"Elitism" vs "Casualism"

[Lucy_Pyre]

-snip-

Here, let me paint you a picture of this run I just got out of from Saint Mocianne's Arboretum (Hard) as I farm out poetics, and I think that will illustrate the point that many of us have been making quite clearly.

Party is as follows:

Me - WAR
DPS 1 - NIN
DPS 2 - DNC
Healer - WHM

Things start looking sour immediately, as I do the first double pull before the log blocks your path from continuing. I instantly notice that, by the time I put up Storm's Eye and go into Inner Release, all the WHM is doing is spamming Cure 1. So I pop Vengeance as I hadn't used any CD since I was expecting instant Holy spam. The pull takes over 90 seconds to kill because not only is the WHm using zero damage spells, but I notice that my NIN is completely freestyling it; using Throwing Dagger, uncombo'd Hakke, uncombo'd Gust Slash, etc, all at complete random with no rhyme or reason to it. Once the pull finally (agonizingly slowly) dies I say this to the WHM;

"WHM you should spam Holy because it helps things die faster."

WHM says nothing, but as I collect the adds of the next double pull, he starts using it. However, whether out of spite of being given advice or simply not thinking more than three seconds ahead, the WHM in this pull did literally nothing *but* use Holy, which led to me dying and him saying that "that's why I don't use it", to which I quickly informed him that my death wasn't caused by Holy, it was caused by him *only* using Holy. But, whatever, we get to the first boss. This took almost five minutes to kill, and during the fight I was paying very close attention to my party to see what was going on. NIN not only continuing his full on freestyle SAM impression, but also not so much as using Trick Attack a single time or even using Ninjutsu other than occasionally popping Ten Chi Jen to only use Fuma Shuriken and then immediately cancel it, the DNC only using Standard Step about once every two minutes and never even once using Technical Step (but seeing how the NIN was playing it's not like the buffs the DNC was giving him were going to matter anyways), and the WHM spending (at a rough guess) about 80% of the time that he wasn't overhealing me standing idle doing nothing.

As you can probably imagine, this made the rune abysmally slow. So slow, that not only was I forced to single pull because the healer could barely keep me alive in double pulls and it wasn't worth the risk, but I even at one point said to the DNC "you should give me partner, NIN isn't using Trick or any proper skills" and was met with only pure silence. The run totaled out to be just shy of 30 minutes long, for a dungeon that should take 12-15 minutes. So, no, it isn't just a matter of "oh you're just elitists who don't want to wait an extra five minutes to finish a dungeon". But rather, it's a case of some of us believe that there are unacceptable lows for player performance, and this run illustrates exactly that.