Does 14 Promote a Culture of Mediocrity?

After MMOing for nearly 20 years, I think the only stat I trust at this point is that only 5-15% of players complete endgame content when it's current pretty much regardless the game.

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Originally Posted by Saidosha

After MMOing for nearly 20 years, I think the only stat I trust at this point is that only 5-15% of players complete endgame content when it's current pretty much regardless the game.

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And your source is.....?

In Heavensward, DRK was impossibly difficult for a casual player to get into compared to now and a handful to take into savage. The tanks were full of pointless abilities like standalone dots, Reprisal requiring parry procs which don't happen much when bosses do magic damage, cross-class skills like Cure and Fracture. You had to level PLD to get Provoke and you had to level Conjurer to get PLD. Trying to explain what an enmity combo is, was enough to convince DPS that tanking seemed complicated and to keep away from the tank role.

The developers want the tanks and healers to be able to be played by a new player at a decent level. That's been made pretty clear in live letters. The 5.0 balance got a lot more people into tanking and they want to keep it in that direction.

This does not mean there is "no skill ceiling and skill floor". If you have tanked for years like I have, the difference between a new or casual tank and an experienced tank is still night and day. I can spot it immediately.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

These issues, however, are nothing compared to how the community and general attitude have shifted toward shielding the bad from valid criticism, and a general apathy towards self improvement. Even the devs have admitted to designing content in this manner. It's all quite disheartening, given 14 was at in time one of the most mechanically engaging MMOs.

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What you call "bad" is usually new or casual players who are either still learning the game or never intend to learn it properly because they are just enjoying the story, roleplaying or normal mode content. It's important for them to have a good experience and not find classes overly complicated.

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yet you proceed to mald endlessly in literally every single thread that's even tangentially related to player performance or slightly harder content

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Not quite. Maybe you need to reread my comments and their context.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

This thread is not the vibe.

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it is the vibe. i see so many dps not doing proper damage after reaching level cap. you had 90 levels to figure out the bare minimum of your job, so 90 levels to just do less damage than a healer. it really does not take that much effort to figure out x skill does more than y yet you'll keep spamming y because "it's what i'm comfortable with", this is why mentors are revered as a joke even when they offer to help. they're met with hostility and it comes to a point where there is a limit as to what can be tolerated.

everyone is saying op is a troll but he is correct, even if the game is a safe haven for casuals, no one is telling you to clear savage or ultimate week one, they're asking you to perform your jobs basic skills properly. it's not difficult to know one is followed by two, yet people are perfectly fine using just one. and the reason for that is 'it's just a game', ok so it's just seven people i'm inconveniencing, but i'm having fun. if you want to be like that, go play a single player game because those other seven players are certainly not having fun carrying you.

bottom line is, yes, ffxiv has a history of coddling less-then-average players, and i agree with the previous poster stating mediocre is too generous for the vast majority of this game. but alas, this is the state of the game now, and there isn't anything we can do about it. call me elitist, call me whatever you'd like but this is the truth of the matter as many jobs have been dumbed down to accommodate this new normal.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

And your source is.....?

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That’s your whole bit isn’t it

And your source is…?
I’ve never seen it…

No real content, just a vague questioning of a post. Routine got old fast

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Originally Posted by Kolaina

That’s your whole bit isn’t it

And your source is…?
I’ve never seen it…

No real content, just a vague questioning of a post. Routine got old fast

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Comment

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I think the only stat I trust at this point is that only 5-15% of players complete endgame content when it's current

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My asking where the source of this "stat" comes from is quite relevant.

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Originally Posted by Kolaina

That’s your whole bit isn’t it

And your source is…?
I’ve never seen it…

No real content, just a vague questioning of a post. Routine got old fast

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Why did you feed it?

People who post replies like that are lazy and/or trolling. Never feed trolls.

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Originally Posted by ErryK

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That's a lot of words to say you failed the vibe check.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

That's a lot of words to say you failed the vibe check.

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there was no vibe check, babe.

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Originally Posted by ErryK

there was no vibe check, babe.

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You know you can just kick bad players and go about your day. No mald required.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

You know you can just kick bad players and go about your day. No mald required.

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kicking still enables them. why do you think i'm malding? i'm just trying to disprove your "vibe check" of coddling bads.

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Originally Posted by ErryK

kicking still enables them. why do you think i'm malding? i'm just trying to disprove your "vibe check" of coddling bads.

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The vibe in this thread is people wringing their hands about so and so being bad and so and so being an elitist prick. We have this thread every week.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

In Heavensward, DRK was impossibly difficult for a casual player to get into compared to now and a handful to take into savage. The tanks were full of pointless abilities like standalone dots, Reprisal requiring parry procs which don't happen much when bosses do magic damage, cross-class skills like Cure and Fracture. You had to level PLD to get Provoke and you had to level Conjurer to get PLD. Trying to explain what an enmity combo is, was enough to convince DPS that tanking seemed complicated and to keep away from the tank role.

The developers want the tanks and healers to be able to be played by a new player at a decent level. That's been made pretty clear in live letters. The 5.0 balance got a lot more people into tanking and they want to keep it in that direction.

This does not mean there is "no skill ceiling and skill floor". If you have tanked for years like I have, the difference between a new or casual tank and an experienced tank is still night and day. I can spot it immediately.

What you call "bad" is usually new or casual players who are either still learning the game or never intend to learn it properly because they are just enjoying the story, roleplaying or normal mode content. It's important for them to have a good experience and not find classes overly complicated.

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I was a new player in 3.1, and HW DRK was the job that made me want to see endgame. To learn and to do better. It wasn't even that hard. You took an afternoon to level GLD to get provoke, then you read your tooltips and maybe looked at a guide or two (Xeno had a great one at the time) and you learned. It was the most fun I ever had with the game. Furthermore, I was fine with 4.0 balance, despite DRK being made worst. Atleast there was still some nuance to tanking, but alas that's gone now.

The game mechanics are probably getting dumber as the OP says. However, the better you play, the more likely you are going to encounter rude, impatient players who are playing for parse number on FFlogs. They are trying to impress strangers with their Internet points.

I remember my first time raiding in this game. Players ridiculed me for failing to heal a raid I had no experience in. Then in another group, I had bad Internet with frequent disconnects one night. One player quit the raid and left the FC. You have to grow thick skin against everyone doubting you. Finally, you are going to have to ask yourself if spending that much time with players that hate playing with you is worth it to you.

I mean, I get why they reworked the game as they did. From bad experiences in 2.0 either to me as a newbie or seeing other healer/tanks mess up and get hated on, to this day I will never do a new trial/raid etc as a tank/healer u til I’ve done it enough times to know it inside and out. Regardless of how easy healing/tanking has become. That pressure or hesitation to do those roles is a feeling I think the devs don’t want players to feel, this, faceroll.

Now I’m not saying this is a bad call for the main game itself, but it does make certain jobs useless in certain content… like why would you ever bring a healer to treasure hunts?

They certainly need to give healers more utility stuff like protect so that they would be useful at damage reduction or maybe better crowd control like a sleep spell that doesn’t wear off instantly (maybe just reduce sleep time by 1 sec for each hit received, effectively making it an alt stun).

1. FFXIV doesn't have the same budget as WoW. You can't expect the same output of content. (since it came up in the thread)
2. Can a game that is easy have bad players, wouldn't they just be lazy.
3. Less than or 8% of the NA/EU playerbase cleared the last tiering of Shadow Bringers.

It does , all is going down the road of making classes less and less meaningfull, they are still playing differently, but the trend is clearly simplification and homogeneisation and unfortunately we aren't keeping SE to their usual quality standards, it's just going the way of simplification, simplification, and simplification ever since HW. The Reaper is a direct result of oversimplification of the Melee dps class. Hey... IT's enjoyable to play, who wouldn't want an easy dps class where you can barely mess your rotation, but it's the simplest melee dps to date, just compare it's braindead rotation and opener to any other jobs like samurai / ninja / monk. It's almost a melee dps on automatic drive / cruise control mode.

Doesn’t seem like you played ARR. The positional/s were an annoyance. It wasn’t fun to dance around not fun when you did it right either. It would seem to me you have complaints about a road you haven’t traveled.

Let me point out some for you. A shield lob can hold groups in a leveling dungeon through a triple flare.
You no longer have to level and learn several jobs to get the tools you need dropping the barrier to entry.
There is no longer a way I’ve seen yet to rip hate from a tank no matter the size of the pack.
The pull limits are several fold what they used to be, and everything is dead in seconds.
You virtually can’t wipe while learning and progressing through the story, if you can manage it, tell me how. There's no learning curve anymore. Raid geared tanks have no idea how to LOS a pull, or why. They weren’t forced to eat dirt to learn it. There's no need to learn anything. These are the problems I’m seeing and they have nothing to do with the rotations or annoyances from positional/s.

The problem is the content isn’t offering any resistance anymore. How you spin the globals doesn’t matter. It’s what you’re spinning them against, and the players that walked the road to bring us here, apparently aren’t here anymore or are no longer able to be heard from the flood of new people coming in. Who don’t know how the road they’re standing on was paved in the first place and it’s their voices being heard while they guess why things are as they are and the changes are being made to suit them.

Look at my signature, that was the life of a level 50 tank. T5 and T9 for roadblocked most of the player base because the game itself offered more resistance physically than it does now. What it offers now for the most part is mechanical resistance, which can be paint by numbers learned through by patience and effort. I’m sure there’s X super hard whatever, there is no longer a universal difficulty which stood as the always barrier to entry which forced you to learn. I haven’t seen this forum probably since 2015 or 2016, and I probably won’t again until 2025 so I don’t have to deal with the inevitable tripe daring to speak up might bring me.

These are my opinion, as a person whose been around a very long time and actually walked the road of every single change they’ve made. When it got to be more than I could handle, I stopped playing. My sub has been running all these years to keep my house, and my FC house. I last stepped into a raid when Sephirot EX launched after several years away, the I left because I didn’t like the road anymore, I came back for Byakko EX and really didn’t and left again. Didn’t even try past a primal, no need. I’ll keep paying to hold my holdings and keep checking back to see if I like how they’ve progressed.

I love the game, I am happy to support it even when I don’t like it, but what I don’t have to do is play, and I’ll do so until such time I hope, that they’ll reign in some of the actual problems, that people don’t even realize is the problem.

Don't you have to log in at least once every 45 days for an hour in order for you to not loose a house?
oh, ty Shibi.

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Originally Posted by dapperfaffer

Don't you have to log in at least once every 45 days for an hour in order for you to not loose a house?

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Log in, and enter the house, doesn't need to be an hour.

All i see in this thread is people trying to find excuse for their lazyness in game.. This game is not hard at all , all you need to do is read your skill.Literally....

Some expectations in this sub-section of the FFXIV community seem to a bit strange. Taking a bit of a step back: why are you criticizing people? I've not been doing that in WoW, either. There are very few situations where that doesn't end poorly, and it has nothing to do with the game. Furthermore, often the advice giver is not even better than who they give advice to, if better at all. The thing is, the sort of people who know things worth sharing also know that randomly criticizing people you don't know is a questionable endeavor. The whole issue is when you start feeling entitled to control how another person plays because you think you're better than them due to your difference in skill.

One thing you have to understand: teaching and directing people is hard. It's an actual skill. If done well, it pays huge dividends. You do not gain that skill by being a better than average player. Nor do you gain that skill by acquiring a mentor crown. You gain it through patience, empathy, and understanding the perspective of another. It doesn't take much reading of peoples' complaints to see that that is certainly not happening in most cases. As soon as you are dispensing advice to alleviate your own frustration or to improve your situation you missed the point.

And, by the way, what you're calling coddling is mostly common courtesy. The only environments where that's not expected is the military... and the gaming community.

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Originally Posted by lulunami

The game mechanics are probably getting dumber as the OP says. However, the better you play, the more likely you are going to encounter rude, impatient players who are playing for parse number on FFlogs. They are trying to impress strangers with their Internet points.

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I've experienced the same and this is the funniest thing. You're never really rewarded for playing well, because you just end up with angry players who demand perfection, and that's not a standard you're going to meet. Why I gave up on serious raiding ages ago, I can't deal with the ego and with the people also not actually being great on top of it, completely refusing to think besides what the latest streamer told them, put your brain in the microwave already if you're so intent on not using it.

Ego ego ego. That's the problem. If it was high skill it wouldn't be a problem, but it's mostly ego.

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Originally Posted by MidnightEquinox

Some expectations in this sub-section of the FFXIV community seem to a bit strange. Taking a bit of a step back: why are you criticizing people? I've not been doing that in WoW, either. There are very few situations where that doesn't end poorly, and it has nothing to do with the game. Furthermore, often the advice giver is not even better than who they give advice to, if better at all. The thing is, the sort of people who know things worth sharing also know that randomly criticizing people you don't know is a questionable endeavor. The whole issue is when you start feeling entitled to control how another person plays because you think you're better than them due to your difference in skill.

One thing you have to understand: teaching and directing people is hard. It's an actual skill. If done well, it pays huge dividends. You do not gain that skill by being a better than average player. Nor do you gain that skill by acquiring a mentor crown. You gain it through patience, empathy, and understanding the perspective of another. It doesn't take much reading of peoples' complaints to see that that is certainly not happening in most cases. As soon as you are dispensing advice to alleviate your own frustration or to improve your situation you missed the point.

And, by the way, what you're calling coddling is mostly common courtesy. The only environments where that's not expected is the military... and the gaming community.

I've experienced the same and this is the funniest thing. You're never really rewarded for playing well, because you just end up with angry players who demand perfection, and that's not a standard you're going to meet. Why I gave up on serious raiding ages ago, I can't deal with the ego and with the people also not actually being great on top of it, completely refusing to think besides what the latest streamer told them, put your brain in the microwave already if you're so intent on not using it.

Ego ego ego. That's the problem. If it was high skill it wouldn't be a problem, but it's mostly ego.

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As an actual teacher, what you said is not all that accurate. Anyone can teach. Anyone can learn. None of us stop doing either in our lifetimes.

Someone teaching someone else is not inherently toxic at all. Throwing a fuss, because someone is pointing out your mistakes is.

I could give my honest opinion on the matter, but topics like this always just devolve into "Team lazy/enabler" vs "Team toxic elitist" as if you could only be one or the other (when the majority of us are neither)...so...

https://c.tenor.com/aP8HxuS_w8QAAAAM...n-watching.gif

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Originally Posted by Zsolen

As an actual teacher, what you said is not all that accurate. Anyone can teach. Anyone can learn. None of us stop doing either in our lifetimes.

Someone teaching someone else is not inherently toxic at all. Throwing a fuss, because someone is pointing out your mistakes is.

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Teaching and teaching effectively are 2 entirely different things. Anyone can stand in front of a class and waffle, but ensuring they actually retain the knowledge, and creating an environment that is actually conducive to learning is a skill. Regardless of your own personal feelings on the matter. There's an abundance of teachers and there's also an abundance of teachers that are absolutely appalling.

If people aren't learning from your advice then you should probably look at how you're conveying that advice, equally if people are giving you pushback when you present advice or a criticism of their work then you should probably take a stare in the mirror to see if it's as a result of what you're saying and how you're saying it, rather than just the person complaining because they were simply flawed in their approach. Because I can assure you the former is a fairly common case - "I'm only giving advice, I'm only helping" - Which in many cases was presented in the most vile way possible because people utterly devoid of the ability to reflect on their own action - Yet seemingly have an 'all seeing eye' when it comes to other peoples' actions - and this does apply to both ends of the spectrum.

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Originally Posted by Zsolen

As an actual teacher, what you said is not all that accurate. Anyone can teach. Anyone can learn. None of us stop doing either in our lifetimes.

Someone teaching someone else is not inherently toxic at all. Throwing a fuss, because someone is pointing out your mistakes is.

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Everyone can teach but very few are good teacher. I was teacher once, and I have to admitted I was never a good teacher in those year.
Teaching require patience, a lot of patience, understanding how to reach out to the pupils etc.

I believe most players do not reject constructive criticism but in all my year in FFXIV, criticism almost always come out with judgemental language.

I see a lot of “bare minimum” comments, but what is the standard? We have solo instances which I don’t think an “ice Mage” would be able to clear it. Does clearing solo instance mean the player could execute bare minimum.

Every expansion pass there are some good change and some I don’t quite agree with. That’s the way, it will never please everyone

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Teaching and teaching effectively are 2 entirely different things. Anyone can stand in front of a class and waffle, but ensuring they actually retain the knowledge, and creating an environment that is actually conducive to learning is a skill. Regardless of your own personal feelings on the matter. There's an abundance of teachers and there's also an abundance of teachers that are absolutely appalling.

If people aren't learning from your advice then you should probably look at how you're conveying that advice, equally if people are giving you pushback when you present advice or a criticism of their work then you should probably take a stare in the mirror to see if it's as a result of what you're saying and how you're saying it, rather than just the person complaining because they were simply flawed in their approach. Because I can assure you the former is a fairly common case - "I'm only giving advice, I'm only helping" - Which in many cases was presented in the most vile way possible because people utterly devoid of the ability to reflect on their own action - Yet seemingly have an 'all seeing eye' when it comes to other peoples' actions - and this does apply to both ends of the spectrum.

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Who said people aren't learning? There are plenty of people given advice and learn in this game without issue. I'm merely responding to the individual that said you should not teach. That's a silly notion, because we all teach every day and we all learn every day.

Teaching is a skill everyone has. People just have different skill levels, like they have with everything else. I never made any statement that those that were toxic were teaching properly. While not in 100% of the cases, generally the most toxic people are those that try to AFK/ throw a FL match or have max levels characters and are doing some very basic things wrong like "face pulling."

I have very mixed opinions about the matter because, on one hand, jobs have been turning more streamlined and simple but that in itself doesn't necessarily correlate with making them less engaging. It's really something that varies depending on the removed element and, of course, it also depends on the person itself.

Aggro management back in 2.0 and 3.0 was more of a nuisance than a rewarding mechanic. PLDs having to waste GCDs for a non-damaging spell (Flash) to keep aggro, DPS being forced to reduce their aggro or to target whatever tank targeted at early levels to not get punished and warriors having to also use flash whenever their TP dropped were counterproductive and annoying as they were handicaps with no visible reward to it. Stance management, on the other hand, was a mechanic that, while it complicated healers and tanks, it gave them a chance to expand their possibilities beyond the minimum. You could theoretically do the minimum expected if, as a tank, you never ever used the DPS stance or, as a healer, you never turned on Cleric Stance. But if you did the 'dance' with the stances, you would perform way better contributing with DPS. You had a risk and playing around it correctly would reward you in turn (obviously, it wasn't perfect either and it wasn't always the case).

And when it comes to class mechanics, there were mechanics that weren't engaging to begin with, beyond the appearance of seemingly making the class more "complex". MCH in HW was complicated but it was also a convoluted mess which only "fun" mechanic was the ammo imho. The CD lineup for every Wildfire window wasn't all that fun. And while some people mourn for SMN now, ShB SMN wasn't really any better, despite being more complex (ironically, some of the issues people had with SMN were solved in EW, starting with the pet system). Greased Lightning won't be missed, either. And on the other hand, there is also classes that feel like a shadow of their former selves, like SCH and DRK, and feel less engaging than before.


Regarding the players, I believe there is a fair share of people that can't take even the slightest hint of criticism but, more often than not, I find people that, whether they will it or not, come out as rude and dismissive when giving feedback to other players then act surprised when they receive defensive or rude responses back, then believe they're refusing to improve rather than they're actually being stubborn just to get back at a rude person. Manners can really go a long way in making people receptive to advice and, if I want to be rude, I shouldn't be expecting people to be receptive with me.

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Originally Posted by Zsolen

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Teaching in this game has a singular inherent flaw in that the people that are 'teaching' often are expecting the results to be an immediate process rather than a gradual one. That is the issue with teaching in this game and unless you have the commitment and understanding of this fact then trying to teach in this game is just counterproductive because the likelihood of people actually executing it is going to be fairly negligible. There's practically several posts alone in this very thread that would give credence to this fact and an entire thread created on this - You know people creating the bizarre suggestion that content should have a solo component or option simply because people aren't meeting that expectation. These are all perfectly reasonable cases why most people shouldn't be teaching, really. Some responses in this thread and arguably a myriad of other threads on this forum can be attributed to people acting like children because people didn't learn. - That said we can argue people did eventually learn, but in many cases they certainly didn't to do anything meaningful with it in the presence of the person 'teaching'.

To summarise - I wouldn't dispute everyone is always learning something, but having the patience and commitment to actually follow through with this is where the difficulty comes. People have the expectancy that they'll give advice then the next few pulls will be nigh on perfect in execution, or that they'll present some rotational advice and all subsequent pulls will magically result in said advice being executed when I'm pretty sure you and I know full well that learning is a gradual and not an instantaneous process - and this is not discounting the simple fact that it is very difficult to learn or adopt new muscle memory. Sure, by all means we can preach teach if you like. But please don't bother teaching if it is only at the expense of you being frustrated and expecting immediate results, and failure to do so results in said person throwing a hissy slugfest.

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at with this, that much is clear. Teaching is a skill you learn to develop and some (rather many) people simply don't develop to an adequate enough level to where their teaching is meaningful, or productive in the first place. - In fact I would take it a step further and argue that teaching is not a skill, but rather a profession that involves a wider range of skills, be it communication, management, passion and adaptability just to name a few. If we wanted we could argue that you can learn and develop communication and management to a varying degree, but adaptability and passion are things you can only teach the principles of and not the execution of it. If you aren't passionate that will reflect on your ability to communicate the knowledge in a meaningful way. Similarly, if you aren't an individual that is able to adapt then it will only further stagnate your ability to communicate because you'll be approaching different problems using the same methods where said methods might not necessarily apply - This is why people can absolutely be abysmal - Don't get me wrong it's a nice notion but it's just a detractor to a degree from the reality.

That being said, this relates to the thread because many people are simply only using teaching a fight or parts of a job as a means subverting their own frustrations and sooner than later for people this just results in a toxic slugfest for a myriad of reasons. Either fully commit to it or don't bother at all, really.

What is the purpose of this semantic argument? "Does not posses the skill" doesn't mean "has 0 capability of learning", it just means insufficient to be effective. Just like I do not posses the skill to clear a Savage raid. "Everyone can teach" is as meaningless as "everyone can play", nobody disagreed with that.

The point is that many people misread ability to play the game well as equivalent to the ability to teach, but they're different skills, and having one doesn't mean you have the other. If your communication skills are poor, which are core to teaching, your advice will fall flat.

And, by the way, effective communication and teaching skills are actually relevant to life. That's why for some of us, there's very little to compromise here. If you're a tank that doesn't use AoE abilities I will be internally going ??? and wondering if you're playing drunk or trolling or misplaced your keyboard, but if you insult another person for not meeting your arbitrary standard of skill you're lost to me.

I don't know about promoting, rather it's adapting to it.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Teaching in this game has a singular inherent flaw in that the people that are 'teaching' often are expecting the results to be an immediate process rather than a gradual one.

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but that is the thing, quite a few things you can learn in this game, that would make you instantly a better player, are immediate processes
a tank would immediately see the results from trying out mitigation a pull vs no mitigation in a pull, a melee dps would see a marked improvement in a group dying by going from st to aoe, a healer would immediately see how much easier it is to keep a tank alive if they would use their ogcds and so on

it's not like people are talking about low levels players in 90% of the cases on the OF, either, it's people who have spent hundreds to thousands of hours playing the game and their class, people who, most likely, have access and knowledge of guides to improve, but still chose not to, where people, in my opinion at least, rightfully get annoyed with them and give advice that the person that receives them should've known about 30-40 levels ago

I don't disagree with the message of your post at all, but to the defence of many who complain about players like that, they do fully commit with giving tips and being helpful, hence their frustrations with people attacking them over it

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Originally Posted by MidnightEquinox

And, by the way, effective communication and teaching skills are actually relevant to life. That's why for some of us, there's very little to compromise here. If you're a tank that doesn't use AoE abilities I will be internally going ??? and wondering if you're playing drunk or trolling or misplaced your keyboard, but if you insult another person for not meeting your arbitrary standard of skill you're lost to me.

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agree, though in my case I'd replay the drunk with never really having learned how to play a tank, which can be frustrating when it's in 80+ content, but which also makes it really satisfying when the little advice clicks with them and you can see them improve on the field

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

I don't know about promoting, rather it's adapting to it.

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This is true, ff14 is just a product of the zeitgeist.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

I don't know about promoting, rather it's adapting to it.

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I think you nailed it. If we consider current player base a lot of their design choices make sense. With that in mind current difficulty for most content is perfect. Personally I more worried about little to no gameplay of certain side content (like beast tribes), or even MSQ itself. Has turned more about watching than doing.

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Originally Posted by Rinhi

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Quite a few things you can and should learn naturally or be able to apply almost immediately which is fine in the cases of doing AoE on multi-target instead of a single target rotation, or similarly using cooldowns. But not all issues are narrowed down to being that simple, again, there's plenty of case scenarios on this forum and even outside where people are just crying out for not meeting other expectations outside of these. That being said the game is a victim of its own approach as far as the community is concerned. People aren't put into a position where they're forced or at least encouraged to develop good habits early on, and this issue is just further exacerbated by their insistence on normal content being as easy as humanly possible, so people trail these bad habits into harder content. There's just as many people that pick apart or cry about even intermediate or advanced executions which might not necessarily be an expectancy for the party or group with which it is designed. - In practically both of the examples you've elected to utilise are not done so from lack of knowledge or experience but just sheer laziness or absolute choice which is a different matter entirely, and unsolicited feedback won't do anything to resolve that, barring to create some bizarre notions that have been present lately.

Don't get me wrong, sigh all you like, get as pent up as much as you like, but when this emotion leeks into your advice (of which it very quickly becomes apparent) then don't be surprised when people just simply aren't receptive to your feedback or advice and ignore it or just bite back or if it is done so in an unsolicited fashion. Is it selfish that people go into content with which they're woefully underprepared for? Sure. But on the other side of the coin; unsolicited advice is generally a pretty naïve thing to do - In more cases than not accomplishing the opposite of which you're intending to do in the first place. You need a very special sort of grit and the acceptance that some people just simply aren't willing to play ball with you. - This is not one of those tit-for-tat scenarios, just subtract or eject yourself from the environment. - Many people have this bizarre notion that they must make some snarky comment before ejecting.

Personally, if I were to be frank but this does come from the same place that is under the impression that presenting some feedback or a criticism could, or would result in a nice 1:1 with a GM upon the next login, so I can't really give much benefit of the doubt that people are 'presenting some constructive feedback in a civil fashion'.

Things can be simple and fun. I find Dancer a lot of fun, and it's considered a very easy job. Things can be simple and unfun, which is generally how a lot of people feel about DPS on healers at the moment. I think a lot of contention comes from the fact that the devs would rather scrap ideas entirely instead of finding a way to make it more fun. When they have good ideas with poor execution, instead of saying "Okay, how can we make [x] more fun?" they instead opt to remove it and instead not replace it with anything fun in return. I think there's definitely a lack of direction for a lot of jobs (healers, MCH, DRK, etc) and that the frustration definitely comes from there being little communication on what their vision for these roles/jobs are. I know Yoshida said that they weren't "going back to 3.0 complexity" but the problem with that is it assumes that fun to people complaining about their jobs means they want it to be "hyper big brain and complex" when something can easily be hyper complex and unfun.

I think the developers need to accept that no matter how much you lower the skill ceiling on jobs, there are always going to be players who refuse to play properly. DPSing on healers for example, is incredibly easy, yet I still come across loads of healers who refuse to damage at all and just stand there doing nothing in content, while spamming GCD heals and rarely/never using their wide kit of oGCDs. If those players are able to have fun playing that way, great, but it shouldn't come at the expense of everyone who found fun in the mechanics of their job. A happy medium is what they should try to achieve, and a lot of jobs are lacking on that front at the moment.

If a person has thousands of hours in the game but performs what you consider poorly, that's likely a choice at that point, and nothing you say will make much of a difference. I don't see an inherent issue with that. I'd assume that person's endgame is the MB, glamour, the Gold Saucer, etc., and they happen to be in your dungeon for some auxiliary reason like some tokens or what not.

Also, in-game instruction beats guides for the common playerbase. There's a segment of people that simply doesn't read guides. There's a segment of people that does not register the concept of "meta". I belong to a segment of people who will refuse to go to a game discord if I can avoid it, and I also never watch streamers. If people are continually missing really obvious things there may be insufficient in-game instruction or reminders. 3rd party resources are naturally insular and what many define as "the bare minimum" may be reminiscent of disparity in 3rd party resource usage.

In-game, the only forms of instruction I'm aware of are Hall of the Novice, which is nice, but as far as I understand, it's no longer even required, and it's very barebones and very early; Novice Network, which from what I've heard is a mixed bag in terms of whether it ends up a good place to ask questions or just a mentor fan club; and SSS, which is only relevant to DPS.

I have not seen any teaching groups or teaching FCs. MMORPGs tend to be very sparse on teaching environments in general, the only one I remember is EVE University.

There are some basic things that I expect in a group otherwise I'll straight up leave without a word in any dungeon past level 50:

Tank stance. Is it on? Great.
Everyone using their aoes when appropriate? Fantastic.
Mininum 2 packs per pull if not possible to w2w? That shows me you are trying, and if I'm playing a healer then I'll at least have something to do.

I will admit though towards the end of Shadowbringers before EW launched the state of DF was...horrific. One or more of these absolutely basic requirements wasn't being met on a regular basis and the result is that I just avoid the headache and run with trusts to level my remaining jobs. It is better to deal with 30 minutes of trusts than 40 minutes of players who haven't grasped the fundamentals.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

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I see two main points.

One you continue to assume that those that teach in this game are being passive aggressive, which I had pointed is not the case already. People learn from others in this game all the time and are quite appreciative when they get that advice. There are others still where it is not they are not being taught properly so much as they refuse to adapt. I'm not referencing people that leap to pull vs those that use a ranged attack, which makes little difference most of the time. I'm talking about players face pulling and refusing to accept help. I'm also not doubting there are elitist types but they are a very, very small minority to the point of not even being worth consideration.

You second point focused on how teaching works. It is quite clear you know little about just how impactful even informal teaching is. It is not as diffict as you make it sound. Yes, some are better at it, but you don't have to be college certified to teach someone a mechanic. Anyone is capable of teaching it.