Why are standards seen as a crime in this game?

[Alestrae]

Hi. I'm a bit behind in this thread so I will try to provide my opinions on this as succinctly as possible.

The smith tutorials: I love the Smith. Less for how much it improves my gameplay (which it probably does) but more for the level 15 gear it provides that render nearly everything under halatali obsolete, it is a total recolour of the first dungeon set. the issue with the optional Smith quests is, it teaches suggests an optimum way to play that may not entirely match the way most players play the first instances. Take Sastasha(?) In two of 3 runs only one said "Can you please do the mechanics." (TBH my response was something along the lines of there's mechanics here?) The other run said focus the boss, the third didn't say anything and I assumed I should focus the boss. I had a similar problem in Halatali, where I wasn't always sure if we were following a mechanics strategy or a brute force strategy. There are instances of mechanics mattering in most of early dungeons (needing bombs to kill the slime, don't stand in the electrocuted water, kill the linked puks) but there are others where mechanics were seen as optional (focus final boss in Copperbell, focus final boss in Sastasha) I'm assuming that if you don't kill the noxious pods in totorak you will drown in diremites, but I only go for them because the first run I did in there, everyone was blowing up the pods on principle.

[Alestrae]

WoW: My beef with wow goes back far beyond MoP and Trials, Which if you do not pass silver, there are/were certain instances you cannot enter. I think it used to be if you didn't pass Gold. My problem wasn't so much with the difficulty of the trials itself but certain classes had a much better time of it than others, or that you had to spec a particular way, just to scrape by (sorry that's my 'entitlement' showing a fin there. I hate to the back teeth the appearance of the shaman ascension ability, and no amount of power will ever convince me that a bad dragon costume is thematic. Could I please ascend into an elemental, instead of the weird cthulu-dragon thingy?) *ahem* my problem with WoW extends to the next item on my hate list.

[Alestrae]

ilevel/overgearing: THIS is the problem that has plagued wow. It has never been new, and has been there since at least TBC "buying a powerlevel" through deadmines for example. Then legacy came along and every single person on an account could be best in slot equipped for the content they are running Since legacy, the chances to learn tanking or healing 'on the job' have become remote because 'that one person' will have the legacy gear that will make every fight trivial. And they have been playing catch up to this ever since, especially as more and more people could afford the stuff, and are veterans 'running for the lulz' or simply helping a friend. It is also present in ff14. I am fine with ilevel requirements if players choose to use them inclusively instead of exclusively, and my experience in wow recently shows they tend to do the latter.

I have had two instances recently, both Totorak which is not the hardest mechanics wise (in other words there is no mechanic I am aware of that will kill you if you screw up) but I could have walked behind the party and not pressed a button and the fights would have ended just as fast (PGL and LNC; was running the instance to get to 30) in one instance I was the only non advanced job, and the other there was only one other. I will freely admit that I was out of practice with the PGL positionings, but as far as I know the level syncing doesn't force stat changes due to equipment (I stand to be corrected) and mobs were literally dying before I could press my third button. In that kind of situation, you can't learn in optimal conditions, with other similarly geared players, who are also learning (I discovered during a copperbell run that a synced down DRK is still fragile if they take their armour off, they chose to run naked to make it more challenging). The likelihood of this reduces with every expansion as more and more veterans, with the best intentions, help out their friends. So I have to admit that through no particular wish to be carried, and simply following current game capabilities, I have been handed the first four dungeon completions free, with no real threat and only absolute stupidity on my part has caused my deaths.

I worry about my performance and I'm not the best player, but all I can do when things die that fast, is try, but I don't feel I'm learning. I hate to use WoW again but is the only other mmo of which I have significant experience; before Legacy and without a carry, the original deadmines was a brutal test on how well you knew your job. You wiped you tried again (and again, and again)with no stacking buff. This was how you learned, some players were better, others had more (or less) patience, but when you came out of it, when you finally got that completion you had gained that working understanding (not basic) of your class.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I have seen another player (in his 30's or so) quit claiming "I'm older, work and don't have time to learn X Y and Z and dont have some reflexes like young gamers ect. ect." My response was showing him footage of my mom (in her 50's mind you) playing games she got the grasp of in like an hour. Cue rage and indignation without acknowledgement of the games design at all.

As I said before, every community has its stinkers.

Hi Gula!

Yeah, a lot of players fall into the self-defeating attitude that they are too old to learn how to play. It's borne out of insecurity.

The attitude also smears us players who have legitimate reasons for our struggle to learn the game. In my case, it's a combination of severe fibromyalgia and the medicine I need to treat it.

Turns my brain into a fog machine. Hahaha!

But, I still try to learn and respectfully listen to advice. There is no excuse for not attempting to learn how to play your class.

[Dualgunner]

I'm assuming you mean Dualcast.

Potency calculation is 490 against a single target vs 200 (each) against multiple targets.

Assuming that the mob you target is within range of all the other mobs, AoE is the winner, which makes the single target rotation suboptimal, but not necessarily less effective.

It greatly depends on which mob you target as well, as I find out every time I use Tri-Disaster/Bane followed by Painflare, only to realize I only caught 3 of the 9 attacking mobs.

"Enemies nearby" does not necessarily mean you will hit all the mobs, although experience over time will get you to the point where you can maximize the number hit.

Against three enemies you scatter+verstone/thunder unless enhanced scatter is up. 100 per target at 3 targets is greater than jolt 2 could ever be, but less mana generated (mana roughly equates to 9.8 potency per point) and less potency than aero/thunder. At 4+ targets all bets are off, start scatter spam.

[Kalise]

There are instances of mechanics mattering in most of early dungeons but there are others where mechanics were seen as optional

This is mostly down to the way that level sync works and has become very lenient and gives sync'd players incredible amounts of power for their level so that many bosses can just be burned down before they even get a chance to do mechanics.

Usually, the exceptions are the ones that force it such as needing to bomb the slime because it takes so little damage otherwise.

I'm assuming that if you don't kill the noxious pods in totorak you will drown in diremites, but I only go for them because the first run I did in there, everyone was blowing up the pods on principle.

Actually, the only thing that not blowing up the pods does is apply a Poison debuff on players that walk next to it (Basically, as soon as someone gets close enough, it blows itself up and puts poison in an AoE, just like if people attack it but are standing too close anyway)

It's a very minor thing, especially with the poison not being particularly strong but it's simple enough to do.

Which if you do not pass silver, there are/were certain instances you cannot enter. I think it used to be if you didn't pass Gold.

Gold was never required. It only ever needed Silver.

My problem wasn't so much with the difficulty of the trials itself but certain classes had a much better time of it than others, or that you had to spec a particular way, just to scrape by

I and most of my guildmates had no issues completing golds on any specs though.

It was all a matter of learning how to use your kit.

Like, I had one guild member complain endlessly about how it was impossible to do Silver as a particular Warlock spec (I think it was Destruction) but at the same time, another of my guild members went and did it on his character in the same spec and had no issues and went on and beat Gold too (I think I remember him saying you just put down Volcano or something and Silver auto-completes itself because that single CD kills most of the waves of enemies alone...)

In fact, I managed to do the Silver DPS ones as all the Tanks and Healers (Also, I managed to do the Healer and Tank ones as a DPS and also did the Tank one as healers). You just had to figure out how to maximize your damage output, it wasn't like the Gold ones where you had to burst damage during certain windows and had to know the best time to use your CD's and pick up the Bloodlust box... (I also did Gold DPS as a Tank too... Didn't manage it as Healer, not enough DPS cooldowns in their kits)

(sorry that's my 'entitlement' showing a fin there. I hate to the back teeth the appearance of the shaman ascension ability, and no amount of power will ever convince me that a bad dragon costume is thematic. Could I please ascend into an elemental, instead of the weird cthulu-dragon thingy?)

Elemental Ascendents are thematic and they are Elementals.

Then legacy came along and every single person on an account could be best in slot equipped for the content they are running Since legacy, the chances to learn tanking or healing 'on the job' have become remote because 'that one person' will have the legacy gear that will make every fight trivial.

I assume you mean Heirlooms?

If so, Heirlooms didn't cause this to happen, they exacerbated it sure, but they didn't cause it.

What caused it was the stat inflation over time. Especially when Cataclysm released and they redid all level 1-60 loot and basically upped the stats by a factor of 5-10x

Since, they became focused on making leveling as easy and straightforward as possible, with exp requirements reduced every expansion for all previous levels, increased exp rewards from quests and exp bonuses from LFD runs.

They didn't want people to face a challenge, because they wanted everyone to get to end-game so they could (In theory) spend all their time designing end-game content and having actually challenging content before then was not conducive to that.

This later went into pushing their wellfare gear earned through Valor points/seals/marks, remaking a lot of old dungeons to be streamlined for quick and easy LFD runs (Including separating older labyrinthine dungeons like Gnomeregan, Maraudon, Blackrock Spire, Blackrock Depths, Stratholme etc. Into multiple "Parts" that you hop into to kill like 1-2 bosses and then leave)

Heirlooms just made things worse for new players, though they got free carries through dungeons (Which is not too dissimilar to back in the day, when people would just ask for boosts through dungeons from max level characters).

Heirlooms killed low level PvP though, since "Twinking" was no longer relevant because the difference between someone who'd gone through the effort of farming/buying all the best level 19/29/39 gear for the character (Also, doing things like getting that rum from the level 40ish area as well as getting the Trinket from the open PvP arena in STV (Which would require having max level friends to act as bodyguards to let you get it)) and someone who just had a bunch of heirlooms equipped was not particularly large.

Thus, it made "Twinks" basically easy to make and thus anyone who wasn't kitted out in heirlooms was no longer able to participate in PvP lest they get 1-2 shot (Whereas before, you might have like 1-2 twinks in a match every so often and they'd often be fighting each other. Meaning normal players could still fight each other and have a good time)

as far as I know the level syncing doesn't force stat changes due to equipment (I stand to be corrected) and mobs were literally dying before I could press my third button.

Level syncing does tune your gear down to a more appropriate item level.

Though, again, this is done fairly leniently and thus will still create significant power level differences between players. Especially at lower levels (For example a sync'd Healer in Sastasha can literally out damage both DPS classes that are actually appropriate level)

It gets better as levels increase, but it still remains that sync'd players are significantly more powerful than non-sync'd. Outside of some specific duties that have a much lower item level they sync to which are far more even between players since its much closer to what at level players will actually have (Provided they've been keeping on top of their gear)

I worry about my performance and I'm not the best player, but all I can do when things die that fast, is try, but I don't feel I'm learning.

Yeah, this continues to be a problem until you reach current content. Before then, you will encounter plenty of sync'd players that will destroy content before you can do much.

Even PotD/HoH doesn't help because outside of bosses, nothing lasts long enough to do anything (I recall leveling my BLM a bit in PotD and I couldn't even get a single cast off to start my rotation if anyone else was around. Same with my DRG in HoH where it was impossible for me to keep my Blood of the Dragon buff up because I couldn't advance more than 2 steps into my 5 step combo to refresh it...)

It's part of what I mentioned earlier in that duties really don't do anything to actually help players at all, even if they want to learn, all it promotes is toss out quick AoE's to nuke down packs before sync'd players evaporate them... Or you get into a party where no-one is sync'd and then it feels like torture because no-one knows how to play their class and it takes like 5x as long to complete the dungeon...

P.s. You can bypass the character limit on posts by editing a post and typing in more stuff (Or, type out your full post, cut most of it then edit and paste it back in)

[Feidam]

A "normal" pull is not 3 mobs. 3 Mobs is a small pull.

Really? You dot mobs first as a BRD? Again thanks for educating me but i know that too. The point is, and yes i WILL name the number of mobs extra for you now, if a tank pulls 6+ mobs, that are not impossible to hit properly with an AOE, and the dps still uses single target skills he/she is subpar.

A normal pull is the number of mobs that are clumped up(usually 3). Tanks running and grabbing multiple sets are large pulls which is the norm due to gear levels.

I do not think a certain level of expectation is bad honestly. What I think is bad is when people expect others to play perfectly all the time. No mistake always 100% optimized remember every aspect of every fight ever created. And yes those people exist and they tend to be loud with their displeasure imo. It’s not uncommon for hardcore players to expect that level of play from people who have no interest it. I’ve seen many players berated because of it. When while they were not optimal they actually capable of meeting the contents requirement. However, instead of 15 min run it took us 20 to 25 mins. Then they go off about learn your class, just quit the game etc. I can understand why some have become super defensive as this attitude is present in most games i’ve Played.

Players have to keep in mind too sometimes players are just toxic regardless of skill level. Just blacklist and move on.report if the toxicity warrants it. Sometimes players are just bad. They try but will always be on the bad side. It is what is.

[hydralus]

I'm assuming you mean Dualcast.

Potency calculation is 490 against a single target vs 200 (each) against multiple targets.

Assuming that the mob you target is within range of all the other mobs, AoE is the winner, which makes the single target rotation suboptimal, but not necessarily less effective.

Any tank worth their salt will group the monsters together for AoE, especially since you can't parry back attacks. And you were still comparing 490 potency (assuming low-level content) to 300 potency for some odd reason when it's 600 potency and now we're talking about something entirely different. It's not only suboptimal but it's not some unreasonable expectation. It's 1 button for heaven's sakes.

[XenociderOmega]

WoW: My beef with wow goes back far beyond MoP and Trials, Which if you do not pass silver, there are/were certain instances you cannot enter. I think it used to be if you didn't pass Gold. My problem wasn't so much with the difficulty of the trials itself but certain classes had a much better time of it than others, or that you had to spec a particular way, just to scrape by (sorry that's my 'entitlement' showing a fin there. I hate to the back teeth the appearance of the shaman ascension ability, and no amount of power will ever convince me that a bad dragon costume is thematic. Could I please ascend into an elemental, instead of the weird cthulu-dragon thingy?) *ahem* my problem with WoW extends to the next item on my hate list.

I remember the proving grounds it was easy but WoW has hidden how bad ppl really are that ppl can't handle stuff when it shows how bad they truly are at the game. Ppl cried more over mage tower in legion which i did 20 ilvl under the recommended.

[Penthea]

Having standards for players seems to a crime among this community

Why is it such a crime to have actual STANDARDS in this game?

This attitude is absolutely not unique to this game at all. I have seen this stuff in literally every multi-player game I played. There are always players who push back against having to meet a standard. This is just how some people are. People can be lazy or selfish in all aspects of life. Stop phrasing it as if it only happens in FFXIV.

In FF14, if you are a bad player, you cannot be criticized because the other person can report you for harassment and you'll probably get a warning under the new rules they implemented, and if you don't help them you get called a toxic elitist anyway.

There is a lot to be said for the method you use to point out someone's poor performance. There is a massive difference between "stop being such a ****ing noob and stack with us" and "please stop running away and stack with us when you have the red marker". Politely targeting what a person is doing wrong won't get you into trouble.

Another example is with the AoE mechanics aka the orange markers. I encounter many people that stand in them at levels 50+ because they don't realize that orange marker = bad.

It's completely mind boggling that this is considered acceptable by a large part of the community.

I'm not sure where you get this impression. Every time I have seen someone so bad that they stand in the orange all the time someone comments about it, and/or they get kicked. If it happens only once or twice in an entire dungeon most people stay silent because it's frankly not a big deal. No point in starting drama over something so minor. Everyone messes up sometimes.