Here we go...

Lousy monk was talking crap in an Ultima party. Person with parser (FFXIV-APP) calls him out, saying how bad his DPS is for being "Pro". Monk makes a GM call about someone using a 3rd party program. Dude with the parser gets busted.

Lesson Learned? At best, don't advertise you use a parser. At worst, may be think twice about using one. I dunno...

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1vopgf/banning_for_ffxivapp/

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thing that is kinda silly about the ban, is that an add-on with the same function would not only be perfectly ok but encourage to be made once the add-on option is open. i guess gms cant pick and choose between third party programs if its against the rules and i dont wish to discourage them from banning bots. so im not sure how to feel about this, its kind of a gray area for me i suppose.

Yah, I'm not sure how much I would be worried about this. The dude in question was a loser for lying to the GM's face, too. So there's that.

But it's a bit of a slippery slope. Yah, it's reading memory, but so do virus scanners/protection. And it may provide an advantage in the sense that you know how well you're doing, but are they gonna ban Vent, because it makes it easier for people to coordinate?

It's kind of like the Windower all over again.

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Because I'm great at playing devil's advocate: The TOS does actually state that you may not use third party programs. It also states that you may not use software that reads from game data directly.

The fact that the parser is a useful tool, and is completely harmless to other players is irrelevant to a GM. They're basically first-line support reps told to follow a set of instructions and enforce a set of rules.

It's hard to tell these kind of reps to straddle a grey line and allow some things, sometimes, if they're morally okay. It's also not a good idea for them to specifically whitelist certain add-ons with the reps, because that's a pain to manage and is open to abuse if any of those whitelisted apps become a problem in future. From a company standpoint, the easiest thing to do is a complete blanket ban on third-party software.

Once the game has official add-on support and this kind of thing can be built directly into the game's own UI (which should be entirely possible with LUA) -- SE will be able to block things they don't want to allow at the script level. E.g. WoW's add-on framework automatically blocks/breaks any script that tries to perform more than one player ability per button press. Eliminating the ability to program bots using it. Then, they'll be able to say that add-ons that run within the game's framework are completely within the rules and TOS, but all third-party software is bannable.

Of course, SE can't track that you're using this kind of software unless you're stupid enough to go around telling people (and a GM) that you are. Like the Windower, SE are probably aware that it's mostly harmless, and COULD detect and block it if they really wanted to, but don't. They essentially adopt an unofficial "don't ask, don't tell" policy. So the best thing for now is, yes, to keep quiet about it.

So, first rule of Parse Club: You don't talk about Parse Club.

Except for in Vent

So yah. I guess don't go around spitting out the DPS breakdown for people. Most of our parser talk takes place in Vent, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

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the guy was a dork and deserved a ban for attitude alone, but ket badically statet what i meant. it /is/ against the rules, but only becuase of how its accomplished. the act of parsing would be perfectly legal once add-on ui is enabled as long as you use an add-on. i dont disagree with the action taken. but from a logical standpoint that two programs doing the same exact actions one is legal one is not simply due to how the product is delivered. personally i hope this spooks people into not harassing others over their parse scores at the very least.

So... their logging in the game is terrible and doesn't lend itself to accurate parsing at all. I'm worried about this for the eventual add-ons, etc... I wouldn't be surprised if we still have to rely on parsers reading directly from memory, etc... to try and get accurate values.

We'll see how it goes.

I'll be the first to admit that I originally hated the idea of parsers, but now I do see them as a tool for making myself better as a player. If I'm in a party with another person of the same job, I want to compare to see how I'm doing.

I was doing low level dungeons with Ath (as Felicity), when she was tanking, and I was leveling BRD. I normally topped DPS all the time, except one run where we went with another BRD who was doing like 1dps more than me consistantly through the whole dungeon.

It aggrivated me so much! haha. When I hit my next tear of gear, I converted all my BRD gear into materia and got 2 pieces of gathering materia. Oops! So I guess two of my leather BRD pieces were actually the gathering gear. They're all named the same thing, so when I made them, I must not have noticed. haha.

But at least it helped me swallow the 1-2 dps difference that one bard was doing over me :D

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