Final Fantasy XIV and a Culture of Enabling

[Hikelos]

This has been completely derailed, as usual , off of the initial discussion that was the community fostering and propagating a culture of not meeting the bare minimum, into "You are unreasonably mad because a NIN in Ex Roulette popped a bunny".
Look at that strawman burn.
The regulars of these forums make discussions about anything slightly controversial or unpleasant completely impossible, 100% proving OP's point.

Not that discussion about this is going to do anything, clearly this is intended.
From the Easy and Very Easy modes in quest scenarios (which almost autocompleted in most cases on normal) to the oppressive and unreasonable in-game moderation which covers, verbatim: "Difference of Thinking", it's pretty clear that this is exactly the sort of atmosphere that is wanted by the developers.
And that's really unfortunate.

[Darkmoonrise]

Note : I didn't read the whole thread here. So I may repeat some stuff that was already mentioned.

First I'm on the side of "underperforming player shall improve them self or be punished". But we're speaking about a game, and in such an environement, such "punishement" should not be a thing. Because people's entertain themself differently, depending of their own personnality.

But I'm not worried about this for FFXIV because this will go against the main philosophy of SE, which is, let's face it, make as much money as possible. The main strategy they follow to achieve this goal is to attract as much people as possible. And the allowance of the "enable culture" is a direct consequence of this. By letting everybody do what ever they want, they will stick around, pay their sub, buy in the cash shop, buy goodies, attract more people, etc. It's that simple.

So the "enable culture" won't go away officialy. Now with what I read here, almost all solutions gravitate around the same idea : segregation. Separating the underperforming people from the other. But this strategy has too much problem :
* As a company SE can not implement a segregationnal system into its game, too dangerouse for the business image.
* Where do you put the line? how do you define underperforming? How do you measure the performence?
* How do you enforce such a system without alienating half of the player base (because at the end SE would need to say to player : "You suck, here is your punishement").
* How do you treat player who do their best but cannot perform as much as needed (disabilities, very young/old, etc.)

We already have such minor systems implemented in the game which prove that "absolute scale based segregation" does not work. Here are 2 examples :
* "minimum ilvl" and it fails at its job. Ilvl absolutly does not reflect player performence. I always smile when I see PF with aberrant minimum ilvl requirement. I see so much people fully geared with performence proportionally inverse to their ilvl.
* "commend" and it fails at its job. Commends do not reflect player performence, only how much time the player invested in doing group content.

I don't know if the segregation solution is a good solution but an "absolute scale segregation" is not, for sure.

What about a relative scale then? I see a possibility here, based on an "avoid player list". Allowing you to draw your own red line. You ended up with a player you don't like? Put it into this list and you won't be grouped with her/him in DF, you won't see any PF with her/him inside, etc. (or at least you'll be informed that an avoided player is present). It will be the opposite of the black list system : you could still be able to interact socialy with the player but not do content with her/him.

Advantage of this solution :
* It is relative to you.
* You can add whoever you want without justifying it.
* It depends on actual behaviour of the player, not on predefined scale.
* It is not an official segregation mechanism.
* Maybe it will reduce GM work load because I'm sure 50% of their work is : "I don't agree with [insert name], please punish [insert name]".

But, and I have to say it, segregation is a quick and dirty solution which only leads to a single negative long term outcome : conflict between the groups. Which in an MMO translate to a very bad general ambiance in the community. And this will be terrible for the whole game, regardless of the group you're in. So maybe we should forgot segregation and look for something else.

[Awha]

Thing is with the OP we already have tools in place to police our own experience. They may not be perfect but they are what we have. Do not like NN just leave it, do not like how a certain player is performing vote to remove them from the group. Quests are too easy do them naked. :P

Sure you might be judged by the community for not lacking empathy, being toxic, abusing the system etc . . . But our desire and wishes on both sides for a experience that caters to our personal standard is not going to align with the everyone so it is easier if people just use the tools available to try and make the best of it.

Just remember despite what others day or try to phrase it one has very little reason to go out of there way to help another person in game. Being worried about your own experience or time does not make you a bad or horrible person. It is your gameplay experience that matters, the same could be said for those that wish to play as an ice mage a melee only rdm etc . . .sure it may be annoying but they are also entitled to maximizing their personal enjoyment.

That is why one should use the tools in game do not just suck it up and deal with it because 'reasons' the truth is you do not have any reason to care about their reasons on either side.

DF does not mean you have to take it laying down. If the vote does not pass then you have a choice to make leave or suck it up.

Both sides can also create a PF.

Both sides can leave an NN.

The one thing I never got about FFXIV community is this disdain they have for the vote kick feature. In other games GM's and community promote liberal use of the feature cause if someone is causing you to not have fun try to remove that element, if it passes great if not time for you to move on. Especially in FFXIV bring kicked does not give you a leave penalty. Yet here in FFXIV do not like how someone plays sorry the community rather see that person suck it up or eat the timer themselves. For a community that promotes understanding of others it seems backwards. To want someone to sit around in a group with a element they may not enjoy or to blanket just leave it.

[Ammokkx]

This has been completely derailed, as usual , off of the initial discussion that was the community fostering and propagating a culture of not meeting the bare minimum, into "You are unreasonably mad because a NIN in Ex Roulette popped a bunny".
Look at that strawman burn.
The regulars of these forums make discussions about anything slightly controversial or unpleasant completely impossible, 100% proving OP's point.

Not that discussion about this is going to do anything, clearly this is intended.
From the Easy and Very Easy modes in quest scenarios (which almost autocompleted in most cases on normal) to the oppressive and unreasonable in-game moderation which covers, verbatim: "Difference of Thinking", it's pretty clear that this is exactly the sort of atmosphere that is wanted by the developers.
And that's really unfortunate.

There's no discussion to be had in the first place.

Extremely bad players that lack even the most basic understanding of this videogame you and I play are rare. They're at their most common in low-level content, shocking as that may be to hear. The only times I've ran into spectacularly bad players who don't even know the most basic of basics have been in dungeons levels 15-40. Once I had a level 44 gladiator that didn't activate stance or stand in the pools of Darkhold, and you know what the party did after countless attempts to tell him what to do?

Kicked him because he wasn't listening.

Not a lot of "enabling" goes on around me. And sure, you could argue "lmao bet you must Q with friends all the time" which would be nice, but considering I'm a European playing in an NA datacenter, that means the most free time I've got is spent playing while all my friends are asleep. Could it be the weird timeslot making me avoid all these supposed terrible players who you're not allowed to tell "git gud" to? I doubt it myself, since I have had plenty of "sub-par" parties regardless...

...but "sub-par" doesn't mean "irredeemably bad" as most of those parties were people experiencing content for the first time. Most of the deaths that happen in dungeons or raids that I'm a part of are so because of player inexperience, not a lack of player skill. You know what I, and many others do when we notice someone dying a lot?

"Hey, if you want to get through that mechanic, you have to watch out for X!"

Usually nets you positive responses, and I've seen more than a fair few people actively go out of their way to apologize in chat, unprompted, when they were underperforming. The most cited reason- again- is "sorry, first time, I don't know how this works"

"what about easy and very easy in solo duties" yeah what about them? Half the time you die in those it's because of a mechanic you didn't figure out in time 4/5ths of the fight and you really just want to set it to "very easy" not because you're incapable of clearing it, but because it's slow and boring and no way in fuck am I going to sit there for another 10 minutes just getting up to the stage I was already at.

"but what about those that are so bad they don't even try"
If it's truly watered down people's skills so much they can't even do a basic 1-2-3 combo and not stand in the bad stuff then all I can say is: I haven't seen the problem. The level 44 gladiator from earlier wasn't finding many friends in our party in any case, and if a player is so poor you question how they even got there to begin with, then I'm sure your party would agree with you if you pull up that 'vote kick' menu.

EDIT: Y'know, just to be on the safe side...

"This isn't about freestyle SAM being common, it's about being held hostage with one"
Oh big deal. This is such a 1-10000 occurrence because unlike what you might be assuming, people don't like wasting their time. It'll be one party you can talk about in the duty finder thread and then for the next 6 months you'll never encounter something even approaching that bad again. The stars have to align so perfectly to screw your day up in particular that it's not even worth entertaining the thought. You'd need
1: A bad player
2: A minimum of one person who does not want to kick the bad player
3: A dungeon so hard you can't solo carry it (and yes, I am only considering 4-mans, because you're not convincing me this is going to be much of an issue in 24-mans)

And about your ocean fishing example from earlier, that you "can't just get 24 people together for" and all?

Join a discord, man.

[linayar]

In the end the potential still exists without a hard dps check. The healer could just run out of mp and tank runs out of coold0wns cause the fight takes too long. The potential for a wipe still exists no matter how unlikely.

Do we have to qualify tanks not mitigating/holding enmity or healers not healing with "no matter how unlikely?"

I'd say a DPS consistently not out DPS'ing a tank or healer in normal content is underperforming.

They may not be underperforming to the point that they are causing wipes, but they are significantly slowing down progress if that's the case.

A DPS not performing well is just as dangerous. Because lower DPS means a longer fight. A longer fight increases the chances of players making a mistake with mechanics or skill usage that could result in a wipe.

A D grade while passing is under performing. A person just caring to graduate high school may not have motivation to improve their performance, but they are still under performing.

Without actual consequence, saying that they're underperforming is meaningless. If efficiency is the metric you want to focus on, hence time taken, then you should make your own party.

If you want to be efficient, then hope for every normal content to be nerfed down so hard that people "underperforming" by that metric is irrelevant. People who allegedly manipulate roulette to get easier content is being efficient.

Duty finder mixes players of all skill levels and game goals together. As long as the content's being completed, I personally wouldn't agree with a kick, especially if there hasn't been any attempt to nicely ask the player to improve. Players who care about the skill levels and game goals should use party finder to form a group.

Indeed.

[Hikelos]

Extremely bad players that lack even the most basic understanding of this videogame you and I play are rare. They're at their most common in low-level content

This is the last thing I'm going to say, not to repeat myself, but just to make the argument absolutely clear, a 5th time now, because once again the response is either willing deflection or honest misunderstanding.
The people OP is talking about are at their most common in end-game and high level content.
The problem is not and has never been, sprouts who don't know what an AOE is. Actually, seeing sprouts learn the ropes and helping them out is very endearing and carries a sense of nostalgia.
The subject at hand is ye olde "You don't pay my sub" attitude, and the problem that makes this attitude unbearable is how the in-game moderation will side with self-entitled, toxic, and unreasonable manbaby saboteurs.

These people, and there are many, have no problems filing a report if they are reminded (in a polite and friendly manner) that SCH can use shields and doesn't need to individually heal every player when there's an AoE, or getting people together in discord to mass report someone they don't like.
Essentially they spend their time looking for drama. They feed off of it. It's not just that they're bad, they identify with being bad and therefore see people trying to help as a personal attack.
And again, they do it because they are fully enabled to do so. That's the thing.
Be honest, when you told that 44 GLA to put tank stance on, did you say it casually, or did you put together a sterile and unnaturally polite PR statement out of fear of being reported?
Whatever is the answer, I don't think it's controversial at all to say that most people will go for the latter option when they find themselves in that situation.
In my experience people either do that, or outright leave without saying anything and suffer the 30m lock.

The end result is this oppressive, 24/7 Mask-On atmosphere.
And that's not good for a game genre whose main pull is being a social experience first and foremost.

Sidenote: Yes, the likelyhood of finding this type of player heavily depends on the time of day. And no, you cannot que ocean fishing as a raid, having 24 people on hand won't change anything- and you shouldn't have to do that just to work around and accomodate someone who will que at the speed of light to get on the very boat, and then spend 15m walking around and emoting, ignoring people pleas to please either fish or leave out of nothing but spite and malice. I've been there many, MANY MANY MANY times.

[linayar]

Be honest, when you told that 44 GLA to put tank stance on, did you say it casually, or did you put together a sterile and unnaturally polite PR statement out of fear of being reported?

The fact that saying something casually means that you should fear being reported shows that the problem is with you. Change what it means to say things casually.

And no, you should never fear being reported. You should fear the GM agreeing with the report. And if you really think they're being toxic, report them.

[Saefinn]

This has been completely derailed, as usual , off of the initial discussion that was the community fostering and propagating a culture of not meeting the bare minimum, into "You are unreasonably mad because a NIN in Ex Roulette popped a bunny".
Look at that strawman burn.

I don't think even a strawman.

The issue is that the subject is a false premise and people have been arguing why it's a false premise and you can see it backed up by how the OP is handling it.

The two false premises I see are:
- That the community is enabling it
- That it's as big of an issue as OP makes out and so big it needs addressing by said community

The main issues I think are:
- Maybe OP's standard is higher. Their attitude and follow up posts imply they are.
- Maybe OP is being unfair in how they're interpreting and assessing their encounters in DF, OP's attitude towards under performers without acknowledging the numerous reasonable ways a person might be under performing suggests it strongly.

People acknowledge that bad eggs exist. We've all encountered them. But it's being overstated.

And I think it can be easy to as well, because it can be easy to have derogative assumptions about the failings of fellow party members. But they're "bad" or "not trying" and so on is a gross oversimplification that if anything enables a poor attitude towards them. My biggest experience of it comes when people complain about healers, hence my linking earlier, where the common assumption appeared about healers refusing to heal and I gave reasonings as to why the "refusing" can just be an assumption. Any one of a party member's failings can be for a whole plethora of reasons.

But again, within that, there are bad eggs and you know that are because you've tried to engage them or help them and they've been crappy about it and show totally the wrong ideas and attitude. But I would argue, the bulk of so called "bad" players aren't because of crappy or toxic attitudes. And verified bad eggs can end up being confirmation bias too.

So we can't simply just /expect/ the player who's trying from meeting certain expectations. We'd like them to for sure, but because of the many reasons they might not be meeting those expectations, I don't think is fair to have such a derogative outlook on those players, my instinct on it is to try to help.

It's not like SE can turn around and say "sorry, you can't play, you're too bad" or enable a culture of calling players out or excluding them based on performance creates bigger toxic issues. I think the culture SE has generally enabled (because it was the same as FFXI) and that's one of people helping each other out, and I'd rather keep that TBH.

[Awha]

Do we have to qualify tanks not mitigating/holding enmity or healers not healing with "no matter how unlikely?"

Without actual consequence, saying that they're underperforming is meaningless. If efficiency is the metric you want to focus on, hence time taken, then you should make your own party.

If you want to be efficient, then hope for every normal content to be nerfed down so hard that people "underperforming" by that metric is irrelevant. People who allegedly manipulate roulette to get easier content is being efficient.

Indeed.

The thing is as stated the potential still exists. Though the quantifying remake is person dependent. Personally wiping in normal content is already unlikely even with low dps or underperforming tank / healers.

Though for normal content a tank or healer not performing their role it is still possible for someone else to pick up the slack to make up for the difference. Which is the same principle of dps doing lower damage the group is able to make up the difference so it does not matter if the content gets cleared in regards of the dps because all that matters for the most part from what I understand is the group performance. Though the same Principle still stands for the other roles, and that is my point. If we break down the standard to a core principle of completion through group effort the same standard should apply across the board. Though for the most part people are far more understanding of dps underperforming over tanks and healers. Which is understandable but at the core kind of unfair. I prefer to apply an equal standard across the board when it comes to performance.

Though I do not expect SE to do anything about it that is why I support a liberal use of the vote kick feature, and advocates for both sides to use the PF or queue with friends if they want to play a certain way. If someone wants to be a free style sam cool do you, but if that us your preferred way of playing then I also think the PF suggestion should also apply to them.

[linayar]

The thing is as stated the potential still exists. Though the quantifying remake is person dependent. Personally wiping in normal content is already unlikely even with low dps or underperforming tank / healers.

Though for normal content a tank or healer not performing their role it is still possible for someone else to pick up the slack to make up for the difference. Which is the same principle of dps doing lower damage the group is able to make up the difference so it does not matter if the content gets cleared in regards of the dps because all that matters for the most part from what I understand is the group performance. Though the same Principle still stands for the other roles, and that is my point. If we break down the standard to a core principle of completion through group effort the same standard should apply across the board. Though for the most part people are far more understanding of dps underperforming over tanks and healers. Which is understandable but at the core kind of unfair. I prefer to apply an equal standard across the board when it comes to performance.

Healers losing MP could have various factors contributing to it, like tank overpulling or healers not using their resource wisely, not just dps being low, and it takes the entire party having low dps, including the other dps as well.

So, no, the standard is still the same. But low dps doesn't affect the party like tanks losing aggro or healers not healing. The latter two has immediate effect more than simply fight taking longer or healer losing MP.

And here is the other thing, if the dps gets so low that the party cannot get through a mob, then of course that's a problem, but considering healers and tanks have good dps, dps being lower than them doesn't necessarily mean anything in normal content.