"Elitism" vs "Casualism"

[Zsolen]

Things SE can do:
-The meters
-More training for newbies
-Careful analysis of who is toxic in a given event, irregardless of who reported it

Things we can do:
-Show effort in the content we play
-Do not see taking advice as a negative unless it is said in an actual mean-spirited fashion (neutral is okay)
-Try to cooperate with one another

[Doozer]

Damn, I go spend a few hours leveling some crafters and I see the same group of people is still trying to cry about how simple pieces of advice somehow equate to being rude and comparable to criticism and personal attacks.

At one point you were one of those people arguing the same stuff over and over. Of course, you say the forums are primarily inhabited by sub-par players, so... nah, I won't finish that.

You keep coming back. That says enough.

[Lucy_Pyre]

At one point you were one of those people arguing the same stuff over and over. Of course, you say the forums are primarily inhabited by sub-par players, so... nah, I won't finish that.

You keep coming back. That says enough.

You're projecting.

[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.

[Enla]

Things SE can do:
-More training for newbies

All of this, but especially this line in particular. ^^^ Honestly I think a lot of this could be solved with just more training in general. The Hall of the Novice is a decent, albeit shallow introduction to the game and it's systems but because it's entirely optional most players never really benefit from it in the slightest. Likewise it really only preps you for dungeons and very low level ones at that, but woefully under prepares players for content that requires more than four people to proceed. While one can argue most people can intuit the needed skills as they progress through content - the Tales of the Duty Finder thread by it's very existence shows that leaving the bulk of the learning up to players isn't necessarily the most efficient way to make sure people play their class at least somewhat decently.

Before they consider anything else they need to both expand The Hall of the Novice so it better prepares people for challenges they'll face and make it mandatory in order to progress into further content for new players. Anyone who is about to hit Sastasha or who is new to the game and bought a level skip potion should be forced to do it without exception. Likewise we also need an 8-man variety and maybe even difficulty levels that are more optional, but give worthwhile loot to players for completing. As well as higher difficulty tutorials that could even go into how to perform a soft rotation for your class at a specific level interval. It won't 'fix' everything but it would at least instill some basic level of competency. Or hell, just teach people about the various markers in game they're going to encounter so we don't have situations where healers run away with stack markers and get themselves killed.

[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.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Things SE can do:
-The meters
-More training for newbies
-Careful analysis of who is toxic in a given event, irregardless of who reported it

Things we can do:
-Show effort in the content we play
-Do not see taking advice as a negative unless it is said in an actual mean-spirited fashion (neutral is okay)
-Try to cooperate with one another

Meters- I doubt we'll see them change their stance on meters, years of players using those sorts of tools to dump on others and wave their epeen around has made it pretty clear they're used as a tool to enhance toxicity. Compromises should occur- personal meters, or the option to use them in non PUGs, but I don't expect to ever see them in pugs because the result is something the online community has already gone through and proven their character on many times over.

Newbie training- I think this is the most important thing, both to teach rotations, teach utility use and teach commonly used mechanics. ARR had some fairly simple duties meant to teach some fairly simple group concepts, I think they should do more of those. Another thing they could do is look at WoW Legion's Mage Towers- difficult solo boss fights that required you to know both your class and how to handle many difficult boss mechanics. You put a cosmetic reward like an armour or mount behind it, make it challenging enough to force people to know what they're doing to get through it- and you'll have a real incentive for players to learn their class.

Effort and taking advice- keep in mind the forums are not often viewed by casual players, and most of these discussions aren't interested in the casual point of view, or in some cases quite hostile to the casual PoV. While that may be good advice, it's not advice that's going to reach the ears of the people who need it most. If anything, advice will need to be directed to the audience of this thread.

The reality is that people here will need to think about how they're giving advice and how to change it if they actually want something to change with the community, realistically the elitists are the only ones who can change what they're doing but as long as they're entrenched in the belief that despite their methods regularly failing they are still doing the right thing and have no need to change- don't expect to ever see community driven change happening, and don't expect a group of players that can't take criticism to ever be able to decently give criticism. It seems like all the elitists here take any advice on how to talk to people without pissing them off as a personal attack, no matter how neutral that advice given is.

[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.

[Veis_Alveare]

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.



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.

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.

[Zsolen]

Meters- I doubt we'll see them change their stance on meters, years of players using those sorts of tools to dump on others and wave their epeen around has made it pretty clear they're used as a tool to enhance toxicity. Compromises should occur- personal meters, or the option to use them in non PUGs, but I don't expect to ever see them in pugs because the result is something the online community has already gone through and proven their character on many times over.

Newbie training- I think this is the most important thing, both to teach rotations, teach utility use and teach commonly used mechanics. ARR had some fairly simple duties meant to teach some fairly simple group concepts, I think they should do more of those. Another thing they could do is look at WoW Legion's Mage Towers- difficult solo boss fights that required you to know both your class and how to handle many difficult boss mechanics. You put a cosmetic reward like an armour or mount behind it, make it challenging enough to force people to know what they're doing to get through it- and you'll have a real incentive for players to learn their class.

Effort and taking advice- keep in mind the forums are not often viewed by casual players, and most of these discussions aren't interested in the casual point of view, or in some cases quite hostile to the casual PoV. While that may be good advice, it's not advice that's going to reach the ears of the people who need it most. If anything, advice will need to be directed to the audience of this thread.

The reality is that people here will need to think about how they're giving advice and how to change it if they actually want something to change with the community, realistically the elitists are the only ones who can change what they're doing but as long as they're entrenched in the belief that despite their methods regularly failing they are still doing the right thing and have no need to change- don't expect to ever see community driven change happening, and don't expect a group of players that can't take criticism to ever be able to decently give criticism. It seems like all the elitists here take any advice on how to talk to people without pissing them off as a personal attack, no matter how neutral that advice given is.

People are not hostile towards casuals. Most casuals are not offended by advice. We are talking about the people that try to use casuals as a shield to defend not being cooperative or a team player. That's why SE should look into the person doing the reporting, as well as anyone involved.