Shrinking the gap by raising the floor | brainstorming skill incentives

[Gemina]

I suppose I shouldn't expect much from someone who claims to know how I feel better than I do. It's not as if I've given a lot of thought to how we can try to help players who don't understand game basics or mentored countless people through my FC over the years (no crown, the real deal) of every role. Those things were clearly somehow all just me being selfish.

What you do in game is not in question, so there is no need to pat yourself on the back. You shouldn't even have to express yourself in this manner because the only person who needs to know your courtesy is genuine is you. Again, you don't even realize that you're not giving players the respect you think you do. An issue is that you improve your own gameplay and expect other players to follow suit, and then you try to rationalize this erroneous mindset by saying you are doing your part in the community; but what you're actually doing is attempt to dictate the playstyles of others. This easily falls within the definition of selfish.

I am guessing you went on the defensive because I said you lost my sympathy with defeatism. This is not an attack, or even an inflammatory comment. All it means is that I cannot see your side to things if you are going to approach it like it a negative nancy. Once you acknowledge that you are indeed in a community, then you immediately should know that you can't just increase the difficulty of casual content and solo content to something you find suitable. How do you even define this? If you can answer this question, I will bow right the hell out of this thread. Of course, this is rhetorical because not even the devs can answer that question.

Just like in a community, you can't go into a room full of people watching a TV and turn up the volume to a level you find comfortable without pissing someone else off. Instead, the person in charge of that community puts the TV volume at a set level, and those who want to watch it can do so. Meanwhile, the TV set with the headphones where you can look at what you want when you want, and how loud you want is all by itself in another room. See where I am going with that analogy?

[ADVSS]

I agree with OP. Sometimes when im on DRG I wish the floor would raise me.

[whoknows851]

This is my personal idea:

Give a result page similar to other FF titles after battles. For example, after you complete a dungeon, show a result page: giving DPS numbers, damage mitigated, healing received/given, gil received, exp received, etc. I don't know if to give a grade or not, but the bottom line is to show a person's performance. Of course, all this I think should be optional and considered an extra option.

So, this will give a standard rule that you can measure yourself accordingly. For those who are interested, it's a great way to measure yourself. For those who don't care, it's just optional (or interesting numbers at least XP)

P.S. I have seen bad players generally (even players with multiple 80s) but this is FF14. My bar has dropped so low that if you're a tank, and switched on your tank stance, you receive a passing grade from me.

[Wyakin]

You don't understand people very well if you think "raising the floor" is going to get them to decide to improve.

Not everyone is here to be personally challenged playing a video game. Most are just here to relax and have fun. If they wanted to be a better player, they would already be working at it.

I’ve never met a single person who has fun losing or being poo at a game

[Silica-chan]

I’ve never met a single person who has fun losing or being poo at a game

Depends on what goals you set yourself.
Fall Guys is a prime exampe for this. I'm playing it ince it's release on the PS4 and I only won 1 crown so far. Sometimes I drop out in the first round, but I still have alot of fun playing it.
Winning is not the only way to have fun at video games.

[Jojoya]

And the 3-23 other players need to make up for that personal choice. That 1 person's selfishness inhibits others' ability to just "relax and have fun" because they need to make up for the person that felt improving in their 100+ hour investment was just too much.

Unacceptable. If people are so lazy, selfish, and entitled to not contribute, force becomes a viable alternative.

No, the other 3-32 don't need to make up for that personal choice. If the one person is keeping the rest of the group from completing the content, the group has the ability to vote kick that one (or the party leader remove that player if it's not a group created through random matchmaking).

Fortunately, the majority of content in this game is very forgiving so it's a rare player that doesn't meet the minimum needed to get through the content or that it's necessary to kick for that reason.

Force is never a viable alternative because it does not work.

I'm assuming you didn't read the post?

The very concept I'm talking about here is how to raise up the bottom performers, it isn't just a vague topic about "make stuff harder, people need a challenge" but rather "how do we make people want to try" which... has nothing to do with what you posted?

I did read it.

You still don't comprehend human nature. The desire to change has to come from within. There is nothing you or I or any other player can do to make yet another player decide to improve. Our attempts to do so are only more likely to make that player even more stubborn about not improving.

The only thing this game could do that might encourage some of the bottom performers to choose to improve is to add a basic parser to the game. Have it display what SE (not other players) considers to be basic minimum competence on a boss fight depending on class/job and item level along with the player's actual performance.

If someone sees they're doing 500 DPS when the game is expecting them to do 1200 DPS, they might take an interest in trying to get better. It's still not going to work with everyone. Some people will never care.

It's never going to happen when the information is coming from a player with exaggerated standards using a third party tool. Not everyone needs to be 85th percentile or better for a group to complete content.

I’ve never met a single person who has fun losing or being poo at a game

Then you hang out with a select group of individuals because I have many times over (and frequently had to remove them from groups when I was raid leading in WoW).

There are plenty of players who can enjoy content while losing because they aren't competitive by nature. It's only the competitive player that can't stand losing.

As for being "poo", different people have different skill levels and the game's content is designed to reflect that. Some are naturally going to fall at the bottom end of the range and most of them can accept they just aren't going to be that good at playing the game. They stick to playing the content appropriate for their skill level.

It only becomes a problem when a lesser skilled player starts demanding access to content designed for higher skill levels, or when a higher skilled player starts demanding better performance from lesser skilled players in content that doesn't need the greater skill.

[LaylaTsarra]

It only becomes a problem when a lesser skilled player starts demanding access to content designed for higher skill levels, or when a higher skilled player starts demanding better performance from lesser skilled players in content that doesn't need the greater skill.

Nothing new here. Threads like these have been a staple of this forum since I've been here. The development team isn't listening to them and rightfully so.

[Veis_Alveare]

I did read it.

You still don't comprehend human nature. The desire to change has to come from within. There is nothing you or I or any other player can do to make yet another player decide to improve. Our attempts to do so are only more likely to make that player even more stubborn about not improving.

The only thing this game could do that might encourage some of the bottom performers to choose to improve is to add a basic parser to the game. Have it display what SE (not other players) considers to be basic minimum competence on a boss fight depending on class/job and item level along with the player's actual performance.

If someone sees they're doing 500 DPS when the game is expecting them to do 1200 DPS, they might take an interest in trying to get better. It's still not going to work with everyone. Some people will never care.

It's never going to happen when the information is coming from a player with exaggerated standards using a third party tool. Not everyone needs to be 85th percentile or better for a group to complete content.

Let's not act as if it's human nature to either have a desire to improve or not just built into your subconscious. As you mention later in the same post the addition of something really simple (perhaps a screen at the end of a dungeon that says "hey on this job the baseline is usually X but you've managed 60% of that" would certainly inspire some people to try harder. It could even also be a helpful screen that gives some tips to accomplish that baseline, let's not act as if xivanalysis doesn't already exist. If a third party platform can do it even for minor adjustments at a Savage level I'm sure we could let SAMs know "higanbana is a big part of your damage, try to keep it up on bosses" or "using AoE abilities on 3 or more enemies is beneficial" like... I'm really just shooting for the bare bones here.

One of the reasons I questioned whether or not you'd read my post is that you're restating things I've said in it already as if you're explaining something I haven't already addressed. Like the idea that some kind of feedback about performance wouldn't convince everyone to try - yes, that's kind of one of the core things I'd pointed out, that being informed they're underperforming would only spark a desire to improve in some people and that others would likely only be motivated by tangible rewards.

Even if we increased exp/gil/tomes gained for players meeting (very achievable) damage standards in group content there would still be some people who just wouldn't care to improve. I understand this, I don't see anyone arguing otherwise. To cast aside any aspirations to engender baseline effort would be like saying "I'll die eventually so i may as well not eat well or exercise" like... okay, but you can still improve your lot in life even if you aren't able to make everything perfect.

That's been my goal with this discussion. I'm not out here saying anyone who's got a below purple median is bad and needs to step their game up, I'm just trying to think of ways to help the most confused and uninformed (or lazy, I'll admit) players do a bit better for both their sake and ours.

See where I am going with that analogy?

You've very clearly made up your mind about what I'm saying and don't care to reevaluate even when it's painfully obvious you've misread the situation. Either keep yelling into the void or don't but until you say a single thing which addresses any of my actual suggestions I'll just be ignoring your subsequent replies should they exist. I got "defensive" because you claimed to know where my heart was on something and tried to paint me in a bad light, calling me selfish abs claiming I only care about my own time. Anyone in their right mind would call you on your bull.

As to your bad analogy it is a bad analogy. It would only be pertinent if I was calling for an increase in the difficulty of the game which I'm not. Maybe, again, try the reading.

[Raelsar]

If there's one thing I've learned in my time playing and discussing FFXIV it's that you can't underestimate the skill floor.

First off, I'll start by saying we are dealing with a slippery slope here, so even with good intentions this needs to be handled carefully. FFXIV already has a half-decent tutorial & learning curve with the mandatory MSQ, mandatory group content, and some fairly copious solo duties throughout.

Where it breaks down seems to be more on the performance side of things, as the vast majority of the MSQ seems to be directed to teaching players mechanics... which is probably the better and easier thing to teach. While it probably feels a bit easy to many here, the one thing to keep in mind is that you're also likely VERY used to it and almost doing the mechanics passively... which is why we're also dealing with not just avoidable AoEs at this point, but sequences and overlapping AoEs on a regular basis.

So I think FFXIV is in a good spot for teaching mechanics... performance is a bit trickier, and not readily resolved without forcing players into some very unpleasant content. We already have a few nudges with the combo system and when abilities are learned (usually works if done right, a couple of exceptions). If someone isn't hugely interested in refining their rotation, being forced into content where that's what you must do will NOT go over well. Beating on a target just to optimize and practice does not make for interesting content.

---

What we've ended up with is an MSQ which guides people through doing mechanics (and eventually gets surprisingly advanced in that regard)... but is actually rather light on DPS checks and performance/output requirements. While some probably want to lean more onto the performance side and are assuming the mechanics are something that is just done without issue, but it really is where it should be.

If players want to improve their performance, they'll find the information themselves and put the effort in. The MSQ (and most normal/story difficulty content) is focused on mechanics, and justifiably so.

Maybe it comes down to how we approach players struggling through the MSQ, and quite frankly performance shouldn't be the focus in most cases I often find people are quick to criticize, tend to come off as overly confrontational, and aren't always the best at explaining what needs to be done. More patience, targeted advice (just say what they're missing), and generally being nicer get better results.

... and you'd be surprised how effective mid-fight call-outs can be, even if typing them out is a hit on your performance. These can be direct, but shouldn't be critical; things like "don't move" and "split stacks".

It's not always about how to get people to be better, but how to guide them there.

[Brightamethyst]

What we've ended up with is an MSQ which guides people through doing mechanics (and eventually gets surprisingly advanced in that regard)... but is actually rather light on DPS checks and performance/output requirements. While some probably want to lean more onto the performance side and are assuming the mechanics are something that is just done without issue, but it really is where it should be.

Yeah. There's only so much you can do with DPS checks in solo MSQ fights. They need to be doable by both veteran BiS DPS, and newbie healers with middling gear. Mechanics on the other hand affect everyone much more equally. "Look away from the gaze attack" or "don't let the orb hit the NPC" affects everyone the same, while "kill this add in 10 seconds, or else" does not.