Apparently trying to help is being rude

[Shiwayari]

Giving some advice is one thing but when he tells you "but thank you for the advice" and you reply by saying "Then you should choose another job"... well what part of that sentence was giving advice or being constructive? As others have said, I can understand where he was coming from after, cause that line comes across as condescending and rude.

If you can't look at that and see why he/she may have felt that way I don't know what else to tell you.

I see that the problem was with that phrase, I agree that sounded rude.
He said 'thank you, but no'. So I stopped giving him advice about BLM.

However, I tried to bring the point across that playing with that attidude is not very welcome in a game where you work together with other people, hence "You should choose another job". I do not think that argument was wrong, it was worded in a bad way, which came across as rude. I wouldn't take that comment and be very pleased either. But this is all about how one intreprets how the language is meant to sound.

I'm also not the perfect player and have had others give me advice, some lines which I also intrepreted as "rude". Beyond that, I even had somehow swear and leash out at me for being stupid and ignorant and doing my job completely wrong. And no, I did not feel the need to "leash back" at him. I tried to explain why I did so and what points I agreed I wasn't doing right and what I think I was doing right.

If the best someone can come up with is *Insult* *quickly leaves instance* leaving the other person behind with the worst kind of feeling just to feel satisfied, that person either hopefully had a bad day, or should not be playing a game like this.


If the BLM in question is reading this, I'm sorry for choosing this wording, I was not trying to be rude, I hope you at least understand the point I wanted to make. And please, next time try being a bit more civil about it.

[Miitan]

Tbh you come across as a dick to me too in that conversation.

The best way to tell someone they're "doing it wrong" is to start with something like

"Do you mind if I give you some tips to maximise your dps?" or "Can I give you some constructive feedback on your rotation?"

People are much more likely to accept help if they see it as help rather than someone making fun of them. If they say no, then screw them since it's DF and you'll probably never see them again. If they say yes then you can help make a player better with your advice.

[Fyce]

Why is everyone defending the BLM here?
The first thing that BLM said was basically "No, I'm bad and I want to remain bad".
"But ty for the advice" can very much be seen as sarcasm (in which case, it means "shut up dude I play like I want").

When you play as a BLM, YOU KNOW what Fire III does. It's one of the most basic thing to understand about the job. So, when you come across someone who's so bad to the point that he doesn't understand how the basics of his class works, most people won't obviously have the patience to say "Awwww, let me help you with all my love <3<3<3"... especially when the bad player answer with "no thanks".

Keep in mind that, they were doing end game content. At that point, you cannot afford to refuses some advice, especially for something like that. Even if said advice is given to you by a "you should read your skills again".

The correct way to react was "Why should I, mind to explain?", not "Shut up, I play the way I want".

[Elazu]

This is exactly why I stopped giving advice to people who have no idea wtf they're doing.

[Demeos]

So I just ran Halatali HM, and noticed after a while that the Blackmage's rotation was wrong, so I tried to be helpful
and give some advice. I did not bring it up the first time I saw it, because mistakes happens, but I did after I
noticed him doing the same thing every pull. Being {Fire} {Fire} {Fire} to attain Astral Fire III instead of starting
with {Fire III}. This leads to a (roughly approximated) decrease of 30-40% of potential dps.

Because I'm not doing this the first time, and I know noone wants to wait for me standing around while typing a wall of
text explaining the BLM rotation, I simply suggested him to read his skill descriptions again. Short while after, I was
being called a dick by him and the tank. I was trying to be helpful and did not use any insulting words, nor did I be
rude to him not for doing what I suggested.

I've done this multiple times, especially when I saw wrong BLM rotations, because the cast timer is easy to see and
analyze and also because BLM is a job i play frequently.
I've had a few players actually be grateful for this, but most of the time there is either no response, after which I
simply don't persuade, or this utterly rude reaction for no reason other than "Because I'm right."

Chatlog:


I cut the first line off a bit too much, for the record, I said
"You should reread your skills <Blm's name>"

Not censored = me
Black = BLM
Blue = Tank
Green = Healer


This was a case of "I play how I want" and to anyone else doing that, fine, if you want to do that, do that. But
please stay out of any content that involves playing with other players, because >knowingly< using your job
wrong is being rude to all other players in your group.
Practice is one thing, I don't care if someone is doing bad because they need practice, I simply give advice, and let
them try, or ask questions, or even disagree with my suggestions. Then we can discuss about it, or not if noone wants
to take the time to do so. This is all fine with me.

What I absolutely cannot stand however, is this stuck up, utterly rude reaction for absolutely no reason. Sorry, but if
you must be like this, you have no place in playing an MMO. I report behavior like this every time and rest
assured I also have in this case, whether or not SE does something or not.

I think I gave valid suggestions, he clearly said he does not like the rotation that utilizes the job to its fullest,
i.e. he does not have fun playing that job. So I suggested to play a different job. How is that rude?

Just because you are a DPS, and knowingly doing your job wrong "just" leads to the run taking a few minutes longer and
"noone will notice" doesn't mean everyone is ok with that.
Like I said in the chatlog, this is like a WHM spamming Cure III until MP empty and then everyone dies because the WHM
"doesnt like to use Cure I".
Or a Paladin pulling 10 mobs and only using his simple 1 2 3 Hate combo "because he doesnt like to use Flash".
Now imagine any of these 2 scenarios, I would give advice at first, and if they replied with "because I dont like to
use xyz", the only thing I call that is a troll.

Just because as DPS you playing your job purposefully wrong doesnt have the immediate effect of a wipe doesn't mean
it's right to do so. In fact, that's one form harassment. I wouldnt report you for it, but id at least tell you what I
told this BLM, you can read it in the screenshot.


Sorry, I just had to let this off, situations like that are very frustrating for me, because I'm just trying to help
and / or explain the situation. I always try to be friendly, maybe I don't always choose the perfect words, but I try
my best to not harass other players in any way. If you need to explode your anger at someone for pointing out a simple
mistake, please don't play MMO's. {Thank you.}

...What?!

That was insulting.

Not only was it insulting but judging by the rest of your conversation, you were doing a flawless interpretation of being intentionally insulting. The other guy on the other hand at least started out polite. Just because his rotation is half-arsed doesn't make it alright to give half-arsed advice. When you do, you sound like a condescending dick. People rarely take the advice of such individuals and will even go so far as to avoid using their advice just out of spite.

In the end, you end up hurting your own cause.

[Gextiv]

"boss of me"

Early teens? Maybe even younger?

Do not take it too seriously, or let it effect you too much. Hopefully this does not escalate anymore.
Anyway, keep trying to help people. I know I really appreciated feedback in my early tanking days.

[Starlord]

As much as casting Fire III first will grant you max power for BLM in one spell, Using Fire I 3 times you will eventually get the same result, I normally don't care about little details like that. However, what can annoy me is if they don't switch from Ice to fire and Fire to Ice accordingly as if you exhaust all you MP and "refuse" to switch elements essentially you're a sitting duck, then I would be annoyed.

Play the Job however you want, BUT at least make sure you're doing the 1 thing that really matters to the job.

[Peachy]

Let me try: You should think carefully before talking because you are pretty rude if thats your normal attitude to people. I'm just saying, why bother interacting with other people if you are going to do it wrong.

"Do it better or get out of my content". Last I checked halatali hm isnt exactly raid content. So someone isnt up to par in game, its going to happen, but you really have no place to make someone feel like crap over it and pretend you were giving advice. Be nicer next time and you might be thanked instead of told off.

[Ramath]

OP, it's clear that you don't know how to communicate with written form only. Yes, you might have had good intentions with wanting to give advice, but it came across as very rude. If you had spoken that way to me in a run, I would have ignored you, at best.

You have to understand that in a text box, they can't see your face, hear your voice, or feel a tone or expression. All they have is the literal words, and that's it. Unless you make a very direct effort to chose your words carefully, it will come across as rude.

Next time, perhaps start out with a question, and/or a compliment. Maybe something like:

You: Oh, cool, a BLM! I love having a BLM in my party!
Them: [misc smiles and gratitude]
You: Hey, I noticed your spell order. May I give you a tip?

At this point, wait for their answer. If they say "No", let it go. It's not your place to correct the world. If they say "Yes", start with what they did right, then add what they can do to improve.

Either way, you need to be far more mindful of how you use a text-only form of communication.

[Shiwayari]

Let me try: You should think carefully before talking because you are pretty rude if thats your normal attitude to people. I'm just saying, why bother interacting with other people if you are going to do it wrong.

"Do it better or get out of my content". (...)

Like I explained I was trying to not spend a lot of time with long text in this case, which I think is the main reason it ended up sounding rude.
Your quoted line is not what I wanted to get at at all and I don't really see how you read that out of the chat. The point I wanted to make was

"Don't intentionally hold back the party, and if you don't want to do otherwise on the job you are currently playing, then you are better off choosing a different job to avoid other players becoming frustrated with you". And he would most likely enjoy that way of playing more.


What I get from the replies so far is next time, I'll try something like "I noticed you are doing X, but the job can be played much more efficiently. I can try to give you advice, if the party gives me a minute to explain."
For answers like "But I don't like to do it that way", I'd reply "Give it a try. If you intentionally hold the party back, many players will get frustrated with you and I'm sure you don't enjoy that. If you don't like playing the job that way, maybe consider trying a different job."

Now that took me a few minutes to come up with, to be especially careful not to come across as rude, and in the case I already mentioned, I'd have been kicked for "AFK" by that point. So.. I guess I better macro this. For me, while I realize what I said to this BLM might have sounded rude, the amount of information contained in "You should choose another job" (I just realized this english is wrong..) and the above which took much longer to think about what I'm writing is pretty much the same. I find it's not easy to find a sweetspot inbetween these, and, even if it sounded rude, if the answer wouldn't have been directly insulting, he might have found out I didn't actually want to insult him either. Instead he chose to call me an ass an leave the instance as quickly as possible.

You have to understand that in a text box, they can't see your face, hear your voice, or feel a tone or expression. All they have is the literal words, and that's it. Unless you make a very direct effort to chose your words carefully, it will come across as rude.

I understand that, but I think this is a highly disturbing fact, and one point I wanted to get across by making this thread is that, next time you think someone is being rude, don't be rude back, but talk in a friendly manner. I think, many, many, MANY times in the end you will find out that person was not trying to be rude at all. I try to make this effort, and I think everyone should. If you don't want to bother, please, just ignore me, but don't insult me because you thought I was being rude, when that wasn't my intention.