We Need to Start Expecting Mid-Level Sprouts to Play Better

[Deceptus]

It is not the game of individuals, but of a community. And as it belongs to no one as such (... Except SE, but you get the point), it is necessary to find compromises.

The goal in dungeons should be "do your best to make this particular group work". If a healer kindly asks you to speed up the pace as a tank, do so; in exchange, don't pull in the tank's place if it makes him uncomfortable. You can see that you are not very useful in dps because you are accompanied by level 90 players who dismantle everything? Take the initiative to take the keys to pick up and go open doors, or switch on the elements needed for certain mechanics.

A lot of people are toxic not by insulting; not by giving advice in a dry way; but because it is visible through their gameplay that they are playing as if they are with bots. And yes, this reproach also concerns those who claim to "go at their own pace" without any consideration for others. And this is true whether their pace is particularly slow or particularly fast.

Basically:

If you don't want to be a team player in a team based game, go play with Trusts.

But a lot people don't do that because trusts take longer. Trusts take longer because the trusts are programmed to not do as much damage as players. It's the exact same way as people who aren't playing at a moderate level. If you can't even do as much damage as a Trust NPC, something that is SPECIFICALLY programmed to do lower dps, that's a YOU problem (general "you", not you specifically Merrigan) that you need to work on.

And yes, I've had runs in 80+ content take longer than a Trust would have taken.

It's a bit harsh to say that, but it's reality, something a lot of players need a healthy dose of.

[Boblawblah]

Basically:

If you don't want to be a team player in a team based game, go play with Trusts.

But a lot people don't do that because trusts take longer. Trusts take longer because the trusts are programmed to not do as much damage as players. It's the exact same way as people who aren't playing at a moderate level. If you can't even do as much damage as a Trust NPC, something that is SPECIFICALLY programmed to do lower dps, that's a YOU problem (general "you", not you specifically Merrigan) that you need to work on.

And yes, I've had runs in 80+ content take longer than a Trust would have taken.

It's a bit harsh to say that, but it's reality, something a lot of players need a healthy dose of.

I have to wonder, is it really the player who isn't doing enough (to you) dps's problem? The game doesn't punish them, in fact, it defends them against people being toxic towards them. So whos problem is it exactly? What "reality" is it really?

[Rilifane]

Basically:

If you don't want to be a team player in a team based game, go play with Trusts.

Agreed.
It's simply common sense that whenever you do an activity that is either team-based or takes place in a confined space where everyone's action are bound to affect others you try to not negatively affect others to the best of your abilities.
And "to the best of your abilities" doesn't mean pull off pro gamer moves - but try your best to be a teamplayer and make it a smooth experience for everyone by keeping it mind that everything one player fails to do another has to make up for.
Adjust the pull speed to the party, don't netflix and pick your nose if no healing is needed, use aoes in big pulls, use your mitigation (doesn't have to be used well, just use it), don't stand in the bad and stay in heal range of the healer, use cooldowns as often as you remember them etc.
No reason to make this out as some elitist bs and go around lamenting "b-b--but my FUN" - you're not the only player in a party, everyone's fun and smooth experience is equally important. This is at the same time nobody's and everybody's game.

You don't go on a open for all football field and start randomly run in someone else's way - there is no explicit rule against doing so but it obviously affects them negatively. If you play as a goalkeeper you don't randomly stand next to your goal because nobody told you that a goalkeeper should... you know... guard the goal a little bit?
You don't go ice skating in a rink open to public and stand around in the busiest parts and start a nice group chat even if there is no explicit rule against doing so. Nor do you practice fancy things in the middle of the most-used path, you go into centre where you're least likely to disturb anyone.
You don't go into a supermarket and tak care of that really long phone call in the middle of the only small path to another aisle because there are no rules against it and maybe it's your first time in a supermarket and you're also drunk and didn't sleep.
Not everything should be spelled out by the law for you, some things should simply be a matter of common sense.

But if you really don't want to be a teamplayer, there are trusts. One of the reasons they keep expanding on that feature is that people who'd rather play it like a single-player game can. And if your mindset is "I play what I want and I don't care about the rest of the party" then this is for you.
And if you don't like trusts because they're slower then congratulations, now you understand why people don't like it if others can't show some basic decency and respect towards other people's time by trying to be a teamplayer. Don't be a trust.

[Merrigan]

Basically:

If you don't want to be a team player in a team based game, go play with Trusts.

But a lot people don't do that because trusts take longer. Trusts take longer because the trusts are programmed to not do as much damage as players. It's the exact same way as people who aren't playing at a moderate level. If you can't even do as much damage as a Trust NPC, something that is SPECIFICALLY programmed to do lower dps, that's a YOU problem (general "you", not you specifically Merrigan) that you need to work on.

And yes, I've had runs in 80+ content take longer than a Trust would have taken.

It's a bit harsh to say that, but it's reality, something a lot of players need a healthy dose of.

It's not harsh, though?

Anyway, to add another thing: there is another option than the "trust" system, that is to play with your FC. With people who agree with your way of playing.

As soon as you enter a team, you implicitly accept its rules. And among these, the rules that are common sense, i.e. to make efforts concerning your teammates. Whether it's in terms of dps, general rhythm or whatever. Which leads me to answer this:

I dont understand the self importance one must have to queue up for a roulette with 3 or more random other people, with any expectation what-so-ever.

Look in the mirror, will you? What is arrogant is not having expectations; it is thinking that you can do absolutely anything you want when you fall in a random team with three strangers.

[Avoidy]

The game basically only puts pressure on healers in normal mode multiplayer content, and that pressure comes exclusively from other players being atrocious at the game. Everyone else can just do whatever they want and nothing will change outside of some rare niche fights that have the balls to include a dps check or a tank mechanic -- and of course, in those fights, wipes are common. Shout out to Titania in trial roulette, which continues to be a crapshoot because tanks won't just do the bare minimum and turn on their stance.

But no. Outside of those niche areas of the MSQ where some dev was having a good day and decided to spread responsibility evenly, it doesn't matter what you do. If you're a DPS, you can tap [1] for the whole fight. "Who cares." There is no enrage. There's no shield to break. There's no add phase with a timer. Your performance does not matter for about 80 levels. Maybe more. And as a tank, you can get away with knowing nothing about your kit if you just single pull all of your dungeons, which is what most random tanks do by default. But if you decide to heal, then you're stuck dealing with these types of people every goddamned day. And I think this is the actual reason healer queues are always instant for this kind of content; nobody wants to put up with that for 20+ minutes. And it's only this bad because the game never encourages anyone to get better. From start to finish, you can sort of just play horribly and lean on the one person in your group who knows what they're doing. If you heal, you're stuck cleaning it up; and even that doesn't necessarily create a better healer. It just creates panicky overhealing healers who heal too much and waste MP because they're conditioned to expect a shit-hits-the-fan scenario every 20 seconds. Obviously this changes when you hit more challenging content, but we're talking about getting these people in roulettes.

To solve this, they should make hall of the novice mandatory and then update it with relevant information. If I recall correctly, the tank tutorial basically encourages you to single pull and gives out information that hasn't been relevant in years. If it changed with endwalker, then I'm just wrong on this but either way it's not like the tanks have magically gotten better so clearly it needs work. And for DPS, some kind of in-game grading system is necessary. Like, loads of DPS don't even know they're performing poorly because it's not like there's a meter in game or anything. And I can't exactly say "wow, we're seeing mechanics I've never seen before. Maybe press your buttons, DPS" because that's harassment. So the game should have a mini evaluation at the end of trials or dungeons or w/e, that only the player can see, that tells them stuff like "hey you're a bard but you didn't actually use any songs," or "we noticed you never used technical step" or "you realize samurai has a DoT, right? you should keep that up as often as possible." etc. There's already a site like this called xivanalysis, but it works off of tools we're not allowed to use, so the game devs should take responsibility and provide something similar in the game so people who don't know about parsing tools or don't want to use them can improve. Also stuff like stone sky sea should just be a setting you enable at any training dummy without having to unlock it. Loads of people don't even know it exists until they google it.

[Stanazolol]

The game basically only puts pressure on healers in normal mode multiplayer content, and that pressure comes exclusively from other players being atrocious at the game. Everyone else can just do whatever they want and nothing will change outside of some rare niche fights that have the balls to include a dps check or a tank mechanic -- and of course, in those fights, wipes are common. Shout out to Titania in trial roulette, which continues to be a crapshoot because tanks won't just do the bare minimum and turn on their stance.

.

This is why I don't get people who say DPS have just as many responsibilities in this game. That's just not true at all. At the top level, sure, but vast majority of people are never at the top level. Tank and healer failures are obvious to the entire group, and/or party failures are more commonly and easily attributed to tank and healer failures whether rightly or wrongly. It's against TOS to even figure out where the DPS failures are.

[weebtext]

Some of you people are out of your minds, pressing a mitigation button on a pull is savage-tier gameplay? lmao get real

[Striker44]

snip

There's so much subjectivity there it's hard to even fathom where to begin. What does "no idea what they're doing" actually mean? You said you've done thousands of roulettes. What do you consider a "completely unacceptable" number of under-performing tanks? A thousand? A hundred? A dozen? Two?

You say you spoke to the person "politely," but in your own description of what you said here, you include things like "I'm having to tryhard to keep you alive," which I suspect most reasonable people would not consider a polite way of phrasing anything. There's also a lot of self-aggrandizement in the post and it just grips with condescension when you say things like "a level 90 savage raider like me." Get off your high horse already.

Frankly, it's completely reasonable to think mitigation gets mainly saved for bosses instead of trash, because A.) that's how it's frequently done in other MMO's, and B.) it's the bosses that have actual "tankbuster" abilities where Player Random can think that's where they absolutely need to make sure they have their mitigation ready, and the "death by a thousand cuts" from a trash pack just doesn't register the same way in people's minds.

Why do you have to take more responsibility? Because you chose to take on the role of healer. In no MMO ever has the "responsibility" been viewed equally among all party members. Tanks and Healers always bear the brunt of the responsibility. It's the reason you can play any MMO you want and those roles will always be in more need compared to DPS.

I was going to make what I felt was an awesome flow-chart to respond to this thread, but in the end only the last part really felt like it was needed:

-Are you making an enormous paragraphs-long post to rant about what you perceive as below-average players in casual content in a casual MMO, and then returning to the thread repeatedly to launch numerous other paragraph-long responses insisting you must absolutely be correct and anyone disagreeing with you must be wrong?

A.) If so, I think perhaps it's time to take a little break from the game. Taking a game this seriously can't be good for anyone's health.
B.) There is no B...

[IDontPetLalas]

There's so much subjectivity there it's hard to even fathom where to begin. What does "no idea what they're doing" actually mean? You said you've done thousands of roulettes. What do you consider a "completely unacceptable" number of under-performing tanks? A thousand? A hundred? A dozen? Two?

You say you spoke to the person "politely," but in your own description of what you said here, you include things like "I'm having to tryhard to keep you alive," which I suspect most reasonable people would not consider a polite way of phrasing anything. There's also a lot of self-aggrandizement in the post and it just grips with condescension when you say things like "a level 90 savage raider like me." Get off your high horse already.

Frankly, it's completely reasonable to think mitigation gets mainly saved for bosses instead of trash, because A.) that's how it's frequently done in other MMO's, and B.) it's the bosses that have actual "tankbuster" abilities where Player Random can think that's where they absolutely need to make sure they have their mitigation ready, and the "death by a thousand cuts" from a trash pack just doesn't register the same way in people's minds.

Why do you have to take more responsibility? Because you chose to take on the role of healer. In no MMO ever has the "responsibility" been viewed equally among all party members. Tanks and Healers always bear the brunt of the responsibility. It's the reason you can play any MMO you want and those roles will always be in more need compared to DPS.

I was going to make what I felt was an awesome flow-chart to respond to this thread, but in the end only the last part really felt like it was needed:

-Are you making an enormous paragraphs-long post to rant about what you perceive as below-average players in casual content in a casual MMO, and then returning to the thread repeatedly to launch numerous other paragraph-long responses insisting you must absolutely be correct and anyone disagreeing with you must be wrong?

A.) If so, I think perhaps it's time to take a little break from the game. Taking a game this seriously can't be good for anyone's health.
B.) There is no B...

By the time that someone has hit mid-level they should be aware of how mitigation works in FFXIV so the excuse of "I thought I should be saving it for the boss' really isn't valid, as pointed out by OP, if someone uses a skip, the logical and considerate thing to do is take a new job into a lower level dungeon, and then a mid-level dungeon. Unfortunately someone with a skip might still get a surprise (e.g. Holminster) but that would help.

Expecting a tank to know how their mitigation works and when to use them really isn't unreasonable, no one is even asking for a perfect use- just some recognition that they can hit those buttons at all when they are likely most needed.

[Striker44]

By the time that someone has hit mid-level they should be aware of how mitigation works in FFXIV so the excuse of "I thought I should be saving it for the boss' really isn't valid, as pointed out by OP, if someone uses a skip, the logical and considerate thing to do is take a new job into a lower level dungeon, and then a mid-level dungeon. Unfortunately someone with a skip might still get a surprise (e.g. Holminster) but that would help.

Expecting a tank to know how their mitigation works and when to use them really isn't unreasonable, no one is even asking for a perfect use- just some recognition that they can hit those buttons at all when they are likely most needed.

I'd disagree with sentiment. Unless you're wall-to-wall pulling at those early-to-mid levels (which if you're just learning how to tank, you're probably not), I can easily see someone noticing no need whatsoever to use their main mitigation abilities on single trash packs. The change happens precisely when you both: A.) Get to higher levels, and B.) Wall-to-wall pull. For developing tanks, that may not be happening period until they're at a higher level, and all it usually takes is an actual polite recommendation to go ahead and use some of those mitigation tools on the trash, because when we pull multiple packs you'll find that the trash actually does more damage than the bosses.