Stormblood had a quest in Kugane where we had to cross the city while dodging Sekiseigumi patrols.
I simply don't define being partially AFK and not trying as "bad performance." To me bad performance is as you said - someone trying but failing for whatever reason.
To me being semi-AFK and lazy by practically only auto-attacking and refusing to move is just "leeching" and one of the few reasons I'd vote-kick someone.
For me it was simply the weird placement of the red-dot-line borders, and it was not intuitive where to go; We started in the east side of town.. if the goal was to get out ASAP, I would have wanted to just exit the east side and skirt the outside of the city where the mobs were least dense. It did not make sense to have to go into the heart of the city and derp around fixing a reaper to blow up a hoard when I should have easily been able to just slip between buildings.
Again, not that it was difficult, it was just..derp.
All the need to do for me was (as I said earlier) remove all the dotted line barriers really. They could force me to move in some direction by simply putting impossible amounts of monsters, or just one of those big robots blocking the way.
Alternatively, they could have introduced the reaper at the start as the objective, then had us explore to find the parts. I was pretty good at avoiding monsters, so I didn't take chances messing with broken robots for med kits or whatever. By the time I got the the reaper, I had to backtrack significantly to find the fuel tank or whatever.
The real icing on the cake was the quicktime event at the very end. My wife thought she was done with it when it faded to black, then "REady!?" She was talking to me about the mission and by the time she realized there was a quick time she panicked and failed it. So.. she had to redo the whole thing.
The actual concept was good, the actual mechanics were fine. But it was horribly designed.
Play how you want to play, if something makes you want to quit, quit.
It's a simple statement, and can come across crass to some, but as much as I want everyone and their grandma to experience this amazing story, it is still a game.
A game that values your time and respects your efforts, would you not respect the game in turn?
By not getting frustrated or disheartened at every little challenge the game throws at you?
If the answer to this is no, then with the most kindest words I can muster: please try a different game, one that fits your playstyle.
While it is not OP, but a very responsive prominent person on this thread:
These are common takes from some one who is playing a game outside their play-style.
Watch a movie. You are not a player, you are an audience. Watch a Let'sPlay series.
And I maintain the fact that just because someone finds something difficult, doesn't make it actually difficult or need to be touched.
A reminder that the 4.1 solo mission, when it released, was complained about here by multiple players for being far too difficult of an encounter. And it was made worse by the fact that the echo did nothing. For some players, that was their road block, and they were not going to get passed it and demanded Square nerf the fight or else they would quit the game.
This solo mission... required a single button press. That's it. It had a dps check of 0. I know. I cleared it literally never attacking. It simply asked you to click a glowy button on your screen. There were ffxiv players that found that difficult. Would the correct response there be to weaken down said thing because some players couldn't manage a single button press? No, because in this scenario, that would mean you'd LITERALLY afk the solo mission. So Square left it alone. And surprise, people got by it, or, well... quit, apparently.
We don't have to make things easier just because somebody complained. There are times where they kind of make a point, Steps of Faith, as much as I hate how hard that was nerfed, did have a point that missing a single dragonkiller meant you were now waiting 15 minutes to wipe wasn't exactly fun. Did they have to go super ham on the boss's hp to where you needed none of them at all? No, personal opinion, but it still had at least a form of argument of "This is the first time you toy with this and failing once = super delayed wipe". We don't have things like that here now after that (unless your WAR just refuses to die, but that's not square coding doing that).
I can only imagine how some of these people would've reacted to on-release Shinryu, lmao. Zodiark is kinda tough for a main story trial (as tough as someone as good as me can find it, at least), but there are plenty of trials out there that were even worse for the playerbase at large. It's nothing new.
nop its a game not a hold your hand while making you feel special about a title or mount or some glowly weapon it suppose to be hard as hell to challange you