How to give advice

[JohnSeal]

I tried to find an old post I made, but couldn't.

The premise is that I've had random people give advice to me. Like all advice/criticism you need to listen and evaluate regardless of context. Some of the most rewarding advice I've ever received professionally or in sports were from people that would make the average FF14 cry just by being in the same room as them.

I play USTA tennis at a decently high competitive level. I once played this scumlord who was CLEARLY sandbagging his rating. He wasn't rude during the match or before/after, but he wasn't as friendly and talkative as most tennis players are. After he completely bodied me 6-1, 6-1 in less than an hour, he said "Your running forehand was really weak and easy to attack, work on it".

I could have gotten upset or mad, etc, but instead I thought about what he said and he was right. I hadn't realized I lost nearly 14 points on a running forehand...

In my career, one of my managers was probably the least people friendly person I ever met, but he was a professional genius. The sheer amount of expertise I was able to acquire from simply being around him and in meetings with has served me incredibly well. Had I ignored all of that because he was a dick, it would have left me a much worse/ill equipped professional than I am today.

The point of this post is to say that ignored how feedback is given. Seriously who cares. Be an adult and evaluate it and if it makes sense, implement it.



Not sure how old you are or where you live, but in the real world of adults, criticism is one of the most important things in the world, and I ALWAYS accept it from anyone and everyone willing to give it. It makes me stronger.

There is a Hugely gigantic super mega super difference between advice and criticise!!!
Advice you do it with a certain use of words,and with kindness.
Criticise is just toxic... some people gives healthy advices and other just like to feel great by giving orders and make people feel bad.
I as a nice mentor like to advice, other just shoot criticism... my way to interact with players “ in need “ is : Hey, you know that T4 works better on mobs? Hi, please try to use your scatter it works better on 3+ mobs!
Hey “ tank name” please try to use your flash, it will make my job easier <3
Others toxic players: M8 stop ******** using that ***** move. Or,Ooo your are really bad at this job...
This are easy examples of the difference between advice and criticise!!!

Anyway I am almost 30,working since I am 16 because I had too ( I finished college anyway) never appreciate criticism from who doesn’t want actually help but just bossy around, always helping younger colleagues with a smile xD

[Rymm]

Criticise is just toxic

Okay, I am honestly not trying to belittle you here, but is English your first language? I know first hand that some things get jumbled in translation and I worry that this might be one of those things.

I just need to point out that criticism is absolutely not necessarily toxic or even impolite.

If you think it is, then I feel like that explains some of the misconceptions you have on this particular subject. In that case you are mistaken. Criticism is inherently neutral, neither good nor bad. It can become either based on how the person presents it to you. And, as an aside, criticism can still be constructive, even when presented in a toxic manner.

[JohnSeal]

I know I typed the part about where I mentioned combos specifically in bold to stress my point about how the game tends to hold your hand when it comes to correct play for the various classes, but that wasn't the only part of the post I intended for you to read. You seem to have missed the closing line of that paragraph that was meant to address everything not covered by the 'blinky combos' example. To reiterate, I said "Doing the bare minimum of reading the tooltips of the spells you get as you level up should be enough to perform at least passably."

Passably. Maybe not proficiently, as that tends to take practice and effort. But at least enough not to be a burden upon your party when doing even casual group content.

Please, in the future, read and comprehend my entire post before accusing me of talking nonsense.

Yes fair enough, just saying
Yes I agree basic knowledge is required but luckyly on CHAOS the situation in not so bad XD I do mostly everyday good runs with good groups (:

[AxlStream]

Don't give advice on this game. Just silently kick. Less of a hassle.

[JohnSeal]

Okay, I am honestly not trying to belittle you here, but is English your first language? I know first hand that some things get jumbled in translation and I worry that this might be one of those things.

I just need to point out that criticism is absolutely not necessarily toxic or even impolite.

If you think it is, then I feel like that explains some of the misconceptions you have on this particular subject. In that case you are mistaken. Criticism is inherently neutral, neither good nor bad. It can become either based on how the person presents it to you. And, as an aside, criticism can still be constructive, even when presented in a toxic manner.

No is not, but I live in England since many years,I speak English better than many locals lol I also speak other three languages anyway....
yes that’s the point of all the thread!! Criticise is TOXIC, advice is appreciate by most of players.
Criticism= impolite,rude,unsettling and not appreciate
Advising= kind hearted,helpful,useful for the community.

I wrote another reply earlier with examples between the two.

If have make some spelling/grammar mistakes is just the damn keyboard changing words lol

[Vidu]

No is not, but I live in England since many years,I speak English better than many locals lol I also speak other three languages anyway....
yes that’s the point of all the thread!! Criticise is TOXIC, advice is appreciate by most of players.
Criticism= impolite,rude,unsettling and not appreciate
Advising= kind hearted,helpful,useful for the community.

I wrote another reply earlier with examples between the two.

If have make some spelling/grammar mistakes is just the damn keyboard changing words lol

"Its not what you say, but how you say it" - you can criticize someone without being toxic. And you can give advice in a toxic fashion.


This is an actual defintion of criticism - I shortend it a bit, you can find the long version here: http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/criticism
1: the act of expressing disapproval and of noting the problems or faults of a person or thing : the act of criticizing someone or something
2: a remark or comment that expresses disapproval of someone or something
3: the activity of making careful judgments about the good and bad qualities of books, movies, etc.

I can criticize someone and still remain polite and friendly, it just depends on how I present it. At the same time I can give advice and be very unpolite and unfriendly by doing so, for example if I call the person in question names or belittle them like in OPs example.

I dont know enough about monk to give a person soild advice on how to play that class to its full potentital or just how to play at all. If I play it, I hit the glowing buttons (and I dont even need a job guide to figure that out). But I made it a point for myself to know enough about each class to notice (obvious) mistakes (and I believe that aftter 5 years of playing the game I also developed a kind of "sense" for that). So I can point out that I'm seeing some flaws, but I cant really assist on fixing them - the only "advice" I could give there would be to look up a guide or ask someone else.
Now, as long as I'm saying this in a friendly way - is that toxic, rude and unpolite? Is saying "Hey, I see you struggle with monk, you should look up a guide" toxic? Or is that already advice? In which case, I'll circle round to the "spirit" of a point I made earlier in one of my posts: Doesnt every advice countain some sort of criticism? Because if you were doing everything perfectly, you wouldnt need advice in the first place - so giving advice is already saying "There is something wrong", it just comes with a solution.

Both advice and criticism are mere acts, that can both come off as rude or friendly, depending on your tone.
Rude = criticism
Friendly = advice
...thats just not true.


(Also, little critic on your posts: for me its not grammatic errors and spelling mistakes that make them difficult to read/understand at times - I'm not a native speaker myself, so my posts are stuffed with such errors aswell - but your use of "lol" and "xD" and the like. For me those belong into a chat, not a foren-post - and certainly not when you're trying to have "serious" discussion about a more or less serious topic. Kinda irritating and it makes me take you a lot less serious.)

[Nixxe]

No is not, but I live in England since many years,I speak English better than many locals lol I also speak other three languages anyway....
yes that’s the point of all the thread!! Criticise is TOXIC, advice is appreciate by most of players.
Criticism= impolite,rude,unsettling and not appreciate
Advising= kind hearted,helpful,useful for the community.

I wrote another reply earlier with examples between the two.

If have make some spelling/grammar mistakes is just the damn keyboard changing words lol

Blaming your mistakes on your keyboard is utterly absurd, especially when you make so many, including basic syntactical errors that a keyboard or even an autocorrect program is unlikely to be responsible for. I'm hardly a prescriptivist zealot, but I do find it a bit irritating when people refuse to own up to their shortcomings, especially if they're fairly reasonable ones.

Essentially what you are arguing though are your connotations, which are frequently idiosyncratic, not denotations. You can't hold other people accountable for your connotations though, as those are simply the associations you make with a particular word.

[NessaWyvern]

Criticism= impolite,rude,unsettling and not appreciate
Advising= kind hearted,helpful,useful for the community.

You know there is such thing as bad advice, and there is such thing as constructive criticism, right? Not all criticism is unappreciated, and not all advice is good for the community.

Your use of smilies, lols and over-positivity is coming off as slightly patronizing. It's my advice to you to tone it down a tiny bit, and have a more neutral tone. I'm sure many people are replying to your comments simply because it's rubbing them the wrong way.

[MoroMurasaki]

No is not, but I live in England since many years,I speak English better than many locals lol I also speak other three languages anyway....
yes that’s the point of all the thread!! Criticise is TOXIC, advice is appreciate by most of players.
Criticism= impolite,rude,unsettling and not appreciate
Advising= kind hearted,helpful,useful for the community.

I wrote another reply earlier with examples between the two.

If have make some spelling/grammar mistakes is just the damn keyboard changing words lol

I think perhaps the fact that English isn't your first language is negatively impacting your ability to participate in this thread and this post is a great example of it.

Criticism and advice are synonyms. They may not mean exactly the same thing but in many instances they are interchangeable. All criticism is advice while not all advice is criticism which also might be confusing you.

If someone says 'Your DoT uptime is particularly low, if you focus on bringing that up it will help your dps. I used Iron Jaws as I started playing each song when I was getting started on BRD, maybe try that.'

The entire thing is advice. The part about DoT uptime being particularly low is criticism. None of it is 'toxic' or bad in any way though, despite pointing out a flaw. Things like 'omg uninstall scrub' or 'you suck' aren't criticism or advice, they're just rude comments.

I hope this helps bridge the potential language barrier here so this thread can move on. For the record there are a plethora of mistakes in virtually all if your posts that could not be attributed to 'the damn keyboard changing words' so perhaps be more open to the idea that while you may speak English fluently there is always more to learn.

Also, yes, that was both criticism and advice.

[Rymm]

No is not, but I live in England since many years,I speak English better than many locals lol I also speak other three languages anyway....
yes that’s the point of all the thread!! Criticise is TOXIC, advice is appreciate by most of players.
Criticism= impolite,rude,unsettling and not appreciate
Advising= kind hearted,helpful,useful for the community.

I wrote another reply earlier with examples between the two.

If have make some spelling/grammar mistakes is just the damn keyboard changing words lol

I only speak two languages (and the second one rather poorly at that.) But I know how difficult language barriers can be so I have nothing but respect for those willing to put forth the time and effort to speak something that is not native to them.

That being said, you are most certainly mistaken about your use of the words 'criticism' and 'advice.' I'll not repeat the definitions of the words or the explanation of their uses, as those have been pretty well canvased already. The one thing I will bring up, is that you can not arbitrarily decide to use your own preferred definitions for specific words rather than the established definitions accepted by the populace who natively speaks the language you are conversing in. The language itself will break down at that point and it will be impossible communicate in any meaningful way.

About your keyboard changing words, are you typing on a phone with autocorrect? If you are, I highly recommend turning that feature off if you can. I know I had a lot of trouble trying to message in English with my cell phone that I bought in Brazil. It was a mess, constantly trying to change my English words to the closest guess it could get in Portuguese. In my experience, autocorrect is more trouble than it is worth.