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

[Supersnow845]

I made no assumption. You said it yourself in your post.

I said if you are spamming cure 1 in kistis hyperboa that I think you have no idea how to play the game, not that I’d tell you in game that you suck at healing

But also how did you get to kistis hyperboa believing that cure 1 spamming is the optimal way to play

[hagare]

I said if you are spamming cure 1 in kistis hyperboa that I think you have no idea how to play the game, not that I’d tell you in game that you suck at healing

But also how did you get to kistis hyperboa believing that cure 1 spamming is the optimal way to play

Where in my quoted post did you say that?

[Supersnow845]

Where in my quoted post did you say that?

I mean that comes back to the idea of how much should you need to sugarcoat explanations of absolutely fundamental topics

If someone is spamming cure 1 there is only so many nice ways to tell them that they have no idea how to to play the game

Is my post you quoted, I never once said that I would say in game they suck at healing, at most I said they have no idea how to play the game which if you are cure 1 spamming in kistis hyperboa I stand by

[hagare]

I mean that comes back to the idea of how much should you need to sugarcoat explanations of absolutely fundamental topics

If someone is spamming cure 1 there is only so many nice ways to tell them that they have no idea how to to play the game

Is my post you quoted, I never once said that I would say in game they suck at healing, at most I said they have no idea how to play the game which if you are cure 1 spamming in kistis hyperboa I stand by

Sureeeeeeeeeee.
I guess that's why you posted what you posted.

[Supersnow845]

Sureeeeeeeeeee.
I guess that's why you posted what you posted.

Yep, I posted what I posted, maybe next time read the post you quote before you just pretend like I said something completely different, almost as much as that other poster who apparently read the same post and said I was going on screaming tirades at innocent sprouts

[LeonKeyh]

1/2:


I feel like people are seeing this as some sort of way to kick or insult sprouts that aren't playing well but that's not the case at all.

Most games have an overall difficulty curve that plays well with mechanisms that teach you how to play (some of those are explicit like tutorials, others are implicit like bosses/enemies that require that you use a certain ability to defeat).

A great game will marry the explicit/implicit tutorials with the difficulty curve to foster the growth/mastery of the player. This is not one of those games unfortunately. The first and last explicit tutorial for handling yourself in group content is the Hall of the Novice. While there are various implicit tutorials with game mechanisms within boss fights growing more and more complex, there are a few issues with it:

1. There are no implicit or explicit tutorials teaching someone how to play their job, or rather, there are but there are also essentially ways to "skip" them. Solo duties sort of fill the role of implicit tutorials to teach you your job. It "tests" you to see if you understand your job well enough. The problem? "Easy" and "Very Easy" options for solo duties. After 1 failure it "gives up" on you as the player and lets you take the easy (or very easy) way out.

2. Group content is under tuned to the point where 2 people (hell, 1 in some cases) could carry the entire group. As hinted at in my first point, FAILING in video games triggers you as a player to rethink what you've been doing and ultimately improve. With group content being so easy, you can continuously fail without necessarily realizing it because you're continuing to progress in the game. If a really casual player never fails, they're never going to sit and rethink how they've been playing. Thus, the difficulty actually perpetuates "bare minimum" gameplay from players. People complained about the ability to do trusts, but Dungeons with trusts FORCE you to actually learn boss mechanisms. I have known people in NN to ask if someone can run them through a dungeon because they can't complete it with Trusts.

3. There is a lack of explicit tutorials in later levels. Implicit tutorials are great for simple stuff (i.e. this is a knockback, you'll want to be near the center; this is bad, don't step in it) but for complex ideas like group synergies and job rotations, explicit tutorials would do a much better job. IMO, they should have a job-based tutorial at 50/60/70/80/90 that goes through and teaches you how your abilities interact with each other and then TESTS you to make sure you understand it. Also, Hall of the Novice was a good idea (not executed too great, but still) and I think that it could be cleaned up and augmented with Hall of the Intermediate, Hall of the Advanced, Hall of the Master, etc to go over various group/role dynamic things that people likely don't understand (Addle/Feint, Group mitigation buffs, Tank mitigation buffs, etc, etc)

[LeonKeyh]

2/2:


IMO, the fact that players get as far as they do without knowing/understanding the game is MORE of a failure of the game than the player (the player isn't innocent, but the game should do a better job). Without the game being there to help foster player skill and improvement, the community would need to step in to do so.

The problem is the postmodernist hate of criticism. There's ultimately 3 issues with players that make this very difficult to overcome:

1. Players believe that advice is criticism and believe that criticism is an insult of how they play. This causes people to shut down when given advice and just see the person giving it as an "elitist"

2. Players believe that failure is some big deal. While this isn't an issue with the more difficult content, players in "normal" content seem to believe that failure is some horrible thing, and that's why normal content is so under tuned. It's also why people are so against wall 2 wall pulling because "What if we wipe?" You're not going to die in real life, you respawn and go again.

3. Players don't want to improve, they don't want to put effort in, they just want to jump in and "have fun." The problem is that you're in a game with other people and there's an expectation for you to perform for those other people. You can't leech.

[UkcsAlias]

If someone is spamming cure 1 there is only so many nice ways to tell them that they have no idea how to to play the game

The problem is at multiple parts here.

- If you can still easily beat the content, it essentialy didnt matter much that you spammed cure 1. You have beaten it quickly which is still the most important measurement. (and before you think. but you could have used cure 2. plenty of times you could have used panic heals to enable more dps. but you saved these instead. while a smaller dps loss, its still a loss. and therefor a similar argument)
- For any other class, abilities were either useless from the start, or they improved. Cure 1 never improved far enough to be worth it. Its an ability that becomes useless later on. This fails a very basic design aspect in which every tool you have should have its use. (even though sleep is generaly useless, it still has its feature to be able to reduce aggro by disabling a target from the fight for a moment. which is mostly just for msq though)
- Freecure promotes cure 1 usage above cure 2 usage. It gives players false information on the proper playstyle.
- Other abilities also upgrade on the WHM, yet cure 1 doesnt, which again is an indication that its usefull on its own.

Cure 1 is an abomination in its current style. And while some suggest removing it, i personaly would still prefer to see a diffirent upgrade to it. Just so there is diffirences in casting the 2 (and therefor have variety in casting there. otherwise cure 2 just becomes the new stone, but then for healing).

(also, i never use cure 1 when cure 2 is available)

[Supersnow845]

The problem is at multiple parts here.

- If you can still easily beat the content, it essentialy didnt matter much that you spammed cure 1. You have beaten it quickly which is still the most important measurement. (and before you think. but you could have used cure 2. plenty of times you could have used panic heals to enable more dps. but you saved these instead. while a smaller dps loss, its still a loss. and therefor a similar argument)
- For any other class, abilities were either useless from the start, or they improved. Cure 1 never improved far enough to be worth it. Its an ability that becomes useless later on. This fails a very basic design aspect in which every tool you have should have its use. (even though sleep is generaly useless, it still has its feature to be able to reduce aggro by disabling a target from the fight for a moment. which is mostly just for msq though)
- Freecure promotes cure 1 usage above cure 2 usage. It gives players false information on the proper playstyle.
- Other abilities also upgrade on the WHM, yet cure 1 doesnt, which again is an indication that its usefull on its own.

Cure 1 is an abomination in its current style. And while some suggest removing it, i personaly would still prefer to see a diffirent upgrade to it. Just so there is diffirences in casting the 2 (and therefor have variety in casting there. otherwise cure 2 just becomes the new stone, but then for healing).

(also, i never use cure 1 when cure 2 is available)

I don’t deny cure 1 is badly designed but that isn’t really the problem here, the problem is if you can sit in a high level dungeon and see every skill you have access to as a WHM and still think cure 1 spam is the correct way to engage with the content then it’s not cure 1’s bad design that is the problem here

[BaconBits]

Me, staring at the Dragoon that's been spamming raw, uncomboed Chaos Thrust into Sonic Thrust for the entire duty, knowing full well if I say anything it's a 50/50 chance the party will either call me a sweaty tryhard and give me the boot, or get rid of the Goon that seemingly has never read a tooltip in their life.