The general player base needs to improve

I apologize if you take offense but I'm simply stating that not everyone will be on par with players who have had more time to master their classes. Sprouts can reach SB content fairly quickly and we have jump potions now. its to be expected to have a level of play gap. I'm not saying people shouldn't improve. I'm saying they shouldn't improve at your pace

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Originally Posted by Transient_Shadow

I apologize if you take offense but I'm simply stating that not everyone will be on par with players who have had more time to master their classes. Sprouts can reach SB content fairly quickly and we have jump potions now. its to be expected to have a level of play gap. I'm not saying people shouldn't improve. I'm saying they shouldn't improve at your pace

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No offense taken. I'm simply stating my point. Bluntly, yes, but I usually don't speak indirectly. This isn't about mastering a job...like I said above, I struggle myself with DRG, but I will carry my weight. Again, I have to point this out, my original post isn't talking about regular leveling roulettes, MSQ dungeons, or even the lvl 50/60 dungeons. Most of the time, you can get away with using the basic 1-2-3 combo if you're not throwing out AOEs. Nor have I suggested that players should go 100% at all times. I don't even do that in these dungeons. What I am saying is that when content like Rabanastre, which was released in October, still sees full out alliance wipes, and a vast number of the players in it have farmed this place for the coins, I view that as an issue on the player base.

Yes, it is true that all it takes is one player to wipe out an entire alliance in Rabanastre with double stack markers, but that doesn't account for the other stuff happening in it, like tanks that will not pick up their adds, players ignoring the first set of adds on Mateus which in turn creates a snowball effect when Blizzard is cast by the boss, DPS who focus down the boss instead of taking care of their alliance's adds...stuff like that. Basically, level 70 content.

I could even dial it back and say, how it is possible when, after being told not to take any action whatsoever on the second boss in Baelsar's Wall when it does the cast for motion sensor, players still move around, DPS'ing/healing away, and wonder how, after two wipes, they still died. Of course, this is one of those uncommon occurrences and I won't touch on that.

Regardless of jump potions, there is enough from Sirensong Sea to Ala Mhigo, not to mention the various story battles that you engage in, that you have to have some competency in order to clear through them - at the very least, the story battles that you are in. Even job battles will require you to put in some effort in order to clear them - from the ones I've experienced up to 70, you cannot get by simply from cheesing the fight...you actually do have to pay attention.

To close this response, it is not elitist to expect some average play from who you are playing with in the casual instanced content. If I were to come out and say the entire player base needs to be capable of clearing Savage - then that is truly elitism. I don't believe the whole player base should want to be capable of Savage-level gameplay - Savage is meant for a select group of players. Before anybody else comes out and says I'm being elitist, maybe hear out exactly what I'm saying. And then actually get involved in this discussion instead of being ready to get offended on behalf of other players, some of whom have agreed with my postings.

This is not a 'git gud' thread. This is a thread bringing my thoughts to the forefront, one that I am openly willing to have a discussion with from alternate points of views. Talking about how to raise the player base from below-average to average does not equate 'git gud'/elitism.

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Originally Posted by Transient_Shadow

I apologize if you take offense but I'm simply stating that not everyone will be on par with players who have had more time to master their classes. Sprouts can reach SB content fairly quickly and we have jump potions now. its to be expected to have a level of play gap. I'm not saying people shouldn't improve. I'm saying they shouldn't improve at your pace

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Why shouldn't we expect people to learn their levels x to y skills over the process of reaching y+1? They have the whole level to read the tooltip and figure out how best to fit it in, with only at most a small part of their overall strategy needing to be reconsidered beyond what's been done across all previous levels.

I don't expect everyone to do so on their own, but there are also a plethora of resources available to stimulate and spot-check improvement, especially for PC players.

Playerbase is fine. People have the right to have their own goals in the game and to be more or less ambitious, you are nobody to judge at what level each individual should aim to play. The "stop wasting my time" can only be applied to PFs or premade parties, but there you have an easy solution which is booting the person who is dragging out the rest of the party. In blind content you should expect anything, people are just different and play the game for different reasons. I'm a bit tired of the whole "people refuse to learn" garbage when most of the times it's more about a temperamental player that goes nuts when a DF party doesn't clear an EX primal on their first try. Learn to deal with the diversity of this community rather than mindlessly banging your head trying to change peoples' aspirations and goals, that's not in your hands and it shouldn't be.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

If you want people to improve, the very first step to achieve that goal is making them aware that they can improve. The second step is giving them an incentive for improving. Turns out unspoke social pressure is really good at that, as well as compering yourself to others in some kind of meaningless competition without any real impact on anything.

My suggestion does exactly that, use tools the engine already has, and avoid the "issue" of in-built DPS meters. It also doesn't gate people off like some suggestions would, such as making SSS a requirement to enter something.

Of course the total amount of damage done throughout an entire run is somewhat meaningless. But meaning is not something mandatory to achieve the goal of making people aware of their own situation. Heck, you could even put a little medal icon next to the biggest damage number if you want to go further into this idea. All we need is people asking themselves "what can I do to get that medal?". If we manage to do that, we win. That's both the simplest and hardest step in the process of making the playerbase improve itself.

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Certainly. At a screen like that would be better than nothing. I discourage it only because SE has a habit of filling needs that can be both simply and comprehensively solved with tangential, convoluted, and/or overly shallow means. Each solution reads more as an "added feature" with only an indirect attachment to the need at hand. This feels like something right up XIV's design ally. But, that's precisely because it makes for an incomplete solution. I would hate for the effort to stop there, but unless the next step can be sold as bulletpoint on an added features list, that's almost certainly where it will stay.

Consider it against any other solutions to show performance, such as a personal rDPS parser (via relative potency per second) showing your performance* percentile. (*Definition variable, but essentially based either on global comparative metrics scaled to your item level, or as compared against an accurate but theoretical/simulated value.) Perhaps this ending screen can signal equally that one can improve, excepting all need for information on the breadth or areas available to that improvement. But how? By having more gear? By being a different class? None of it is proportionate.

It's a step in the right direction, but it's a yard when in need of a mile.

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Originally Posted by Transient_Shadow

This borders on elitist.

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No, it doesn't. And just as much as the general playerbase needs to improve, people need to stop throwing that word around improperly.

An elitist wouldn't be open to discussing the matter; they'd simply write everyone off as bad by their own standards and leave it at that. An elitist wouldn't offer any advice nor be receptive to it. The OP wants for more players to be capable of the reasonable standard, not their standard. When I say reasonable standard, I mean a standard generally agreed to be normal and viable for most sub-Savage content; a standard that doesn't require the devs to have to attempt to simplify the game or hold back ideas so as not to overwhelm players. An elitist would simply set fire to this thread and give no care or concern to any responses, and that's not what the OP did at all.

Stop using "elitist" as the catch all term for someone that can identify when people are performing sub-standard and speaks up about it. That just doesn't apply here.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

This is not a 'git gud' thread. This is a thread bringing my thoughts to the forefront, one that I am openly willing to have a discussion with from alternate points of views. Talking about how to raise the player base from below-average to average does not equate 'git gud'/elitism.

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By definition, half the playerbase will always be "below average". Collectively, the entire playerbase is not below average (because half of them are above average), and you can't raise the whole thing to average, because the average is defined by the skill level of the entire playerbase.

You can try to bring people up so that the gap between the top and bottom is lowered, but you will always have above and below average players, and if content is tuned for the average or higher, you'll always have people failing it along with people at the top finding it easy.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It's a step in the right direction, but it's a yard when in need of a mile.

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Well, I don't want to say that it'd be impossible to go further than simply making people aware of their performances and trying to show that it's something important, but then next step of actually teaching them how to properly play is a dangerous thing to dive in.
Either you put hard restrictions on content like some people suggest (mandatory SSS, for example) -which will most likely make people stop playing instead of them trying to pass the exam-, or you try doing soft solutions like the Novice Hall -which will most likely be simply ignored by players, leaving things in the same state-.

So, while I agree that something amongst the lines of what I suggested is not enough, the question is, can we actually do more? I mean, literally. Does a definitive solution exists? As far as MMORPG history showed us, it doesn't seem to be. And if there is, I don't think that FFXIV will be innovative enough to find and properly implement it.

I guess the tl;dr would be "Assuming we get people's attention on the matter, how do we actually teach them? And more importantly, how do we make them want to learn?"

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Originally Posted by Tridus

By definition, half the playerbase will always be "below average". Collectively, the entire playerbase is not below average (because half of them are above average), and you can't raise the whole thing to average, because the average is defined by the skill level of the entire playerbase.

You can try to bring people up so that the gap between the top and bottom is lowered, but you will always have above and below average players, and if content is tuned for the average or higher, you'll always have people failing it along with people at the top finding it easy.

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Well....I actually thought pretty good about this response. And the truth of the matter is, yeah, you're right. Taking into account the entire player base, including raiders, streamers, and everyone in between that group of people, the player base perhaps is already above-average, or at the very least, are capable of being above-average. I might have to change my wording around some...competent feels very ...degrading to say, so I'm looking for a synonym to describe what I should be saying.

The skill gap will always be there, I'll admit, and unfortunately, proposing a way to shorten that skill gap enters into territory that I've been trying to avoid - which, to me, means perfecting rotations, min-maxing, spending hours learning, which is an area I'm trying hard to avoid bringing into active discussion. Conversely, I don't mind that there are top players and bottom players - my thoughts start to lean towards how to raise those bottom players up to be at the current average level in level 70 content where being average is desired.

I hear where you're coming from on that, Kavia, and while I fully agree, I gotta take the hardline on it.

Yes, the gap will always exist and there are people that just won't get better regardless. But it really is time for SE to push people a bit. I don't mean suddenly spike the difficulty, as people had run into before with all content up to Coil back then, but I mean start putting up more of a challenge in low to mid content that will condition players for more once they reach endgame. Don't wait til endgame to get people accustomed to stack/spread mechanics, or mob separation, "Extreme Caution" mechanics, or facing enemies in given directions. Acclimate people to mechanics that will be thrown at them in endgame while they're leveling, or as part of their "lighter" endgame fare, and it won't be so undoable if/when the same mechanics come up in tougher content.

This isn't me saying "make it harder and make them either get used to it or get out!" But I do have confidence that most players, if not all, can at least develop a sense of familiarity with things and handle it accordingly from there. As a mild example, my group was having a little trouble with a double aoe mechanic in O6S, and while everyone was overthinking it, I just said "oh, it's like double Weight of the Land in Titan". . . We've never had a problem with that one since. Back in Weeping City, someone started to explain Acceleration Bomb to me on my first run, and I think "sounds like Blighted Bouquet from T6". . . never been hit by it. If players are given more than a superficial challenge in "expert" or daily content, this familiarity will be established well before they realize it. No, it's not going to do anything for the guy that's phoning in his efforts and single targeting in an aoe situation, but at the very least, when a mechanic that calls for a particular response comes up that he remembers from leveling/daily content, if he's paying even a little attention, he won't fail it.

As an addendum to that idea, and I know people aren't gonna like this: Punish failure of mechanics in daily content. I've heard people mention Kugane Castle on this one a lot. It doesn't have to be an instant kill, no. But let there be some kind of penalty for it. Did you not interrupt something? Let the enemy be buffed for it. Want to pull everything and mindlessly aoe it all? Not if mob A and B will buff each other's attack/defense within range. When the enemies present more of a challenge than just existing, that too can help raise the competency of the playerbase a little.