drama. On the plus side it leaves me free to pursue something different, so I'm tempted to try out an Au Ra since we're going to Othard in 4.0.

Ech, my sympathies, I know the pain of OOC drama killing storylines all too well, hopefully it wasn't tooooooo awful.

[Anzaman]

I don't really RP myself, but I do have background story for my character, which is slightly altered whenever she goes from Au Ra to Miqo'te. Tho, lately I've started to adapt Miqo'te as main.

Just hoping that we'll get Sice, Rem and Machina hairstyles in March update - based on the pics I've seen on Google, Rem's might look pretty nice on my cat.


*Above pic is Sice.

[Jun]

Skip Soar or Disband!

I'm fine without meters, as the gaming community turns into even frothrier raging asshats when they have numbers to wave in people's faces.

[Granyala]

So glad that a person on the internet thinks I don't really care. Amazing really. Hint, I refuse to use ACT and i do read class guides. But hey, since I don't do one of your points, I don't care at all right?

Seriously, this is why I am so against parsers like that, because of the community acting like that, "omg if you dont have it you dont care!"

Sort of agree but:
There are many different levels of "care". Playing at the elite / high end level w/o information parsers provide? I doubt that it feasible.
Though not everyone cares quite THAT much.
You can still play adequately at the DEVs intended target and beat the content w/o going into the extremes.
As a BLM, I don't need parsers that much.
Every time Enochian runs out, I know I fucked up.
Enough of an indicator for "occasional BLM play", yet I still care about performing to the best of my abilities

Bottom line: Yes, it's totally possible to care about ones own performance w/o wanting to use ACT.
ACT just makes our job of finding out what works/doesn't work easier.

[Rafal]

I wouldn't mind giving people personal dps meters. But I really don't want this game to become meter centric. =( its WoW all over again

[Faroth]

Right now players who do care will just run ACT, I guess I don't see the issue here.

I mean if you don't run ACT and don't look up some sort of guide on how to play your Job. I feel like you don't really care about your performance as is.

I don't run act, but know how to play the job. Friend was running ACT and he's confirmed a few times I've been top or near top DPS.... damn BLMs always tend to steal it. Them and their "I don't have to get out of range of my attacks to avoid stuff, lol, poor melee." And then I shake my fist at our BLM and threaten to lock him out of the FC house! *fist shake*

But we're not doing savage raiding either.

- - - Updated - - -

Blergh. My role-play plans fell through due to some unexpected OOC drama. On the plus side it leaves me free to pursue something different, so I'm tempted to try out an Au Ra since we're going to Othard in 4.0.

What server are you on? Balmung, I assume?

- - - Updated - - -

I wouldn't mind giving people personal dps meters. But I really don't want this game to become meter centric. =( its WoW all over again

Fortunately, I think that's exactly how Yoshida feels. He wants to come up with a solution to provide the desired feedback without the meter centric obsession.

I <3 Yoshida, though. I'm a total Yoshida fan. ^-^


Unrelated to DPS meters, my alt is almost 1/4 through the post 2.0 patch quests. Stopped click skipping and resumed reading and watching cut scenes as I just got to Yugiri's arrival. This alt is a female Highlander, short as the creation allows it to be. She's based on a character I created before (who is Japanese), so I always thought of her Eorzea incarnation to be half Ala Mhigan half Doman (or Othardian anyway), so the Yugiri and then the Stormblood content interests me with her. Ala Mhigan wound up sailing with pirates, ends up in Othard, has a baby with a woman, he considers staying but he's killed by Garleans. Mother instills a fire again the Empire in the girl as she grows up and she fled Othard joining pirates herself when young.

I previously got her to 50, made her FC room to resemble a ship's captain's quarters, and parked her in a nice glamour, but Othard in Stormblood made me want to get her to 60.

I don't want my WoW alt-itis to return full blown, but.... *scratches neck* Just this one will be alright... (I have a 2nd alt at 50. Same thing, made a room, glamour, and park...... but I wouldn't mind her getting the scholaticate emote). >_> *scratch scratch*

[Anzaman]

On the plus side it leaves me free to pursue something different, so I'm tempted to try out an Au Ra since we're going to Othard in 4.0.

Makes me wonder if (story) characters will "act" differently in Othard if player character is Au Ra.

[Deleted]

So glad that a person on the internet thinks I don't really care. Amazing really. Hint, I refuse to use ACT and i do read class guides. But hey, since I don't do one of your points, I don't care at all right?

Seriously, this is why I am so against parsers like that, because of the community acting like that, "omg if you dont have it you dont care!"

Ok so I m totally fine with that and all as long as you answer one simple question. How do you know how you re performing without the parser? If someone else is parsing you thats all right but if now then how?

[Wrecktangle]

Which is exactly why Yoshi P leaked that they are working on something that will tell ONLY you how well you are doing without making a comparison to everyone else and their epeen. In fact he said its something no MMO to date has attempted before.

No one has attempted it yet for the same reason that no one tried mounting nuclear engines on ice cream trucks. It's just obviously stupid. Personal meters aren't going to tell anyone anything they don't already know, it's a waste of time and resources. He either needs to embrace it 100% or refuse it 100% and stick to participation medal gaming.

I am excited to see how it turns out. Actual DPS meters and things like DBM, Gearscore and other such addons are IMO what caused the toxicity and complete break down of WoW's community over the years. When is the last time you queued for a random 5 man in WOW and had anyone say anything nice to anyone?

Fun fact, every time I pug a weekly 15 or do a raid or help out a guild struggling on a random heroic boss, I always have people say nice things to me. Hell I've been recruited by at least 3 guilds since NH dropped based strictly on my performance. I have people who've seen my logs and whisper me randomly asking for tips. I have people who try to get their friends in a raid to see if he can out dps me etc. I've never seen someone deny trading an item that wasn't a upgrade for them because they're selfish. So when you say complete breakdown, I think you're probably a bit wrong there. The only time people are ever nasty is when there is such a colossal fuck up, or some of the worst performance you've ever seen, which happens in both games. I've seen some vile shit said to people in EX runs across the years.

The point I am trying to make is that for me, both games are basically the same. You see the same behaviors, the same positive and negative interactions. The biggest difference is that one game lets you easily access and identify critical performance data and the other doesn't. ACT is great, but not the most robust or easy to use and that's why it should have an in house setting that supports this.

Also DPS meters only cause epeen neckbeard players to tunnel hard and ignore MORE mechanics. FFXIV needs no global DPS meter and it needs no DBM. The mechanics are broadcasted just fine as is and the less incentive we give players to be cocks to each other the better.

Fun fact #2. This commonly used idea that tunnel vision people do the most DPS is actually a hilariously bad fallacy. In fact the highest DPS players are consistently the ones who perform the mechanics the best (via uptime). The simple fact that you're not aware of that is proof that you could use a parser.

funny you mention something like that. I was doing the roullettes for my tomes and got tam tara with a greenleaf healer. They get stuck on geometry out of line of sight, the party wipes and they dont release. The tank -who of course had a world of warcraft characters name to keep the stereotype alive- starts doing the "FFS HEALER WTF ARE U DOING" thats been the norm since dungeon finder showed up in wrath along with the 'one wipe and everyone leaves' mentality and tries to kick when they dont release.
I inspect the healer and they have the friendship circlet, novice gear and a PSN ID, clearly they are new. Healer types "dont know how " and the tank goes nuclear but the other dps goes "oh im so sorry i didn't realise you were new" and they try to help but dont know the PS4 interface, knowing whats probably up i say "hit the trackpad in the middle to cycle to a tiny button on the bottom right" and instantly they respawn. I then offer some tips for healing like "use the up and down on the d pad to cycle fast through the party" as the tank calls everyone faggots and says how 'legion is killing this trash game anyways' and leaves so we wait for 5 minutes helping them out with info and a new tank shows up and goes "greenleaf know what to do?" and is perfectly willing to help as well and we get the dungeon and the healer asks what he could do to help more and was very happy people helped and said "i didnt think people online could be friendly in games anymore" and adds the others who were on his server to his friends list and we leave with the duty concluded.

This is an interesting story.
1) You don't even need a healer for TamTara, so not sure how you guys wiped to begin with.
2) How does he get stuck on geometry? I mean, Tam Tara is like level 16 so you pretty much understand how movement works by then. Honestly getting stuck on shit after playing that much is kind of pathetic. Not rage inducing, but certainly sadly pathetic.
3) Now that said, the guy was clearly a complete fucking goober. I would have been annoyed about the wipe (again because you don't even need a healer), but would have shown compassion and respect for the greenleaf. I wouldn't have been able to offer a ton of help as I don't heal or play ps4 though.

People who want to perform well will learn how to do that with or without a parser/ meter. All the meter does is give a much more easily measurable metric to go by to tweak the performance here and there and allow you to see what other people are doing. Those that don't care to perform, aren't magically going to perform better because there's a parser/ meter available. We already have a somewhat usable measure of DPS in game in the form of the Earth, Wind, Sky dummy thingy for trials that can be used to measure how quickly you kill it which could be used to give a rough DPS estimate. Not exactly the best tool, but it's something. If anything, it could easily be used to measure an individuals performance prior to going into battle so you know who's up to par and who isn't, but it sadly could obviously not be used to measure actual performance during the battle

I personally like having a DPS meter because I like to see my numbers, but it honestly doesn't really change how I play it just provides an easily measurable and therefore reportable metric for my performance. I'm one of the people who looks up guides and uses the targetting dummies to get my rotations down before going into battle. I can't stand the thought of holding a group back or not being good enough or seen as incompetent so it's not like a DPS meter is going to change that. It might affect how I gear or what materia I slot to change my DPS by a few %, but I'm not in bleeding edge progression content, I just do PuGs so that level of min/maxing isn't required. That said, I'm not sure introducing an official parser/ meter would affect the game as a whole because people like me will still keep doing what they're doing, those who want to perform at their peak will be on PC and use ACT (or be on PS4 and have a buddy on PC that has a parser measure you) and the people who already don't give a shit will still not give a shit.... so my prediction is all that will happen is that it will open the doors for more open DPS shaming.

Legit question. Let's assume you were in a group and someone did better than you on ACT. You don't look to see how/why they did or do you just chalk it up to gear?

If DPS meters were mainstream people would see other people doing more or less. They'd ask questions about it, they might go hmm.. what did he/she do differently than me? I mean imagine you're in the scenario. You switched mains to NIN, you download ACT and go into a EX and you see this: (made up numbers)

DRG 1600
BLM 1550
BRD 1400
YOU 1000
PLD 850
PLD 700

In this situation you would assume that its your class proficiency right? or maybe gear? But what if you just had COMPLETE shit fight optimization? I.e. You could look and see that the DRG and BRD both used 50% more GCD's. Why? How? Maybe you weren't attacking the boss during a mechanic, that you could? Maybe you didn't use a gap closer at an opportune time. Maybe you could have AOE'd on an add and have it cleave the boss for more damage. All these small fight intricacies that you'd have no idea about unless you looked or asked.

Now for the type of player that doesn't care, guess what. Nothing changes for them. It helps the people who want it, it doesn't change for the ones who don't. If the DRG makes fun of you for low DPS, you report him and move on.

Your argument supporting this is akin to a room full of people who are all given knives. You know there are 25 nutjobs who are mentally unstable but who cares because knives are useful. It's not your fault if something bad happens just because you gave everyone knives. It's the community's problem. You have no responsibility to come up with a more elegant solution, after all, because it's up to people on how they use the knives you gave them!

You never responded to my last post so I'm mad at you.

That aside your analogy is bad. It's not giving them knives. They already have knives (in the form of ilvl/new player bonus/x class instead of y/etc.). You're merely giving them a serrated knife instead of a sharp knife. They're both tools that do the same thing. They'll choose to use one or the other. Ultimately no change.?

I think making them official opens the door for flaunting them to be viewed as acceptable. Right now they ARE in use, they just aren't as precise as some want them to be and since they're not official and aren't really against ToS, it's a don't flaunt don't tell situation, which keeps them from being touted around for bragging or harassment.

Or you know they could release them and say "FLAUNTING OR HARASSING PLAYERS IS NOT PERMITTED, YOU CAN BE WARNED OR BANNED, ETC.). Problem solved.

The thing about meters is that in a game without meters, if a run is unsuccessful because of low dps, it's really hard to correct the issue. But in a game with meters, a run that is successful can see a lot of harassment because the good players harass the low performers, hold them to an arbitrary standard, even though the group as a whole is successful.

So to me there are no good choices. On balance, I'm on the no meters side. I'd rather not see see successful runs become toxic. And unsuccessful pug groups are going to be toxic with or without meters.

It's strange. In all my successful runs in WoW where your alleged situation is from, I've never seen this. No one harasses people for poor performance when you succeed. The group just disbands, or removes the carried player (no drama no fuss, just thanks for coming, removes and refills the spot).

[Katchii]

A lot of players actually need to see the improvement, or they do not believe it.
Dummy testing with a parser tool is also decent when you want to take into account your own player skill.
For example: It's easier to see how much my DPS suffers if I can't maintain a certain buff during a fight and maybe it's overall more DPS if I play safer and reset it earlier etc.

I agree that in this kind of situation you're correct. The meter is a much more definitive measure of performance, and is obviously sensitive to buffs falling and and whatnot. My statement isn't meant to be "meters don't help" it's that a meter doesn't fix bad gameplay. A player can learn their class, their rotation and the fights without it and be on the higher end of the skill spectrum and for a large portion of the population and the game content this is enough. For a player at the higher end of the spectrum already, using a meter can/ will help them get even higher, but it's not fundamentally changing how they play (in most cases) it's just reinforcing how important X stat is, or that Y buff must be kept up 100% or tightening up what they already know is the proper rotation/ priority and helping them understand it within the context of the fight they're in.

[Anzaman]

Saw this on Reddit.



https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...eable/de5r8ud/

[Katchii]

Legit question. Let's assume you were in a group and someone did better than you on ACT. You don't look to see how/why they did or do you just chalk it up to gear?

If DPS meters were mainstream people would see other people doing more or less. They'd ask questions about it, they might go hmm.. what did he/she do differently than me? I mean imagine you're in the scenario. You switched mains to NIN, you download ACT and go into a EX and you see this: (made up numbers)

DRG 1600
BLM 1550
BRD 1400
YOU 1000
PLD 850
PLD 700

In this situation you would assume that its your class proficiency right? or maybe gear? But what if you just had COMPLETE shit fight optimization? I.e. You could look and see that the DRG and BRD both used 50% more GCD's. Why? How? Maybe you weren't attacking the boss during a mechanic, that you could? Maybe you didn't use a gap closer at an opportune time. Maybe you could have AOE'd on an add and have it cleave the boss for more damage. All these small fight intricacies that you'd have no idea about unless you looked or asked.

Now for the type of player that doesn't care, guess what. Nothing changes for them. It helps the people who want it, it doesn't change for the ones who don't. If the DRG makes fun of you for low DPS, you report him and move on.

I think I mostly answered this already, but in this situation I'd check the persons gear level vs my own and if it's vastly different I'd chalk it up to that. If it's close, I'd chalk it up to a few things depending on the situation it could be 1) Class awareness, if i'm new on it I'll be a little slower on things than a "pro" 2) Fight awareness, as you said knowing when the fight mechanics happen have a huge impact for many classes DPS output so if I don't know it well I'd say it was this.

As I already said, this isn't the situation where I say meters aren't necessary. You're thinking about how a meter can be applied to a player who's already relatively skilled, and may just need more practice, and is trying to improve their output. They're not trying to learn their class at this point, they're optimizing their playstyle to eke out as much DPS as possible.

If you think of player skill and DPS output as a spectrum

Terrible [----------------------------------------------------] Amazing

A DPS meter isn't going to make a Terrible player Amazing, or make Terrible DPS Amazing. Practice and understanding your class mechanics will get you to ~ here on the spectrum.

Terrible [----------------------------------------X------------] Amazing

From this point a meter is a highly valuable tool that can take a player from there to Amazing. But in my experience it isn't necessary get the player to that point initially, though it certainly could be I'm just saying it's not a necessity.

All I'm saying is that a meter doesn't fix everything, and can't/ won't make someone play better, it just measures performance. Only a player who's willing to look up guides and information on their class and playstyle, put that information into practice and basically apply the scientific method (test, measure, analyze, adjust, etc...) will improve. A meter CAN be one of the tools used to do this, but it doesn't HAVE to be at least not until you really get to the higher end of the spectrum and are really min/maxing your gear and the fight. For many people just a fundamental understanding of class and fight mechanics is enough to get by in the majority of the content, and a meter isn't necessary to get to this level.

[Faroth]

No one has attempted it yet for the same reason that no one tried mounting nuclear engines on ice cream trucks. It's just obviously stupid. Personal meters aren't going to tell anyone anything they don't already know, it's a waste of time and resources. He either needs to embrace it 100% or refuse it 100% and stick to participation medal gaming.

This is what shuts down conversation. "My way is the only way that is conceivably valid. Yoshida is stupid" automatically kills any interest in attempting discussion with you.

If they had a system that informed you that you underperformed on the fight's tuning of X DPS, took Y amount of avoidable damage, etc, etc. that seems like useful information without the party epeen meters.

Also, you're a fool! NUCLEAR ENGINES ON ICE CREAM TRUCKS WOULD MAKE THEM HELLA FASTER! WE SHALL BE RICH!

You never responded to my last post so I'm mad at you.

I'd have to go back and re-read it. I may have concluded there was no point in replying as any opinion other than what you presented would be dismissed as stupid. If work is particularly boring today, I'll try to go back with a fresh mindset. My apologies.

That aside your analogy is bad. It's not giving them knives. They already have knives (in the form of ilvl/new player bonus/x class instead of y/etc.). You're merely giving them a serrated knife instead of a sharp knife. They're both tools that do the same thing. They'll choose to use one or the other. Ultimately no change.?

I've not once seen anyone say anything about ilvl in FFXIV other than Party Finder stating requirements for that group.
I've seen people respond positively and helpful to new player bonus, even happy to be getting the bonus. I've never seen a complaint. Not once. I'm not exaggerating, I have NEVER ONCE seen a complaint about that.
I've not seen x class complaints either. For pre-made groups, they may want a particular group make up, as stated in party finder based on how they set it up, but I've never seen it a topic of complaint or used against a player.

For that matter, I didn't see these as often in WoW as the DPS meter shit talk. So I'm still standing by my analogy.

Or you know they could release them and say "FLAUNTING OR HARASSING PLAYERS IS NOT PERMITTED, YOU CAN BE WARNED OR BANNED, ETC.). Problem solved.

It's not permitted in WoW, yet you've got a decent number right here saying it became something they were accustomed to seeing.


However, let's make sure we're on the same page because I'm seeing two phrases used and they maybe aren't supposed to be interchangeable. I'm not even sure people are intending to use them as such, but others (including me) have taken them as such. So let me make sure so we aren't speaking about totally different things.

Are we talking DPS meters?
or
Are we talking about parsing logs?

Or are we talking about both?

Because @Granyala posted earlier about parsing logs and I can totally see the validity of having data afterwards to go back and review. I don't consider this the same as real time DPS meters, which is what I have more reservations of.

[Kazgrel]

WHM anima at 270 and MCH at level 60 (which was last job I had left to level)...combined with getting the remaining padjali weapons from PotD, those were all worth 110 nerd (achievement) points in the span of a day.

Now to finish WAR and PLD animas...blergh. If the umbrite nerf is enough to convince me to do another anima, it'll definitely be DPS (and likely SMN since it wouldn't need to farm a gear set for it). DPS have it made for the light farm step (when it comes to A1S groups). But for now, two more tanks weapons...argh. No one's "fault" but mine, since nothing required me to make all these damn weapons (and I will likely step it back to dps/tank/heal, 1 of each in SB).

[Anzaman]

Monk leveled up, woo.



Just DRK, WAR and BLM left. Decided to start working by leveling up both tanks 2 levels at a time, so they remain in same gear.

[Kazgrel]

Monk leveled up, woo.



Just DRK, WAR and BLM left. Decided to start working by leveling up both tanks 2 levels at a time, so they remain in same gear.

Exactly what I did with tanks, only it was all 3 of them together (once I caught WAR and PLD up to DRK).

Getting all 3 of them to 60 freed up about half of one of my retainer's inventory, since I piled up tons of tank gear from the quest rewards in HW.

[Anzaman]

Yeah, tho got PLD up early since I wanted to have at least one of each role.

Now just working through the list.

[StrawberryZebra]

I think I mostly answered this already, but in this situation I'd check the persons gear level vs my own and if it's vastly different I'd chalk it up to that.

What if you were vastly better geared, and still lagged behind hard on DPS? That's a serious flaw thats on you, and on you alone. A DPS meter could highlight that to you, and give you some insight as to how to fix it.

The real danger with these kinds of situations is that DPS who are being carried thinking they're actually making a serious contribution. If they're consistently being sucessful in the content they've got no real reason to ask those kinds of questions. Afterall, the boss did die, so you did just fine. Right?

Without some outside intervention they're never going to examine their own play habits and look at how they can fix their issues. A DPS meter puts an actual numerical value on just how much you're contributing which makes it hard to ignore. If you're lagging behind, you can see how much you need to improve. It also offers you a very clear goal too - Make that number go up!

If they had a system that informed you that you underperformed on the fight's tuning of X DPS, took Y amount of avoidable damage, etc, etc. that seems like useful information without the party epeen meters.

It's useful feedback. Where it falls short, in my opinion, is in being actionable. If you're underperforming on DPS regularly how do you go about changing that? Reading a guide can help fix any serious rotational flaws, but they're somewhat limited in scope beyond that. Practicing the fight and getting better gear can help too, but they're not the whole story. If you've got other issues that are holding you back, such as performing your rotation too slowly and leaving a gap between each skill then a guide isn't going to fix that. The only way an issue like this is going to be apparent is if you've got someone constantly watching you play who could point it out to you, or if you're able to pull the information you need from a DPS meter.

[Granyala]

Monk leveled up, woo.

Grats!
Bard is 58 1/3rd .. getting there...

@ Yuna costume: Really pretty, but I'm not forking over 30€ for that.

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It's strange. In all my successful runs in WoW where your alleged situation is from, I've never seen this. No one harasses people for poor performance when you succeed.

I have seen it. (You see a lot over course of 10 years ) But it is quite rare.
Mostly they make fun of underperforming people in TS but if everything goes well they ultimately don't give a damn.