A Crazy Solution To The Growing Problems of Inadequate Preparation For Duties.

[Silverquick]

Problem: There are concerns in the community that there is a lack of players' understanding of the skills they gain during their journey in Eorzea.

Weird: Job Quest - What I mean by this is that, we have a job quest system in which it reward us with skills but we have no idea when or how to utilize the skill effectively as the job quest usually do not require us to use them or teaches how to use them.

Suggestion/Solution: In the Job Quest, there is a section where the quest teaches us how and when to use the skills. This is NOT A NEW CONCEPTS. I created this post NOT TO INTRODUCE A NEW CONCEPT but to ENCOURAGED A CURRENT EXISTING overlooked concept.

To be completely honest with you...

I do agree. This game has an excellent mechanism for teaching the basics of the Tank/DPS/Healer... lets be honest here... it does... there is literally a class you go through before you enter your first dungeon. And its great!

There are also Guildhests which give a basic runthrough of the mechanics you find when fighting boss mobs in dungeons... again an excellent idea from FFXIV Devs...

What they're not so good at.... is the Character developments along the way...

There was a guy who posted on a thread a while back talking about how some of the newer level people don't quite understand their specific version of their character in a party... ie... the skills you gain through the levels and how they change.

For example: Healers not knowing to take Cleric Stance off in a dungeon when healing... or Summoners who don't understand that you Stack your DoTs... then hit Bane to spread them to other targets.

They are simple things, and basic mechanics of the class... or teaching them when to use AoE attacks and when to use single target attacks and which of their abilities actually do it...

It's more about the skills you gain through the levels and how to use them... not everyone is like me and knows to go out on the internet and read up on what things do and figure out how to piece them togather properly.

[Mycow8me]

I'm of the opinion that no amount of guidance (that we don't already have in the game) is going to fix a problem that is created by the players themselves who are lazy, impatient, or don't care till its evident that they need to improve in the first place (after their first current endgame EX primal/raid equivalent of a challenge).

The lvl 50 class battles are supposedly designed to test you, whether or not they are challenging enough to get you to use your toolkit to the best of your ability is another question.

[Dzian]

I'm going to say this. About 95% of the players in the roulette know how to play their class and role. Funny thing is, even half the 'newbies' you see.. you know the ones that give you bonus tomestones are veterans on alts. The players that do not know what they are doing form a very small percentage. .

Not so sure about this. I mean sure 95% of players might be able to play there roll well enough to clear a dungeon or something at the absoulute minimum of difficulty... but that bar is increbibly low to be realistic. a blm could literally /follow a healer with auto fire button set to blizzard 2 and he'd be doing enough to clear that dungeon... or a dragoon could literally just 123 123 123 and do nithing else and still do enough to clear low end content..

IMO if what you say is correct and 95% of players know how to play there jobs effectively then the "huge skill gap" that Yoshi is addressing wouldn't really exist because if it's only 5% of the player base that's having a problem it wouldn't be a primary issue..

I'd also say that if 95% of players knew how to play there jobs effectively the "no bonus" culture wouldn't exist either. because ya know if there's a 95% chance that bonus person knows how to play there job most people would be a lot more willing to give them a chance...

and the success rate of various learning clear and even farm parties would be that much higher...

you also get things like dun scaith. if 95% of an alliance knew how to play there jobs effectively that first boss would be dead everytime by the time the 4th square hit the ground. yet in how many groups do you see 6-7 maybe even all 8 squares on the floor..

same goes for the second boss. if 95% of the alliance were effective at there jobs he'd be dead before the second fire/water puddles come up...

as for class / job quests they really do nothing to teach you how to play your job. if I use paladin as an example i'm a tank. and in every job quest if I actually try and do my job. i.e tank. i'm gonna be dead and I'm gonna fail.... instead some npc does some stuff while I run a round a smack a couple of tiny mobs... teaches me nothing about my job.

[Dualgunner]

as for class / job quests they really do nothing to teach you how to play your job. if I use paladin as an example i'm a tank. and in every job quest if I actually try and do my job. i.e tank. i'm gonna be dead and I'm gonna fail.... instead some npc does some stuff while I run a round a smack a couple of tiny mobs... teaches me nothing about my job.

It is sort of weird how they give you the new skill *after* the quest. I'd give it before the quest and have the quest revolve around how to use it and the other skills you learned while leveling to get the quest.

[Kaethra]

you also get things like dun scaith. if 95% of an alliance knew how to play there jobs effectively that first boss would be dead everytime by the time the 4th square hit the ground. yet in how many groups do you see 6-7 maybe even all 8 squares on the floor..

A tutorial isn't going to change that fact. In your perfect world, players would play to the 85-90% of their potential at the very least. They'd have the mechanics memorized with a photographic memory. They'd have their material melded with the best for their job and role.

Issue with that, is if you required players with those qualifications. You'd have a very long queue. Long enough that you'd be picking and choosing people in a PF to make sure it went well. Then at that point.. what's the point of the queue?

The players you speak about that cause a boss to go longer than you think it should. Apparently know their stuff well enough to complete the dungeon in question.

Don't get me wrong. I probably get more frustrated than you do when players are less than what I believe they need to be. As my friends on my TS server can attest, there's a serious amount of foul language that comes from my end when I do some of that content. However.. newbies and ignorance I can deal with. Newbies aren't newbies forever, they can learn. Ignorance can usually be righted through enlightenment.

Those players aren't the problem. They learn, they get better.

The lazy PoS's are the problem. They've learned, but don't care. They know what they are supposed to do, but don't do it. They let other's deal with adds, mechanics, or whatever instead of taking initiative.

Tutorials won't help them. They'll play 110% to get past the content that they need to on their own. But when they run with us, its back to what they intended to do anyway. I know it feels wrong and almost alien to think that player beside you doesn't give a flying crap. But that's the honest truth. They're there to get their loot and you're a means to get it for them.

Feels crappy, I know. But its the truth.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

If people would just READ the ability tool tips, they would have a much better idea on what to do. Hell, I leveled monk to 60, then didnt touch it for over a year, and ive out dps'd 95% of the players i run into in df, without ever looking up a tutorial on how to monk. I run into bards all the time who dont keep DoTs up, or use mages ballad all the time. simply reading your skills would resolve 90% of the badness people have with their jobs. the other 10% is just people not wanted to try.

[Jijifli]

I do agree. This game has an excellent mechanism for teaching the basics of the Tank/DPS/Healer... lets be honest here... it does... there is literally a class you go through before you enter your first dungeon. And its great!

Do you mean the hall of novice, the thing I don't see enough people do because it isn't a requirement to enter your first dungeon?

In seriousness on that, I rare see actual newbie's with the ring. Vets do it more often because they know the rewards, and newbie's aren't as likely to know. If only they made you, at least once per account.

[Shougun]

I'm going to say this. About 95% of the players in the roulette know how to play their class and role. Funny thing is, even half the 'newbies' you see.. you know the ones that give you bonus tomestones are veterans on alts. The players that do not know what they are doing form a very small percentage. Out of that percentage most of them do not join groups because of that limitation

I think people believe they know how to play but I disagree that 95% and are just lazy and know how, besides how would you even produce that statistic? You can only know people are doing poorly not why, unless you interview everyone..

Anecdotally the people I've talked to that were doing very poorly were unsure how to play, meaning they did not quite know what was to be done and just faked it till you make it sort of thing (or thought their method was good, but was obviously far from it, they adjusted when they saw their mistake - usually in my experience). A better tutorial would have helped them (job quests being massively underutilized opportunities).

[Kaethra]

If people would just READ the ability tool tips, they would have a much better idea on what to do.

They do. Its how they get their 123 combo going. Everyone likes seeing big numbers. They just don't care about maintaining them. Why should they? Someone else will and that's all that is needed for content. Think about that. Even the hardest content of the game doesn't factor a DPS rotation from a tank or healer and only 90% of the potential DPS from the DPS's ilevel if they have the bare minimum.

That's for the hardest content, the stuff NOT in the DF.

And people think a tutorial will help. Asking for a tutorial is asking for another layer of excuses. "Oh well there's a tutorial for it. I don't have to teach anything." That's the real reason for these requests. Dump the responsibility from the player to the dev.

[Feidam]

Yes, a million times yes. This is one of my gripes I bring up every now and then. This game does not teach us how to use our skills. 1st time players of MMOs might struggle because of this. Novice network and that training they added are not that good. The training itself is only up to level 15 skills. Novice network is just a glorified chat line.

Actually the game does give you plenty of time to learn the skills. The leveling dungeons are designed to slowly introduce your skills to you and give you time to learn how to fit them into your rotations/needs. However, instead of leveling in the leveling dungeons people even newbies do palaces the dead. Or if they do utilize the leveling dungeons the higher level players drag them through by their johnson telling them to ignore mechanics etc. This problem, imo, has been caused for the most part by the community. There of course will always be bad players, but they are usually the extreme minority.