A proposed solution for having players become better players.

[Eldevern]

Well, bashing new players or bad players reveals that some people forgot one thing, from my point of view : the leveling is so fast it is just fine to do one time one dungeon, if you are lucky, you do it and that's all. No challenge, no training. You can then be 60 without a fair skill. And players who are playing since 2.0 will be shocked that a fresh level 60 doesn't reach their expectations. But could it be possible since you can be 60 with... about 50 dungeons and raids when since 2.0 players can have run more than 1000 dungeons?

People should remember that. Not all people farm each dungeon again and again. The only real solution is very slower leveling. You know, as for Lineage I, you take 10 years to reach the highest level. Are you really ready for that?

[Teraluna]

How about the solution that used to happen years back in mmo's - players went out of their way to help other people.

Some may remember the mmo days when players could admit they where struggling in a quest and there'd be many offers of help, even people offering to meet in game to get others through the quest.

Nowadays I pity someone coming on the forum admitting they cannot get something done. The abuse directed at them, often personal, wouldn't just be from one or two people.

So what's the result?

Struggling players shy away from asking for help on here, and either continue to struggle or quit the game.
The former remain a target for the people who would rather hurl abuse rather than helping them in the first place.
The latter doesn't seem to bother anyone despite the obvious loss of revenue - which is directly linked to resource development.

The game doesn't need these target results as the priority - as these are retrospective rather than before the event.

The priority - but I fear a near impossible one - is a change in general approach to helping people. For people to come one here without the fear of pages of self satisfied abuse being written against them.

It is a drift in declining help v escalating mockery which has been ongoing - and will only get worse unless the negative parts of the playerbase turn from antagonism to genuine kindness.

[Zojha]

Well, bashing new players or bad players reveals that some people forgot one thing, from my point of view : the leveling is so fast it is just fine to do one time one dungeon, if you are lucky, you do it and that's all. No challenge, no training.

I don't feel people need extensive training to read their tooltips to be honest.

Let's go through this: You'll learn about combos as melee within the first few levels and the combos are stated in the tooltip. The potencies and extra effects of your abilities are spelled out for you in the tooltip. The only thing left you need to do in order to get a decent rotation going is the knowledge of the DoT interval, which might indeed not be obvious and needs you to count to 3. That is assuming you have little game experience because 3 seconds is a very common DoT tick interval. Positionals are introduced before hitting level 30 as well.

The rest is basic math. 150 < 200 < 260 ergo: Use combos. (150/200/320)/3=223,3. (150/200/260)=203,3. But 223,3x1,1 = 245,63 and 203,3x1,1 =223,63. Ergo: Keep Dancing Edge applied, but don't use it exclusively. Similarly, use poisons. (150+200+6x40)/2=295 > 223,3. Ergo: Keep Shadow Fang applied, but don't spam it. Similar for Mutilate. 100x7, 250x7 > Anything else in your repertoire. Ergo: Use AoE. Anything > Nothing, ergo use OGCD abilities during cooldown.

Okay, so just by doing some very basic math, we now have a ninja that alternates between dancing edge and either armor crush or aeolian, that keeps shadow fang applied and keeps mutilate applied. Also, he uses AoE in big pulls. And the only reason he doesn't use Suiton-> Trick attack as well is because the tooltip of Suiton doesn't say anything about allowing the use of trick attack. He'll have to find that out by experimenting with Suiton.

I personally think...that's not too shabby, considering how easy it is to come to these conclusions. You don't even need to play the game for them.

[mp-please]

.

Mentor system.

[Teraluna]

Mentor system.

Yes good point, and if used well it can be a good system. If being the operative word.
Unfortunately there's numerous examples on here (just put a search in for 'mentor') that show this system suffers from exactly the same thing.

It falls prey to any system - they're only as good as the people who use them. Honestly, I don't see how things will change for helping people with any system unless people change.
Helping people can sometimes be a real headache - it can also sometimes be really rewarding. There's no doubt in my mind the general trend has deteriorated over the years, and I don't see the popular will to reverse the trend.

[Eldevern]

...

But many few people will try to calculate, they will push buttons and see what happens. Many people don't come in a game to calculate some statistics, this is not their aim and purpose.

And to know a fight, there is no better way than to train. It is a whole. DPS is not everything, same goes for heal and tanks. To get right reflexs needs training. To know the pace of a boss needs training.

[Reinha]

So remind exactly why you have a problem with rewarding healers who DO DPS?

Usually healers dps'ing is a good thing. When you throw in rewards though, it promotes bad play and favours certain jobs.

3. Your idea causes disparity between different healer jobs based on off-role potential which is not balanced. It encourages AST players to give cards to themselves and discourages AST/SCH pre-shielding because of overheals. It discourages using damage mitigation abilities (Protect, bubbles, Virus, Disable, E4E, stuns) because they lower the amount needing healed. It encourages healers to spend MP at the end of a pull instead of letting the passive regeneration fill up HP bars. Team members playing well at early gear levels would make it hard to build up rating as a healer, because healer dps would not yet scale well.

Different healer jobs do different amounts of dps. What is usually a nice bonus to party dps and something to keep the healer busy, becomes a method to get maximum rewards and therefore puts pressure onto healers to play the most efficient healer job. It's unfair because healers are not balanced based on their dps capacity. ASTs giving cards to themselves is a good example of the bad play this system would promote. Every man for himself, screw the party. WHM and AST would be punished for stunning the enemies and using other types of mitigation, because then the amount of effective healing they can do is reduced as incoming damage is reduced. The healing kits and dps potentials are so different that it would be impossible to make an algorithm that doesn't promote healers playing badly in hopes of getting the best rating for a dungeon. When a system is made to encourage good play but it achieves the opposite, it's time to scrap the system.

This applies to all roles (described in my full post).

[AutoWhit]

Geez, this again?!?

Who cares how others are playing if the job is getting done and bosses are being killed? If all you care about is getting out of the dungeon a couple minutes faster maybe you should try a different type of game.

[Zojha]

But many few people will try to calculate, they will push buttons and see what happens.

And the thing is: This can never make you any better, because in order to even realize hitting for 600 is higher than hitting for 300 requires, guess what, calculations. No challenge and no training in the world can make such players better, because these players can't even possibly tell when they've improved - even comparing parser data before and after requires some basic math.

As for training, it only helps you improve your execution. If you have a bad rotation, training will make you better at performing that bad rotation. It will not however lead you to a good rotation. And the same applies for bosses - if you don't realize standing in a mechanic is bad, training won't help you, you'll keep repeating your mistakes.

[Dzian]

The problem is the game revolves solely around DPS

healing and mitigation never matter in the grand scheme of things they're so heavily trivialised.

A bosses ultimate attack forexample only ever has 2 outcomes. either you pass t he dps check and thus sail through with almost no healing or mitigation required.or you fail the dps check and you're going to wipe. no amount of mitigation or healing will save the group.

A paladins Divine viel for example should be strong enough that if used correctly would make the group survive a failed dps check in nidhogg or something such.

at present though it's so weak its completely unnoticeable . if you pass the dps check you're going to take so little damage from the ultimate that any form of mitigation is just laughable as is any form of strain on the healers.
if you fail the dps check your going to wipe no matter how many defensive buffs you put up. sacred soils divine veils aoe stoneskins and succors. still gonna get wiped.....

the game needs to make mitigation and healing actually more important in the first place.

need to increase incoming damage to players quite a lot but at the same time increase the potency of mitigation.

make it so that tank that runs an expert with zero defensive buffs or dps that get hit by everything under the sun is going to a real strain on the healers mp but a tank that mitigates effectively with be much easier to heal. instead of the current pop my fairly jump in cleric and lol just face roll through everything.