Don't tell me what to do!

[Coldheart]

In my humble opinion, for "suboptimal play" you can offer some advices (and please be polite when doing this), but the player doesn't have to agree.

If a player is playing wrong and causing troubles to the party, I tell him (or her) the problem and I give some advice ("please attack the nail or the party will be wiped"). But constant harrassment it's not acceptable.

And there is a big difference between "playing suboptimal" and "playing wrong".

You play suboptimal when you don't use your skills in best possible way. For example: as Thaumaturge stay unnecessarily in Umbral Ice stance. A dungeon may get harder or slower, but is still doable without major hindrances.

You play wrong when you don't use your primary skills at all or very rarely or ignore a key boss mechanic . For example: a Thaumaturge that never use Fire or a DPS that never attack the Infernal Nail during Ifrit trial. A dungeon will get harder and slower, and maybe cause one or more wipes.

[Sapphic]

If a player is playing wrong and causing troubles to the party, I tell him (or her) the problem and I give some advice ("please attack the nail or the party will be wiped"). But constant harrassment it's not acceptable.

Problem is there are too many cases where the player either ignores any advice and "still doesn't attack the nail" (using that as an example of ignoring mechanics that will probably wipe the party) either because they don't care or they select a language they don't understand for a first time run thus explanations fall on deaf ears.

[Yukariko]

what always enters my my mind, and one of you guys can explain, is how do you know?
sure it's pretty easy to tell if dps is generically slow by how many times a boss's mechanics loop or if you're hitting an enrage timer, but how do you know which dps is at fault and at which point in their rotation they are going wrong?

I personally don;t have a keen eye and I'm concentrating on what I'm doing rather than watching what other people are doing.

is it just watching the debuffs/buffs that appear in the party window? I generally keep my mouth shut but often just wanna bark "how about you worry about your own rotation that worrying about theirs" when i see this happening

that said, if you are going to give advice always explain why something should be done different. generally will go down a lot better.

[SayuriHime]

what always enters my my mind, and one of you guys can explain, is how do you know?

During the dungeon, I was very much thinking the same thing Yukariko. We were doing AK (the first one, old easy one) and the Black Mage was using Flare as part of his combo. The ninja kept saying "Stop using Flare! It uses all your mp!". I was thinking "I am pretty sure the Black Mage knows what his spells do."

Also during the dungeon, I did speak up but not about specifically in defense of the Black Mage. I made small talk and general conversation to change the subject and bring humor to the dungeon. When the Ninja started nagging, I would say silly things like "Only combo I know is Holy Holy Holy o/" and stuff of that nature. I didn't want the Black Mage to feel bad and I also didn't want to bring confrontation to the dungeon by blasting the rude Ninja.