"Elitism" vs "Casualism"

[Veis_Alveare]

With the direction the conversation has taken I think it would be good to summarize a few points from what I see as the loose grouping of people on 'my side' as it were. It's by no mean me claiming unilateral endorsement of these ideas from everyone who favors advice and improvement, if I'm misrepresenting anything please call it out, but I'm seeing the same few objections from detractors.

Primarily I see the frequency with which any one player might encounter play poor enough to warrant advice brought up; the "don't let one bad experience color your thoughts on players as a whole" argument. I'd say this misrepresents my own experience at the very least and I see it said specifically in response to anyone bringing up a specific story of a time someone underperformed.

Instances of someone performing badly enough for me to offer advice happen maybe once every day or two, outside of EX+ content. These are usually the gaping holes in competence, things like cure spammers who do no dps and truly freestyle dps or tanks who seem to just be pressing buttons randomly or with no care. My Shield Lob PLD in Copied Factory comes to mind.

To be clear there are many, many more times people are also doing just awfully but there just isn't a chance to actually try to help. The number of times as a tank or healer that I end trial or normal raid roulette above some dps who haven't died... it's really frequent and it shouldn't be. Those instances are too short to generally get out much in the way of help though.

Secondly I see the "rudeness" argument, primarily championed by Goji. While I don't think anything anyone could say would get even close to changing his mind (and clearly people have tried) I would say that intent matters and that it's being entirely dismissed here.

If you speak to someone with the desire to cause them distress and embarrassment that's bad. If you speak to someone with the genuine desire to help and someone gets embarrassed as a consequence you need to weigh whether or not the advice you gave was worth it. I'm not going to nitpick every little bit of someone's play in casual content, if a tank wants to pop CDs as he finishes a big pull rather than waiting for some Holy stun mitigation that isn't the end of the world. If DPS aren't banking resources to destroy big trash pulls and instead popping it all on bosses that's fine, we'll still be moving apace.

The issue needs to be great enough for me to think the potential embarrassment or annoyance (or even maybe being kicked on my part, you never know who's in an oversensitive premade) is worth it on the off chance that the advice penetrates and helps that person do better in the future. This is delicate but I think I'm getting the hang of it.

That kind of touches on the last point that I've seen brought up less frequently but still pops up now and then - the actual standard to be held to in order for advice to make sense to me.

For anyone if there ignoring a big part of their kit I think it's worth pointing out. You never know what button might not have made it onto a hot bar.

For tanks they should be able to hold threat 100% barring a dps getting dumb and bursting on a single mob during a big pull or something. They should be using all their CDs potebtially aside from their immunity because I know getting good use of LD/Holm during dungeons can be weird. AoE on trash, use ST combos on bosses, pull big.

For healers they should be using their ogcd heals frequently and filling in the gaps with the appropriate ST/AoE nuke. Spamming heals on people with full hp or something is bad. They also dont get to stand around doing nothing. I realize sometimes they do this because of MP, those same healers usually have Lucid ready and waiting until they're at like 2k MP. I think I tell more healers about lucid than I do about doing dps.

For dps it can vary but it boils down to AoEing when appropriate and doing enough of what would be their single target rotation to at least keep pace with the tank/healer. If I'm on a support role I should not outdps you, period. Standing in too much bad or, as ranged, being out in the middle of nowhere and thus out of range for heals is also notable.

So there we go. If you think those standards are too high have at it. I am about as immovable as Goji is on this. Clearly my standards for content with enrages are very different but if I meet someone in casual content I'd expect them to be able to do this much and if they can't (and if I'm able to) I'm going to give advice. It isn't rude or toxic, it's trying to get people to be better for both their sake and the sanity of their future parties.

[LaughingBanana]

Snip.

I think all that you said above is really logical and good and I basically agree with the general thrust of it.

Again, I think giving advices (politely, of course) is alright if you see someone severely underperform at the cost of the group. I just think that our personal responsibility and reach ends at just that, after we give advice. Afterwards, don't waste energy trying to doing it again or getting angry when people don't want to listen or acting rudely about it... It's just a waste of time.

I mean, just take it easy is what I'm saying. It seems like a really tiring thing to do playing the game always with the assumption that you (the general you, not you specifically) are better than the rest of others and that you are obliged to give advices/suggestions all the time.

In my opinion.

[Veis_Alveare]

I think all that you said above is really logical and good and I basically agree with the general thrust of it.

Again, I think giving advices (politely, of course) is alright if you see someone severely underperform at the cost of the group. I just think that our personal responsibility and reach ends at just that, after we give advice. Afterwards, don't waste energy trying to doing it again or getting angry when people don't want to listen or acting rudely about it... It's just a waste of time.

In my opinion.

I'd agree. Unless it's like a serious impediment to the completion of the duty it's not worth more than just telling someone what needs to be done.

I think theres not enough actual reasonable communication going on and I realize many of us (myself very much among them) are plenty sassy online. Thanks for being an actual person! Hopefully we can get more of that going on.

[Goji1639]

So there we go. If you think those standards are too high have at it. I am about as immovable as Goji is on this. Clearly my standards for content with enrages are very different but if I meet someone in casual content I'd expect them to be able to do this much and if they can't (and if I'm able to) I'm going to give advice. It isn't rude or toxic, it's trying to get people to be better for both their sake and the sanity of their future parties.

Your standards are yours, and I'm not even telling you not to act based on them.

What you need to understand is that regardless of your intentions, criticizing in front of the group in a team situation is rude. That's not me saying you can't do it; in many situations it may even be necessary, but it's not something you should do for petty reasons. As a general rule it's something you want to avoid doing.

I get the feeling a lot of you don't understand it's rude, and just pick at people in your groups for every stupid little thing you notice. You assume it's just always ok, becuz "helping," and then your minds get blown when that casual player responds with "WTF Seriously? Mind your own business!"

I'm just explaining this phenomenon to you. Criticizing someone like that in front of the group in a team situation is rude. It just is. That's why people will sometimes react that way to what you're doing.

[Veis_Alveare]

I'm just explaining this phenomenon to you. Criticizing someone like that in front of the group in a team situation is rude. It just is. That's why people will sometimes react that way to what you're doing.

As so, so,so many people have explained to you already - unsolicited advice is not objectively rude.

You see it that way.

These are different.

I see someone not caring to learn the inner workings of their job as rude (since it places undue burden on the players they're grouped with) but I also understand that this isn't an entirely objective stance and that these people don't see what they're doing as rude. This is likely because they're unaware there is more to learn since the only feedback loop for 99.9% of the game is a purely positive one; 'we cleared, must be going well.' SE only doubles down on this by making more and more restrictive ToS so players are discouraged from filling the gap they've left.

You're trying to act as if the subjective status of politeness is something objective and using that to assign (or at the very least imply) a moral judgment against those with whom you disagree. It's convenient thought manipulation, too. If we're rude and defending rudeness we must not be worth actually listening to, easier to repeat like a broken record than engage.

People choose how to react to stimuli. It is my choice when I see a SMN with titan ego out and no dots in level cap content to choose my own adventure. I could be rude ("stupid smn use the right pet's where are your dots uninstall if you can't play right") or helpful ("hey, I see we're having some difficulty. It'd help if [SMN] used garuda-egi on trash and ifrit on bosses, here's some smn resources too. I know it's a complicated job [link to balance/ahkmorning]") or be silent and kick them. Yes, I initially exclude leaving from this or carrying because I respect my time.

Just like I have those options so too does any player who receives advice. They can ignore it (don't be super shocked if a kick follows but w/e), respond rudely, respond like a reasonable person or leave. They could even try to kick me in return! Though I've yet to see this ever work out.

For some reason you're defending the recipient being rude but oh so adamant that it's not okay to give a struggling player advice. I assume this stems from some sort of "casting the first stone" mental gymnastics with you entirely discounting that the poor play by the advice recipient actually is the first stone.

[Goji1639]

As so, so,so many people have explained to you already - unsolicited advice is not objectively rude.

Unsolicited criticism in front of the rest of the team in a team activity is objectively rude. They teach this in business and managerial courses; it's part of communications degrees; this isn't something I'm making up to upset you.

You can say the casual is being rude as well for not being good at his role; you can say that the casual responding aggressively is also rude; I'm not denying either. Fact still remains that what you did was poorly mannered, and if you had handled it differently your target may have been more receptive of what you were trying to communicate.

So....You again tacitly acknowledge that while you may not be trying to convey something in a certain manner, someone else might take it that way? It's almost like you cant control how other people take things!

But you can control how you communicate things. I'm not saying you're trying to be rude; I'm saying that whatever your intentions may be the fact is that you ARE being rude; I'm illustrating why what you're doing is rude and explaining how to correct it. Not being rude provides better odds of success, even if it doesn't guarantee your advice will be taken.

[Shalan]

Unsolicited criticism in front of the rest of the team in a team activity is objectively rude. They teach this in business and managerial courses; it's part of communications degrees; this isn't something I'm making up to upset you.

You can say the casual is being rude as well for not being good at his role; you can say that responding aggressively is also rude of him; I'm not denying either. Fact still remains that what you did was poorly mannered, and if you had handled it differently your target may have been more receptive of what you were trying to communicate.

That's interesting, never learned that while getting my PR/Communication degree, nor my time in the business school at my university. In fact, the majority of my professors never shied away from lecturing, criticizing, or grilling us without notice in front of our groups or the class as a whole if we fucked up in an obvious manner. The only time we were taken aside was if we requested some clarification in private, or on personal papers/exams. Never during group content.
But maybe that's because we often worked with actual clients during class/workshop time so they expected something of us.

I don't know anyone who took personal offence from the criticism either. Yeah, we would be embarrassed in the moment but we were emotionally stable enough to take it for what it was, advice to help us grow as professionals and not a personal or rude attack intended to shame us. And you could learn from seeing the mistakes and criticisms of your group members as well. A partner of mine hadn't really considered the aspects of negative space when preparing slides for a prospective client in one of our workshops until the professor criticized another group for overcrowding their presentation. That criticism, aired publicly gave her ample time to fix ours.

[Goji1639]

That's interesting, never learned that while getting my PR/Communication degree, nor my time in the business school at my university. In fact, the majority of my professors never shied away from lecturing, criticizing, or grilling us without notice in front of our groups or the class as a whole if we fucked up in an obvious manner. The only time we were taken aside was if we requested some clarification in private, or on personal papers/exams. Never during group content.
But maybe that's because we often worked with actual clients during class/workshop time so they expected something of us.

I don't know anyone who took personal offence from the criticism either. Yeah, we would be embarrassed in the moment but we were emotionally stable enough to take it for what it was, advice to help us grow as professionals and not a personal or rude attack intended to shame us. And you could learn from seeing the mistakes and criticisms of your group members as well. A partner of mine hadn't really considered the aspects of negative space when preparing slides for a prospective client in one of our workshops until the professor criticized another group for overcrowding their presentation. That criticism, aired publicly gave her ample time to fix ours.

I've already explained how a teacher student relationship is different. The fact you're equating a classroom environment to a team project or managerial position makes me question all of this experience and education you claim to have.


Specifically regarding all of your education, I have no idea what to tell you. It's been at least a note in every business course I've taken and every bit of management training I've had. Maybe your communications degree being focused on PR meant there wasn't much education on managing team projects and leadership roles. Either that or you're lying; it's the internet so why not. The idea that you've never come across the concept "criticize in private; praise in public" with any extensive business and communications training is straight up baffling. If that's your claim then we're definitely at an impasse; we clearly don't exist on the same planet.

This is literally similar to speaking to a brick wall.

I explained in clear terms why you're wrong and you just hee-haw your way through the same bull.

No wonder you can't take advice ingame, you're incapable of fathoming that you might be wrong.

Yea, responses like this are just pointless posturing. You may as well have just said "I have no counterpoints and nothing useful to contribute, so I'm leaving."

[Zsolen]

I've already explained how a teacher student relationship is different. The fact you're equating a teaching environment to a team project or managerial position makes me question all of this experience and education you claim to have.


Specifically regarding all of your education, I have no idea what to tell you. It's been at least a note in every business course I've taken and every bit of management training I've had. Maybe your communications degree being focused on PR meant there wasn't much education on managing team projects and leadership roles. Either that or you're lying; it's the internet so why not. The idea that you've never come across the concept "criticize in private; praise in public" with any extensive business and communications training is straight up baffling. If that's your claim then we're definitely at an impasse; we clearly don't exist on the same planet.

Whenever someone is teaching and someone is learning, it is at least temporarily a teacher-student relationship. That's the way the world works. It does not have to be formal.

[Veis_Alveare]

I've already explained how a teacher student relationship is different. The fact you're equating a classroom environment to a team project or managerial position makes me question all of this experience and education you claim to have.


Specifically regarding all of your education, I have no idea what to tell you. It's been at least a note in every business course I've taken and every bit of management training I've had. Maybe your communications degree being focused on PR meant there wasn't much education on managing team projects and leadership roles. Either that or you're lying; it's the internet so why not. The idea that you've never come across the concept "criticize in private; praise in public" with any extensive business and communications training is straight up baffling. If that's your claim then we're definitely at an impasse; we clearly don't exist on the same planet.



Yea, responses like this are just pointless posturing. You may as well have just said "I have no counterpoints and nothing useful to contribute, so I'm leaving."

You complete and total void of reading comprehension, I swear I've never seen your equal.

I've given you 3k words explaining the exact points you're asking for and your response was "no that's rude" in spite of all logic.

I'm not going to copy/paste it repeatedly for you. You've been proven so completely and utterly wrong so many times I'm genuinely startled you have the gall to keep showing back up. I'd usually attribute it to unwarranted self-confidence but in this case I'll fall back on the lack of reading comprehension because what else could it be.