Final Fantasy XIV and a Culture of Enabling

[Jin-]

Best wishes to that mentor for being booted while only doing their "job"

[WoW]

Best wishes to that mentor for being booted while only doing their "job"

I never heard of a mentor doing their job.

[SturmChurro]

I never heard of a mentor doing their job.

[Tommara]

I never heard of a mentor doing their job.

I have.

One mentor told my husband, who had joined a level 30+ duty finder as an arcanist to do the summoner quest.

[Darkmoonrise]

Note : I didn't read the whole thread here. So I may repeat some stuff that was already mentioned.

First I'm on the side of "underperforming player shall improve them self or be punished". But we're speaking about a game, and in such an environement, such "punishement" should not be a thing. Because people's entertain themself differently, depending of their own personnality.

But I'm not worried about this for FFXIV because this will go against the main philosophy of SE, which is, let's face it, make as much money as possible. The main strategy they follow to achieve this goal is to attract as much people as possible. And the allowance of the "enable culture" is a direct consequence of this. By letting everybody do what ever they want, they will stick around, pay their sub, buy in the cash shop, buy goodies, attract more people, etc. It's that simple.

So the "enable culture" won't go away officialy. Now with what I read here, almost all solutions gravitate around the same idea : segregation. Separating the underperforming people from the other. But this strategy has too much problem :
* As a company SE can not implement a segregationnal system into its game, too dangerouse for the business image.
* Where do you put the line? how do you define underperforming? How do you measure the performence?
* How do you enforce such a system without alienating half of the player base (because at the end SE would need to say to player : "You suck, here is your punishement").
* How do you treat player who do their best but cannot perform as much as needed (disabilities, very young/old, etc.)

We already have such minor systems implemented in the game which prove that "absolute scale based segregation" does not work. Here are 2 examples :
* "minimum ilvl" and it fails at its job. Ilvl absolutly does not reflect player performence. I always smile when I see PF with aberrant minimum ilvl requirement. I see so much people fully geared with performence proportionally inverse to their ilvl.
* "commend" and it fails at its job. Commends do not reflect player performence, only how much time the player invested in doing group content.

I don't know if the segregation solution is a good solution but an "absolute scale segregation" is not, for sure.

What about a relative scale then? I see a possibility here, based on an "avoid player list". Allowing you to draw your own red line. You ended up with a player you don't like? Put it into this list and you won't be grouped with her/him in DF, you won't see any PF with her/him inside, etc. (or at least you'll be informed that an avoided player is present). It will be the opposite of the black list system : you could still be able to interact socialy with the player but not do content with her/him.

Advantage of this solution :
* It is relative to you.
* You can add whoever you want without justifying it.
* It depends on actual behaviour of the player, not on predefined scale.
* It is not an official segregation mechanism.
* Maybe it will reduce GM work load because I'm sure 50% of their work is : "I don't agree with [insert name], please punish [insert name]".

But, and I have to say it, segregation is a quick and dirty solution which only leads to a single negative long term outcome : conflict between the groups. Which in an MMO translate to a very bad general ambiance in the community. And this will be terrible for the whole game, regardless of the group you're in. So maybe we should forgot segregation and look for something else.