Quote Originally Posted by Avarghaladion View Post
If SE did such a fantastic job of teaching people their roles in XIV there wouldn't be i110 players with no idea how to fulfill their roles' basic requirements, let alone how to optimize those roles in a very simplistic game. I feel your perspective here is coloured by the fact that you're personally a more experienced gamer in the MMO realm now, so you can catch onto things faster. XIV does provide "direction" in the form of the extensive hand-holding quest chains, but it certainly doesn't provide any more guidance than XI or any other MMO. Even the class/job quests that are designed to test one's ability to apply what they've learned just pump players full of echo until they clear them.
This. If anything, the hand-holding we're given seems misplaced or even truncated, teaching little more than how to work quest triggers while ideas of skill and gear optimization, fulfilling one's own role, and thereby supporting other's roles, are all left without any in-game instruction outside of mentor players (who are great, and irreplaceable, but probably not desiring to teach every person who pops into tab-target combat MMO or its raid settings for the first time).