/Accuse @ the devs: have you set us up to fail...?

[BluexBird]

Reminds me of when Nidhogg came out. The amount of times we wiped because DPS couldn't kill that nail was just... wow.

I absolutely do think they need to come up with something. But one thing I don't think has been mention, is TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO PLAY THEIR CLASS VIA THEIR JOB QUESTS!

I'm gonna be honest - I HATED 99% of this game's story, with some very minor exceptions, twists, and jokes they managed to put it. So instead of filling job quests with a bunch of pointless, useless, and mind-numbing tasks, how about you actually have your job master actually teach you something USEFUL for once?

For instance, teach Bard to apply both their DoTs, use Raging Strikes, Iron Jaws, Wanderer's Minuet, and then tell them to use Pitch Perfect at 3 stacks. You know... just something like that for starters. It's not the most optimal combo, but at least it would be a start for those players who apparently only seem to spam Heavy Shot the entire fight.

Or you can go yell them to go somewhere and kill 3 monsters before coming back for some more useless dialogue. Up to you.

[Ametrine]

Snip.

Yes! This too!
Some jobs have completely different rotations and mechanics at different points. Say, a new Black Mage leveling now would know nothing about the flare rotation for level 50 content, but they may never even need to learn it since even just derping about and just being a step up from being a frost mage is always enough.
Conversely, that rotation is still good enough for most HW content, so, you can bump into 60+ BLMs who never use Enochian, because they don't ever need to.

[Tridus]

I'm levelilng MCH right now, and this bugs me. Compared to levelling the healers and PLD, I don't get a whole lot of feedback on if I'm doing it correctly. It turned out when I was working on BRD that I was doing it very wrong at 50, which I found out later after I failed an instance, made some changes, did it again, and did double the DPS of the previous run through (unsurprisingly, we cleared that one). I only knew there was a problem and that I'd improved on it because ACT told me so. The game told me absolutely nothing. It will also be telling me nothing when new abilities show up that drastically change what I should be doing (which isn't a thing that really happens to healers in the same way).

I don't find the obfuscation helpful to trying to play DPS given how much more complicated the job mechanics are compared to the healers I've been playing. God help me if I got to 70, totally failed an Ex Primal due to my lousy DPS and only learned about it at that point (which is a thing I've also seen happen to people in my FC, it was very discouraging for them). As you said, the tanks and healers don't suffer the same shock. Bardam's Mettle gives them a great indication of what's going to be expected when someone shows up undergeared, without cooldown usage, and gets utterly destroyed. DPS do not get the same treatment in there. If stuff takes longer, it just puts more stress on the healer.

I don't really view lack of feedback as a good thing until it suddenly shows up and gets you kicked out of groups.

[SilverObi]

The game's major failing is that it doesn't ENFORCE a high standard of dps play outside of current endgame. It's up the player to take what they've been given and put it together correctly (tooltips help!). An already good player will do that and figure out how to make themselves perform better and better while those who don't want to improve or read or research never will no matter how much the game or community tries to help them. So again I'll say the game does fine teaching players the basics of what they need to do throughout the leveling process, but it's always up to the individual player to elevate themselves to a higher level of play.

Hell when I took up mnk again in ARR after the transition from 1.0, I was misunderstanding how Bootshine worked in a rotation. Know what I did? Asked a then max level mnk for tips and took their advice to improve myself. It wasn't the game's fault I was misinterpreting an ability, it was mine. The feedback for failure is there for those that want to see it and admit to it.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Thats not a silly title, that a clickbaity title.

I can do that too.

Man, Can you imagine if the devs made it so any time your character did damage that got the enemies below 90%, the enemies just died?! How about the moment you finally killed the first boss, and you just got the dungeon clear right then and there?!

Just kidding tho.

[Sebazy]

The game's major failing is that it doesn't ENFORCE a high standard of dps play outside of current endgame.

Frankly, I'd say it barely enforces any standard of play until you hit EX and Savage.

I've mentioned this before in another thread, but I had a 165DPS BLM in Rabanastre the other day (Not perma dead, not their first clear, no afk, no DC), the group actually attempted to kick them after Hashmal which failed. It wasn't until Rofocale where repeatedly running away with the chariot likely got them kicked. Ironically that kick was likely doing them some small mercy given how shocking their level of play was. They had already gotten their loot so it was no real loss to them.

I just find it sad that someone can get to level 70 and perform that badly in content they've previously experienced, yet still get 'rewarded' for it.

Please pardon the silly title (which was made only for silliness, I assure you :P )
but something occurred to me about how XIV's leveling experience does (or does not) prepare players for max level play.

The thing is, this game did have a very good DPS curve at ARR's launch. WP was perhaps a bit of a blip due to how easy it was to speed run, but otherwise, the last few levelling dungeons actually pressured players whilst Amdapor Keep was a fantastic introduction to the mechanics people would see in the three HM primals. These were in turn gatekeepers for Coil.

There is absolutely nothing of the sort now. Until you hit EX/Savage/Ultimate, the endgame is often easier than the road that leads there.

[SilverObi]

Actual good points

I can agree with how older dungeons basically forced you to get better, those AK speedruns were insane back in the day! I saw your posts of those parses and yes that blm was abysmal, but if someone can manage to get their way to 70 without learning how to do their job, no amount of step-by-step or babying will improve them. That shows willful ignorance at that level and that's something you can never solve. And they did get relatively punished by getting kicked (too bad they got their loot though but we all have stories of dead <job> winning loot rolls).

I will say that yes content outside of savage has gotten so simple that it allows people to be carried, but isn't it also up to the other people on the team to decide to not carry? It's harsh but that's another metric for failure when your team can point out glaring problems and it's up to the player to acknowledge and fix it. That's part of why I'm pro-parser since it'll allow people to see just how good/bad they are in honest numbers

[Sebazy]

And they did get relatively punished by getting kicked (too bad they got their loot though but we all have stories of dead <job> winning loot rolls).

Yeah, their partner was with them so they likely knew exactly what was going on. It's doubly frustrating as the partner didn't pipe up until after the kick but he was clearly rather angry about it.

In the end it wasn't a particularly pleasant experience for anyone, not least those two.

[RitsukoSonoda]

*Snip*

We also need to stop making excuses for people not just in games but irl as well. The real issue is that these kids now at least in the US have excuses made for underperformance starting at pre-school age. A majority of the players that worked at things in game in the past still do so now. The only thing that's changed is either the amount of time they actually play the game or the number of games they play at a time.

The most successful games nowadays aren't successful for being easy and fast paced. The most common factors for game success generally are Marketing (See Blizzard), Franchise (Elderscrolls, Fallout, Final Fantasy as long as the game itself isn't poorly done), Pandering to specific demographics that will repurchase the newest version of a game every year, (Sports games, to an extent Call of Duty games).

[Destati]

One thing that has always struck me as sort of odd about the game is that the class/job quests do very little in actually teaching you how to play. Yes, you could say that's what the tooltips are for, but it would be nice if the trainer NPCs actually... you know, trained you. My problem with looking up guides out of game is the fact that these guides often have varying opinions on what is/isn't the "best" or "most optimal" rotation, etc. It becomes more of an issue when said guides aren't updated to reflect patch changes.
I've said this elsewhere but it's really discouraging when I'm led to believe that I'm doing something correctly, only to be told I'm not. I realize things like this are inevitable in the metagame but it would be nice if there were something in-game that helps me know I'm going in the right direction. It doesn't have to be a parser, just something.