Why Does It Feel Like Poor Play Is Acceptable (I'm Venting.)

[Miksu]

Because this community loves to mollycoddle the mediocre. You need only read these forums for a brief space to learn that for a lot of players, expecting something called "effort" is entirely synonymous with being an "elitist". How dare you expect a tank to hold threat! How dare you expect a WHM to do more than throw out Regen every 20 seconds! How dare you suggest a MNK actually land his positionals! How dare you tell that BLM to stop spamming Blizzard II! I've played many MMOs in my time and I think XIV is the only one I've ever seen where people try so hard to play poorly or to excuse poor play. It's just like being a sane man in a world full of crazies.

I thought we were talking about truly low-skill players and not the mediocre. This is another problem I have with articulation here on the forums: People conflate mediocrity=bad when that's not even what the word means.

[Vailius]

When they went and nerfed Steps of Faith because it'd have blocked people out of expansion content, it was the probably the biggest indicator that being a poor performer was "okay".

Or remember when the first few weeks of ARR came out and they nerfed the lvl 15-16 solo instance when you had to take a potion+antidote? Yeah... hah.

[Iscah]

Above level 42 (last class skill), there needs to be Hall of Novice (Hard/Extreme/Savage) where it's not skippable and possible to fail it 100x.

Compulsory Hall of the Novice would be great, although possibly putting "too many" roadblocks for an underprepared tank - if they haven't kept up with their class quests, they would need to turn back and do all of those (as you need Shield Lob/Tomahawk for the Novice course) before being able to complete the exercises and move on with the MSQ. Better for everyone overall, but I don't know how they balance that against potential individual frustration.

An "Advanced Hall of the Novice" (Hall of the Initiate? Hall of the Expert?) would be fantastic. The current Hall was a great introduction to the play concepts I needed at that level, and I would love have an in-game tutorials for higher-level strategies and how to properly use the various techniques I am given.

I feel like the game is really lacking in the way it presents new abilities as you learn them from job quests. I feel like the related quest should be about giving you the technique and then sending you on a mission that encourages you to use it - this happens occasionally (eg. the two-part Lv15 Rogue quest that rewards you with stealth mode for completing the first quest then makes you use it in the second) but for the most part you're just given the ability with no suggestion of how or when to use it. And - certainly for me - if I'm not encouraged to try a new ability that I'm not sure how to use, then I'll probably stick to the previous tactics that seemed to be working.

Case in point - I was somewhere around Lv48 on my black mage before I finally worked out the point of Scathe - it's weak, but instant-cast - but when I first received it (fairly early when I was still getting the hang of everything) it was simply described as "a powerful spell" but I looked at the description, only saw it was weaker than either of my elemental spells, didn't understand it and never touched it again. It finally clicked when I was in Copperbell Mines feeling useless against the horde of weak spriggans and wishing I didn't have charge time on every single one of my spells...

Sadly, this game doesn’t teach anything to prevent the ignorant play (most things have to be learned via external resources when it comes to playing one’s class/job)

Similar to what I was writing above - it seems so strange to have to turn to external resources for information. Even if you're starting out and *want* to do a good job, it seems natural to assume that you'll learn everything you need within the game itself, or work it out as you go.

[winsock]

Why does it feel like a person playing the game poorly is considered acceptable behavior?

Because you decided to feel that way.

Honestly, you can feel however you want to about anything. You can choose to tolerate or reject any behavior you feel like. I think the important thing to understand is that it's pretty unreasonable to expect random players who have different backgrounds, mmo experience, insecurity levels, etc to meet your personal minimum standards of performance and security 100% of the time. It's just not going to happen in a pug.

[Laerune]

Not saying that poor play is acceptable, but the way they made the leveling experience soo easy does not help either.


- The monsters in the open-world are easy, like very easy. This means that the player only has to use 2-3 skills and the mobs die. With my BLM, I only had to do thunder --> fire ----> fire ----> fire. The main issue is that the player does not learn to use all their skills. I have seen WHM who dont use their buffs, players who dont know when to do AoE and when to use Single type of skills, Dragoons that never use Heavy Thrust, even though it provides 15% increase in damage dealt. Players dont need to use them, because the open-world mobs are to easy. Developers tried to do change this by giving mobs more health in Heavensward, but still no changes.

- The other way to level is via FATES, DEEP DUNGEON or PVP. With FATES, unless you are soloing or killing the bosses, the player will most likely revert back to pressing only few skills. In Deep Dungeons, mobs die too fast and the first 100 floors is a joke. In PvP you are playing differently and lack alot of the PvE skills.

- The last way for people to level is via Dungeons and the issue with this one is that:
1. Queue takes to long for DPS players, which encourages them to either do Fates, PvP or Deep Dungeon.
2. Leveling Dungeons requires that the player only knows the basics when it comes to their classes. The mobs die too fast, mobs die soo fast that in Heavensward and Stormblood players are encouraged to pull two or 3 groups. There is no reason to use all your tools. Which is understandable when doing level 15 or level 30 dungeons, but when Stormblood leveling dungeons are just as easy as the level 15 dungeons, that is when you know something is wrong.

With 5.0, I hope Square Enix does the following:
1. Make the mobs hit harder, let them use more skills that take your HP. Force the players to use their buffs, if players are forced to use all their tools to survive while leveling, they will be more skilled when reaching endgame.
2. Place a ilvl gate on the leveling dungeons, I have seen too many players with gear that are 10-20 levels lower then the content, this needs to end.

[Raikki]

I think the important thing to understand is that it's pretty unreasonable to expect random players who have different backgrounds, mmo experience, insecurity levels, etc to meet your personal minimum standards of performance and security 100% of the time.

When you're engaging in any group-based activity in life there is always a minimum level of competency/contribution required. The baseball analogy above is appropriate. If you can't or won't perform even the basic functions of your role in a team then you are interfering with other people's ability to have fun and you have no business being there. You shouldn't enter into content that entails a cooperative group effort and treat it as a single player experience where nobody else matters but you.

We aren't talking about someone doing 4000 dps instead of 5000 dps, or people who don't know what they're doing yet in Sastasha. We're talking about people who aren't even doing the very basics of the game and their role who are attempting to do max level content meant for people who know the fundamentals of how to play already.

[Alleo]

If you got the clear then time wasn't wasted.

So would you stay to the end of each dungeon if it needs the whole time every single run? Would you be alright if you need over 120 (?) minutes for each 24 man raid clear every single time no matter how old it is? Because as long as they clear at the end (even with just 5 sec left) its not wasted time?

Honestly I dont want much from players. I just want to go through a dungeon/raid on a reasonable time and I dont care if we wipe to mistakes sometimes. Yet I am still shocked how low the skill bar is for some if you still can call it skill. In my old FC I had a monk that had no idea how to play their job. They were resistant for tips, did not know about their stacks and they did not do much more than one combo..I am quite sure that they dont know what positionals are either. They were at lvl 60 and still had no single idea how to play their job..every time we had them in our group for a dungeon we carried them through it..just have two DDs like that and suddenly you wont clear the dungeon anymore..also funnily they were kinda annoyed that they were kicked from some groups and they left the FC after someone else did not want them in their Nidhogg ex (synch) run..

In the end its not surprising that we have those players. There is nothing in the game that truly forces you to get better and if they are not able to do their job quests, well there is no need for those skills right?

I mean someone in our FC once said that they had a BLM in their group that did like 200 DPS..we were not even sure how something like that is even possible on 60..

[Ayer2015]

People derive enjoyment from games in different manners. Perhaps they are just running content without caring how good they are at the game and just want to relax.
As a healer, I enjoy the 'bad' groups... makes it more fun for me.

[Dualgunner]

Because they think its a game, and you think its a job.

https://goo.gl/images/oQBCe8

[kidalutz]

Not saying that poor play is acceptable, but the way they made the leveling experience soo easy does not help either.


-
With 5.0, I hope Square Enix does the following:
1. Make the mobs hit harder, let them use more skills that take your HP. Force the players to use their buffs, if players are forced to use all their tools to survive while leveling, they will be more skilled when reaching endgame.
2. Place a ilvl gate on the leveling dungeons, I have seen too many players with gear that are 10-20 levels lower then the content, this needs to end.

1. Boss FATES you know those things nobody does that teaches cooperation and getting out of the bad.
2. And where are they pray tell to get the gear they need? Oh wait yeah the dungeon they're in to replace that bad gear with.