What is a "bad player" to you?

[Ceridwenae]

What is a bad player to me? Oof, I don't like this kind of definitive sort of question. I don't want to call someone bad for one or two things they've done, and most of the time, it's not like I can comment on how they do after I encounter them, or even before that. Yes, something they do may be less than brilliant, but it doesn't mean they are, in themselves, a "bad player".

I could group people up and put them in boxes, but I don't feel it's right for me to do so. I just can't damn whole sways of people I don't know. What I can do is gauge my own personal experiences, and although it's just anecdotal, that's what Tales from the Duty Finder is for. The best self-help thread I've seen on a game forum anywhere.

So, if in one particular instance there's someone who seems to not be pulling their weight, and even after kind words nothing seems to occur, then I might vent in that thread, or to Hubby. That doesn't mean the person pulling their weight won't then go and have an epiphany at some point afterwards and suddenly become the most attentive player ever. I'm likely never to know if that happens or not. But it could. I only know that if I didn't try to help them help themselves if or when I can, then I'd consider myself and only myself bad and know I have more work to do. If I've tried my best to help and it doesn't work, then at least I tried. Hopefully it sticks somewhere and whoever it is doesn't run into major issues down the line.

I have to be careful, to an extent, at how I approach this sort of question. I see many sides of an argument. I am a slow learner (my brain is borked!), and have anxiety to boot, so I'm very conscious of the fact I really have to double down on my efforts everywhere to have success. It can be very tiring, which is why you're unlikely to see me doing some of that more difficult content (savage stuff. That kind of thing). I can't deal with many rinse repeats in one hour for example, it's too overwhelming and draining physically and emotionally (I will try another time if it's really important to me, however).

Still, we lead by example. If we don't do the best we can do, be that using all our toolkit at the appropriate moments or simply just making sure the party sticks together and looks after itself, adjusting expectations based on who is in the party, all whilst keeping a healthy line of communication open, then we're probably all bad players. I'll also say I personally like to swot up as best I can ahead of going into something, particularly if I've not done it before, or have only done it once or twice, but I do that to compensate for the fact I don't always pick visual cues up so easily, and if there are patterns and/or lights, I can't guarantee I won't get caught short. Forewarned is forearmed for me in this case.

We can have ranting, venting threads because mostly it's good for the soul so things don't fester and build up into resentment (frankly, I see Tales from the DF as a confessional of sorts). We want others to give us a little support, even validation for our decisions, instruction on what to do if it happens again, and forgiveness if we did eff up (own your mistakes, everyone, and enrich your lives).

We've got people from round the globe, all walks of life, ages, etc., playing this game. We've got people with still developing reasoning skills, people who don't fully understand themselves let alone anyone else, people with different physical capabilities, mental capabilities, different belief systems, customs, cultures. We're going to run into differences of opinion on anything you can think of. Any thread on the forum, this one included, demonstrates this. But here's where I hope we can at least try to agree: being courteous and understanding with each other is a great start ahead of improving anyone's respective gaming skills. I can't help but think it starts by not calling people "bad" for missing that, and having forgiveness for ourselves and others when mistakes happen.

[Ilan]

What is a bad player? Someone who clearly struggles with playing any class and any mechanic, refuses to read the tooltips of their skills, refuse to use certain skills and reacts to any kind of help with something like: "This is a game you toxic elitist, i can play how i want because you don't pay my sub."

[Penthea]

It also wasn't any shorter, was it?

No of course not but that doesn't mean that it's common for instances with a zero dps healer to take two or three times longer. Such a statement is a blatant lie. Most healers do dps but most healers are not top tier savage players with BiS gear. Most healers are incapable of pulling enough dps that if they stopped the instance would take several times longer, either due to their own skill, their gear, or the pugs they're landed with demand frequent healing.

For someone to truthfully say "when I do an instance with a low or zero dps healer, it takes two or three times as long" they would have to be playing with exceptional players all the time...or their own dps is so bad that they need even just a generic pug healer's dps to carry them.

In the case of healing, the faster things die the less you have to heal. High DPS is the numero uno damage mitigation tool in this game. It becomes really important in endgame, even just the NM encounters which are still a moderate step above dungeons, trials, and 24-man. The mechanical difficulty for NM raids and 24-man are about equal I would say, but what makes the 8-man raids more difficult is there are fewer players so reliability on everyone doing their jobs correctly is a lot tighter.

Now lets say you don't participate in this content and just do the required duties to complete the MSQ; you don't suddenly become less of a burden to others by not utilizing your full toolkit. The other members of your group are still putting forth more effort than the heals-only healer because in order to clear the dungeon, mobs need to die and you are doing nothing to help make this happen. This is why the heals-only healer is considered being carried. Sure, without your heals they won't get very far. But think about this: How far would you make it without them?

Team effort is present in ALL content, and there is no disputing your courtesy towards your fellow party members when you contribute to offense.

I completely agree with all of this. I just don't agree with the idea that a zero dps healer outside of savage is automatically assumed bad regardless of their healing ability. Especially when tanks and dps are rarely scrutinised in the same manner for their lack of involvement with their secondary roles. And especially when some of these tanks and dps are the ones criticising healers for not doing enough dps. The hypocrisy drives me mad.

I don't approve of zero dps healers. I rarely speak up when I encounter them outside of savage because a lot of people don't take kindly to criticism no matter how small, and I frankly don't want to invite drama if I don't have to. I recall saying something about it once, and it was because I died every time I got caught in The Sable Price in The Aery. However a lot of the blame is also on the other dps because their damage was low and they were slow to react.

Context matters when judging people. If I see a zero dps healer who is healing a lot because the group demands it, and I know if I was healing I still could insert dps, I don't get annoyed. Why? Because they're clearly pumping effective numbers somewhere. If I see a zero dps healer just standing around doing nothing for ages because the group doesn't need healing, then I get annoyed. Why? Because they're doing literally nothing. I get more annoyed when someone does nothing than when someone is playing sub-optimally yet are clearly putting in effort. There's also the context as to what content you're in. I get far less annoyed about a zero dps healer in Brayflox normal than in Ala Mhigo. And if the player has a sprout or returner tag, I'll be more forgiving than usual.

But in ex and savage I have no interest in playing with a healer who doesn't do dps during healing downtime. That content is where I reserve my harshest judgement because it demands much more than just fulfilling your primary role. In casual content I'm not overly concerned about what others do as long as things die in a timely manner without incident.

[Misutoraru]

I think that the mentality come in
I don't do big pull till I am sure my heal and DPS can handle it, I dont so stance dance until I know my tank isn't squishy and my DPS know to dodge AOE
However, it take time to observe the party ability.
I would rather my party play safe than risking of getting wipe because it will get longer
That's the issue of DF, unless you queue with a friend, you never know the players you get in queue and it would take time to observe
I would told the tank I can handle the dmg and do bigger pull if I know I am comfortable or I would ask the heal if he/she feel comfortable for me doing bigger pull.
At the end it is the communication that make the different. Shouting or insulting won't help, but there are just always someone incapable of normal communication and start with a insult or shouting at other

[Laerune]

A bad player for me is someone:

1. Has the skills to do decent damage, but doesnt want to do this, because of reasons. I have met alot of players who completed endgame raids etc, but when playing with randoms they go the lazy route and only use the minimum required skills. Tanks that do not bother with defensive CD, DPS who are lazy and stand in everything and underpreform, healers who have full mana bar and do nothing. For me those players are the bad ones.

2. Toxic players and trolls, players only log in to ruin another players playtime.

I do not count new players, players are new to a content, class or role as bad, because they are learning.

[Nyxn607]

For me, there are two types of "bad" players:

1. The players that refuse to take any advice, while making the same mistakes and blaming others for those mistakes.

2. The players that think they are above everyone else for the simple fact they can play nearly 24/7 and get more practice than 80% of the population. These players then choose belittle/berate for what reason they can come up with.

[Gariored]

What is a bad player? Someone who clearly struggles with playing any class and any mechanic, refuses to read the tooltips of their skills, refuse to use certain skills and reacts to any kind of help with something like: "This is a game you toxic elitist, i can play how i want because you don't pay my sub."

THIS, just... all of this


also I believe bad players are ones who "don't put the party first"

[HyoMinPark]

I think you underestimate how much faster a dungeon will go if the healer focuses on healing and so the Tank feels safe enough to mass pull.

I can't tell you the number of times I've had to take dungeons 1 pack at a time because healer's are too busy spamming Stone/Malefic to cast even a Regen. I've literally died to a single pack of enemies because the healer would just stand there DPS'ing while my health bar dropped.

Meanwhile, when I get healers who actually heal, wall to wall pulls it is. Spam me with heals while the DPS and I spam AoE and take out 3-5 packs far, far, far faster than your pathetic healer DPS would have made single packs die.

You realize if the healer was also DPSing those trash packs, they will net anywhere between 5,000 to 8,000 DPS on average, right? I've even broken 10,000 on a large trash pack before with Holy/Gravity spam. You call healer DPS pathetic, but Holy/Gravity can do more than a DPS' AOE.

[Kalise]

You realize if the healer was also DPSing those trash packs, they will net anywhere between 5,000 to 8,000 DPS on average, right? I've even broken 10,000 on a large trash pack before with Holy/Gravity spam. You call healer DPS pathetic, but Holy/Gravity can do more than a DPS' AOE.

You also realize that I'm talking about times where if you pulled that many trash then the healer wouldn't have time to be DPSing?

Or do all healers pump out massive HPS 100% of the time so get to freely DPS?

I'm not against healers DPSing. I think it's fine.

It's just that, a lot of healers (Mostly Savage Raid geared ones ) make runs last way longer by trying to push their DPS on trash instead of actually facilitating the Tank to pull more trash packs and at worse, cause wipes because they were too busy being in the middle of a Holy cast to actually save the Tank.

If you're doing content where the Tank can pull wall to wall while the Healer is spamming out DPS heavily, sure, go ahead and do it. But it's not all content that allows that and when it is, it's often content that hard blocks actual mass pulling with roadblocks so you're only got like 1-2 packs you can get... With Tanks only having 1 CD that can let them ignore damage for a period of time and heck, Hallowed Ground ideally will only be able to be used ONCE in an entire dungeon, since it shouldn't last much more than its 7 minute CD.

But often, it's not the case. In my experience anyway. The healer won't let mass pulls happen. They instead want to just push out ST nukes on single packs and even then it can be dicey for the Tank always questioning "Will I actually get healed? Or am I gonna need to use Clemency/Inner Beast spam?" this is where the "Pathetic" healer damage comes from. By the fact that they just want to ST nuke (To say nothing of the fact that this also happens in Roulettes that use content below the level that healers get AoE's) instead of thinking "Maybe if I made the tank feel like he can actually take more packs, he'll do so and then the DPS will melt everything down"

Healer ST spam will not ever make a dent compared to DPS vs mass packs but many healers think otherwise.

[Penthea]

It's just that, a lot of healers (Mostly Savage Raid geared ones ) make runs last way longer by trying to push their DPS on trash instead of actually facilitating the Tank to pull more trash packs and at worse, cause wipes because they were too busy being in the middle of a Holy cast to actually save the Tank.

Sorry I am going to correct you here. Any healer worth their salt would never completely drop healing because they're too obsessed with dps to the point of greatly endangering the group. Likely the healers you meet who do this are tryhards who play like this because it's the meta but they're unaware that this sort of playstyle requires certain conditions to be truly effective. Such as having a well geared tank who manages defensive cds properly, dps class players who dish out good numbers, and everyone generally avoiding taking damage.

Real raiders can read a combat situation very well, and they will adapt to what they're presented with. They'll go ham on dps if it's safe to. The ones who cause deaths or wipes are unable to judge the situation properly. Or they don't even think to. Or in some cases they think it's beneath them to play in any other manner...which is just sad.