Why is it so acceptable to be bad - Solutions?

Hello dear FFXIV community!

As a 7 months old wow immigrant, one of the things that stood out to me is basically the title.

When I was still a sprout and leveling my first job, I did not notice such a thing at all, but nowadays, after starting to wet my feet in the current extremes and some savage stuff and studying the game a bit more and starting to level more jobs too, mainly through the DF, it's extremely evident.

And I m sure you all know what I m talking about. From sylphie healers, frost/thunder mages, dps doing single target on w2w pulls, WHMs insisting on Cure I in endgame dungeons etc.

As a healer or tank in 90% of the content, I have learned that the best way to deal with such stuff is to adapt and just do my best. What baffles me however is why the community is so accepting of this stuff. Why is it that players and have sit and studied their jobs should be the ones to adapt, and those that have reached endgame and still have no idea how their class works or how to handle basic mechanics should enjoy immunity from shunning/being kicked.

I love that there are so many other activities in the game other than the endgame, like housing deco, venues, glamour, rp etc, but if you are choosing to participate in endgame content, trials, extremes etc, it should be expected to have a basic understanding of stuff.

On suggestions now. I feel the hall of the novice + guildhests were pretty neat. They could be for example merged and expanded into a large hall of the novice, with "Classes" that would get unlocked all the way to 50, and be teaching you from absolute basics, like don't stand in the fire, to "rules" like ABC, when to single target, when to aoe, more complex mechanics like towers, tethers etc, dps/healing checks, positionals, could have job specific classes too...And this be mandatory, to say move on to HW or SB.

Last but not least, I feel the DF could use a stepping stone that could bridge typical dungeons to extreme content and above. Like, merge leveling and the 50/60/70 category, and create a new one, say, Extreme dungeons, with overally more complex and tighter/lethal mechanics and stat requirements, not braindead w2w pulls and with larger rewards too, the same with MSQ one for example. Basically, dungeons where everyone would be required to fully pull their weight if they are to be completed.

It's because a lot of people in the community understand that not everyone who plays has the time to understand an optimal rotation. When you work 9 hours a day doing something horrible to yourself like customer service, the last thing you wanna worry about is pushing out maximum dps. But besides this, trust me when I say that a newbie is not going to learn how to be "good" at the game when the community alienates them for being "bad." They'll just not want to play the game and quit. A lot of people get this because they used to be in that situation so they try to give them the benefit of the doubt and give them a chance to learn. Now, obviously griefing is an issue, and if someone isn't even trying to improve then they deserve to get booted. But at the same time people shouldn't be called out for something so trivial as a suboptimal rotation, costing you minutes of the run at most. It's okay for people to be bad at the game, because that's how you start no matter where you come from. And you cannot in a million years tell me you weren't bad at the game, or bad at MMOs at some point. Nobody picks up a game they've never touched before and knows immediately what they are doing. It's a learning process and it's our job as a community to give people the opportunity to learn and improve so we can all enjoy content together.

People will always stand in the fire. The best thing to help players out is when someone in the duty group takes a few secs to explain things. I was gone for about 6 months. Came back and before I had to leave I was stuck on the Dark Inside. Every group would wipe 4-5 times and people who had finished it would do nothing but yell. I came back a few days ago. Got in it and we wiped 1x and someone then did a quick explain and marked themselves for us to follow on the move mechs. That would be more helpful imho then anything else. In SB I used the trust system to learn the mechs of the duties before I joined lfd groups.

A little kindness in the groups goes a long way also to help players. I know a person who if they get yelled at in a group for missing a mech they purposely miss it. That's not right but they do.

Despite being relatively young to the game, I have encountered no little cases of people just refusing to do even that.

Like, when tanking, I could mark myself during say, a boss like Storge which could be tricky to figure out if going in blind, yet people would still refuse to follow or listen to advice.

Now, as for your friend, yelling at someone for failing is bad sure, but doing what he does is plain unsocial/toxic behavior. What Kikitia above says could also be labeled as antisocial/egotistical behavior. In the sense that even in a simple dungeon, if the tank presses random buttons, AND the healer is a cure I troll, AND the dps are doing their rotations wrong, the run WILL fail. If it does not fail, it simply means some people have to work twice as hard and potentially get their fun soured to make up for the rest. That to me, does not sound very right...

Coz we're all special snowflakes and are basically scared of being banned for giving advice to people.

Which is really effed up, honestly!

Welcome to present day gaming tho! :'D

I wish this game gave titles and achievements for playing well. In the last game I played, Tera (RIP), you could get really cool titles and achievements for doing things like "not getting hit in X dungeon." Imagine if there were like... a cool achievement for never getting hit during that hallway run through puppets bunker, and a title over your head for it like "Ball Dodger" or something, idk. Just little things to encourage people to kind of care just a bit.

Because unlike WoW who is known to have "toxic elitism", FFXIV is known for its "toxic casualism".

The very moment u try to tell People that they do something wrong, no matter how on point your argument is, you get constant hissing and hairballs spit from EVERY Partymember at you with the occasional "You don't pay me Sub m8" response. Most People expect and even demand on these Forums, that the Game should stay at Cookie Cutter Difficulty, just so that they can watch Netflix while being semi-afk during their Roulette runs.

And the best of that is, that neither Devs or the Community cares for their Veterans because lord forbid, if someones better than me at something.

I'd simply say because the failure rate is incredibly low.

It doesn't matter how "bad" or just "lazy" players are. You can still clear 98.7654321% of content. Net result is it just doesn't matter..

But then because it really doesn't matter players get bored and then drop the game.. another aspect of why player retention is so crap.

Also the learning curve is kinda backwards. They keep dropping the bar lower and lower. Which means instead of the learning curve gradually going up. It goes down down down. Until maybe extremes where there's a bit of a brick wall as it's an almost vertical increase in difficulty and another vertical one to savage.

Sometimes I also think terminology is partly to blame.. when players can play badly but still breeze through an "expert" roulette. It's not really surprising to find they think they can take on an "extreme" I mean the game is telling them they're experts...

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Because unlike WoW who is known to have "toxic elitism", FFXIV is known for its "toxic casualism".

The very moment u try to tell People that they do something wrong, no matter how on point your argument is, you get constant hissing and hairballs spit from EVERY Partymember at you with the occasional "You don't pay me Sub m8" response. Most People expect and even demand on these Forums, that the Game should stay at Cookie Cutter Difficulty, just so that they can watch Netflix while being semi-afk during their Roulette runs.

And the best of that is, that neither Devs or the Community cares for their Veterans because lord forbid, if someones better than me at something.

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While i will believe those people exist I have yet to encounter one in like 8 years of non stop playing.

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Originally Posted by Caitlinzulu

While i will believe those people exist I have yet to encounter one in like 8 years of non stop playing.

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The thing is, that IF you play it all nice all day, all week, every Month in every Year including any Boot licking Events, you wont be able to tell any of them apart.

But the moment something happens and youre on the recieving end or you see someone is? You'd be suprised if you observe the Event as a Neutral Party.

The players who claim they have no time learn a proper rotation are often the same who have all the time in the world to meticulously arrange furniture in their house using lifting glitches or doing ther same dungeon unsynced over and over hunting down very specific glamours. Sometimes people are just not reeeeally interested in high end content, but they still wanna be carried through it anyway.

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Originally Posted by KikiTia

It's because a lot of people in the community understand that not everyone who plays has the time to understand an optimal rotation. When you work 9 hours a day doing something horrible to yourself like customer service, the last thing you wanna worry about is pushing out maximum dps. But besides this, trust me when I say that a newbie is not going to learn how to be "good" at the game when the community alienates them for being "bad." They'll just not want to play the game and quit.

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There's a few things I disagree with here. Working a 9 hour day does not prevent you from saying "Oh, Cure I is bad? That makes sense, I'll Cure II more" or "I didn't realize Ice Mage was that much of a dps loss, I'll look into it". Nor does it prevent you from taking a little time to read over a job guide. No one mentioned max dps either, just not viewing terrible gameplay as good. It's a fact that many good players work long jobs and many terrible players are unemployed and have all the free time they want. It's down to player mentality more than free time. Some players want to contribute, some don't care.
Obviously a new player shouldn't be harassed or abused, that breaks ToS by itself, but if someone told them they're playing wrong and why, or told them how to improve and asked them to try it, I disagree they'd simply quit the game.

The real reason is because it's a mindset the developers have unintentionally fostered and developed.

There are a group of players who are easily tempted to put in the bare minimum. That's just how they are. They can play harder games, they'll just put in the bare minimum but still enough to succeed. They'll grumble and complain, but they're enjoying it enough to keep playing. Making content easier does not make that type of player better because no matter how low the bare minimum is, they'll go that low. If you can beat content even by playing terribly, they'll play terribly.
The issue the devs have is that they perceive a player doing the bare minimum as "struggling" and get caught up in an endless struggle of their own to make the content easier for the player they think is struggling. It's a battle they can never win. Ever.

Secondly, the ToS enables and justifies playing badly. The ToS protects a player from having their performance being brought into question. This is meant to prevent player exclusion, but in reality it makes players who don't want to contribute to their team or care feel like the devs have their back and approve of their laziness. It makes them feel that lazy play is how you're meant to play, after all the devs have a ToS that justifies and enforces it!

Overall this is why the community not only accepts being bad, they approve of it and look down on and belittle players wanting to be good. It's a strange sort of toxicity that looks nice on the surface but has some rather disturbing depths when you dig into it.

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Originally Posted by IckeDerTyp

Coz we're all special snowflakes and are basically scared of being banned for giving advice to people.

Which is really effed up, honestly!

Welcome to present day gaming tho! :'D

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Whose been banned for giving advice to people?

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Originally Posted by Upirlikhyi

Whose been banned for giving advice to people?

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Well, it's not exactly "giving advice" to people that lead to a ban, but more "Forcing a player to a playstyle they don't want" and in a agressive behavior like : "Pull more ! It's the norm, so do it."

Giving advice is fine if the receiver is ok with it, but you may (or already have) encounter "You don't pay my sub" type of player, and because of the ToS you can't say shit to them because it will be considered as Harassment

People who don't want to progress, or become better are usually "You don't pay my sub". But their is also some player who really want to go chill and just enjoy the fun, not do a Sastacha speed run in 5 minutes (For them, I highly suggest the new "Solo" system implemented)