If the following were to occur, how might they affect player culture?:
There would still be a way to measure/test performance for a character setup, but it wouldn’t be usable as a tool to discriminate against other players in group content.
Thoughts?
Parsing comes from logs what are you on about. And what is deemed acceptable Warcraftlogs is arbitrary (usually leaning toward favoring buff targets and a certain region that doesn’t have public API until enough people complain to have it changed).
Wouldn’t really work.
SWTOR basically just dumps the combat logs to a file and then players created a tool called starparse (at least back in the day).
I think at best you might be able to curb real-time parsing and damage meters mid-fight, but folks would still turn to things like raiderio/warcraftlogs for after the fact group gating.
Also - there are merits to monitoring your own performance during or after the fact just for your own benefit (improving).
Is this a question of culture or an add-on thread in disguise? 
Why should person not be accountable for their performance in a group? And assuming they should be (and they definitely should be), then accountable to whom if not their group members?
Logs not only point out the underperformers but also the tunneling apes that refuse to move for mechanics because “muh parse”. Melee dps not baiting sleep clouds on dreadlords deserve the bench.
If you think things like damage meters contribute to discrimination in group activities, what do you think is gonna happen if you take damage meters away? That people being nasty are going to just stop? No.
I’ll issue a counter-scenario.
What if, and bear with me here… people got good instead of whining about DPS meters?
What you get instead is “Skip soar or disband”.
“If the group doesn’t get the boss to 80% within the first minute and a half, the DPS is too low and we will disband and reform”.
And then the group will reform without the low DPS players, instead of kicking them, if “enforced politness” becomes the norm like it is in FFXIV. People will just find roundabout sneaky ways. People will run illegal mods or use IO scores or some other metric.
Players want to find other players who are good and will succeed. It’s that simple. It’s that %%%%ing simple. Just get good if you don’t want to be discriminated for performance, because the fact of the matter is, people as humans do care about performance no matter what you try.
They will go back to doing gear inspections and will deduce that your low gear or missing weapon enchants or whatever it is that is the problem. Which, in my opinion is worse than being told that you are factually on the low end of the meters.
I just feel like… yeah, people are rude and/or blunt and criticism isn’t always constructive. As an adult I just choose to ignore that and glean any constructive criticism I can.
When I am actively running normal and heroic raids I WANT to know what I can be doing better. Maybe that’s just me.
Yeah. I recently figured out what I was doing wrong on my enhancement shaman after looking at what another enhancement shaman I played with on my bear was doing in terms of rotation and got a DPS bump after making a change and that felt good.
DPS’ing without a damage meter… I don’t even understand what the point of it would be. I legitimately think the game would fall apart if it was impossible to track DPS.
The core gameplay loop of WoW is getting stronger, doing more damage, doing harder stuff, and getting loot that makes you stronger, all while learning to play with the new tools at your disposal. The inability to gauge your own power completely tears down the fundamental construction of the game.
Not to mention, the damage meter part of the add-ons is only a part of the actual add-on… there’s so much information you can get from something like Details. I was using it to keep tabs on my overhealing on my monk and druid.
I can play just fine without add-ons but I’d never, ever advocate for their removal. Removing meters would do more harm than good.
Pass, this information is important when you are failing at a fight and need to see why. For example knowing that one DPS is doign less damage than the tank, is important information if you are failing DPS checks.
DPS meters work by parsing your combat log, so there’s not really a reasonable way to stop them.
This parsing is actually quite computationally demanding though and on older or lower-specced PCs can very noticeably negatively impact FPS and perceived latency.
So what I’d like to see happen is for an official DPS/HPS/etc meter to be added to the game so that DPS meter addons can just pull fully calculated, ready-to-display numbers from the API and no parsing is necessary. This would be a huge win for players on low-spec/old PCs.
could just do what ffxiv does. they do not allow addons, but they know people use them. if someone talks about the addons in game, they can be reported for it. you cant kick for lack of dps. you cant mention anything about their performance that would indicate you are using an addon.
so, wow could make it a reportable offense by just mentioning dps meters.
i mean, people using the meters would just kick or leave without saying anything. after a while, you can figure out dps is lacking anyway just by watching mob/boss health over time. i guess without the meters, you couldn’t pinpoint the offenders.
i like dps meters but i dont use it to bash other players or anything. i just use it to see how im performing in real time. if i see someone with really low dps, it is what it is.
idk how id feel if they removed dps meters ability to read combat in real time during fights. I really do like using it for my own measure.
so, you want player damage to only be seen at an individual level, and only on a target dummy?
this is a garbage idea. no thanks
no thanks, if my group is repeatedly failing damage checks i’d prefer knowing why so i can help the weaker performers improve
-declines your app-
If peoples complaints somehow ends up in my details addon being broken completely I’m gonna be giga-sad. Like if people want to coddle their world view of toxic positivity then I would hope blizz would be competent enough to selectively disable tracking of player generated damage in log while in a group/wpvp (but still retain self damage tracking in all circumstances).
But I swear please do not ever break interrupt, death log, aura, damage from source, etc tracking in damage meters. Details is so much more than a damage meter players think “oppressive players” use to enable abuse. It’s a quicker/in-game way to monitor activity without needing to live log and then bother through log site shenanigans.
This wont happen.
so 100% useless in every way?
measuring dps vs a dummy isn’t a valid way of measuring.
or just ignore it.
Is this really something that happens, and it just eats you up all day?
The best solution is to balance the game so well that the difference between classes never exceeds 5% and parcing is more a matter of ego than of true value.