The general player base needs to improve

[Raven2014]

I have a few people I know that had flat out told me that: if it doesn't kill you, you don't have to move. And note that these guys are actually raiders.

It presents the problem with the game: it's THAT easy. You don't have to say "oh the game should apply this mechanic, or should have player do xyz" here, those suggestion are meaningless. If you pay attention, there are already enough mechanic hitting you in DUNGEON. The issue is not about there isn't enough mechanic, the issue is most if not all of them are inconsequential. The 2nd box in the new Research facility dungeon actually have a lot of mechanic, and I tell you I have been regular hit by them. But I admit I rarely ever pay attention what they are: BECAUSE I NEVER DIE GETTING HIT by them.

- Other MMO: 1 or 2 mobs loose from the tank and the healer only get a few second to live. Here, you can pretty much do a FFA tanking if it's a single group. Tank's incompetency is an annoyance rather than hinderance.
- Other MMO: you get hit with an ability and most likely you gonna die, or come very close to dying, and put further stress on the healer, who in turn can result in the tank dying. Here you can eat 1 - 2 - 3 AOE and still standing, and it only take 1 AOE heal from the healer to top you off.

You don't need a culture of player to tell or enforce vote kicking, you just need the game enforce consequence for mistake. Do that, and you'll be surprise how fast people become better by themselves. Remember: why should I move, if this hit doesn't kill and feel nothing more than an aint's bite?

[Gallus]

Are you entirely sure that the above is what the playerbase really wants though? Because personally, I have my doubts.

[Tridus]

I don't think every AOE rotation can be learnt that easily, not in a dungeon run. It's not just pressing the right buttons, it's pressing them in the right order, having them binded, some aoe rotations can be unforgiving if you mess up.

If someone isn't AoEing at all, using an AoE is an upgrade. That can be explained. The full on optimal rotation for every job can't, but that isn't the goal. Much like I can't condense how to play a savage PLD into chat (especially since I don't know), but I can tell someone who is losing aggro how to hold it in levelling.

The goal isn't to turn someone into an expert in 5 minutes. It's to take someone who is having trouble with something and help improve it. That can absolutely be done in chat, from first hand experience on both ends of it. Doesn't always work, but sometimes it does, and that success rate is far better than throwing your hands up and declaring it's hopeless so why bother trying.

You entirely put the blame on the player, and if things don't go the way you like, you automatically assume they are not listening to you and proceed to kick them.

Would you quit making stuff up? It's pretty old. I can count the number of vote kicks I've initiated on one hand, and zero of them were for this. If they don't take my advice and we're still getting our clear, than so be it. That's my attitude. It's rather tiresome to have you taking someone else and imposing it on me so you have a strawman to argue against.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

And how do you plan on solving the "lack of desire for self-improvement", that's a pretty complicated thing to do. What else can you do other than making stuff harder? SE already did that with HW and Gordias, and it literally set the worst FFXIV precedent after the 1.0 fiasco. Why do you think they've made SB significantly easier, and why do you think a lot more people are playing now than they did in HW? Hell, you are literally asking them to do what made them lose more subs in the first place?
They've put share markers, they've made an eye of the size of an elephant appear when you have to look away from the target, they are certainly doing things to encourage people follow mechanics and make the game less confusing, but ultimately it's up to people.
Again, I don't see as much of a problem as you obviously do here.

There's the point of the topic: SE tried to raise the bar a bit in Heavensward and players couldn't handle it. Now, in Stormblood, they've sought to make things easier, and people STILL can't seem to handle things. . . Something's got to give.

I said it in a different thread before, that we're level 70, but still barely handling what can effectively be considered level 50 challenges. Hashmal is nothing more than Ifrit dashes, instant kill line AoEs with the obvious "IT'S GOING TO FALL THIS WAY" visual, and the usual AoE on player rondo. It's nothing new at all; just mechanics we've seen before with a different coat of paint, and maybe heavier penalties for failing them. And yet people seem like they just can't handle it. . . They can't handle it because outside of leveling and Savage content, all other endgame content remains faceroll easy, either for convenience, or because SE literally thinks people can't handle more than that. And it would seem that players have validated that.

And you see no problem there?

As for self-improvement, some people just won't. We understand that. Some don't care; we understand that. But when the game itself doesn't spark the desire to even try, but instead chooses to keep the bar low AND continually lower it, most players would be inclined to either not feel it's necessary, or question if it's even worth improving. That is not a good precedent for a game to have for the sake of longevity.

[Tridus]

I have a few people I know that had flat out told me that: if it doesn't kill you, you don't have to move. And note that these guys are actually raiders.

Sometimes that's true. I took a tank friend through Fractal Hard the other day for his first time, and I told him pretty much that on the last boss. When he does his spin attack, the tank can simply eat it without consequence. If I can heal through it (and I absolutely can), then why not?

I mean, there needs to be something for healers to do.

But yes, in general I agree with you that lots of mechanics that should have consequences don't. A lot of that is because healing requirements are low and burst healing is absurdly powerful. I can heal a group to full in seconds on WHM, and then I'm back to tossing rocks because there isn't more damage incoming. If it took me 5 GCDs and a third of my MP to recover from everyone standing in stuff, even if it didn't kill them, it'd be a lot harder to keep doing that because by the fourth one I'm going to be running into problems keeping that throughput up. That's a consequence, but not a one hit kill one.

IMO, healing needs to be nerfed across the board as part of 5.0 so we can see something like that happen.

- Other MMO: you get hit with an ability and most likely you gonna die, or come very close to dying, and put further stress on the healer, who in turn can result in the tank dying. Here you can eat 1 - 2 - 3 AOE and still standing, and it only take 1 AOE heal from the healer to top you off.

Ah, I see you got to that.

[Gallus]

And you see no problem there?

Not gonna judge whether it's right or wrong, but if that's what the majority of the playerbase feels comfortable with, I'm afraid we all have no choice but to adapt to it. Personally, I do agree there's a certain degree of lazyness among the FFXIV community when it comes to handling relatively complex mechanics, but I too think it has nothing to do with SE and more with the community wanting something specific from this game. Players spend 10 times more gil in glamour than they do in anything else. That should give you a hint.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

but if that's what the majority of the playerbase feels comfortable with, I'm afraid we all have no choice but to adapt to it.

We definitely do not have to adapt to it. And yet we do.

We don't have to adapt to simply having the bar set low and it being lowered because people will continue to be too lazy to meet already watered down challenges.
We DO have to adapt by improving. Players improve by being challenged, or through a self-motivated desire to be better, but if there's no reason or incentive to be better, both SE and players can neither gauge their improvement, nor offer proportional challenge/effort in the future.

[Gallus]

The goal isn't to turn someone into an expert in 5 minutes. It's to take someone who is having trouble with something and help improve it. That can absolutely be done in chat, from first hand experience on both ends of it. Doesn't always work, but sometimes it does, and that success rate is far better than throwing your hands up and declaring it's hopeless so why bother trying.

Personally, I don't offer advice to anyone unless they explicitly ask for it or unless someone is blatantly wiping the party with a very specific mechanic. Calling out someone in a group automatically means you are telling them they are doing something wrong, and not everybody takes that well (especially because when that happens you automatically are setting the focus on them, and understandably, some people feel uncomfortable with that). More often than not you'll be meeting with a bitter response or an unpleasant silence, but let's not pretend this is exclusive to FFXIV... this literally happens in every online community and even in real life in general. If you are telling me you can deal with that and that you rarely kick anyone and rather finish the dungeon and move on, then I don't see a problem here because this is as much of a big deal to me than it is for you.

[KaivaC]

From what I gather, you seem to think there's a problem with the average level of this community. I'm not seeing it.

Pretty sure I'm close to my posting limit, so I'll leave this here until my limit resets. While you may not see a problem, a lot of us do. Take a look through this thread and you'll see players, vets and sprouts, who have basically said that, yes, we might just have a problem. A week's worth of Rabanastre runs shouldn't produce as many wipes on Mateus and Hashmal as it does. I'll give a pass on the Crystal Tower because, well, for one, it's not exactly obvious how to find it, and two, players coming into the SB expansion likely skipped a lot of the optional content in ARR to get here. That's why I said what I said. That's why I'm defending this position, and that's why I engage in conversation about ideas and suggestions.

[Shurrikhan]

I have a few people I know that had flat out told me that: if it doesn't kill you, you don't have to move. And note that these guys are actually raiders.

It presents the problem with the game: it's THAT easy. You don't have to say "oh the game should apply this mechanic, or should have player do xyz" here, those suggestion are meaningless. If you pay attention, there are already enough mechanic hitting you in DUNGEON. The issue is not about there isn't enough mechanic, the issue is most if not all of them are inconsequential. The 2nd box in the new Research facility dungeon actually have a lot of mechanic, and I tell you I have been regular hit by them. But I admit I rarely ever pay attention what they are: BECAUSE I NEVER DIE GETTING HIT by them.

- Other MMO: 1 or 2 mobs loose from the tank and the healer only get a few second to live. Here, you can pretty much do a FFA tanking if it's a single group. Tank's incompetency is an annoyance rather than hinderance.
- Other MMO: you get hit with an ability and most likely you gonna die, or come very close to dying, and put further stress on the healer, who in turn can result in the tank dying. Here you can eat 1 - 2 - 3 AOE and still standing, and it only take 1 AOE heal from the healer to top you off.

You don't need a culture of player to tell or enforce vote kicking, you just need the game enforce consequence for mistake. Do that, and you'll be surprise how fast people become better by themselves. Remember: why should I move, if this hit doesn't kill and feel nothing more than an aint's bite?

Players who push their limits will end up performing best even if they may spend seemingly silly amounts of time dead during progression in figuring out those limits. This is true of every MMO I've ever played. Possibly even every FPS, solo RPG, RTS, and TBS as well.

People don't become "better" when a game "enforces consequences"; "good" play simply adjusts to what newly becomes optimal.

Now, I would assume that the game experience would improve -- lending more to impact, tactical weight, and variety, if damage taken were ramped up to a degree. But I'd also rather not see burst healer power reduced altogether, where limited by CDs or the like. Those periodic bursts, as by ability-based healing, should be an allowable rDPS contribution. We should have the decision to soak things. Otherwise, you again reduce impact, tactical weight, and variety.