Friction between casuals and raiders - One Lala's weird trick, GMs hate her!

[Kaethra]

You seem to assume most good players mind picking up slack. I dislike elitists more than I dislike bads.

This is a good point. I don't mind people making mistakes (as long as they learn from them). But the squawkers I could do without. Though admittedly they aren't that good. The so called elitists, you know the ones, the vocal ones. Usually try to hide their own ineptitude by being vocal. They know they're bad. So they try to put the blame and focus on someone else.

You can see them in the forums too. They're the ones who complain the most about newbies in groups. A newbie means that someone new plus their own ineptitude means it might not make for a quick run. They'd prefer to be carried by the silent majority. They get all kinds of crazy when we speak up too.

[Jetstream_Fox]

I'd be happy enough to see a simple performance grade at a dungeon/trials end (a boring old score you get in countless games, just for the user alone). Really with games, all people need is a little feedback, then they are spurred on to improve themselves. At the moment, there is zero feedback of any kind to encourage players to improve.

Issue with that though, most games allow you to practice in some regard, 14 doesn't do this outside of Novice Hall, and parsers don't help either, given they don't tell you what to do in order to maximize damage, they just show how much. It ultimately lies with the player to find out exactly where they need improvement.

[kattzkitti]

One of the main problems with a system like this that I would personally have, is that I'm a member of both groups. Whether I want to take it easy or speedrun some clears simply depends on my mood at the time, which is influenced by what's going on in my life.

Just got off a long shift at work? All I want to do is kick back and relax, run some casual dungeons.

Woke up, had some breakfast, and fully energized for a day in Eorzea? Let's get some speedruns rolling, friends!

Considering my life is extremely fluid, what I seek in any given run can hit polar ends of the spectrum within even a single 24 hour period. This system wouldn't know what to do with me, and my experience in the game would likely suffer harshly for it.

[Sebazy]

One of the main problems with a system like this that I would personally have, is that I'm a member of both groups.

I'd also be concerned about how it would judge performance for the various roles. Take healing for example

The first point is very good and something I didn't really think about, second I suspect wouldn't be as a big a deal as you think it might given that this would be in expert only, with dungeons gated as tightly as they are now, the gap between a good and bad tank in terms of mitigation isn't that massive, the only current pull that gets me sweating on AST is the first in Baelsar's Wall. I'm pretty much 80%+ uptime on cleric stance everywhere else.

I think simply having a rather low cap on how far your rank can swing in a single roulette would probably be the best approach here, it would mitigate the harm done by a catastrophically bad group and if your DPS is good enough even as a healer or tank, it'll average out in the long term. Going back to the first point, I guess you'd end up somewhere in the middle ground and for the most part, not much would change overall for you?

[Hitsuzen]

Too many variables to implement a player segregation algorithim. Also it is clear that SE intended for high skilled players to mentor the next wave of players and so forth, which is why they planted incentives for such players to run older content. High skill content is made to be outside duty finder anyway.

I would also like to add that the problem isn't between casual and hardcore players. The issue is a moral one, with the selfish antisocial behavior exhibited by certain specific people who only care about their own agenda and will not slow down for struggling players.

If we as a community practice patience and understanding. This wouldn't need to be an issue needing a solution.

[Inferiae]

Okay, assume I'm a low ranked tank. How do I rank up if I keep getting matched with healers that can't keep me up through a big pull or DPS that take so long to kill stuff that I run out of cooldowns?

[Sebazy]

You seem to assume most good players mind picking up slack. I dislike elitists more than I dislike bads.

I'm glad you bought this up, it's something I thought about afterwards but was too far gone to get back up and throw it up here

Oh and don't get me wrong, I'm trying to work on as few assumptions as possible, this idea is coming both from the friction I see on these forums between casuals and raiders, as well as the salt I've seen first hand. Whilst I think overt harassment isn't as a big a deal as some make it out to be due to the fact that a simple report will quickly earn someone a temp ban, it's not that rare for a duo or trio grouped together in roulette to silently kick someone who isn't playing to their tastes. I still see it occasionally and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth everytime even if I'm generally not the victim of it.

Back on track, I would think the easiest way around this would be to have mentor status temporarily set your score to the baseline or just below it.

This would allow a higher ranked individual who fancier a milder paced roulette to increase the odds of getting such a group. Technically someone with a negative score could abuse it to get a group above their 'station' so to speak, but they would only be harming their own ranking overall as stronger teammates will mean their personal contribution will actually be lower.

@PondHollow, I disagree with your second point tho, if this system purely concentrates on DPS done I think it'll actually work well for healers and tanks too. Look at it this way, I personally pull 1300-1500dps as SCH in expert and in my logged runs I average 80% uptime on cleric stance across the entire instance irrespective of how good the rest of the group is, a 'mediocre' party actually inflates my personal DPS as it gives me a lot more bang for my buck out of the longer dots and shadowflare. This is a double edged sword for the tank to deal with. Not only are they going to see their health dropping lower and for longer than they might be comfortable with due to me only really healing with the fairy and an occasional and brief burst of personal healing when it's required, they also have to deal with my substantial aoe agro which even in expert, can become problematic on the longer pulls. Fresh 60 tanks are likely to find this overwhelming whereas a highly scored DPS hungry tank is going to be expecting it.

On the tank side of things, a lower ranked tank doing less DPS is likely to be sticking to smaller safer pulls and thus getting less aoe DPS as a result. They are going to be taking less damage and will be far easier to heal than a tank going for a 99 percentile run that's maximising their DPS stance uptime and getting the biggest pulls they can. Again, by explicitly going off personal DPS, said low ranked tank would be more likely to get matched up with an equally cautious healer with this system. Sticking a top tier DPS hungry healer with a super cautious tank or group overall is just going to increase the odds of friction, frustration and salt spilling over (As you state though, just odds, nothing is a certainty of course). Whilst it generally doesn't spill over into outright harassment, I suspect we've all seen the talk of 'lol oh my god this dps is doing a third of my damage' etcetc in FCs and linkshells. I wonder if that's somewhat demoralising for a new or casual player who might feel concerned about there own ability level and performance?

But the squawkers I could do without. Though admittedly they aren't that good. The so called elitists, you know the ones, the vocal ones.

I was hoping someone would mention this. If anything, the most significant thing to come out of this idea is that people would actually have to suck it up and earn their fast clears.

It's great to see some useful feedback here, perhaps it's not as good an idea as I thought last night but there's always the chance it'll inspire a better idea out of SE themselves. Keep the thoughts coming <3

[Sebazy]

If we as a community practice patience and understanding. This wouldn't need to be an issue needing a solution.

Absolutely agreed, in an ideal world, SE would do a better job of introducing players to new DPS abilities and critically, do a better job of explaining how to use them optimally. It's all too common to see a 60 BLM playing like a level 50 and for the most part, it's not because they are bad or such, but because the game does such an awful job of leading them down a 'better' path with their abilities. SMN and MCH are other good examples of where it's very easy to go very wrong with your play style with little feedback on offer to suggest otherwise. A smaller skill gap between the top and bottom of the player pool would do wonders for peoples patience I imagine.

Okay, assume I'm a low ranked tank. How do I rank up if I keep getting matched with healers that can't keep me up through a big pull or DPS that take so long to kill stuff that I run out of cooldowns?

For healers and tanks, my thinking is that rank WOULDN'T automatically equate to skill, rather it'd also be indicative of that players aggression with cleric stance/dps stances and such.

A lower ranked healer isn't automatically going to be bad at all, rather to perhaps over simplify things for the sake of explanation you could pigeon hole healers into 3 camps:

1) A low APM healer who plays badly either due to inexperience, a lack of skill or a lack of attention due to focusing more on a netflix window or such. These guys will get a low rank.

2) A higher skilled healer who is just overly cautious and timid with cleric stance, perhaps they DPS more on the boss but are nervous about clericing up on big pulls, they will lose a lot of personal DPS due healers being skewed toward aoe and as such, their rank will be lower than their skill would suggest. These guys are going to end up in the lower middle ground.

3) A high APM healer who is concentrating more on DPS than their healing, they might be 'pro MLG', they might be letting a DPS die to dots on the first pull, it isn't this system's place to take that into account. Regardless of if they are good or utterly awful, their DPS will land them a higher rank.

Remember that once again, the rank is not intended to equate to skill with my idea, I'd never want it to be visible to the player base.

So in your example, if you actually wanted to increase your rank I think it'd be rather easy for you. You're more likely to get a healer from pools 1 and 2 as well as lower performing DPS, so the odds are you're either going to get a healer that's mindlessly overhealing you, or one that is actually cautious and can play well. Eitherway that's a good result in your case no? You'd also double dip on the benefits, lower overall group DPS would make it easier for you to get a higher personal contribution which in turn should make it much easier for you to consistently improve your rank each run.

Remember that if you've got a pair of summoners doing 6k+ dps between them, it's actually harder to do good numbers as a support role because stuff melts so quickly.

I hope that's the sort of answer you were looking for <3

[Kaethra]

One of the main problems with a system like this that I would personally have, is that I'm a member of both groups. Whether I want to take it easy or speedrun some clears simply depends on my mood at the time, which is influenced by what's going on in my life.

I don't think you'd see a difference. Let's play devil's advocate for a moment.

Lets say you're in the mood to relax. You queue up now and the group wants to just blow though. Well.. that sort of ruined the mood a bit.

Or the opposite. Lets say you're in a bit of a hurry for whatever reason, and.. the healer wants to wait up or someone's in a cutscene.

That's how it works now. Sure sometimes groups match up to the mood. But they don't usually do. I speak from personal experience since I know exactly what you mean. The system the OP proposed wouldn't change that. Not all vets want to speed run all the time. And of course not all newbies are slow. As far as the pacing is concerned. I doubt we'd see a difference.

Though this gave me an idea. When queuing as a mentor, your rating is suppressed. So if you choose to have your mentor status on, you WILL be paired with newbies and only ONE mentor can be in group at a time when queued in this manner.

[Zojha]

Back on track, I would think the easiest way around this would be to have mentor status temporarily set your score to the baseline or just below it.

Well, the point of a mentor is to help people that are struggling, so ideally you'd want to put them together with people of very low or negative scores while they put themselves on mentor status.

The main issue with the rating idea IMO is: You need to make it somewhat elaborate.

If you only go off personal DPS, a DPS that does a perfect single-target rotation in small pulls will be rated lower than one that spams their AoE spell in a mass pull. That's just wrong, AoE rotations are usually less complex than single target ones. Likewise, gear needs to be a factor - If a person is performing exceptionally well at a low item level, he'll still perform exceptionally well when he gears up, so friction due to conflicting mentality could still ensue. On the flipside, bad players naturally gear up as well and inflate their numbers.
Things such as synergy effects also play a role - A SMN or BLM is going to suddenly deal 10% more DPS on a pull if the bard decides to play requiem. However, in order to accurately adjust the rating, the game needs to know whether the 10% more DPS came from requiem or the player just playing better. And then the AST gives the SMN/BLM an enhanced balance and suddenly his numbers go up by another 30%. This is a classic when two friends play together.
Other group play effects can happen as well - A classic is the tank that fails to hold AoE aggro and thus prevents DPS players from using it without getting murdered. A badly geared tank doing a mass pull can also prevent a healer from DPSing much.

It seems simple enough if you only take the 2500 DPS raider and the 800 DPS casual, but the middle ground is fairly muddled.