"Elitism" vs "Casualism"

[Penthea]

It's the former, by the way. From Satasha to Ultimates, someone should always aim to do their best. I could argue the virtues for doing so for one's self and how harmful the other side of that argument is, but that's a mentality and approach deal with self improvement. No, a player should give their best in every single thing because this is a team game and to not do so is disrespectful to the people you're playing with. To the team at the time. There is never a justification for not trying that is positive.

I think there is a time and place for being expected to try to perform at your peak.

A lot of people play games to unwind and this game is no different. I don't personally expect people to play their best unless I'm in ex or savage. Outside of that merely playing well is good enough for me, even if it's not that person's best.

I'm not saying I'm fine with people relaxing to the point of doing rotations very incorrectly, not using tanks cds, etc but what I do mean is I'm not going to have a fit or get in a bad mood because someone isn't being as efficient as they could have been if we're only doing normal mode. As long as things die in a timely manner and no one is being seriously carried then I'm happy. I don't need everyone to be constantly pushing themselves to feel satisfied with a normal mode group. I reserve that attitude for content where that is an actual requirement.

But I'm a pretty patient person when it comes to players not playing very well in normal mode. I usually give them the benefit of the doubt. I don't know a random person's background with a class, role or even the game. I don't know if they haven't played that class or content in a long time. I don't know if they're distracted from a bad day. I don't know if they have lag. Sometimes people have very valid reasons for not playing super well. I generally only speak up if there is a big problem like the tank constantly dying, dps spamming aoe on single target, or a player is clearly being afk for a lot of combat.

But in ex and savage my expectations rise quite significantly because the content demands it.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Would you read a guide on how to kill every boss in a Mario game before playing? How about research how to win as fighter x against all others in a fighting game? Do you keep informed with the current best gun and item load outs for Battlefront, or know which hero is best on which map in Overwatch?

Maybe you do the effort of reading up on all those things- but I am pretty sure most players don't do a bunch of research before they start playing a game on how to excel at it. It's no different for MMOs, most players aren't checking the forums or looking for guides, and there's a lot in this game that isn't obvious. Telegraphed mechanics don't always have obvious effects or many chances to experience them, and without timers for boss abilities or even your own CD/DoTs it is easy to lose track of things or not know the timing.

I, interested as I level in my class, looked up a guide to summoner after having played it for a while to find out my rotation is apparently 2+ minutes long. Of course nobody's going to get that, it's not something the game teaches you- just playing the class the most logical thing is to keep dots up, use procs when possible, summon dragon and use his breath twice, summon firebird, etc... and try to make sure the dragon reset of tri happens right after using tri. It's a lot of CDs and dot timers to keep track of- without the aid of a UI add on that tracks that sort of thing. I also feel like it's a hard thing to practise- solo enemies die too fast, and bosses use so many mechanics that at some point I have to move, which can put refreshing dots in a different place in the rotation, which can screw up when to use tri and dragon tri refresh, and suddenly I'm free styling.

What I can say probably isn't going to be helpful is someone just saying 'you are doing it wrong' in the middle of a dungeon run. Generally 'advice' isn't particularly useful when it's in a pug since most players don't know how to give it without coming off as jerks- but even when it is, saying 'you need to do this, use these abilities, do this, and keep this on the target' followed immediately by more pulling forces the other player to keep up with the pulls- not go through and check if they missed putting an ability on their bar, give a chance to read what it does, etc... People often forget that teachers don't just say one thing to a student and then never interact with them again, but elitists in pugs sure do.

It takes time to process things, especially new things- things that player hasn't thought about but might be second nature to you. It's like pointing at a math problem a child has done wrong- saying 'no you need to multiple this first, then subtract this, split these unknown factors and move the exponent to the other side'- and then five seconds later as the child is looking over the problem and his errors asking him why he hasn't solved it yet because all the actually smart kids in the class figured this out last week.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

I think there is a time and place for being expected to try to perform at your peak.

A lot of people play games to unwind and this game is no different. I don't personally expect people to play their best unless I'm in ex or savage. Outside of that merely playing well is good enough for me, even if it's not that person's best.

I'm not saying I'm fine with people relaxing to the point of doing rotations very incorrectly, not using tanks cds, etc but what I do mean is I'm not going to have a fit or get in a bad mood because someone isn't being as efficient as they could have been if we're only doing normal mode. As long as things die in a timely manner and no one is being seriously carried then I'm happy. I don't need everyone to be constantly pushing themselves to feel satisfied with a normal mode group. I reserve that attitude for content where that is an actual requirement.

But I'm a pretty patient person when it comes to players not playing very well in normal mode. I usually give them the benefit of the doubt. I don't know a random person's background with a class, role or even the game. I don't know if they haven't played that class or content in a long time. I don't know if they're distracted from a bad day. I don't know if they have lag. Sometimes people have very valid reasons for not playing super well. I generally only speak up if there is a big problem like the tank constantly dying, dps spamming aoe on single target, or a player is clearly being afk for a lot of combat.

But in ex and savage my expectations rise quite significantly because the content demands it.

People who play at "peak performance" don't suddenly stop doing their rotation or start using single target attacks on a group of mobs when they're doing their roulettes.

[Penthea]

People who play at "peak performance" don't suddenly stop doing their rotation or start using single target attacks on a group of mobs when they're doing their roulettes.

Okay. But I did not say this. Did you even read my post? I explained that as long as something really bad isn't going on I'm fine with people doing less than their best in normal mode. I even gave examples of what I consider to be something bad.

Or is it a case of because I didn't mention a specific thing you said you somehow assume I'm okay with players doing single target dps in an aoe situation? I didn't want to test anyone's patience by listing out every single thing that can go wrong in group content. That would be a tremendously long list. I was hoping people had enough common sense to realise I meant more than just the very short list I wrote.

EDIT: you also do not need to play at your peak to play the game adequately in normal mode. Normal mode is not so challenging that anything less than everyone's best means something very wrong is happening. I know some players who are better than most even on their worst days. Do you think that when they don't play at their peak they can't tell the difference between when aoe is appropriate to use or not?

[Kolsykol]

Snip.

I do have expectations of DPS, don't literally go out of your way to pull as DPS.
And yet sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many people fail at this lol.
I can't begin to count the number of times the healer has been afk ( things I pay attention to ) and a dps just sprints ahead head first into mobs and dies.
Or DPS like Ninja using sprint + teleport and their natural increased movement speed to on purpose stay ahead of me at all times and pull mobs. Or ranged with insta casts ( even BLM with Scathe ) making sure to get the first hit in...

Every time that a DPS pulls or runs in front of me I just want to let them die tbh.
I am not even a slow tank, and when I do fast pulls sometimes dps will go all out while I am sprinting to grab the next one or two packs to pull them all together and they get aggro and then start ranting at me about it.
Like let me finish the pull? If I run in, AoE and then keep sprinting to the next group then why are you using all of your CD's and going all out while running?

It's sorta indicative of the mentality of MMO players nowadays I think, I still remember in WoW vanilla and TBC when you actually had to use sheep and other tools to survive and how disappointed I was in WOTLK when mass pulling started to become the normal thing. Especially since all of these tools became useless outside of PvP.
I dunno about others but imo it's just a lot more fun when there's some structure to things, marking targets and sheeping or targets for Mages to Spellsteal etc. That was fun and made the dungeons feel dangerous and more important and rewarding.
The reason why I resubbed to FFXIV again was because in other MMO's I tried like ESO and GW2 to get into mobs just die too fast and everyone is running around and all is chaos with no structure at all.
Sometimes I feel like a lot of DPS in this game play like they're in one of those MMO's.

I know that people will make assumptions about my tanking for saying this, but no I am not slow I do pull very fast and multiple groups but sometimes it's not even up to me ( the healer afk/brb or not the best ) and what am I even supposed to do when DPS with far better mobility than me is literally going out of their way to be ahead of me at all times?
Staying behind the tank is just supposed to be common MMO etiquette and yet it isn't and it's driving me insane.

I'll rather take DPS doing half the damage that is actually respecting my role as a tank and not being annoying like that than the best DPS in the world who plays like they're a toddler high on sugar.
Usually these DPS in question aren't even good tho tbh so they're just annoying.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

Okay. But I did not say this. Did you even read my post? I explained that as long as something really bad isn't going on I'm fine with people doing less than their best in normal mode. I even gave examples of what I consider to be something bad.

Or is it a case of because I didn't mention a specific thing you said you somehow assume I'm okay with players doing single target dps in an aoe situation? I didn't want to test anyone's patience by listing out every single thing that can go wrong in group content. That would be a tremendously long list. I was hoping people had enough common sense to realise I meant more than just the very short list I wrote.

EDIT: you also do not need to play at your peak to play the game adequately in normal mode. Normal mode is not so challenging that anything less than everyone's best means something very wrong is happening. I know some players who are better than most even on their worst days. Do you think that when they don't play at their peak they can't tell the difference between when aoe is appropriate to use or not?

No one plays at their peak on normal content. People who defend inept performance usually just misrepresent what decent performance is.

No one is asking for 100% uptime strats on dungeon bosses. Just doing their rotations, using AoE when necessary, doing positionals, using combos and not just isolated moves, etc. So yes, players who play at "peak" performance continue to do it on normal content. They don't just derp out and start pressing buttons at random.

There's also no point in saying "well I think people shouldn't pretend they're doing Savage on a normal content", when no one was arguing that anyway and it just ends up muddying the waters.

[Lucy_Pyre]

snip

If you can't handle a DPS pulling something 1 second before you do as a tank then you're far too fragile to be playing an online game. You can rip aggro from non-tanks with an auto attack or two nowadays. There's absolutely zero excuse for whining about how "wah a DPS pulled", or the classic "yOu pUlL iT yOu tAnK iT" nonsense. To be frank, tanks and healers in this game often have gigantic egos and think and think that they're infinitely more important than DPS. As a tank who actually understands how the game works, any content below EX/savage/ultimate you should be instantly pulling things the moment you can, barring an extreme case like someone is DC'd (and even then if it's a dungeon boss and you're a WAR with a DC'd healer, pull it regardless. You don't need a healer for bosses). If that means that the DPS hits the boss 0.7 seconds before you do as a tank, big whoop. This is especially true for certain jobs that may have buffs about to fall off depending on how long the run between the last trash pack and the boss took (eg. SAM, BRD, DNC, RDM).

[Penthea]

No one plays at their peak on normal content. People who defend inept performance usually just misrepresent what decent performance is.

No one is asking for 100% uptime strats on dungeon bosses. Just doing their rotations, using AoE when necessary, doing positionals, using combos and not just isolated moves, etc. So yes, players who play at "peak" performance continue to do it on normal content. They don't just derp out and start pressing buttons at random.

There's also no point in saying "well I think people shouldn't pretend they're doing Savage on a normal content", when no one was arguing that anyway and it just ends up muddying the waters.

I was responding to someone who said people should play their best from Sastasha to Ultimate. This is not saying that people should play normal mode like savage, but it is saying that anything less than anyone's best is not acceptable. For some people their best is savage level of skill, which is far above what is required for normal mode.

I don't particularly care if people don't play their best in normal mode. I am fine with them simply playing well enough that no one is carried and things are killed in a timely manner. The person I quoted appears to not think this is enough for them, that players must do their best performance for absolutely everything...which in many cases is tremendously more than is required for normal mode. I personally reserve this mentality for ex and savage because the content demands it.

It's the former, by the way. From Satasha to Ultimates, someone should always aim to do their best. I could argue the virtues for doing so for one's self and how harmful the other side of that argument is, but that's a mentality and approach deal with self improvement. No, a player should give their best in every single thing because this is a team game and to not do so is disrespectful to the people you're playing with. To the team at the time. There is never a justification for not trying that is positive.

[LaughingBanana]

If you can't handle a DPS pulling something 1 second before you do as a tank then you're far too fragile to be playing an online game. You can rip aggro from non-tanks with an auto attack or two nowadays. There's absolutely zero excuse for whining about how "wah a DPS pulled", or the classic "yOu pUlL iT yOu tAnK iT" nonsense. To be frank, tanks and healers in this game often have gigantic egos and think and think that they're infinitely more important than DPS. As a tank who actually understands how the game works, any content below EX/savage/ultimate you should be instantly pulling things the moment you can, barring an extreme case like someone is DC'd (and even then if it's a dungeon boss and you're a WAR with a DC'd healer, pull it regardless. You don't need a healer for bosses). If that means that the DPS hits the boss 0.7 seconds before you do as a tank, big whoop. This is especially true for certain jobs that may have buffs about to fall off depending on how long the run between the last trash pack and the boss took (eg. SAM, BRD, DNC, RDM).

That poster didn't say that he couldn't handle it, they say they didn't like it when DPS charges forward and get aggro, which is a fair position to think if you are playing tank.

This is a thread where people are being told that they are expected to do their job role properly, and a DPS that charges forward and leaving the tanks behind are not doing their job role properly.

Yes it may only for "1 second" and yes a Tank can steal the aggro back but still any DPS that does that often is annoying and by saying "Not a big deal" to that kind of thing, you are actually promoting people to play their role the wrong way, or in a way that selfishly pushing their way into others playing in the same group, something that I thought is a big no-no in this thread, especially coming from a player like you who claimed that you are above the vast majority of other players in this game.

[Lucy_Pyre]

which is a fair position to think if you are playing tank.

Unless that DPS pulling more mobs leads to you dying because you can't handle that many, no, no it absolutely isn't. If a DPS or the healer pulls more mobs and you survive it just fine that means that you are failing your job as a tank because you should have pulled those mobs before the DPs had an opportunity to do so.