What is a 'bad player'?

[Rutelor]

Many people who fit in the elitist role take offense to a player on their main job who don't spend the most basic of efforts to gear up for a fight. I'm not saying everyone should have double meld yada yada gear but for the most basic of setups if you are a THM and you go to an Ifrit fight with me as a DD and you are sporting your dated ornate silver sceptor I just might drop party. Anyone can spend 2hours a week and farm up some karakul fleece with any 50 job and bank enough to buy a full set of basic nuking gear. Buy some entry level tier III materia and do a few shouts around for a couple basic melds. Go full dated setup of pre 1.19 gear vs the 3hours to gear up your main job and its gonna make a monster difference in DPS/usefulness.

I have no idea what your gear setup was but I do take offense when I see someone who couldn't bother to spend 10min. in the wards to at least pick up the basics. Of course I make every effort to help out people and if it were me I'd have whipped you up a set of gear on the spot. I make it my personal challenge to help people out if I can. I was once new to MMO's and had no idea how to get sub jobs and some nice players that I still remember helped me on Bahamut back in 2004 I want to be remembered like that. He sounds to me like a strait dick and not the type of ppl I hope to meet in FFXIV ever.

Are we going to be indulgent with the whole concept of "taking offence" when someone does something out of relative inexperience or ignorance? Because I think this is the tipping point that starts pushing the whole community towards the abusive tendencies so many evince. The problem seems to reside in the fact that many of the "offended" parties find that offence to be a totally logical forerunner of their abusive excesses, making these acceptable. Whether verbal abuse, or tantrums, or demands, or suddenly abandoning a party in the middle of the run because people are "wasting their time," I view this behavior as nothing but intolerant, abusive and, at worst, Fascistoid.

My preferred attitude would be to respectfully, and somewhat humbly, send a tell to offer some guidance to the person that is creating the issues, whether it be from gear, or behavior. But in their minds this suggestion seems to be an added offence. However, in a game in which so much has been done, by intention and design, to bring together disparate populations, and one in which information is, still in the post-Tanaka age, so scarce and unclear, it is not fair to punish those with more casual attitudes. Especially if they evince interest in doing well and pulling their weight, once they've been informed of the problems they might be causing.

That is not to say that there aren't players that underperform out of malice... but this is really a rare case. And everybody is in agreement about what to do in those instances. In most other cases, however, the true offenders are the Game Nazis, as I call them. I have written elsewhere advocating for a game environment in which challenge and frustration exist to stimulate a sense of reward, achievement, but also of community and cooperation. As a corollary to that principle, one of tolerance and willingness to improve the group by helping the individual must be understood and accepted.

Those among us that need to abusively define themselves by underlining performance contrasts with others, usually when they are ahead, never when they're behind, tend to be desperate, abused individuals in real life that have come to the game world to perpetuate the cycle of abuse. I'm not pushing for an end to challenge, nor for a lack of a certain pressure to better the collective by improving the parts; but bullying MUST not be tolerated here, just like anywhere else. However, I see party/linkshell leaders actively catering to those abusers, just because with them in their party/shell, they feel they increase the possibilities of the coveted win or drop. In my book, no gear is worth that.

R