Lessons I think I've learned from my mistakes

I'd like to share some things I've learned the hard way and hopefully provide some solutions. I've dealt with a lot of problems and think I've figured out what technically optional, but vital training I missed. I'll be doing some remedial stuff once the game's back up from today's maintenance. I've also got to unlearn bad habits I've developed because of perverse incentives.

Observations:

1. Level 70 is a participation trophy, not an accomplishment. Levels don't tell you anything about a person's ability to play the game. I failed all the way up to level 70 SCH.
   
2. Based on my experience thus far, players talking about who's carrying who are the ones who drag down newbies the most. Patience, leadership, education, and communication are skills, and often more important than the technical skills. Scapegoating a newbie is usually a convenient way to avoid the hard work of developing those skills.
   
3. Look for the "kiddie pool" stuff, especially if you're new to MMOs in general. The first few tests might come across as insultingly easy or obvious, but it's still worth doing. There's a LOT of features out there, and it can be easy to miss some of these things when everything's so new.
   • Hall of the Novice: I found it good to go over. Earlier MMOs I played didn't have this kind of support.
   • Guildhests: This was the training I missed because I had a smorgasbord of other exciting things I wanted to do. Being technically optional, and having a lot of Duty titles that didn't include "Training" in their name made it easier to skip past.
   • Maybe other stuff?: Experienced players: Please let me know if there's another 'kiddie pool' I've missed.

Things I'm going to experiment with, that other newbies might want to try:

1. Make a lot of chat macros for Duties. At the very least, I suggest having one something like this:
   
   /p Please wait a moment.
   
   Hopefully having a fast way to put something in the chat box will get more people to treat me like a fellow player.
   
   
2. More HUD customization: I'm prone to information overload, and turning off or shrinking certain things has cleaned things up a lot. I'm going to create a second layout specific for Duties that gets the absolute bare minimum so I have a nice view of the battlefield.
   
   
3. Preparation/Edge case hotbar: I have a hotbar on one side of my screen for summoning my faerie (and put it in "Obey" mode), casting Protect, and other things that don't merit an inclusion on my main hotbar(s). I'll be reviewing my options with some friends to get priorities straight.
   
   
4. Experiment with targeting methods. Rereading stuff on macros, there are a lot of ways to choose targets I didn't know about. Picking out the right target was an early frustration, and I'm going to find smoother methods. One that probably goes much more naturally for playing a support class is /assist. I'll report once I've tried some things.

While I'm at it, here are some suggestions for longer time players dealing with newbies like me:

1. Sometimes silence means the person is panicking. The "Hi." right at the beginning of a Duty doesn't count as interaction. I've had the cumulative experience with a lot of impatient players inadvertently teaching me to be afraid to stop and type because they'd engage the enemy before I finished. Part of this crisis of mine was a tank who posted a long, detailed essay on how to fight the boss, and engaged while I was scrolling up to read a line I missed. That's when I realized I was afraid to even glance at the chat box because I couldn't trust the tank to give me the breather I needed.
   
2. Chill, speedrunners. If you want to do a speedrun of the dungeon, at least take the time to ask if everyone's okay with it. You don't want to find out if you've got new and confused people after you've had preventable party wipes that send you running across the map again and again. If you're the extreme perfectionist type, trying to shave off every unnecessary fraction of a second, get a dedicated, hand-picked party of people who enjoy that sort of thing and know what they're getting into.
   
3. In the event of a total party kill, give everyone a moment to breathe and digest what happened. Not everyone instantly knows what went wrong, especially if there's some kind of gimmick. I've had a few boss battles where I didn't know what was hitting me because the telegraph or areas of effects didn't register to my eyes. I was way too used to red being the universal hostile AOE indicator, and sometimes the color or brightness ground makes the color shift more subtle than I was prepared for. (I hate snow.)
   
4. A lot of newbies internalize blame because they know they're inexperienced. This increases their stress and makes it even harder to concentrate. If they made a blatant mistake, ask them what they think they were doing so you can address root causes and get them to understand what the correct response is, and why it's correct.
   
5. If someone's really struggling, ask what types of training they've done, not what level dungeons they've been through. I found the game's difficulty curve very uneven until I hit a brick wall around the level 50/60 dungeons, and I don't think incremental improvements to my mechanics or gear was going to fix that.
   
6. Be ready to unpack jargon, especially if the term is specific to FF14. Not everyone has previous MMO experience. Not everyone has spare hours to do extra research on the wikis or watch how-to videos. Give players a chance to verify that they understand what you're saying, or ask for clarifications.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RecursiveRabbit

Chill, speedrunners. If you want to do a speedrun of the dungeon, at least take the time to ask if everyone's okay with it. You don't want to find out if you've got new and confused people after you've had preventable party wipes that send you running across the map again and again. If you're the extreme perfectionist type, trying to shave off every unnecessary fraction of a second, get a dedicated, hand-picked party of people who enjoy that sort of thing and know what they're getting into.

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I agree with most of the things you say here, but i think this point is not going to work. in 95% of the cases, all people want fast runs, of course people are not going to ask every time before they run off. So, instead, if you want to take it slower, you should say so at the beginning. If it's the first time you are in the dungeon, say so right away.

When i came back from a 2.5 years break and had a lot of catching up to do, i said so in the beginning if it was my first or maybe second or third run of something. Often people slowed down then.

I really like to help new people and i often explain stuff if someone is new. I keep it to the most important stuff if not asked for more detail though, because i think it's more fun if you don't know everything beforehand. If i see some big mistakes or misunderstood mechanics, i often say so during the fight.

That said: The most frustrating thing is, if there is no communication or at least impression of understanding coming from a new player. Before a dungeon, if the game says there are first timers here, i usually ask who it is, most of the time i get no reply. So i'm assuming it's just someone on a second character who already knows what is going to happen and i play like i do with a full party of experienced players.

Case in point: A few days ago i went to Sunken Temple of quarn, and in the party was a lvl 38 conjurer. I asked him whether he did all his class quests because he could be a white mage by now, not a conjurer anymore. I expected him not to know about how to become a white mage, or that white mage is even a thing, or maybe he made some other mistake and wanted to help with it. I got no response whatsoever, and stuff like that is really frustrating. Not to mention he screwed up the doom/instant kill mechanic of the first boss, and after he died he simply went offline. I would have helped and explained this mechanic beforehand, because it's really important and not intuitive, but if there is no reaction whatsoever, in the end everyone gets annoyed and frustrated.

TLDR: New players, communicate. People in this game are helpful, but if you just stay silent, they don't know you need or want the help.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Naryoril

TLDR: New players, communicate. People in this game are helpful, but if you just stay silent, they don't know you need or want the help.

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This is by far the most important point, the rest is just background lessons compared to this one.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RecursiveRabbit

Level 70 is a participation trophy, not an accomplishment. Levels don't tell you anything about a person's ability to play the game. I failed all the way up to level 70 SCH.

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Totally right. Even if that level is on multiple jobs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RecursiveRabbit

Based on my experience thus far, players talking about who's carrying who are the ones who drag down newbies the most. Patience, leadership, education, and communication are skills, and often more important than the technical skills. Scapegoating a newbie is usually a convenient way to avoid the hard work of developing those skills.

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I'd say also "players talking about who's carrying who are the ones who's being carried the most".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RecursiveRabbit

Look for the "kiddie pool" stuff, especially if you're new to MMOs in general. The first few tests might come across as insultingly easy or obvious, but it's still worth doing. There's a LOT of features out there, and it can be easy to miss some of these things when everything's so new.

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Right again. o/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RecursiveRabbit

• Maybe other stuff?: Experienced players: Please let me know if there's another 'kiddie pool' I've missed.

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Novice Network, where the leaves can find some help. You can go there while you have that leaf above you.

Things I'm going to experiment with, that other newbies might want to try:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RecursiveRabbit

Make a lot of chat macros for Duties. At the very least, I suggest having one something like this:

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Never tought on doing that an can be incredibly useful. Specially considering I play using joystick.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RecursiveRabbit

Maybe other stuff?: Experienced players: Please let me know if there's another 'kiddie pool' I've missed.

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Two tips immediately come to mind.
1. Be willing(or at least dont be afraid) to try different types of content. Optional trials, optional dungeons, normal mode raids and alliance raids often introduce mechanics that will make their way into required content later. And as these are mostly full group instances(or multi-group for the alliance), there will usually be someone else along in your role - so the whole group isnt usually depending on you playing at a high level. These will also often have interesting stories, and there are plenty of rewards(glamours, minis, music, etc) to be had.
2. Learn to use the Party Finder tool. The game never really highlights it, but this tool lets you form an open group other people can join. When making the group you specify the content you want to do, so the people joining will typically be other people who need to do the same thing or people who like to help newer players along. I actually consider this a skill to practice, as the description you use(or dont) to form you group makes a big difference in how quickly it fills and the types of people who join.

Side tip, your "edge case" hotbar would be a good place for a tank or healer to stash the limit break button. Most of the time a tank or healer limit is completely unneeded(if not an outright waste of the limit bar), but those times that it is needed its an absolute run saver. Ill come back if i think of any more good ones.

Thanks for the replies, everyone. Spent a bit of time thinking over this stuff.

1. That hotbar of chat macros I'm thinking about is going to include some greetings at the start of the Duty, and I'll be using them just before I use start up buffs.
2. Admittedly, I was recovering from a nasty set of runs, so I got a little too harsh on speedrunners, there. I'm not going to put the burden of opening communications entirely on them, and I'm going to try to set an example by consistently using my greeting macros, including one asking if everyone can handle a speedrun, since I've done my own share of Allagan Tomestone runs.
3. Additional macro I'm going to make: Ready check.
4. I'm going to use the Party Finder more often, now that I'm getting familiar with it.
5. Not sure what specific method would be most appropriate, but I'm thinking of doing interviews with people who main other classes so I can get more on their perspective. Had a little daydream where I was doing a guide series called "Getting to know your [class] friends," that was essentially about how to work with people of a certain class, rather than how to play the class itself.

I'm going to spend a bit of time tonight fiddling with my HUD to see how much I can reasonably fit on there. No point in writing chat macros if I cover my entire screen with them, after all.

As a relatively new player myself, i have had mostly positive experiences in this game where people have been really nice and helpful. When greeting in the beginning of the instance, I always start with letting people know that I am new or have not done this particular dungeon/trial/raid before. I have had at least 95% of dungeon runs where people were really nice to me and told me about mechanics before hand because of this. The others were either impatient or didn't acknowledge what i had said so and i just "winged it" knowing that at least i had made an effort to alert them to the fact that i have little to no experience of the instance. Therefore i did not panic or blame myself for any failures.
That being said, sometimes if they do not acknowledge, i carry on commenting or talking during the run.

Don't let the fact that you are new or inexperienced impact your enjoyment of the game.

So I'm SUPER new. I've only dabbled in a few MMOs (since the 90's) and I can't agree with this more. I literally have "How to Raid" videos in my YouTube "watch later" list.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frizze

2. Learn to use the Party Finder tool. The game never really highlights it, but this tool lets you form an open group other people can join. When making the group you specify the content you want to do, so the people joining will typically be other people who need to do the same thing or people who like to help newer players along. I actually consider this a skill to practice, as the description you use(or dont) to form you group makes a big difference in how quickly it fills and the types of people who join.

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I cannot recommend this enough. I've seen posts on Reddit of people waiting over 90 minutes to queue in for Bowl of Embers HM because they just queue into it. Post a listing for this on PF state "First time bonus" and watch people flock from all over the DC to help you out with it. Nothing makes us feel bad then content that can easily be run through in a matter of 5 minutes gated for progression because these tools aren't utilized.

Hello, I'm pretty much a new player (played a month of original original FFXIV, and played a bit at re-release stumbling around so my knowledge base is old and really a non-thing ^.^ ). I've learned to say "I'm new" or "My first time" and ask questions about what to expect with dungeon bosses but I don't always. The hurdle for me here is simply I learned to hate PUGS in other MMO's and there you learn to keep quiet so you don't get to be the next 'target'. I'm a work-in-progress ^.^

Anyway much to my pleasant surprise the PUGs here are a lot of fun, and a really good learning experience. I panicked the other evening on my first run through the mansion as we wiped on (!)trash. I couldn't keep my heals up to the damage spikes. I was completely dejected. I was waiting for the vote kick or some kind of raging.

But no, my party members just dusted themselves off and we carried on-- they were understanding, offered some really good suggestions and we finished successfully although I think I had gone into 'overhealing' mode wanting to do well for them. After I analyzed my terrible performance, taking into account the suggestions given me, I've begun to make better use of all my spells etc even when I'm just out questing-- I found with the current rapid progression, outlevelling questlines etc., can be detrimental as I had fallen into the trap of "Press 1, Press 2, Press 1 and done, next."

I've spent some time reorganizing my HUD, trying different bar configs and have gleaned a few ideas of what might work for me out of this helpful thread. One thing I haven't touched yet is macro's but thats now on the 'To Do' list. Anyway, that's been my experience up to now.

Arigato,

Kawada Kiku

The way this game is designed, you want to be careful around macros. Text or target macros are typically fine(like "raising target" cast raise or mouseover targeting for a heal), but combat ones are dicey. The way the game calculates delay guarantees that macro'd commands will go off slower then the alternative(you can que your next action before the GCD from your current one is over), and ive seen them drop or fail to activate later steps in some circumstances.

Thank you for the warning about the macros. I will likely use one or two macros for 'text' purposes. I probably won't look at trying them for spell set-ups until things start to get more complicated as I still only have a few skills/abilities that I want to get used to using first so I know when to use, what they do.

As I was fixing my HUD last evening I realized (duh!) I can set hot keys to change HUDs so I can have a clean one for dungeon runs saved and one for RP saved, one for me soloing etc.

arigato,
Kawada Kiku