Do Something About Duty Finder Already

[Kaethra]

They have a stance on it that is pretty much a looser dont ask to dont tell policy.

I've personally read through the TOS and the CoC and have seen no reference of this policy. I'm sure a dev, producer, or even CM might have made this offhand comment about how they don't like it. And I believe the community took it as gospel from there. Because if it isn't written anywhere on their site. Its not on the index cards they give to GMs. And I really could care less. If a DPS is giving me crap when his DPS is crap, I'll let him know. Consequences be damned. That's my choice. And its yet to result in any sort of administrative action.

I would just add, because I'm not sure what you consider hand holding exactly

To be honest? Anything outside an instruction manual either printed or in a .pdf

The game ramps up at a pretty decent and manageable rate. In fact I actually believe it WORKs. Speaking of dungeons you start with Sastasha and work your way up from there to Auram Vale. That's the 1-49 game. Those dungeons are pretty good about teaching people mechanics and some of them are walls to certain roles. I did Dzemal Deep the other day in the leveling roulette. Noticed the 'warrior' not holding threat.

No big deal right? I'm 60 with a high ilevel, and.. what the heck is up with their icon? Oh its a Marauder. So I asked him where his soul stone was. They told me they tried and it didn't work. OK this isn't a newbie who didn't know what a job quest is. They were playing Marauder over Warrior, intending to play Warrior in the dungeon. They DC'd and I think they pulled plug to avoid embarrassment. If any fix is needed there.. its to allow people to swap in their soul stones. I don't know why they took it out. I don't want to know. Its not my business.

Anyway back to the subject at hand. The game gives a good job on how to play. It really does. You will die in a solo duty if you do things.. wrong. Hell some of them get outright difficult if your gear is out of date (or at least they did at one point, it has been several years since I did them). But when I say wrong. I'm talking about totally wrong. As for the right rotation. You're not going to get that from the game.

You're not even going to get that from a developer tutorial. As I said before, I don't believe the developers know those rotations. Well how can that be? They made the game, they should be experts. Experts they are (if we're lucky). Masters they are not. The optimal rotation for any class or job in any given situation is changed based on the situation, gear, and party makeup. Tutorials cannot cover that.

The very basic rotation without any other factor is 1 - 2 - 3. For the most part. We don't need a tutorial for that. Some classes like black mage and summoner are a bit different than that. But their class/job quests fix that, mostly.

Of course some players are going to fall through the cracks. There are some players that will never 'get it'. A tutorial cannot help these players. You'll teach these players motions to mimic. But never the reasoning behind them. And that is the crux of the whole ordeal.

In my opinion. These players should be left in the cracks. Make the cracks a happy place for them. Give them some story to read. Some simply content they can keyboard turn and mouse click their abilities through. But set up the system in a way that they are not with other players. In this case.. I do agree with you on the next point you brought up:

It also might be helpful to work on a flex system like WoW has and aim for three modes, or more, as well so that you get easy, normal to moderately hard, then epic hard, and that few pieces of face melt self torture. Which would help give everyone something to do even when divided out a bit, and help be a cost effective way to do it too (design a few extra mechanics, trash changes, mini bosses, and other changes that are more interesting that just a simple HP/Damage buff as the difficulty ramps up, maybe introduce optional areas and separate paths as well for the harder contents).

Segregating players based on skill level is the best thing a MMO can do. Let's be honest. If you're a newbie, or someone just trying to go at a certain pace. You hate seeing speedrunning mow over content before you can even reach it. And if you're someone looking to for a challenge. You hate seeing your tank grab one group at a time. Why put these players in the same group with each other?

So the vets can teach the others?

Yeah right.. that's going to happen. Well before I go further.. it does. In Party Finder, statics and FC's DO teach players. But that assumes the teachers want to teach, and the students want to be taught. In a roulette. People just want to do content. At the pace they want to do it at. They don't want to teach. They don't want to be taught.

So your suggestion would be outstanding. There are slower paced players (I don't use the term casual as it comes from a situation involving slurring other playstyles from a decade ago, this isn't the place to explain that) and those slipping through cracks that simply don't need to be doing content that others would rather be doing. And then you have those that want to get as much reward from time spent as they can, and those who want a bit of a challenge on a daily basis.

Though one could argue that the roulettes are spread out this way already. Between Leveling, 50, 60, and Expert. And outside the leveling roulette, you had to do the dungeons in the roulette at least once. So playing devil's advocate here. I could almost argue that the solution is already here. And the 'bad' players are just being lazy. That's an issue we have to overcome in this discussion.

But know that I would like to see a better method of player segregation. WoW: Legion did a decent job with it. Normal, Heroic, Mythic, and then Mythic 2-15. The majority of complaints with the system there was that Mythic was too hard. Well.. those players that complain about Mythic ought not be doing Mythic IMO. And those doing Mythics had no problems staying out of Normal and Heroic due to the rewards being far better in Mythic for what they wished to accomplish.

That tells me the system worked.

I'd like to see that done here. And it'd be easy for them to pull off. They've got the gear sets already ready. They could have a Normal, Hard, Expert, and Master level difficulty. Tomestones from Normal buys 180 gear, Hard gets 200, Expert gives 230, and Master gives 260. Or something similar. And condense it when the content isn't relevant (like when Stormblood is released, can't leave noobs in a previous expansion... this isn't EQ).

All the difficulties are based on a setting or content (some dungeons are naturally harder than others due to progression of an expansion). And you get the rewards based on that or the roulette (that picks from a pool of similarly difficult dungeons). And what happens is everyone does the hardest content they're capable of. Either through skill or gear, and most likely both.

So if you're decently geared, and skilled. You shouldn't see jobless people in your queue. Unless someone is trolling. In that case do what you need to. You shouldn't see the keyboard turners and ability clickers. And likewise you shouldn't see the speedrunning madmen in you lower queues. Unless its a scrub trying to act better than they are. But you've got a votekick for that situation if needed.

[Shougun]

I've personally read through the TOS and the CoC and have seen no reference of this policy.

The written stuff just says no third party things, like you're not supposed to data mine and access the game's memory outside of what they give you. There is no mention of dont ask dont tell in the ToS or whatever; however, Yoshida has gone on record about it a few times so we have director of the game reference for the policy. He's specifically said they won't hunt you down for using a parser and understand why some people use it, but that you shouldn't be smearing the parser in other people's faces and harassment is harassment.

Parser is banned on the basis that it reads from memory and other things can do that too that SE really doesn't want, like a radar. Parser = Third Party = Under the no no corp. lol. But again it has a shadowy cloak of protection, a special sort of exception status even though its in the dark :P. Still wouldn't advise even mentioning parser in game, you could collect a record and one time a GM thinks you're harassing and you have a nice history of yellow slips lol, GM boops you :3.

As for thinking the game teaches you well, beyond the most basics, I greatly disagree. I believe the game teaches you well if you're already a gamer and you get the nuances of things, so some of us see bloodbath and vengeance and go "makes sense should do that together thats how I'll take on big groups!". And other people won't see that, because this is their first game - or because imo the game doesn't challenge you. For the 1-49 if you have someone capping the ilvl and is competent you could easily be carried through the whole game ignoring nearly if not all mechanics. I think it did better when 90% of the members in the group weren't capped.

Get a good capped healer? Stand in all the puddles, don't turn, stack, twister drop, bother with balls, or anything lol. Also as the game gets older and needs to help people get through faster, this will become worse and I already disagree that they've done enough teaching and foresee they will have greater need to teach better in the future. Very few of the job quests taught me anything special about my job, sometimes they were a challenge but pretty much if I brought a pot I could do whatever I wanted.

I also disagree that it is not the place of the devs to teach /key/ rotations. Players can form better ones sure, but I do believe SE can be telling you these combo of spells work ideally together and things like that. Both Warrior and Dark Knight I believe suffer from this, where people think that perhaps they're not as strong and reliable as they are because the game didn't really help these new players understand their core components (and to me every job quest that doesn't teach you something but gives you a new ability is a wasted job quest). Some players may never get it sure, but I don't believe most players are incapable of learning as much as they haven't been given proper opportunity to learn. To note though a lot of my job quests are done a long time ago so perhaps they've modified them to be better teachers, I do know many were made easier from when the game was first out though.

Not sure we can add much to each other since we disagree on some core concepts, like that the game has been teaching people effectively. I get Yoshida had a fear that the game is telling you that you're doing it wrong is weird but to be honest if you're only casting ice spells (classic stereotypical example now lol) then you /are/ doing it wrong (unless you're with a group of friends, then do whatever you want~!).

I guess we do agree that people being conveniently and peacefully allowed to move into groups of effort/knowledge would ease community burden and make general play more consistent/enjoyable though. I want everyone to enjoy the content and do so as peacefully as possible, while also encouraging players to take responsibility for their own actions and have expectation of others, so difficulty options, halls, job quests that introduce their abilities, combat feedback (personal parser, parser, or whatever), and short reasonable gates seem like good things to me.

[bardaboo]

I have yet to see ANY Ninja use anything but Huton, they don't even use the Jutsu auto refresh.

Other people's stupidity shouldn't be used as a defense of your own

[bardaboo]

Right, but another thing is the Classes thing. As a Class you can help more, Classes get Eye for an Eye sooner, Mantra sooner (which despite what most thinks can give Healer a big hand if the Tank is a paper Tank.), Virus, as well as a few other power ups you may not get if that Job isn't in the run.
Personally if its just one Class that is normally ok, its just two or more is the problem. And if the Class is a DPS role then its not as bad.

That said there are only two roles that could get away with Classes anyway, Healer and DPS. Tanks could not get away with it.

oooh that virus is suuuper helpful. Glad the tank is taking less damage even though the dungeon takes longer . all those " helpful" skills only make healer job easier. So now the healer can dps more in order to pick up your slack.

[Kaethra]

Parser is banned on the basis that it reads from memory and other things can do that too that SE really doesn't want, like a radar.

Parsers I've seen use a text file in either my documents folder or desktop. And has nothing to do with where the game is installed (an entirely different harddrive by the way). The game doesn't need to be running, nor does the parser need to be running on the same computer or network. So that statement doesn't hold. And of course they can't hunt anyone down because of that fact. My Teamspeak client has more impact. Especially when interlays are involved.

But save your breath on parsers (as that is getting off topic anyway). I've made my decision on them and you will not sway me. Even a GM can't. So take that as you will.

As for everything else you said. No a dev cannot help those players. One of my good friends is that player you describe. Hell they've been gaming for 20 years, not even new to MMOs (they started in EQ). Outside the game pressing the buttons for them. I seriously doubt they could complete class quests and would never obtain a soulstone unless a friend played it for them. Its also why I've told them to avoid FFXIV.

They'd never be part of the problem though even if they did play FFXIV. Simply because they wouldn't be able to do the quests to unlock the dungeon in the first place.

I've never seen anyone at level 50, or even 60 for that matter be that bad. The issues described by the OP are lazy players. Not uninformed ones. Remember there's a whole slew of leveling content 'new' players have to slug through. They figure it out on the way. The ones that don't get fed up and quit. There MIGHT be a slim fraction of a percentage who got carried. But the number is so small that its not worth spending time on. They'll either eventually 'get it' or not.

[Airget]

With the ability to party-finder people on other servers I feel like people harping about DF issues are just being lazy. DF's benefits you having the ability to wait while the server queues you up with people, the downside? You don't get to choose the party or create the recommended loadout/IL average you are looking for. So the odds of you ending up with people you don't want is gonna be higher than if you used PF.

With PF you can choose what you want, the limitations and the IL, sure it might take longer and you might have to socialize with the group to make sure all the rules are understood but honestly I don't see any reason to change DF when the other option is there. It's your choice whether to use it or not but if you aren't going to use PF then you have no right to complain about DF since all you are doing is acting for yet another means to weed out people through DF. A means which can be done through PF.

[Kaethra]

With the ability to party-finder people on other servers I feel like people harping about DF issues are just being lazy. DF's benefits you having the ability to wait while the server queues you up with people, the downside? You don't get to choose the party or create the recommended loadout/IL average you are looking for. So the odds of you ending up with people you don't want is gonna be higher than if you used PF.

With PF you can choose what you want, the limitations and the IL, sure it might take longer and you might have to socialize with the group to make sure all the rules are understood but honestly I don't see any reason to change DF when the other option is there. It's your choice whether to use it or not but if you aren't going to use PF then you have no right to complain about DF since all you are doing is acting for yet another means to weed out people through DF. A means which can be done through PF.

This isn't a bad point to be made. I've always said that if you want to speed run. Don't use DF. If you want to speed run. Don't use DF.

Meaning you don't always get what you want in DF. Because lets be honest. The OP and this thread's intent is to try to force people to play a certain way in the DF so that they don't have to use PF. With this facade of "trying to help new players."

New players don't need nor want that sort of 'help'.

[LalaRu]

... These players should be left in the cracks.... set up the system in a way that they are not with other players...Segregating players based on skill level is the best thing... You hate seeing your tank grab one group at a time. Why put these players in the same group with each other?...

I think this will deny the very basics for a game being an mmo.

If really someone feels to be the master race and want play only with the other elects, the best is him playing premade with his friends.

[Solarra]

Segregating players based on skill level is the best thing a MMO can do.

Wildstar - every time I see someone asking for this, I think Wildstar. Remember how that ended up?
DF is designed to group you with random people, it also puts mentors into the roulettes so (in theory), they can help players who are struggling/ have made bad choices with gear etc. Your suggestion trashes that system because if Square were to adopt it, those players will no longer meet.

PF is the tool you should be using if you don't like running with random people and cannot cope with the occasional poor player. Expecting DF to only group you with good players who play exactly the way you like is unrealistic to say the least.

[Paladinleeds]

snip

You say if Square were to adopy this the mentors and struggling players would never meet. Perhaps then the mentors could select an option that puts them with newer members if they're willing to help teach and mentor them, so the Mentor gets knocked down to their pegging in the queue. That way those players can still meet. I can't speak for the community at whole here, but it's something I would do. Plus then those "In it just for the reward" mentors would go for the normal queue times, helping leave those players be. I mean I'm not behind the suggestion because as you say DF puts you with random people and you have to expect the unexpected, but I'm trying to play devil's advocate here and showcase a way that may work.