The general player base needs to improve

[ToasterMan]

Agree with this too. I especially like the people defending PVP - guys... it just sucks in this game, c'mon - trying to PVP with that glacial GCD on unreliable servers? The world is awash with better options for you if you want to PVP - even WoW is better.

Remember when Yoshi said that he wanted PvP to be an esport? I mean, I think they did a good job with revamping the PvP for stormblood, but even then this games PvP can't really compare to pure PvP games.

[Shurrikhan]

Click on the Duty's exit (or go into the menu and leave), and get prompted with something like this (obviously, you don't do Doma Castle with 8 people. It's a quick photoshop to get the point across):

If you are worried about "shaming", then disable chat when this window is open. Or simply prompt it during the black screen after the duty.

Would be a good start to provide people with a little tool to help them compare themselves with others.

I don't actually see how that'd be of much use. Damage is consistently valuable, nor do we have any way of saying from damage alone what a person's value to the party was.

Don't get me wrong: I think in the end EVERYTHING comes down to damage, as all things in XIV are cleared through depleting enemy HP... via damage. But, pDPS is only part of any given story, and a run-wide average or total says nothing of key pulls or necessary bursts and who all especially contributed, or to what degree, to those more pivotal areas. And if the difficulty of the game (and therefore, albeit indirectly, understanding of these areas) should increase, that could make its shortcomings much more obvious than its strengths.

Remember when Yoshi said that he wanted PvP to be an esport? I mean, I think they did a good job with revamping the PvP for stormblood, but even then this games PvP can't really compare to pure PvP games.

I'd laugh at the notion, but the fact that it was even a notion at all in the present state of XIV PvP is just too disheartening to manage it. I see now a PvP experience even worse, in more ways than not, than ARR's and HW's. It remains a fringe element in treatment, with nearly zero cohesion with the rest of the game. It remains swamped with fundamental issues from polling rates to ping variance that cannot even be fixed by netcode itself, let alone combat undermechanics. Hits made and taken remain largely unimpactful, by aesthetic (i.e. ragdoll effects), undermechanics (e.g. suppression or stagger), overlying economy (healers are eventually drained of mana, but what of the rest?), and sometimes just the sheer potency benchmarks of skills and -- above all -- our scarce ability to skillfully escape damage as anything but a tank or shielder.

[Fyce]

I don't actually see how that'd be of much use. Damage is consistently valuable, nor do we have any way of saying from damage alone what a person's value to the party was.

Don't get me wrong: I think in the end EVERYTHING comes down to damage, as all things in XIV are cleared through depleting enemy HP... via damage. But, pDPS is only part of any given story, and a run-wide average or total says nothing of key pulls or necessary bursts and who all especially contributed, or to what degree, to those more pivotal areas. And if the difficulty of the game (and therefore, albeit indirectly, understanding of these areas) should increase, that could make its shortcomings much more obvious than its strengths.

If you want people to improve, the very first step to achieve that goal is making them aware that they can improve. The second step is giving them an incentive for improving. Turns out unspoke social pressure is really good at that, as well as compering yourself to others in some kind of meaningless competition without any real impact on anything.

My suggestion does exactly that, use tools the engine already has, and avoid the "issue" of in-built DPS meters. It also doesn't gate people off like some suggestions would, such as making SSS a requirement to enter something.

Of course the total amount of damage done throughout an entire run is somewhat meaningless. But meaning is not something mandatory to achieve the goal of making people aware of their own situation. Heck, you could even put a little medal icon next to the biggest damage number if you want to go further into this idea. All we need is people asking themselves "what can I do to get that medal?". If we manage to do that, we win. That's both the simplest and hardest step in the process of making the playerbase improve itself.

[Kazgrel]

WoW combat system/engine stuff

That's an engine/netcode level difference between the two games, though, and yes, even after having not played WoW for the better part of the past 4-5 years, I can still vividly remember how much more fluid the combat is there compared to this game. This game has improved on that aspect, though, but for players new here that have experience with WoW...it's a big change. What helped me is that going from caster there (ele shaman) to caster here (THM/BLM) was that I already had the preconceived notion I'd be casting slow but hitting hard. That doesn't apply to everything, though; going from something like a combat rogue or fury warrior to any of the starter melee here...yeouch.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

I'm all for improvements, but good tools in the hands of amateurs don't often produce solid results. Now, if those same amateurs show more of a willingness to learn and face challenges rather than cry nerf, perhaps those good tools could be even better?

A lot of people do sarcastically fire off the old "git gud" bit, but honestly, the bar is already set so low in most content that that's really just the basis of the improvements many of us talk about.

Let me paint it differently:

From guildhests to Savage content, I strive to not just be capable of doing it, but doing it well. If something needs to be learned or be mindful of, I take the steps to know it. I PRACTICE: If I'm good at it, then I want to stay sharp. If I'm not, I want to get better. This isn't the least bit difficult; do you know why? Because it was a habit I formed while leveling. I didn't wait til endgame to start paying attention and trying to do well. For that reason "gitting gud" isn't a challenge or an answer to everything. It was just something I made a habit out of. The rest was easy after that.

[Dualgunner]

From guildhests to Savage content, I strive to not just be capable of doing it, but doing it well. If something needs to be learned or be mindful of, I take the steps to know it. I PRACTICE: If I'm good at it, then I want to stay sharp. If I'm not, I want to get better.

This. This times a hundred. Thousand. Million. Infinity. This is the only thing I really ask of my static, and the only thing I ask of myself. The drive to improve, whether or not one can already be considered "good" is IMO better than any dps a person currently has.

[Fyce]

Click on the Duty's exit (or go into the menu and leave), and get prompted with something like this (obviously, you don't do Doma Castle with 8 people. It's a quick photoshop to get the point across):

If you are worried about "shaming", then disable chat when this window is open. Or simply prompt it during the black screen after the duty.

Would be a good start to provide people with a little tool to help them compare themselves with others.

[DracotheDragon]

Click on the Duty's exit (or go into the menu and leave), and get prompted with something like this (obviously, you don't do Doma Castle with 8 people. It's a quick photoshop to get the point across):

If you are worried about "shaming", then disable chat when this window is open. Or simply prompt it during the black screen after the duty.

Would be a good start to provide people with a little tool to help them compare themselves with others.

even if the chat was disabled they are very adamant to not show Damage debt or healed or any number in normal content, with pvp theres a different mentality, with what you suggested you could have people throw out names of someone who didn't know what to do and have them shunned from future parties, unless they could make it truly anonymous yet informative or similar to the record ready check, but again with that could cause players to abuse someone D:

[Fyce]

even if the chat was disabled they are very adamant to not show Damage debt or healed or any number in normal content, with pvp theres a different mentality, with what you suggested you could have people throw out names of someone who didn't know what to do and have them shunned from future parties, unless they could make it truly anonymous yet informative or similar to the record ready check, but again with that could cause players to abuse someone D:

We already have all the tools (would they be allowed by the ToS or not) to do everything you said:
- We can check people's performances live with third party softwares.
- We can check their history in great details on a third party website.
- We can kick pretty much anyone by simply calling the "differences in playstyle" excuse.
- We can remove anyone from a PF without any kind of justification.
- We have a tool showing every recent players we played with, which allows for easy black listing.
- We have Stone Sky Sea and Stormblood's equivalent that can be used without any kind of third party tools to roughly check someone's performances.

It'd be absurd to think that giving the players some metrics about a run they just did would open the floodgates for shunning and name shaming all over the place. It'd most likely not change anything, or at least it won't be worse that what we have now. If you do a random DF dungeon and get promped such a window, chances are people will forget about it a few seconds after closing it. Exacly like any Frontlines game.

Besides, the stance we're hearing from SE is mostly in regards to inbuilt DPS meters. Otherwise they wouldn't have given us these tables we see at the end of a PvP game to begin with. Also, I don't know why you think that showing someone's performances in PvP is different than doing it in PvE. You can do some shunning and name shaming regardless, which would also impact them in PvE.

Keep in mind that showing performances at the end of a run doesn't mean allowing witch hunting, name shaming and discrimination more than it currently is.

[DracotheDragon]

snip

the main reason as to why PVP and PVE would be different is due to the lack of feedback you get the numbers in that have a different style to them to show what you have done, while in normal PVE the feedback you get is the exp the items etc, not only this, but theres no gate with DPS in PvP so showing a numbers tends to be ineffectual since you could have someone guarding say the generator in Rival wings and may not attack anyone, to someone dealing a lot of damage to a tower outside of a mech meaning the numbers you tend to get are worthless while in pve if you went to do a dungeon you could see someone didn't know how to play there job complain and then reports could get thrown and it becomes a mess.

also SSS is not a very good tool to measure DPS, i have wanted a parcer in the game so i can improve on my ps4 but i have seen and been in parties where i got hounded for any logs regardless to the fact i cleared the content multiple times putting it in the game could make it the norm. it won't make it allowed it would just make it easier for people to do so.