(Rant Post) Why Does It Feel Like Giving Advice Is Evil?

[Camiie]

Even if I was a great player, I'd feel like an arrogant, narcissistic jerk offering unsolicited advice and thinking I was being some benefit to the community by doing so. I'd feel like I was overstepping my authority, which I actually do not possess. After all, despite any accomplishments this mythical great player version of me may have, she is still just another player without any rank over anyone else.

[Linx0r]

Players are usually bad because they don't give a flying eff.

Exactly. Depending on the day, I’m one of them. Some days I just don’t care and others I’m very serious. But meh it’s whatever. People will play how they want. I’m baffled and amazed at some of the power personalities here who feel they have the right to tell someone how to play. In my life experiance these people have major insecurities about themselves or their real life and use gamin as a forum to do what they are to cowardly to do irl. Ouch....that sounded harsh . Let people play how they want!

[Linx0r]

It's the world social media has created.
It's so easy to just get into an echo chamber of being told how right you are about everything that there is absolutely no tolerance built up for being told how you can improve and even the smallest tips get taken like direct attacks

even have a couple people like that in my FC, get vote kicked out of things all the time but it's everyone else in the world at fault

I blame global warming .....

[Aluja89]

Naw, if they're wasting my time and won't listen to advice and continue to waste my time by not doing their job at the 3rd wipe, then it's time for the good ol boot.

lol @ these unsolicited advice nonsense.

[MrSmiley]

I'm gonna chime in I have been in OP's position before. I have very nicely asked people to use certain skills or why they don't use others and been railed on instantly for it. I asked a fellow bard why he was using no songs at all and he blew upon me over how it was wasted cooldowns on trash packs... we have 100% uptime =/

[HoodRat]

Exactly. Depending on the day, I’m one of them. Some days I just don’t care and others I’m very serious. But meh it’s whatever. People will play how they want. I’m baffled and amazed at some of the power personalities here who feel they have the right to tell someone how to play. In my life experiance these people have major insecurities about themselves or their real life and use gamin as a forum to do what they are to cowardly to do irl. Ouch....that sounded harsh . Let people play how they want!

You're absolutely right. This game is filled with group content where we all come work together to meet a common goal, so we should all learn to get along. If others in our group think they can help us out, and thereby help out the group, maybe we should listen to their advice and at least give it a try to see how it goes instead of attacking them for no reason. And if we're not ready to be team players, maybe we should just stay out of group content until we can act like adults and learn how to negotiate. After all, who are we to tell others how to play?

[Jijifli]

Exactly. Depending on the day, I’m one of them. Some days I just don’t care and others I’m very serious. But meh it’s whatever. People will play how they want. I’m baffled and amazed at some of the power personalities here who feel they have the right to tell someone how to play. In my life experiance these people have major insecurities about themselves or their real life and use gamin as a forum to do what they are to cowardly to do irl. Ouch....that sounded harsh . Let people play how they want!

Apparently my assistance is a power personality.

So I guess I'll use one of the excuses some of the people that are like my issue say, in my own way. I've been told before they can play how they want because I don't pay their sub. They also don't pay mine, so why do I have to spend time babysitting instead of playing the game? Because when I did decide to go healer, and get 2 Ice Mages, that's literally what it was.

Also, honestly, I don't care how you play outside of group content. At all. That's your time. It's when it disrupts group play, or makes a more basic piece of max level content take 50% longer to complete, that I get irritated at it. I actually want to know how Blizzard I only is fun, or how only the Full Thrust combo on DRG is the bee's knees. Or standing there for 4.5+ seconds hard casting verthunder on RDM constantly is interactive.

[Miraiina]

Just my 2 cents on the matter, I usually don't offer advice unless asked or if I see something being done wrong like a mechanic or something and try to clarify for those who need it.

For the most part other players take the advice fairly well save for the odd person out who screeches back that they know what they are doing and tell me to shut the f up, then I either give it a few more tries to see if things improve and proceed on, or just leave/kick depending on the level of aggro being put out.

The absolute worst had to be a time where I was trying to help a DPS who stated he was new to Temple of Qarn Hard with the second boss, after 2 wipes I said that everyone needed to focus the huge cactus add before hitting the queen so we could move on and the BRD completely lost it, yelling about how entitled and snooty I was acting, then resorting to petty insults about my "fat" Femroe character. Needless to say I left after saying screw it and gathered for the duration of my penalty.

But otherwise I think its a "your mileage may vary" scenario.

[Pheryx]

I appreciate advice if i'm not doing well. If it wasn't for some people giving it to me me back in stone vigil when I played blackmage in ARR I don't think I would ever have gotten it to lvl 50 otherwise. So thank you to people who taught me about rotations. Probably wouldn't have been here without them.

[Jojoya]

There are good ways to phrase things and bad ways to phrase them.

"Your DPS is really low, you should be doing this instead" is rarely going to be seen and friendly and helpful. It's also not an offer of advice, it's giving the advice whether the other player wants advice or not.

"If you don't mind, I know a way you can improve your DPS so it's even higher than it currently is" is an actual offer that can be followed up with the advice if the other player accepts. It doesn't make a specific judgment on the player's currently ability and some players may actually read it as a complliment, making them more receptive to the advice you'd like to give them.

Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle is going to be that crown next to your name. Whatever your good intentions, too many mentors have none. They're doing it strictly for the reward and have no interest in helping other players. They're more interested in being rude and obnoxious, bragging about how awesome they are because they have a crown next to their name.

Many of them don't know what they're doing, either. Last week in FC chat, a couple doing a roulette together were complaining about most of their group in Steps of Faith were totally ignoring mechanics so the group kept wiping. I asked how many were sprouts (figuring it was probably people trying to get it done for the MSQ who weren't familiar with the mechanics) and they said none but 3 of them were mentors.

If that's the quality of mentors players keep running into, then it's not surprising players aren't going to listen to the mentors who are knowledgeable and trying to help.