The general player base needs to improve

[Zojha]

Good luck with that?

I've been playing League of Legends for a long time. By design, the game will constantly pit you against opponents of your own skill level via matchmaking rating and adjust dynamically if your skill increases/decreases to give you just the right amount of challenge.

The game has been around for what, almost 10 years? now and it wasn't until the game shoved wards down people's throats for free that the lower elo brackets (Bronze/Silver - around 65% of the rated playerbase) started using them, i.e. the most basic sight control tool that allows you to avoid game losing ganks and ambushes easily while simultaneously allowing you to set them up, steal buffs and many more. To this day, masses of creeps are lost because people fail to last-hit them, people pick what they like whether it fits the team or not, people die to easy ganks and dives, people are building bad item builds, face-check brushes that make enemies invisible, don't capitalize on kills, ignore objectives and many, many more.

Sure, the playerbase did improve over those years - Things were even worse once - But it's been a glacial process and it's hard to tell just how much of that actually came from the players and how much from the devs just handing them stuff on a silver platter.

I don't think you can teach a playerbase. I think that if you want a better overall playerbase, the only reliable way to get one is to kick the lower end of the skill spectrum out of the game - Either directly, or via content they just cannot beat or enjoy.

[Metalwrath]

OP i have news for you.
A lot of the time they do know the mechanics they just choose to ignore them.This is because of 2 things.
A lot of players have attitude of i will dps and the other dps will do the mechanics for me.What happens a lot of time is several people have same selfish ideals so nobody does the mechanics.
Due to there not being proper Ilvl restrictions on older content and because most people now clear older content through level unsync you have a large player base that is brought up on the ideal of if you dps hard enough you can skip mechanics and never bother doing or learning them.This had been going on since Heavensward.

The only way to fix these issues are for SE to remove unsynced runs from game completly and have harsher max ilvl restrictions.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

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.

That's a whole other argument, but yeah, she's a wonderful tank. Still, that doesn't make everything in the current meta for Savage (not talking about optimal picks, here, just raw DPS). O8S P2 DPS check is 32.3k. Assuming all DPSs are at 5k5 DPS (big assumption here), healers + tanks need to do 10k3. Let's say both healers pull 1k5, tanks still need to make 3k5 each. In the way Savage is designed right now, tanks and healers are expected to DPS, so, even if she's a wonderful tank, tankiness wise, she isn't a wonderful FFXIV tank. Doesn't change the fact we're glad to play with her, but still : for higher tier content, everyone needs to have a perfect rotation.

But yeah, she's doing more than enough for Expert/EX primals, I agree.

[Rockette]

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.

Aww, it's been nerfed to the ground now, even at synched ilvl, they've nerfed actual mechanics.

It absolutely did unleash hell. People had complained Final Coil was too easy so the developers said, ok, TRY THIS THEN. There were a few oversights. Firstly, the new expansion meant people had to relearn their jobs. New jobs needed to be balanced and for a long time there was an actual players vs developers argument about Machinist in particular. The players stated the job was weak, SE stated that it wasn't weak, we were just bad. Adjustments were made later of course. Astrologian suffered the same sort of treatment.

While job rotations got far more complex than they were from ARR, the actual DPS requirement of Gordias basically meant if you didn't have a WHM that could carry the group while your tanks stayed in dps stance and your scholar was full time dps - you didn't clear. Tanks were also putting points into strength for the extra DPS which made them squishy, which made the healing check even harder. The world first players complained the dps check was so high it was actually a gear gate.

Not only all this - the fights were super dull. A3s was the most interesting but the others were just a chore. You had to preform at 100% capacity with zero mistakes through boring mechs. (My opinion). Not only was Gordias a BIG step up, pug groups couldn't even clear Bismark. The first primal had a high dps check too. The skill gap between people who challenged savage and casual players became massive. Groups fell over, people quit. The one part that really stands out remembering Gordias was how many hours I had to sink into crafting pots and food. One per craft, one minute + per craft, I needed 33 pots per our raid time, plus I crafted for others. I had to set aside hours per week each raid to struggle street these crafts we NEEDED to push our dps. Heavensward was a lot more of a grind to start off with.

Gordias made my group better players. Like I said, it was hard, it broke us weekly but it was such an achievement to get through it.

Now, we're finding "savage" in stormblood pretty tame. Week one / two clears. I understood they were pretty scared of making the same mistakes as Gordias but I thought they would turn it up a little for Sigma :/ In fact I'm sure they said the raids would scale up in difficulty so it's a little disappointing that they haven't.

I'm glad they're doing the Ultimate's. At least that's something to prog on while Savage has become the weeklies.

[Shurrikhan]

Good luck with that?

I've been playing League of Legends for a long time. By design, the game will constantly pit you against opponents of your own skill level via matchmaking rating and adjust dynamically if your skill increases/decreases to give you just the right amount of challenge.

The game has been around for what, almost 10 years? now and it wasn't until the game shoved wards down people's throats for free that the lower elo brackets (Bronze/Silver - around 65% of the rated playerbase) started using them, i.e. the most basic sight control tool that allows you to avoid game losing ganks and ambushes easily while simultaneously allowing you to set them up, steal buffs and many more. To this day, masses of creeps are lost because people fail to last-hit them, people pick what they like whether it fits the team or not, people die to easy ganks and dives, people are building bad item builds, face-check brushes that make enemies invisible, don't capitalize on kills, ignore objectives and many, many more.

Sure, the playerbase did improve over those years - Things were even worse once - But it's been a glacial process and it's hard to tell just how much of that actually came from the players and how much from the devs just handing them stuff on a silver platter.

I don't think you can teach a playerbase. I think that if you want a better overall playerbase, the only reliable way to get one is to kick the lower end of the skill spectrum out of the game - Either directly, or via content they just cannot beat or enjoy.

Competitive games are a completely different beast, though. As long as players face only each other, just as the chance for reiteration, improvement, and nuance are nearly endless, so too can complacency be endlessly rewarded. As long as you play poorly, you don't have to play well, because you'll end up against players playing equally poorly. You need only be marginally better than the other 5% player to see victory. This would be like people thinking they only need to do as well, in something easily completed such that the competitive component can only be felt through the speed of completion, as those of equal skill to themselves. How would that oblige improvement?

A difficulty curve against fixed gradually and patternedly intensifying goals, on the other hand, will necessarily cut players off at a certain point if they actively refuse to improve, but the progress should be so gradual that players would lack any obvious place to draw a line in the sand and to point at and yell "Hey man, I don't use combos/oGCDs/proper positioning/resource regenerators/enmity skills/focus targeting because "I just do this for fun sorry I don't play this 24/7 okay?"

[Nedkel]

Stone, Sky, Sea should be a requirement for getting savage content of the game.
After beating a certain dummy in it, the player should be rewarded with the access to certain duty, and not being given for free like a candy on Christmass.

Stone, Sky, Sea is a bare minimum for the player to pass the run, its a good way to test yourself out, so it should be necessary to beat it in the first place.

[ShanXiv]

That's because this game is catering too much to these player base,
The difficulty of MSQ quest & leveling contents are one of the easiest I've seen in a MMO.

In ARR beta, the Ul'dah LV14(or15?) MSQ boss fight is harder than now, I wiped twice,
then figured out I've to use one Antidote（a reward of previous quest) to cure the poison debuff. it was a tricky design, I like it

but in the retail version, the boss fight is super easy, quite boring
because some people complained it's too hard in the forum, and SE listened to them....
because the contents are designed under such standard, then more cry babies will stay, more players that seek for challenging, or normal difficulty contents, will leave

[Rockette]

Stone, Sky, Sea should be a requirement for getting savage content of the game.
After beating a certain dummy in it, the player should be rewarded with the access to certain duty, and not being given for free like a candy on Christmass.

Stone, Sky, Sea is a bare minimum for the player to pass the run, its a good way to test yourself out, so it should be necessary to beat it in the first place.

Oh man, I was INCREDIBLY disappointed at what Stone Sky Sea ended up to be. They sort of sold it as a training palace, I'm sure they mentioned you could practice parts of fights, I thought maybe they'd have leaderboards of top deeps on a dummy, I thought it was gonna be fun. Ugh. I guess they cut it all back.

[Zojha]

A difficulty curve against fixed gradually and patternedly intensifying goals, on the other hand, will necessarily cut players off at a certain point if they actively refuse to improve, [...]"

...or are simply unable to.

Or do you truly think that you can crank difficulty up perpetually, no matter how slow and gradual? At the top level of "worse than ultimate", it is obvious this doesn't work, but at any level below there will also be people getting cut off, either voluntarily because they can't be bothered and play a different game, or because they simply are unable to for whatever reason.

The end result really is what I said: You kick the lower end out of the game.

That aside, the thing about competitive games is: Yes, you do indeed only need to play marginally better than those around you. But when you do, your rating gets adjusted upward, the people around you get better and you yourself need to get better to get the same effect again. And then you need to do it again. And again.
If you are complacent with where you are, you will be stuck and lose just as much as you win, which isn't something people want or like. People would rather win every time, obviously, and a lot of people get very frustrated with the fact that this isn't possible in a such a large competition.

[Lilseph]

I really don't know. I'm kinda hopeless with people. Even though the f*** up, remain silent and they are awfully bad, I have tried everything and they never seemed to receive these pieces of advice (Either ignoring them or just replying in a rude manner) so if I queue up with my squad and we find them, I just kick them. I know it's not ideal, as I don't know the true reasons why they play like that but seriously, it gets old.