We Need to Start Expecting Mid-Level Sprouts to Play Better

[Gararr]

Nope I also have the option of playing with competent friends, so I don't have to play with low skilled people that take away my enjoyment of the game, and no offense but you sound like one those.

I hate the "use the trusts" response because for any skilled player trusts are objectively aweful. They literally do LESS damage if you perform your job.

Trusts aren't for skilled players. They're there for story, immersion, lore and when you want to play alone. If SE makes them scale to the skill of the player instead of dragging the player down it might be possible to see more use in them.

[Iustitia-sama]

I hate the "use the trusts" response because for any skilled player trusts are objectively aweful. They literally do LESS damage if you perform your job.

Trusts aren't for skilled players. They're there for story, immersion, lore and when you want to play alone. If SE makes them scale to the skill of the player instead of dragging the player down it might be possible to see more use in them.

To be honest sometimes using trusts is quicker than with actual players that don't know how to press buttons, but I only use them for the first time doing the dungeon if my friends aren't online. I still think that skill based matchmaking is a good thing, as it means lower skilled players will have to learn how to play rather than getting carried, and if you don't want to learn to play then 30+ min dungeons are the consequences of your own actions.
Another thing is that mentors will actually have the job of mentoring as they will be put in lower skilled matchmaking, so they can, you know, actually mentor people. I don't mean in just mentor roulette, as long as you wear the crown you will have mentor matchmaking.

[DPZ2]

I still think that skill based matchmaking is a good thing, as it means lower skilled players will have to learn how to play rather than getting carried, and if you don't want to learn to play then 30+ min dungeons are the consequences of your own actions.

MMR is great for competitive play. This game has some level of competitive play, and it might make sense there.

The remainder of the game (outside of PvP) is not competitive, and the measures one would require in order to determine 'skill' do not exist.

I expect that your judgement of whether a player has 'learned how to play rather than getting carried' is fairly subjective. It's one of the problems that highly skilled video gamers have to live with in any MMO that does not cater exclusively to them. (Which is most MMOs. There isn't enough money to be made by catering exclusively to high-end combat skilled players. The All-PvP-All-the-Time MMOs probably come closest.)

[Iustitia-sama]

MMR is great for competitive play. This game has some level of competitive play, and it might make sense there.

The remainder of the game (outside of PvP) is not competitive, and the measures one would require in order to determine 'skill' do not exist.

I expect that your judgement of whether a player has 'learned how to play rather than getting carried' is fairly subjective. It's one of the problems that highly skilled video gamers have to live with in any MMO that does not cater exclusively to them. (Which is most MMOs. There isn't enough money to be made by catering exclusively to high-end combat skilled players. The All-PvP-All-the-Time MMOs probably come closest.)

Who mentioned being competitive? skill based matchmaking doesn't have to be for competitive modes and it would all be under the hood so you won't be epeen measuring ingame, that's the domain of fflogs. This would be just for people of similar skill level playing with eachother and not being frustrated by low skilled/bad/lazy players and those said players won't be bothered and frustrated by getting criticized by higherskilled players. Don't know why people would be against it unless you're bad and want to be carried through stuff.
All the time I see people whine that they got kicked for being bad or not playing their class properly and the other side for having to play with those people, skillbased matchmaking would alleviate those kind of complaints and we all get to play with people who want to play in a similar fashion, don't know why people would be against it.

[DPZ2]

Who mentioned being competitive? skill based matchmaking doesn't have to be for competitive modes

MMR (matchmaking ranking), also known relatively loosely as 'skill based matchmaking', is the domain of competitive gaming, where you don't play with the heavy hitters until you can prove you deserve to be there. League of Legends is a prime example of a game that leans heavily on MMR.

In MMORPGs, you'll find some simple measure of MMR in competitive PvP. Other leaderboards in an MMORPG are generally the result of 'time spent in game' rather than skill level. There's a list of 'skill based' MMORPG games out there (although I'd call them "partially influenced by concepts of a skill-based system").

Would I be against such a thing in an MMORPG? Not particularly. It's there already in some games with PvP elements. Would it work for PvE? It's easy to say "skill based", but what skills are we measuring here?

What "skills" would you be looking for that are not already available to you from third-party sites? Considering the fact that damage meters will never be available in-game, what criteria would you use to determine if you are 'gold' or 'platinum' or 'diamond' level worthy? I know that the only criteria currently used is "did you complete the objective within the time limit assigned?".

[Yeastyloins]

MMR (matchmaking ranking), also known relatively loosely as 'skill based matchmaking', is the domain of competitive gaming, where you don't play with the heavy hitters until you can prove you deserve to be there. League of Legends is a prime example of a game that leans heavily on MMR.

In MMORPGs, you'll find some simple measure of MMR in competitive PvP. Other leaderboards in an MMORPG are generally the result of 'time spent in game' rather than skill level. There's a list of 'skill based' MMORPG games out there (although I'd call them "partially influenced by concepts of a skill-based system").

Would I be against such a thing in an MMORPG? Not particularly. It's there already in some games with PvP elements. Would it work for PvE? It's easy to say "skill based", but what skills are we measuring here?

What "skills" would you be looking for that are not already available to you from third-party sites? Considering the fact that damage meters will never be available in-game, what criteria would you use to determine if you are 'gold' or 'platinum' or 'diamond' level worthy? I know that the only criteria currently used is "did you complete the objective within the time limit assigned?".

The thing is that that SE could calculate DPS in a run, true healing done (not overhealing), overhealing, damage taken, damage mitigated themselves, and time completed. They could take all of that information, compare it other players internally, give you ranking WITHOUT assigning a percentile rank or showing the player the actual number of DPS/True HPS/Overhealing/Damage Mit/Damage Taken which is fundamentally what logs are giving you when you look at somebody's parse in a fight. You just rank players in those categories as Poor, Good, Great and show the player but not the party that information except the ranking for completion time. Make an explicit rule in the ToS against asking players about their ranking unless they share that information with harassment rules in effect. People who get a great ranking get 1k extra gil added to their reward per category, or something that is conceivable small but adds up overtime.

Guess what happens next. Mr. Tank who gets a poor for damage mitigation goes "why do I keep getting poor rankings for mit?". He then goes looks up about damage mit techs and begins to understand that not only it will improve his rankings but it makes him a more enjoyable person to play with, which makes him more comfortable playing tank. The healer that gets a poor ranking in overhealing despite the party living goes "why do i keep getting this?" looks stuff up means to heal a bit more efficiently which gives them time to play around with using their "dps kit" (lmao). The DPS who gets poor damage ranks might check something to learn the importance of positionals, when to use their AoE rotation.

[Iustitia-sama]

The thing is that that SE could calculate DPS in a run, true healing done (not overhealing), overhealing, damage taken, damage mitigated themselves, and time completed. They could take all of that information, compare it other players internally, give you ranking WITHOUT assigning a percentile rank or showing the player the actual number of DPS/True HPS/Overhealing/Damage Mit/Damage Taken which is fundamentally what logs are giving you when you look at somebody's parse in a fight. You just rank players in those categories as Poor, Good, Great and show the player but not the party that information except the ranking for completion time. Make an explicit rule in the ToS against asking players about their ranking unless they share that information with harassment rules in effect. People who get a great ranking get 1k extra gil added to their reward per category, or something that is conceivable small but adds up overtime.

Guess what happens next. Mr. Tank who gets a poor for damage mitigation goes "why do I keep getting poor rankings for mit?". He then goes looks up about damage mit techs and begins to understand that not only it will improve his rankings but it makes him a more enjoyable person to play with, which makes him more comfortable playing tank. The healer that gets a poor ranking in overhealing despite the party living goes "why do i keep getting this?" looks stuff up means to heal a bit more efficiently which gives them time to play around with using their "dps kit" (lmao). The DPS who gets poor damage ranks might check something to learn the importance of positionals, when to use their AoE rotation.

I personally would choose against giving players any info on it at all, as people cannot be trusted with that info ingame, and we already have fflogs for finding out precisely how we are doing.

[Bukachu]

The thing is that that SE could calculate DPS in a run, true healing done (not overhealing), overhealing, damage taken, damage mitigated themselves, and time completed. They could take all of that information, compare it other players internally, give you ranking WITHOUT assigning a percentile rank or showing the player the actual number of DPS/True HPS/Overhealing/Damage Mit/Damage Taken which is fundamentally what logs are giving you when you look at somebody's parse in a fight. You just rank players in those categories as Poor, Good, Great and show the player but not the party that information except the ranking for completion time. Make an explicit rule in the ToS against asking players about their ranking unless they share that information with harassment rules in effect. People who get a great ranking get 1k extra gil added to their reward per category, or something that is conceivable small but adds up overtime.

Guess what happens next. Mr. Tank who gets a poor for damage mitigation goes "why do I keep getting poor rankings for mit?". He then goes looks up about damage mit techs and begins to understand that not only it will improve his rankings but it makes him a more enjoyable person to play with, which makes him more comfortable playing tank. The healer that gets a poor ranking in overhealing despite the party living goes "why do i keep getting this?" looks stuff up means to heal a bit more efficiently which gives them time to play around with using their "dps kit" (lmao). The DPS who gets poor damage ranks might check something to learn the importance of positionals, when to use their AoE rotation.

SE could calculate DPS in a run but, that means 0.

If tank pulls w2w, your DPS will be different, compared to if tank pulls 1,2,3 packs.

like, DPS is such an irrelevant number in dungeons. not to mention certain classes will do more DPS in different scenarios.

and dont forget gear exists, which will change your DPS obviously.

even so, lets say you segregate people by "their dps done", what about healers?

Like yeah, for logs DPS does work to a certain degree, but main purpose of logs was never the parse, its to read the fight, hence why healer logs are quiet literally irrelevant. because 1. in order to "heal" a lot, people need to take damage a lot, which ultimately makes them worse, so ultimately, the more you heal, the worse your group is LOL.

And for tanks, sure you can measure damage taken/damage mitigated, but less you pull, less damage you'll take. you could pull one pack at a time, use all your mitigation, pull as slowly as possible, maybe even chill between packs until all your mitigation is up again.
+ kitting would mean you take less damage, while DPS would do less DPS due to adds moving.
and 99 other factors that I could list for either role, and aside from the fact that ranking for each role means too little, there's also a massive conflict of interest between each role.

[Iustitia-sama]

MMR (matchmaking ranking), also known relatively loosely as 'skill based matchmaking', is the domain of competitive gaming, where you don't play with the heavy hitters until you can prove you deserve to be there. League of Legends is a prime example of a game that leans heavily on MMR.

In MMORPGs, you'll find some simple measure of MMR in competitive PvP. Other leaderboards in an MMORPG are generally the result of 'time spent in game' rather than skill level. There's a list of 'skill based' MMORPG games out there (although I'd call them "partially influenced by concepts of a skill-based system").

Would I be against such a thing in an MMORPG? Not particularly. It's there already in some games with PvP elements. Would it work for PvE? It's easy to say "skill based", but what skills are we measuring here?

What "skills" would you be looking for that are not already available to you from third-party sites? Considering the fact that damage meters will never be available in-game, what criteria would you use to determine if you are 'gold' or 'platinum' or 'diamond' level worthy? I know that the only criteria currently used is "did you complete the objective within the time limit assigned?".

No where did I say to add damage meters ingame or give players viewable skill based ranking, it would be all internal, skillbased matchmaking doesn't have to be competitive. All the devs have to do is keep it all under the hood where they can see but players cant see, not exactly hard.

[DPZ2]

The thing is that that SE could calculate DPS in a run, true healing done (not overhealing), overhealing, damage taken, damage mitigated themselves, and time completed. They could take all of that information, compare it other players internally, give you ranking WITHOUT assigning a percentile rank or showing the player the actual number of DPS/True HPS/Overhealing/Damage Mit/Damage Taken which is fundamentally what logs are giving you when you look at somebody's parse in a fight.

Where do you get the idea that SE actually records this data for every single dungeon or raid instance for every single player for analysis? The data you see from third party parsers is externally recorded by a non-supported parser and manually uploaded to a non-supported website for analysis. The game itself will not support parsers, so why would they deliberately add an under-the-covers one in?

Forget personal 'rankings' reported 'only to the player'. The answer from the game's Producer is an indirect, but polite form of "No" in Japanese. That ship sailed 10 years ago, and the call and response for something like that is a semi-annual event.