Parsing? Drama? ToS? Solution!

[Omymy]

Sure! If you want to waste time hitting a stupid dummy before you can actually do any content. A dummy that would literally have no bearing on the actual content you are doing it for.

Ah... Churro, Churro... You didnt catch the joke.

[Omymy]

awe someones feelings are hurt, that is part of the issue you cannot make a group in PF and say blue parse and above only, because you get banned because some grey parser gets butt hurt.

I couldn't care less about your tryharder airs and graces. It's just funny how frustrated you are over a few color bars.

[Teros]

I couldn't care less about your tryharder airs and graces. It's just funny how frustrated you are over a few color bars.

is it frustrating to wait in party finder for 20+ min to have someone join that is mechanically inept, because they either got lucky on their clear or was carried, then waste 2-3 pulls to learn they are not good, i would say yes, yes that is frustrating. is it tryhard because you would like to avoid that and not waste your time, nope, not in the least. my time is as valuable to me as yours is to you, and i would like to spend it on accomplishing a set goal. if you are casual that is perfectly okay, there is zero issue with allowing groups of people to form groups in party finder how they want.

[Kleeya]

Aren't the pretty colors on fflogs percentage based ? If everyone without any exception would suddenly become super good at the game, and dealing a bare minimum of 20k dps while the best players would deal 23k, there would still be tons of 20k grey parsers right ?

Do you think some people would still be then like "Omg are you only auto-attacking or something ? Shaaaaaame, shaaaaaaame, please learn how to play you grey parser, how can you do only 20k dps ?" XD

[Omymy]

is it frustrating to wait in party finder for 20+ min to have someone join that is mechanically inept, because they either got lucky on their clear or was carried, then waste 2-3 pulls to learn they are not good, i would say yes, yes that is frustrating. is it tryhard because you would like to avoid that and not waste your time, nope, not in the least. my time is as valuable to me as yours is to you, and i would like to spend it on accomplishing a set goal. if you are casual that is perfectly okay, there is zero issue with allowing groups of people to form groups in party finder how they want.

Make your cool group of tryhards and stop crying, child.

[Halivel]

Aren't the pretty colors on fflogs percentage based ?

They are, and the color is determined at minute you upload the info and will not change after this. You can fall into "good" area at 1st week when everyone had same gear and you managed to play good, then fall into "bad" 3 weeks later with same gear and performance cuz you had a beark from the game just because in that period of time enough people upgraded their armor and uploaded their runs there to outmatch you.
In fact color at that website means literally nothing except "look how I am shiny in comparison to others", but people still care about it as if it says something, while the only way to understand if person is any good is actually seeing him in action and to being able analyse the situation.

[purgatori]

Let's stop catering to the huge portion of the subscriber base who belong to the 'casual' classification, and instead focus entirely on endgame raiding and preparing people for endgame raiding. That worked out spectacularly for Wildstar, after all.

On a more serious note, I don't think that gating off Ex/Savage behind some sort of test of ability within a given role would be unreasonable. They did this in The Secret World, and I don't remember them being a big to-do about it. As a casual player myself, I attempted the boss fight required for high-end content in The Secret World, got thrashed, and promptly decided "well, I guess I'm not ready (yet)."

Similarly, I have done a few Ex fights in XIV, and didn't like being carried so much, so I decided that this content wasn't for me (I haven't even tried Savage yet, and doubt I ever will). I'm happy with doing normal raids, dungeons, and 24-mans, and have worked fairly hard on getting better at tacking that sort of content—e.g. through watching dungeon/job/raid videos on YouTube, practicing rotations on dummies, reading tool tips etc.

But I am unwilling to wade too deep into the technical minutiae of jobs, as it runs counter to how my brain works, and how I approach games: e.g., intuitively. For a person like me, an in-game parser isn't going to work, and if you spit back my numbers at me in a dungeon I'm not going to pay that any heed, either. If, on the other hand, you politely call me out on something sub-optimal I'm doing, then I'm always going to be amenable to changing it up.

All of that being said, I do wish the game did a better job of explaining mechanics, job actions, etc. in the game itself. External resources are fine, and they are probably necessary for high-end content or working out the niftiest ways of 'breaking' content, but for the people who just want to use whatever time they can spare for gaming to enjoy the game itself, it would be handy if, say, job quest lines actually did more to teach you how to play your job, in addition to telling a story.

[tdb]

I would also support gating savage/extreme content behind a test where you can prove you are worthy. However the test should be more than just a passive striking dummy. It should have mechanics similar to the actual fight. Otherwise you're going to get players who pass the test but can't keep up their DPS when they need to dodge mechanics at the same time. Party finder should have an option to require players to have passed the trial, so that the party leader can set it as appropriate for practice, clear and farm parties.

Requiring a particular clear time in SSS or other similar way of requiring arbitrary player-supplied DPS, on the other hand, is elitism. It allows requiring much higher DPS than is actually necessary to beat the fight. If you want to save those precious seconds of your time, set up a static. That not only allows you to vet players based on their ability, but consistently playing with the same group will also allow you to work tighter together than a bunch of random people.

[Mansion]

I would also support gating savage/extreme content behind a test where you can prove you are worthy. However the test should be more than just a passive striking dummy.

Oddly enough, that's roughly the purpose that Fausts used to serve in Alexander tiers. And players asked it away because it was getting tedious. It's difficult to include that kind of system to gameplay I guess.

One step in the good direction would be based on the Hall of Novices and try to get more stages of that content with higher difficulty settings. Like DPS check while dealing with mechanics, or healing checks, that kind of stuff. It does not have to be savage difficulty,but I'd argue than we are now 80 levels in the game and that's still quite common to see people with no basic understanding of combat gameplay in level cap content. We are not asking speedkills of anything really, but people understanding how mechanics and rotations should be the common ground. I don't like tagging in an Expert roulette and see DPS not using AoE skills (or AoE skills on a single target), or healers contributing to nothing DPS-wise, or a tank eating dmg with no CD at all.

Now in the high end scene, I'm not sure gating would work regardless. There are a lot of external factors about why people can be "bad" or why people can be "elitist". I don't think it's up to FFXIV to provide content to shave off those players (and I don't think it's possible). FFXIV can just enforce rules, and people who break them can face sanctions.
What is concerning here is how FFXIV/SE's holy judgement can sometimes feel weird.

[purgatori]

We are not asking speedkills of anything really, but people understanding how mechanics and rotations should be the common ground. I don't like tagging in an Expert roulette and see DPS not using AoE skills (or AoE skills on a single target), or healers contributing to nothing DPS-wise, or a tank eating dmg with no CD at all.

But are the players who haven't got these basics down really putting their hands up for Ex/Savage in the first place? At lot of the players like me who don't consider ourselves ready for Ex/Savage have these basics in our toolkit, but we're not confident about lining up burst windows, tank swapping, knowing fights back to front, and all the other things that confer competence on a high-end hopeful.