Do you think one day there will be a MMORPG where helping others....

[Afania]

My description of elitism was in reference to a players attitude toward others they feel are inferior to them for what ever reasons. Discrimination is a possible result of elitism.

But to touch on some of your later postings: picking and choosing who you play with is one thing. If you want to create a group that consists only of players who play jobs you find acceptable that is entirely your right. But unfortunately this kind of elitism rarely stays so focused, and it becomes commonplace in how these players deal with others on a regular basis. Because I've had players come into groups that I created or a friend of mine created and then start mocking other players in the group and telling them their job sucks and they need to re-roll. And this is what I have a problem with.

So in other words: if players want to get together and create a samurai-only club then be my guest. But I think this kind of attitude needs to stay inside the club. When it permeates into the general public it becomes toxic. Because a lot of us do not share in these kind of opinions (and let's be clear, it is just an opinion) that only certain jobs, gear, play-styles etc. are acceptable and everyone else should be scorned or ostracized.

I agree that first and foremost we need to separate the difference between exclusive and disrespect, they are very different.

Since the performance in this game can be measured by number, it is also nothing wrong with thinking others are worse at their job....a SAM parsed 30% v.s another SAM parsed 15%, the one that can parse 30% is better, this is fact. There's nothing wrong with 30% SAM thinking himself plays better. It doesn't matter if 30% SAM plays better because of gear or knowledge, it is still a fact that he is better.

However, if the SAM used the language like "you suck", then that's disrespect. Playing better doesn't necessary result disrespect, personality issue does.

Also, elitism is only one reason that may cause disrespect, out of many. I can name at least 5 posts in this thread that's full of disrespect/discrimination..., most of them aren't because of elitism, except 1.

I think you guys are focusing on elitism as a source of disrespect/discrimination way too much. I've seen a lot of disrespect/discrimination on forum and in game(this thread has many), but less than half of them is elitism.

[Dale]

I agree that first and foremost we need to separate the difference between exclusive and disrespect, they are very different.

Since the performance in this game can be measured by number, it is also nothing wrong with thinking others are worse at their job....a SAM parsed 30% v.s another SAM parsed 15%, the one that can parse 30% is better, this is fact. There's nothing wrong with 30% SAM thinking himself plays better. It doesn't matter if 30% SAM plays better because of gear or knowledge, it is still a fact that he is better.

However, if the SAM used the language like "you suck", then that's disrespect. Playing better doesn't necessary result disrespect, personality issue does.

Also, elitism is only one reason that may cause disrespect, out of many. I can name at least 5 posts in this thread that's full of disrespect/discrimination..., most of them aren't because of elitism, except 1.

I think you guys are focusing on elitism as a source of disrespect/discrimination way too much. I've seen a lot of disrespect/discrimination on forum and in game(this thread has many), but less than half of them is elitism.

There is more to how you play your character than just how much you parse. That's a poor indicator of a player's over-all performance in my opinion. So that alone is not really what I would consider a justification for any player to think they are somehow better than another.

That being said, people are free to believe they are better players than others for what ever reasons they wish. I think we agree on the major point: and that is it's not a good reason to treat others disrespectfully.

I would disagree with you though about elitism not being a common source for disrespect in MMORPGs. In my experience, it's a real problem and a lot of the rude comments I see directed at other players is because of it. And often times it has very little or nothing to do with how the actual player even plays. It has more to do with the job or sub job the player is using or the gear he/she is wearing. Hell, much of the time I start seeing the insults fly before the fight even begins and the player hasn't even had a chance.

[Dale]

you imply they have more intelligence or skill. I've run with "elites", that isn't the case. Most just have more time and a steady group to accumulate better gear, but they don't play their jobs any better than about half the server. Like the WHM who ran in a pick-up delve with us yesterday without RR, he's considered elite, especially by himself. Didn't stop him needing me to raise him.

I would agree with you. Most of the time those who consider themselves the elite aren't very impressive. Like the occasional DD I run into who continuously brags to the group how awesome their dps is and how everyone else will suck by comparison. We enter the battlefield, said Samurai immediately begins to spam weapon skills - DOES ZOMG UBER LEET DPS MAN - bites off more then he can chew. Dies. We continue on without him and easily beat the battlefield while he spends the rest of the fight dead or in the corner weakened. I suppose he was really elite for the few seconds he was alive.

My idea of a truly skilled player is one who knows how to assess a situation and adapt to achieve victory. And I would take someone like that any day over a lot of these so-called elites who do nothing but brag all day and demean others yet can't function successfully except in the narrowest of circumstances. Which is probably why they end up being so picky about who they play with to begin with.

[Comeatmebro]

There is more to how you play your character than just how much you parse. That's a poor indicator of a player's over-all performance in my opinion. So that alone is not really what I would consider a justification for any player to think they are somehow better than another.

A parse isn't a sole indication of how useful someone is, correct. A DD parsing 18% may be more useful than a DD parsing 21% if they make smarter target selections, use support abilities, or are otherwise more alert and helpful. However, once that gap starts to widen, it's a pretty clear indicator of usefulness. If you have a situation where you'd choose a 700DPS dd over a 1000DPS dd, you're likely better off adding another support job anyway.

We enter the battlefield, said Samurai immediately begins to spam weapon skills - DOES ZOMG UBER LEET DPS MAN - bites off more then he can chew. Dies. We continue on without him and easily beat the battlefield while he spends the rest of the fight dead or in the corner weakened. I suppose he was really elite for the few seconds he was alive.

Samurai should be WSing as frequently as they can in any content worth bringing Samurai to. If your party chose to bring a SAM, they should have expected that person to have hate and acted accordingly. I realize this is a hypothetical, but even so I'd side with the samurai over anyone else.. it's not their fault the mages are incompetent, and there are very few events where any sort of hybrid or PDT is still needed if your mages are attentive. They were doing their job(as a damage dealer) by dealing damage, it's the support that didn't hold up their end.

[Lithera]

you imply they have more intelligence or skill. I've run with "elites", that isn't the case. Most just have more time and a steady group to accumulate better gear, but they don't play their jobs any better than about half the server. Like the WHM who ran in a pick-up delve with us yesterday without RR, he's considered elite, especially by himself. Didn't stop him needing me to raise him.

I was mainly going by the definitions Camiie's had posted and in most of those definitions intelligence was listed in them. I think most here can agree that you can't fix stupid. Back in the day when dynamis LSes existed my group would have this Pld that would never get an xp buff. Sometimes they would be our only tank, his constant deleveling would make the group faceplam.

[Afania]

There is more to how you play your character than just how much you parse. That's a poor indicator of a player's over-all performance in my opinion. So that alone is not really what I would consider a justification for any player to think they are somehow better than another.

It depend on the job, if you're a support/hybrid DD like DNC, COR or BLU, maybe you can't completely rely on parse to decide who has better performance.

In the case of SAM however, at least 95% of performance are based on parse, 5% based on luck, such as QA proc/got hit with amnesia/charm and so on.

I would disagree with you though about elitism not being a common source for disrespect in MMORPGs. In my experience, it's a real problem and a lot of the rude comments I see directed at other players is because of it. And often times it has very little or nothing to do with how the actual player even plays. It has more to do with the job or sub job the player is using or the gear he/she is wearing. Hell, much of the time I start seeing the insults fly before the fight even begins and the player hasn't even had a chance.

So, in this very thread, Spetreman, Camiie, Lithera, Zarchery and Comeatmebro all posted disrespect comment, besides Comeatmebro's comment, which ones are based on "elitism"?

Also, since the choice of subjob and gear choices are part of the gameplay, pointing out certain subjob choice is the same as gameplay. So it really makes no sense to say that "pointing out SJ and gear choices is irrelevant to the gameplay"

[Afania]

I would agree with you. Most of the time those who consider themselves the elite aren't very impressive. Like the occasional DD I run into who continuously brags to the group how awesome their dps is and how everyone else will suck by comparison. We enter the battlefield, said Samurai immediately begins to spam weapon skills - DOES ZOMG UBER LEET DPS MAN - bites off more then he can chew. Dies. We continue on without him and easily beat the battlefield while he spends the rest of the fight dead or in the corner weakened. I suppose he was really elite for the few seconds he was alive.

My idea of a truly skilled player is one who knows how to assess a situation and adapt to achieve victory. And I would take someone like that any day over a lot of these so-called elites who do nothing but brag all day and demean others yet can't function successfully except in the narrowest of circumstances. Which is probably why they end up being so picky about who they play with to begin with.

Based on your previous comment, I think you misunderstood the concept of "good performance".

Unless you're a support/DD hybrid, your job is to do dmg. Thus it's logical to use parse as an indication to tell who is better. There aren't much else a SAM would need to do in an event.

Know when to turtle when not to turtle is part of gameplay, but ultimately, the point of putting up PDT- set is to do more dmg.

If a SAM died because he doesn't use PDT- set when necessary, and he doesn't turn back when spikes up, so he ended up parse low, then he's bad. Because a dead DD does no dmg.

If a SAM over-turtled when his mages are competent, PDT- set up full time and such, and ended up parse low, then he's still bad.

A "good" DD knows when to turtle so he wouldn't die, when not to turtle so he wouldn't waste dmg potential. The parse is the result of his decision making, and decision making determines whether a DD is good or bad.

Thus, it's only logical to tell who is better DD by parse result, because the parse itself included the decision making process.

If there's only 1%~3% difference between each DD, then luck can be the difference, so it's not that of a big deal.

If there's anything higher than 5%, and it happens every parse after 20 events, then it's easy to determine who's a better DD.....a DD that deals more dmg is better DD, whether you accomplish more dmg dealt by turtle more, or turtle less, decision making doesn't matter, only result does.

[Dale]

A parse isn't a sole indication of how useful someone is, correct. A DD parsing 18% may be more useful than a DD parsing 21% if they make smarter target selections, use support abilities, or are otherwise more alert and helpful. However, once that gap starts to widen, it's a pretty clear indicator of usefulness. If you have a situation where you'd choose a 700DPS dd over a 1000DPS dd, you're likely better off adding another support job anyway.

Samurai should be WSing as frequently as they can in any content worth bringing Samurai to. If your party chose to bring a SAM, they should have expected that person to have hate and acted accordingly. I realize this is a hypothetical, but even so I'd side with the samurai over anyone else.. it's not their fault the mages are incompetent, and there are very few events where any sort of hybrid or PDT is still needed if your mages are attentive. They were doing their job(as a damage dealer) by dealing damage, it's the support that didn't hold up their end.

Yes I know how you feel. It's everyone else's fault. Everyone else is incompetent except the LEET DD who doesn't know how to hold back or take any kind of precautions or responsibility for his own survival because he wants to parse as high as possible and use those numers to measure his epeen. That's the typical attitude, and why even hearing this word parse on FFXI makes me sick to my stomach.

But in the end, it's the elite that's on the ground dead blaming everyone else for his own mistakes while we finish up the battlefield with no problem. So you can blame who ever you wish in this example I gave, but I think the end result speaks for itself.

Also, that wasn't a hypothetical.

[Dale]

It depend on the job, if you're a support/hybrid DD like DNC, COR or BLU, maybe you can't completely rely on parse to decide who has better performance.

In the case of SAM however, at least 95% of performance are based on parse, 5% based on luck, such as QA proc/got hit with amnesia/charm and so on.


So, in this very thread, Spetreman, Camiie, Lithera, Zarchery and Comeatmebro all posted disrespect comment, besides Comeatmebro's comment, which ones are based on "elitism"?

Also, since the choice of subjob and gear choices are part of the gameplay, pointing out certain subjob choice is the same as gameplay. So it really makes no sense to say that "pointing out SJ and gear choices is irrelevant to the gameplay"

Parsing isn't a good indicator period in my opinion. Doesn't matter what job it is.

And I'm not really talking about this thread when I accuse elitism of being to blame for much of the rudeness I encounter. I'm talking about in-game. So take my comments in that context. And just for the record I felt you were unjustly attack earlier because I haven't seen you make any personal attacks toward anyone in this thread. So I agree with you there has been disrespectful comments made in this thread that were not based on elitism. So maybe hearing me say this helps.

As far as your sub job comments, I never said pointing out sub jobs is irrelevant to gameplay. So what really doesn't make sense is putting something I never said in quotes and then telling me I made no sense because I said something I never did.

What I did say is often times people make rude and disrespectful comments toward others based off what job or sub job they are using. And that is an example of elitism, someone thinking they decide what is the best job or sub job and anyone else who disagrees with them sucks and is fair game to be mocked for it. But I never said sub jobs were irrelevant to gameplay.

[Dale]

Based on your previous comment, I think you misunderstood the concept of "good performance".

Unless you're a support/DD hybrid, your job is to do dmg. Thus it's logical to use parse as an indication to tell who is better. There aren't much else a SAM would need to do in an event.

Know when to turtle when not to turtle is part of gameplay, but ultimately, the point of putting up PDT- set is to do more dmg.

If a SAM died because he doesn't use PDT- set when necessary, and he doesn't turn back when spikes up, so he ended up parse low, then he's bad. Because a dead DD does no dmg.

If a SAM over-turtled when his mages are competent, PDT- set up full time and such, and ended up parse low, then he's still bad.

A "good" DD knows when to turtle so he wouldn't die, when not to turtle so he wouldn't waste dmg potential. The parse is the result of his decision making, and decision making determines whether a DD is good or bad.

Thus, it's only logical to tell who is better DD by parse result, because the parse itself included the decision making process.

If there's only 1%~3% difference between each DD, then luck can be the difference, so it's not that of a big deal.

If there's anything higher than 5%, and it happens every parse after 20 events, then it's easy to determine who's a better DD.....a DD that deals more dmg is better DD, whether you accomplish more dmg dealt by turtle more, or turtle less, decision making doesn't matter, only result does.

I got no real problem with anything you said here. You make a bigger deal out of 5% more damage than I would. But at least you recognize there are times when a DD should make arrangements to assist in their own survival.

We will just have to agree to disagree about the importance of parsing.