Does the average XIV player know how to play their jobs?

[RobynDaBank]

Yes, no, maybe? I don't know, can you repeat that question?

[jameseoakes]

Yeh. Typical forum take. Either live on the Balance discord or you're a filthy casual. lol

I don't really get where your going with that, in my experience most average players play fine and are probably content with how they play.

[TaleraRistain]

The average casual player is never going to go into content that requires learning any of that so why have the devs waste resources on having the game show them something they won't use?

And playing correctly or badly or anywhere in between is subjective. The requirements of a given group are unique to that group. Sometimes people will need to adjust their playstyle to be what their group needs from them, whatever that might be. Sometimes that's ultra focused on rotations and numbers. Sometimes it's being willing to be more laid back and not stress if things get spicy or there's a wipe.

Most people I encounter in roulettes just want to get through the run and are willing to work together for that purpose and things go just fine.

[Iyrnthota]

The average casual player is never going to go into content that requires learning any of that so why have the devs waste resources on having the game show them something they won't use?

Probably not your intention, but this comes across as very "why would the devs spend resources telling people how to use the content they spent resources creating"

[Jeeqbit]

No, people don't typically know how to play their jobs. That was, until SE started making them easy and braindead.

Let me give you some examples. New players were definitely struggling to keep up things like Enochian, Blood of the Dragon, Greased Lightning and other things, so they were made traits to help average players.

Things that were logical to press in your rotation, did not always highlight yellow previously, so this has since been improved on many jobs.

It used to be possible to overwrite things easier. Dancer has the greatest example here, where pressing Flourish would overwrite all of your procs. It doesn't do that anymore, because the Flourish version of the procs use a different buff now.

It used to be possible to mess up Dragoon's GCD rotation a lot because of things like Heavy Thrust interrupting the combo while also being required to keep damage up, so the potency got reduced until it was finally removed. I think I remember Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust being a little easier to mess up as well.

Then there are tanks, where you used to either use tank stance (20% reduction to your damage dealt) 100% of the time, or you would use your DPS stance 100% of the time (no 20% reduction to damage dealt, plus extra damage dealt from that stance).

The point is, average players used to play really poorly. They don't play nearly as poorly now, because it's hard to do so, because of SE's attention to this issue. But do they still manage to play poorly? Yes.

They still manage it by standing in things and dying, not knowing mechanics or becoming worried, not having good hud layouts, keybinds and settings such as Legacy. They still get distracted by an aoe enough to restart their combo from the beginning without finishing it, or to not attack at all while figuring out what is going on. They still don't notice infrequent abilities come off cooldown, such as buffs or attacks on a 30, 60 or 120s cooldown. They still play alt jobs they are not used to in roulettes.

[Jaquan]

Hard to answer your question when you don't define what "Average" means in the context of the question as well as not realy explain what do you mean by "knowing how to play their job". Do you mean "Understanding how the class works and applying basic concepts" or do you mean "Knowing fully optimized rotations that yield best results and applying them regardless of complications"? Major difference between the two.

[Avoidy]

I don't think so. For a while it was so bad that I just stopped even doing my dailies (which are like the easiest most minimal concentration required content; yet DF still found a way to make this miserable) unless I could find friends to do it with. Tanks who don't aoe, healers who don't use their damage dealing spells, ice mages, rdms who hardcast their long-cast spells, smns who don't summon and just spam ruin at level 90, nins who wear the bunny hat like it's a glam, dncs who need to be reminded to partner someone and then don't even use standard step, songless bards; I've seen so much shit. Even when I dipped a pinky into EX's for the first time in shadowbringers, I had people who needed to be taught, at cap, what arms length was and what it did; I even got to witness a 30% enrage because the damage was just nonexistent and even with markers, a safety dorito, voip callouts, and doing the same clock positionings a dozen times people still couldn't just go to their proper positions and kept wiping us to the same scripted bullshit mechanics. idk dude, I'm not like a gamer god or anything but I have really low expectations when I do stuff with randoms because half the time there'll be at least 1 dude who makes you wonder how the hell he made it to cap because he's playing like he's actually blind irl; and in teams of 8, sometimes you'll have several people like this who just stonewall your progress for hours. I kinda stopped healing because I was sick of cleaning it up too.

I don't even think making the jobs easier to play has helped in this. SE lowered the bar, and a lot of people just sank lower with it somehow. Not even sure how it's possible, but again, I've seen enough shit to make me wonder.

[Carin-Eri]

Strong opinion time - and not really used to saying something like this..... but really - who cares?

I mean, some forumites here quite frequently express the opinion that they think the game is too easy and make claims about "practically falling asleep" when playing the more difficult content. So where is the issue here? If you're that good - that sure of yourself, why does the performance of another player even matter to you?

Seriously - if you're going to express the opinion that the game fails to deliver in terms of hard content, why is compensating for someone who "can't play their job" such a big deal?

[Iyrnthota]

Strong opinion time - and not really used to saying something like this..... but really - who cares?

I mean, some forumites here quite frequently express the opinion that they think the game is too easy and make claims about "practically falling asleep" when playing the more difficult content. So where is the issue here? If you're that good - that sure of yourself, why does the performance of another player even matter to you?

Seriously - if you're going to express the opinion that the game fails to deliver in terms of hard content, why is compensating for someone who "can't play their job" such a big deal?

I ain't a high end player by any means, but a lot of my frustration can come down to how much one bad player can hold up an instance.

For example, I joined an in progress run of Dead Ends as a BLM not that long ago. The poor healer was having so much trouble that they just couldn't keep themselves alive on the last boss, and so we kept wiping.

We managed to clear, but it was with about 2 minutes left on the instance timer (not an exaggeration). I danger dorito'd myself and they followed me around.

They were super apologetic and were making a genuine effort, I don't hold any bad feelings for them, but it's a good example of how one person not playing up to snuff can really affect even what is considered the low difficulty content.

[PintyMcEars]

I don't think so. For a while it was so bad that I just stopped even doing my dailies (which are like the easiest most minimal concentration required content; yet DF still found a way to make this miserable) unless I could find friends to do it with. Tanks who don't aoe, healers who don't use their damage dealing spells, ice mages, rdms who hardcast their long-cast spells, smns who don't summon and just spam ruin at level 90, nins who wear the bunny hat like it's a glam, dncs who need to be reminded to partner someone and then don't even use standard step, songless bards; I've seen so much shit. Even when I dipped a pinky into EX's for the first time in shadowbringers, I had people who needed to be taught, at cap, what arms length was and what it did; I even got to witness a 30% enrage because the damage was just nonexistent and even with markers, a safety dorito, voip callouts, and doing the same clock positionings a dozen times people still couldn't just go to their proper positions and kept wiping us to the same scripted bullshit mechanics. idk dude, I'm not like a gamer god or anything but I have really low expectations when I do stuff with randoms because half the time there'll be at least 1 dude who makes you wonder how the hell he made it to cap because he's playing like he's actually blind irl; and in teams of 8, sometimes you'll have several people like this who just stonewall your progress for hours. I kinda stopped healing because I was sick of cleaning it up too.

I don't even think making the jobs easier to play has helped in this. SE lowered the bar, and a lot of people just sank lower with it somehow. Not even sure how it's possible, but again, I've seen enough shit to make me wonder.

I pretty much never see any of what you mention...interesting