Why Does It Feel Like Poor Play Is Acceptable (I'm Venting.)

DISCLAIMER: I'm not stating that I expect perfect play, or that mistakes can't happen. They do, I make them too. I'm not perfect with everything either. I am venting from the more sever cases and the constantly raising annoyance of them repeating.

With that out of the way, title basically has my question. Why does it feel like a person playing the game poorly is considered acceptable behavior? No, I'm not talking about someone maybe not knowing a perfect rotation. No I'm not talking about someone who made one mechanical mistake in a fight. I'm talking about the more severe cases, the ones where I need to know HOW they make it past level 30.

I have plenty of cases, from the starting land of Sastasha to the capped "pug" difficulty of Shinryu EX. The higher it goes, the more I am lost in how, but there's so many cases of people just doing things so unbearably wrong. Repeating, not talking about the guy that misses a few positionals. I'm talking about the BLM that spams Thunder. The WAR that presses only Butcher's Block (NOT the combo line, just the Butcher.) The WHM that only puts up Regen and then afk's for 30 seconds, regardless if their heals are needed or not.

These wouldn't be issues if advice is taken, but so often, I'm either outright ignored when I try to help, or backlashed back for daring to try. I just got through a Snowcloak that I joined in towards the end, with 45 minutes in. WAR never dodged anything and barely did combo's, making me obtain the enemy threat with Diversion running. BLM barely casted the correct things and stood in everything possible. WHM also stood in everything, never casting a Cure II and just randomly not doing anything. Despite my advice, nobody took it. I explained the fight in detail, every part they were messing up, even using specific sound effects to alert of which mechanics. Ignored. It always feel like it's on deaf ears. Then I realized something, how did they even make it TO THE LAST BOSS like that? How much did that DPS I replaced have to carry?

I get concerned every time I see this. I don't want to be going with people that perform very poorly and refuse to take advice. If they did take advice, that's another thing, because then we're moving along. When I do get people that take advice, it's fun. I see people improve and I've given the thanks, but it feels like it's much more common it's ignored, or in other cases, I'm told back nasty remarks, or told I'm reported for parsing (Which I wasn't,) or the one that makes me need to ask the question of why it's acceptable, "It doesn't matter it'll die eventually anyways."

I just needed to get this off my chest. I know about the Tales of Duty Finder thread. I just felt like I needed to make my own post. If you did read this, thank you for doing so. Whether we agree on it or not, I at least feel a tad better over typing it out.

A lot of times if I choose to join partys already in progress I'll run into that kind of situation. The person I'm backfilling for left for a GOOD REASON and a lot of times the reason is "omg I cannot deal with these people".

I sympathize, and remember the infamous words of George Carlin: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that".

Bless you for backfilling.

If advice isn't asked for, more often than not it won't be well received.

I was doing roulettes with an in-game friend and his irl friend. I noticed that his IRL friend who was playing the same class as me in ala mihgo had an odd rotation. We were in discord at the time and his response was that he wasn't going to play this game like it was a job.

Which for me is the reason I rarely do roulettes or daily stuff because they feel like chores or assignments rather than enjoyable gameplay. But I still try to strive to be as good as I possibly can at any given role I play...

I was completely blown away that the notion of playing the game well was somehow making the game unenjoyable or turning it into work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Bless you for backfilling.

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I'm usually backfilling for queue's sake. Sometimes it ends up okay, like the spot's just open because they kicked a player that stayed offline or was harassing. Sometimes though, like you said, they left for a good reason. I'm still trying to figure out how godly that person that left had to have been, since for that last boss I was with, I h ad to pull out what I could just barely scrape the fight after the third try.

Because people get carried through content. That's why its acceptable to these kind of people. When you get carried through a certain type of content long enough without ever being told you're messing up, it reinforces the belief that you're not doing anything wrong. Get carried through Shinryu Ex about 30 times doing only Butcher's block and the next person who comes along and tells you off and suddenly, that person's looks real iffy. Do they even know what they're talking about? After all, you cleared Shinryu EX man. Shinryu EX! With Butcher's block only. 30 times. There's absolutely no way you're doing something wrong.

So yes, that's "acceptable".

In alternate universe, no one would carry anyone like that, period. Not even once. Doesn't matter how long you waited to form a party to do it or if you have a tight schedule to keep and you just want your clear. That person is getting kicked right from the start. In that universe, that person gets kicked so often that they either come to two decisions:

-I have a problem. I will try to fix it.
-Screw this game, I'm playing something else.

But alas, we don't live in that universe. Each of us have a different paradigm when we're playing our online games, each of us have a different threshold. Some are content with carrying. Some feel like the content's faceroll enough to clear with maybe...just 4 people. Some don't care. And as such, we carry those people in a little bit of different content at times, reinforcing their beliefs that they're doing well because our personal limits have not been breached.

they kind of designed it that way.
The story is laughably easy, the 24 man content is designed with the idea of like a third of the group being constantly distracted by a bird outside the window

pvp is not uncommon to have 5/8 of your team to be using that pvp bot that makes them camp at the base entry point and just follow passing players

It's just this weird mentality of video game players that a large portion of them want to get constantly rewarded for absolutely zero effort and they even get offended at the idea that they should at least try to do well; comparing that to working a job.

It's a really weird mentality, can't even think of another interactive hobby where "results from no effort" is a thing

I actually miss that section in labyrinth of the ancients where all three alliances have to split up and fight their own enemies. Makes it real easy to see where the trouble is coming from

The baseline difficulty is basically non-existent, there's no real penalty for failure, you can get carried through almost all content by the other party members, and thanks to duty finder, your reputation doesn't matter so people don't care about improving, how bad they are, how bad their gear is, or how bad their attitude / behavior is. That's before you even get into false elitism in party finder from people who have an inflated sense of entitlement with none of the skill to back it up.

Short version is one of the biggest problems of this game is its own playerbase, same as any other MMO. It's just the game itself has created most of these problems where older MMOs saw a lot less of this because of their design philosophy.

Because they think its a game, and you think its a job.