Does 14 Promote a Culture of Mediocrity?

[Packetdancer]

The game is meant to largely appeal to casual audiences, which is where most of the games financial success originates. Many of the old HW / SB era systems that were streamlined were pointlessly punishing to casual players, but had very little real impact on high-level gameplay.

I'd say the systems not only didn't impact high-level gameplay, but folks doing high-level gameplay often tried to find ways to do end-runs around them, optimize them out of gameplay, or otherwise to just generally try to actively avoid engaging with said systems.

When people spent an entire expansion complaining that all of AST's cards were pointless except for the Balance, and finding ways to avoid using cards that weren't the Balance, it shouldn't be hugely surprising that the developers reacted by turning all of AST's cards into variations on the Balance in the following expansion.

[zcrash970]

Editing
/Snip

[Zfz]

The vast majority of players fall in the range of mediocrity by definition. And that is the only reason why FFXIV is as successful as it is today: it caters and accommodates the biggest group of players in the market.

It was never a game designed to challenge the tip of the pyramid in the player population. It was, and still is, one that is designed to be satisfying to the vast majority of players. It doesn't promote a culture of mediocrity; the game has no such intentions. It is a game designed to entertain, not to educate nor to challenge, hence it doesn't promote anything.

[Rolder50]

Considering their tendency to take an axe to jobs and make them utterly braindead and not requiring of any functional thoughts (hello summoner) I'm going to with yes.

[DrWho2010]

playing this game is also not a job it's supposed to be for fun. some people just take playing this game way too seriously.

[Caurcas]

Petty attacks aside, some of ye bring up good point. However, for the casual vs anything more than casual dichotomy when it comes to complexity and punishment for failing rotations and gameplay loops I feel like they had a good balance in SB, and have overextended into the opposite with Shb and EW. Furthermore, it's a cooperative game, ere go it is valid to be annoyed at fellow players not trying as hard to reach the shared goal.

[AziraSyuren]

The skill ceiling is as high as its ever been.
Literally.
The difference between an average (50) and max percentile Samurai, for example, is almost the same now as it was in Stormblood (going off of ADPS in EW, which is more or less the same metric as DPS was back in StB). Don't know where this narrative comes from, it's just not backed up by the data.

It's the community that encourages mediocrity.

[linayar]

As the title ask, does 14 create and promote a culture of mediocrity within it?

It depends on what you mean.

the community and general attitude have shifted toward shielding the bad from valid criticism, and a general apathy towards self improvement.

Mediocrity doesn't mean bad, so the answer to your question is probably "no" if that's what you mean.

[MidnightEquinox]

This is not a valid concept for a video game. How good someone is at FFXIV is largely immaterial to life. The majority of a game's audience is casual players who want to have fun, in whatever form that happens to be, "mediocrity" doesn't really factor in here. A lot of us indeed are completely apathetic about self-improvement in a game. It might be something some of us personally enjoy, but we also understand it's... simply not important. And so we develop a rift with others who also enjoy it, but also believe it's very important, to the extent that they berate or speak poorly of others, which to me is a line that cannot be crossed.

Evaluating someone as "bad" (skillwise) only makes sense in mutually competitive environments with stake, which for most people, games are not. FFXIV in particular has a large number of systems that people may choose to engage in, it's even less focused on high level team performance than other MMORPGs, and pretty much all MMORPGs rely on a large casual playerbase.

[Lunalepsy]

As the title ask, does 14 create and promote a culture of mediocrity within it? I say it has been sliding that way since ShB. The healing and tanking roles have been reduced to dull, hollow shells of what they were in HW and SB. The skill celling and floor no longer exist for these roles. DPS roles are heading in this direction as well with all the flavor and mechanical complexity being slowly striped away. See the removal of synergy and reduction of positionals, and reduction of punishment for rotational screw ups. These issues, however, are nothing compared to how the community and general attitude have shifted toward shielding the bad from valid criticism, and a general apathy towards self improvement. Even the devs have admitted to designing content in this manner. It's all quite disheartening, given 14 was at in time one of the most mechanically engaging MMOs.

The game caters to the lowest common denominator.