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

[Tridus]

I think it is all related to lazyness, even if more indirectly. Lazyness of not asking for tips, lazyness not looking up information, lazyness of not reading tips. This game appeals to seems to be wants to be open for everyone. Well if it is going to be made for everyone, you need Tutorials to be explained in a way to people that never played a game before. I did get in a low level group once where this mentor was trying to explain to this new tank how to play. After a while they where having problems because they never played a game before, let alone MNORPG. Maybe there can be a prompt giving extra optional Tutorials to do. I do not mean the hall of novice and it does take a bit to understand it. I mean before you even see the first cut scene, "Would you like to see basic tips of the game ? (This is a good idea to hit yes if you never played a MNORPG before)"

I'm a professional software developer. Speaking from first hand experience, tutorials won't reach the players you want to reach. Why? They don't read them. They want to click them away as fast as possible to get back to whatever they wanted to do. Ever tried making a Delete function that won't result in accidental deletion? It's impossible. No matter how many checks, confirmations, and warnings you put in, people will still do it. At some point it becomes counter productive because once you have too many, they stop reading them entirely and just click "Yes" to everything blindly. People also do this with browser security prompts, which is part of why security is so terrible and also why browsers display far fewer prompts than they used to. (True story: I had someone delete a record, then call support. They asked where the record had gone and why it was missing. I checked the logs, walked up to their desk, and showed them the delete button they pressed, then the giant red warning that it'd delete the record they also pressed. Clearly they didn't read either of these things because they were surprised that a delete button existed, and it was very hard for me to resist asking if they were in fact capable of reading.)

It's not even about "laziness", per se. At the end of the day, people want to clear content. For your core gamer, they also want to optimize, try to find tricks, and such. For another segment of the market, they don't. They want to get their goal done, and that's it. If they can do that, as far as they're concerned, nothing is wrong. If they're being carried? So what? The game doesn't tell them that, and there's no real disincentive to do it in roulette because the only problem aside from a kick is failure, and failure is RARE in roulettes.

It can be a real culture shock when people hit Ex/Savage and suddenly start being told they're doing bad DPS when nothing has ever told them that before and it hasn't mattered at all. A tutorial won't fix that. If you want to fix that, you need to surface that information a lot earlier. IMO you also need to up the difficulty of levelling and expert content so that poor play is more punishing, because if you can stand in absolutely everything and be carried by the healer, what's the harm?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

It can be a real culture shock when people hit Ex/Savage and suddenly start being told they're doing bad DPS when nothing has ever told them that before and it hasn't mattered at all. A tutorial won't fix that. If you want to fix that, you need to surface that information a lot earlier. IMO you also need to up the difficulty of levelling and expert content so that poor play is more punishing, because if you can stand in absolutely everything and be carried by the healer, what's the harm?

This here is why I get so tilted over the eased difficulty we've seen since mid-Heavensward. Look no further than Sunsao and Lakshmi EX, where the excuse was "people are learning their new abilities!" Fast forward to Shinryu EX and pf is a complete shitshow. Why? The former two didn't allow people to learn but simply made it far easier to carry bad players since you scarcely even need six people for either. Shinryu, on the other hand, exposed those detrimental to the party. The easier casual content becomes, the less people pay attention because nothing reinforces the notion they should. A friend of mine actually got a tank who had never touched Savage before and said "I cleared V4N. Shouldn't be that much different." They legitimately thought normal was just a slight tier below. Honestly, I suspect many newer players have similar opinions only to get absolutely decimated.

If the devs ever truly want to shrink the skill gap, they need to stop coddling and make reasonably paced difficulty curves. Considering they've come out saying The Vault was too much for leveling healers, I won't hold my breath...

[Tridus]

If the devs ever truly want to shrink the skill gap, they need to stop coddling and make reasonably paced difficulty curves. Considering they've come out saying The Vault was too much for leveling healers, I won't hold my breath...

That frustrates me to no end because I main WHM and I loved healing The Vault. When you get a total mess on that and the group pulls it out anyway, it's a great feeling.

There's no real sense of accomplishment without the risk of failure. They seem to have lost sight of that in favor of "nothing can kill you". Like the last boss on Sirensong Sea. If your healer is awake, everyone else can fail the mechanic every time and be fine so long as they run back out afterward. That's it. Compared to the punch in the face The Vault would give you for messing up repeatedly and it's just not satisfying to beat it unless you try to push your healer DPS as high as possible (because that's where the only challenge is).

Seems like the wrong direction to me.

[Sylvina]

People still complaining about how the game is somehow too easy? must be sad living in a world where nothing is good enough.

[akaneakki]

People still complaining about how the game is somehow too easy? must be sad living in a world where nothing is good enough.

Stop trolling.

[HyoMinPark]

People still complaining about how the game is somehow too easy? must be sad living in a world where nothing is good enough.

People still complaining about how people still complain about how the game is somehow too easy? Must be sad living in a world where you feel the need to complain about people complaining.

Maybe they complain because it is. Majority of content is ridiculously easy with little to no punishment for failing. That's why people go into V4S groups saying "I've cleared normal mode; Savage shouldn't be any different".

[winsock]

So that level 65 PLD (who also had multiple other level 70 jobs including DARK KNIGHT) I came across who couldn't hold hate on anything in Dusk Vigil... [snip]... they were just new/didn't know what to do?

No matter the amount of wishing you do, level is just not a representation of skill or knowledge. I knew someone in ARR who had max level tanks but couldn't tank. They didn't like the pressure of tanking, but wanted max level jobs, so they leveled PLD and WAR w/o dungeons.

At one point in time, this person decided to give tanking another go and as expected, was performing terribly and was given a hard time for not understanding how to tank. This person has given up tanking again.

Level is not an indicator of skill or knowledge. You don't know the other players situation, so don't make accusations based on your feelings about them, make them based on actual evidence.

Side point: this whole situation can be avoided by simply treating them like they don't know what they're doing. Politely give them reasonable instructions such has using flash X times, should they decided not to use flash, they aren't working with the party and you can kick them regardless of their skill/knowledge.

I think you're still floating out in that nebula 5million light years from planet Earth still if you think you cannot tell if laziness is a factor sometimes.

Laziness can be a factor. Level is not a data-point you can use to determine that.
For example, John Smith is Level 70 everything. How good is he at tanking? It's just not a question you can answer with level.

For the sake of humoring you, even if we were make assumptions about people's situations, your augment just doesn't make any sense for the scenario you're giving. I could see a 'lazy player' scenario where a tank drops tank stance, isnt paying enough attention cause they're watching netflix, and loses hate on a boss. Maybe a healer misses a heal, etc. But not being able to hold threat on "anything" as a result of being lazy? Tanking isn't THAT hard lol. You're making quite the stretch.

However, tanking would prove very challenging for someone who has little idea what they are doing.

[Jijifli]

No matter the amount of wishing you do, level is just not a representation of skill or knowledge. I knew someone in ARR who had max level tanks but couldn't tank. They didn't like the pressure of tanking, but wanted max level jobs, so they leveled PLD and WAR w/o dungeons.

At one point in time, this person decided to give tanking another go and as expected, was performing terribly and was given a hard time for not understanding how to tank. This person has given up tanking again.

Tank expectation: Hold Threat of mobs. Was he not holding threat? You can literally hold threat against more than 1 enemy with 1 single button.

Side point: this whole situation can be avoided by simply treating them like they don't know what they're doing. Politely give them reasonable instructions such has using flash X times, should they decided not to use flash, they aren't working with the party and you can kick them regardless of their skill/knowledge.

Side point: We do that already. To be honest here, I don't know if I can make the advice I give even easier besides hacking their computer and playing for them. You think I didn't explain to that warrior what the combo was? You think I didn't explain the mechanic that everyone else was messing up? I even communicated, I had a macro that made a sound effect for when we had to hide to avoid the attack. Nobody listened. And in that snowcloak case it's 3 people, good luck kicking that. So since I can't kick that, I should take a 30 minute penalty because players can't grasp basics from playing the game itself?

For the sake of humoring you, even if we were make assumptions about people's situations, your augment just doesn't make any sense for the scenario you're giving. I could see a 'lazy player' scenario where a tank drops tank stance, isnt paying enough attention cause they're watching netflix, and loses hate on a boss. Maybe a healer misses a heal, etc. But not being able to hold threat on "anything" as a result of being lazy? Tanking isn't THAT hard lol. You're making quite the stretch.

If tanking isn't THAT hard, why is your example having so much trouble? Hmm? HMM? How do they little idea what they are doing by 70, even if they didn't do a single dungeon with it? He had to kill things in the open world, right? What did he spam Butcher Block until someone felt sorry for him and carried him through fates?

The patience window drops lower and lower the higher and farther in content you go with your job. I don't think any reasonable person expects some great tank that pulls 3.5k dps or anything. Just a tank that does it's role, a tank. Keeps threat. Like how you expect a healer to heal, and a dps to do dps.

[Miste]

so they leveled PLD and WAR w/o dungeons.
At one point in time, this person decided to give tanking another go and as expected, was performing terribly and was given a hard time for not understanding how to tank. This person has given up tanking again.

So...this player knew he didn't know how to tank dungeons even though he had tanks at max level. Then went into dungeons at max level on tank and performed poorly. I wonder why that is?

Did this player look at guides first to help themselves? Did they maybe queue for a low level dungeon first, like say Satasha, since they knew they would need practice?

Did they attempt to help themselves at all by learning basic dungeon tank stuff from any source at all? Guides? Friends? Anything?

I mean you said it yourself in this very post:

Tanking isn't THAT hard lol.

So why did this person you knew in ARR not know even just the basics of tanking of at least holding hate at max level? Maybe because he knew he didn't know, yet was too lazy to do a bit of research or practice first?

If someone is getting near the back end of the game like level 50+ and doesn't understand the basics (just basics, nothing more) of their role/job then it is THEIR responsibility to research and/or practice it, and that is the problem with some people in this game. They refuse to be responsible for themselves.

They go into 50+ content and expect everyone else to put up with them not even knowing the basics of their role, but won't put in any effort on their own to learn or accept help when it is given. They just expect everyone else to put in a lot of effort to help them by possibly carrying them by having to stressfully perform two roles (like a healer having to tank and heal the dungeon) , but they won't put any effort in to help themselves.

Laziness.

If a player wants to explain if they have an outlier situation they can do so. So I am not saying every situation is people being lazy, but it is easy to tell laziness when you get ignored when trying to help, or told to be quiet (albeit not that nicely), or the infamous "it's my sub I play how I want", those are all indicators they are just being lazy and don't want to learn.

So like I said it is easy to see when Laziness is a factor sometimes and levels do indicate that laziness might be part of it. They've been playing a long time yet don't know basics, whose fault is that? Who else can they blame besides themselves?

You don't know the other players situation, so don't make accusations based on your feelings about them, make them based on actual evidence.

That isn't even what I am saying. So you've missed the point entirely.

What I am saying is level means they've been playing a certain amount of time, barring jump potions, which means they should have had ample time to practice, research, and help themselves learn. Remember how you said tanking isn't that hard? Then why at PLD65 and DRK70 that tank is unable to use Flash even once? If it is so easy then why did they not read the tooltip and use it when they saw they were losing hate? Why did they ignore me when I pointed out Flash would help them keep hate?

As for jump potions it is the responsibility of the jump potion user to research the job they jumped to have at least a minimal basic understanding of it.

That tank I had I tried to help them and got ignored. That is the only evidence I need to know they are lazy and don't care. I know there was no communication barrier since they made idle chit chat with one of the DPS at one point, yet never acknowledged me. Their levels along with not knowing basics indicate laziness, but I didn't only go with that.

Level is not a data-point you can use to determine that.
For example, John Smith is Level 70 everything. How good is he at tanking? It's just not a question you can answer with level.

Yeah it can, since levels shows a basis for how long a player has been playing this game therefore someone with all tanks at 70 should know at least the basics, IE: holding hate. If they know nothing else then whatever, but the basic of a tank role is to hold hate which the game expects you to start learning by level 15 with your first dungeon. Level 15.

So a PLD at 65 who doesn't know how to use Flash, again I ask, what excuse is there?

But not being able to hold threat on "anything" as a result of being lazy? Tanking isn't THAT hard lol. You're making quite the stretch.

No, not knowing what Flash is on a level 65 PLD is lazy. Since they obviously didn't take the time to learn what Flash is or does or research how to use it to hold AoE hate.

I don't know what you were trying to humour me with, but you made little sense with that ramble. I am thinking after that you simply aren't understanding my point.


Also I find it humorous the person who said "just imagine the people you're playing with are 3 year olds" is telling me I am making quite the stretch lol

However, tanking would prove very challenging for someone who has little idea what they are doing.

Who is to blame if that level 65 PLD has little idea what they are doing?

A. Me, because I didn't drop what I was doing immediately and spend my time to type out a full explanation to a level 65 PLD on how to hold hate with Flash which is a basic that tanks would start learning at level 15

B. The game's fault, despite the novice hall actually having a tutorial on how to use Flash to obtain AoE hate and having tooltips which explain how abilities work.

C. That level 65 PLD's friends/FC/Linkshell

D. The level 65 PLD


Personal responsibility is a thing.

I think I have to reiterate I am talking about just basics, like a tank holding hate at 50+, that's it, I don't care what else they do. This is not some kind of tirade about optimization. Just. Basics.

[SavageCipher]

A lot of it comes from simple scapegoating....

You see this a lot in MOBA's. People will spout out the common gems like; "its just a game" or "Its not a job". Which in turn makes certain people believe its okay to mess up time and time again. So to those scapegoating; I pay money to play this game, expect me to get emotional or critically logical, if you happen to repeat a mistake. We need to things to change; people need to stop scapegoating, and others need to stop defending said behavior.