One of the recent questions asked of Yoshi-P, producer director superstar of FFXIV, was whether or not there were any plans to implement in-game data parsing as a tool to help players improve. In actuality, it's been a common question that has been asked of him time and again because it's a pervasive question, particularly from people wanting to improve their gameplay so they can take on the ever challenging raid content confident that they are performing to the best of their ability.

The response is that he is concerned that easy access to such a tool could be toxic to the community, allowing for abuse to happen based on a person's parse results. With such a concern in mind, he's kept the idea at bay because he feels that the community is better served by not having it, and figures that those that are seriously concerned about their performance will find other ways to do so. Of course they have, but only on the PC which leaves PS4 players reliant on PC players to parse for them.

It's a dicey and complicated subject, really. There will always be abuse in online communities and harassment over arbitrary numbers (gear scores, kill times, stat allocations, etc.), and Yohsi-P's stance won't stop it, but I certainly can appreciate the desire to curb such behavior. Having some jerk get on my, or a friend's, case about DPS numbers when we are trying to learn our class in lower level dungeons had always rubbed me the wrong way. Easy access to the tool means that it's always on and the judging is ever present because some insufferable jerk decides a dungeon he's run a million times is taking too long even though others in group might be new to the fight or the game in general. I think it's a keen point not often brought up, about the desire to shelter lower level content from such parsing.

Having said that though, I fully admit it's a tool I use for myself for nothing other than to determine my effectiveness at my role and to see in what ways I can improve. Where and what am I dying to? Did I get my bubble off before the tank buster hit? How're my reaction times? For many, it's part of the overall metagame to reaching mastery… And to make sure some sluggard isn't poaching our ponies. >.>