@kat what do "uploading parses" and "orange parses" mean
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@Felthry oh boy okay i wasn’t expecting not-ffxiv-likers to care about this post hang on give me a while to type an explanation

@Felthry a lot of xiv players use a piece of software to parse combat logs during fights and give readouts of who’s doing what and who’s doing how much damage and how many deaths people had so they can improve their gameplay or analyze fights and see what needs to be improved to complete harder content with their group

you can upload a parse to a site called fflogs that will automatically turn it into a big interactive chart that helps you look through and analyze the information (cont)

@Felthry when you upload a fight log it also gives you your overall damage readout and a percentile of your damage compared to other players of the same class, on the same fight, so you can understand your general performance overall

those are color-coded so 1-25 or so is gray, 25-50 is green, etc

if you have a very good higher-percentile parse you get blue and orange and stuff

some people look at others’ uploaded data to gauge their performance, someone with a lot of gray parses might (cont)

@Felthry struggle a bit on harder content, someone with a lot of orange probably will perform very well, though it’s not a guarantee either way

some people treat it as a “you’re cooler if you play the game better” thing and sometimes there’s a stigma on someone with a lot of gray parses, or a perceived superiority if someone has higher parses

this person is making a joke about “i only play the game well to get girls, who definitely care about my parse percentiles”

they do not, that’s the joke