Tactful ways to inform people that they're playing badly?

[Floortank]

To answer the question posed directly: you don't.

To elaborate—

There are a couple of really important human being things that many MMOs players don't seem to understand. First, unsolicited advice — no matter how well intentioned or polite it appears — is considered rude behaviour in civil society. Almost every single person who has ever received unsolicited advice recoils at it, most often with a, 'Who does this guy / gal think he / she is telling me what to do!'

Anyone wasting another person's time invites and should expect criticism. They're lucky to get advice.

[Dreakon13]

Anyone wasting another person's time invites and should expect criticism. They're lucky to get advice.

The bar of what constitutes "wasting another person's time" varies wildly from person to person.

Case in point... the poster who hated the healer for healing.

[Vulcann]

Anyone wasting another person's time invites and should expect criticism. They're lucky to get advice.

i remember when video games were considered a way to waste time.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

Attitudes like this are the reason why I quit healing in this game. I used to login after a long shift and enjoy healing and relaxing. Now if a healer is not doing big DPS, compensating for people’s mistakes / laziness and more... there bad.

I play this game to relax. People are turning healing into a stressful second job where you don’t get paid. It’s time for people to stop harassing healers about DPS, period.

Argument has never been about DPS, it's about idling.

It's just that doing DPS is the only option after the healing is taken care of.


Pretty much everyone who's actually on that side of the argument would agree, as long as you're attempting to cast a beneficial skill every time the global cooldown comes up, you're fine.

It all has to do with fairness, if every other member of the party is expected to be using a skill every time the global cooldown comes up, the Healer should as well.
Remember the ABCs, always be casting.

If the healer is in a situation where every Global cooldown needs to be a heal, that's fine as well.




It's situations where stuff like this...

I love healing. Placing regens then sitting on ground emote and watch ppl fight is fun to me hahaha.

... Comes up where people are getting upset.

[Eli85]

Anyone wasting another person's time invites and should expect criticism. They're lucky to get advice.

Short answer: no. When a player is playing the game in a non-malicious and non-trolling playstyle, there should not be an expectation of criticism from strangers that they happened to be matched with. Again, this all goes back to unsolicited advice and how it rude that behaviour is in civil society. If you don't like the way they're playing, then either vote kick them or leave the group. But just by being in the group does not give you the right to give criticism and / or offer unsolicited advice.

It's a really sad that this needs to be explained. It should be common courtesy not to do it.