"Elitism" vs "Casualism"

[Doozer]

Want to know how most of them give advice to pugs that are bad or trial raiders that mess something up? 'Uninstall and kill yourself'.

Even though part of me expected that deep in the back of my brain, it still totally knocked me off kilter to see that for some reason. I know players that are Really Good tend to be so serious that they become extremely rude, but for some reason that's now how I expected that sentence to end. I had hoped they were actually really helpful but I think I knew as I was reading that that wasn't going to be the case.

If you want to give good advice and can do so, by all means go ahead- but if you're in a situation where you're constantly finding players consider you rude, maybe you just aren't as good at giving polite, constructive criticism as you think you are. Or perhaps it's the fact that players can see right through you and that your elitist way of looking down on others makes it very clear you have no intent of actually helping them and use 'polite advice' as an excuse to show your disdain for those you consider sub-par.

Everything you said is really good and it's important that you mention you're saying all that stuff based on your own experience with top players, but I think the last part is especially good. Being called rude by lots of people should make you wonder what the common factor is. "Should" being the operative word. I don't think a lot of people get that.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Earlier today someone posted about a SMN not using any AoEs, and generally just spamming nothing but Ruin III in Qitana Ravel (they're level 78). If I, as a decent player, point out that they should be using AoEs on trash pulls and putting DoTs on the boss (in a respectful manner) have I wronged this player?

It doesn't take a good player to realize that using aoe in a situation where there's a lot of trash, or using dots when you're a dot class is the right thing to do. That's bare minimum basic stuff. What you have there isn't a poor player- it's a lazy player, no advice is going to change that. A poor player doesn't do the rotation perfectly, maybe doesn't make use of their utility skills or know when to use CC, or is slow to get out of deadly mechanics- there's also decent players that might just be new to a dungeon and thus not know the mechanics- the lazy player is someone who just spams single target attacks no matter the situation.

Frankly there's a pretty easy way to tell if someone's receptive to advice, they'll say something like 'hey I'm new, if there's anything I can do better let me know'. Generally that's the issue with people that give advice, they don't pay attention to obvious social cues like that. That and as much as people like to say 'but what if I politely tell someone x', what happens in game is never polite. By straight up ignoring that someone hasn't asked for your advice and giving it anyway you've already shown you don't care what that player wants, that's not communication when it's so one sided.

Now, if someone asks you for advice and then is rude when you give it- that's another story. But there's ways that people can seek advice- asking for it, getting mentored, joining a guild/discord/forum and requesting advice.

Has it never occurred to you that maybe there's a reason why teachers, who have years of experience teaching and years of education- don't just pick up the worst exams and go over why the dumbest kids in the class are idiots in front of everyone? Why feedback from actual teachers is universally done in a private way? Maybe there's some sort of reasoning they don't just shout it out in front of everyone. No, I'm sure that the online gaming playerbase's way of giving 'polite advice' in front of everyone is the way to go, those real life teachers could learn a thing or two about how to do it right.

[Veis_Alveare]

sub-par.

I've seen three suicide... suggestions? I don't know what the right word is, whatever, you know what I mean. I've seen that three times in four years of playing XIV, much of it with pugs in savage.

Three.

To be fair each time the person who said it was also jumped all over and kicked once it was an option.

Sorry you caught some bad eggs but there's no response to this beyond either writing it off as you having outstandingly bad experiences or, to call a spade a spade, lying because it suits your narrative.

I realize I'm only countering your experience with my own but it makes me wonder why anyone would ever stick around in a community that tells people to kill themselves over small mistakes. Everyone makes small mistakes, and I mean everyone. Some mistakes are big and some are small but they all happen and many are noticed by other players.

If someone quits the game over the sort of advice I toss out or even most of the advice I see I say good riddance - they have no business playing a game with other people if their skin is so thin that 'drg, doom spike combo pls' is driving them to mental distress.

[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.

[Sylvain]

First and foremost. Anyone who unironically says TBN is bad, has no idea what they're talking about. So long as TBN breaks, it's a DPS neutral ability, i.e., it's free mitigation. Clemency is considered "bad" only outside prog because it's simply unnecessary. Even in that context, those citing it bad are usually referring the Paladins who spam it on themselves whenever their HP dips below 90%. If a single use of Clemency saves your Ultimate run, you won't hear any complaints.

It was during prog on E4S, we were working on P3 and both healer died, the mt PLD was low and I was like "Clemency yourself!", he replied with the sweetest "ok". He critted himself under requiescath, it was litteraly a self benediction. You could hear the whole raid like "... what???"
scholar reply : "sigh.... and here I am with a useless physick while he has that". It didn't end up with a kill but had they not included the last AoE tumulte, it would have been a kill (I think we wiped at like 1% or something)

[SugarPuff]

It doesn't surprise me that a lot of players are not receptive to unsolicited advice from strangers. Anyone who works with the public has probably noticed that although diplomacy makes a difference, as a general rule people who want directions will ask and those who don't ask aren't happy to receive. There are exceptions of course, but some combination of irritation, defensiveness or offense is an extremely common reaction when you approach a complete stranger and tell them they're doing something wrong. Often you need to be overly obsequious to smooth things over.

I don't have much of a stake in this argument since I play almost exclusively with friends, but to me it seems like human nature. Both sides are rude because rude is subjective and while it's an interesting debate, in terms of play style there is no right or wrong.

Personally, I feel that since roulette throws a random group together everyone should make at least a minimal effort to get along. Try to bear advice without taking offense if that's your Achilles heel, or try to rein in your criticism if you tend to be a fault-finder. On the odd occasion I do find myself in a random group I work on responding to people because I can easily fall into "silent" mode, especially after talking to strangers all day at work.

[Lucy_Pyre]

I've been in numerous server top 5 guilds, and even a top 50 world guild in WoW raiding- playing with excellent players that know their class inside out, the raids inside out and ways to excel, many of whom parse constantly in the 95-99 range. Want to know how most of them give advice to pugs that are bad or trial raiders that mess something up? 'Uninstall and kill yourself'..

Yeah, great for you. I was literally the top player for my class in the game I played before coming to XIV (SWTOR) and I don't even remember how many people I taught how to play my class, whether it be answering questions people posted on a guide for it that I wrote or directly sitting down with people in-game and spending multiple hours teaching them directly. I mean, sure, I had my "you're trash, git gud" moments like anyone else. It was PvP after all. But the point I'm making here is that just because you or your friends were toxic doesn't mean that everyone that's good at X or Y class also is. You're projecting pretty hard.

[Zsolen]

One of the alternatives to giving advice is simply kicking the person with a different playstyle. When people come across poor perfornance, these are the two real avenues. Letting people hinder a party and sometimes alliances (Ozma) is not a solution.

If someone does not want to improve, then maybe they are playing the wrong game.

[Kanjien]

One of the alternatives to giving advice is simply kicking the person with a different playstyle. When people come across poor perfornance, these are the two real avenues. Letting people hinder a party and sometimes alliances (Ozma) is not a solution.

If someone does not want to improve, then maybe they are playing the wrong game.

Statements like this (probably unintentionally) are one of the reasons this world is so divisive right now. It is akin to "if you don't want to stand for the National Anthem, maybe you should move to another country!" It takes any form of discussion and mutual respect and throws it right out the window. The issue isn't who is more "toxic", there is toxicity on both sides. The issue is how do we come together as a diverse player base to reach the goal we all share which is to enjoy our time playing a game we love as much as possible.