Dear WoW refugees and returning players

[MaxCarnage]

This is assuming that ALL of the new players are bad. Considering being a FFXIV vet isn't some magical high gravity training ground that turns you into a super saiyan... I'm gonna bet that the same distribution of good/bad players is native to whatever game you came from. FFXIV isn't particularly difficult or complex. The WoW "refugees" that the OP is denigrating are probably just as good if not better at dealing with predictable mechanics in general since that game does sort of the same thing but with some RNG thrown in with weird gear spec dependent results.

All in all the likelihood that everyone got worse is a lot lower than the likelihood that people are just new and unfamiliar with the game. They aren't unskilled, they are simply uneducated.



As that's your opinion I can't exactly say you're wrong, but in general I personally find people who claim this want carte blanche to "yell" at people who do things "wrong". They don't like they can't heap blame and try to shame people into playing well so they call "CAREBEARS!" and proceed to complain about people being patient.


I don't expect people to be happy to carry dead weight. However I also notice that people are incredibly quick to claim dead weight without even trying to help. "OMG YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THAT! GO WATCH A VIDEO!"


I have been playing this game for 10 years, I can pretty confidently say I've seen this cycle of swell and ebb go by exactly as it always has and within 6-7 months we'll be right back to "high skill" numbers.

Patient and understanding coaching and positive reinforcement grow the new sprouts into useful and contributing members of the community. Yelling at them and shaming them into seeking outside education before even attempting content will turn them into elitist grindy content locusts.. or just turn them off to the game entirely.

I never said all new players are bad. I'm talking averages. So is the other person you are speaking with. That seems to be the key point that is consistently being missed in your responses.

I understand that there is a swell in new players. I have seen first hand. But if I am seeing an overall decline in player skill, that means that the average went down. Because if the average were the same as it had always been, I wouldn't be running in to more bad players than I did two years ago. So to say that they are more noticable because the game's player base is larger is in itself admitting that the overall ~average~ is lower. Otherwise it wouldn't be noticable.

Either way, this seems to be a point that you are purposefully ignoring. I'm not saying all new players are bad. And I'm not saying uneducated players have an inability to learn to be better. But when I am running CT or NiER raids, with no new people, and we wipe to multiple bosses, what's the excuse for that?

[Krotoan]

I can say you come off angrier than a person simply being blunt.

If you're getting anger from any of that I have definitely communicated poorly.

Your posts are argumentative.

Of course you'd consider them argumentative, I'm taking a position opposing yours for the most point.

Your posts even come off as talking down to someone who disagrees with you.

I'm sorry you're taking them that way, I don't think you are lesser in any way to me.

I don’t believe you have the solution

The "solution"? To players not doing as well as I'd like? Give them some gentle guidance. If they continue to screw up and I start to get angry I can remove myself from the situation rather than berate others to go learn things.

when you yourself are struggling to communicate.

I think it's more you trying to gotcha what I said rather than the content of my communication. None of what I said was contradictory.

But then, we are currently living in a generation that equates periods at the end of a sentence online to anger

No, I equate insults and denigrating language in increasing amounts to be anger. If someone just posts "Don't stand in orange." I don't consider that angry. Then again you may not be speaking about me, especially since I am not of this current generation.

I never said all new players are bad. I'm talking averages. So is the other person you are speaking with. That seems to be the key point that is consistently being missed in your responses.

I don't mind clarification, but can you see where what you said equates to purely an increase in the bad instead of a general increase in a player base? A true representation being 50 and 25 growing to 500 and 250. If you weren't implying growth and simply stating that 25 in 50 is a lot more of a % than 25 in 500 that's true.. but not relevant to what I'm describing happening.

I understand that there is a swell in new players. I have seen first hand. But if I am seeing an overall decline in player skill, that means that the average went down. Because if the average were the same as it had always been, I wouldn't be running in to more bad players than I did two years ago. So to say that they are more noticable because the game's player base is larger is in itself admitting that the overall ~average~ is lower. Otherwise it wouldn't be noticable.

Maybe it's my insistence that new doesn't equal unskilled, just uneducated. But think of it this way: All the new people who have rushed to cap are now delving into the content. They will die, they will fail mechanics but not forever. They'll learn and soon the perceived level of skill will go back up. It's not a slope of "well I've seen more people fail things, soon they'll make it all easier and then even more people will join and then even MORE things will get failed and then they'll make it easier and... ". Just because you've noticed people failing things more often does not equate to the potential of people going down or the accepted levels of competence being lowered.

Either way, this seems to be a point that you are purposefully ignoring. I'm not saying all new players are bad. And I'm not saying uneducated players have an inability to learn to be better. But when I am running CT or NiER raids, with no new people, and we wipe to multiple bosses, what's the excuse for that?

Likely bad players. Probably bad players who are playing the game AGAIN to catch up and who have always been there. I am not saying they don't exist or that there aren't more of them, just that this supposed dumbing down slope isn't happening.