The issue nobody wants to address

[Priya]

THIS is literally the problem I have with your mentality.
Putting EFFORT into how they PLAY.
I don't know when you last checked, but originally the point of a game was to have fun.
Of course, you can't be completely lazy and do nothing and I totally encourage people to learn about their class or take a pointer about things they might be doing wrong, but by the point you spend more EFFORT on your GAME than on a dayjob, sit over possibilities and spreadsheets for weeks and test on thousands of monsters if skill 1 or skill 2 deals 0.002 more dmg than the other in the long run, you probably should think about getting your priorities straight.

I think people are equating gaming more to being part of a sports team than spreadsheets. One doesn't show up to one's soccer/football(american)/softball game or practice lacking the proper equipment and/or a bit of knowledge about the rules, and then proceed to just kinda mill about the field picking at the grass and ignoring plays. That's not being a team player.

[Ryel]

I think people are equating gaming more to being part of a sports team than spreadsheets. One doesn't show up to one's soccer/football(american)/softball game or practice lacking the proper equipment and/or a bit of knowledge about the rules, and then proceed to just kinda mill about the field picking at the grass and ignoring plays. That's not being a team player.

Pretty much this.

Nobody really cares what happens when you're solo, but when you do something that requires the participation of multiple people working together aka team effort, they expect you to pull your weight.

[Whiteroom]

Its amazing how someone uses the word effort and it gets equated into putting more effort into it than your day job. WE ONLY SPEAK IN EXTREMES HERE!


But really, people should put effort into any team event they play. For about the millionth time its been stated in these threads, nobody is expecting people to preform at world first levels, but you should be capable of putting together a dps rotation that can pass the BEX checks, by the time you are ilvl 190.

[Aniforani]

I agree with this comparison. One should be ready to play and know the rules. Whats being asked here is to be so good that the other team surrenders before the timer runs out. That would be Speed Running a 60 minute match into 15. Plus, duty finder is much closer to grabbing someone from the stands who loves the game, not a preformed team of people you know how to play well with.

[Atoli]

I think people are equating gaming more to being part of a sports team than spreadsheets. One doesn't show up to one's soccer/football(american)/softball game or practice lacking the proper equipment and/or a bit of knowledge about the rules, and then proceed to just kinda mill about the field picking at the grass and ignoring plays. That's not being a team player.

Fine, let's go with that comparison. I play Basketball on a team. Of course I am supposed to know the rules and to show up for practice once or twice a week. But it's a team that plays "for fun", not one we get paid for to play in, so our level is way below professional teams. Still, there are a few people who take it really serious, come to practice 5 days a week, train even outside of official practice and of course, are heaps and bounds better than others. But the thing is - just because two people are that motivated to put a crazy amount of effort into a hobby, does not mean they can expect it from everyone else too. The standard of the team is not suddenly going to rise to the level of the few elites, so either the elites just enjoy play a more casual game with the others or they leave and join a more competitive team.

MMOs are pretty much the same: you won't be able to force people into getting as "good" as you want them to be. Either you accept that someone who only comes to practice once a week (aka does not use a parser or does not read his skill descriptions, reads no guides or does not care about equipment) just won't be as good as you who enjoys putting more effort in, or you leave the team that does not live up to your standards (meaning you stop playing with random people in DF or PF and join a static of like-minded people to play with).

[F_Maximillian]

Fine, let's go with that comparison. I play Basketball on a team. Of course I am supposed to know the rules and to show up for practice once or twice a week. But it's a team that plays "for fun", not one we get paid for to play in, so our level is way below professional teams. Still, there are a few people who take it really serious, come to practice 5 days a week, train even outside of official practice and of course, are heaps and bounds better than others. But the thing is - just because two people are that motivated to put a crazy amount of effort into a hobby, does not mean they can expect it from everyone else too. The standard of the team is not suddenly going to rise to the level of the few elites, so either the elites just enjoy play a more casual game with the others or they leave and join a more competitive team.

MMOs are pretty much the same: you won't be able to force people into getting as "good" as you want them to be. Either you accept that someone who only comes to practice once a week (aka does not use a parser or does not read his skill descriptions, reads no guides or does not care about equipment) just won't be as good as you who enjoys putting more effort in, or you leave the team that does not live up to your standards (meaning you stop playing with random people in DF or PF and join a static of like-minded people to play with).

That's actually a pretty awesome analogy. MMORPGs are alot more like team sports than anything. However, they're more recreational team sports than professional team sports. I think more than a casual team that plays once every few days I think back to playing baseball/basketball/football with neighborhood kids growing up. We would join up into teams randomly and play with whatever variation in skill/ability we had. However, it would be a pain when someone who didn't know what they were doing would join the game or if someone was purposely not putting any effort in at all to learn it.

For me, I don't ask that people I join up with randomly be the best in the world only that they try and do things somewhat properly at least in so far as what the game points out. I had a tank in a brayflox NM run who despite any advice we tried giving him continued to use a fast blade->riot blade->rage of halone combo and wound up repeatedly losing aggro. Things like this make me wonder given the game actually highlights the combo buttons once you've initiated the combo. It's simply a matter of pressing the button with the dashed border and you can continue the hard coded combo yet people still sometimes fail to do that. I don't think its much to expect people to read their tool tips and at the very least perform the hard coded in game combos or sensible rotations.

As for speed running or what not it depends on the group composition and what everyone's comfort zone is. In tanking EX roulettes after the first pull I consult with the group whether or not they want bigger/smaller/whatever pulls and each group tends to be different. As long as people are making a reasonable effort and if a run takes 10 minutes longer than the shortest possible run then so be it, especially for a dungeon most people only do once a day. There's many different types of players on this game but you know that queuing in for EX roulette (which you can queue in with a full party for if you so desire) so there's no reason why people can't find a middle ground and spare themselves the unnecessary animosity.

[Ryel]

Fine, let's go with that comparison. I play Basketball on a team. Of course I am supposed to know the rules and to show up for practice once or twice a week. But it's a team that plays "for fun", not one we get paid for to play in, so our level is way below professional teams. Still, there are a few people who take it really serious, come to practice 5 days a week, train even outside of official practice and of course, are heaps and bounds better than others. But the thing is - just because two people are that motivated to put a crazy amount of effort into a hobby, does not mean they can expect it from everyone else too. The standard of the team is not suddenly going to rise to the level of the few elites, so either the elites just enjoy play a more casual game with the others or they leave and join a more competitive team.

MMOs are pretty much the same: you won't be able to force people into getting as "good" as you want them to be. Either you accept that someone who only comes to practice once a week (aka does not use a parser or does not read his skill descriptions, reads no guides or does not care about equipment) just won't be as good as you who enjoys putting more effort in, or you leave the team that does not live up to your standards (meaning you stop playing with random people in DF or PF and join a static of like-minded people to play with).

For the most part this is true, but when the talk of parsers come up more often than not in dungeons it's not like people are asking for professional play, they're just asking for people to actually play at all.

When it comes to 4 man content this comes in many different varieties:

In some cases with players It's like trying to play basketball for fun and you have one guy constantly traveling, or shooting towards their own team's basket so you breakout the rule book to explain how the game is actually played and they respond with "It's my 12 bucks a month" (See: Ice mages). You probably wouldn't want to play basketball with that person after a while, but you might enjoy playing something else with them.

In other cases its as simple as teaching someone how to pass the ball or helping a team mate with their free throw form so they can get better at landing shots, not in a negative way but it's like "Oh hey i can help with that!". Those players may or may not take the game seriously some time down the line but it's no big deal if they don't, if anything you figure them learning something new would spark more interest in the sport or in this case the game.

Point is players aren't expecting professional level play outside of the content that requires it (endgame), but they are expecting others to show some basic form of competency on how the game is played especially at level 60. For a healer or a tank this means healing the party or holding threat and staying alive, In the case of a damage dealing class this means doing damage while avoiding mechanics. If a player is far, far below what the curve for performance is to the point that it's detrimental to the party there should be some accountability for that, we do so with healers and tanks all the time.

If you enter a 4 man dungeon and a tank is wearing full Dex gear 20-40 levels under the dungeon with no enmity stance on and is using their DPS combo on the boss non-stop without drawing aggro or using cool-downs to mitigate, i imagine you might pull them aside and be like "Hey buddy, I'm not trying to ruin your fun here but i think you might be doing it wrong" i assure you their response of "Well i'm just having fun" wouldn't be all that amusing (okay actually it kinda would, but that isn't the point) and I would hope you would take a few seconds to help the poor guy out.

The higher level the content though the more competency is expected from players, even if that content is casual 4 man dungeon runs, things that people let slide in like... Brayflox probably wouldn't in Fractal or Neverreap because after 60 levels of playing a job they expect you to know it to some degree just like after 2 months on a basketball fun league i expect you to know which basket you're supposed to be shooting for.

You say things like this:

Playing "decently" is entirely enough to make the game pretty much enjoyable to everyone. It doesn't have to be "perfect". A parser isn't needed for "decent" - the game already provides all the information needed for that (combos, effects, attack strength, castspeed, etc.) and anyone with half a brain can create a good rotation with that.

But there are a shockingly large number of players that legitimately have no idea that there is such a thing as "better" than what they are doing or that they aren't performing at base level to begin with. There are quite a few things that aren't actually trackable without a significant amount of attention to detail or at all because of how many of the game systems work; things like like damage from DoTs (SMN / SCH says hi) and Enmity (sup quelling strikes, Shadewalker and Smoke Bomb), I mean we have DRGs who don't even apply Heavy thrust and MNKs who don't bother to keep up with GL I doubt those players are even looking at the enmity list at that point (not that it would even be accurate).

I'm not sure why people get up in arms about the word "effort" being thrown around as if it doesn't refer to a large variety of performance levels and not a single end point. You can put effort into something and still not do so to the point that you're striving for "professional" or "serious" play, sometimes it's as simple as finding out that you aren't doing as well as you think you are and realizing it may be fun to try and do more.

Someone taking 20 seconds to see "Oh so that's what other BLMs are doing, i wonder how i can do that much damage!" is not the same as "I wanna be the very best like no one ever was!"

That's what a parser is for.

[Evangela]

They're only on this forums.

Most people I met in DF, like 90% of them want to do speedrun, which is good for everyone.

[Synestra]

This topic kinda reminds me a friends Fractal run where they had bard that only used venomous bite and heavy shot, mostly it was venomous spam with odd heavy shots here and there.

[Whiteroom]

So shall we consider dps checks to be like a team free throw competition, but you dont get to see your score, teammates score, or total score? You don't even really get to see your teammates shots. You just get told you win or lose at the end. The parser is the scoreboard in this case. But hey, it you want to see the scoreboard, you must want everyone one your team to be NBA level, right? Damn elitests...