Final Fantasy XIV and a Culture of Enabling

[KizuyaKatogami]

Those who want to learn will learn, and those who believe that ignorance is bliss will continue about their business regardless of what anyone says. I don't think these "easy mode" story scenarios are as detrimental as some may think. People have been able to level up fast for some time, even without buying boosts. This isn't anything new. With as casual of a game as this is, I would expect a fair number of players to be a bit below average but still able to get things done...which they do most of the time. It's just not always pretty. What it comes down to is personal expectations. Some have theirs set way too high. FF XIV is the wrong game for that, in my opinion. Some MMOs seem to go through a constant identity crisis, but the dev team knows exactly what FF XIV is and they design the game largely around a more relaxed and casual player base. I respect that.

I think the problem comes in when you start to question what is considered casual. I’ve seen people on the daily that don’t even aoe in level 80 dungeons. Or just stand around not casting anything as a healer. While the easy mode situations may not be *insanely* detrimental, it promotes bad play which is already a constant thing with this playerbase. I understand people not wanting to treat casual content like dungeons as serious as a raid or something like that which is 100% fine, but i expect people to know their rotations and to know they need to aoe in dungeons. Unfortunately lately it seems like every single day i queue up for roulettes i get at least one dungeon run with a dps or healer that isn’t aoeing which just ends up wasting everyone’s time, and 9 times out of 10 when i offer advice they return it with hostility. There needs to be SOME kind of change in the game whether it’s them creating some kind of gameplay wall that requires people to understand dungeon fundamentals or what. Unfortunately i don’t see this happening because Yoshi P said he wants to streamline dungeons even more which...i genuinely don’t even know how that’s possible given how easy this expansions dungeons have been.

[Nayout]

Those who want to learn will learn, and those who believe that ignorance is bliss will continue about their business regardless of what anyone says. I don't think these "easy mode" story scenarios are as detrimental as some may think. People have been able to level up fast for some time, even without buying boosts. This isn't anything new. With as casual of a game as this is, I would expect a fair number of players to be a bit below average but still able to get things done...which they do most of the time. It's just not always pretty. What it comes down to is personal expectations. Some have theirs set way too high. FF XIV is the wrong game for that, in my opinion. Some MMOs seem to go through a constant identity crisis, but the dev team knows exactly what FF XIV is and they design the game largely around a more relaxed and casual player base. I respect that.

That's why I not only name the easy mode, I name the Echo in my comment because in Heavensward it was very normal to hear that for certain class missions or certain history missions it was better to die repeatedly to collect Echo and complete the mission.

And precisely what you are telling me is the problem that we are discussing here, in a game where you do not play with anyone, it does not matter the difficulty or if you want to skip the learning curve of the game but we are in an MMORPG where your performance affects the rest of th players and we return to the same thing NOBODY asks you to play with 99 parsers, people are asked a minimum of understanding, understanding that the game teaches you but is easily ignored by factors that I mention. It is the criticism that many of us do with Yoshida for this kind of thing and it is the problem that many people have encountered with this game that not only affects the dungeon facet, it affects others such as PVP.

[BlitzAceRush]

I honestly want to know where all these bad players are hiding, I've been playing since ARR beta, been subbed and actively playing the whole time, all my stuff is 80, while I don't do savage or such (would rather be stabbed with a rusty spoon) I do instanced contend regularly and I can:
count the number of times I've had to kick someone, on one hand
count the number of truly terrible players I've encountered, with two hands
count the number of truly aggravating players with... well I'd need more than my hands, but it's still a surprisingly low number.
I don't doubt there are players out there who don't want to do their jobs, or just don't want to play, but I don't think adding easy modes or boots did anything to inflate them, you could litterally netflix and deep dungeon and before then fate your way to max with zero brain power and them wonder what all those new button that you never bothered to pay attention to.
While many don't like it, the only answer the game is really willing to provide is simply, PF and create your own "wall" or DF and accept whatever is given to you.

[Nayout]

And I put something back that I put several pages back, many people when they enter their roulettes do not see what the rest does because they play with Tunnel Vision and only care about what they do and only realize that something is wrong when there is a wipe. So I think the right thing to do before saying whether or not they had bad experiences is to analyze whether when we play we can see what the rest are doing or not.

It is incredible how many people have tunnelvision when they play MMORPG and in this game many people happen to them and the perfect example of this is Frontline where they do not see what the rest of the teams do.

PD:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...tunnel_vision/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...tunnel_vision/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...eone_w_tunnel/

[squidmonarchy]

I think there's an interesting assumption there. If someone is able to play with "tunnel vision" and therefore doesn't notice "something is wrong" unless there's a wipe, then who's to say that something IS wrong? As long as everyone's having fun, it shouldn't matter if each player meets some kind of arbitrarily defined standard of competence.

Everyone pays to be here, and people have different priorities. That can be frustrating, but the solution to that is always to form your own parties.

[BlitzAceRush]

I think there's an interesting assumption there. If someone is able to play with "tunnel vision" and therefore doesn't notice "something is wrong" unless there's a wipe, then who's to say that something IS wrong? As long as everyone's having fun, it shouldn't matter if each player meets some kind of arbitrarily defined standard of competence.

Everyone pays to be here, and people have different priorities. That can be frustrating, but the solution to that is always to form your own parties.

It's a fair point, if the argument is, "you just didn't notice that something was wrong!" then was there? If we beat the dungeon in a reasonable time with the tank tanking, the healer healer and the dps killing things that at no point did I see anything amiss, was there really a problem worth worrying about? I'm more than capable of noticing what other players are doing, am I constantly analysing my fellow players, gaging their performance and grading them against my standards? No. However, if the Tank is nearly dying or someone is just standing around, mobs are running around free from the tank or things are dying noticeably slow, I'm more than able to notice, it's just very rare for this to happen, again I've run into more people who are obnoxious than I've run into people who are bad.

[Caurcas]

I wonder if fear of the playerbase finding out just how underperforming they are is an unstated reason why SE refuses to put any performance feedback system in the game? I wonder if they fear the beast that they have themselves made?

[Nayout]

I think there's an interesting assumption there. If someone is able to play with "tunnel vision" and therefore doesn't notice "something is wrong" unless there's a wipe, then who's to say that something IS wrong? As long as everyone's having fun, it shouldn't matter if each player meets some kind of arbitrarily defined standard of competence.

Everyone pays to be here, and people have different priorities. That can be frustrating, but the solution to that is always to form your own parties.

This problem not only affects people who are not able to see how their teammates play, the problem affects these same people, I return to the Frontline examples, because when people are told where to go repeatedly in the chat people do not does it?

Because these people also ignore chat, they are SO focused on what they do that they ignore everything around them including one of the fundamental pillars of a game with a social aspect like this and when you are failing in communication in an MMORPG is when you are doing something wrong.

Disrespect is not only insulting people, disrespect is ignoring your group chat while your group has to support you like dead weight because you are not able to stop to read what people say to you. Why should they have empathy for people who don't have empathy for their teammates? For this reason, many will continue to use the vote to kick people but do not come to me with victimizing speech about these people because when you are ignoring one of the great aspects of MMOs such as the social aspect, you have the problem, not the people.

[Arillyn]

I wonder if fear of the playerbase finding out just how underperforming they are is an unstated reason why SE refuses to put any performance feedback system in the game? I wonder if they fear the beast that they have themselves made?

The reason they won't put parsers in the game is because they don't want people being bullied essentially (paraphrasing but this has been their stance since 2.0) - as has happened in other games that have parsers.

Their compromise was putting Sky, Sea, Land (or whatever the name is) in the game for people to work on those. It's not ideal, but better than nothing. Frankly I would like a personal parser in the game as I'm on console and I'd just like to have that info for myself so I can work on improving. But I don't need to see everyone else's parses. Parsing also isn't even necessary outside of Savage or Ultimates (and even then I'm not sure it's needed then - helpful sure - necessary? Idk).

[SturmChurro]

I am usually playing healer, or tank, and I can usually tell for a fact when each role is 'underperforming' - and it's quite often. I find it hard to believe that people aren't seeing it. It's quite easy to tell when player(s) are either performing adequately or not, from how long it's taking to kill groups of adds, how much damage a tank is taking, how well aggro is managed, interrupts used, aoes , esuna being used, vuln stacks, etc. etc.. Even more so if you regularly play a class and know the regular combos for situations.