The general player base needs to improve

[KaivaC]

Unfortunately, player skill cannever be addressed until the devs design a proper difficulty curve. I firmly believe a large contributing factor is how incredibly easy the overwhelming majority of content is, which encourages poor habits. If players can stand in AoEs or ignore mechanics throughout supposed Expert dungeons or normal mode raids, what incentive do they have not to? Before anyone jumps to silly extreme examples, no dungeons shouldn't be Savage level nor should Savage itself return to Gordias. Doing so simply swings the scale too far in the opposite direction. A proper curve can be seen with Weeping City, which actively punished poor play without being overly difficult. On the flipside, Kugane Castle is among the worst dungeons ever designed. Why? Players aren't punished in the slightest for blatantly ignoring mechanics. Yojimbo coin phase does a maximum of 15k—not even 50% of people's HP in i290 gear. If it didn't take forever and a day to cast, people have no reason to even flinch. Once these bad habits are instilled, they become harder to break hence the frustration whenever something like say, Shinryu comes along. Suddenly, everything people have been doing doesn't work.

I agree, but unfortunately, we'll still get those players who seem to think that the only way to increase difficulty is by taking it to Savage levels...which is not what is suggested. I wouldn't mind starting to see some open-ended dungeons, with mobs having varying degrees of difficulty. Lock the best type of loot behind more difficult mobs. The devs could just make one of these dungeons and tie it into the lore by the WoL missing the adventure...this was alluded to in the quest line for Skalla.

Unpopular opinion: I enjoyed Gordias. It took us months but we cleared it just after Thordan came out. It was way too hard for a starter raid into a new expansion but it was good none the less. We busted our asses and I cried when we cleared 4. I wish we got a title for it. Midas was the right balance I thought.

Related opinion: I never pug anything. Raid group onry so I can avoid the general player base >.>

People don't want parsers so they dont need to be held accountable for their own playstyle. They don't want to know they're bad, they don't want to improve, "you don't pay my sub." So what can we do? Stick to your own groups imo. You can't fix people who firmly want to play at bare minimum capacity.

To be fair, from what I understand, Gordias unleashed hell on the raiding scene. I've never tried it myself, though I personally have a very high interest in challenging it.

Well we should start with something small and realistic. I'm talking about Hall of Novice and the training dummies.

Hall of novice needs an upgrade. Not just for jump potters but generally the whole populace. It should be a place where respective job trainers can teach some advanced combos or tips.

Training dummies need more than "beat this thing under 3mins". They should have the ability to be tweaked to auto-attacking you, have them set in groups (to test aoes) and other settings to allow different testing.

Those are things I feel SE could realistically do if they were serious about it and as I've mentioned, its a step.

Agreed. I mean, they spent a lot of time for Eureka. And I thought they had back-up teams for other content (like Ultimate). Surely, they could get a couple of interns to put something together?

The main problem is not really the players. It's the game itself. By making most of content relatively easy and, most of all, rushable, players don't know how to play anymore. Just put something a little more tricky and it's a catastrophe.
People don't bother to think anymore in this game so the game doesn't really require them to think.

It's even worse today when I see new players that are learning how to play the game and have already all the bad habits of the oldest veterans... and nothing will repair that.
Players also, as stated above, don't have anymore the party state of mind. Maybe only 10% of the players I met say hello when the instance starts and goodbye when it ends. It's the bare minimum...

What I mean is that the game changed the players and now it's too late.

I don't believe this is too late. In casual content, I'm mostly fine with payers not going all-out - so long as they play competently and don't get the party killed, I'm pretty lenient. It's just when we hit content that isn't faceroll...it's like the worst habits of randoms show up. I do feel like mentors need to stop being jackasses and actually do their roles.

I have a somewhat mixed opinion about this...

Sure, the average player is not performing well, but, despite some people that just want to chill and play something fun after a hard day of work (they usually won't go to Savage, though), there are also players that can't perform that much higher. Yeah, "elitist" me all you want, but let me explain. In my static, we have, since the beginning of Deltastice, a PLD that really wants to play well. Yet, even despite explaining her how to play, and her being able to pull satisfying numbers on a dummy, she never got more than 2.5k on an actual fight. She isn't confident enough, she panicks too much, and whatnot. My point is : Some people will be stressed out quicker than others. In her case, she improves slowly, but we'll never kick her out of the static for it. And what's true for her might be true for more people than you think.

Yet, there are also players that are way too focused on themselves, think they perform well, while they can't pull their own weight, be it mechanically or in terms of DPS. That's a whole other problem, and I kinda agree with Rockette here : play with a static if you don't want to deal with those.

I'd be cautious about non-DPS roles having to push DPS. DPS numbers from non-DPS should not be a full indication of their prowess as a player. A 3-4k+ DPS tank or healer would be amazing. But it shouldn't determine their ability, especially if they are doing their basic jobs. I caution the same warning in regards to DPS as well - naturally, the baseline should be around 3.5k as an average, but if a player is doing all the mechanics, contributing to rDPS, I wouldn't exactly think of them as a bad player (let me add in a note by saying obviously, if they aren't even pulling 2k on a fight, there's an issue there that needs to be addressed). Unfortunately, there's players (myself included) who, for a multitude of reasons, cannot join a static.