Is progressive content or the community to blame for player skill gap?

[Amirya]

More to the point, though, bswpayton, even by the point of Ifrit, players should have learned that some enemies have a swipe/cleave ability that hits fairly hard, and dps should not be standing on tanks. By Titan, you should have learned for sure that you probably shouldn't be standing in bad things. Granted, there are some times when you do want to stand in things - so stand in your first Weight of the Mountain, get hit, watch your health drop. Hopefully, you learned to not stand in it.

The first time I did Ifrit, I was levelling as BRD (well, ARC). I do have previous MMO experience, so I already knew about not standing in front of Ifrit. But my first Titan? I was so clueless, even with a video. The one I watched emphasized that all party members need to stand together - well, he jumped, and I was on the "wrong side" of the circle, so I figured I could run right through.

I apologized for my foolish death. Forgiven, Raised, and not five minutes later, fell off due to Landslide. Granted, I had terrible lag, but I explained I was also new, and they explained the fight to my distant, cold, dead corpse.

Back to the topic, it's not necessarily the fault of the new people or the veterans. It's a combination. Personally, I love newbie bonuses in duties. It just makes me all excitable. If they ask for help, I'll do what I can to help. The problem of veterans comes when the veterans forget that they, too, was once a new person who didn't know what to do, and treat the new players with pure contempt. And the problem of the new players comes when they forget that they, too, can always have room for improvement, and not everyone is out to get them. Get enough contemptuous veterans exposing their disgust to the new players, and absolutely the new players learn that the best defense is a good offense.

And yes, you'll also have the players (both old and new) who don't want to improve, or who prefer "I get to play with my friends, even if we waste time doing the same thing over and over!" instead of accomplishing the group's goal. That's on them. It's also on those of us who tolerate that behaviour.

[KarstenS]

I mention the rpg because for instance ff 15 I havent finished it yet but essentially everyone has the same path there with no skip routes there are no other routes, you have to progress from boss to boss learning from each.

Thats not correct. In FF15 you have optional Dungeons. Some of them get unlocked by beating the final boss. There are also superbosses. You don't get all 13 weapons by following the main story.

None of them are needed to finish the game.

The "clearrates" will be low as you have to find your way to beat them. The game will not tell it to you. Its not part of the "Maingame".

No difference to Ex primals and Savage.

[Vespar]

Why do we need to blame anything?

[Zojha]

Why do we need to blame anything?

Because accepting that skill simply is a bell curve and that the ability for different results thus will inevitably lead to different results seems to be rather undesired.

[bswpayton]

Why do we need to blame anything?

Its not really a blaming anyone its a question of the sorts, have you read comments on some of the people in the player base on these forums. How people ragg on tanks that like doing small pulls, are constantly say how bad people are and Im asking if the game itself and the player based have a shared responsibility in this.

For instance with dungeons id say its the safest content to do in the game, I can surely tell the difference in my own personally play from say my first experience with like qarn, or a stone vigil. What happens is what people say works here and it really does muscle memory my first experience with qarn skipped brayflax, so went from hakku manor to qarn, I get in had no clue about doom. I know people with similar experiences and that wonder how they died , so now if I see a new player and Im in their i quickly explain what it means, but the difference in then and now is amazing its because Ive run it enough to know the dungeon like the back of my hand, same with aurum vale first opening that it gave me hell at first but after a few runs , I know exactly how to pull the moobs and finish in a decent amount of time. So I believe the saying practice makes perfect, so part of that means that for players for instance if you do content when its only hot which is fine I get progression , but that being said lets say youve farmed sophia extreme for her weapon 20 plus times. If later on down the line you come back to sophia extreme and you see that someone is on their first attempt at even doing it dont think wit the mindset of oh this is easy you should know how to do this because I did it 20 times and have enough experience with this fight myself , so you should know it also.

Same with any old content when its old remember just the que is like doing another dungeon so , with those whom are catching up its better to have a mindset that their will be a learning curve more than this is going to go 100 percent smoothly just giving your fellow man the benefit of the doubt is all instead of the first response being you are a horrible player how did you fail this or that. Just for the players just acknowledging that it may take practice for others, and for the devs I honestly dont know what sort of approach then can take tbh. And others say that its natural for mmos to progress Id have to say I dono about that really, the thing about other mmos is redoing stuff over and over is a thing because of the having to reroll story more than a few times to level an alt class. On here if we clear it with one job, we arent gona go clear something then with all 13 different ones on the same character , and the fact that we get so much content its easier to just do that new shiney thing. Other games may upgrade their hard content , every six months are a year or so , so things stay relevant a lot longer. I just dont really think wt was a step in right direction all it does is seem to annoy people for the most part.

[Bonkleberry]

This is an MMO. Just like any other MMO, content does not teach players how to play the game. Motivation, practice, and organization are all that any player needs to succeed. Forcing players through filler content for "practice" just kills motivation and does not provide proper practice in the first place.

[Leigaon]

Why do we need to blame anything?

Some people like to point fingers but hate taking blame for themselves so it makes them feel better? Then again maybe I've had just bad experiences watching people.

The issue seems to be everything in the production line with this game is to blame, to a certain point. The game, the players both new and old. There's way too many factors to get rid of it 100%. Nothing is really 100% in these things, there's always going to be some sort of probability that when you add something, something else is taken away. A constant balance...

The game has pros and cons. The tooltips do help players, guildhests help players, those "kill x mob" quests help. Then the dungeons, do not. They do not require you to perform. I had a scholar under geared in AV that couldn't keep the heals up and it was his first time saying he needed to consider his gear because his fair always did all the work. That's a long ways to go without really caring what MND / ilv does. I say this as someone who has less than 3 mmos under his belt and takes constant breaks.

The veterans have their pros and cons. Some are rather kind and give advise as they see fit. They have a range of hand holding to general information to help you get by. There are others who rant, yell and scream for simple mistakes. They don't start with "meteors back and to the left" the go with "what?! how is it some idiot doesn't know this yet?! It's. not. that. hard!!!"

The new players same deal, some new people come in and have every intention of learning. They take advise such as "you're under geared" so they would accept it and we would address whether they should leave. Others do not even take time to learn, they spam their final skill in a combo chain thinking it's the best. They tell veterans to shut up when they tell them about using flash. How is someone who is trying to help you able to stay kind when every response is mean and negative?

You are right it's like going to school, some people do not care and will get C's..or that one jerk who sleeps and gets A's. Like being a parent, you need to take time with your children. But how many parents would tolerate them saying "Go %$% yourself" when you say "you need to brush your teeth."? Then again, how many would say "Brush your teeth you #$$, I shouldn't have to tell you this every night. It's. not. that. hard!"

Though I think the their best solution to minimize things is to make the content harder in general. That would force them to not be able to perform then they either get upset and leave or they go try to learn. Can't patch players, but you can adjust the environment. For the sake of it, when I'm in Thousand Maws, low level, I know I don't have to esuna that poison most of the time. The mobs die quickly then you regenerate health and the debuff doesn't last that long. I figured why not try to keep it off, what if it did do massive HP damage? I actually had MP that was being used up.

As for the jump potions. The more I think about it the more I realize that the type of players that will be using them are either people who most likely know MMO's and can grasp it, or know people and want to catch up and they will help. For a new player that isn't as experienced, it's all very overwhelming. You also level up so fast, then if you're a lore hound you get sucked into the story. Sure you might use the jump potion on your second job or even after you hit 50 to jump to 60...there's a lot of variations out there.

[HakaseNyan]

I don't believe much in skill-gaps for FF14. Perhaps an experience-gap, like others have mentioned, but not a skill-gap. The only true skill required for this game is paying attention. So, the only real "gap" in skill is whether or not you are rolling your face across the keyboard to play.

But hey, some people are just bad at videogames, while others have a disability.

[Ilan]

The biggest problem aren't the progressive content or the community. Its the lack of interest that most players have who are not playing good and i'm not talking about new players here.

You have players who have several jobs on level 60 who don't use any sort of rotation or cooldowns, they meld materias in their gear that make absolutly no sense at all and if you try to explain them what they are doing wrong (and yes in a friendly way and not as flame) you get answers like: "I play the game how i want, i paid for it." or "You don't know anything about the class since you are playing (insert different class as the one that you tried to explain)!" or they don't even react at all. That stuff is a complete lack of interest and the fault of these players not the content or the community in general.

[bswpayton]

The biggest problem aren't the progressive content or the

I get what your saying and it does take patience I guess some have more than others, I ran aurum vale yesterday with a whm that only used cure 2 the whole time was killing their mp. Luckily I was playing with a pretty skilled dragoon, and someone from nn I was helping that was doing fine as a bard. I mention to this whm and I actually as nice as I am, with words in text I dont know how to make it sound like Im not being rude to someone cause Im honestly not.

But I mention that they could use regen, and use cure 1 instead, I did fail to mention they could use cure 2 just only when it was needed, and for mp regain using shroud would help as well. Well of course they continued on with what they were doing but I did notice that they did use regen and they never really said anything, we died once in room after second boss he was having trouble. My fellow party member went off on him and said dont let the tank die whm, I instead chose to just tell him it was all good and I remember my first time in the dungeon. I feel like I planted a seed maybe it didnt work out perfect the way Id prefer but at least they listened a lil bit and at the end of the day thats all I can expect.

I guess I just have a different mindset, I don't set goals for myself and things that I have to do this is a game , and its just a distraction that I love its not a job, and sometimes things arent gona go my way and thats ok because I know Im playing with other people. I do my best to learn something each day and improve my skills on a daily basis, and thats come from good feedback more than the negative feedback and Id figure that is really what will help most people at the end of the day.