Please implement something to teach players how to play

[Jojoya]

Parentheticals my own, to ensure I'm understanding your retorts to Diva here. Emphasis (underline) also my own.

There are plenty of games that already profit plentifully by attracting players who are too tired to think. Find them on Steam. Find them on Google Play. There's a veritable trove of them.

So why do we need to increasingly turn XIV into Candy Crush? The relaxing parts are already there, and most investment in system design (Trusts, for instance) have increasingly catered to (made further allotments for) that span of players.

My discussion with Diva began after a reply i made to another poster talking about a comment Ion Hazzikostas made about his intent for WoW game design and how THINK was important to it. That's why I keep using that specific term.

Who's trying to turn FFXIV into Candy Crush? I don't see anyone trying to do that.

I'll repeat the same thing I said at the start of the thread and again later.

You cannot teach people who are not interested in learning. You cannot get people to improve who have no interest in improving.

Human beings just don't work that way. The desire to learn and improve must come from within. Try to force it on them and you start generating resentment and hostility.

That's why games, especially those trying to reach large audiences, almost always come with some form of difficulty levels to all or part of content. You've got the base level that should be possible for anyone to complete. You've got the moderate difficulty levels for those who want a bit more of a challenge. You've got the highest difficulty levels for those who want to THINK, as that one poster put it.

There is nothing that SE can do that will get the player who's happy at the base level to up their game play to the moderate level. It's the player who has to decide they want to make that change.

Again, when the game was released, dungeons as a content type included instances which could appeal to those looking for more than just a relaxing experience (i.e., those who actually wanted to engage with the systems of the game at a level that'd give those systems pertinence). Because the game has done so little to increase its efforts to facilitate learning even as the number of pieces of content have increased twofold, threefold, fourfold, content types have, in effect, begun to exclude player interests they used to include. "You want cognitive engagement? Go fight in a boss arena. You want depth in a job kit? Sorry, but you'll have to find something other than MCH now, no matter how that aesthetic may be your favorite. We don't serve your kind here anymore."

The kind of exclusion you're fearing is what's been subtly happening over the last 7 years, with some points of change far more noticeable than others, to those you'd accuse of encroaching on your preferred style of content design.

It sounds more like you're concern is one of content design than of player behavior. That's a different topic.

As for job kits having depth, there's a point where more buttons stops adding depth and starts creating bloat. It's a real problem in MMORPGs where character levels keep increasing and developers have to work to keep the bloat under control. That's another topic that deserves a separate thread.

Yet you can first get people interested in learning. See the differences between when education does and does not work.

SE is a game development and publishing company. They are not educators. It's not their responsibility to get people interested in learning.

I was literally replying to your own comment.
Even if Game companies are profit driven, doesn't mean that they have to cater towards everyone. Just the majority. If you want something specific, there're plenty of games that are made for "tired" people where you don't need to think.
FFXIV is an MMO. A game, where you WILL encounter other players and you WILL engage in activities with them. It's up to YOU to do your best (no, it's doesn't mean you need to perform like everything is at Ultimate level play, I'm so tired of repeating this, I don't understand why you people are so dense) to provide your support for your team, which includes doing your job as DPS/Tank/Healer. This doesn't mean that you have to be top parser score in anything you do. This means that you have to respect others' time the same way they respect yours. Therefore not being lazy.
This thread was started with an idea to add more tools to teach people literal basics. You will be surprised how many players out there want to learn the game, their class and not just mush random pretty buttons. Especially new players.
For some reason, part of this community thinks that you are allowed to be a burden for your team. If you're not interested in learning, it's fine, no one is forcing you. But you also need to avoid forcing others to work twice as hard because they didn't pay their sub to carry you through content. (And I don't mean You Jojoya, specifically, just in case)

And my comment had been in response to that other poster. You're removing context when you take that out of the discussion.

You're right. It's up to the individual player whether or not they are going to do their best. You cannot force them to do their best. I cannot force them to do their best. SE cannot force them to do their best. Only they can make that choice.

The problem you're ignoring is that you lack information that will let you know what that other player's best is. Are they disabled in some way? You have no way of knowing that. Are they running the game on a potato PC barely meeting system requirements from a low speed internet hotspot? You have no way of knowing that.

They may very well be trying their best even if it doesn't look that way to you.

What you can do is decide whether or not you want to be in a party with another player who doesn't meet your personal standards. You can try to get the rest of the party to agree to remove the player, or you can leave on your own. I've left parties when there was literally a player who was not trying. I'm talking not even doing a single or 2 button mash, I mean just following the party at a distance usually making stupid comments. The rest of the party wanted to carry that person and wouldn't agree to a kick so I left.

But those situations are so extremely rare. Most of the time, everyone in the group is contributing to a reasonable degree. Maybe a dungeon will take 25 minutes instead of 15 minutes? Doesn't bother me as long as everyone's got a good attitude about things.

Why are we trying to get SE to divert development resources that could be used for improving job depth, creating new dungeons, etc. just to try to force a tiny percentage of problem players to change that have no interest in changing?

[Shurrikhan]

You cannot teach people who are not interested in learning. You cannot get people to improve who have no interest in improving.

Yet you can first cause people to be interested in learning.

See, for example, the differences between when education does and does not work.

Human beings just don't work that way. The desire to learn and improve must come from within.

Is it inborn? Are some just inherently and permanently incapable of that desire, and therefore of learning or improvement? If not, see above.

Try to force it on them and you start generating resentment and hostility.

That's quite a false ultimatum.

That's why games, especially those trying to reach large audiences, almost always come with some form of difficulty levels to all or part of content.

Yes. Would you agree that it is better to give access to a greater span of difficulty levels?

Let's put it this way:

• Content Type A (Battlecraft Leves, let's say) includes elements 1-2.
• Content Type B (Trust dungeons) includes elements 1-4.
• Content Type C (Squadrons, perhaps) includes elements 1-5.
• Content Type D (Guildhests) includes elements 1-3 and 6-7.
• Content Type E (a DF dungeon with no melee, no need for Rescue- or Bard-taxi-ing, and all players mostly follow the same actions as trust NPCs) includes elements 1-8.
• Content Type F (a DF dungeon with no melee and more normal players) includes elements 1-10.
• Content Type G (a DF dungeon, normal, with melee so positioning double matters) includes elements 1-11.
• Content Type H (Bozja/Eureka) includes elements 1-3, 5, and 12.
• Content Type I (PotD/HoH) includes elements 1-3, 5, and 12-13.

And so forth. There's just different amounts of "stuff" to actually interact with in any of those given modes.

The complaint is less that Content Type F, for instance, is too easy so much as just that it its designs are increasingly constrained, wasting much of its potential.

In part that comes from stagnating expectations, such as that everything in content type F must be interchangeably [<trash pack x4, boss> (Repeat x3)].

In other cases it comes from parts of the experience being outright trimmed just because the game couldn't be bothered to teach how it might be used (example: CC, if you haven't joined the game too late to know what that was) -- and thus Content Type G, for instance, is increasingly trimmed until it has only a total of 7 elements' worth of "stuff" available to interact with. That latter point is the main issue:

• Why have CC when people can't be bothered to learn how to use it? (Don't worry; it's basically gone now.)
  
  
• Why have decently interest DPS rotations available to healers if they might overwhelm the bottom 10%? (Don't worry; they're gone now.)
  
  
• Why experiment with remotely deep mechanics like Heat Gauge if the lowest-common-denominator won't understand how to utilize them? If things start getting complex, it's not like we can be bothered to write clear tooltips, let alone explain our own mechanics. (Don't worry; they're gone now.)
  
  
• Why have synergetic oGCDs when people can't be bothered to learn how they synergize? (Don't worry; they're mostly gone now.)
  
  
• Why have choiceful utility if either (A) it takes more work than just what sounds good on a job preview to balance for depth in practice or (B) people might oversimplify instruction into "you only want Balance" anyways? (Don't worry; it's gone now.)

Welcome to the already large graveyard that zero efforts made to facilitate and incentivize player learning, per your suggestions, would only expand further.

SE is a game development and publishing company. They are not educators. It's not their responsibility to get people interested in learning.

In learning their game? Yes it is. It absolutely is.

[Miracle_Diva]

The problem you're ignoring is that you lack information that will let you know what that other player's best is. Are they disabled in some way? You have no way of knowing that. Are they running the game on a potato PC barely meeting system requirements from a low speed internet hotspot? You have no way of knowing that.

That's not really SE's problem. While I would agree that we need more tools to help disabled players, no need to assume that everyone is disabled. Potato PC is really a player's problem. And it's also what's holding SE's hands tight when it comes to adding more functions or expanding features.

They may very well be trying their best even if it doesn't look that way to you.

What you can do is decide whether or not you want to be in a party with another player who doesn't meet your personal standards. You can try to get the rest of the party to agree to remove the player, or you can leave on your own. I've left parties when there was literally a player who was not trying. I'm talking not even doing a single or 2 button mash, I mean just following the party at a distance usually making stupid comments. The rest of the party wanted to carry that person and wouldn't agree to a kick so I left.

And I don't disagree with you on this one. What's mindboggling here is that some people think that it's fine being lazy. It's simply disrespectful to everyone. And it's not about my personal standards. For some reason it's fine to be lazy and disrespectful, but asking the said player to work with others and stop holding everyone back is not.

But those situations are so extremely rare. Most of the time, everyone in the group is contributing to a reasonable degree. Maybe a dungeon will take 25 minutes instead of 15 minutes? Doesn't bother me as long as everyone's got a good attitude about things.

While it's fine to spend a bit more time than on some duty, if you start having more and more of those runs (and you will because of players influx), this additional time spent in a duty will accumulate into hours and days, you just don't feel it yet. The quality will drop. Even for defenders of lazy players.

Why are we trying to get SE to divert development resources that could be used for improving job depth, creating new dungeons, etc. just to try to force a tiny percentage of problem players to change that have no interest in changing?

It's not tiny. 14 "teaching system" is very outdated. It needs improvement. Right now people are not bothered to learn because everything is so simple. Until you actually get to harder content and get "gated" from it because people there want to actually clear stuff and get rewards.

I mean if those people already have that mentality then there's nothing SE can do about it, no matter what training features they add.

It's fine, let them be then. Just don't let them ride your back when you meet those unless you're fine with that.
Altho, if we had a better teaching system that would interest players to learn, it's only a benefit for everyone. You still won't need to be the best, you will just have more knowledge about things, thus create good habits for yourself.

[Miracle_Diva]

When did this turn into a discussion about stressful/hard content? The OP was addressing all content that wasn't being done solo.

You're the one who believes THINK is so important. Try engaging it. Game companies are profit driven in the end. That means they need to think about all the potential customers they are trying to attract, including people who are tired after a long day of work. They absolutely need to cater part of their game to those people.

Part does not mean all, though. I've already stated if you run into someone joining a Savage/EX/Ultimate group that does not meet reasonable expectations for performance in that content, by all means remove them from the group.

But those same standards cannot be expected of players doing normal content. That content is intended for everyone.


Or it's more a problem with a specific data center. It's extremely rare I run into issues in Duty Finder. I'm even leveling a new character right now and the number of players being welcoming and helpful to all the sprouts has been great to see.

I'm not going to say the bad experiences never happen on Crystal but they're so uncommon from my experience I never walk into an instance fearing the group will have a nightmare player.

I was literally replying to your own comment.
Even if Game companies are profit driven, doesn't mean that they have to cater towards everyone. Just the majority. If you want something specific, there're plenty of games that are made for "tired" people where you don't need to think.
FFXIV is an MMO. A game, where you WILL encounter other players and you WILL engage in activities with them. It's up to YOU to do your best (no, it's doesn't mean you need to perform like everything is at Ultimate level play, I'm so tired of repeating this, I don't understand why you people are so dense) to provide your support for your team, which includes doing your job as DPS/Tank/Healer. This doesn't mean that you have to be top parser score in anything you do. This means that you have to respect others' time the same way they respect yours. Therefore not being lazy.
This thread was started with an idea to add more tools to teach people literal basics. You will be surprised how many players out there want to learn the game, their class and not just mush random pretty buttons. Especially new players.
For some reason, part of this community thinks that you are allowed to be a burden for your team. If you're not interested in learning, it's fine, no one is forcing you. But you also need to avoid forcing others to work twice as hard because they didn't pay their sub to carry you through content. (And I don't mean You Jojoya, specifically, just in case)

[Rinhi]

I'm not going to say the bad experiences never happen on Crystal but they're so uncommon from my experience I never walk into an instance fearing the group will have a nightmare player.

maybe it says something about the data center when the majority of the people who defend said selfish and toxic "playstyle" to death come from a certain one, while the people from the other "camp" come from various different ones?
maybe I'll make a crystal alt and see for myself how different it is!

When did this turn into a discussion about stressful/hard content? The OP was addressing all content that wasn't being done solo.

huh?

TO clarify: I'm mainly concerned about level 70-80 characters having these issues.

[Shurrikhan]

I thought very much before I wrote it.

Thinking absolutely can be fun for some people. I'm one of them. I like solving puzzles.

But I also like other things. I don't want to be spending all of my time solving puzzles when that's taking time away from other things I also want to do.

Not everyone finds THINK to be fun. They just want to relax after a stressful day doing other things. But perhaps your own ability to THINK is too narrow to understand that.

"I want to relax, but I don't want to just do the things made to be relaxing, so I want the stuff that wasn't (originally) intended just to (continue to) be changed until it is similarly relaxing."

You realize this applies in the inverse, too, right? "I want to really cognitively engage in something, but I don't want to just do the content forms to which that engagement has been constrained (8-man boss arenas), so I want stuff to see some among the later iterations of content forms that haven't always been intended to be cognitively engaging to offer cognitive engagement."

But, alas, somehow the first, despite being the more reductive, is fine, while the latter would likely trigger uproar...

__________

There is content to be played while relaxing or to relax. No one is suggesting that such be removed, only that cognitive load not be increasingly restricted to Savage, Ultimates, and the occasional harder Extreme trial -- in other words, only to be found off the main road and in perfectly circular or rectangular rooms -- or divorced from the common player experience, per the trajectory of changes since the game's release, be that to the content itself or to job toolkits and playflow.

:: Many here would also add, if the game did a better job of situating its own tools (its stuff to be interacted with or made use of), engagement would be less at odds with relaxation, and vice versa.

For instance, look at endgame dungeons on ARR's release and shortly thereafter, such as pre-nerf Amdapor Keep or Pharos Sirius. Look at dungeons now.

Especially in the context of the job playflows themselves being so simplified, the norm has increasingly become one where cognitive load significant enough to be engaging for more than even just half the community is something you have to go out of your way for and is increasingly less diverse in its forms. And that trajectory appears likely to continue given the comments we've seen from the devs regarding the inevitable design constraints of "skill gap", for which they still solely blame the players, rather than their ability to facilitate or incentivize learning.

Even a request to keep things the same as they are now, then, is asking for a change to that trajectory, which others will then take as reason to get up in arms against "entitled elitists" for their wanting there to remain some semblance of diversity in content with cognitive load, or even just to not have yet another of their main jobs gutted. God forbid those "elitists" ask for further options with, for them, engaging cognitive load outside of merely perfectly circular or rectangular rooms. The horror.

Clearly, increased options in a direction that has more stuff available to interact with or make use of -- and to be used to the extent one has skill for -- would be horrid pandering to the oppressive elite. Meanwhile, steadily rounding up those forms of engagement and isolating them among Ultimate fights, while leaving the typical experience increasingly barren or shallow just so a select group doesn't feel as bad about not using the tools that would otherwise be offered them... is perfectly fine?