Quote Originally Posted by Laesha View Post
I think this is a really big part of it. But not only does the game do a bad job of allowing players to slide by via attrition, but it also does a really bad job of incentivizing improvement. Obviously, there are incentives. Quicker gear upgrades, dyable glams, titles, etc. are all available to people who do savage+ earlier than the rest of the player base.
Thing is, people who don't look up guides in the first place probably are mostly unaware of what they can even get from top end content... or even really what top end content is. It used to be regular raids, then it was hard, extreme, savage, ultimate- then the side stuff like BA. I find WoW's difficulty levels have gotten out of hand- but at least it's pretty clear what their order is. They're also going to be unaware of many of the rewards, and if gear can be obtained even more slowly through easier pug content that's an ideal situation- elitists can get their gear fast through premades, casuals can take longer in groups that won't bother the elitists.

SE should however consider ways to encourage good solo play. Their tutorial stuff is all from the base game and thus dated, and was very basic anyway. There's two things they could do to fix what's basically a complete lack of information and direction for players in game.

1- Update tutorials. Go through rotations and important abilities, as well as some of the most useful macros for that class. This would do two things- make it clear that knowing the rotation is an expectation from SE, and give players that want to get better instruction and a place to practice. Naturally- put a reward behind it for incentive.

2- Challenge content. Best example is WoW Legion's Mage Tower- if you wanted to complete it you had to know how to play your class well, needing to know rotations and good use of your damage abilities AND how to utilize defensives at the right time and several other utility abilities. It also provided a unique, well sought set of glamours as an incentive. It didn't teach you to play your class, but it required you to be able to and it was very rewarding to do. In FFXIV- make this part of the weapon glamour quests, or put a unique armour for each class behind it. That won't entice everyone, but it's been made pretty clear that glamours/cosmetics are valuable to a lot of players- probably more so than gear stats which everyone knows lose value every patch- a glamour never loses value.

This of course is a fair bit of work for SE- both designing the unique glamours, and designing a decent amount of challenging solo content. Glamours however I think are one of the things that can drive casuals to get better at a game. They're absolutely a better incentive than stat gear, or random guy in a pug telling them they suck and to uninstall.