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

[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.

[Ghastly]

There's a skill gap and there's an experience gap. I think a lot of people tend to confuse the two (especially here), and that the skill gap isn't nearly as wide as most people think.

The experience gap is caused by impatient players who can't be bothered to teach others how to get through content, and who leave at the first sign of trouble. This causes a situation where PF is filled with parties that require experience to get in. This leads to a situation where the only way to get experience is to have experience, which leaves new players who don't have connections in the dust.

Cactuar is one of the best servers because we don't mind running clear parties for 2-3 hours even if we don't clear, the experience matters.
Would be interesting if clearing primals with bonus increased bird drop rate to like 50%

There would be more clears, more people helping new people, etc

[bswpayton]

Cactuar is one of the best servers because we don't mind running clear parties for 2-3 hours even if we don't clear, the experience matters.
Would be interesting if clearing primals with bonus increased bird drop rate to like 50%

There would be more clears, more people helping new people, etc

Well I guess thats maybe what this cross server party finder intends to do I know that's coming around I'm just afraid that it will be like it is on my server and just a bunch of parties posting up unsync runs.

[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.

[Judge_Xero]

In my experience, it's a player issue. A large chunk of the player base has no desire to learn how to be good and wants no expectations on their performance, and is unwilling to change. Dungeons, 24-mans, and story versions of raids and primals are built for them. If someone wants to learn, they will seek knowledge from other players or outside resources and learn, and they will join the serious players in being good at their job. The players who have no desire to learn their job will always be problems.

This is exactly my feeling on the subject.

For the argument of "The Game does not teach you how to play"
- As you level up you gain small parts of a skillset in a linear order of how they are applied in a fight. All the skills have a reasonable description of what they do
Example
Straight Shot - Increases Crit Hit Rate by 10%
Venom Bite - Additional Effect: When damage over time is critical, there is a 50% chance Bloodletter and Rain of Death recast time will reset
Wind Bite - Additional Effect: When damage over time is critical, there is a 50% chance Bloodletter and Rain of Death recast time will reset

The game is not to blame for not teaching Bards that they should keep up Straight Shot and their DOTs to maintain a respectable amount of DPS to clear content, and yet somehow there are players that spam Heavy Shot and only use Bloodletter after it's manual CD Timer, even though BRD has it's basic DPS structure by the time you hit Level 12.

This is true for most classes in the game.

DRG - Heavy Thrust Level 12 -> SE saying that between level 12 and 38 we are only going to make you worry about keeping up Heavy Thrust and learn to weave in oGCD skills. See many Dragoons that don't use Heavy Thrust?

BLM - For 34 Levels between level 4 and level 38 we are going to let you learn the difference between Astral Fire and Umbral Ice. Since there isn't a great description on what the differences are that should be enough time to figure it out, "Right Ice Mages?"


I mean, that's just getting a skill and reading the description of it which is pretty straight forward. Then we have "The Hall of the Novice"!!!!! which actually holds your hand, step by step and explains to you what to do. This game literally force feeds you on how to play.

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As far as fights getting outdated and unavailable to new players, while that is somewhat of an issue of getting to experience those mechanics it is not a game breaker. A lot of the same mechanics appear in different areas of the game including Dungeons. So while they are dubbed down compared to their Savage counterparts or Extreme Primals, they are present and in a lot nicer learning environment for new players.

[Rinari]

As a new player, I'd like to thank all of you that have the patience to lay down a bit of strategy before a big fight. The game teaches you things like 'don't stand in the bad color' and 'do your skill rotation', but doesn't cover things like running from 1000 ton swing (no bad color ground effect), the distance based damage on Titan's quake thing (run to the edge), or that it's probably ok for DPS to handle certain varieties of adds without the tank running a boss all around the battlefield. As a new tank, I feel compelled to watch videos as dungeons get more complex, but the videos usually only cover basic mechanics of a fight and not overall group strategy...and I can't always remember everything anyway.

I've found the FFXIV community to be wonderful. I haven't had a single bad experience yet with anyone getting angry or impatient. I'm sure it will happen, but it seems very rare. Overall, people have been very patient and helpful.

[bswpayton]

This is exactly my feeling on the subject.

For the argument of "The Game does not teach you how to play"
- As you level up you gain small parts of a skillset in a linear order of how they are

As I gave an example on the whm I had in aurum vale I think some people tend to get a lil confused, and just the comprehension isnt always gona click like it does for some. For instance that whm probably thought well the tool tips say that cure two heals for more than cure 1 so I'm going to use that one instead, its just like a driving test just because you read what the manual says doesnt mean that you are now officially an expert driver or that your going to past the test. The fact that people think tool tips is the number one answer alone just doesnt make sense to me, its helpful but it doesnt take someone from a 2 week skill level to all of a sudden they are a master of the job.

I remember when I first started blm I made my own mistake, with astral fire , I thought sense it dealt more damage that I was suppose to trade it out for fire 1. It wasnt until someone explained to me that it was better to have it up and then go back to using your basic fire 1 that I fixed my mistake. And also learning an ability and working with mechanics are two totally separate things, the reason why dungeons are so much easier is because adds dont have mechanics. Its the mechanics from what I have seen that give people the most trouble and all hall of novice pretty much does is tell you how to avoid the big orange circle so I dont understand how something that is meant for a novice to do can be compared to the harder content. On Ifrit extreme does the hall of novice teach u how to dodge a mechanic that takes up the whole entire circle aside from two tiny little patches of space, or the same with titan his huge aoe that covers up the whole entire platform aside from 4 tiny little cut out plots of land. Are dealing with a charmed type of ability like in ramuh extreme the only way to learn this type of stuff is to actually doing it , and if people arent doing it then more than likely most people will never learn it. With how the game is set up and how content grows old so fast then for those whom want to do any challenge content , if they skipped over all things before it to play catch up then chances are they arent gona be very good at it, not everyone some people will be great but others wont.

I notice when I look at guides now like sophia extreme, that they have fewer and fewer views, I think apart of this is because fewer and fewer people are doing the extremes as they come out probably due to the bad experiences of rude and frustrated players making them not even wana try any longer. Because tool tips, hall of novice and all of that dont really show you how to deal with mechanics in this game nor does a video , videos give a general idea, but just like with everything else to get good as people say takes practice there is no other replacement for this.

[Ama_Hamada]

Anyone see those people that have all levels bank but the one 15 that is required to unlock the class while having the job they are on be the only thing they leveled? I think part of the issue is allowing people get to level 50 in 4 days, then having no clue what to do. I did a MSQ roulette where both healers where new to it and undergeared for the megapulls and people kept megapulling and wiping despite me trying to explain that both healers are new. Both of them had like level 47 book and other things, and had no idea you could enter it with that low gear level.

Basically the game lets you get to x point too fast. Part of the issue is giving out too much experience points and leveling up too fast. If you level too fast you go not gain much play experience. Is getting cross class abilities a requirement or just made for customization and make things easier? If you are trying to base a game to level up different things for abilities, then why allow people to be 50+ and only 1 other class to 15? you are not going to get experience like that.

Also why do we have situations where one tank is trying to tell another tank don't just randomly provoke bosses? You are either MT or OT. I had a The Weeping City of Mhach where someone inexperienced kept randomly provoking bosses. Ever since the first boss the other tank was trying to tell them to stop it. The one tank said it in a harsh way and was being a bit arrogant though so people where on the person's case, the one that knew what to do. Finally on the last boss, the random provoking was causing problems and MPK people from the turning the haircut. The experienced tank commented see this is what i been trying to explain all this time, then when others told the other tank to stop doing that, they ran to the edge and literally sat out the battle (using the /sit emote)

I am not sure how to fix this other then putting tutorials on how to do rotations, how to do limit breaks, explaining the different damage by the types of limit break, how to play with more then one tank, so on. Also slower experience gain?

[CGMidlander]

Skill gaps are related with personal motivation and interactions. In addition to practice and experimentation, most good players in most multiplayer games interact with relevant communities and partake in, or at least look at theory crafting. High level learning doesn't come from in-game tutorials.