Dam. meter

[Sacred_Nym]

I do think the average player needs to be doing better than they are, but I honestly get the feeling that throwing a number into their face and telling them it's not high enough isn't going to do anything but demoralize.

If there's anything I've learned since I've started to play this game, it's that you can't motivate anyone to do anything without a clear, material incentive. If raids didn't give gear you'd probably have maybe 1/10th the people running them. If Ex Primals didn't give mounts, they'd be dead in a week. If 24-mans didn't give tomestone upgrades... you see what I'm getting at.

So I propose instead of trying to make people improve by harassment, we motivate them with rewards.

Basically at the end of a dungeon, we receive a report card that grades us on Damage done, Avoidable damage taken, Overhealing, Times lost aggro vs. # of enemies pulled, etc. filtered by role. Kind of like the results screen of an Action game like DMC or Bayonetta. This wouldn't even necessarily have to be hard numbers. Letter grades based on how much the instance itself might expect would be sufficient. And an overall grade of say... B+ or higher would net you a free, random piece of gear from the dungeon for your role, or bonus tomes, or extra tokens in the case of raid/Ex. Higher grades might lead to better rewards, maybe even choosing which piece of gear you want rather than leaving it up to chance. Even if you don't need anything that's still potential GC seals.

I firmly believe that without rewarding good play in this manner, we won't see an improvement. A parser isn't going to fix anything, but a carrot just might.

What do you guys think?

[bardaboo]

I do think the average player needs to be doing better than they are, but I honestly get the feeling that throwing a number into their face and telling them it's not high enough isn't going to do anything but demoralize.

If there's anything I've learned since I've started to play this game, it's that you can't motivate anyone to do anything without a clear, material incentive. If raids didn't give gear you'd probably have maybe 1/10th the people running them. If Ex Primals didn't give mounts, they'd be dead in a week. If 24-mans didn't give tomestone upgrades... you see what I'm getting at.

So I propose instead of trying to make people improve by harassment, we motivate them with rewards.

Basically at the end of a dungeon, we receive a report card that grades us on Damage done, Avoidable damage taken, Overhealing, Times lost aggro vs. # of enemies pulled, etc. filtered by role. Kind of like the results screen of an Action game like DMC or Bayonetta. This wouldn't even necessarily have to be hard numbers. Letter grades based on how much the instance itself might expect would be sufficient. And an overall grade of say... B+ or higher would net you a free, random piece of gear from the dungeon for your role, or bonus tomes, or extra tokens in the case of raid/Ex. Higher grades might lead to better rewards, maybe even choosing which piece of gear you want rather than leaving it up to chance. Even if you don't need anything that's still potential GC seals.

I firmly believe that without rewarding good play in this manner, we won't see an improvement. A parser isn't going to fix anything, but a carrot just might.

What do you guys think?

Rewards, ok i can get behind that, but we also need to seriously be ok with booting players at the opposite end. I can't count the amount of times I've been the "bad guy" for pointing out seriously poor play, and incorrect accessories, thus rewarding slackers, and by people that didn't even queue with that person. We see it on the forum too, "did you clear? Then who cares, so what if the run took a few minutes longer" Any reward system implemented would be undermined by white knights. A 4 hr cooldown on dungeon kicks? Cmon. This game punishes us for trying to punish slackers, thus rewarding slackers. Sure there are always going to be trolls and slackers, but there are too many people that are ok with it. Maybe if these white knights could see JUST HOW BAD THESE PEOPLE ARE they might be less inclined to vote no, less inclined to reward and carry.

[Sacred_Nym]

Rewards, ok i can get behind that, but we also need to seriously be ok with booting players at the opposite end.

While on one hand I agree with you, but on the other hand this sort of general negativity won't lead to improvements. If anything it will lead to hurt feelings, anger, and possibly people wuitting the game. For as bad as the situation is, the solution is not, and never will be punishing the underperformers. That only hurts the game as a whole. I'm not saying it's okay to underperform or anything, but if we want to see positive change, then everyone involved has to be positive too.

[Arrius]

While on one hand I agree with you, but on the other hand this sort of general negativity won't lead to improvements. If anything it will lead to hurt feelings, anger, and possibly people wuitting the game. For as bad as the situation is, the solution is not, and never will be punishing the underperformers. That only hurts the game as a whole. I'm not saying it's okay to underperform or anything, but if we want to see positive change, then everyone involved has to be positive too.

I am holding against it with a few of my friends who frequently go through mentor roulettes:


They report me of a staggering amount of unwillingness from the players there that won't change their ways of playing the class better, even lashing out on the mentors because they feel attacked in their ignorant way to play the game how they want to.
We talk about Summoners who use Bane before applying dots, level 40+ Black mages who still use Transpose to switch between astral/umbral, tanks that don't use their tanking stance because 'it lowers DPS', bards who don't seem to know what songs are (wanderer's minuet included) or even how to maintain dots, Rogues/Ninjas who attack at the front, dragoons that still use single target attacks on 6+ monster pileups, and the list goes on.

They tried. They tried so many times to make those change in a better way. Yet the reponses they received were harsh, uncalled for and just rude against a mentor who only wanted to help.

In the end, my friends gave up trying and stopped caring - They got turned into those glass-eyed people you know from roulettes. The ones which don't care anymore how long it takes, as long it gets the dungeon done, because even the slowest steps get the job done eventually.

[Sacred_Nym]

Players unwilling to learn.

I'm convinced that is in largely because they think because they are clearing stuff (literally anything), what they're doing is okay, and there's no point in trying to fix what isn't "broken". There's only three ways I can see to deal with this. Either you make the content MUCH harder (like, Ex Primals become the minimum difficulty, hard), you start punishing the underperformers with penalties for underperforming, or you give notable rewards to those performing well or overachieving in any and all content. If players see that by doing well enough, they get rewarded, they will want to improve in order to get those rewards. As it stands, the game does not particularly reward players doing more than the minimum, so there's very little incentive improve. And strictly speaking, they don't NEED to get better to clear the content or claim their roulette rewards or drops. These bad players clear content all the time. A noticeable, and personal carrot at the end of the stick is, IMO, the only way we're going to see positive change.