Things to think about before you call someone "Bad"

[Vidu]

I'm expressing a different opinion than yours, I'm not upset, I can sleep tight at night, you guys can keep going around offering as much "friendly" advice as you want, but nobody is going to acknowledge your cause because it doesn't exist. Companies are not concerned over players being too sensitive because they can't take friendly advice. They do however, have online tribunals, perform chat disables and launch permabans over an endless sea of players being the opposite of tactful when approaching other players.

You're not exactly expressing a different opinion though - at least not without accusing the entire community of only giving toxic advice, insulting other players and not being tactful - whatever that even means in this context. You need to be tactful when someone has an actual problem that requires that (death, illness, a very bad new haircut), but not when you inform them in a polite and neutral way that they need more training or consulte a guide.

Companies shouldnt be concerned about players not taking advice because players shouldnt have to give and take it in the first place. I truely wish for heaver gating in this game - which is to say: gating at all.
Each time I see threads pop up about people struggling with solo-instances I shake my head in disbelieve and am wondering how someone at level 70 can have come that far and yet be so absoultly incompetent. And instead of going about this with "Okay, what did I do wrong and how can I improve?" their answer is "NERF! Nerf this is to hard!"

This game has a vote-kick-function and thankfully its legit to kick for "difference in playstyle" - so if you're playstyle in The Burn equals using about the skill you got at level 30, I can kick you. Without a tribunal or a ban coming my way.
And how tactful and considerate of your fellow players is such behaviour? You know, behaviour that involves going into a dungeon unprepared?

You're implying that all of us who try to offer actually friendly advice in the form of very simple requests ("Please use [skill]") are actually toxic and tactless and call that "having a different opinion".

You might be right - no one will gives a badge for giving advice, but I dont need such a badge. Either I managed to make the game more pleasent for everyone involved, the advice-reciving person involved (a lot of jobs are just so much more fun at 70 when you actually play them at 70) - or I made the run at least more pleasent for 3 people involved, by removing someone who had no consideration for fellow partymembers whatsoever.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

Maybe, but you're on your way there.
Four years ago, most people would've sympathised with the TC. Calling someone idiot is never justified. However, this thread proves (at least in this forum), that nowadays we have a significant amount of people going around offering "friendly" advice. That doesn't sound very healthy. Might just be me though.

Can you quote where someone here justified calling someone an idiot? Or are you just making that up?

Bear in mind that bad =/= idiot

[Vidu]

Maybe, but you're on your way there.
Four years ago, most people would've sympathised with the TC. Calling someone idiot is never justified. However, this thread proves (at least in this forum), that nowadays we have a significant amount of people going around offering "friendly" advice. That doesn't sound very healthy. Might just be me though.

Please point to a significant amount of posts... or, wait, even one! that supports your point of people saying that its okay to go around and call people idiots.

Most of us are actually adovating for giving advice in a polite and friendly manner - or dismissing people silently from a duty.
No one here says that you should go around and call people "idiots". There is no need to insult someone, that is indeed never justified. And I dont recall reading a post that said otherwise.

But not playing at 70 like you know that you're at level 70 is also never justified - not even by the points listed in the OP. At a certain point you stop being new; sorting out your UI is something you do on your own time; and if you're sick enough that it influences your performance greatly: Stay in bed, rest, get better - or at least dont burden 3/7/23 strangers with it.
Telling someone who cant perform the basics of their job in The Burn shouldnt happen, I agree - but its also totally justified to tell that person, in a polite manner, that they really need to improve.

[Gallus]

In all my years of online experience, I've never noticed a worrying trend of hermetic people that absolutely refuse to listen to others because they don't want to improve (I believe that sums up your cause). However, I've been noticing an increasing amount of people normalizing insults, flame and harassment. Against the latter, companies have gone a long way to create multiple tools in a poor attempt to alleviate it, and I say poor because the problem not only persists but seems to be getting worse over the years.
Technically, we are all accusing here, you are accusing people of being too sensitive and not taking friendly advice properly, while I'm accusing others of perhaps (just perhaps...) not being so tactful when the reaction on the other side is commonly hostile.

Each time I see threads pop up about people struggling with solo-instances I shake my head in disbelieve and am wondering how someone at level 70 can have come that far and yet be so absoultly incompetent. And instead of going about this with "Okay, what did I do wrong and how can I improve?" their answer is "NERF! Nerf this is to hard!"

People are different than you. Many approach this game in a very different way than you. Perhaps you are very passionate about FFXIV and like setting your goals high there, which is totally fine and respectable. But what about someone that plays FFXIV along with 3 or 4 other games? Is it not acceptable for someone to play FFXIV maybe 1 hour a day or 4 hours a week? Whether that's a waste of a sub it's up to each individual, but that's still respectable no? That might be the sort of player that asks for advice or struggles. You don't need to shake your head in disbelief over that, people have different ambitions and expectations when it comes to playing this game (or any other game for that matter).

[Gallus]

Please point to a significant amount of posts... or, wait, even one! that supports your point of people saying that its okay to go around and call people idiots.

Most of us are actually adovating for giving advice in a polite and friendly manner - or dismissing people silently from a duty.
No one here says that you should go around and call people "idiots". There is no need to insult someone, that is indeed never justified. And I dont recall reading a post that said otherwise.

But not playing at 70 like you know that you're at level 70 is also never justified - not even by the points listed in the OP. At a certain point you stop being new; sorting out your UI is something you do on your own time; and if you're sick enough that it influences your performance greatly: Stay in bed, rest, get better - or at least dont burden 3/7/23 strangers with it.
Telling someone who cant perform the basics of their job in The Burn shouldnt happen, I agree - but its also totally justified to tell that person, in a polite manner, that they really need to improve.

Not idiot, bad. My fault. Bad is still derogatory though. The point of the thread was that you don't go around calling bad to people. Seemed pretty obvious to me, but a disappointing amount of people seemed to be on the other side. Noticing a worrying trend here.

[MoroMurasaki]

In all my years of online experience, I've never noticed a worrying trend of hermetic people that absolutely refuse to listen to others because they don't want to improve (I believe that sums up your cause). However, I've been noticing an increasing amount of people normalizing insults, flame and harassment. Against the latter, companies have gone a long way to create multiple tools in a poor attempt to alleviate it, and I say poor because the problem not only persists but seems to be getting worse over the years.
Technically, we are all accusing here, you are accusing people of being too sensitive and not taking friendly advice properly, while I'm accusing others of perhaps (just perhaps...) not being so tactful when the reaction on the other side is commonly hostile.



People are different than you. Many approach this game in a very different way than you. Perhaps you are very passionate about FFXIV and like setting your goals high there, which is totally fine and respectable. But what about someone that plays FFXIV along with 3 or 4 other games? Is it not acceptable for someone to play FFXIV maybe 1 hour a day or 4 hours a week? Whether that's a waste of a sub it's up to each individual, but that's still respectable no? That might be the sort of player that asks for advice or struggles. You don't need to shake your head in disbelief over that, people have different ambitions and expectations when it comes to playing this game (or any other game for that matter).

The point is even if someone plays rather infrequently if they're reading their tooltips and applying basic common sense they will arrive at a semblance of a rotation by the time they're in the level 70 solo instances people love to whine about.

A BRD may not know that they should line up Raging Strikes with Minuet or save Barrage for that window and use it on Reflugent procs or Emperyal but they should understand things like "Reflugent arrow is powerful" or "straight shot buffs my crit chance and a lot of these song mechanics rely on my dots critting so I should try to maintain straight shot, my dots and a song".

This isn't expecting amazing levels of optimization just like... reading comprehension.

[Vidu]

People are different than you. Many approach this game in a very different way than you. Perhaps you are very passionate about FFXIV and like setting your goals high there, which is totally fine and respectable. But what about someone that plays FFXIV along with 3 or 4 other games? Is it not acceptable for someone to play FFXIV maybe 1 hour a day or 4 hours a week? Whether that's a waste of a sub it's up to each individual, but that's still respectable no? That might be the sort of player that asks for advice or struggles. You don't need to shake your head in disbelief over that, people have different ambitions and expectations when it comes to playing this game (or any other game for that matter).

Oh, that is totally fine by me - as long as the person in question is still able to perform on a very basic level of "well" in groupcontent.
You are again making excuses for why someone might not do that - or you're assuming that my expectations of other people are high, because my personal goals are high.

But is it really a high expectation for a tank in a level 70 dungeon to make sure they've got aggro on all mobs? For a healer to keep said tank alive and heal through group-wide AoE? For a DPS to know their single target rotation and their AoE one and to know when to use which? For everyone to move out of AoEs, stack with stack-markers and turn their backs when a giant eye appears?

I get the different approach and everyone can approach this game the way they like - until they enter group-content. The moment they do that, I feel it can be reasonbly expected that they perform with a very basic level of competence. The level I just described. There is no excuse for not doing that, no matter how hard people try to find one.
Explantions? Yes. But they dont make for an excuse.

Even the person only playing one hour a month plays this game together with other people and should be as mindful about them as they should about that person. Just "doing whatever" in a dungeon, not caring about your performance, not listening to advice given isnt being mind- or respectful. And thats the person I'll have an issue with - one that can be solved by kicking them. Not because they were performing bad, but mainly because they displayed an atiitude of "I dont care about my fellow players".
If you can only play an hour a month and dont know how to play your job anymore everytime you log in, you should take the 5 minutes to figure it out again, before you queue for a dungeon.

People need to stop making up excuses for someone not being willing to even read their tooltips...

[Vidu]

Not idiot, bad. My fault. Bad is still derogatory though. The point of the thread was that you don't go around calling bad to people. Seemed pretty obvious to me, but a disappointing amount of people seemed to be on the other side. Noticing a worrying trend here.

Still, thats a big difference - "bad" can be a neutral and true assessment of skill, while idiot is a clear personal attack.

And I'm sorry, but a tank who cant hold aggro is a bad tank and there is no sugarcoating that.
Personally I prefer to tell people how to fix them being bad without telling them that they are.

But please, what would you call a tank whos losing aggro on the Mist Dragon? Maybe not to their face, but as neutral assessment of their skill? How would you describe that tank to your friends? "Aaawww, I just had the cutestet paladin in The Burn! He was so afraid of the dragon that the healer got to tank it!"

"Bad" is not an insult and if you're only understanding it as derogatory term with no basis... oh dear... sometimes people are just "bad" at something. Maybe without being aware of it - which is a shame, because then they could improve in a lot of cases. Obviously, they cant and wont do that if no one tells them that they have room to improve.
We havent even been adovacting to tell people "You're really bad at your job", there are ways to express that without calling them bad - "Please read up a guide"; "You can really improve on playing your job" - but I bet those are mean aswell...

[Gallus]

I get the different approach and everyone can approach this game the way they like - until they enter group-content. The moment they do that, I feel it can be reasonbly expected that they perform with a very basic level of competence. The level I just described. There is no excuse for not doing that, no matter how hard people try to find one.
Explantions? Yes. But they dont make for an excuse.

Again, underperforming is a rather vague term. It can range from someone legitly getting overwhelmed (someone who just switched to healer dealing with mass pulls undergeared) to a SMN pulling 1k DPS on packs. Both players will most likely be offered "friendly" advice. There's at least one that doesn't need it. It has little to do with respecting others and more about being more passionate or less passionate with the game. If I put myself as an example, I like spending a lot of time in dummies trying to optimize my rotation and improving my numbers. But I'm going to be honest here, I don't do it because I respect others enough so that I don't waste their time when I queue into a dungeon. I do it because I enjoy setting the bar high.
From my experience, tanks that don't hold aggro or heals that don't heal to the point you can't clear a dungeon happen very rarely.

[Gallus]

Still, thats a big difference - "bad" can be a neutral and true assessment of skill, while idiot is a clear personal attack.

Both are personal attacks. Bad isn't an assessment of skill. An assessment of skill consists on telling someone where they can improve. Telling someone they are bad helps nobody improve. Not even accounting for the fact the player in question could very well be doing their job properly while you are in the wrong here.