SE needs to do more to help bad players

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Yep. Let's do it. Also make it if you're in any of the group's blacklist (or you have ANY of the group members blacklist) and try to join, it fails to join. Also, increase blacklist limit to 1'000'000'000 characters. And make it so you can broadcast a player to blacklist and get them automatically added to all your friend list's blacklists too, as well as all LS and FC members' blacklists. I'm deadly serious about that. Watch how quickly the bad players get locked out of content doing that.

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I am sensing some level of sarcasim here. Not sure, but something tells me this is.

I don’t think you understand what I meant by Player Blacklists. I will expand on this.

What I am referring to is not the Blacklist FF14 has built into the game.

Instead, it is a Blacklist created outside of game. During the days of FFXI, Endgame Linkshells would have a list on their forums which members could only get access to.

The list would contain the names of players who are barred from either joining the group or temporarily join in on content that needs non-members to fill certain roles.
The Blacklisted player would have a description on why they are Blacklisted.

Not all Blacklists were the same. Some had “timers” that would expire and allow a player to no-longer be Blacklisted. Entries could also be contested if a Linkshell member or officer knew of the person who was Blacklisted.

Sometimes lists were shared between allied Linkshells.

People had their own personal Blacklist as well (I did). I would avoid doing content with certain people.

Of course, we could do this because there was no such thing as cross server DF or DR. We didn’t even have PF. Everything either done through /shout (like Eureka) or online through websites and forums (today we would use PF or Discord). You couldn’t do anything cross sever… so it was all in-server. You had social standings and reputation between you and your fellow players. Blacklists (and their opposites, Whitelists) are just a written form of that standing and reputation.

That is what I meant about Player Blacklist.

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Originally Posted by Krojack

What SE could do it add a built-in personal parser that shows just your DPS (and HPS if on a healer) then after the fight compare your numbers to others of your job with the same average ilvl gear. If you're on Monk and have average ilvl 440 and your DPS is 4,000 less that the the average 440 ilvl Monk you could see this. It would give you an idea that you're doing something wrong and should do some reading up on your class.

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This is something I suggested in WoW as well. Keep it private. Remove the exact numbers and just show a bar graph showing party member's relative performance, scaled by player / gear level, so it players with equal performance but different level / gear would show the same. If you see yourself consistently underperforming, you coudl sign up for training. or be forced into it :)

Of course, they'd have to back it up with a training system, Perhaps version of the trust system where it shows you where you could do better and how, without the feeling of disapproval by other players.

But there's also the issue of players with disabilities that make it impossible for them to play at max level. It could be a problem to force them out of content because they can't match everyone else in DPS or HPS.

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Originally Posted by HyperSMB

I, like many of you, often find myself internally raging as I watch players commit any number of major offenses:

* Not using AoE on 3+ enemies (2 depending on class)
* Never ever ever doing damage (Healers...)
* Mindlessly failing the same mechanic over and over again

Now, the last one is the one I really wanna focus on. Even a DPS doing nothing but single target is doing damage, but dead players do zero. There is very little for a bad player to do but continuously throw themselves into content and fail. Now you would think organic learning would occur and natural progress would be made, but for some people this either never comes or simply comes unbelievably slowly. SSS is a nice idea as a test for if you can do a fight, but it doesn't ACTUALLY tell you if you are good enough to do the mechanics.

I suggest a special "Mechanic Test Zone" that players can use to bridge the gap between the lowest content and mid-core content. It would handle things like:

* Overlapping but delayed AoE's
* Time mechanics (Think E2)
* Preys
* Tank swaps
* Tankbusters
* Boss positioning
* Downtime for healers (And then different forms of burst damage)
* Patterns (to help players work on memory since that seems to be a big issue)

Simple things like these would go a LONG way to improving the general skill of this community.

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Well it is past time to update Guildhest. The whole point was to show mechanics after all.

A teachable spirit and a humbleness to admit your ignorance or your mistake will save you a lot of pain. However, if you're a person who knows it all, then you've got a lot of heavy-hearted experiences coming your way.

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Originally Posted by Xtrasweettea

I am sensing some level of sarcasim here. Not sure, but something tells me this is.

I don’t think you understand what I meant by Player Blacklists. I will expand on this.

That is what I meant about Player Blacklist.

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Thanks for the explanation about the player blacklists.

But no, I wasn't being sarcastic about it. I'm talking about making it that if you are a bad player (be it in terms of skill or personality), you'll very quickly end up on every blacklist of players in the game, or at least on enough that anytime you try to join a PF you'll get an error and your PFs will never fill up (because people won't be able to join). Of course, people who's blacklist you get automatically added to can remove you. or they can share out their blacklist too and add you to all their friends/FC/LS members blacklists. You'd be able to right click a name and click "Share with friends" or "Share with LS" etc, and the player would automatically be added to all the members of your friends list, or the linkshell you select, etc. Meaning being a toxic person to one person, could see you talked about to friends, and very quickly ending up on about 500'000 blacklists over one interaction. Basically, helping streamline the whole process of the player blacklists. Only thing missing would be the timers aspect.

This combined with an auto-kick function for performing below par (done by the game automatically, no players instigating the vote kick), giving you a 168 hour timeout from all duties, while also reducing your craftsmanship and gathering to 0 (so you can't gather or craft, as your progress would increase by 0% no matter what, and all gathering nodes would be at 0%), as well as reducing your STR/DEX/INT/MND by 100% (so you can't do combat either). I'd have it start from the very first guildhest, so every instanced duty involving multiple players would have it. It's brutal, but you'd be pushing out the bads. Unfortunately, for disabled players (including myself, I have problems with maintaining focus that degrades my performance), they'd be collateral damage. Perhaps a way to be able to prove to SE you have a disability and how it affects you, and have it adjusted for that? I don't know how else this could be done to protect disabled players?

And, though the extremity of this may suggest sarcasm, I am not being sarcastic here, I am suggesting it as a legitimate idea.

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

Yes they are.

A good group leader won't have this issue in PF. If your group stinks from PF its because the leader failed.

We gonna have a leadership tutorial now?

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It happens in PF all the time. If you think this is specific to only DF you dont do much content in the PF. Groups disguising themselves as farm parties and having not only the leader but others failing basic mechanics happens all the time. A good leader only goes so far, they aren't the be all end all of a bad or good group.

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Originally Posted by Makrar

If you want every healer to dps during down time then the game needs to change to mandate that.

For example: The healing mana costs across the board are increased slightly and the single target casted DPS nukes RESTORE mana instead of costing mana = healers need to DPS during down time in order to manage their mana.

Unless the above happens, the majority of healers are just not going to DPS as nothing in the game tells you to play that way outside of the community.

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Ok so a couple of things.

One, why do DPS abilities need to restore your MP for them to be worth using? Them restoring MP makes no sense and its a silly idea to think this is what needs to happen to make Healers DPS.

Two. Have you done any of the healer quests? Have you solo'd as a healer? Not only do they HAVE DPS abilities but many of the quests tell you that there are times when you need to do damage when healing isn't needed. Healing keeps people alive but it doesn't directly help defeat the thing doing damage.

Why WHY do you think it is okay for a healer to stand around and do nothing when they don't need to heal? Why do you think this is how the role was designed? Why do you think this is fair to your team and helpful? Why do you think you need the game to tell you how to play effectively before you do?

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Originally Posted by Nims

Or do like every other MMO on the market does and allow players to do so without getting banned.

FFXIV has the largest population of absolutely awful players and is the only MMO that I know of ( I could be wrong feel free to correct me) that doesn't openly allow parsers, people to correct each other for better gameplay, and or simply removing people without like a 2 hour cool down.
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I agree with this 100%. But the parser ban is only part of the problem - another is that there is no general channel for such a topic. The Novice channel is a start, but only if you are a novice. There is also a lot of bad and outdated info on the internet.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Thanks for the explanation about the player blacklists.

But no, I wasn't being sarcastic about it. I'm talking about making it that if you are a bad player (be it in terms of skill or personality), you'll very quickly end up on every blacklist of players in the game, or at least on enough that anytime you try to join a PF you'll get an error and your PFs will never fill up (because people won't be able to join). Of course, people who's blacklist you get automatically added to can remove you. or they can share out their blacklist too and add you to all their friends/FC/LS members blacklists. You'd be able to right click a name and click "Share with friends" or "Share with LS" etc, and the player would automatically be added to all the members of your friends list, or the linkshell you select, etc. Meaning being a toxic person to one person, could see you talked about to friends, and very quickly ending up on about 500'000 blacklists over one interaction. Basically, helping streamline the whole process of the player blacklists. Only thing missing would be the timers aspect.

This combined with an auto-kick function for performing below par (done by the game automatically, no players instigating the vote kick), giving you a 168 hour timeout from all duties, while also reducing your craftsmanship and gathering to 0 (so you can't gather or craft, as your progress would increase by 0% no matter what, and all gathering nodes would be at 0%), as well as reducing your STR/DEX/INT/MND by 100% (so you can't do combat either). I'd have it start from the very first guildhest, so every instanced duty involving multiple players would have it. It's brutal, but you'd be pushing out the bads. Unfortunately, for disabled players (including myself, I have problems with maintaining focus that degrades my performance), they'd be collateral damage. Perhaps a way to be able to prove to SE you have a disability and how it affects you, and have it adjusted for that? I don't know how else this could be done to protect disabled players?

And, though the extremity of this may suggest sarcasm, I am not being sarcastic here, I am suggesting it as a legitimate idea.

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Sounds like a job for the JUST US League. Seriously this is the most arrogant delluded idea I've ever seen in a game keep that crap for LoL.

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Originally Posted by Hash_Browns

You really think people who got fed clears don't join farm parties?
The PF is a mixed bag.

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I think the people who lead properly filter them out.

Do you need a tutorial on how to do that?

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

I think the people who lead properly filter them out.

Do you need a tutorial on how to do that?

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Have you never seriously been to a farm party before?
Even if I eventually kick them, I still have to deal with them.

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Originally Posted by Hash_Browns

Have you never seriously been to a farm party before?
Even if I eventually kick them, I still have to deal with them.

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Maybe you should ask SE for a tutorial on how to do it.

I've done farms before and usually weed them out before getting started with a vetting process.

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

Maybe you should ask SE for a tutorial on how to do it.

I've done farms before and usually weed them out before getting started with a vetting process.

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https://i.imgur.com/u8Obo5F.gif

I think I'm being trolled, and I can't tell at this point.
I've lost my touch on dealing with the internet.

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Originally Posted by ksuyen

A teachable spirit and a humbleness to admit your ignorance or your mistake will save you a lot of pain. However, if you're a person who knows it all, then you've got a lot of heavy-hearted experiences coming your way.

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"Just sit back kids, and watch a pro at work." or "Look how much cooler I am than you." They then proceed to make a fool out of themselves and then blame someone else for not breathing the right way just to save they're own ego. I agree with you. Wholeheartedly.

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Originally Posted by Hash_Browns

Have you never seriously been to a farm party before?
Even if I eventually kick them, I still have to deal with them.

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I wish there was somehow a record that can help you avoid bad players :thinking:

/em starts passing out Ipads loaded with 45min Mr Happy guides... xD.

I mean I can do my part.

Quit again.

I am so bad that my leaving alone should lower the incompetency in the playerbase around 30%.

https://media.giphy.com/media/4wqux6cOB6dEY/giphy.gif

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Originally Posted by Granyala

You do not need parsers in order to see who fails core mechanics.
SE will never ban anyone if he constructively criticizes another player and offers solutions, nor will they ban you if you kick players.

While I do think a "training hall" would be nice, WoW did attempt such a thing at one time and it didn't make much of a difference.

Why? Because 90% of the bad players are not interested in learning/improving. They just want to mash buttons and kill stuff / get rewards. Present them with a challenge and they will simply abandon the endeavor.

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Challenge Mode, that was WoWs attempt at a training mode and getting higher than bronze was a struggle for the player base.

I'm not on board with adding in-game parsers or allowing the discussion of it. This community has been so much more friendly and I strongly believe that's one of the major reasons for it. There's less elites, because you're not allowed to /flex on everyone you see and doing so, gets you removed or punished.

I like it the way it is. If you want to get better, there's resources for it but the overwhelming amount of people just want to play to play and have fun, has been one of the most fascinating and enjoyable experiences, than what I get in WoW or other MMOs that allows parsers.

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Originally Posted by Snapdragyn

"2) They are just really bad and do not care...." (Bolding added.)

As one of the people who fails mechanics regularly, I just wanted to address this assumption that I see being made throughout this thread.

Background: 19 years of MMO gaming, from EQ to EQ2 to Rift to GW2 to SW:TOR to TESO to here. No, I never played WoW.

So I have a bit of experience in gaming. One might suspect (rightly) that it's even something I enjoy - perhaps even care about? But, here's the thing - skill levels just differ. I didn't manage to live through an Omega 3 w/ that fricking 'larboard/starboard' mechanic until almost the end of the 4.x cycle. I had watched videos. I had people call out over Discord. Didn't matter - my reaction times simply _are not_ fast enough to handle the 'if you see yellow ground it's already too late' timings that SE seems to favor on current cycle mechanics (I remember going off the edge on Titan all the time during ARR; now I could sleep & still dodge that because they've clearly changed how long the warning is up before the effect triggers).

I try to limit my 'fail drain' on groups by not running too many times repeatedly - I realize that people may get frustrated when I drop after 3-4 attempts, but I think it's probably best for everyone as the group gets another person who's almost certainly more competent (also I often seem to 'get' mechanics better if I STOP beating myself against them for a few days before trying again). After 9 runs at TitaX this weekend, I've managed to make it to the add phase without dying... um... well, I'll let you know when that happens. I've at least made it into the forest phase w/o a death a couple of times, & for me that's progress.

I think the game itself does a decent job of distilling the skill levels through the system of varied difficulties. I've never entered a Savage & probably never will, so the content certainly exists for the hard-core gamers who don't want to get stuck w/ the low-skill people like me. It would be nice if we could continue to share the regular and (on occasion) extreme trails & such, though, without the assumptions that everyone who isn't 'as good' is just lazy or AFKing (as I was once accused of after a 3rd death to an AoE in Dun Scaith; I wish I'd thought of the proper retort at the time - 'Sir or Madam, you severely underestimate my capacity for ineptitude!').

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You shouldn't try to react to the orange marker on the ground. You should see the name of the attack when Omega is casting Larboard / Starboard. It's simply memorization of which means what. Larboard = be on bosses right, Starboard = be on bosses left. So ideally you should position yourself during the beginning of the cast. In savage mode the ground marker didn't exist at all, so the only choice was to memorize which attack name meant what.

If you're saying that you couldn't dodge in time despite knowing in advance which way to dodge (Discord call out), then perhaps you were positioned poorly? Ideally you would be on the bosses rear ready to dodge either way prior to the mechanic. If you were positioned ideally prior to cast, had it called out the moment it started, and still couldn't dodge... then I've got nothing.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

Your Tank example falls apart under the fact that Tank DPS is factored into Raid tuning.

So heres a fun experiment for you. Take just a Tank and 2 DPS into any high level dungeon. No Healer. Afterall, a healer that isn't dpsing is "refusing to contribute" in your opinion. And since they're "not contributing", you don't need one in your party.
Now, try to complete that dungeon with no Healer. Go on.

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I can absolutely do dungeons as a paladin with 2 DPS and no Healer. In fact I've solo'd the final boss of Amaurot before, as the other 3 players died to the first mechanic.

I should try going in premade with 3 DPS though. That'd be really fast ^.^

Seems clear to me that Square needs to delete healer :p

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

The players that were going to struggle with the Proving Grounds generally weren't players interested in difficult content to begin with. .

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I always found Proving Grounds (Silver and above?) to be extremely difficult as Enhance. Often, it took me 30+ attempts to get through one, so I hated the things. Personally, I think they were easier for certain classes than others. (I did OK in raids despite my dismal PG performance).

One big problem was that they didn't teach. You could either do them or not, and if you failed at it, nothing was offered to teach you how to do it better. If the running NPC offered helpful suggestions after each fail, and other suggestions on how to perform better, then they might have helped players become better. For me, they were just a major chore that I nearly quit the game over when they were required for something.

I personally think the Trust system is a really good tool for learning how to do a dungeon. Because the NPC's in your party always move to the right spots, you can use them as a guide, which takes some of the stress off the player so they are able to focus more on the boss and they get to learn how the fight goes. I used the trusts a lot as I was levelling my RDM from 70 to 80. Now as I am levelling up my next class, I am able to use the duty roster/roulett bonuses and when I am now doing the dungeons with real players, I don't feel like I am going to have a panic attack.


There is also one big thing the OP is assuming, which is that these bad players actually want to improve in the first place. I would bet there are a lot of these bad players, always thinking it's someone else fault for a wipe or their death.

Honestly this is like when I used to try to help my nephew with his homework. You can only help someone as much as they WANT to be helped, which he didn't give a damn. Many players don't give a damn either. Sad to say.

Hall of the novice should have more added to it and it should be required that every new account does it. It wont solve all the problems but it'll help with the new players using jump potions and immediately jumping into duties to mess up or severely hinder df runs. Would be nice if it somehow tracked that you've gone through it on another character incase you made an alt too.

Bad players just pay no attentions to improving their skills :D After all, machanics in FFXIV is that straightforward even for my little niece.

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Originally Posted by FelixDaCat

I personally think the Trust system is a really good tool for learning how to do a dungeon. Because the NPC's in your party always move to the right spots, you can use them as a guide, which takes some of the stress off the player so they are able to focus more on the boss and they get to learn how the fight goes. I used the trusts a lot as I was levelling my RDM from 70 to 80. Now as I am levelling up my next class, I am able to use the duty roster/roulett bonuses and when I am now doing the dungeons with real players, I don't feel like I am going to have a panic attack.


There is also one big thing the OP is assuming, which is that these bad players actually want to improve in the first place. I would bet there are a lot of these bad players, always thinking it's someone else fault for a wipe or their death.

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I can verify that with an anecdote. My friend and I Q'd for a level roulette and got the first dungeon from SHB, fogot it's name. We both ran with what we think is the worst tank we ever encountered. Would only pull one - 3 mobs per, and took way too much damage from just those despite being in a full set of scavean gear. My friend dumped his entire mana pull keeping him alive for each pull just because he wouldn't use cooldowns. We noticed the bosses were going by extremely slowly too, and realized he's not even using half of his dps skills available. This wasn't a GBK either, he was a DRK. We wipe on the first boss due to my friend absent mindedly taking a stack marker behind some aoe puddles, and the tank gets snarky about it. Bruh. I don't understand the mentality of these sorta people. Don't get me wrong I have a ton of patience and my largest pet peeves are people complaining about wipes rather than explaining mechs to established newbies before pulling and expecting smooth sailing. But there's a world of difference for like.. intentionally not even reading your skill descriptions and then chiding people for an honest mistake.

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Originally Posted by Dreamsoap

I can verify that with an anecdote. My friend and I Q'd for a level roulette and got the first dungeon from SHB, fogot it's name. We both ran with what we think is the worst tank we ever encountered. Would only pull one - 3 mobs per, and took way too much damage from just those despite being in a full set of scavean gear. My friend dumped his entire mana pull keeping him alive for each pull just because he wouldn't use cooldowns. We noticed the bosses were going by extremely slowly too, and realized he's not even using half of his dps skills available. This wasn't a GBK either, he was a DRK. We wipe on the first boss due to my friend absent mindedly taking a stack marker behind some aoe puddles, and the tank gets snarky about it. Bruh. I don't understand the mentality of these sorta people. Don't get me wrong I have a ton of patience and my largest pet peeves are people complaining about wipes rather than explaining mechs to established newbies before pulling and expecting smooth sailing. But there's a world of difference for like.. intentionally not even reading your skill descriptions and then chiding people for an honest mistake.

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To me, it sounds like the tank paid to have DRK at 70 and has never bothered to either tank before? I am your cliche DPS type, where I find tanking and healer way too much outside my comfort zone.

While I can't do the other roles, I do find a dungeon is much more enjoyable when people communicate what method they want to use to beat the dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Nims

Or do like every other MMO on the market does and allow players to do so without getting banned.

FFXIV has the largest population of absolutely awful players and is the only MMO that I know of ( I could be wrong feel free to correct me) that doesn't openly allow parsers, people to correct each other for better gameplay, and or simply removing people without like a 2 hour cool down.

There's only so much a game and or the developers can do to better people without forcing things on other people and annoying them. This is just simply where the community steps in but that's wrong for some reason.

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^ Horrible idea of the day.

Banning people isn't going to make them better at the game, it will only make them leave the game, and that is probably not great for long-term viability. So, instead of useless punitive measures that will only serve to grant you a little bit of catharsis, how about SE do a better job of up-skilling players who are struggling?

SE could even run some parsers or examine other metrics on their side that would trigger notifications for players who could do with some extra training. They could expand the Trust system to cover a greater share of the group content, such that players a) have more opportunity to learn about mechanics, b) can simply not group with other players if they elect not to. They could feature some advanced video tutorials about boss mechanics on the Lodestone, and maybe even add the capability to have these play in game. Or, they could even do what The Secret World did, and require that players are able to beat a particular challenge before they can progress to harder content.

But even if SE do none of the above, and the situation does not change, I would rather put up with the occasional bad player than have the culture of the game transform into one of toxic elitism.

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Originally Posted by CazzT

DPS is not a requirement of Healers.

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What part of "everyone should constantly press buttons" don't you understand? Without dpsing healers would just sit on their hands. You're part of the problem.

As a new player I do feel like there should be a built in option somewhere in game to learn and practice any mechanics that aren't obvious in high level dungeons. People don't learn because there isn't a good way to if you don't have friends that will let you do practice, exploratory or learning runs with them.

As for healing, I'm not sure it's made obvious anywhere while learning the game that healers are also supposed to be DPSing. That runs counter to what most people assume and would expect in an MMO.

100% echo should be enough xD.