Is anyone else bothered by the lack of incentive for mediocre players to improve?

[RocketUnderwear]

Except this makes zero sense.
A better analogy would be you bench one ton and get a trophy for it, and then someone uses a crane to lift it and gets the same trophy.
The fact that the person with the crane was granted the same reward that you worked hard for, without putting in any effort, degrades the work you put towards the goal.

It is obvious that you have never operated a crane before. Have you considered what it takes to do it right? Have you considered what minimum angle can the boom be at to lift that load? Can you identified if the crane intended to do the lifting is rated for that weight? Is the ground stable? Is the crane braced properly? I could go on but I'm sure you get a point.

You're all missing the point, which is that giving out free loot to bad players makes it impossible to identify skilled players, as you can in other games.

Incorrect. I always assume that the pugs I'm running with are complete n00bs and need training wheels on a tricycle. With this approach I have never been disappointed by a complete fail.

[elreed]

I agree with the op here, other games made that right, the gear that is for sale with tombstones should be noticeable lower than the gear acquired in a hard dungeon/fight, having the option for normal and heroic modes gave the chance to anyone to gear up according to the challenge, yes its a game and im more casual now than I used to be, but if Im going to invest some time trying content I should be rewarded according to my effort, SE should give up on lowering difficulty for older content, instead they should adopt the heroic and normal modes like a lot of games.

[rabbitzero]

Nope, never bothered, it's a freaking game. If your sense of accomplishment is tied to a game, and other people getting the same thing as you in a game, you really need to look at your life, seriously.

Also, in every game there are people who got carried to get whatever. WoW especially, guilds run things for gear all the time, and gear up friends without regard to skill. Too many times been in random dungeons with people fully geared with best gear and can barely function, or use anything other than texting speak.

[SarcasmMisser]

I wish there were more mechanics...

Firstly, twintania has been sold though it is situational and not at all widespread. The thing stopping carry runs isn't the difficulty but the lockout, I've heard em primal sellers say they wouldn't sacrifice their weekly t5 loot for 10m. Since you can only do it once a week it just makes sense to sell primals instead, which you can spam. T5 selling will probably be widespread in 2.2 if the twin nerfs aren't too heavy. There is really nothing in this game that can't be carried.

Secondly I agree, I want content in this game that really can't be carried. Mechanics that require a full raid to be alive, or skill checks so tight you can't skip a single member, even on min-maxed toons. 2.2 better deliver on this, and better at least be the wall that twintania used to be if not more, otherwise this game is pretty dead for progression. If they want to satisfy all crowds they need to segregate content instead of making it all try to satisfy everyone. Make the designated easy content easy, make the hard content a progression in difficulty with the most dedicated players in mind. Don't hold back, try to raise the difficulty ceiling every time.

On loot, it's not just the ease but the rng that frustrates players. I've gone 3 months without caster pants, last night in Garuda em there was a blm that was doing less than half the damage I was, and had the caster pants. Where's the meritocracy in that? Gear should be proportional to effort put in, it is after all the carrot on the stick.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

You're all missing the point, which is that giving out free loot to bad players makes it impossible to identify skilled players, as you can in other games.

I'm going to counter this by saying that people still have to work for the tomes to get that gear. And I don't recall any of the original sources of tomes to be all that easy when you didn't already have gear from said sources, or were just barely meeting the minimums. This is of course under the ideal model that people aren't abusing the goodwill/efforts of other players to be carried through content in order to grind tomes. Sure it's a lot easier now to get tomes, yes, but let me raise another point: Assuming there was a loot system like WOW (never played, only using the info you've provided me), how do I know the person with "heroic" gear actually earned it? How do I know he didn't have friends carry him to get it? Or perhaps cheated for it (however possible or not that may be)?

The flaw in your argument, Yenn, is that you assume all players (insert your "99%" comment here) = bad. And that all these bad players can just roll over and get good gear. That simply is not true. Yes, it's unfortunate that you get stuck with people who turn out not to be as good as their gear would suggest, but then, you're a bit at fault for wanting to assume they're good based on gear alone. Gear doesn't = skill, and I believe we at least agree on that. But gear locks or higher tiers/requirements really don't solve the problem either.

[Mailstrum]

Gear should be available from myth, but not an entire set of the highest level gear. Maybe half of the pieces?
There needs to be some sort of reward for skilled players, and some sort of goal for the unskilled players to try to improve themselves and work towards.
This is currently missing, so the unskilled players just wallow around and cry that they deserve all of the gear without having to try to play well to obtain it (as is apparent if you read half of the threads in this cesspool of a forum).

With full i90, most of the encounters turn into loot pinatas. Nobody deserves to down an end game boss by outgearing it on their first attempts.

yes you can get a full set by its by far the optimal set. The optimal set is a mix of myth gear and coil gear and some of the primal ex gear. So its safe to say getting Best in Slot for every slot is the reward for good players. the not so god players can still earn some gear over time.

[Yenn]

I'm going to counter this by saying that people still have to work for the tomes to get that gear. And I don't recall any of the original sources of tomes to be all that easy when you didn't already have gear from said sources, or were just barely meeting the minimums. This is of course under the ideal model that people aren't abusing the goodwill/efforts of other players to be carried through content in order to grind tomes. Sure it's a lot easier now to get tomes, yes, but let me raise another point: Assuming there was a loot system like WOW (never played, only using the info you've provided me), how do I know the person with "heroic" gear actually earned it? How do I know he didn't have friends carry him to get it? Or perhaps cheated for it (however possible or not that may be)?

The flaw in your argument, Yenn, is that you assume all players (insert your "99%" comment here) = bad. And that all these bad players can just roll over and get good gear. That simply is not true. Yes, it's unfortunate that you get stuck with people who turn out not to be as good as their gear would suggest, but then, you're a bit at fault for wanting to assume they're good based on gear alone. Gear doesn't = skill, and I believe we at least agree on that. But gear locks or higher tiers/requirements really don't solve the problem either.

Everyone has to work for their gear, but the problem I'm pointing to is that they don't have to improve to get better gear. They just have to go through the motions of running Wanderer's Palace or something equally trivial each week.
It's really just grunt work, with no sort of skill involved. At this point in the game, even the entry level dungeons are easy, because there are enough geared people running it for tomes or random duties.

In WoW, each dungeon had three difficulty levels: looking for raid, normal, and heroic. The looking for raid dungeons are done via duty finder, every encounter is extremely watered down, and it gives lower level versions of gear. The heroic versions have extra mechanics and are very tightly tuned (similar to Twintania, but a bit harder), and give higher level versions of gear. Players can use LFR to learn the encounters and get a slight gear advantage for normals. Groups that find the normal encounters too easy can do heroic. The heroic versions are too tightly tuned to carry anyone through them, so there's little risk of someone having a lot of heroic gear without deserving it.

To put 'everyone is bad' into perspective, I've been trying to get my tank alt a new ring. My score on Ultima is 6/30. My score in Garuda is 0/11. The Garudas were all party finders with completely different people, and 4/30 of the Ultima wins were party finders.
There is nothing mechnically challenging about either of these encounters. In the case of the Garudas, most of the group were requiring i80 or higher (i.e. 15 levels higher than intended), and they often could not beat her enrage, let alone kill her.
Every other player in my BC group flat out refuse to do anything unless at least four of us are in a group to carry, because they have the exact same experiences.

Currently, I have absolutely no way to tell if someone is good or bad. It's impossible for me to form groups efficiently with the current state of gear.
I can form a group of i80+ players, go into a duty, find out that 3/7 of them suck, and then have the entire group disband on me because of it.
Gear should be a reward for playing well, and new gear should be something you work to improve yourself to attain.

[Yenn]

yes you can get a full set by its by far the optimal set. The optimal set is a mix of myth gear and coil gear and some of the primal ex gear. So its safe to say getting Best in Slot for every slot is the reward for good players. the not so god players can still earn some gear over time.

Even though it's not optimal, it's enough that you can out-gear most of BC and get the rest of the pieces, if you're so inclined.
This might be better in 2.2, but every mechanic in Turn 1 to 4 is trivial, so gear alone can beat them.

[Senfei]

Your posts make me sad for Coeurl Yenn.

[illuminapanic]

Nope.

If I bench 1 ton and someone uses a crane to lift 1 ton that doesn't "degrade my sense of accomplishment" at all. In any way. Same concept applies here.

And besides, it's a video game with a 2.5 second GCD where you fight scripted AI bosses. You're already setting the bar extremely low if you're going to use this game to boost your self-esteem. Stop comparing yourself to others and just play the game, ffs. This stuff is embarrassing.

This is a bad comparison. Because this is a video game, EVERYONE is able to reach maximum performance on their character. It's your capabilities irl that sets your character back, being lack of focus, lack of learning, or whatever. So a better comparison would be that "If I benched 1 ton and got a reward but then they lowered the requirements so another person benched 1/2 a ton and got the same reward." This is how the game operates, it nerfs dungeons so that players, who are personally unable to complete a dungeon, are now able to be on par with the people who are capable.

While I don't agree with the op about players getting loot, since they do add more content for skilled players, I do agree that there is no incentive for unskilled players to improve. If content is too hard for you, just wait a few months and then it'll be easy for you. This, in my opinion, promotes laziness. It's like our education requirement being lowered because there are less degrees being awarded in our country compared to other countries. It doesn't give people incentive to study more or spend more time on their homework and spend anymore time on any school topic when our education requirements are lowered so more people will pass.

Honestly, I don't even enter any party finders or duty finders expecting to win because of all the carries. It's sad though seeing everything in party finder being i80+ when a good 90% of the players will not even perform what their ilvl requirement is. Heck, I do more dps on my i74 brd than i90 people.

Do I care about other people's accomplishments? Not at all. I do care about other people doing their part in the dungeon though because when content requires 8 people and only 2 are doing what they are suppose to, it's a loss.