SE needs to do more to help bad players

[WaterShield]

"2) They are just really bad and do not care...." (Bolding added.)

As one of the people who fails mechanics regularly, I just wanted to address this assumption that I see being made throughout this thread.

Background: 19 years of MMO gaming, from EQ to EQ2 to Rift to GW2 to SW:TOR to TESO to here. No, I never played WoW.

So I have a bit of experience in gaming. One might suspect (rightly) that it's even something I enjoy - perhaps even care about? But, here's the thing - skill levels just differ. I didn't manage to live through an Omega 3 w/ that fricking 'larboard/starboard' mechanic until almost the end of the 4.x cycle. I had watched videos. I had people call out over Discord. Didn't matter - my reaction times simply _are not_ fast enough to handle the 'if you see yellow ground it's already too late' timings that SE seems to favor on current cycle mechanics (I remember going off the edge on Titan all the time during ARR; now I could sleep & still dodge that because they've clearly changed how long the warning is up before the effect triggers).

I try to limit my 'fail drain' on groups by not running too many times repeatedly - I realize that people may get frustrated when I drop after 3-4 attempts, but I think it's probably best for everyone as the group gets another person who's almost certainly more competent (also I often seem to 'get' mechanics better if I STOP beating myself against them for a few days before trying again). After 9 runs at TitaX this weekend, I've managed to make it to the add phase without dying... um... well, I'll let you know when that happens. I've at least made it into the forest phase w/o a death a couple of times, & for me that's progress.

I think the game itself does a decent job of distilling the skill levels through the system of varied difficulties. I've never entered a Savage & probably never will, so the content certainly exists for the hard-core gamers who don't want to get stuck w/ the low-skill people like me. It would be nice if we could continue to share the regular and (on occasion) extreme trails & such, though, without the assumptions that everyone who isn't 'as good' is just lazy or AFKing (as I was once accused of after a 3rd death to an AoE in Dun Scaith; I wish I'd thought of the proper retort at the time - 'Sir or Madam, you severely underestimate my capacity for ineptitude!').

You shouldn't try to react to the orange marker on the ground. You should see the name of the attack when Omega is casting Larboard / Starboard. It's simply memorization of which means what. Larboard = be on bosses right, Starboard = be on bosses left. So ideally you should position yourself during the beginning of the cast. In savage mode the ground marker didn't exist at all, so the only choice was to memorize which attack name meant what.

If you're saying that you couldn't dodge in time despite knowing in advance which way to dodge (Discord call out), then perhaps you were positioned poorly? Ideally you would be on the bosses rear ready to dodge either way prior to the mechanic. If you were positioned ideally prior to cast, had it called out the moment it started, and still couldn't dodge... then I've got nothing.

[WaterShield]

Your Tank example falls apart under the fact that Tank DPS is factored into Raid tuning.

So heres a fun experiment for you. Take just a Tank and 2 DPS into any high level dungeon. No Healer. Afterall, a healer that isn't dpsing is "refusing to contribute" in your opinion. And since they're "not contributing", you don't need one in your party.
Now, try to complete that dungeon with no Healer. Go on.

I can absolutely do dungeons as a paladin with 2 DPS and no Healer. In fact I've solo'd the final boss of Amaurot before, as the other 3 players died to the first mechanic.

I should try going in premade with 3 DPS though. That'd be really fast ^.^

Seems clear to me that Square needs to delete healer

[SamSmoot]

The players that were going to struggle with the Proving Grounds generally weren't players interested in difficult content to begin with. .

I always found Proving Grounds (Silver and above?) to be extremely difficult as Enhance. Often, it took me 30+ attempts to get through one, so I hated the things. Personally, I think they were easier for certain classes than others. (I did OK in raids despite my dismal PG performance).

One big problem was that they didn't teach. You could either do them or not, and if you failed at it, nothing was offered to teach you how to do it better. If the running NPC offered helpful suggestions after each fail, and other suggestions on how to perform better, then they might have helped players become better. For me, they were just a major chore that I nearly quit the game over when they were required for something.

[FelixDaCat]

I personally think the Trust system is a really good tool for learning how to do a dungeon. Because the NPC's in your party always move to the right spots, you can use them as a guide, which takes some of the stress off the player so they are able to focus more on the boss and they get to learn how the fight goes. I used the trusts a lot as I was levelling my RDM from 70 to 80. Now as I am levelling up my next class, I am able to use the duty roster/roulett bonuses and when I am now doing the dungeons with real players, I don't feel like I am going to have a panic attack.


There is also one big thing the OP is assuming, which is that these bad players actually want to improve in the first place. I would bet there are a lot of these bad players, always thinking it's someone else fault for a wipe or their death.

[Bacent]

Honestly this is like when I used to try to help my nephew with his homework. You can only help someone as much as they WANT to be helped, which he didn't give a damn. Many players don't give a damn either. Sad to say.

[Cojika]

Hall of the novice should have more added to it and it should be required that every new account does it. It wont solve all the problems but it'll help with the new players using jump potions and immediately jumping into duties to mess up or severely hinder df runs. Would be nice if it somehow tracked that you've gone through it on another character incase you made an alt too.

[ging3399]

Bad players just pay no attentions to improving their skills After all, machanics in FFXIV is that straightforward even for my little niece.

[Dreamsoap]

I personally think the Trust system is a really good tool for learning how to do a dungeon. Because the NPC's in your party always move to the right spots, you can use them as a guide, which takes some of the stress off the player so they are able to focus more on the boss and they get to learn how the fight goes. I used the trusts a lot as I was levelling my RDM from 70 to 80. Now as I am levelling up my next class, I am able to use the duty roster/roulett bonuses and when I am now doing the dungeons with real players, I don't feel like I am going to have a panic attack.


There is also one big thing the OP is assuming, which is that these bad players actually want to improve in the first place. I would bet there are a lot of these bad players, always thinking it's someone else fault for a wipe or their death.

I can verify that with an anecdote. My friend and I Q'd for a level roulette and got the first dungeon from SHB, fogot it's name. We both ran with what we think is the worst tank we ever encountered. Would only pull one - 3 mobs per, and took way too much damage from just those despite being in a full set of scavean gear. My friend dumped his entire mana pull keeping him alive for each pull just because he wouldn't use cooldowns. We noticed the bosses were going by extremely slowly too, and realized he's not even using half of his dps skills available. This wasn't a GBK either, he was a DRK. We wipe on the first boss due to my friend absent mindedly taking a stack marker behind some aoe puddles, and the tank gets snarky about it. Bruh. I don't understand the mentality of these sorta people. Don't get me wrong I have a ton of patience and my largest pet peeves are people complaining about wipes rather than explaining mechs to established newbies before pulling and expecting smooth sailing. But there's a world of difference for like.. intentionally not even reading your skill descriptions and then chiding people for an honest mistake.

[FelixDaCat]

I can verify that with an anecdote. My friend and I Q'd for a level roulette and got the first dungeon from SHB, fogot it's name. We both ran with what we think is the worst tank we ever encountered. Would only pull one - 3 mobs per, and took way too much damage from just those despite being in a full set of scavean gear. My friend dumped his entire mana pull keeping him alive for each pull just because he wouldn't use cooldowns. We noticed the bosses were going by extremely slowly too, and realized he's not even using half of his dps skills available. This wasn't a GBK either, he was a DRK. We wipe on the first boss due to my friend absent mindedly taking a stack marker behind some aoe puddles, and the tank gets snarky about it. Bruh. I don't understand the mentality of these sorta people. Don't get me wrong I have a ton of patience and my largest pet peeves are people complaining about wipes rather than explaining mechs to established newbies before pulling and expecting smooth sailing. But there's a world of difference for like.. intentionally not even reading your skill descriptions and then chiding people for an honest mistake.

To me, it sounds like the tank paid to have DRK at 70 and has never bothered to either tank before? I am your cliche DPS type, where I find tanking and healer way too much outside my comfort zone.

While I can't do the other roles, I do find a dungeon is much more enjoyable when people communicate what method they want to use to beat the dungeon.

[purgatori]

Or do like every other MMO on the market does and allow players to do so without getting banned.

FFXIV has the largest population of absolutely awful players and is the only MMO that I know of ( I could be wrong feel free to correct me) that doesn't openly allow parsers, people to correct each other for better gameplay, and or simply removing people without like a 2 hour cool down.

There's only so much a game and or the developers can do to better people without forcing things on other people and annoying them. This is just simply where the community steps in but that's wrong for some reason.

^ Horrible idea of the day.

Banning people isn't going to make them better at the game, it will only make them leave the game, and that is probably not great for long-term viability. So, instead of useless punitive measures that will only serve to grant you a little bit of catharsis, how about SE do a better job of up-skilling players who are struggling?

SE could even run some parsers or examine other metrics on their side that would trigger notifications for players who could do with some extra training. They could expand the Trust system to cover a greater share of the group content, such that players a) have more opportunity to learn about mechanics, b) can simply not group with other players if they elect not to. They could feature some advanced video tutorials about boss mechanics on the Lodestone, and maybe even add the capability to have these play in game. Or, they could even do what The Secret World did, and require that players are able to beat a particular challenge before they can progress to harder content.

But even if SE do none of the above, and the situation does not change, I would rather put up with the occasional bad player than have the culture of the game transform into one of toxic elitism.