Does 14 Promote a Culture of Mediocrity?

[Zsolen]

Teaching and teaching effectively are 2 entirely different things. Anyone can stand in front of a class and waffle, but ensuring they actually retain the knowledge, and creating an environment that is actually conducive to learning is a skill. Regardless of your own personal feelings on the matter. There's an abundance of teachers and there's also an abundance of teachers that are absolutely appalling.

If people aren't learning from your advice then you should probably look at how you're conveying that advice, equally if people are giving you pushback when you present advice or a criticism of their work then you should probably take a stare in the mirror to see if it's as a result of what you're saying and how you're saying it, rather than just the person complaining because they were simply flawed in their approach. Because I can assure you the former is a fairly common case - "I'm only giving advice, I'm only helping" - Which in many cases was presented in the most vile way possible because people utterly devoid of the ability to reflect on their own action - Yet seemingly have an 'all seeing eye' when it comes to other peoples' actions - and this does apply to both ends of the spectrum.

Who said people aren't learning? There are plenty of people given advice and learn in this game without issue. I'm merely responding to the individual that said you should not teach. That's a silly notion, because we all teach every day and we all learn every day.

Teaching is a skill everyone has. People just have different skill levels, like they have with everything else. I never made any statement that those that were toxic were teaching properly. While not in 100% of the cases, generally the most toxic people are those that try to AFK/ throw a FL match or have max levels characters and are doing some very basic things wrong like "face pulling."

[Kaurhz]

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Teaching in this game has a singular inherent flaw in that the people that are 'teaching' often are expecting the results to be an immediate process rather than a gradual one. That is the issue with teaching in this game and unless you have the commitment and understanding of this fact then trying to teach in this game is just counterproductive because the likelihood of people actually executing it is going to be fairly negligible. There's practically several posts alone in this very thread that would give credence to this fact and an entire thread created on this - You know people creating the bizarre suggestion that content should have a solo component or option simply because people aren't meeting that expectation. These are all perfectly reasonable cases why most people shouldn't be teaching, really. Some responses in this thread and arguably a myriad of other threads on this forum can be attributed to people acting like children because people didn't learn. - That said we can argue people did eventually learn, but in many cases they certainly didn't to do anything meaningful with it in the presence of the person 'teaching'.

To summarise - I wouldn't dispute everyone is always learning something, but having the patience and commitment to actually follow through with this is where the difficulty comes. People have the expectancy that they'll give advice then the next few pulls will be nigh on perfect in execution, or that they'll present some rotational advice and all subsequent pulls will magically result in said advice being executed when I'm pretty sure you and I know full well that learning is a gradual and not an instantaneous process - and this is not discounting the simple fact that it is very difficult to learn or adopt new muscle memory. Sure, by all means we can preach teach if you like. But please don't bother teaching if it is only at the expense of you being frustrated and expecting immediate results, and failure to do so results in said person throwing a hissy slugfest.

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at with this, that much is clear. Teaching is a skill you learn to develop and some (rather many) people simply don't develop to an adequate enough level to where their teaching is meaningful, or productive in the first place. - In fact I would take it a step further and argue that teaching is not a skill, but rather a profession that involves a wider range of skills, be it communication, management, passion and adaptability just to name a few. If we wanted we could argue that you can learn and develop communication and management to a varying degree, but adaptability and passion are things you can only teach the principles of and not the execution of it. If you aren't passionate that will reflect on your ability to communicate the knowledge in a meaningful way. Similarly, if you aren't an individual that is able to adapt then it will only further stagnate your ability to communicate because you'll be approaching different problems using the same methods where said methods might not necessarily apply - This is why people can absolutely be abysmal - Don't get me wrong it's a nice notion but it's just a detractor to a degree from the reality.

That being said, this relates to the thread because many people are simply only using teaching a fight or parts of a job as a means subverting their own frustrations and sooner than later for people this just results in a toxic slugfest for a myriad of reasons. Either fully commit to it or don't bother at all, really.

[Zsolen]

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I see two main points.

One you continue to assume that those that teach in this game are being passive aggressive, which I had pointed is not the case already. People learn from others in this game all the time and are quite appreciative when they get that advice. There are others still where it is not they are not being taught properly so much as they refuse to adapt. I'm not referencing people that leap to pull vs those that use a ranged attack, which makes little difference most of the time. I'm talking about players face pulling and refusing to accept help. I'm also not doubting there are elitist types but they are a very, very small minority to the point of not even being worth consideration.

You second point focused on how teaching works. It is quite clear you know little about just how impactful even informal teaching is. It is not as diffict as you make it sound. Yes, some are better at it, but you don't have to be college certified to teach someone a mechanic. Anyone is capable of teaching it.

[Kaurhz]

snip.

No my main point was that you just need to be proactive in your approach and that the moment you set the expectancy of the results to be immediate then you have already lost. If you expect all subsequent runs or attempts to be fine then you berate or get angry as a result of this then I'm very sorry but the only way a rational individual is able to see this is that you're going to be interpreted in a not-so-noble light. As for the second part I don't necessarily dispute it, however, in the vast majority of those cases there is a mutual expectancy or similar level of skill where people are learning from each other. As the disparity in that gap grows so does the willingness to actually teach, especially if you aren't already in there with the expectancy you're going to teach. - If you go into a learning party as an adept and experienced individual then some form of implied expectancy is there that you'll be teaching. - Comparatively, if you're going into a clear party, a specific phase-practice party or heaven forbid even a roulette party then there's less of an inclination to 'teach' and more often than not in these latter cases it is done so in an unsolicited fashion with the only concern to speed up the roulette which won't necessarily happen.

To summarise that last point. There's a very big difference in going into an encounter or a piece of content where mutual learning is the intention is entirely different from casually taking a stroll into a piece of content where that implication isn't necessarily expected. In case it was lost on you; this was my point all along. If you're going to teach, commit to it and only do so when you went into the group with the intention of doing so or where said teaching is solicited. If it is not solicited or if you didn't go into the content with the expectation then don't bother at all because ultimately you're giving unsolicited advice in order to benefit your run, which as per the previous argument isn't always going to be an immediate outcome.

Yes my second point focused on how it works because all of those are still embedded even in informal teaching, so if you want to go ahead and undermine it on the premise then it's bordering comedic for me. So let me try this using another approach:

If you explain a mechanic to a person several times and they still fail to understand the mechanic then the probability is; how you're presenting them with that information likely isn't going to work - Yet some people, or many actually will leap to the conclusion that their approach was infallible and thus the only logical conclusion is that they're utterly inept. Try restructuring your advice, or better yet create a little GIF or even go on MS paint and attempt to illustrate the mechanic visually as opposed to writing a wall of descriptive text, upload it to imgur and paste it in the chat. This still underpins how effectively you communicate whether that be in a formal teaching setting or whether you're just teaching someone a mechanic over Discord.

You absolutely don't need a college diploma, no. But if you want to actually be effective in your practice then I would expect you to come at me with something a little better than "It's ez, anyone can do it" - All this is doing is setting the tone that you're stagnating. - Let me be clear here and summarise all of this as simply as possible; If you can't adequately communicate your information then regardless of how much information you have it is going to be a completely pointless because all of it will be lost on the recipient. Regardless of whether you're communicate the Pythagorean theorem, or whether you're teaching Fundamental Synergy, the same still applies. If you can't communicate it? Meaningless. This is why bad teachers exist and this is also why bad guides exist - Because they fail to convey the information properly.

[Zsolen]

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Please stop typing out multiple paragraphs and being passive aggressive the entire time, while making no actual point with them. You are not being honest, and it shows.

Why are you randomly talking about clear parties? In what clear party are people face tanking?

You are also making up scenarios I was never in and do not apply to the face tank scenario I gave.

[Kaurhz]

Please stop typing out multiple paragraphs and being passive aggressive the entire time, while making no actual point with them. You are not being honest, and it shows.

Why are you randomly talking about clear parties? In what clear party are people face tanking?

You are also making up scenarios I was never in and do not apply to the face tank scenario I gave.

If you think that constitutes as passive aggressive then you ought to rethink how soft your skin is, especially taking into account you yourself first elected to attempt to undermine my understanding or knowing on the difficulty, ease or impact of informal teaching, I just responded in kind and presented several scenarios to help reinforce the point I was making If anything I'm just responding in a blunt and straightforward manner. If you can't respond with a rebuttal and supporting it with examples, be it native to your original point or with several very common and realistic applicable examples, then simply don't respond. Furthermore, points were included within them, you just elected to ignore them because you can't refute them, simple as.

I mentioned them to reinforce the points I was making, just as you were when you elected to mention about people face tanking. But if you want to use that example then it's hardly about adaptability and just simply an unwillingness to learn because they didn't go in with that expectancy. Linking back to another poster wherein it is not suitable to teach because the environment or expectation wasn't established in advanced. I get it you try and want to be helpful but simply read the room and grasp whether they're open to the idea.

No they apply to the point I was making, you know, much like your scenario of face tanking. You used that as an example in order to attempt to support your point. Not unlike what I was doing. Don't attempt to undermine the examples as being made-up when they're fairly common-place in itself. Why do you think some people just aren't inclined to learn or present an aggressive stance when you try to 'teach' - Because that expectation wasn't established beforehand. - The fact people on this forum are very much of the belief that people on this game can't handle criticism of their ability nor playstyle (whether aggressively, or empathetically done) just supports this. This is why it's just as important in informal teaching as to what it is in formal teaching for the vast majority of people.

[Brownondorf]

FF14 is a sandbox MMO, it's designed for EVERYONE. There's content for all skill level.
But the truth is simply that there's a massive amount of unskilled and stubborn player in the game. And a lot of white knights and enablers.
So many people can't to their rotation, can't read their skills, can't dodge anything, the cure1 bots, the "you pull you tank" players, the NOdps Sages... and so many people that defend that "bUt iTs fInE wE cAn ClEAr tHe CoNtent AnYWay DoNt Be tOXic bla bla bla"
There's a difference between being a toxic elitist and expecting people to play at a decent level by the time they reach the lvl90 dungeon...
Do you really think it's ok to do expert roulette in 30+ minutes because the healer is spamming cure 1, the tank is doing small pulls and the dps only know to do their 1-2-3 combo when it's easily beatable in less than 20 minutes by playing at a decent level?
Why there so much people ok with this is beyond me...

[Zsolen]

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The soft skin comment is passive aggressive also. It's doesn't matter if I can handle it or not. There is no excuse for your behavior. Nothing you have said was straight forward. All you did was hide behind words. I was the only one being forward in my responses.

You can't fool someone actually trained in this sort of thing. It's pretty clear you either are not or completely forgot.

The example of a face tank was something I personally experienced, and I was very considerate about it. You are giving examples and applying those examples to me, which is completely unfair as they do not apply to me. Here is an example of something that does happen: There was one player that died a lot in one of the ShB 24 mans. I was healing, and they asked not to be rezzed and claimed that they were bad (meaning they didn't deserve the mana used on them). I told them I was still willing to rez and not to worry about dying more. I even explained a few things. They started to learn some of the mechanics. They still failed some of the latter mechanics on the last boss, but they kept at it from then on. The whole party was telling them how proud they were at the end of the raid for sticking it out and being a team player. But I guess that's just toxic behavior to you.

You keep acting like my advice falls on deaf ears. It often doesn't. MMOS are meant to be cooperative. If you are unwilling, play something else. This goes more so for people that intentionally throw PvP matches and AFK. You can teach people in it but the ones that don't try and don't care are very toxic, which was my original point. What goal post will you move next? I wonder.