The general player base needs to improve

[Gallus]

Learn the difference between a troll (someone who comes only to waste other players time) and a new player please.

Your so called "good guys" that only "offer friendly advice" and think that it's the rest of the community that "refuses to learn" are very often people that should be more concerned about solving their own anger issues rather than trying to change the rest of the players so that they meet their own "acceptable standards". I have no idea who the TC is, but I'm very familiar with this sort of player profile that claims to have just given advice when on reality ingame they are nothing but angry bullies ready to rage at the very first mistake your party makes.

[KaivaC]

Your so called "good guys" that only "offer friendly advice" and think that it's the rest of the community that "refuses to learn" are very often people that should be more concerned about solving their own anger issues rather than trying to change the rest of the players so that they meet their own "acceptable standards". I have no idea who the TC is, but I'm very familiar with this sort of player profile that claims to have just given advice when on reality ingame they are nothing but angry bullies ready to rage at the very first mistake your party makes.

I assure you, you are not familiar with me at all, especially with that blanket statement. I have never raged at any of my parties, thank you very much. I am the sort of individual who will queue up in mentor roulette, as I said in my original post, and I will stay and help. No matter how many wipes we get, I will not rage at folks. But please, go on about how I fit this profile of yours. Do compare that to the times I have genuinely offered help to other players, even brought a couple of them through some of the harder content - and not once did I rage.

[Tridus]

Your so called "good guys" that only "offer friendly advice" and think that it's the rest of the community that "refuses to learn" are very often people that should be more concerned about solving their own anger issues rather than trying to change the rest of the players so that they meet their own "acceptable standards". I have no idea who the TC is, but I'm very familiar with this sort of player profile that claims to have just given advice when on reality ingame they are nothing but angry bullies ready to rage at the very first mistake your party makes.

There's certainly people who act like jerks when it comes to offering advice.

But at the same time, when I do levelling, I get lots of newbie tanks who hit Brayflox & Qarn, are losing aggro frequently, and aren't using tank stance. Usually, that means they just got it and don't really understand what it does, or they forgot to turn it on. I feel like saying something is what an experienced player should do, because they may simply not understand why they're struggling and that the button they just recently got would help fix it (and that it turns off when you zone into the duty finder, usually).

Usually, that type of advice is met with a positive reaction. But it's all in the delivery. "Acceptable standard" there just means I want to clear the dungeon, and I want them to clear it too.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

And then we'll be back to Amdapor Keep 2.0 where half DF parties couldn't make it past demon wall. Or even worse, Pharos Sirius, where people wouldn't even bother to queue up because the first boss overwhelmed most DF parties with an army of explosive hellhounds.
What are these "acceptable standards" you are talking about? Where do you exactly draw the line? .

Significant problem with both those dungeons is there was a faster alternative. A proper curve funnels everyone through the same route. Weeping City worked wonderfully in this regard because you either pushed yourself or you weren't upgrading your tomestone gear/obtaining a i230 drop. Had Stormblood began with dungeons of that caliber for Expert, you either do them or accept a less efficient way to cap for the week. You'll be amazed at how quickly people motivate themselves when reasonably pushed. We need to emphasise reasonably here because, no, dungeons shouldn't be some insurmountable activity on par with EX Primals. But I think Expert dungeons should require more than a pulse.

Your so called "good guys" that only "offer friendly advice" and think that it's the rest of the community that "refuses to learn" are very often people that should be more concerned about solving their own anger issues rather than trying to change the rest of the players so that they meet their own "acceptable standards". I have no idea who the TC is, but I'm very familiar with this sort of player profile that claims to have just given advice when on reality ingame they are nothing but angry bullies ready to rage at the very first mistake your party makes.

You realize the inherent hypocrisy here, yes? By casting a wide, generalizing net, you look just as toxic as the players you're accusing. When people cite those "refusing to learn," they mean dungeon runs where DPS will not AoE no matter how often they are asked; any job who has not even the basic idea how their job works despite being at max level. In plenty of cases, it's these people who get the most irate despite causing the problem. Or am I an "angry bully" for expecting you to press your AoE abilities when I pull ten mobs and you're wearing better gear than I am?

[SenorPatty]

Your so called "good guys" that only "offer friendly advice" and think that it's the rest of the community that "refuses to learn" are very often people that should be more concerned about solving their own anger issues rather than trying to change the rest of the players so that they meet their own "acceptable standards". I have no idea who the TC is, but I'm very familiar with this sort of player profile that claims to have just given advice when on reality ingame they are nothing but angry bullies ready to rage at the very first mistake your party makes.

Who hurt you?

/soothe

[HyoMinPark]

I have no idea who the TC is, but I'm very familiar with this sort of player profile that claims to have just given advice when on reality ingame they are nothing but angry bullies ready to rage at the very first mistake your party makes.

Because you look so saintly making your sweeping generalizations about someone you don’t even know? I find your post far more “toxic” than Kaiva’s opening post.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

And then we'll be back to Amdapor Keep 2.0 where half DF parties couldn't make it past demon wall. Or even worse, Pharos Sirius, where people wouldn't even bother to queue up because the first boss overwhelmed most DF parties with an army of explosive hellhounds.
What are these "acceptable standards" you are talking about? Where do you exactly draw the line?

Completely offtopic, but I just came back a few days ago from taking a break. Completed the Sigma NM quest and proceeded to start doing the NM turns. I even watched some videos. On Sigma V4, on the very start, one of the healers says "if I find another troll I'm afk". I was like wtf? This was my very first time, I even watched a video but I didn't know if I was going to do everything perfectly? That comment at the start made me feel so uncomfortable with the run and I ended up dying a couple times. And then I come across threads like this and they infuriate me to no end.

The TC came across a group that couldn't clear Garuda EX. What the hell does he even know about that group? Perhaps new players? Perhaps someone that had a bad day? There could even be a person with some sort of physical deficiency or anxiety issues.

You guys can keep your "acceptable standards" to yourselves.

First, these aren't our standards. You see aoes and knockbacks in plenty of content. Are you telling me dealing with the same things we've dealt with since level 50 was the cap is somehow insurmountable? The demon wall wasn't hard, even with the adds. Yes, it was a bit of a DPS race with aoe dodging, but it was a worthwhile challenge for its time, and clearing it not only made me ready for what came after, I actually had a sense of pride and accomplishment when I bought - and still have - my first Darklight piece. Pharos was a challenge as well, but the first boss? That was little more than a lesson to not try and ignore adds and zerg a boss.

That tank's comment in O4 wasn't aimed at you and had nothing to do with you. Sure, it wasn't cool of them to say, but don't let your confidence be shaken with something that little. Yes, I just said that. Don't let someone else's words destroy your confidence. Someone might have something bad to say, even when you do it right, but if you know what to do and you're confident in doing it, or even if you're new and you've taken steps to try to be prepared, then who cares what they say? If it's an issue with anxiety, I'm not one to make light of that, as I understand it's a serious issue for many. But! This again backs up my statement from before; get people used to dealing with mechanics they'll frequently see in endgame, and they won't be blindsided or unprepared.

So, first - and I'm not pulling punches here - get over yourself, and properly assess what an acceptable standard is: being able to perform your job at the most basic level while dealing with common mechanics. Even guildhests only ask that of you. . . or is that too hard?

[Thoosa]

I tried to beat Byakko extreme and Sigmascape 1 Savage over the weekend by joining party finder groups and on Sigmascape I found that:

1. People blowing up all the ghost boxes and is being thrown off the edge.
2. Not sticking the green aoes to the edge.
3. Picking the wrong ghosts to enter the carriage and fight.
4. Placing the bombs in the wrong place and killing us all.
5. Not killing the putrid passengers fast enough.

In byakko it was slightly better but people kept dying to the first tiger fight or leg sweep.

Also in party finder groups you get people treating practice as “farm party” and leaving after first wipe, or in a farm party, repeatedly wiping.

I jus think savage and extreme content is a huge leap and people seem to think they can sale through it! Also it seems to highlight bright as day bad dps.

[RiyahArp]

There is no gradually in this. You either make it so that the dungeons harshly punish mistakes or they don't. Healers like to say it doesn't matter how low your HP is so long as you are still alive; we have boss attacks that knock people down to under ten HP. You can stand in the fire for virtually all the bosses in expert and survive a hit. We already have gradual or slow examples of one-hit attacks; Nidhogg Hard will wipe you at starting ilvl if you don't react to aoes. Hashmal will wipe you too. These things are both required and apparently do not prepare the player base.

The only way it will work is to essentally make bosses similar to Nid Hard, but increase both the speed of his attacks and and the severity of the dps checks. Both of these need to be hard enough to wipe the party in a way that prevents people from carrying others through it; even if you are a good healer or tank, the DPS have to make the checks or stay alive, or otherwise its just a carry. You can make the total amount of mechanics small, and maybe some leeway; if you get hit by Arbuda's counters or attacks two times with two players you all wipe, for example. But you cannot do this dumb "gradual and optional" stuff; you're shrinking away from the fact that to git gud means people need to fail and fail hard if they aren't gud.

And considering a lot of the complaining is more about ex and savage farms, either you accept a lot of players simply won't be gud, or you make the casual game hard enough to funnel the players who aren't gud out. If you think everyone can be savage caliber, you are mistaken. If you aren't happy with the current playerbase, who does manage to do most casual content fine, and want them to be better in some undefined way, well define it or you are being useless. You can't balance things on undefined quantities.

[KaivaC]

snip

Players will be players, unfortunately. Sadly, healers are far too strong that they could easily fix mistakes made in dungeons, and the dungeons themselves aren't really interesting enough once you get out a lot of the pre-60 dungeons that encourages more than the bare minimum to get through them. It isn't as though the devs can do anything about healing potential either, because that balancing will have a huge effect across the game. I think we might just need better dungeons, ones that subtly take away from AOE emphasis and more on role specific stuff. I mean, we're starting to have to use AOEs more now in raids...so I wonder if regular mobs in a run could start encouraging the using the ST skills.

snip

Eventually, yes, make it so that we'll come to a point where Expert dungeons can harshly punish mistakes. But the way things are set up now, that shouldn't happen until the end of 5.0 when you unlock those exclusive Expert dungeons after whatever story is in there. The game has room for gradual difficulty. You can't just suddenly throw in Nid Hard bosses - that will definitely kill Expert runs right now. You say that gradual and optional is dumb, yet you fail to recognize that some of us have already thrown in some ideas on how this could work, whereas, once again, you have not provided anything and now you're on the 'git gud' train. Some of these dungeons shouldn't be labeled 'Expert' if they are practically no different from the rest of the other dungeons, save for the level and the scenery. Lemme pose another question.

This one is specifically for you, Riyah.

What's wrong with having optional, harder dungeons that actually feel like Expert? If they are harder and the rewards are increased enough that they offer rewards like just-below-raid-level gear, materia, exclusive mounts, maybe even tomestones that you can find during a run (though those will have to be capped...maybe implement a system where these harder, Expert dungeons can give you tomestones around 200 above the weekly cap), how is that a bad thing?

See, I just threw in some ideas and incentives just in my response to you.