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

[winsock]

People have a right to reasonable expectations when they queue into content.

A reasonable expectation is for someone to only be accused of laziness with actual evidence of laziness, no? Is that not reasonable?

[MoroMurasaki]

He is a 70 Tank and decides he wants to do a dungeon. He is level 70, so he reasons he should pick a level 70 dungeon.

This doesn't make any sense. Who would honestly make that jump?

This is a far reach even by forum standards.

Oh god, I used the word standards, I am elitist scum now.

[HyoMinPark]

The entire point of "John" is that you don't know his circumstances and that you should not treat him as if you do.

He is a 70 Tank and decides he wants to do a dungeon. He is level 70, so he reasons he should pick a level 70 dungeon.

At the end of the day, "John's" circumstances could be anything, just like a party member you might meet in a pug. The bottom line is that if you don't know what their circumstances are it pretty unfair of you to:
* Dream up their circumstances in your imagination
* Treat that dream as if it is reality
* Then hold them accountable to the transgressions they made in your imagination

That doesn’t excuse his behavior as being incredibly inconsiderate of the other three people he gets in his party. Stop making excuses for these people. They obviously don’t care enough about the random players in their party to try and not perform poorly, so why should you care to make excuses for them?

There is a base expectation when someone queues into level 70 content on a level 70 job, they know how to play said level 70 job—I’m not even talking about at an optimized level, but at a basic level: tanks tank, hold aggro, use cooldowns; healers heal, maybe weave in some DPS; DPS use DPS skills, single-target and AOE when appropriate. When they fail to meet that very basic expectation, it is no one’s fault but theirs. John doesn’t know how to tank but decides to tank and does poorly? That’s his fault for not trying to actually learn before he subjected random people to his play.

Inb4 you say: “You shouldn’t have expectations in DF”—that’s fine, but there are still minimum expectations there.
—Tanks are expected to know how to tank (aggro management, cooldown management)
—Healers are expected to know how to heal (when and where to heal, and which type to use [AOE or Single Target])
—DPS are expected to know how to DPS (a very basic 1-2-3 rotation, and when to use single-target or AOE skills)

[AphraelAmarantha]

It really should not take much thought to face monsters away from the party because of cleaves, or you need the monsters be packed tightly together for some aoes have a small radius. Can you explain more in detail why tank scares you? maybe we can think of putting something in the game to encourage more tanks because we all know there is a shortage of them, and every bit helps.

I mean it is why I made this thread:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...able-to-use-DF.

Maybe you be fine with tanking if there was something you could interact with to show you. I do not think the current hall of novice really shows what people expect you to do when our ilevel 310 or w/e

It's not that the role scares me, I just suck at it lol. I don't want to put other people through my bad play. So I just avoid playing tank in this game in general. Tanking has never clicked with me. Usually I play DPS in all mmos I play. However, I discovered I sucked playing DPS in this game which I figured that out without a parser fyi, SSS revealed that I cant do dps rotations very well. Even after posting a vid and trying out all the advice I was given, I just did not improve at all so I'm like welp, not playing DPS anymore (and I was playing RDM no less, a class apparently that is so easy no one should be having issues with so I felt rather stupid and discouraged). Now imagine how bad I would be as a tank where I know I suck so badly that I would rather I get kicked. lmao yeah it would be horrible and no way am I gonna put other people through that. I'm too considerate for that.

WHM for me is the best job in the world, I feel relaxed, its comfy af and all I have to do is heal and then throw rocks at things when no one needs healed. And if no one dies during the run or the tank is not taking damage because of damage mitigation tools that I like to use (Divine Benison and holy are nice for this :3 ) then I know I'm succeeding :3

[ovIm]

The entire point of "John" is that you don't know his circumstances and that you should not treat him as if you do.

He is a 70 Tank and decides he wants to do a dungeon. He is level 70, so he reasons he should pick a level 70 dungeon.

Lets spin this a bit, shall we?

John wants to play football/soccer with his friends. John has never heard the rules of football. John does not read up on the rules and refuses to listen to the friends who know the game explain the rules, and keeps grabbing the ball with his hands to carry it around, while not being a goalkeeper. If criticised, he responds with "its just a game relax.".
In this situation, John would soon find himself shunned by his friends, rightfully so. Being new is not a bad thing, you can communicate this. But at least being familiar with the rules of a game if you engage to play with others should be the very bottom line, regardless of circumstances.

[Cakekizyy]

This doesn't make any sense. Who would honestly make that jump?

This is a far reach even by forum standards.

Oh god, I used the word standards, I am elitist scum now.

See other tanks make it look easy. Figure it can't be that hard. They try it on level and faceplant.

[KaijinRhada]

They also pay money play how they please, you're free get angry they're free to not listen & get angry back. If you don't like it's very simple find some friends/ or a fairly active FC & play with people you want to play with instead of pugs if ticks you off that much or learn to relax.. .

The flipside is also true. When you're in group content, you're not playing on your own time, there's 3/7/23 other people there. It's not an unreasonable request that people at least try and put a modicum of effort into it. Making mistakes and learning from them are fine, but it's not those players that many of us have a problem with, it's people that can't even do the basics of their class, and refuse to learn.

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?

This reminded me of a time I got into an in-progress 1/3 Antitower as a monk, before PotD was a thing. The BLM and WHM were there from the beginning, trying to tell an unreceptive PLD how to hold aggro. It was very apparent when even single target became a gong show on the second boss. I don't know how it went while I wasn't there, but it only took me saying something along the lines of "If you flash 2 or 3 times on pull, it can help with aggro" before they had a temper tantrum and rage quit on the last boss.

---

All in all, I'm not saying everyone that doesn't know the basics will act like this, and it does make you wonder, but it's not unreasonable to expect people to know the basics (and using Flash/Unleash/Overpower is very basic in FF tank 101). And it certainly not an outlandish thought to think "They'll at least know to use aggro-generating skills" at such a point, especially when in higher level content.

On the note of preconceptions, it's pretty easy to avoid it by saying something. If you happen to be the player learning or know one, all one needs to do is say something like "this is my first time doing X" and people will probably be more receptive to helping out.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The entire point of "John" is that you don't know his circumstances and that you should not treat him as if you do.

I'll be blunt. I don't care. His circumstances could be anything from "I used a jump potion" to "my cat walked across the keyboard several times and somehow it made me level 70." Frankly, I'd have more faith in the cat than some people...

Regardless, all I know is his selfish decision to queue into content he clearly has no business attempting wastes my time. In fact, I had such a tank in Rabanastre last week. She insisted on main tanking yet had no idea how to use CDs—even using Hallowed Ground as the off tank. When asked multiple times to use CDs for tank busters she got angry because "they're not available." She forced myself and my co-healer to compensate because she couldn't be bothered to learn how to actually tank before queuing into max level content.

A reasonable expectation is for someone to only be accused of laziness with actual evidence of laziness, no? Is that not reasonable?

Would you rather I say incompetence? Either way, if you can't perform your role at level 70 yet queue into content at that level, you're wasting everyone else's time.

[winsock]

That doesn’t excuse his behavior as being incredibly inconsiderate of the other three people he gets in his party.

I disagree. We are pushing this conversation more and more into the abstract (and honestly i think this is becoming a pretty interesting discussion as it becomes more abstract). To push it further, do circumstances matter at all?

John is a level 70 tank and queues for sastasha. It's his first time tanking a dungeon.
Jane is a level 15 tank and queues for sastasha. It's her first time tanking a dungeon.

For all intents and purposes, assume they are equally terrible. How should they be treated?

[HyoMinPark]

I disagree. We are pushing this conversation more and more into the abstract (and honestly i think this is becoming a pretty interesting discussion as it becomes more abstract). To push it further, do circumstances matter at all?

John is a level 70 tank and queues for sastasha. It's his first time tanking a dungeon.
Jane is a level 15 tank and queues for sastasha. It's her first time tanking a dungeon.

For all intents and purposes, assume they are equally terrible. How should they be treated?

They should be assisted. Because at least they are doing entry-level content and trying to learn. I would give props to a max-level player (or even a player that was level 50/60 and that jumped a job) for queuing into an entry-level piece of group content and trying to build up their skill on a job that way.

But. There is a huge difference from this scenario you’re now presenting, and your previous one of a level 70 tank that doesn’t know how to tank queuing into level 70 content wanting to learn, and assuming people would be just as accommodating. People generally are more willing to help a level 15 player learn (or even a higher level player that is running level 15 content learn) than helping a level 70 player learn in max-level content.