The general player base needs to improve

[RayneBoemir]

I think SE does a good job of having a difficulty curve. I mean it starts brain dead and later mechanics are introduced. I just think the mechanics aren’t punishing enough and healing is so high people just ignore mechanics and expect the healer to cover the cost. Also some people expect others to do the mechanic for them and are just outright lazy.

[KaivaC]

I'm sure you're not polling this OP, but good weighed against bad, I'm pretty sure you've had more good runs then bad ones. Humans just tend to notice the faults in anything before acknowledging the good. Do people suck? Yes, its an MMO, you're gonna run into every type of player. Is it ever really as bad as we make it? Case by case, but generally never so bad.

Though keep in mind that I'm not defending awful players, especially not in this current age of technology wherein you can look up anything...with videos. Ultimately I really can't sympathize with someone, if they found out how to install, pay for, and run an MMO, but have no idea how to use a search engine, or happen to be too lazy to do so.

Eh...depends on the content. Truth be told, I have more of a bad experience in Savage than good, but that has no bearing or reflection on my thread. Savage is a different beast and I sort of expect most runs to have a wipe due to how punishing they are. I myself tend to do a lot of things blind on patch week. Unfortunately, some online guides are still pretty outdated, so I can see how some players may be misled by the information they would find.

I think SE does a good job of having a difficulty curve. I mean it starts brain dead and later mechanics are introduced. I just think the mechanics aren’t punishing enough and healing is so high people just ignore mechanics and expect the healer to cover the cost. Also some people expect others to do the mechanic for them and are just outright lazy.

I think the difficulty curve of the 2.x series was alright...3.x also felt pretty good, difficulty wise, while I was coming up through it. I didn't get that same feeling in 4.x, though. Maybe because Shinryu was the epitome of difficulty, but nothing really prepared me for fighting him - a lot of the things he used, you had to have fought some of the primals to have experienced it, and even then, Tidal Wave here acts differently than what Leviathan throws at you. Diamond Dust as well. Jump potions are the biggest ones who would've missed out on those early game experiences, and thus, when they run smack into Shinryu, this probably would've been all-new mechanics for them to deal with.

[Shurrikhan]

Click on the Duty's exit (or go into the menu and leave), and get prompted with something like this (obviously, you don't do Doma Castle with 8 people. It's a quick photoshop to get the point across):

If you are worried about "shaming", then disable chat when this window is open. Or simply prompt it during the black screen after the duty.

Would be a good start to provide people with a little tool to help them compare themselves with others.

I don't actually see how that'd be of much use. Damage is consistently valuable, nor do we have any way of saying from damage alone what a person's value to the party was.

Don't get me wrong: I think in the end EVERYTHING comes down to damage, as all things in XIV are cleared through depleting enemy HP... via damage. But, pDPS is only part of any given story, and a run-wide average or total says nothing of key pulls or necessary bursts and who all especially contributed, or to what degree, to those more pivotal areas. And if the difficulty of the game (and therefore, albeit indirectly, understanding of these areas) should increase, that could make its shortcomings much more obvious than its strengths.

Remember when Yoshi said that he wanted PvP to be an esport? I mean, I think they did a good job with revamping the PvP for stormblood, but even then this games PvP can't really compare to pure PvP games.

I'd laugh at the notion, but the fact that it was even a notion at all in the present state of XIV PvP is just too disheartening to manage it. I see now a PvP experience even worse, in more ways than not, than ARR's and HW's. It remains a fringe element in treatment, with nearly zero cohesion with the rest of the game. It remains swamped with fundamental issues from polling rates to ping variance that cannot even be fixed by netcode itself, let alone combat undermechanics. Hits made and taken remain largely unimpactful, by aesthetic (i.e. ragdoll effects), undermechanics (e.g. suppression or stagger), overlying economy (healers are eventually drained of mana, but what of the rest?), and sometimes just the sheer potency benchmarks of skills and -- above all -- our scarce ability to skillfully escape damage as anything but a tank or shielder.

[Kazgrel]

Here we have this thread on the front page, and until I made this post, 2 threads below it was "remove EX primals from mentor roulette".

[Fyce]

I don't actually see how that'd be of much use. Damage is consistently valuable, nor do we have any way of saying from damage alone what a person's value to the party was.

Don't get me wrong: I think in the end EVERYTHING comes down to damage, as all things in XIV are cleared through depleting enemy HP... via damage. But, pDPS is only part of any given story, and a run-wide average or total says nothing of key pulls or necessary bursts and who all especially contributed, or to what degree, to those more pivotal areas. And if the difficulty of the game (and therefore, albeit indirectly, understanding of these areas) should increase, that could make its shortcomings much more obvious than its strengths.

If you want people to improve, the very first step to achieve that goal is making them aware that they can improve. The second step is giving them an incentive for improving. Turns out unspoke social pressure is really good at that, as well as compering yourself to others in some kind of meaningless competition without any real impact on anything.

My suggestion does exactly that, use tools the engine already has, and avoid the "issue" of in-built DPS meters. It also doesn't gate people off like some suggestions would, such as making SSS a requirement to enter something.

Of course the total amount of damage done throughout an entire run is somewhat meaningless. But meaning is not something mandatory to achieve the goal of making people aware of their own situation. Heck, you could even put a little medal icon next to the biggest damage number if you want to go further into this idea. All we need is people asking themselves "what can I do to get that medal?". If we manage to do that, we win. That's both the simplest and hardest step in the process of making the playerbase improve itself.

[Mirch]

Yes, player base should improve. No. Wait. Improving hurts someone's feelings, it's not good.

[Khanscott]

Press 1, 2, 3 and apply occam's razor to determine where to not stand and you have the means to do every piece of content that isn't Savage. Some people aren't even capable of this. Though, if they have the mental faculties to continue sucking air into their bodies, they have the means to accomplish this much. Ergo, their lack of performance is nothing more than laziness and they shouldn't be inconveniencing people with their lack of standards. Yes, on the other side of the spectrum you will have people that will chastise them with baseless subjective crap while not knowing what a percentile is or how statistics work. But, these people are the selfsame that don't seem to realize the lack of correlation between basic intelligence and being able to press 4, 5, and 6. Personally, people in general should consider it a blessing to have someone who doens't know how to die while providing some degree of usefulness when doing PUGs.

[Minako_Nightsong]

Press 1, 2, 3 and apply occam's razor to determine where to not stand and you have the means to do every piece of content that isn't Savage. Some people aren't even capable of this. Though, if they have the mental faculties to continue sucking air into their bodies, they have the means to accomplish this much. Ergo, their lack of performance is nothing more than laziness and they shouldn't be inconveniencing people with their lack of standards. Yes, on the other side of the spectrum you will have people that will chastise them with baseless subjective crap while not knowing what a percentile is or how statistics work. But, these people are the selfsame that don't seem to realize the lack of correlation between basic intelligence and being able to press 4, 5, and 6. Personally, people in general should consider it a blessing to have someone who doens't know how to die while providing some degree of usefulness when doing PUGs.

1 is Heavy Shot
2 is Straight Shot
3 is Bloodletter

I will take your advice and I will use all three of my buttons in every run tomorrow. I will also dodge every single mechanic since I won't be needing to track anything but Straight Shot. I will only run regular roulette.
If you allow me 4-6 as well I could probably get away with it in some groups. Those give me Empryian Arrow, Wanderer's Minuet, and Iron Jaws.(useless)

I will report some of the more colourful comments I receive and I will also report on if I actually wasn't kicked from every single group. I doubt if I make it through more than one.

[Transient_Shadow]

everyone learns at their own pace. I don't see how it people should 'belong' in any category of play style. This borders on elitist. Not everyone will be as grand a player as you. Nor should they be expected to be

[KaivaC]

This borders on elitist.

And there it is. I knew eventually, someone was going to say this line here. Define elitist for me, ya? Because I myself am not this so-called GRAND PLAYER that you've called me. I struggle with DRG. I haven't cleared O7S. I used to die quite often to leg sweep in Byakko Ex. And yet, I'm still able to pick up my own slack, learn from my mistakes, and keep on. Is it elitist to ask for players to play a tad bit better in relevant content like Rabanastre and Primals?

Is it elitist to turn to the community and ask for suggestions and open discussion on what we can do?

For as many folks who have come here looking for an argument, not a single one of those detractors provided any way to help improve our player base when I directly asked them about it. Instead, they take a white-knight position and reject any concept of discussion, wanting to sit here and argue instead. I've never asked for players to be anywhere close to savage level experts. Barring computer issues and disabilities, how is asking how to improve the community being elitist? When I ask for players to go from below-average to average, that's the concept of elitism? Really?