How to give advice

[Jijifli]

I don’t want to debate I want to sensible the community, I want less sad or upset players, less reports and a more friendly community that’s all!
If some at least understood how to talk to others in a better and constructive way I probably got a result

And saying that criticism is bad and the cause is incorrect. By definition, me ever saying you are doing something wrong is criticism. If you're spamming cure on a full health tank and I ask you to not spam since you're overhealing and wasting 90% of your mp, that's criticism. If I brought up that you should be using impact and not just jolt, and that you should be using verstone and verfire instead of letting it sit, that's criticism. If I ask the tank to keep threat, that's criticism.

The question is, how do YOU react to it? Do you give the words a go? Do you ignore it and pull the "don't pay my sub" card? Do you prove why your method is better?

Just to make sure you are understanding between what is constructive or not though, let me give you a comparison using the same scenario. Joe is playing FFXIV, and he plays a Bard. Joe is having difficulty keeping 100% uptime on his dots, causing him to miss possible crits for songs and lower his dps.

Constructive would be pointing it out, and explaining a method that potentially helps. Such as an already given example, using jaws to reset the duration afterplaying a new song, as both are 30 second durations (the dot and the song) and makes it much easier to manage.

Non constructive is calling you garbage, telling you to uninstall, or silently removing you from the party.

Now, if you want all criticism gone, we're at silently removing you from the party. Do you find that fun?

[JohnSeal]

Arguing semantics with someone who isn't a native speaker and clearly has only a rudimentary understanding of the language, yet feels confident enough to act as though they're an expert, is a truly pointless endeavor. Sometimes it's best to just wash your hands of it and walk away.

Looks that’s pointless,offensive and not called for criticism.
Agree on the point that sometimes you should just wash your hand of it and walk away because talking to some people is a wastes of time.

[MoroMurasaki]

I don’t want to debate I want to sensible the community, I want less sad or upset players, less reports and a more friendly community that’s all!
If some at least understood how to talk to others in a better and constructive way I probably got a result

It seems like your desire for less sad and upset players only extends to people receiving advice, not to those giving it. I refuse to believe you don't understand that it upsets me when a dungeon drags out to double the length because of some combination of poor or uninformed play.

I have a question for you. Is something like this bad?

Bob is playing BRD in Hell's Lid. Bob is not using any songs. Carol is playing WHM but plays BRD a lot. Carol says 'Bob, If you just play a song as each song ends you'll unlock some extra abilities and give the party some buffs too. You can see if you're playing a song right above your Straight Shot gague.'

Is that abusive or bad? If you think it is in any way I can comfortably wash my hands of this conversation because you are completely unreachable.

[Lubu_Mykono]

It comes to what some people want in runs. There are lots of different players.
If you aren't great at the job then you get advice and it helps be polite and say thank you.
If someone is calling you out for bad DPS or job function it's up to you know to respond.

People complain to me all the time for not doing huge runs in dungeons. I don't do huge pulls, never have never will.
"Don't like it, leave". then blacklist. Most don't leave, some do. But then they have another 20-30 minute queue time ahead it.

Tl;dr it's up to you how to interact with other players, there are tools to negate hostility and promote productivity.

[JohnSeal]

It seems like your desire for less sad and upset players only extends to people receiving advice, not to those giving it. I refuse to believe you don't understand that it upsets me when a dungeon drags out to double the length because of some combination of poor or uninformed play.

I have a question for you. Is something like this bad?

Bob is playing BRD in Hell's Lid. Bob is not using any songs. Carol is playing WHM but plays BRD a lot. Carol says 'Bob, If you just play a song as each song ends you'll unlock some extra abilities and give the party some buffs too. You can see if you're playing a song right above your Straight Shot gague.'

Is that abusive or bad? If you think it is in any way I can comfortably wash my hands of this conversation because you are completely unreachable.

Honestly,if you put in this terms yes I am sorry you feel in this way. I can understand the frustration and I don’t like fights or see people upset in general. I don’t get upset over people incompetence, I just expect will happen and that sometimes instances will be double of the length required.

No what you say is acceptable and not bad at all!
No the examples you made are not abusive or bad, I never say you are but many others are.
You are not toxic or offensive to others.

[JohnSeal]

And saying that criticism is bad and the cause is incorrect. By definition, me ever saying you are doing something wrong is criticism. If you're spamming cure on a full health tank and I ask you to not spam since you're overhealing and wasting 90% of your mp, that's criticism. If I brought up that you should be using impact and not just jolt, and that you should be using verstone and verfire instead of letting it sit, that's criticism. If I ask the tank to keep threat, that's criticism.

The question is, how do YOU react to it? Do you give the words a go? Do you ignore it and pull the "don't pay my sub" card? Do you prove why your method is better?

Just to make sure you are understanding between what is constructive or not though, let me give you a comparison using the same scenario. Joe is playing FFXIV, and he plays a Bard. Joe is having difficulty keeping 100% uptime on his dots, causing him to miss possible crits for songs and lower his dps.

Constructive would be pointing it out, and explaining a method that potentially helps. Such as an already given example, using jaws to reset the duration afterplaying a new song, as both are 30 second durations (the dot and the song) and makes it much easier to manage.

Non constructive is calling you garbage, telling you to uninstall, or silently removing you from the party.

Now, if you want all criticism gone, we're at silently removing you from the party. Do you find that fun?

You asked a question,it’s kindness to reply:
I just don’t react, I don’t care and I don’t express disappointment because when the instance will finish I won’t see this player that unsettle me again, I am prepared to the fact the often dangeouns take much longer than how are suppose to last.
I give advice or ask someone to make a change only when is jeopardising the entire group and damaging others directly, if a tank can’t hold aggroI will give politely advices (easy stuff like use unleashed/Flash/Op ) or if a healer can’t keep us alive I will recommend which skills works better and why.
Anyway sometimes I see horrendous things in duty finder and still I shut up because I don’t like to argue and still I don’t care or get upset, fresh example in today 70 roulette:
This BLM rotation was: T3-B3-F3-F3-F3 repeat all three bosses, and he was a mentor, as a tank I probably dealt more dmg than him and it took so long ( around 30 minutes) the other DPS was fresh 70 bonus.
I didn’t complain, advice or whatever just chuckling ^^

Now please let this post die in piece

[MoroMurasaki]

Honestly,if you put in this terms yes I am sorry you feel in this way. I can understand the frustration and I don’t like fights or see people upset in general. I don’t get upset over people incompetence, I just expect will happen and that sometimes instances will be double of the length required.

No what you say is acceptable and not bad at all!
No the examples you made are not abusive or bad, I never say you are but many others are.
You are not toxic or offensive to others.

I think this is part of the breakdown in communication perhaps. What most people in this thread are advocating for is advice/criticism given in this fashion.

I am very opposed to people being mean to other players. Even my biggest pet peeve (healers not dpsing) doesn't get me to be mean to people but I will often counter it with something like "Hey (healers name) I promise you're safe to do some damage. I'll rotate my cooldowns, you don't have to worry about me too much" which seems reasonable to me and I would say most other people.

To be clear - if anyone is saying it is alright to belittle others because of poor performance I don't agree with that but I just don't see anyone here advocating for that approach. It seems like that's what you are arguing against but I don't think that is what anyone else is arguing for

Seriously, if you see someone saying treating people badly based on performance is okay point me in their direction and I will give them a piece of my mind.

[van_arn]

Here's me advice: the op clearly stated he knew he should "work on" things.

What he didn't state is he queued up for something knowing full well he is subpar at his chosen role.

"Work on" things when other people don't need to carry you. Read your tooltips. Randoms aren't obligated to carry you, even if courtesy requires them to be nice when telling you you're incompetent.

You are, however, required by simple courtesy to play your role at an adequate level. If you can't or refuse to do that, you only have yourself to blame when people want to kick you.

[Berethos]

Unless you've established a mentor-student or teacher-student relationship where said person is actively seeking advice from you, then you should ask if someone wants advice. The reason is because it's important to keep the control in the person's hands.

Agreed, especially if you want your advice to be effective and not just a waste of your own typing.

I'm a teacher in real life - there's an art to getting someone to buy into the idea that they should both listen to the knowledge that you're imparting and that it will actually benefit them. Chances are the drive-by advice drop approach is going to be ignored, unless that individual came into the experience wanting you to share your knowledge already.

Seriously - butter-em up a bit with pointing out something they did right, but then tell them that you've got something that will help them even more, and be surgical about it. You might just be surprised at how well that works so that the time you could have spent doing more pressing buttons in combat isn't wasted on typing words. Doesn't take much extra effort either - "So you've got this part of the job down pat, but I noticed this other thing, and if you do x and y you'll really see things come together." Obviously this is for when you have a couple seconds to type it out, and barking out commands in the middle of combat cause whatever they're doing/not doing needs to change yesterday is appropriate for those moments. I wouldn't want anyone here getting their hempen pantalettes in a twist thinking I'm suggesting any command needs to be couched in that approach.

Maybe it's just me, but we seem to be in general so fixated on the "Don't make it easy, make it harder, gotta be tough, school of hard knocks, or it's not legitimate" approach that we generally just suck at actually teaching each other how to get better, and that definitely extends to gaming more often than not.

[OurMom]

"Let me school you" is usually a joke. If you play more competitive or PvP mmos you'll see a lot of people talking like that to their friends when giving them advice on how to do something.

If something that small messed up the rest of your run.....yikes...