Quote Originally Posted by LineageRazor View Post
Skilled endgame players have VERY poor conception of the actual skill levels of the majority of players in this game, and tend to assume that most are at least near their level. This is absolutely not the case.
They have what I call 'Associative Bias" - Most people will tend to associate with people of similar values, past-times, hobbies, etc. What this means in games such as this is that those who are higher personal skill level will tend to associate more/only with those of similar skill level - this means their view on the 'player base' skill level is warped, since the majority of players they see / deal with are of similar level to them.

While FFXIV has random grouping via the Duty Roulette, how many of these players use it just by themselves? I'd bet most of the time these players are in groups of 2/3/4 when queuing for dungeons/trials/raids via DR, so their contact with other players is either limited or none. How many of these players enter end-game raids & such solo? Doubt many do, they most likely have a groups/FC/Static/etc to do it with... and these will all be players of equivalent skill level to them.

Thus their contact and knowledge of other players skill level is limited, and what they view the common player as... is based on the skill level of those they associate with - ie associative bias.

This IMO is the main cause for people saying "oh, it's easy for everyone"... because that's all they see. Players of equivalent skill would naturally make the content easy, and even if there is 1-2 'normal' players in a duty... 2-3 highly skilled players will easily manage the fights regardless of the 'lesser skilled' players mistakes/handicaps/etc. So to them they still see the content as easy, and believe that all players find it easy... because they don't realize that with 2-3 skilled ppl in a group can easily carry 1-2 bad players and still make everything look/seem easy.