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

[Gemina]

I place little blame on the content when something like Hall of Novice teaches you imperative fundamentals to group play that goes with you from the moment you graduate HoN all the way until you play your last raid. The little blame I do place is because HoN remains optional. The other thing about progressive content is no middle ground. The closest we have is probably HM primals, but even these instances... The synced iLv is ridiculously high. A tank of this iLv can survive all three of Ifrit HM charges without a heal, so why exactly should he move from them? Especially when a sole regen will patch him right up?

I blame the community for anything other than rapid progression to be unorthodox. Despite the fact that there is no middle ground of difficulty, I still believe the casual stuff punishes players enough that they should learn to obey mechanics. But being carried through content, running it unsynced, or skipping it is going to stunt any kind of skill progression until the player no longer accomplishes things in such a way.

The way I feel is each player needs to be accountable for their own skill. How do we as humans get good at anything? It's through countless hours of practice. We practice to get better at what we are good at; we practice to get good at what we're bad at; we practice to maintain the skill we have acquired. Jump potions, starting jobs @50, rushing through content... not a whole lot of practicing going on if you ask me. Ultimately the largest skill gaps are between players that want to be best from the players that want to be the rest.

[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.

[Watachy]

Snip

Sounds like real life.

- Want that job ? You need 5 years experience !
- But i just finished sch...
- 5 five years experience and below 25 yo.
- Flash News: unemployement is nearly 30% for 20/28yo people

Lel dude

[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.

[Mirateski]

Who had higher iLvL ?

There was an approximately 300 hp difference between the two bards. I had the same ilv as the higher dps bard. I'd say the other bard was probably in like, 255? 250 maybe at worst? And the other bard and I were 258.

On the topic of confusing markers, though - I've lost count of the number of people I've had to tell in WoD that the lightning is a stack, because that exact same marker is used as a spread in EVERY OTHER ENCOUNTER IT'S EVER FEATURED IN. Confusing much?

And usually they still die because I type slow. >>

[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.