Game Promotes Stagnation and Terrible Play

[Miiu]

FATEs
While the dungeons/hests/trials provide a great learning curve to anyone new toMMOs, sadly, they are mostly optional. At launch, FATEing was very feasible and it allowed people to reach level cap without learning a lick about playing their class correctly. FATEs are not as viable to level with now, but the problem still remains. It is evident in low level dungeons where people fail at basic things like dodging Landslide on Normal Titan or removing Doom from Temple of Sarn's first boss. Instead of teaching new players how to remove Doom, I see things like "stand on the hill to ignore the mechanic".

If you go through the main story you have to do almost all of the dungeons. With the addition of new mainstory bits in 2.1 they even make you go through the guildhests. SE is already trying to get people to learn the basics.

Commendations
The commendation system just promotes people to stay quiet in runs. If you criticize someone's play, there goes your commendation. Even if someone can obviously improve their rotation and shorten run times, most of the time they simply do not care what others have to say about their playstyle. I've seen too many BLM who insist on staying full MP or Bards who think their DOTs are not worth using. Even times where I point out that someone can improve themselves, I get responses like "Don't worry about how others play".

Commendations are not crucial and only give you vanity item at the moment. During low level roulette I encountered players who obviously did stuff wrong and I mentioned it to them but not like "you newb you don't use ability X" but more in calm way. I got thanked for the tips and received commendations. Maybe you should approach people differently?

Duty Roulette
Instead of using low level dungeon/trials as a place to learn, you simply get teamed up with players with multiple 50s and full gear on. This skews their perception of the game and really does no one any favors. Low level duty roulette is primarily Sastasha <-> Halatali. You rarely get a dungeon above that and when you do there is a good chance of failure.

50/50 for me

Exploits
Pulling Chimera up the hill pretty much negates the entire difficulty of the fight. Allowing players to ignore all abilities in Turn 2 ADS is a step in the wrong direction. You have a crowd of players who need to cheat their way through the game before reaching walls like Titan HM/XM, and then they get frustrated and quit, blaming things like 'latency' instead of personal error.

edit: 1000 character limit

Personally I like that players find ways around certain mechanics. Is it cheating? Maybe but I still love that people think outside the box.
So if people have the mindset of quitting the game when they reach Titan HM/EX because they can't beat it what would they do if they SE would disable the workaround in T2 and such? Would the same player who quits after failing at Titan not quit if they fail at T2?

[Merlinian]

Honestly after 14 years in MMOs, FF XIV has probably some of the worst players I have ever encountered. They do it wrong and the worst thing is they have no learning curve and if you tell them how to do it better, they get defensive. Like the tank in Sastasha the healer and myself told repeatedly to use flash, but he insitsed in "do it all with my shield". That gets really bad at 50 when content is less forgiving. And so many people dont seem to care to gear properly for the content they want to do.

EDIT: and the reason I like FATEs is that at times they are a good option to escape the dungeon fail groups, but that isnjustnme, I try to alternate a bit. As a monk I leveled more dungeons, as BRD and second job I did more FaTEs.

Garuda HM is so bad, if they wipe on the first add phase, i dont even wait for respawn, just eat the 30 min wait.

[Archona]

Honestly after 14 years in MMOs, FF XIV has probably some of the worst players I have ever encountered. They do it wrong and the worst thing is they have no learning curve and if you tell them how to do it better, they get defensive. Like the tank in Sastasha the healer and myself told repeatedly to use flash, but he insitsed in "do it all with my shield". That gets really bad at 50 when content is less forgiving. And so many people dont seem to care to gear properly for the content they want to do.

Personally with all my MMO experience I have to say that FFXIV has the easiest learning curve. I was amazed on my first 50 at how the difficulty for each fight and each dungeon slowly increased and provided a real easy going atmosphere to learn in instead of say, like WoW, where you're typically thrown into full boss rotations immediately. All the guildhests, dungeons, and trials, if completed in order, will teach you how to play the game. Sadly, the people that need this most likely just FATE grinded to 50 or did not do all of the optional dungeons/hests while leveling. Even some of the class quests do a fairly good job at telling you what you need to do to play your class (for example, WHM teaches you to DPS while healing, to use Esuna and DPS quests teach you to target adds and focus healers first). Except that Echo buff is like Mickey Mouse coming to save you when you die in Kingdom Hearts.

[Xairos]

I think this comes down to how can we politely tell other players about guildheists. Because what you say is true. the first week of release I went through the guildheists. and I felt that this teaches you how to play better than any text could. But how could we say to a bad tank, hey try out the guildheists to learn how powerful flash is? Not to mention the variable of what platform they are playing on. some players dont talk that much or have a mastery of menu surfing. But I don't know, im just fishing here.

[Saziel]

Anecdote: I just leveled MNK to 50 post 2.1 and the amount of people who knowingly stick to fates to level as opposed to running dungeons is nauseating. Dungeons are much, much, better now.

I do my daily duty roulette for the exp bonus for Bard, but I still like to fate grind. I don't want to be locked away in dungeons all day long earning exp. I just wish there were other ways than fates/leves to level in the outside world. I like the freedom of leveling in the outside world because I'm not locked down for a set amount of time.

I would love to level just using leves, but it currently takes like...15-20 leves to gain one level at 41? Something like that.

I actually don't really care for fates, but I do like that I'm not locked down while doing them. I already spend a lot of time in dungeons on my 50s.

[Xairos]

Yes, Leves carried me to about 40. Then only to jump off the cliff afterwards. lol

[MrSmiley]

FATEs
While the dungeons/hests/trials provide a great learning curve to anyone new to MMOs, sadly, they are mostly optional. At launch, FATEing was very feasible and it allowed people to reach level cap without learning a lick about playing their class correctly. FATEs are not as viable to level with now, but the problem still remains. It is evident in low level dungeons where people fail at basic things like dodging Landslide on Normal Titan or removing Doom from Temple of Sarn's first boss. Instead of teaching new players how to remove Doom, I see things like "stand on the hill to ignore the mechanic".

I doubt FATE's are still effecting people learning their classes, and things like the doom thing (I didn't even know about it) is something players in any game will do given the chance. Players will always try turn things into spank and tank because its easy, I wish SE would fix these things though instead of ignoring them.

Commendations
The commendation system just promotes people to stay quiet in runs. If you criticize someone's play, there goes your commendation. Even if someone can obviously improve their rotation and shorten run times, most of the time they simply do not care what others have to say about their playstyle. I've seen too many BLM who insist on staying full MP or Bards who think their DOTs are not worth using. Even times where I point out that someone can improve themselves, I get responses like "Don't worry about how others play" (edit: and no, I'm not a huge jerkface about it, I'm usually quite calm and clear about things). The commendation system is a waste right now, because instead of teaching new players how to improve, it is a simple "say hi in the beginning and then stay quiet for whole run" thing instead. (Or just spam guildhest until you get your mount).

Couldn't disagree more. Most new players I give advice to either thank me or ignore it and say nothing, but its still worth trying for those that do listen. I am very talkative in almost all my runs, whether it be about people's classes, or just banter/jokes and I walk away with 2-3 commendations most dungeons even on my DPS classes. Just be friendly...

Duty Roulette
Instead of using low level dungeon/trials as a place to learn, you simply get teamed up with players with multiple 50s and full gear on. This skews their perception of the game and really does no one any favors. Low level duty roulette is primarily Sastasha <-> Halatali. You rarely get a dungeon above that and when you do there is a good chance of failure. The guildhests are simply being farmed for Commendations by geared players, and in turn the new players learn very little or nothing.

No idea what you mean a good chance of failure...seriously, what? Also in 2.15 we will be seeing dungeons above halatali more (thank god). Not sure what your getting on with about the guildhests...the very low guildhests always had mechanics ignored from the start

Exploits
Pulling Chimera up the hill pretty much negates the entire difficulty of the fight. Allowing players to ignore all abilities in Turn 2 ADS is a step in the wrong direction. You have a crowd of players who need to cheat their way through the game before reaching walls like Titan HM/XM, and then they get frustrated and quit, blaming things like 'latency' instead of personal error. Or, they'll resort to buying runs from good players and in turn never improve themselves.

Now this I can agree on, I really wish they would step up and fix these things. Players don't do these things because they have to though, they do it because they can, and its easier. As I said above, players will attempt to turn any fight into a spank and tank if they can even if its less fun, simply because its easier to do. Sometimes you have to go out of your way and force the challenge on them in order for them to actually enjoy it.

So the next time you come across an awful player in the endgame, think about these factors. Yes, bad players exist in every game, but the fact is that this game will constantly reward you for being mediocre. Echo buff even allows bad players to finish quests that normally would require class rotation knowledge. People don't want to improve and instead demand the game gets nerfed down to their level. WP/AK were great instances before. Now they are a joke. I'd hate to see all the other dungeons reduced to such triviality.

edit: 1000 character limit

WP/AK are supposed to be the introductory lv 50 dungeons. Demon wall and Xanta cans till one shot parties who ignore mechanics, tonberry king can punish players who overkill adds, flan can one shot dps etc. They aren't supposed to be very hard, they are supposed to get people started into 50 and give a way to start finding decent loot. We have the two HM's and pharos for harder 50 dungeons.

I have a few good points but also some questionable ones. I think you are overall trying to be too negative on anything and pointing out some issues that aren't issues. Rather than trying to find a plethora of problems you should focus on the few real ones. Boss exploits being #1 by a long shot, they seriously need to start doing something about these...its bad design and people will continue to abuse it.

[RafeMacleod]

FATEs
Commendations
The commendation system just promotes people to stay quiet in runs. If you criticize someone's play, there goes your commendation. Even if someone can obviously improve their rotation and shorten run times, most of the time they simply do not care what others have to say about their playstyle. I've seen too many BLM who insist on staying full MP or Bards who think their DOTs are not worth using. Even times where I point out that someone can improve themselves, I get responses like "Don't worry about how others play"

While, yes, I've had parties where the person receiving criticism is defensive about, that's been the minority of my experiences. Most people I've partied with have taken criticism well and I usually get commendations for it. What I do find is that it keeps the people who just complain or wrap their criticism with an insult quiet. And, personally, I think that's all the better.

[Alhanelem]

The majority of players I talk to are willing to learn if you are constructive, rather than critical. Telling people their gear sucks or "they're doing it wrong" is not constructive. You could say things like "You may want to play through this dungeon a few times to upgrade some of your equipment, you'll do a lot more damage that way!" or "Try this combination of abilities. I found it very helpful, you may like it!"

[Moirear]

Commendations
The commendation system just promotes people to stay quiet in runs. If you criticize someone's play, there goes your commendation. Even if someone can obviously improve their rotation and shorten run times, most of the time they simply do not care what others have to say about their playstyle. I've seen too many BLM who insist on staying full MP or Bards who think their DOTs are not worth using. Even times where I point out that someone can improve themselves, I get responses like "Don't worry about how others play" (edit: and no, I'm not a huge jerkface about it, I'm usually quite calm and clear about things). The commendation system is a waste right now, because instead of teaching new players how to improve, it is a simple "say hi in the beginning and then stay quiet for whole run" thing instead. (Or just spam guildhest until you get your mount).

This is half-true. People are too shy to criticize or offer advice because of the commendation system. And there used to be more exchange in that regard. I'll concede to that assertion. On the upside, a lot of rude people shut up now and hope for their amazing gaming skills to net them their beloved commendations.

But I've gotten a lot of commendations in cases where I've offered advice or constructive criticism. Maybe because someone was new to the game or a class/job and not aware of certain game mechanics, or maybe because they were being a burden for the party somehow. There are cases where I've gotten none for that but I suspect that these sorts that are angry about it are just thin-skinned and quite frankly, who cares if you have their approval for doing what you think is the right thing? That said, it's probably also a question of tone if you never get any commendations for such behavior, because there are enough reasonable people who appreciate it and end up giving out commendations in return for your efforts. IME.

Your mileage may vary, and all that.