Remember When Tanks Asked Before Large Pulls?

[Aldora]

I once said the following in a different thread, which still holds true to this discussion:

The bottom line is that when you are playing a game with other people (like FFXIV), you are actually playing with other people. Everyone has a different kind of skill set, certain amount of experience, etc which might not be similar to your own.

However, since you group up to tackle different kinds of content, you are asked to work together as a Team in order to complete the said task, like for instance clearing a Dungeon. When you are working as a Team, you should look out for each other so that everyone crosses the finish line together.

I read a lot of things like:

• If you don’t keep up, you suck
• Healer: If you don’t wait for me (to finish my buffs), i’ll let you die
• Healer: If you don’t pull less, i’ll let you die
• Tank: If you pull ahead of me, i won’t take the monster off you (and let you die)
• Tank: I keep pulling multiple packs. If you can’t keep me alive, you suck
• Healer/DPS: If you don’t pull more, i’ll pull more for you
• If you don’t switch to DPS stance (referring to Tank and Healer), you suck
• Etc

All of these comments display the wrong kind of attitude when you are playing with other people as a team. It doesn’t really matter if someone is faster than you or even not as fast as you. If they are as skilled as you or not as skilled as you.

Most of the comments i read are rather “self centered” and lack team spirit. Even if only 1 person can’t keep up with the rest of the group, that single person is just as valuable to the team then the rest.

As a member of a team, you are expected to do your job to the best of your abilities. Some people work better under pressure and improve faster when placed in stressful situations, but not everyone will be able to. There are plenty of people who will panic in situations like that, or simply won’t be able to function properly.

That doesn’t necessarily make them a bad player. They might need more time and less stressful situations in order to “blossom”. They may even need a guiding hand in order to teach them things they didn’t manage to figure out themselves.

Which brings us to the next point. When reading comments on the forums, it’s pretty plain to see that we (as in the general populous) are unable to properly communicate with each other. We call each other “trolls”, slap each other in the face with insult, aren’t open to suggestions or even in some cases able to properly phrase a suggestion so that it won't “feel” like it’s “forced upon them”. We take offense to almost anything, take things personal and react rudely to things that don’t go the way we want them to go. We don’t have any patience and insult people/kick players/vote abandon at the first sign of mistakes or even a wipe.



It seems that it’s hard to find a sense of (team) effort, camaraderie, community, support and most of all fun in the things we do as a group. Apparently we don’t see games as a form of relaxation anymore, but a competition or a job.

Perhaps it’s time for us as players to take a good look at ourselves and wonder how we got to this point and how we (as human beings) can change that.

I mean, taking things down a notch to ensure that the entire group makes it through the duty will feel a lot better then rushing towards the end and be frustrated about the amount of damage the group does or the amount of deaths/wipes we faced during the said duty. If you see someone struggle, why throw insults? Why not talk about it and try to help instead?

Sure, not everyone listens. There are bad apples in every community, but for every bad apple there are a hell of a lot more apples that make a pretty damn fine juice when mixed together. Aren’t we all thirsty and crave for such a juice?

Just, don’t go fight fire with fire. You’ll only going to get yourself burned in the process.

Sometimes, mostly when reading threads like this or the “Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent.”-thread, i think to myself: “Why is it that we can’t simply work together when playing this game?” Is it really that hard to talk to one another, relax and play with each other, rather than “jumping at each other's throats”?

Saving CDs for emergencies is usually a bad thing. Especially short 60s ones like Swiftcast, Tetra, Aetherflow(incl. the 3 stacks, i.e. sitting on '6' stacks for emergencies), Divine Seal, etc..

I rather use those 15x in a dungeon than once in 15 dungeons. :3

It is true that saving cooldowns for emergencies is not really the way to go, but i wouldn’t go as far as calling it bad. Like i’ve mentioned in my quote above, everyone has a different kind of skill set, certain amount of experience, etc which might not be similar to your own. Not every might be as comfortable with a class or stressful situations than others. Some people work better under pressure and improve faster when placed in stressful situations, but not everyone will be able to. There are plenty of people who will panic in situations like that, or simply won’t be able to function properly.

As people, we should be able to respect that try to work with them nonetheless. I believe that this is where the main problem lies. We want others to adjust to us, rather than adjust ourselves to others.

One of the arguments used, would be “One most adjust themselves to the majority of the group”. However, this is only true to the extend that everyone can follow suit. When you are running “group content” (like Dungeons) in Final Fantasy XIV, you are asked to work together as a Team in order to complete the said task. This also means that you look out for each other.

If you have a tank, who’s struggling to maintain hate, or a healer struggling to keep the tank alive. The fault shouldn’t be placed solely on the tank who couldn’t maintain hate, because the majority rest of the party wanted to pull more. The fault also shouldn’t be placed solely on the healer, who didn’t manage to keep the tank alive during a bigger pull, just because the tank pulled more than the healer could handle.

You are all in this together. The most important thing about working together, is communicating with each other. And by that, i mean come to a mutual agreement and taking every member in the party into consideration (even the members who are struggling to keep up).

However, this also means that you have to put your best foot forward and give it your all. Put all of your skills to the test and try to improve yourself as well. You can only improve, if you strive to be better with each attempt. After a while you will notice that you will have less trouble keeping hate, or keeping the tank alive during bigger pulls.

“You can’t advance by standing still.”

I'm not going to waste my swiftcast on a spell that doesn't take very long to cast. It should be saved for raises, in the event that a party member dies.

Trust me. When i started playing this game as a White Mage healer, i was one of those people who said that “Healing is my main priority, not DPSing”. I started off simply focussing on keeping the party alive, but as i gradually progressed throughout the years, i kept improving my skills to the point where i can DPS during most of the dungeon and still keep the party alive.

This doesn’t happen overnight, so you have work for it in order improve. First thing that you need to learn, is to put trust in both your own skills as well as the rest of the party. Don’t plan for emergencies, plan for smooth successes. Expect every run to be something you haven’t experienced before and be as flexible as you can possibly be.

I also kept my Swiftcast available for when i had to raise others, but if you trust your own skills enough, you’ll find out that you won’t be using Swiftcast at all during the entire run. Since the cooldown of Swiftcast is rather short, it’s safe to use it for other things like Swiftcast > Stoneskin (II) while running towards the next pull or before starting a boss battle. During a boss battle, you can Swiftcast > AoE Regen/Shield so that you will create more breathing space for yourself to do other stuff (like buffing or DPSing).

It takes a bit of practice and confidence, but you should be ok.

Most frequented dungeons are fairly simple for many players and so they go in with the mentality of wanting to finish them as quickly and as efficiently as possible. In something like Xelphatol or Gubal (Hard) that translates to 'big pulls' more often than not since a lot of people have the sort of gear that makes such acts fairly trivial.

Because dungeons are too easy and offer no challenges? Pulling the maximum amount of mobs finishes the dungeon quicker before everyone falls asleep.

Experts have become so easy, you have to be asleep to not handle big pulls. The sole exception can be the last stretch of mobs before the Owl boss in GGH. More than a few healers or tanks aren't ready for the amount of damage, though it's less of an issue nowadays. I wish dungeons actually required me to work towards big pulls. Sadly, we haven't seem even remotely hard dungeons since The Avery and Vault. It's pretty sad leveling content is harder than the supposedly experts. Admittedly, I won't do small pulls in Xelphatol. Call me an elitist but it would actually take less time if I left it and ate the penalty. That is how absurdly easy it is.

What you guys are saying is true for a lot of people, but that mostly has to do with the fact that there are quite a few people who are pretty much overgeared for the content (even the content that’s being released on Patch day). Because of this, all of the level 60 dungeons feel extremely easy. But, this doesn’t necessarily have to be same for all of the players. People who haven’t played the game for quite a while are still in the process of gearing their classes/jobs. They won’t be as overgeared for the content as we are.

One of the reasons that Aurum Vale is still considered to be one of the hardest dungeons in the game so far, has to do with the fact that you’re synced down to level 49. Some of the more vital skills are locked behind level 50, so you won’t have access to those.

So, in light of that, try running dungeons with the “Minimal iLvl”-option active. You’ll experience the content for the item level it was “designed” for. This will have a pretty big effect on how fast you’ll be killing monsters and the damage they deal to you. Burning down bosses, skipping phases and ignoring mechanics should prove to be a bit of a challenge at least.

Think back to a time where you were running Amdapor Keep and Wanderer’s Palace with your iLvl50-ish AF gear. Those were fun times, right? Now, why not give that “Minimal iLvl”-option a go with the level 60 dungeons and see if you can get that same feeling back.

At least, i’m planning on doing that with a couple of my friends. Just for the fun of it.