Define a good player

[RiyahArp]

There's no point because ultimately caring about good or bad in this sense is letting other people define your own conduct by what other people like. I think Kaiva themself suffered from that when they fell into the trap of believing a good player has a high parse on savage content. People tend to care about good or bad because they want people to externally validate what they do, but it's never enough; if you get good at casual content, someone will look down on you for not doing savage. if someone clears savage they won't think you are good unless you can farm it. If you farm it, then people will think you aren't good if you have a low parse. If you do PvP, there's a whole ranking system you can use to look down on people or look up to them, from bronze wolf to top 100.

If you allow others to set these standards you're always going to fail them, but setting "good and bad" standards isn't as much for yourself as you think, it's because you want people to say "oh, he's such a great player!" or don't want them to say "oh, he's bad!" You shift the aspect of playing a game a bit to fulfilling other players ideas of how you should play a game, and that's a bad aspect of gamer culture. Good or bad is dumb, it's whether or not you have fun or enjoy the game. You can be good by someone's standards, and hate every second of it, or be bad and have a great time.

So much of this is just players desire to control and erect status monuments. It's not enough to play a game and have fun in it (especially in one as forgiving in casual content as this), you have to win worship by satisfying whatever crowd you aspire to's conditions of being a good player. Kaiva would just have a lot more fun if they didn't worry about what others said; if mastery of a game is fun, you don't need other players to tell you how good you are; the journey itself is fun. But all of this said here is just how fragmented that idea is; some people will think you bad if you are patient with bad players, some people think you are good if you mentor them, some people think being nice is better than being skilled, some people think its better to be mean if it spurs people to git gud...what's the point of asking? Everyone will ask you to be all things at all times.

[Sigma-Astra]

There's no point because ultimately caring about good or bad in this sense is letting other people define your own conduct by what other people like. I think Kaiva themself suffered from that when they fell into the trap of believing a good player has a high parse on savage content. People tend to care about good or bad because they want people to externally validate what they do, but it's never enough; if you get good at casual content, someone will look down on you for not doing savage. if someone clears savage they won't think you are good unless you can farm it. If you farm it, then people will think you aren't good if you have a low parse.

...And what's wrong with Kaiva's viewpoint? What is it with you and this "hate boner" you have for people who do Savage content...? Like seriously, any time it's brought up, you're on a warpath with it lately I've noticed.

Good or bad is dumb, it's whether or not you have fun or enjoy the game. You can be good by someone's standards, and hate every second of it, or be bad and have a great time.

I don't know, I don't really enjoy the game that much when I have a bunch of bad players in Weeping City or Rabanastre that consecutively die to the same thing five times in a row and I have to keep Manashifting the healers to raise them on BLM. That's not really fun, in my opinion, just saying. I'm glad though that the other person lying on the floor five times in a row is having a great time, while I'm thinking that I need to play a different game for a few hours or quit the raid entirely. You see how much of a double edge sword that is?

[RiyahArp]

...And what's wrong with Kaiva's viewpoint? What is it with you and this "hate boner" you have for people who do Savage content...?

Nothing I said in that was savage was bad; the point was rather that no matter how you define "good" there's always a higher step defined by other people. I used the progression there to show that even as you fulfill "good" conditions, there's always something people can use to look down on you.

I don't know, I don't really enjoy the game that much when I have a bunch of bad players in Weeping City or Rabanastre that consecutively die to the same thing five times in a row and I have to keep Manashifting the healers to raise them on BLM.

Then you can structure the game so you have fun; only play with friends, leave bad runs, vote kick the bad players, etc. Obsessing about them being bad does what?

Arguably, this is actually a miraculous feat in and of it's own as the developers have gone out of their way to suck the fun out of as many things as humanly possible this expansion.

Hah, well, yeah it's a bit of a bad time for them right now. Too much repetition doesn't help I guess, and a lot of the good/bad stuff probably happens when there isn't that much to occupy us.

[Sigma-Astra]

Nothing I said in that was savage was bad; the point was rather that no matter how you define "good" there's always a higher step defined by other people. I used the progression there to show that even as you fulfill "good" conditions, there's always something people can use to look down on you.

Well, yes, again, that's the point. Everyone has their own merits and criteria for what they deem acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It's just like the real world in that regard. That's why I don't understand what else you were expecting from this thread, yet still felt the need to post in it and say that there's no point and complain about everyone's idea, not even showing constructive criticism about it because all you've offered on the table is "there's no point" and "just play the game and have fun" which doesn't add anything else to the conversation. It's no different than walking into a job and your potential employer having certain criteria and merits that they expect you to have over the person standing next to you that may display even better quality traits or completely abyssal ones instead. Just because you find that the concepts of a "good player" or "bad player" are dumb doesn't deny their existence or deny others from having certain standards and upholding those standards.

Then you can structure the game so you have fun; only play with friends, leave bad runs, vote kick the bad players, etc. Obsessing about them being bad does what?

It's impossible to only play with friends in a 24 man raid unless I have 24 friends all on at the same time from the same server or different servers on my Datacenter to run it with. After queuing for 15 minutes, why should I leave a bad run because a player thinks it's hilarious to stay dying on the floor five times in a row? How can I kick them if it's not a group majority vote? It's not really obsessing about bad players so much as it's just me expecting, you know, other players to be somewhat competent and realize that the orange puddle means death after the fifth time.

You want everyone to just ignore these factors and play the game and have fun, which I guess could be said that they are your standards, however, you're still not going to convince anyone here that we should just casually ignore these things in favor of "just have fun guys". A person can be bad and enjoy the game, great...that doesn't mean I have to enjoy them being bad in order to enjoy my playtime either.

Fun is subjective for everyone.

[RiyahArp]

Just because you find that the concepts of a "good player" or "bad player" are dumb doesn't deny their existence or deny others from having certain standards and upholding those standards.

It's all about what other people do, though. Your example was like that. The whole thing is about what other people do or don't do. And if you tried to look at how to be good, you'd be following people's contradictory and sometimes unattainable ways of that. I think that's dumb for the reasons I give, and tends to lead to less fun because it's always chasing external validation. I didn't like seeing Kaiva despair over how other people defined good in that post a while back, and i'd rather people just focus on fun than good sometimes. Again if game mastery is legitimately fun for you, go for it. But if its more about what others do, its doomed to failure.

You want everyone to just ignore these factors and play the game and have fun, which I guess could be said that they are your standards, however, you're still not going to convince anyone here that we should just casually ignore these things in favor of "just have fun guys". A person can be bad and enjoy the game, great...that doesn't mean I have to enjoy them being bad in order to enjoy my playtime either..

That all goes out the window when it's you dying five times.

because, you know, everyone does that at some point. Did you think it was hilarious to lie on the floor when you screwed up that one mechanic? For me I think it was the puddles from the dun scaith plant boss. I couldn't actually see them at all the first time i did it, and ate every one. Got called out on it too. But I didn't think it was hilarious; if anything i was WTF. It took another run for me to see them, and then i did fine. The risk in having those standards is that you focus too much on others and how they injure you, and that's what i see when people talk about it. The person hates runs taking a long time or wiping; the other hates being called wrong or being kicked for failing. And, well, i'd rather not play a game where everyone is a potential hindrance, I guess.

[Sigma-Astra]

It's all about what other people do, though. Your example was like that. The whole thing is about what other people do or don't do. And if you tried to look at how to be good, you'd be following people's contradictory and sometimes unattainable ways of that. I think that's dumb for the reasons I give, and tends to lead to less fun because it's always chasing external validation. I didn't like seeing Kaiva despair over how other people defined good in that post a while back, and i'd rather people just focus on fun than good sometimes. Again if game mastery is legitimately fun for you, go for it. But if its more about what others do, its doomed to failure.

I don't think Kaiva is despairing as much as you think that she might be over how other people defined what a good player was. She realizes this is a forum after all and heads will butt and that people will not always see eye to eye. She even said that this thread was about people's personal opinions and that no one else HAS to follow anybody else's opinion about what a good player is, she even lamented that there were a lot of good responses so far in the thread. She was taking a break for being too critical of herself and going through a lot of personal things in her life also, which is fine, people get like that sometimes with any game or hobby, it happens. You're trying to be a voice for someone that doesn't technically need a voice, at least, from what I can see. She's not taking a break because she's despairing about over how other people define what a "good player" is.

Good responses thus far. I was just curious. Also going through a lot of things in my personal life, so it's been kinda beaten into me to take a break and stop being over-critical of myself. So, I'm taking a break. As for the few questions about what qualifies as a good player...there is no single answer to this. It's your own personal opinion on what a good player is. You don't have to follow anybody else's definition on this: it's what you personally feel is a good player in FFXIV.

I mean, she states it, right there what the point of the thread was. Of which, you just say earlier that there's no point and everyone should just play the game to have fun, which is all fine and dandy, but fun is subjective for everyone. I just find it mind boggling how you keep missing the main point of the thread's reason for discussion over and over again.