Why is it so common to join extremes without watching a guide first?

[Reinha]

Going "hey, go watch this 8-minute video and remember all of it" isn't necessarily any better. But for another, people in this thread have mentioned before that they learn better from seeing the mechanics; that's true for lots of people.

I'd like to comment on these two things. I've seen many people say they can't remember the whole video after watching it. The point is to remember something, so you don't zone in and ask someone to explain mechanics for the first 5 minutes. At least be ready for a few pulls and have an idea what the tether is for, what damage to share or avoid, which adds to kill first and/or what you need to do for tank busters. You can see, hear and read the mechanics on a good video, so there is something for everyone.

And if seeing the mechanic, hearing about it and reading it's name and cast bar in the video is not your style of learning and you need to die from the mechanic in game to figure it out? Don't ask for someone to type it in a chat box before the first pull since that's not your style of learning.

No one will convince me that "hey, ask for someone to slowly type mechanics for 5 minutes before pull and remember all of it" is the secret sauce for making people learn while graphs, videos and text guides do nothing for them. Please. The best thing a mentor can do for clueless newbies is to point them to useful resources like Party Finder, YouTube and The Balance. This game's etiquette at high levels does not include asking to be spoonfed information that is readily available.

[Packetdancer]

No one will convince me that "hey, ask for someone to slowly type mechanics for 5 minutes before pull and remember all of it" is the secret sauce for making people learn while graphs, videos and text guides do nothing for them. Please. The best thing a mentor can do for clueless newbies is to point them to useful resources like Party Finder, YouTube and The Balance. This game's etiquette at high levels does not include asking to be spoonfed information that is readily available.

I mean, if you get an extreme in Mentor Roulette, it is almost always because the sprouts don't know what an extreme is, so obviously have no idea they should prepare for it. I will always tell them that in the future it'll be smoother if they use Party Finder, and that unless they're specifically organizing a blind run it's generally good etiquette to study the fight.

(Though, keep in mind, free trial users are not allowed to create parties, whether in party finder or otherwise; queuing in directly is one of their only options.)

But once that's been detailed? It is absolutely faster for me to explain the fight in chat than make them all go watch an 8-minute video for a fight from back in ARR. Especially if I break it into bite-size chunks. For instance, to use Garuda EX as an example (since it's recent enough that I can easily remember more or less how I summarized it):

First explanation:
In the first half of the fight, there's only really two things to remember.
First, when those feathers spawn, one of them is a 'Satin Plume' instead of a 'Razor Plume'. We need to kill that one *first*; it's the thing that puts us all to sleep there.
Second, when the adds show up, the tanks will want to each take one and drag the two of them a bit apart from each other; the party can focus on Chirada first, and then go finish off Suparna.
Let's get through the adds, and then I'll cover the rest of the fight. Sound good?

Second explanation, after we'd gotten through adds cleanly:
When we get more Razor Plumes again, the special one this time will be a 'Spiny Plume'; we want to *not* kill that one.
The Spiny Plume will start stacking a debuff called 'Thermal Low' on whoever has aggro on it; if they get three stacks of Thermal Low, they explode and we all die. So we can't let one tank hold aggro the entire time if it takes too long.
Once Garuda leaves the arena again, *then* we want to kill the Spiny Plume; that'll give us a safe spot to stand in for when she comes back and does a ton of damage.
After that, there'll be some whirlwinds that appear and make chunks of the arena unsafe. The adds and the Spiny Plume will come back, and you deal with them the same way as before, just dodging whirlwinds.
(But honestly, we'll probably kill her fairly soon after the whirlwinds land, so you probably won't need to deal with that last part.)

Et voila, explanation given. The only stumbling block was that people would kill the Spiny Plume early with AoEs, but the group figured where that was going wrong pretty quickly, cleared out the Razor Plumes near the Spiny Plume individually, and then AoE'd the ones farther away down.

My typing that explanation was almost certainly far faster than trying to find a strat video for an ARR extreme and having them go watch it.

[AmiableApkallu]

I mean, if you get an extreme in Mentor Roulette, it is almost always because the sprouts don't know what an extreme is, so obviously have no idea they should prepare for it.

Yes and no. I remember queueing for ARR extremes in Duty Finder as a sprout. An "extreme" is a more difficult version of the "hard" and/or "normal" version of the fight. The game all but tells you that. And like every other dungeon and trial you've done, there's this journal entry you want to get rid of, and you've always used Duty Finder in the past, so that's where you turn to yet again.

The problem is that as a sprout, you don't realize how broken the item-level sync is in ARR. All those dungeons and trials labeled "hard" don't actually seem that much more difficult than the "normal" version, so there's no expectation that an "extreme" would be any worse of a jump up in difficulty. And indeed, at least for a few of them, once someone explains the one tricky mechanic, the party powers through by sheer force.

[Packetdancer]

The problem is that as a sprout, you don't realize how broken the item-level sync is in ARR. All those dungeons and trials labeled "hard" don't actually seem that much more difficult than the "normal" version, so there's no expectation that an "extreme" would be any worse of a jump up in difficulty. And indeed, at least for a few of them, once someone explains the one tricky mechanic, the party powers through by sheer force.

That's more or less what I meant; the game gives them no reason to think "Hard" -> "Extreme" will be any more dramatic of a jump than normal -> "Hard" was. If "The Howling Eye" and "The Howling Eye (Hard)" were both facerolls, what reason would a sprout have to think "The Howling Eye (Extreme)" would not be?

When you're talking about groups in PF for current-level extremes that state a specific progression point, yes, it's rude if someone joins without any experience and expect people to explain the strat. But if they're at endgame and looking for groups in PF anyway, it's safe to assume they know enough about the game to know that extremes take a little preparation; if they want to be spoon-fed the mechanics in a group that isn't expressly a fresh teaching party, they're being inconsiderate of other people's time at best.

(Though, I will note, sometimes we have enough different strats used in PF—more in savage than extreme, admittedly—that asking for strat clarification isn't a bad idea; P7S can be interesting if someone labels the PF "JP Harvest" and half the group thinks you're doing Inumaru for War's Harvest and the other half thinks you're doing far tethers. But in that case, you usually know the fight in general and would just like clarification on which strat is being used.)

But when you're talking about getting an ARR extreme in mentor roulette, I don't actually think it's fair to expect anything other than sprouts coming in unprepared; the game gives them absolutely no reason to think they should read up on the mechanics.