Toxicity, Kindness, Abuse and the Exploitation of Kindness

[Shuuchi]

This is not a rant, but a discussion. Please share with me your thoughts.

After a semi-argument with an FC mate, I felt the need for a bit of self-reflection.

...and what better judges of morality exist than strangers on the internet, amiright?

Heres a story of one of my many encounters in ff14.



Summoner in Ivalice:

The story begins back in Stormblood, Orbornne monastery, 3rd raid of Ivalice series. Back when the content was still relevant, the instance was known to be heal intensive, with a very demanding 3rd boss. I was playing summoner.

A few minutes into the first boss fight, I noticed group B got wiped. I immediately made a call for help in alliance chat and ran over to rez one of group B's healers. 2 minutes later, group B wiped again. I tossed another rez to one of the healers and started keeping an eye on the group. Less than a minute later, the whm in group B died again, and again, and again. I was spamming quickcast + rez practically on cd. The fight was painful and drawn out due to the constant deaths in group B.

We moved onto the second boss fight, and the same thing kept happening. I continued to rez the whm over and over and we wiped several times. Until finally, by some miracle, we managed to scrape by.

But next on the list was the infamous TG Cid. I could already tell the fight was going to be bad. We just started the fight and group B got wiped almost instantly. I ran over as quickly as I could to help rez, but it wasn't good enough. The mechanics kept coming and the people we rezzed would die as soon as they stood back up. And if we left group B on the floor, the mechanics they were suppose to deal with would get sent to the other two groups, guaranteeing a wipe.

After wiping 3 times, I asked group B to kick the whm. I haven't said anything directly to group B or the whm till this point. The whm started chewing my head off, claiming shes not feeling well. I responded by telling her I rezzed her twice (in the last pull), but avoided mentioning the other 16 times I had rezzed her in previous fights. The whm rage quit and everyone in the raid now hated my guts. The replacement healer came in a few minutes later, and we cleared the rest of the raid with no issues.

EDIT:
The story happened back when Orbornne was still relevant content and people came in with secondary/tertiary classes hoping to get better gear. There are some mechanics where you HAVE to have 2 healers. Even if you somehow managed to scrape by with 1 healer, you won't have enough mp or any of your big CDs ready for the next mechanic. Especially since you'd barely have any mp in the first place from solo healing. TG Cid's 2nd phase also requires everyone to be up. We managed to get all of group B up in time on one of the pulls but since they were all tagged with the rez debuff, our efforts were ultimately in vain.

My thoughts:
- If the whm was not feeling well, why did she queue up for a high end instance with such a demanding boss? Was she expecting a carry through TG Cid with a party that had only 1 healer?
- If the whm had gone in as dps, none of this would have happened. She could have leeched off the rest of the raid and no one would have noticed. Why did she choose such an important role?
- I chose to become a villain to do what I felt was necessary. What would you have done in this situation? How would you have acted differently?

[Sindele]

Takes more than just one bad white mage to cause group wipes that fast, even in Orbonne. My guess is you ran into a clueless group queue and accidentally drew more fire than intended by calling them out.

Also, honestly, there's a disproportionate amount of middling-to-bad healers that simply cannot (and don't want to) play any other roles, and are very, very defensive about their performance. Healing in FF14 has a profoundly low skill floor that people can skate by on, and the nature of healing in a holy trinity MMO lends them a greater level of plausible deniability as to whose fault a wipe was. When tanks and to some extent DPS are grossly underperforming, the feedback is usually much more immediate and much more likely to block their progress.

[Jimmymagic]

My thoughts:
- If the whm was not feeling well, why did she queue up for a high end instance with such a demanding bosses? Was she expecting a carry through TG Cid with a party that had only 1 healer?
- If the whm had gone in as dps, none of this would have happened. She could have leeched off the rest of raid and no one would have noticed. Why did she choose such an important role?
- I chose to become a villain to do what I felt was necessary. What would you have done in this situation? How would you have acted differently?[/QUOTE]

You should of kick sooner and people are wrong to harp on you for it. This is a classic example of someone thinking there feeling sick doesn't affect other peoples time a true ex of entitled brat syndrome imo. There is no reason you should be rezzing 16 times or more for anyone-insane. More power to you for your patience but from what you described is accurate, I would've kicked group b entirely if that were possible.

[Liam_Harper]

You don't queue for instances if you're unwell to the point of being incapable of playing a key role. A few deaths or even a few wipes due to honest mistakes is absolutely fine, but 16 deaths is going a bit far.

If no part of your story is fabricated or false, then you weren't in the wrong.

[Theodric]

Emotional manipulation is sadly quite common in this game.

[SamRF]

I feel for you OP, must be a terribly frustrating experience. Absolutely despise the cheap virtue signaling that players in this game may engage in when such situation arises. Rationality gets thrown out of the window as soon as there's a (however small) opening for virtue signaling. People with ego issues seem to be prevalent in this game.

[Lauront]

Emotional manipulation is sadly quite common in this game.

As are the vitriolic responses when it's called out/questioned. People seem to think putting on emotive displays should just disable the respondents' critical thinking skills... and then they get mad when it doesn't have that effect.

[Saefinn]

It takes more than 1 bad healer or ill healer or new healer etc. To ruin an Orbonne run. Hard to say what the case was with the one healer, I don't always mark a healer's performance based on how smoothly the run is going, but how they have a grip on things. If the group is really pushing it, then healers will struggle, great healers can make bad runs feel smooth because they are carrying people's mistakes, but a healer that can't isn't necessarily the weakest link but can be the first people will point fingers at.

So it is hard to cast a shadow at the healer you had when we don't know what that healer was up against.

[Jirah]

That Instance has 2 healers per group, how is it the fault of 1 Healer? Anyways I do agree healers are very important roles and you have to bring your A game in all Raids you never know when the party will wipe. Sometimes even carrying other groups.

You cannot snooze yourself through a instance especially this high end like Ivalice. If aTank or DPS dies it’s a no big deal if a Healer dies your party loses its healing and they call can die. You weren’t in the wrong if the story told is 100% correct

[Fynlar]

Nobody else saw or understood your struggle; all they saw was one person calling out another person, making them disband, and "slowing down" their completion time.

You should weigh the value of their inputs appropriately.

- If the whm had gone in as dps, none of this would have happened. She could have leeched off the rest of raid and no one would have noticed. Why did she choose such an important role?

Not everyone has alternate roles leveled.