Expectations are ruining this game

I've played for six years, and GNB is my first tank role. I am rusty. I am nervous. But I am very upfront with people and let them know. We all love to learn new roles. I find if you are OPEN with people, they are more than willing and understanding.

As a new tank, I've been pretty much leveling on HoH and doing MSQ Roulette, since there is a second tank, and I can get a feel for things.

I did two dungeons for the first time tanking last night, and for the most part people were really chill.

I totally understand not wanting to spoil dungeons or story before doing them. I just wouldn't take a new job into them. My main is MCH and now DNC as an alt main, so I tend to do new content with the roles I am comfortable with and have down. Once I've got GNB to a skill set I am confident in I will branch out.

Bottom line, be open with your communication. You will always get people who are just looking to rush through and have an experienced tank, but those aren't the norm.

I can relate to the fiance. I want to try my hand at tanking, but I know I'll get shat on for fucking up in trials or alliance. Dungeons, so far, haven't been so bad but in alliance or trials? People can get really nasty if a tank messes up. I know most dungeons and raids like they're the back of my hand at this point, and I'm typically OK with running any dungeon as tank provided I have my favourite healer, otherwise I only do ones I'm very comfortable with, like Wanderer's Palace. But Alliance? Even though I know those ones so well, I'm not confident about tanking with multiple tanks, knowing tank mechs, etc. So, I really can't bring myself to do those.

I do like blind runs, though. I absolutely hate it when people try to spoil the mechs for me by going "OK U DO THIS AND THAT" without asking if I want instructions first. So, I make sure to do dungeons and raids and trials when they're brand new as a non-tank class. Then, later on, I may do redo the dungeons as a tank. I think most of the parties I've been with are fine with blind runs, but you get the occasional bad apple who doesn't. :/

I think the issue with expectations are more community based than game based. (I do let people know that I'm new to tanking or never tanked X before, etc. and they're usually chill about it after I let them know that.)

It is expected to get people like that who get upset if you don't do the dungeon in the exact method that they are use to.

Half of it is like what people said, letting the party know you're new. Half the time, people will be fine with it. The other half will get annoyed, and really it's about communication and how people want to react to one another. I take long breaks and took a long one with 4.0, came back and wanted to jump back into tanking. I went into a dungeon and would say "It's been a while so I don't remember everything 100%"

I would get mixed messages from "Np I don't remember this much either." to "It's fine, just pull to the wall and we'll be okay." or if I don't pull all the way because no one said anything and I guessed wrong, I get yelled it for being a horrible person that's wasting their valuable time. It's the way they react to it and it will force the person to respond back, either in a nicer way where they feel comfortable and hopefully perform better or if you get the nasty one you kinda go "If there wasn't internet between us I'd $#@$ you with my tea cup."

I've seen people mid-way, they go in blind and when they get to a boss they ask if there's anything important that would make them wipe that they should know. Some are fine with it and say what to look for, others flip their lids and break into a riot.

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Originally Posted by MOZZYSTAR

But Alliance? Even though I know those ones so well, I'm not confident about tanking with multiple tanks, knowing tank mechs, etc. So, I really can't bring myself to do those.

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I would definitely encourage you to keep trying. You get to a point where they yell at you and you need to be honest with yourself. If you're trying, showing improvement to at least some degree, then you should feel good about yourself. You're not going to get there as fast as the player who takes two days off, youtubes their videos and runs the game non-stop. It may take you a week, while it takes me two weeks. You'll run into people who are fine with you learning so long as you're trying to people who demand perfection and this is their sad way of life.

Even simple mechanics can be hard to come by with some people, there's usually some sort of missing link to make it all click. Once you find that, you're good to go. If someone isn't being offensive towards you and trying to help, take the help. We all need help sometime in every aspect of life. Then again, there's nothing wrong with someone being a complete douche and saying "How about you leave or say something productive you little thunder-^#$%" In the end they're just people over the internet, some who act out more than they do in real life because they can.

Read some good responses here but I wanted to give my experiences. I've seen these sort of players since day 1. They're far more common than I care for but they aren't the majority. Majority changes by data center/server, time of day, era of the expansion, etc. Basically it's always changing. Since the release of the roulette function with incentives to assist those in need of content clears it has been abused.

Personally I run everything blind. That's how I enjoy the game. I was a dot mage in 1.x, dps in 2.0-2.1, tank from 2.2-4.1 and dps from 4.2-current. I've encountered people who respect my choice of experience first and experience fresh, those that hate and rage and those completely indifferent. I'll heed advice for something I'm new to so long as it isn't "go read/watch a guide". My goal isn't to make you suffer, thus if a tried and true mechanic suddenly swapped here I'll be happy to oblige you if you drop that "tethers are reverse here. Stack to break them" cool. If not, I'll figure it out on my own.

Mind you this is solely for the Duty Finder. Anything requiring preform parties I'm not going to join a loot-completion/farming group in PF if I haven't experienced the fight to completion yet. But that doesn't require I read/watch a guide.

Guides are written by players. Developers don't drop a guide for the FFXIV content when it launches. The players have to dive in, adapt and learn it before sharing their findings for others. The expectation of waiting for someone else to do the work for me never sat well with me. The song and dance I'd rather learn with my own to feet and I feel I'm better for it.

You'll meet all kinds of people in the game. There's as many kind hearted souls as there are jerks who just want to make everyone suffer. When you don't perform it's a toss up of who you'll get but it is within your ability to completely avoid if you so choose.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

But unless something is said, people could just assume that the "new player" is an alt. Plenty of people play alts. If you want a fully blind run, however, and wish to avoid potential spoilers or drama I would suggest starting your own group through the party finder tool.

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assuming its an alt is a bit of a guess, the simplest answer when it tells you people are new, is that some one is new. Also, when dungeons are recent, the likelyhood that everyone knows the mechanics is lower. The regular duty finder and roulettes are designed to place people new to dungeons with people who have done it before. No one should expect that everyone is experienced in a random duty finder dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

on one side you are fully in the right to play your way, on the other if you're joining completely blind some people who have run the content countless times and explained it countless times are going to be a little frustrated when someone joins a dungeon and needs someone to walk them through all of it. Science parties are fun for some, but others they are quite the ordeal. Maybe use party finder so you can specify that you want a blind run?

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the standard for duty finder is never going to be to only use dutyfinder when you are experienced, the game literally tells players progressing the game to queue for duty finder, or requires them to click the duty finder interaction points during thier quests. It also goes out of its way to tell people there are new players, and reward the group. People need to accept duty finder is the standard for getting new players through content, and roulettes are designed to make old players have reasons to do dungeons they have done before with people who are less experienced.

the ones who should be expected to party finder to avoid new players is the more experienced players

I've only experienced the first few MSQ dungeons + Ifrit as DPS, but to my own - I guess postive - surprise these runs were silent ones without me messing things up due to my innate nervousness (regardless of difficulty). However, I did watch brief dungeon versions on youtube by MTQcapture who does/did imho an amazing job in her videos. In contrast, although I enjoy leveling my Paladin next to my "main job", just the thought of tanking in dungeons gives me the chill for whatever reasons.
While so far everything seems quite managable, I fear I'll eventually reach a point when I have to draw the line and mechanics + gimmicks gets multilayered, given the amount of story dungeons I'm expected to complete. Fortunately, it seems that raids and coils are not required for the MSQ, yet seem to be partially useful for grasping the whole picture (e.g. Bahamut from what I've heard). But I disgress... when push comes to shove, I will definitely consider playing the "first timer" card before the experienced players before the actual run begins.

It's funny because even now with Shadowbringers I still had to keep telling people "Please don't spoil!" because I personally want to experience the content myself and figure it out.

Especially when Tanking my actions are generally going to dignify if we wipe or not. So me personally experiencing and learning the fight feels much more rewarding for me. Thankfully with many of the fights in current content they are all very predictable in terms of when your tankbuster is coming, when a raidwide is coming, and then that bosses specific mechanics. I wouldn't have been able to piece that together as well if someone just flat out told me what was going to go on, sometimes you need to deal with that head on to get the best knowledge about it.

This is applying this logic for mainly dungeons, MOST trials, and MOST raid bosses and is generally based on how many new people I see in a group. A perfect example of this imo is Tsukuyomi normal. If about 6 people know this fight you can generally hop to it without any tips (most people can pick it up as the fight goes on), however when your number is about 4-5 that's when i would suggest giving very brief tips on the fight. You still want people to experience the fight for what it is since it's really cool, but explaining every single bit about it takes the magic completely out of it. Especially when people mess up and someone has to be passive aggressive on explaining the fight to still have people die. I feel brief tips are great since it avoids having people die to mechanics that aren't too clear. The swapping sides during lunacy is a big one as that leads into both bleed and doom, easily killing someone if a healer is brand new. Nothing feels more degrading then dying to a mechanic like that as opposed to something like the fans where it's more clear as to WHY you died. That's why explanations without going into too much in depth are a big thing. Just saying "swap sides when your count hits four" is perfect, doesn't tell you what this side mechanic is, but also gives you an idea that something bad will happen if you don't follow it.

When you start hitting EX and Savage the expectation then is that you know how the fight works unless joining a blind party finder group. You can absolutely pick up mechs during those groups but as the difficulty is much higher it's best to go armed with some knowledge unless you're joining a blind one.

OP I understand your frustration and it just sounds like you've been having bad groups of people. I would recommend to avoid being spoiled on fights to simply just say "First time here, please don't spoil". I did that for every dungeon/trial I ran in Shadowbringers and only asked for help on one of them, which was Titania simply due to an aggro question.

My advice is to just expect it and shed it like water. I have no fear of what a rando online thinks of how I play. I'll tell people straight up if I'm new at a duty or class and just let the hate flow if they don't like it. I will agree it's ridiculous in this game though.

My girlfriend has dungeon anxiety because of people like that and I always tell her what I just said here. Part that shit like the Red Sea and just walk on through it like you own the place. Too much actual stuff to worry about in the world besides rude people online. :)

I really appreciate all the responses to this! First of all, I just need to say that this was me venting out of frustration and I'm a lot calmer and levelheaded now tbh.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to explain things from both sides. There are definitely a lot of things that we can do to make things easier on ourselves. However, my fiance has decided to run through everything as a healer first so they can get a feel for how things go because they are a lot more comfortable with healing than tanking. We will definitely try to be a lot better about letting people know when we're new to a dungeon or whatever so that they understand if we wipe, that's why.

Of course, that is to say that we have played through most of the dungeons up to level 50 and do have a pretty good grasp on mechanics, unless something new gets thrown at us. But even then, we're both pretty quick to pick something up, and if one of us misses it we'll explain. And if we both miss it multiple times, we're not too proud to ask for help.

Just recently we did Thornmarch for the first time with other people (we did it undersized first just for fun, so we kind of knew what to expect), and we wiped probably 3 times before people were like "okay this is what's going on", but nobody really got upset about it thankfully.

And as I've said in other posts, I completely understand the frustration of dealing with new players who have no idea what's going on. We recently had a tank in Sastasha who literally didn't know how to do their job. But our healer was patient and explained what he needed to be doing. It was super frustrating, but we understood that he was new, so we took our time and let him learn. It may have taken 30 minutes, but it still got done and we helped someone learn something in the process.

But again, we're going to try to be better about announcing our newness to content so people know what to expect.