Teracide wrote:
Maybe I'm just over-victimizing the players that would be negatively effected by having a DPS meter in the game.
Or maybe I just don't want this game to become and sociopathic wasteland like WoW is.
I don't believe that the one leads inexorably to the other.
I do understand what you're saying about the guy taking LFR entirely too seriously. But even without Recount, that'd be the guy madly spinning his camera around watching for anyone standing in the wrong spot or anyone who stops their rotation for a second to scratch their nose. My point is, he'd find a way even without the tool.. and the tool can be used for good in spite of him.
I do remember in FFXI (even though it had an out-of-game parser available) a time when MNK was considered awful, entirely because it didn't put out huge sexy numbers like BLM did. People couldn't tell that the MNK was doing good damage, because it was coming in smaller chunks than the BLM.
Parsers also help keep the devs honest. When you can point to hard data to explain a problem with class balance, it's much more likely to be listened to.
Refews wrote:
Gaming is serious business. No thanks man. I log in to play a game, not to do what I basically do at my job. I am not going to pour over dmg parses nor am I going to critique anyone else's gameplay based on the numbers game. If that makes me a bad gamer than so be it, at least I am going to have fun at it. Seriously, some people just get way too involved... like baseball, it is a beautiful and fun game until the statistics junkies start in on it.
And that's fine. Play the game the way you want to play it, nobody can tell you you're wrong (legitimately). But understand that if you're trying to do more serious progression, that your performance DOES matter. If you don't want to deal with that, just don't enter that environment.
It's going to boil down to playing with people who share your viewpoint on the subject. Surrounding yourself with hardcore players and complaining that everyone is hardcore is just silly.