"Elitism" vs "Casualism"

[Daniolaut]

Greetings fellow Eorzeans.

Lately there has been talk of things such as:

"Elitism"
and
"Casualism"


I know this is likely going to see backlash, but I feel its important to at least attempt to share and spread my idea, that

Anyone can clear any fight.

Its actual fact that a party full of "grey parses" can clear savage, as well as likely even ultimate.



I personally feel, based on my experience, as well as comments and activities mentioned by twitch streamers and youtubers, anyone failing to pull orange parses, or world first, or week 1 final fight progs are now considered casual.

From "skip soar" to now "everything uptime" the community is more and more accepting of "dps mentality."

It seems the only line you cant cross, is ...
Specifically...
...creating a twitch following, and having your entire FFXIV and twitch community harrass a single individual.

Which if you ask me, I find that the extreme, not the base line, but I have never been on the side of parsing and treating others below me mentality.

The reason I feel "elitism" and the idea that everyone should perform at a ridiculously needless high level, is unhelpful. This is because this turns away a lot of players, who very likely otherwise would perform more than sufficiently in a savage setting.

Also, even from this meme, it is deduced that anyone who does not "actually try" or "take something serious" is seen as a lower individual, when is the furthest from the truth.

(the person not playing tic tac toe properly is being percived as a casual, and pictured as intolerable for simply not taking tic tac toe seriously. When in reality absolutely no one plays tic tac toe like this, nor does anyone play any game in such a manner. This is only insulting to anyone who uses the terms: "its just a game.")

So I decided to fix this meme, and share the truth of how things actually are.





It has even now been said you "should" and I quote exactly word for word:

"If your group's not doing uptime strats, bully them into doing them."

Taken from here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=2085396304


It has also been said that actions such as Clemency and even ones such as The Blackest Knight, are now considered "bad" skills, and should not be used.

These things are getting more and more widly accepted, and I strongly feel, if it was not for Square-Enix literally and directly combating this mentality by making changes, such as deleting off tank stances, these things would be even more out of control.

I would not even be making this post, if there werent twitch streamers literally in one instance absolutely ripping into a healer who cast "ONE MORE STONE FOUR!!!" when they are a tank, who just took a damage taken up debuff, and died. When in another video by the same streamer, says these words "if its not a damage down debuff, its not a debuff."

In that same vien, I myself, have died numerous times to
-lack of heals, while performing all mechanics perfectly and utlizing debuffs such as Addle or Feint, as well as second wind, and bloodbath actions.
-Ripping threat from a tank even while properly using enmity reduction actions (thankfully this is not longer an issue) simply because I was out performing them.
-Seeing healers rip threat from tanks because too many people are taking extra damage and taking damage up debuffs, because they are "greedy."


In closing or ..
"TLDR"
I feel everyone can clear any fight, and players should adapt to a situation, with the goal of success in mind.

Simply pushing more damage does not always equate to success. If fact most often than not, the opposite is true.

Also fixed a "popular" meme.

[Vahlnir]

There's another thread about this already. We didn't need another. Even now though I feel that thread has reached its limit, but everything you have said here has already been said in varied ways in that other thread.

[Daniolaut]

There's another thread about this already. We didn't need another. Even now though I feel that thread has reached its limit, but everything you have said here has already been said in varied ways in that other thread.

When I stop dying to raid wide damage, while performing mechanics perfectly, and using Second wind, Addle, Bloodbath, and Feint, I will stop repeating threads.

[Seddrinth]

I personally feel, based on my experience, as well as comments and activities mentioned by twitch streamers and youtubers, anyone failing to pull orange parses, or world first, or week 1 final fight progs are now considered casual.

If you are referring to the other thread then literally no one is saying this or implying this. They are talking about people who refuse to take advice or put any effort into being a team player.

[ForteNightshade]

There is a great deal of exaggeration in this. So lets dissect some of them!

Its actual fact that a party full of "grey parses" can clear savage, as well as likely even ultimate.

Shiva required enough DPS that even a single death meant you'd wipe barring absolutely stellar performance. Even now, twenty odd weeks later, it remains impossible to clear her without reasonable DPS contribution from both healers. Furthermore, none of the Ultimates can be cleared by your typical grey parsing players. What do I mean by that? A grey parse in Ultimate will be much higher than Savage simply due to their being significantly less players to average out. Now you certainly don't need to top tier orange across the boards, but you can't limp through Ultimate DPS checks when they're current.

Also fixed a "popular" meme.

You "fix" is nothing but a strawman. It suggests the person demanding more expects 99% orange tier raiders—or has you put it, "state of the art technology." No one has that expectation. What they do expect is reasonable competency and a little effort. Wanting someone to AoE a large pull is not demanding "state of the art technology."

Taken from here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=2085396304

You are taking that statement far too literally. NEST "bullies" and frequently jokes about it yet no one would ever consider it actual bullying. That being said, if you care about your damage, Melee players have no choice but to insist on uptime strats, especially when our range options are so pitifully weak. Now you might argue they shouldn't care, however that isn't your business. Plenty of people find increasing their damage and performance fun. If they're forced to constantly lose DPS, thereby making it impossible to reach their goal, they may not find it fun. In which case, they need to find another static.

It has also been said that actions such as Clemency and even ones such as The Blackest Knight, are now considered "bad" skills, and should not be used.

First and foremost. Anyone who unironically says TBN is bad, has no idea what they're talking about. So long as TBN breaks, it's a DPS neutral ability, i.e., it's free mitigation. Clemency is considered "bad" only outside prog because it's simply unnecessary. Even in that context, those citing it bad are usually referring the Paladins who spam it on themselves whenever their HP dips below 90%. If a single use of Clemency saves your Ultimate run, you won't hear any complaints.

Regardless, the whole DPS mentality is the fault of the dev team not the players. There is nothing else to focus on in this game except damage. One of the chief complaints from healers this expansion is how little they actually have to heal. Likewise, DPS stance on tanks became so prevalent because nothing required tank stance. You gimped your damage for no actual reason. You go on to say people should adapt. That is precisely how the DPS mentality evolved. Players adapted to the low healing requirements, low outgoing damage and scripted nature of encounter design which allowed an increase focus on DPS. In the case of healers, they have two options; focus on their damage or stand around doing absolutely nothing because even Savage requires very little of their healing kit relative to how much downtime they actually have.

When in another video by the same streamer, says these words "if its not a damage down debuff, its not a debuff."

Why would I be threatened by a vulnerability stack that doesn't carry any significant risk? I've had seven invuln stacks on the last boss of Grand Combos. He still didn't break 60k with his tank buster. With that knowledge, I have zero reason to care about getting them. That doesn't mean I'll go collecting vuln stacks for giggles but if there's a choice between losing uptime and not getting one. There is no incentive to give up said uptime. A damage down, on the other hand, defeats the very purpose of greeding uptime. Hence why people will respect those mechanics. Put simply, the punishment has to be enough of a deterrent or it isn't a punishment.

[Kleeya]

Regardless, the whole DPS mentality is the fault of the dev team not the players.

I still remember my first dungeon on the game. At the time i was conjurer, and since i didn't know the way i did following blindly the others. Some time after that, looking at the achievements window, i was like "uh, why didn't i get the exploration one for Sastasha ?". Looking at the map, i did realize that the group i was with did get in a straight line from point A to point B without doing all the optionals rooms, not giving me the achievement. I remember very clearly thinking then, even though i was new, that it was like that the players were wanting to be done with the dungeons as fast as possible. Strangely now, we have only straight lines with the (2 packs of mobs + 1 boss)x3 formula who does perfectly fit this.

What do i want to say with that ? That it is way too easy to say that the game being more and more dps centric is all the devs fault. For my part i think that they are looking at what the players are doing, and are orienting the game in this direction. To give us what we show them that we want.

I don't remember the devs aiming a gun to all the tanks at the end of SB, shouting "don't use your tank stance and aggro combo ! Don't do it ! What, the dps are taking the aggro back even though they did use diversion and lucid dreaming correctly ? Don't do that anyway, it will be very bad for your dps, very bad !".

I don't remember as well the same scene with the devs shouting at all the AST "don't use another card than balance ! Don't do it ! What, you want to use the defense bole on the tank so that he can handle that huge pack of mobs more easily ? Don't do that, balance is better because more dps and a fight finishing more quickly means less heals and is a form of mitigation !".

I could take other examples, but you get my point : the devs did never force the players to get mad when an instance did take a bit longer by playing more carefully. It was the player's own choice. Backed by all the dps centric theorycrafting, and enhanced by the you know what website where even tanks and healers are ranked primarily by their dps, and not by how well they keep aggro/mitigate TB or how well they heal their teammates. And where even expert dungeons are ranked by how fast you complete them.

And seeing all that, it is just logical that SE thinks "eh, seems like our players dont care about crowd control, defense and such, and love only to dps more and more and having big numbers. Let's give them what they want !". It might come as a shock to you, but getting and keeping more customers is easier by studying them, and making them satisfied with what they desire.

[Veis_Alveare]

what.

The reason people blame the devs for the dps-focused mentality of the playerbase is because the devs have never given us anything else to try for.

As a healer what is my reward for standing around and doing nothing? How about horribly overhealing? How about emote spam? None of these get me anything. Know what gets me a real reward? Dpsing.

It's the same in your other examples - there is no advantage to losing a Balance for a Bole on the old AST card system or for sitting in tank stance, those things didn't reward you. The only real reward is clearing the instance so you can do more things to get more exp/tomes/gear/whatever. Even if you take the tangible game rewards like currency out of the equation doing an instance quicker let's you (as a player) do more things and gain more experience on your job.

Don't get me wrong, as someone who's played healers for years I would love if I had an actual need to focus on my healing in casual content. Give me dungeons where I'm on the edge of my seat and small mistakes can actually cost the group a full wipe. That would make people focus less on dps as a healer for sure!

The issue would then become that many people... just wouldn't be able to heal. If you're bad at healing now increasing the amount you need to heal isn't going to suddenly mean you're good at healing (although it might cut down on your overheal) it'll just mean that you won't be able to clear a larger portion of the available content.

If you can think of a way for the devs to force me to focus on keeping a party alive in casual content without also making it impossible for most princess uwu pure healers who don't understand their buttons to complete I'm all ears, SE won't risk alienating those people though.

As for the topic of this thread... lmao. Just lmao.

I'm very happy to call out people on the high end when they're being idiots and expecting too much, I love that thats already happened in this thread about one of the most unironically toxic streamers out there, but to act as if the damage done to this community by elitism is in any way comparable to the damage done by militant casuals is to just put your blinders on and stick your head in the sand.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen actual degrading toxicity ingame meant to demean someone for their poor performance, but I would be at a total loss if I tried to tally up the instances of toxic casuals acting entitled to their bad play as if it didn't negatively impact 3/7/23 other people. It's nearly constant. It permeates many novice networks and there's always a decent chance you'll see it for just some requests like asking for a healer to dps or for another player to AoE on trash packs. I'd repeat things I've been called when asking for those very things but I don't need to get banned from the forums right now.

[Vyrerus]

I can count on one hand...

Can you though? I've seen both sides of the issue more times than I have toes or fingers. Generally people who lean to one side of this issue don't perceive elitism in the same way as those who lean to the other.

Those who trend towards elitism are like me. We expect and want everyone to use everything in their arsenal, at the very least. Participate for the entire duty timer. Miss as few GCDs and oGCDs as possible. Complete dungeons in 15 minutes or less.

Those who trends towards casualism have an entirely different perspective, and honestly, it's not necessarily wrong. Lots of casuals don't understand the need to not miss GCDs, gingerly taking in the entirety of their combat animations. Often they miss out on using the oGCDs or save them for a pinch, thinking of them as a resource rather than a gated amount of DPS. If they're a healer, they often stand doing nothing, or spam their lowest MP-cost heal, because they aren't paying attention to numbers or doing math before, after, or during. They're watching HP bars, fight animations, and trying to not get overwhelmed by information overload.

At their worst, elitists will demand that everyone play just like them or so similarly as to be indistinguishable from them

At their worst, casuals will demand that everyone play in lieu of them, making up for their deficiencies, because it's just a game and they aren't there to do work or get stressed.

Both mindsets are awful, particularly the more a player trends towards either extreme. Sometimes I really wish I could have the perception that a real casual player has, because all I really have is what I believe some of my friends' perceptions are.

[Veis_Alveare]

Can you though?

Honestly? Yes.

I can clarify if it helps - when I say I can count the number of times I've seen toxicity from an elitist mindset I mean actual toxicity.

I don't include things like asking a healer to dps in here, or asking for someone to use AoE on trash in a dungeon. I wouldn't include asking a tank to not cleave the party with tankbusters here either.

There are some gameplay basics (like the aforementioned ones) that I believe once you're into 70+ content should be common sense at that point. If you decided to jump potion a job or god forbid your first job it's up to you to get up to speed on these things on your own time.

When I say actual toxic elitism I'm talking about real bullying, like kicking someone from a party because their logs aren't good and telling them that's why it's happening in a way that is... not courteous? Like by all means PF leaders make their own standards but I remember seeing someone in a Tsukiyomi farm towards the very end of SB kicking a DRG because they only had grey clears of the fight and specifically saying "my of said no scrubs, outta here [DRG]" then trashing that person in party chat after.

That's toxic elitism. It's gratuitous rudeness or power tripping just because you pressed buttons slightly better than another person. No one needs that but it's also woefully less common than "u dnt pay my sub" style responses to basic requests.

[Ririta]

I don't remember the devs aiming a gun to all the tanks at the end of SB, shouting "don't use your tank stance and aggro combo ! Don't do it ! What, the dps are taking the aggro back even though they did use diversion and lucid dreaming correctly ? Don't do that anyway, it will be very bad for your dps, very bad !".

I don't remember as well the same scene with the devs shouting at all the AST "don't use another card than balance ! Don't do it ! What, you want to use the defense bole on the tank so that he can handle that huge pack of mobs more easily ? Don't do that, balance is better because more dps and a fight finishing more quickly means less heals and is a form of mitigation !".
.

Gordias did one hell of a damage to this game's playerbase...

And seeing all that, it is just logical that SE thinks "eh, seems like our players dont care about crowd control, defense and such, and love only to dps more and more and having big numbers. Let's give them what they want !". It might come as a shock to you, but getting and keeping more customers is easier by studying them, and making them satisfied with what they desire.

At launch we did that all the time. Tanks marked things, black mages slept when that patrol pack aggroed, white mages were scolded by putting regen on the tank before he pulled or, god forbid, casted Medica II and got their faces mauled.

Dungeon speedruns were a really touchy topic back in ARR, when the devs preferred to listen to the "I just want to get in, grab my tomes and leave!" crowd and started nerfing everything, even the battle system itself... yeah, that's their fault.

I'm not saying that what we have now is bad, but I disagree with blaming the players for the "DPS" mentality. We could've gone either way.