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

[Deveryn]

To be quite honest, if the game was harder I would agree with you. The current state of the game allow for very unoptimized play (very) in 99% of the content. Even in savage (apart from week 1) healers can get away with doing little dps. A tank can survive any dungeon without using cds, managing enmity is non existent. Healers don't need to dps (there is no dps check), dps can basically hit random buttons and win. If people play well then things are marginally faster, its either you win or you win (but a little bit faster). People don't want to play better because you can still win playing poorly. Before anything else we should demand the possibility of wiping in casual content, soft dps checks, enrages (so you can't drag forever). Until then, I don't care much w/e other players are doing, I can't blame them if they are bad (in any casual content) if the game only requires 10% of their effort.

You say all that, yet we have megathreads, tweets and commentary all around the place about various misadventures. The tank commentary is particularly amusing (and false). You sound like someone who doesn't deal with randos much.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Disappointing. A thread full of players bemoaning other players who may not meet their standards.
I can see why some felt the need to post threads like "I don't like the FFXIV's Community"
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...IV-s-community

However, whilst I'm not one to bemoan others for not meeting some abitary player-dictated standard (which SE themselves don't expect players to meet) I don't think I'm 'qualified' to comment since I'm the sort of player everyone here is passing judgement on: try as I might I'm just not very good at the game - I make silly mistakes too often, am slow to react to mechanics (which I don't always understand) and die more often than I should, and since have been playing for somewhere around eight months, always feel like I should be better. I do also make sure not to go anywhere near the increased difficulty content.

But I love the game all the same and the MSQ was the best gaming experience I've ever encountered. So should I just quit because I don't live up to this 'should be good by now' player-set standard? The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure that some will consider the answer to that question to be "yes".

There's a difference between (a) a learning player who puts effort to try & play better vs (b) player who clearly have played considerable amount of time but chooses not to pick up their slack. Both will most likely result in less than optimum scenario but their intent differs. OP mentioned the tank in question was in Ktisis & insists that they should suck it up and deal with their bad practices because nobody in the past had commented them for that. At that point it's not unreasonable to think: "What is this player had been doing for the past 86 levels of gameplay?". To put into perspective into your mained RDM job, that's like you getting into Ktisis but still fumbling over the Dualcast gimmick of your job that you unlocked from lv50. Or your past main BRD: not knowing what songs are.

Based on the personal thread you have made in the past, I do not think you qualifies as player (b). This thread isn't about you.

[Myrany]

I very much fear the number of people who do not know how to properly play in groups is going to grow exponentially as more and more of the content can be done with trusts. We will see people that used trusts and nothing else to level and then suddenly decide to jump into roulettes and be clueless how to actually function as a team. It is one of the reasons I was really not pleased that trusts were put into the game. Which is actually ironic considering my nature is to be a solo player.

There are just too many things that are going to push the solo only player into group settings. Roulettes, Moogle events, etc

[Syln]

You have all my sympathy op, that being said you should understand that by its nature this kind of topic will only comfort moron doing what they do best : being moron (regardless of which side of the fence they may be)

Sorry if it sounded condescending but unless the real purpose of this post is to vent, nothing good will come out of it.

[Lustre]

It's the games problem for enabling bad, then bad goes into PFs and causes disband because nobody can say anything about how bad they are so its easiest to relist the pug.

This is a fundamental design problem imo. They have stripped away difficulty in msq for the sake of story completion, and then keep adding solo friendly systems. At what point is square enix going to choose? Is this an MMO or a single player game? Cause to me it feels like 50% of the playerbase plays the game like it's a single player game (not trying, bad in group content) and the other half plays it like it's WoW back in 2010, trying hard for your teammates. Square enix would do well not to try to please everybody, because they cant. They need to prioritise, because let's be real, it isnt msq players who stop playing for 6-12 months at a time who are keeping them afloat. It's the daily players. Yknow, the ones playing an MMORPG.

In my opinion, after a certain point, being bad in group content is essentially griefing and is really REALLY rude. On my first run though the game, I checked guides for a lot of stuff before I went in. Why? Well aside from getting flamed when I told people I watched a guide, I wanted to know what was going to happen as tank so I could prepare accordingly. Of course, in hindsight outside of maybe 1 or 2 fights (like eden birds/shadow dog) it really wasnt needed. But 99.9% of those runs went way smoother because I bothered to look it up so I couldnt care less.

I'm not saying we need elitism and RaiderIo and people to have BiS for content. I'm asking for people to DO THEIR ROTATION. I was in a trial lately, ex difficulty equivalent, and a paladin used requiescat ONCE. Yknow, that second half of the paladin rotation? This player probably doesnt even know what they're doing wrong and that content REALLY isnt the place to have someone explain in what order to press your buttons in, so I decided to avoid the ToS and not mention anything. This Is just one example of what I'd consider casual griefing. I'm not claiming to be worlds best player, but at least try to put some effort in.

[Bukachu]

I think the core of the issue is, some people become extremely insecure whenever you mention their performance.

its not really about what level of play we're talking about, could be anything and anyone from person only using auto attacks in dungeons to person making a very minor mistake at ultimate level.

part of people need to understand that someone giving you a tip isnt a personal attack and its not a disrespect to ones family name and masters name.

and second part needs to understand a difference between giving a tip and personally attacking someone.

that's that really.

[Saraide]

Tanking is easy. Being a good tank with good positioning, minimizing movement, not rotating the boss, being able to use aoe mitigation and normal mitigation at the right times, protecting a party member who is about to die, speedrunning efficiently, understanding enmity to grab stray yellows, being confident is another thing entirely.

From my perspective as a tank, I could say that being a DPS is easy because you just press your attacks. Being a good DPS that does good damage, hits positionals, maintains dots and doesn't die to everything is another thing entirely otherwise "seeing damage" and enrages wouldn't be a thing.

Everyone learns at a different pace as well. You can teach the same things to two different people and one of them will take a week and one of them will take months/years. So just because you learn fast doesn't mean that every single sprout does.

You have to remember that many of them play with sub-optimal default settings.

What makes you think they are not trying to contribute? Most of the people who die to every aoe are just new to the content or returning to the game, or they don't know better.

There is nothing wrong with giving them advice, if they are happy to receive it, but it's hard to gain their trust and assess if they want the advice in a dungeon setting. If you have a casual conversation with them after the dungeon and they explain they are returning to the game, you might reach a point in the conversation where giving some friendly advice is the natural response. If you, a complete stranger, just blurt it out mid-pull, it comes across rude.

Why do you always act like we expect everyone to be a god tier player?

[LianaThorne]

(It's too early for this)

[Payadopa]

No.

Any video game player base isn't some static thing that gains knowledge after X hours of play or X number of levels.

It gets a bit old explaining infinite cycles to people, but all I can suggest is to think deeply on this: For every expert player that retires from this game, you have one that joins with zero MMO experience. Therefore the player base is constantly morphing into something different. Always.

My dude, modern basketball has been around since something like 1890. Does that mean if you head down to the park right now, all the guys on the court should be pros? Does it even mean that the 30-year-old guy that's been shooting mediocre hoops since he was nine should be any better?

No one can assume with any degree of accuracy how another, random person will perform at any chosen sport, including video games. Not at first glance. You do some research on the person, then maybe. But not at first glance.

+1
I like.

[Payadopa]

A boot and a report of griefing from me. No mitigation in level 87 dungeon? Yeah I call griefer

Even if I had the worst experience of my life in a particular dungeon I'd never report someone. I've been playing since the closed alpha of 1.0 and that thought never even crossed my mind. What's wrong with you people? lol