A great change for Commendation

[Leshiken]

As I do dungeons, trials, raids, and anything to deal with cooperative teamwork should be heavily change with its commendation system. First, I seen Healers do real foolish gameplay by either damage per second with Holy spam & little effort to heal, Tanks not popping their cooldown & not being stationary at times (although the WHM ruins the stun timing for them), and some DPS not pull their weight with damage. Second, when it comes to real time act maneuver or dungeon mechanics (if they are not sprouts OR on a Alt), and just dragging the party down to not perform well in a dungeon, raid, trial, and etc. Third, a "Score Activity Performance" of some sort would do well for a system to notice the players role and depending how well the player does in the cooperative dungeon, raid, trial, etc . . . . At the end, it will determine the performance on the party & how each did. Over all, would it favor in rewards to those that did perform their role? Yes, and why? To push players to actually play the role that they select to choose and is it harsh? No, because no one wants to waste their time on trolls or people being stubborn to really understand a role on what it should be, therefore why reward the sorry poorly skilled player base, than the ones that do perform their best? This is my opinion and fair believe on tbe outcome of what I just typed out.

[Izscha]

Never really understood why do ppl care about those in the first place, it doesn't mean anything.
I'm curious tbh what does this change to you to have those ?
I've done thousands of dungeons / trials over the years and i got something like few hundreds, only because i quit the thing as soon as it's over does this mean i'm a terrible player ? Not at all.

[Kolaina]

(although the WHM ruins the stun timing for them)

First let me touch on this. I don’t think you play the other jobs to have a fair understanding of how they work and what they are actually doing. Did you know, a white mage holy spamming doesn’t “ruin stun timing”. The holy spam gives the white mage roughly 10 seconds of not having to heal the tank. In fact, thats all part of the white mage healing tool kit. Tank isn’t taking damage, saves them their mitigation (cool downs), tank doesn’t need to be healed, saving big heal skills such as tetra for later in the pull, or even for the next pull.

Now, i think i understand what you are asking for, but not really. Are you suggesting the game has a set standard for each class, and the game itself gives out commendations when those standards are met? If so, what if a person gets a duty in progress, and does amazing? They haven’t been in long enough to reach the bar set by the games standard. Or maybe a new person who is learning mechanics? Takes a few hits, surpassing the potential alotted damage taken threshold, but learns well and pulls themself together? Do they not deserve one for growing as a player? Or potentially all the great players are just really crappy people. Bad attitudes. What of the person enduring all that, tight lipped, and polite all run?
A lot more goes into some commendation considerations than simply, does the job good

[ItMe]

"Score Activity Performance"

Yoshi P has said they won't add something like this for the same reasons they won't add an in game parser.

Also, it comes with the issue of "how do you rate players?" Especially since the rotations the entire playerbase comes up with are often different than what the Devs cooked up or intended. So... how does the game judge what's "right?"

And what about simple differences in playstyle? The devs don't wanna tell people "this is the right way to play." So what will the game do for healers that keep everyone topped vs healers that play "how low can you go" but never letting anyone die vs a group that never needs healing because they're chain stunning everything into the ground (say, by Holy spamming). How does the game measure who is doing good without affirming one style as right?

[kaynide]

Per the devs, they don't want an automated score system for most PvE content because it will become a source of bullying. Specifically anything combat related.

If you're clearing the dungeon, you (as a group) are doing what is expected at that level of play. The game isn't meant to be even mildly competitive or difficult to play (generally speaking).

Yes, there is "git gud" content, but for a general PuG, personally I want to reward the new player if they just survive certain content on their first try. Or if they are nervous about tanking and giving it a shot. Don't care if they did well.

This isn't to say players shouldn't attempt to improve, but it is saying that a player who is genuinely bad at video games can and should be able to enjoy this game's story in general. The devs want as wide an audience as they can get, whether certain players like it or not.

Even then, that would be a quick way to lose friends: My personal group of friends in game includes my wife, and she's pretty awful. We practically had to drag her through Binding Coil, but she was doing her best. Any feedback from the game would have devastated her. Fortunately, we are all RL personal friends, so we didn't care if she was good. She knows she sucks, but it would be harsh for the game to call her out on how BAD she actually is. (If my friends are average joe A-B skill players, she thinks she's a C, but she's like.. E+)

See: Dad of Light TV Drama. That's the kind of player the devs want to include. That's why the game is so easy, and that's why the devs don't want any kind of system to judge optimal play.

[LittleImp]

Most of the players in this game aren't qualified to offer a meaningful assessment of anyone's performance.

You'll find that the better you play healer in DF content, the less comms you tend to get, because to the average casual player optimized healing tends to be frightening. The same goes for good DPS players, who will often purposely stand in AOEs during mob pulls to avoid disengaging, as its basically impossible to take cumulatively fatal damage during the vast majority of add pulls (barring the tank dying or failing to hold aggro).

[StriderShinryu]

Personally, and I've mentioned this many times previously, I do think there should be some sort of personal report card for each (or at least certain select) dungeons and trials. Not shared with the group, not posted anywhere publicly, just one that pops up upon completion of the Duty and gives you basic letter grades and performance pointers. It's not going to help anyone learn who doesn't want to learn, but for those who do want to learn it may help push them in the right direction or lead them to ask about how to improve. Of course, this would be aided tremendously if the game itself were better at teaching players how to play the game without forcing them to go to a third party resource.

As for commendations, it would be nice if there were some sort of use for them but I don't really think there needs to be one as that could just lead to more issues anyway. Besides, a lot of players don't even commend based on performance anyway so it would be near impossible to nail down as an actual performance reward. Heck, I know that I will often tend to Commend DPS if I notice they're playing well as I know that Tank/Healer are the default for most people regardless, or will just Commend someone who happens to chat a bit and be friendly/helpful. I'll also tend to Commend a player who says they're new to the Duty just as pat on the back for getting through it. I wouldn't say performance is the last thing I consider but it's rarely the first unless someone really went out of their way and did something special.

[SturmChurro]

I have routinely saved parties myself by healing (literally solo healed), prevented wipes, and gotten no commendations. I always chuckle when people say "just play healer or tank", when healer and tank is pretty much all I play, and I hardly ever get them regardless of how well I perform in any aspect.

[Dewslam]

I have routinely saved parties myself by healing (literally solo healed), prevented wipes, and gotten no commendations. I always chuckle when people say "just play healer or tank", when healer and tank is pretty much all I play, and I hardly ever get them regardless of how well I perform in any aspect.

Back in the like Heavensward days it felt like "just play tank/healer" was the go-to for comms, honestly. Where you could expect to just get all three for tanking or healing - and it did breed a lot of weird DF mentalities where some people, however bad they were, would demand them just for showing up. But these days I notice I get way, way, more comms just by being a basic brained DPS and doing my job without screwing up. Or doing something comical like LBing and killing a boss and dying at the same time.

[Lexis]

If a party member did something that left a good impression on you, give them a commendation. If not, don't. The system doesn't need to be more complicated than that and certainly doesn't need a 'grading system'.

Plus, as a whm, the fact that you're speaking against holy spamming, one of our most valuable tool against trash in both damage output and damage mitigation via stun locking, makes me glad you don't get to rate your whm on performance <.<