The issue nobody wants to address

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Originally Posted by Whiteroom

True, but they are the ones in the position to nudge the community in a different direction. Falling back on dps checks for almost everything is the easy way out.

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Missed this earlier :p

Yes they are in the position to nudge the community, but what's it gonna cost them? If they can't introduce interesting mechanics because most of the players are hopeless, what can they really do?

They have to think about maintaining a steady amount of subs and income to keep the game running and the content coming for us every 3 or so months. Sure DPS checks might be the easy way out, but currently it's their only alternative and safe difficulty gate. Because they know the good players have the skill to do it on release, the less skilful players will eventually do it due to better gear, and when it gets to the hopeless players they know the better players and over geared players can help them clear the content as a fail safe to keep those players subs going.

If so many players weren't so incompetent we'd have much more mechanic based content that's fun and challenging to do. Sadly SE have to cater to the majority, which is greatly holding the game back from what it could really be.

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Originally Posted by MentheusDreyar

Missed this earlier :p

Yes they are in the position to nudge the community, but what's it gonna cost them? Sadly SE have to cater to the majority, which is greatly holding the game back from what it could really be.

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Indeed they do, but at the same time, if they can't continue to keep people interested. ie, they are bored because everything is the same. But at the same time, they do also seem to have a bit of integrity with their product, look at MSQ gate to HW for example. They aren't simply in it to make the most possible money, they want to make the most possible money with the product they want to sell. So, one can hope.
But in the end, they are the only ones in the position to make the change. Do I think they would have to do it gradually over a few expacs, yes. Not saying they could just start introducing all mechanics heavy content in 3.1. They would essentially have to groom the player base. But then, isn't content supposed to get more challenging the further you get into a game?

I think the over reliance on dps checks is bad for the genre in the long run, but don't know that it will, or can, change.

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Originally Posted by Whiteroom

I think the over reliance on dps checks is bad for the genre in the long run, but don't know that it will, or can, change.

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Dps checks themself aren't that bad, but when they are combined with big influx of stats on gear it creates issues. With better gear content should get easier, but it shouldn't turn older content into faceroll. It's great that it slows down end game during progression - but the second these players return to previous content they are massively overgeared and huge part of the game turns into mindless farm, which is also problematic for new players, especially tanks.

Just simple nerf to gear could increase difficulty significantly. If the gear was nerfed more and more players would have to seek improvement rather than waiting another week for their "free" gear upgrade.

i did a neverreap yesterday wher ei coulda sworn i did like 50% of the dps (im a drk)

Warning: Wall of Text incoming ^^;

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Originally Posted by Ryel

If you enter a 4 man dungeon and a tank is wearing full Dex gear 20-40 levels under the dungeon with no enmity stance on and is using their DPS combo on the boss non-stop without drawing aggro or using cool-downs to mitigate, i imagine you might pull them aside and be like "Hey buddy, I'm not trying to ruin your fun here but i think you might be doing it wrong" i assure you their response of "Well i'm just having fun" wouldn't be all that amusing (okay actually it kinda would, but that isn't the point) and I would hope you would take a few seconds to help the poor guy out.

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I.... Did you just compare a paper tank to a mediocre-but-passing-grade DD? The DD equivalent of your example would be a caster in crafter gear on the left and random accessories on the right, who (in the case of THM/BLM) only casts ice spells over and over or (in case of an ACN/SMN) resorts to Ruin spam with Garuda on Sic. I'm not overly familiar with those classes -- and I'd be the first to tell you I'm a horrible caster -- but even I would notice a DPS like that.

Of course, the standard for DF runs I've been in hasn't been to point out to either said tank or damage dealer what they might want to do to improve (unless it's a 'simple' mistake like a tank not using Flash, or a healer insisting on pre-casting Regen before pulls, or damage dealers attacking the wrong targets), but rather to berate said player for being rubbish while proceeding to vote kick or vote abandon. Especially if the group has wiped directly or indirectly due to this.

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Originally Posted by Critical-Limit

Then that analogy doesn't work. If you make a party finder saying casuals for fun only. And 2 people join in trying to force you to be good. I just don't think that's a realistic scenario. This is a video game, basketball is a game. You have one goal. Win. If you are so lazy in self improving that you're willing to hold back other people from their goals, I dunno what to tell you.

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Well... To me it seems more like back in P.E. in school, or if the work arranges an inofficial sporting event. Your team is chosen through lottery, you have no idea of knowing who you're going to end up with. Some people in your class/department are good at the sport, some play it every now and then, and some barely know the rules. If the ones good at the sport try to force the others in their team to play at their level, they're out of luck in two out of those three cases.

Of course, in the case of P.E., you don't really have a choice in whether you want to participate or not, and once you're put in a team you're stuck there for the rest of that class -- you'll just have to grit your teeth and try your best not to yell at those 'idiots' unable to handle the ball (or whatever other thing you're chasing in that particular team sport) because if the teacher/referee hears about it you're going to be in trouble.

In FFXIV, you do have the option to leave your team if you can't handle it -- or vote to kick out a team member who is being disruptive. It still doesn't give anyone the right to expect the random players they end up with to be good, or to yell at them or call them scrubs if they aren't.

I'm all for personal parsers being implemented -- that way you get your numbers and information on what numbers you should be able to put out at your (item) level would be just as available as it is now. I probably wouldn't use one myself other than occasionally, but I wouldn't care if someone else did (I don't really care if they do now either, unless they use that information to harass/berate someone else).
Party-wide parsers I'm a little bit more hesitant about, since you get information about others which does open up more possibilities for abuse. But on the other hand, such abuse would still be reportable.

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Originally Posted by Critical-Limit

Lmao pointing out someone's flaws or giving criticism is BULLYING now. Wow, feeling pressured means you're getting bullied?

I feel pressure all the time at work, or when I'm representing a region's skill level in a competition.

That does not mean I'm being bullied.

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Not at all, but it all depends on how said criticism is presented. And most everyone has issues with strangers trying to point out 'flaws'. It's one thing if it's someone you know, but if a stranger walks up to you and starts pointing out how you could really improve on your manner of dress, you'd feel insulted. It's not really comparable, I know, since DF-ed people are strangers you've been plunked together with into a group to solve a problem. But to many people it still rubs the same sense of 'what I do is none of your business'.
(Also being pressured into performing in a certain manner is not at all the same thing as feeling pressured at work or in a competition -- last I checked, FFXIV wasn't a competition ^_~)

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

It's not about forcing you to try harder, it's about giving you more information so you know what's working and what's not.

At the end of the day all it is is information. Sometimes it won't help, sometimes it will. But having more information about your performance is never harmful.

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Well, in the end, a parser only gives you a number. It's up to the player to experiment with different rotations to find the most efficient one, and unless we're talking about a proportionally minor difference (like an increase from 1100 to 1150 dps) it's generally possible to tell which rotation is more efficient relative to how complicated it is to perform.

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Originally Posted by MentheusDreyar

As a DPS good damage indicates you are playing your job well or are on the right track at the very least

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Um... Not necessarily. I've read in one of the many threads on these forums about this one guy who refused to do the mechanics in... one of the Alex floors, I think A4 (normal), because he was too occupied whacking those legs to death to 'keep his dps numbers up', and then criticizing one of the other DDs who had to handle pretty much all the mechanics (and thereby giving up a large chunk of their dps numbers), accusing them of causing the wipe cos their dps was too low... So, um, no. High dps output does not always indicate you're a good player.

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Originally Posted by Anyan

At the end of a dungeon or raid, instead of going "yay we did it!" I went "what were my numbers?" It wasn't about us (players) against them (the enemy) anymore, it was my numbers against everyone else's, including my friends. I became competitive in a way that now makes me very uncomfortable, and I didn't have as much fun anymore.

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Which is my major concern with the whole thing, too. I know of one or two players in my proximity who use parsers, and at times I've out of curiosity asked them what my numbers are at. Not because I'm competitive -- I'm pretty much as far from competitive as one can be, preferring not to MT in instances with more than one tank simply because it means I can debuff the boss more and thus assist the team by reducing the enemy's damage output and increasing the other tanks' damage (plus that of any ninjas present) -- but because I like hearing if I'm doing 'good enough'. I know I'm far from perfect, and I know I could never pull off those 11k Fell Cleave crits that I've seen screenshots of, but that doesn't mean I'm not envious of the high numbers the damage dealing jobs pull ^^;
But even so it worries me a bit how much easier those numbers would be to fall back on when it came to judging 'good performance' if they were so readily available in-game to everyone. And how many people who are more competitive than me would stop feeling satisfaction when the boss fell, instead worrying about their numbers and how they were in relation to those of the other team members... =/

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Originally Posted by Noxifer

I.... Did you just compare a paper tank to a mediocre-but-passing-grade DD? The DD equivalent of your example would be a caster in crafter gear on the left and random accessories on the right, who (in the case of THM/BLM) only casts ice spells over and over or (in case of an ACN/SMN) resorts to Ruin spam with Garuda on Sic. I'm not overly familiar with those classes -- and I'd be the first to tell you I'm a horrible caster -- but even I would notice a DPS like that.

Of course, the standard for DF runs I've been in hasn't been to point out to either said tank or damage dealer what they might want to do to improve (unless it's a 'simple' mistake like a tank not using Flash, or a healer insisting on pre-casting Regen before pulls, or damage dealers attacking the wrong targets), but rather to berate said player for being rubbish while proceeding to vote kick or vote abandon. Especially if the group has wiped directly or indirectly due to this.

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No, and this is the misunderstanding that you and many other posters keep having.

Nobody really cares about slightly low but passing grade DPS, it's a non-issue and is completely irrelevant to the topic. What is an issue is when a DPS doesn't meet the very, very low bar that 4 man content sets. This bar however is raised in proportion to your ilvl from a player community standpoint, nobody is expecting the ilvl 150 DRG to do the exact same or even comparable DPS to the ilvl 210 MNK that they get paired with in Neverreap, they do however expect the MNK to do more damage than the DRG, and the tank, and the healer.

If the case is that the full party is 40+ ilvls over the dungeon that they are queued into, then logic follows that the performance level of all of the players should be that much higher, as like i said before the bar is now raised.

What the example you quoted but apparently didn't read the full context of in the rest of it's post, or in the posts preceding and following it is that the level of transparency and accountability for a tank or a healer is very different from a DPS and the community is okay with this for some reason.

Just like the "paper tanks" you sometimes come across in duties, there have been plenty of posts and comments on these forums of entering duty finder for level 59/60 dungeons and ending up with DRGs sporting VIT or DEX gear or BRDs wearing STR gear because... reasons? These are visible examples that you can simply point to and be like "Hey dude y'know STR does nothing for BRD right? Your damage is going to be pretty low" of course all they have to say is "prove it" and without an in game parser the conversation ends there.

The reality however is that far more often you end up with a DPS wearing the correct gear but performing an incorrect rotation (if they're using any at all) this often leads to cases like the 200 DPS BRD someone posted earlier, an example of a player who was performing far below the bar for their level.

Sometimes you can catch this by watching their actions if you're paying that close attention but even if you did there is no system for accountability in play for players who are far below where they should be for the gear and content they are in.

A tank or a healer is required to perform at level for the content they queue into, if they don't content simply will not be cleared and once again we as a community have zero issues removing a nonperforming tank or a healer, in fact it's one of those things that's pretty easy to see and evaluate.

Not holding hate? Players are dying? Can't pop cooldowns? The answer is simple, you replace them. But what about the DPS doing less damage than the healer? The one in full ilvl 190 gear pressing two buttons and basically cruising through the dungeon on the backs of the other players. Why do they get a free ride?

For a Tank your responsibility is to hold threat, position mobs, mitigate damage, and provide DPS.
For a Healer your responsibility is to keep the party alive (within reason), mitigate damage, and provide DPS.
For a Damage Dealer your responsibility is to provide DPS, and class specific utility.

Any player in a party not meeting those requirements is likely to be removed from the duty, but only 2/3 of those are held accountable by the playerbase because of the in game systems that make it possible.

Why is this?

Not a single poster has yet to answer that question in full without dancing around the subject.


So let me make this point clear again:

Low but passable DPS is never an issue but does leave room for improvement, but it generally doesn't matter unless you're doing something with a DPS check like endgame, where 4 man content is concerned most players aren't likely to care.

What is an issue however, is the vast number of players who aren't even playing up to par for the content they are queuing into.

This thread just keeps reminding me of why I don't tend to respect DPS. So many of them see it as a "no responsibility" role, where any slack on their end will be picked up by the other DPS, tank, and healer. A role where if they don't bother to do their role, nobody will notice or care. That if the content is beatable with just the healer and tank's DPS they don't need to do anything.

"So long as the content was beaten, who cares?"

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

This thread just keeps reminding me of why I don't tend to respect DPS. So many of them see it as a "no responsibility" role, where any slack on their end will be picked up by the other DPS, tank, and healer. A role where if they don't bother to do their role, nobody will notice or care. That if the content is beatable with just the healer and tank's DPS they don't need to do anything.

"So long as the content was beaten, who cares?"

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Dps checks and enrage timers are the only reason we even need them? Now if they could only do that part...

Today when I went into A1 they would only kill 2 Alarums, and when I tried to dps the rest of them as healer, they would get hit by everything they could. 5 wipes later, and a caster using lb when one oppressor at 1% while the other was at 13% and wiping at 0%. See ya.

The only way this is ever going to be fixed is by placing the responsibility of survivability solely on the player and to stop forcing such extreme synergy.

WoW never had these problems because of this. If you died, you died and it was your fault end of story.

Another answer is to stop giving away high end gear to every scrub out there.

High end gear should be earned through challenges and better gear earned through harder challenges. Not just "I grinded the same 3 dungeons 100 times... IM AWESOME... Now I get to do it all again in 3.1 and be AWESOMER!:

Casuals DONT need good gear and giving them good gear gets them into places they don't belong.

In most games your gear is a sign of how good at the game you are because that gear is difficult to obtain.