The general player base needs to improve

[Raven2014]

Anyway back to discussion... lets look at this from a different angle. We have a lot of casual players and I would bet some of the casual players that started playing after Stormblood hit the server have yet to hit level 70.

With that said FFXIV still uses old base MMO style game play and the players who only own a console will be thrown into an environment that is very different then most console style games, especially current gen games.

These 2 sentences are contradiction. I believe casual or hardcore are more about the level commitment of a player, not their skill. A casual is someone don't spend a lot of time on something, it doesn't mean that player will be a bad one, a hardcore is simply someone putting a lot of time doing clearing as fast as possible, but that doesn't necessary mean the player is good.You can find a "midcore" group that only put in a few hours in progression a week, but all are solid players with deep understanding of their class. On the other hand, you can find a hardcore groups that requires member to skip work/school and put in 40+ hours of progression a week, yet the member's skill ceiling can be pretty low. For the lack of better word (since my vocab is rather limited), I find it's rather insulting that most people seem to have a misconception about this, but: hardcore =/= good, casual =/= bad.

What you see as the base skill set of vast FF14's players have more things to do with the game philosophy and nature, and that is it encourage bad play by setting the bar very low. You'll always have hardcore and casual in any MMO, even in the "old" MMO like classic WoW or Everquest. The only thing difference is those game set the bard high even for entry content. Think about this example:

- Rushing dungeon is an age old argument you see popping up on this forum once a while, about how people enjoy their running dungeon differently. Yet, the core if this issue is because the system is set up to allow that problem to exist. People can pull wall to wall because - simply put - if they are good enough they can do it, and do it without breaking a sweat most of the time.
- I personally NEVER hear about this problem before I came into this game, why? Because other MMO does not allow it. For example, Wow up until Wrath of the Lich King is a serious business even in normal dungeon. Each pull is a wipe potential, each boss fight is a wipe potential. Difficult pull requires some basic coordination in the group i.e CC, focus target ...etc... You don't even dare to do 2 groups pull, in fact, when the patrols overlaps each other, the party is required to "patiently" wait for them to pass each other before pulling one group without aggro the others. These were not "optional" tactic for good group, but "requirement" for every party. Even if you're in raid gears, accidentally pulling a patrol when fighting a pack is not a pleasant experience.

For example, we have a certain "tank" in another topic just now that claim "I got into another group and we cleared just fine" despite himself admitting that he's pretty much doing every about tanking wrong, thus got him kicked from his previous group. (I don't comment in that thread because if I do I won't have something nice to say). But that tank will be kicked from any "old" MMO really fast if he does not listen to people "advice" because it's not even a problem of the run taking longer, it'll just be impossible to clear. The DPS doesn't do its job meaning the healer will run out of MP and the tank gonna die, the tank doesn't do his job meaning the DPS or the healer gonna die (if the tank doesn't die himself first) and the healer doesn't do his job mean the tank will pretty much guarantee to die. But that's not how FF14 is set up, in a dungeon in this game I feel as long as you have one solid player, you can drag the party to the finishing life even if the other 3 are bad. And because of that, those 3 other bad players will continue to move one thinking they had not done something wrong ... until they ran into a party that won't put up with their level of play, and force to face reality (like the mentioned tank did).

But, this is not the fault of the players, but the system. It sets the bar low, and the players base simply conforming to that standard. In another other MMO, that tank would have learn the lesson he's learning now at level 25 in the latest or he would never finish another dungeon, and not start learning it at lvl 51. So @OP, people does not have to become better, the game gives them no reason to.