Something need to be done about BAD DPS.

[Sereven]

Because being slightly under 'best' is so debilitating for your group. Quit being so melodramatic. You want to play that way? Fine, it's your playstyle, and if you like the paint-by-numbers method, more power to you. What I disagree with is the expectation that everyone else should do the same. That's just unrealistic and, frankly, idiotic.

Heaven forbid we be allowed to have any kind of a personality or unique playstyle. If it's not optimal, then clearly we're not playing the game properly.

Wow. Way to take the high ground and call someone an idiot in the same span. You've got class. You belittle me by calling my desire to perform optimally paint-by-numbers, when I could easily call the mess other players call their performance scribbling off the paper and onto the desk. It's not a matter of optimal play to play your class at the level required by these mechanics, an utterly disingenuous claim you made that I wasn't going to touch because I was at first more bothered by your need to put me down in the process of defending your way of things.

It's not "my playstyle" to work to do better for a group. It's common courtesy. It's not melodramatic to want to do better and hope others I play with do the same. I put in effort so that others aren't hindered by me being grouped with them. It is no tall expectation to have people treat others with like courtesy.

Further, you push for the argument to be over the concept of optimal play as opposed to just playing your class right. You want "optimal play" to be the argument because arguing against its necessity is easier. This topic should have never been about needing people to play perfectly, and honestly it wasn't until you moved that goalpost yourself. You don't need to play perfectly to not drag a group down. You do need to be conscious and have an understanding of what the buttons in front of your face actually do.

There is no crime in desiring to improve yourself. I am not a drone for trying to improve the way I play a game with others, for others. The game places skill and dps checks in content where the developers see it fit that the skilled players and capable dpsers would gather. If that's not "your playstyle" and you want to try and emulate Fur Elise with your keystrokes while poking bad guys, you have other venues to explore that don't involve dragging others down with you.

[Terribad]

What's the reason for not being able to use parsers again?

[Cynthis]

Of course, there are those of us that have certain ... problems, making optimal gameplay not something that can be commonly done...

I feel the same way. I spent quite a lot of time in ARR getting progressively better at BLM until I hit a roadblock in Twintania. In order for me to get close to an optimal use of skills I HAVE to look at the the hotbar and while I can see AOEs and dodge from my peripheral vision I simply could not see and react to twister quickly enough. So instead of trying to maximize DPS, I settled into a rotation that I can do basically from muscle memory and that allows me to focus on other things. It also mayde the fights a LOT more enjoyable for me...and then they ruined it in Heavensward with Enochian...

[Reinha]

A think a reasonable solution would be to implement some kind of system like Proving Grounds in World of Warcraft, albeit more strict. Something along the lines of "You cannot participate in X content as Y class until you can complete this challenge as Y class." The challenge would obviously have to be designed specially for every class. Not only would this help weed out bad DPS, but bad tanks and healers too if executed correctly.

On the other hand, WoW doesn't have class specific quests that teach you the role and introduces key abilities. I do admit that the class and job quests here could be more clear about things early on. Like the gladiator quest, where you kill things and can't even aggro them despite being a tank class. There could be an optional max level quest (solo instance) for each job related to their storyline, which is repeatable and challenging. I think that would provide a good practice ground. However I don't think it should gate any content, because they can never perfectly balance it for each job and it won't fully prepare people for every raid encounter either. It could have some kind of a scoring system and related achievements, as well as having the option to choose the difficulty. I really enjoyed that aspect of Proving Grounds in WoW and spent weeks on it until finally getting Endless 30 achievement on my Unholy DK. Man it was fun! I loved the healer PG as well. It taught me how to prepare for burst damage, how to reduce overhealing and also made me study the mana (mp) efficiency of different spells.

Btw what's with all this dps hate. There are bad tanks and healers too, ya know. Geared tanks who lose aggro, squishy tanks that let mobs hit them in the back and don't use cd's, tanks who run in circles so it's impossible to get positionals, healers who forget to heal, healers who forget they can dps when they are idling for 10+ seconds with full mp, healers who overheal way too much, healers who run out of mp due to using only expensive heals and healers who don't buff. The list goes on. I wonder what caused the OP to target dps players specifically. There are bad apples within all jobs and roles, and they should all be provided with a means to practice.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

The will and drive to improve your skills, be it DPS, tank, or healer, must come from the inside.

Bads will be bads. Period.
This does not mean that people are born "good". People are born either lazy or not lazy. The information and tools to improve your game already exist: bad players only need to reach out to them and use them to get better. Alternatively, they can just be content as they are and keep being labeled as bads.

Official parsers can help the part of the playerbase which indeed has the will to improve but is somehow reticent to use or refer to third party parsers - but real bads will still be real bads. Nothing will fix that, ever.

[Chiramu]

What's the reason for not being able to use parsers again?

Square doesn't want people to discriminate against people because they don't match the numbers.

[Neuflune]

There really needs to be some sort of in-game guide on how to play your class atleast somewhat competently, perhaps tied in with the job quests. It is incredibly frustrating how regularly you meet DPS who cannot even out-dps a PALADIN IN SHIELD OATH.

I laughed so hard because it's so true... but also so sad at the same time.

[Obysuca]

A think a reasonable solution would be to implement some kind of system like Proving Grounds in World of Warcraft, albeit more strict. Something along the lines of "You cannot participate in X content as Y class until you can complete this challenge as Y class." The challenge would obviously have to be designed specially for every class. Not only would this help weed out bad DPS, but bad tanks and healers too if executed correctly.

^ This.
I had the very same idea, even the locking them out of certain content until they passed it. No nerfs. No echo. No npcs helping you. Make it challenging and require people to know their job fully. The people throwing around the "I pay my sub, I'll play how I want.", really need to stop using that poor excuse. Yes, you pay your sub, but "playing how you want" is also ruining the game for others when you're playing poorly. Those 5-7 other people in your pt who actually want to pass the content? Know what? They can't, because you're "playing how you want", is causing unnecessary wipes. I can't tell you how many times me and a fc member have been held back on content, because the other 6 people either can't dodge, don't know their job (at 50+) or just plain won't listen to the strategy. Maybe the good players should start using the "I pay my sub, so stop causing wipes by playing how you want" reply to those "play how I want" people.

Call me a jerk or elitist, I don't care, but there really needs to be something in game that'd lock people out of content until they can pay attention/dodge/do things. They could even go so far as to have a lockout on it if you fail, let's say, once a day or something, so then those people can go practice/learn while the cooldown is up. Sure, it'll lock out a lot of people and there will be tons of QQing, but be honest, do you really want all the people who don't give a crap about how they play, flooding DF/PF and causing wipe after wipe and unneeded stress for others? I know I don't. I remember a time on mmos, when people actually cared and only like 2% of the entire population sucked, with the other 98% actually being good at the game, so you can actually complete content with very few, if no wipes.

I'm going to bring it up, but that's what I loved about XI. Yes, people will say it wasn't challenging, but by the time you hit cap, you knew your job. In 11 years of playing it, I've only encountered maybe 5-6 bad players. XIV? I encounter 5-6 bad players every half hour... Just yesterday, I had a healer in Aery who wouldn't use cures... at all.

Tbh, in a way, making the game so accessible was bad for the community. Good for SE for money yes, but bad for the overall community. 95% of XIV is a walk in the park and it's kind of sad :/ While not everything, but there should be more punishing stuff in game, to teach players not to do certain things, or how to do certain things.
I bet you right now, if there was exp loss, it'd fix a portion of the bad players, especially if they lvled down. It'd probably make them start caring about how they played, so they don't cause 10+ wipes on an easy fight, making other people lose exp/lvl down too. Tbh, DF kind of encourages people to be bad too, since they can just requeue and hope to get carried :/

In a way, fates have a part in this too, raising new players to be lazy and just hit buttons. Argue with me all you want, but I feel the game would be a better place without fates, forcing everyone to do dungeons and actually learn what the other buttons on their hotbar do. Someone might say "it's better exp", sure, in one good chunk it is(like 25k-40kish), but then there could be 8+ min waits on respawns, when in a dungeon you can get 3k-6kish exp a kill and around 50k-100k for bosses, it's actually faster. If more people queued up, there wouldn't be an issue with queue times either.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm all for helping people so they can be better, it's just the large portion of people who refuse to listen and continue to cause the same wipes.

[Ryel]

So just - stop this whining about DPS already. It's bloody annoying. Bloody annoying to see thread after thread after thread popping up about this. Trust me, I could create threads about dumb tanks and awful healers as well, and I'm quite sure I'm not the only one. Yet you don't see those festering on p1 on a pretty much daily basis.

Well actually, you do.

There are tons of threads about bad tanks or the STR versus VIT debate, or about whether or not healers are contributing DPS in content, but as said before countless times in countless threads there are a number of issues at play here.

The first issue is transparency:

It's easy to see when a tank or a healer makes a mistake; lack of cool-down usage, poor MP management, improper boss positioning, lack of hate control, lack of outgoing heals, the list goes on and on. It's generally easy to see and communicate when a tank or a healer performs poorly in content as more often than not one or both playing poorly instantly equals the end of the run. And as far as the community is concerned it's pretty much okay to call them out for their mistakes.

I'm sure any career tank or healer who has done content long enough can tell you there is no shortage of people ready to offer their opinion about how you're playing your job;

"STR jewelry? why not VIT?"
"VIT jewelry? Why not STR?"
"Why are you speed running this!?"
"Why aren't you speed running this!?"
"Why are you DPSing!?"
"Why aren't you DPSing!?"
"My static says it needs to be tanked this way!?"
"The YouTube video doesn't do it that way at all, why are you tanking it that way!?"

The list goes on and on, and in some of these cases the complaints can be completely justified, the point is however is the level of transparency is not the same for a DPS. In reality as long as a DPS simply doesn't die via eating too many AoE attacks and generally stays in the right positions you have no way of knowing whether or not they're actually contributing sufficient DPS. To your eyes it may look like their DoTs are applied full time, but are they executing their combo properly in addition to that? is the MNK properly maintaining stacks? Is the NIN getting the most out of their ninjutsu?

I'm sure someone will try to make the point about watching the enmity meter but Quelling Strikes and Elusive Jump would like a word with you.

So exactly how can you tell which DPS are pulling their weight and which ones genuinely need a helping hand with content? You can't, which leads us to the second issue.

The game gives players no incentive to become more proficient with their jobs:

What does this mean?

The MSQ for the most part is designed and tuned in a way that by simply acquiring level appropriate gear and playing at a basic skill level that players will eventually make it from one point to the other, and this is perfectly fine as it's main purpose is to tell you a story and let you enjoy the ride. It really doesn't offer you any challenges to overcome, at least not ones that are extremely difficult when geared correctly, there was a time that it did but then people complained that it was too hard and well... here we are.

Everything after this however is optional as far as content goes, and usually requires a level of gear and skill that are above what the MSQ has to offer. The performance requirements shoot up substantially from those at the end of the MSQ without a metric for DPS to actually measure themselves by to know if they are prepared or playing at a level appropriate for it. It's easy to tell if you have enough HP to survive attacks or if you're capable of healing a party (usually) but out of 4 DPS in the party how do you know which ones are holding their own?

No measurements tools and no accountability gives DPS no incentive to learn to output more damage, and why should they? Especially if they aren't aware that they're putting out sub par damage to begin with. In addition if players struggle on content for a long enough time the echo is eventually added to aid them which means that players won't actually care about trying to get any better because the game is essentially telling them that there isn't any need, the effort will simply be wasted when content is brought down to their level regardless of if they do or not.

So players can't tell if they need to get better, and the game gives them no reason to try and improve, but surely a collection of their peers would be more than willing to offer them advice and help them correct?

Well...

The Western approach to the Duty Finder:

This is where things get... interesting.

See there are two different schools of thought when it comes to the Duty Finder:

The first is that of the Japanese playerbase, a playerbase that almost exclusively uses the Duty Finder as a means of clearing content, where most people who queue in are already proficient in their jobs and practiced in battle strategy from making parties in the Party Finder. for them it's generally considered bad form to just jump into the Duty Finder blind and place the burden on the rest of the party to not only take the time to teach you the content as the newcomer but in some cases how to play your job as well. That isn't to say it doesn't happen obviously but it's less often the case.

This is in contrast to the western approach to the Duty Finder, where a large number of players are happy to just jump in blind due to the fact that the odds are low that you will ever end up with any of these other players again, a large portion of the population doesn't really care about how well they do as long as they can see and practice the fights and have no issue even if that means they are the reason it's taking 60 minutes to clear a 10 minute encounter. Some of these players then get upset that the fight wasn't properly explained to them or don't even have a basic understanding of how many of their own classes' abilities work (didn't read the tool tips). And in most cases if criticism is offered it doesn't really end well.

See the difference there?

There's also this.. aversion a large number of players have to making party finder groups for learning, many of them commonly stating that no existing groups are already in the PF list, or that the requirements stated by OTHER groups are too high or punishing so they get discouraged from joining a group rather than just... making their own.

So back into the DF they go, and then more threads like this are made.

Players that understand these issues are the ones asking for an In game measure of player performance, a parsing add-on, a scorecard at the end of a raid or dungeon, anything the devs can do to help players improve in an environment that is constantly setting raid DPS as the wall for completing content.

It's why you see and will continue to see this being a hot topic for quite some time, especially so when endgame is and will continue to be DPS check based.

But there's always this last issue...

Player harassment:

This is the internet, and being as such there will always be people who will use whatever they can to be jerks to one another if given the opportunity. However they already do this, from glamours to job choices to which minion is better (It's the Gaelikitten btw if you disagree you are wrong, end of story) the point being is that player harassment should not prevent enriching the game experience.

We've got an awesome staff of GM's just sitting there waiting to hand out some ban hammers (ban axes? ban greatswords? why do we have no hammer users?) let them deal with player disputes by giving them a GM call should people try to abuse each other.

Who knows some players might enjoy finding out there's more they can do on their jobs, or that they might be performing better than they initially thought.

[Gunspec]

I once saw a guy playing an mmo with one hand. Beer in one hand, other hand drifting lazily between mouse and keyboard. This has helped me understand why many players can be running the same content as myself while barely making their presence felt. They just don't care. No amount of hand holding is going to change this.

The game can either:
A. Prevent these bros from progressing in the story, leading to a loss of customers and lower sales.
B. Make mandatory story content relaxed enough that a few such players won't make it impossible for serious players to get stuff done.