Quote Originally Posted by Exani View Post
I have over 1500 hours in this game and I think I can count on one hand every time I've encountered someone complaining about subpar play in roulette/duty finder content. Most people dont care if you die 5 times during a dungeon run since the dungeon is still clearable without much issue.
I have two comments about this.

My first comment is anecdotal, and it's that since Dawntrail released, I've landed in 3 parties for normal content where players have been needlessly critical of others' performance. As a fairly skilled player, that's way more than I normally see, especially in such a short time. It makes me wonder if there's some sort of phenomenon where content being new or an expansion just releasing results in an uptick in negative behavior or something. I have no conclusions, but it's an observation that has me thinking.


My second comment is about the probability of seeing criticism in FF14 groups, which will hopefully address your main point. For any player to see criticism occur in their group, they must be in a group where two events simultaneously occur:
- Event A: there is a player who is willing to criticize an unskilled player
- Event B: there is an unskilled player

The probability of two events occurring simultaneously is:
(Probability of Event A) x (Probability of Event B)
Note that both of these probabilities are less than or equal to 100%, meaning that in most cases when multiplied they result in an even smaller probability. This is why the probability of any event happening will always be greater than the probability of that same event occurring alongside another event (provided that the "another event" has a probability other than 100%).

So if you're a skilled player, the probability that you see a player be criticized is:
(Probability of Event A) x (Probability of Event B)
But if you're an unskilled player, the probability that you see a player be criticized is:
(Probability of Event A)
Why? Because as an unskilled player, the likelihood of your being in a group with an unskilled player is 100%, allowing us to simplify the equation.

All of which is to say: the probability that unskilled players end up in groups where criticism occurs is multiplicatively greater than that of skilled players, meaning they will experience it far more often. And it doesn't even have to happen most of the time to have an impact on players; it just has to occur often enough.

As a final note, this is in no way meant to be a comprehensive model of all the factors involved; you could write an entire thesis on the true complexity of this topic. But I hope that by shining a light on this one specific part of the probability at work, it helps us better understand one particular aspect of why our experiences can differ from those of others.