Final Fantasy XIV and a Culture of Enabling

[Arillyn]

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.

Yea I can see it in some things for sure. There comes a point where you have a good feel for how long it should take to down a group of mobs or a boss and I have been in things where I'm like "omg why aren't these dead already". I don't see that as often as others maybe because I do tend to run a lot of things with my FC and friends (or at least partial parties with them). But I've also been lucky to be in complete rando groups where things are melting at a good clip. But I have also been in some parties where it's just like what is happening here? I will say my own dps is not great when I'm learning a new EX fight. I'm too busy trying to learn the mechanics and not die, but when I have that down my dps goes way up because I know how to time my bursts, when I need to be ready to move, etc.

[BlitzAceRush]

Another problem with this topic is the vastly wide margin for "underperforming", are we talking about savage and stuff? In which case if someone isn't up to your standards, then you PF, your rules. If we're talking just about regular content then people have been all over the place in what we're supposed to see as underperforming, there's a vast different between someone standing around doing nothing to someone simply messing up their rotation or not knowing the ins and outs of their class.

As I said, I refuse to do savage and such but in regular content I'm being told I should be seeing these "underperformers" everywhere, but what constitutes that and at what point am I supposed to care? I could start thinking, "Hm, I've killed these mobs 20 seconds faster on average, someone's not puling their weight..." or "The boss didn't die before X? Who's the low DPSer?" "We took a whole 4 extra minutes in there... someone was clearly not doing their job..." Could I do all of that? Yes, and the thought might have corssed my mind on occasion, but I simply don't see any of that as something worth worrying about in a video game, I'm doing casual content, with people I'll likely never see again in a game, we beat the instance with no fuss, what do I gain by making some? I'd likely add more time trying be "helpful" in those situations than they're "wasting".
Nothing wrong with giving advice or trying to help your fellow player, but like I said in all my playtime since ARR I can count on two hands the amount of players that were playing so poorly that they were actively impacting the group in a negative way, I've encountered far more people who have created that very situation by trying to "better" a player when things were going fine than a player actively playing so bad they needed help.

[SturmChurro]

Yea I can see it in some things for sure. There comes a point where you have a good feel for how long it should take to down a group of mobs or a boss and I have been in things where I'm like "omg why aren't these dead already". I don't see that as often as others maybe because I do tend to run a lot of things with my FC and friends (or at least partial parties with them). But I've also been lucky to be in complete rando groups where things are melting at a good clip. But I have also been in some parties where it's just like what is happening here? I will say my own dps is not great when I'm learning a new EX fight. I'm too busy trying to learn the mechanics and not die, but when I have that down my dps goes way up because I know how to time my bursts, when I need to be ready to move, etc.

It's due to the design of the game. It's simply an objective fact when players are underperforming. There is a way, and a way not to do things as a standard. Sure, high-end players have figured out the timing, position, etc. to perfect this standard, but that's not what is being discussed or asked.
---

I think many players conflate clearing content with performing 'adequately'. I've made this argument many times, probably at least twice in this thread. You can generally clear content with several AFK players, if it nearly runs out the timer you can clear content. The issue here is instead of players encouraging others to do better, read their tooltips, etc. many in this community encourage the opposite. As if, encouraging another player to play at an adequate level is a sin, as if doing so is disrespecting that player, but in fact it's the opposite! The player choosing not to play adequately - yes 'choosing' - is in fact disrespecting every other player who has to carry them to complete even casual content. Make no mistake if there was a full party comprised of these players, who are choosing to play at this level, they would either not clear much content (even casual, or 'normal), or it would take FOREVER to do so.

[Awha]

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?

LOL installing act was one of the best yet worst things I have could have done to improve my in game experience. Prior to that I had suspensions but having it just confirmed how meh people can be.

[Caurcas]

LOL installing act was one of the best yet worst things I have could have done to improve my in game experience. Prior to that I had suspensions but having it just confirmed how meh people can be.

This horror a great community made.

[SieyaM]

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.

You must have terrible luck then because I run roulettes 5 or 6 times a week and never see any of this.

[Awha]

You must have terrible luck then because I run roulettes 5 or 6 times a week and never see any of this.

Wait you have never seen a player not use AoE's before, or a healer that does nothing between heals? A tank doing single pulls in an expert roulette? A part of me finds that fairly hard to believe, or maybe you just have ungodly luck to say you never seen any of it.

Not saying you have to view such things as underperforming but to say one has never seen such things seems more like the outlier instead of the other way around.

[Vahlnir]

You must have terrible luck then because I run roulettes 5 or 6 times a week and never see any of this.

Either you have the best luck ever or you're lying. It happens. I wouldn't say it is constant but I see such things maybe two or three times a week to varying degrees. I usually run a lot of roulettes though, most of which go fairly smooth.

[KizuyaKatogami]

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.

The problem is as long as everyone’s having fun. Chances are if someone isn’t taking the time to learn their rotation or know to aoe by the time their level 80, they aren’t going to either care or take the time to see if everyone is having fun. I expect people to do the bare minimum which is just the two things i’ve mentioned and it seems even in endgame content people can’t even do that. Yes everyone pays to be here, but that goes both ways. First and foremost it’s an online game. You’re playing with other people. When you queue up for roulettes you’re doing so with 3 to 7 to 23 other players. Wasting their time because someone doesn’t want to take the time to learn to properly play is rude,inconsiderate, and it will be addressed eventually. People need to learn not to be so sensitive to criticism and should take it to heart.

[SenorPatty]

BTW

Could someone explain what "bare minimum" or "very bare minimum" is to them? Cause all I can conjure in my head when I see those two statements is someone doing 1-2-3 and calling it a day.

Which, if it is something like that, would be really weird because there's quite lot of posts who are not okay with that sort of play but keep using those statements as their point of argument of what they wish people did.

EDIT: To make this easier, pick a job you know inside out, even play optimally, then explain what would be the "very bare minimum" or "bare minimum" of that job.