Something need to be done about BAD DPS.

[Assirra]

On the contrary, it's already made at least one person I know feel like he can't improve at all and shouldn't even bother, because he'll always be treated like a "baddie" no matter what he does.

This simply does not make sense. You have to be really bad to be considered a "badide"and even then if people can they will drag you along.
It is when the game starts to throw dps checks at you and it becomes impossible to drag the bad dps through that issues arise.

[NovaLevossida]

Had a Stone Vigil group that was bad. Tank tanks the second boss right on top of the cannons facing them so I'd get hit and interrupted while trying to operate them. Summoner wouldn't multidot and would only cast his 3 DoTs, nothing else. No Ruin and no aetherflow abilities. Monk didn't know what a positional was, and he didn't care to get out of AoEs either. Mobs were only dying because I was in cleric stance.



I also had a Keeper of the Lake group the other day where the 2 DPS were incapable of attacking the mob carrying the shield in the final fight, and when they did attack it, they didn't do enough damage to kill it together. Let that sink in for a minute. It was only dying because I was in cleric stance, and on our last attempt I had to push healing instead of DPS because of people standing in AoEs. So I left that one too, and the tank was on the same page as I was.

There are other times where I actually have outdamaged a DPS via cleric stance. There are lots and lots of bad DPS in this game, and that's largely because the game doesn't give any feedback that lets them know how bad they're doing.

The closest you get to feedback is something like Bismarck EX where your pre-made groups keep wiping because the DPS just isn't high enough. Not the tanks. Not the healers. The DPS. And they have no idea how to fix the problem because the core problem is that they've went 60 levels skating by not knowing how bad they really are, and a lot of that is because the game doesn't have DPS checks while leveling / gearing anymore (Demon Wall nerfed, Demon Wall 2.0 lets you save progress after a wipe) and it also does a poor job of actually teaching them how to actually play.

[Ryel]

What can be done for this? Class quests would be a great way to teach people rotations for starters and let them start putting it to muscle memory before doing endgame content. If we can't get the tools to actively measure ourselves something like this is, quite literally, the least SE could do.

This wouldn't really solve the issue tbh.

It's already come up a number of times in the past that the way the developers play the game isn't the same as how the players play the game. The statements Yoshida has made about pre adjustment WAR, NIN, and MCH have kind of proved this in various ways.

The developers adding a rotation tutorial could actually make matters worse if that rotation turns out to be sub optimal to ones that players come up with on their own. In addition for as many players that complain about this being an "MMO on rails" a rotation tutorial would only further take away from the experience of messing around with your job to learn, although you can argue that number crunching already does this on a meta level once an optimal rotation is found by the playerbase.

There are only two real solutions to this issue:

Add Official addon support for a performance measurement tool, or an in-game feature to show party performance levels.

or

Balance future endgame difficulty around the execution of raid mechanics (more levers, damage shields, add placement / killing, unique triggers etc) instead of relying on DPS checks to be the measure of difficulty. If more fights played out like advanced versions of Steps of Faith or some of the Hard mode dungeon bosses (Stone Vigil) there would be less pressure on DPS to optimize their rotations but rather to pay attention to raid mechanics.

[Ayuhra]

The game could still teach you the basics of the rotation. I remember as a BLM the game explained what Umbral Ice and Astral Fire *ARE* very briefly at the start of the game but not what they're actually supposed to do. I don't think it fully explains what SMN pet attacks do either, or teaches you the best times to sing as a BRD. It couldn't hurt the game to explain these things better. If you are a newcomer to the MMO genre especially I imagine these things are harder to understand.

Heck this game doesn't even explicitly tell you that Marauder/Warrior is a bloody tanking class when you start out.

[Ryel]

The game could still teach you the basics of the rotation. I remember as a BLM the game explained what Umbral Ice and Astral Fire *ARE* very briefly at the start of the game but not what they're actually supposed to do. I don't think it fully explains what SMN pet attacks do either, or teaches you the best times to sing as a BRD. It couldn't hurt the game to explain these things better. If you are a newcomer to the MMO genre especially I imagine these things are harder to understand.

Well as far as things like boss mechanics go this is actually what Guildhests are for, the problem is the game for some reason didn't make them a mandatory part of the MSQ when you first start playing, they really should have as they introduce and go over a number of standard boss abilities based on the level of the guildhest.

As for timing and ability usage things like "the best times to sing as a BRD" aren't static, they're fight dependent and the game is hoping you take the time during dungeons to try and learn examples of that yourself, it's why we have all those leveling dungeons with varying boss types and mechanics. The issue is more that players tend to ignore dungeons (queue times) in favor of FATEs for exp and thus don't get any real battle experience until really late in the game.

Also another large issue is a lack of players really playing with their skills and reading tool tips (when they're accurate), but i think what really needs to be addressed is the game not properly explaining the full merits of cross class abilities especially when they are fundamental to your job (provoke says hi).

They do leave quite a bit of room for players to mess around and see how things work though, they pretty much expect you to go out and play around on your jobs (go figure) before jumping into content with other people, unfortunately most players don't actually do this and then have no idea that they are performing abysmally because the game doesn't actually tell them they are, which is something that needs to change.

[Ayuhra]

My point is things in this game seem to be a bit...obscure, I suppose? When it comes to learning how to play. Now I didn't have too much trouble because this is not my first MMO and I am used to doing outside research but I have met people in game who, for example, did not have job crystals because they thought they were supposed to max out their class first (which, I mean, your class stops progressing but they hadn't realized that yet, they were still getting levels).

I am not saying make the game easier. I am saying the game should lift away some of this odd mystery and help us help ourselves.

Maybe I'm not explaining it very well.

[Jim_Berry]

...but I have met people in game who, for example, did not have job crystals because they thought they were supposed to max out their class first (which, I mean, your class stops progressing but they hadn't realized that yet, they were still getting levels).

I guess a Level Cap of 30 should be put on classes so THAT class can't gain that last 1xp to hit Lv31 until after the Crystal is obtained.

In Final Fantasy XI, there was a Level Cap starting at Lv50 then every 5 levels after that. One quest in particular involved fighting a boss using your job's abilities effectively (WHM had to keep itself alive, THF had to steal, RDM enfeeble (debuff), etc).

[Animarelic]

The in game parser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMF5U5BA-PE

[Ryel]

My point is things in this game seem to be a bit...obscure, I suppose? When it comes to learning how to play. Now I didn't have too much trouble because this is not my first MMO and I am used to doing outside research but I have met people in game who, for example, did not have job crystals because they thought they were supposed to max out their class first (which, I mean, your class stops progressing but they hadn't realized that yet, they were still getting levels).

I am not saying make the game easier. I am saying the game should lift away some of this odd mystery and help us help ourselves.

Maybe I'm not explaining it very well.

No, I get where you're coming from.

Honestly (and there will be those who disagree) classes in their current form need to be removed from the game, period. After unlocking a job at level 30 all jobs should function like the new ones in that they don't allow you to actually remove the job stone once acquired, which would effectively remove the class from use. Additionally to compensate the removal of classes they should expand the cross class list for all jobs to bring them closer to class customization.

The hard truth is that the game currently offers no systems that support the use of classes in any "difficult" content, and their existence in the current system causes more harm than good when it comes to both game design and player experience. They do however need to explain the concept of proper cross class for skills that are deemed mandatory (like provoke) or make them baseline on the jobs that utilize them to begin with, but that's an entirely different argument.

As for removing a bit of the mystery surrounding learning your job, while i agree that more job quests should be designed in a way to teach role oriented skills (tanking / healing etc) the idea is that players are supposed to learn these skills by going out and actually doing content, leveling dungeons are created almost entirely for this purpose, otherwise we'd have nothing but FATEs. The point is that they actually want players to go out and experiment to a degree.

The greater issue is that there are a lack of accurate tests that see if players have learned these skills as they level, as another poster has pointed out.

In Final Fantasy XI, there was a Level Cap starting at Lv50 then every 5 levels after that. One quest in particular involved fighting a boss using your job's abilities effectively (WHM had to keep itself alive, THF had to steal, RDM enfeeble (debuff), etc).

This is in reference to the Maat encounter, a fight where you needed to perform your job's role in order to proceed to max level and the endgame content beyond it.

The current job quests do not sufficiently test your skills to see if you've learned how to play your role on a basic level, it's not so much that the game needs to give you instructions on how to play, but rather it should test you to see if you've picked up these skills by playing other content up to that point. This would help players newer to MMO concepts see where they stand accordingly, they might realize that after FATE grinding to 50 that they need to hop into a dungeon or three to pick up the basics of tanking or healing or a proper DPS rotation in order to actually survive the encounter.

The issue remains that there are a large number of players mistaking content as too difficult when the issue is with their lack of skill or proficiency with the job they are playing. Many of these players go into encounters and complain that the fights are too hard instead of coming to the realization that they are under geared or performing poorly for it's requirements, there still needs to be a tool of measurement (scorecard / parser) to gauge player performance and show them exactly how well they are (or aren't) performing so they can make adjustments, preferably before trying to participate in endgame content.

[Prox]

How about a damage summary at the end of an instance? That way at least people would know if they're doing poorly.