The issue nobody wants to address

[Whiteroom]

My final thing, STOP backseat playing other peoples characters. It is rude, inconsiderate and just plain snobby. You have no idea what the person us doing, how the persons hotbar is set up, what the person net connection is or where they live. The more time you spend on whatching other pleople the less time you spend doing your role. If things go south don't blame any one player, talk on how the wipe happen and what the group as a whole can do to improve.

I feel I need to ask this here,and not just for you, but anyone in the thread:

What do you consider your responsibility to be when you join a group?

Now please don't just go "RESPONSABILITY!? THIS IS A GAME!", when you join a team, you are agreeing to certain things. As a tank, you are agreeing to fulfill the tanks role which mostly involves keeping the aggro of the enemies while people attack it for example. So, what do you feel you are agreeing to when you enter a team?

To me, you agree to put all of the work* that pertains to the role you selected upon entering. As dps, in a four man group for simplicities sake, this means doing your best to achieve at least close to 50% of the damage. I say close to because obviously you will have healer and tank damage. Now, this doesn't come into question often if everything is going smoothly, though if someone is doing 6 times the damage of the other similarly geared person, they are likely to get annoyed at some point, as anyone would(note: this is player dependant and instance dependant.)

Now I ask this, because the Pro-Parser crowd, in my eyes, seems to think that you agree to do your job at least competently and not poorly enough to put strain (or too much strain, remember, they are also playing a game)on the rest of the team. The strain should come from the dungeon, not the team.

Where the Anti-Parser crowd seems to think that actually joining the instance is the extent of their responsibility. In my eyes, they don't see it as a team, but four independent players who happen to be in the same instance.

So, I have to ask:

"How is expecting someone to fulfill the role they agreed to when entering the dungeon, back seat driving the persons character?"

And

"Do you feel that you are there for the team when you join an instance? Or that the team is there only for you?"

I don't know what kind of an excuse the hot bar set up thing is, if you set your hot bar up in such a bad way that you cannot do your job that is your fault, not the teams. As far as connection and the like, that will not drastically affect output unless it is severe, and yes, if your team cannot complete content because your internet is so horrible, you probably shouldn't be on that team, and should be figuring that out. I would feel bad for wasting others time if I did that.

* By work I am referring to the instance being the task your party has to complete, and work being the amount of mechanics (dps, healing etc, as well as all other things) needed to complete the dungeon. Not work as in, you have to go to a building, punch in, slave under the bosses incompetent son for a wage you don't feel is appropriate for no gratitude.
^not an example from my actual job btw , just if you say the word work, people automatically think employment to earn money for some reason.

DCUO RELATED STUFF:

I too, came from DCUO, and my experience with their parser is quite the opposite. Of course you do have the odd person abusing it. And you do have the odd person misreading it. The overwhelming majority of the people I ran into, at least understood the basics of class damage, if people were doing mechanics rather than just straight dpsing, and if they joined late, etc. Now I quit after the whole Nexus/Paradox Wave debacle, but I can remember being in one tunnel in paradox, and after an extremely rough completion of it, my damage out being 1.2-1.4 million, while one dps had 200K, if that. Is that in anyway reasonable, even considering AOE mob damage, single target damage, or mechanics being completed? Especially given that we were both alive the whole time.

So, what adjustments would you make to DUCOs parser to make it better? One thing I would have suggested is some sort of an average dps since entering the instance, as I found one of the more common issues, (Note: Not saying I found issues common, but common among the issues that happened), to crop up, to be someone would leave part way through the instance, another would join and some joker might say "X's dps is way too low!" Since it only showed total damage.

Damn I hate that I feel the need to spell out what I am referring to with when I use words like Work, Effort, and Responsibility. Insert Malevctions X's and O's image here please.

[MentheusDreyar]

I feel I need to ask this here,and not just for you, but anyone in the thread:

What do you consider your responsibility to be when you join a group?

To perform my role to at least the bare minimum expected of me, by both the game and party if there is a general consensus within the party (like kiting adds or something when i don't technically have to do it). If i know i'm under performing i'll take advice and apologize, if i'm dragging the group down and causing wipes i'll concede that i'm not ready and leave willingly like any decent player would rather than waste more of those player's time. I'd also include looking up tactics on any content harder than a dungeon, so i don't waste more of people's time. Unless the content in brand new...

Like-wise i'd offer advice to players when i see them doing something i know is wrong or see where they can improve. But do you know what causes all the negativity about bad players? When they refuse to listen, take advice and assume we have hostile intent and we get responses like "STFU i'm doing fine" "I play how i want" etc, etc. when they clearly aren't and causing problems for the rest of us.

Many of us have put up with this kind of vile hostile behavior for just trying to help for so long that we honestly don't try anymore and just kick them as it's a lot less hassle and trying to help them when the majority clearly don't care about overall group performance in group content. These "me, me, me" players are the reason we need parser's to weed out the bad players ruining the experience for many others.

If they don't want to help themselves we certainly won't help them and it's not our responsibility too. Occassionally i'll find a glimmer of hope in the player base when someone actually accepts advice...then lose it again in the next PUG.

[Malevicton]

Insert Malevctions X's and O's image here please.

Whoo, it's my time to shine!

[Kuroyasha]

Whoo, it's my time to shine!

This is hilarious! xD

[Elazu]

This is hilarious! xD

And a perfect reflection of a large part of FFXIV's playerbase.

[MentheusDreyar]

And a perfect reflection of a large part of FFXIV's playerbase.

This is so true.... and so Sad...

[Archaell]

This is so true.... and so Sad...

We could blame game's difficulty and overgearing for that. You have probably noticed by now, but when you can finish most of the conent while being down 1 or more players, then there is something wrong with it.

Also there is lack of difficult single player content. I wonder how many players would pass just hard mode primals if it was locked behind solo trials focused on reasonable tanking/healing/dps checks.

[Colorful]

I wonder how many players would pass just hard mode primals if it was locked behind solo trials focused on reasonable tanking/healing/dps checks.

Not like it matters, it would be nerfed in a week after release regardless. Steps of Faith was so incredibly easy and yet it was nerfed and turned into a horribly boring fight, what once seemed like an interesting homage to Lao-Shan Lung is now an incredibly boring trial.