I’ve been thinking about this a bit. On Monday, MOP’s Eliot penned a lengthy piece about addons in Final Fantasy XIV that seemed to be perfectly timed for the detailed discussion on addons, including DPS parsers, held during yesterday’s live letter from the Square-Enix team. Depending on which translation you’re reading, the gist from the Naoki Yoshida and crew is that they have no plans to ever add parsers, and while generally they aren’t actively hunting for people to ban over them, they still have a standing request to the community not to use third-party versions. One translation straight-up has the team calling parsers “toxic.”
I suspect most people who’ve played slightly more serious group-centric MMOs understand why Yoshida would think this; we’ve all met that group who harassed somebody over deeps. But then again, I also saw plenty of player toxicity about combat when nobody had even dreamed up the idea of parsers yet. And sometimes being able to monitor your own performance and rotations is tremendously helpful when testing a new character or build.
What do you think – do you agree with the devs? Are DPS meters in MMORPGs toxic by their very nature? Should studios be discouraging them in their online games?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
