For those who struggle with group content

[Carin-Eri]

Because according to the tos, the ones giving feedback of any kind can be reported.
That's why

Fair enough.

Personally, though, I'd rather take a hit to my (admittedly already low) confidence than find myself standing in the spot I was in before the instance started looking at text in the chat boxes saying I was dismissed, with absolutely no idea why the rest of the team thought that voting me off was the answer to whatever the hell I was doing wrong.

[Raoabolic]

Fair enough.

Personally, though, I'd rather take a hit to my (admittedly already low) confidence than find myself standing in the spot I was in before the instance started looking at text in the chat boxes saying I was dismissed, with absolutely no idea why the rest of the team thought that voting me off was the answer to whatever the hell I was doing wrong.

That's a good mentality to have but for every person that has that mentality there are 10 more that think that any sort of tip is "harassment". The vote dismiss and silent abandonment is just the evolution of MMOs now. Why would you risk your account because someone had a bad day and your tip of "Hey, don't stand in the AoEs m8." turned you into a target? It's not that hard to see how this mess happened, vocal minority and all that, lol.

[Kalania]

There are many reasons people may struggle with group content, from limited play time to practice to issues with pattern recognition and prediction to social anxiety or whatever it may be.

If this is sounds like you, it's good to have things like duty support and the trust system for things like MSQ dungeons, but that leaves out most group content. Do you avoid such content, grit your teeth and plow through, or something else?

And does it affect how you see your character, the story, etc.? Not necessarily in a negative way, just without such an emphasis on such content?

What do you look forward to doing most in the game? What really draws you in and keeps you playing? There are so many cool things you can do solo or mostly solo. Which are your favorites?

I definitely get massive anxiety with group content; especially playing healer; the duty support bots don't care if I accidentally get them killed!

Otherwise I'm in a bit of a bind when it comes to group content; I can't queue for any group content during the weekends or after school hours because I have a special needs little boy who needs my attention sometimes. (even if its just "here's the remote; I want a show on my tv or to refill his drink) so I'm limited to group content during work/school hours and queueing as a DPS during off hours = horrible horrible queue times. I waited more than an hour to do the Sephirot fight last week. I've thought about traveling over to a Europe DC (don't even know if I can) for that but that may just increase my anxiety.

[Eloriel]

I'm autistic and all group content is getting more and more sensory overload for me. Probably suck pretty bad because of it, but since I'm forced to run some things with other people (not as many nowadays, luckily enough), I'll keep on powering through even though I hate every second of it. Love the rest of the game, though.
I only run group related things when the MSQ forces me. Because of my autism, I just can't handle the tougher stuff. Not because it's actually hard or anything - but so many things are happening on the screen that I always get sensory overload.

[SpiritedMare]

For the most part I'm content to just run with Duty Support. I *suck* at keeping track of what's coming from where when there are three different mechanics going off at the same time, but I've found I *am* really good at sticking like glue to an NPC who's programmed to go to the correct spot, and I slap a big ol' mark on them to make them easier to see (ProTip: In my experience, G'raha Tia and Estinien are the best ranged and melee respectively at interrupting their casts/combos and consistently actually getting the heck outta the poop, heh).

When there's an instance that I have to do to progress the story that DOESN'T have a Duty Support option, I'll grit my teeth and go, though I'm a basket of nerves. However, I explain my issue at the start, and pretty much every time there's at least one person who will say "Oh, I can do these mechanics flawlessly and I don't mind if you mark and follow me!", and more often than not there's at least one other person who says "Oh thank you so much for asking, I have the same issue and the marked person will REALLY help me too but I was too afraid to ask!".

So it works out. I gotta say, though social anxiety isn't something you can really "fix", this game's community has been wonderfully supportive in mitigating and combatting it, absolutely leagues beyond any other MMO out there!

[Amarande]

For me, the wind got kicked out of my sails heavily because of a couple of major things:

* The culture shift when it comes to high end content in recent years is vast (it seems like it is less of a shock for people that played pre-WoW MMOs, but for those who didn't - e.g., in my case, my online RPG career started with Diablo II, moving on to Guild Wars 1 and WoW a few years later. I couldn't get into EverQuest because I didn't have broadband till the mid 00s and on dialup the lag was hilariously nonfunctional and avoided UO because I learned that with FFA PvP, it would basically be "Britain Online" for any new player at that point, so I missed the hyper-hardcore early era).

My earlier years of MMOs felt like endgame players were a lot more patient and a lot less picky. Dungeons were just a matter of having Eureka invite reflexes to answer LFM calls. Sure, for raids it took a while to find an Icecrown guild that didn't abuse GearScore, but other than that, Northrend was as chill as it was chilly. Even as late as Legion, it wasn't hard for me to find a Heroic guild, although I had better work scheduling at the time ... then I had to pick up a retail job with evening shifts that forced me to PUG most of the time.

And then I was introduced to the loveliness of modern hyper-hardcore PUG culture where unless you treat the game like a job and accept forced logging and box scoring and canards like "don't you understand, it's just like a resume" and "bad and don't wanna improve" if you reject the mindset, not to mention the expectation that you death march content right when it drops, you barely ever get into existing groups and ones you start either take all night to fill, or fill with the folks that have two left feet (which is a death sentence with XIV's content design especially) or both.

Heaven forfend that fun still be part of endgame unless you're super fortunate with your RL situation (I thought "build your RL around the video game" mentality was supposed to mainly have died out with the hyper-hardcore EQ era? Now it is back to the norm. Ugh!).

* There's a distinct lack of "mid end" content anymore, you get a choice of stuff that anyone who's got any decent MMO, or RPG, or even video game skills at all is going to squash like a bug, or stuff that requires near-perfect play to even hope to clear. What's someone who's pretty handy with games but has less time and energy to practice and is getting older (I'm in my 40s, I'm not a Monster-fueled teenager anymore. Heck, caffeine seems to barely do me any good anymore either!) to do?

This doesn't even seem to just be a XIV issue either (few games still have a smooth endgame progression instead of this cliff, and the ones that do, like WoW, the middle content tends to suffer from reward-tiering issues).

[Kalania]

* There's a distinct lack of "mid end" content anymore, you get a choice of stuff that anyone who's got any decent MMO, or RPG, or even video game skills at all is going to squash like a bug, or stuff that requires near-perfect play to even hope to clear. What's someone who's pretty handy with games but has less time and energy to practice and is getting older (I'm in my 40s, I'm not a Monster-fueled teenager anymore. Heck, caffeine seems to barely do me any good anymore either!) to do?

This doesn't even seem to just be a XIV issue either (few games still have a smooth endgame progression instead of this cliff, and the ones that do, like WoW, the middle content tends to suffer from reward-tiering issues).

This is most definitely an issue I'm worried about as well. I certainly can't spend hours a night raiding. (However did I manage to clear MC in early WoW? wtf was I thinking) I'm 38 (hey, I've got 8 more days) and I don't have the time or energy to put that time in.
Since I'm still a sprout and just finished heavensward though; its possible my timing might be that I am always one expansion behind.

(caffeine has never affected me; so I can't do the stay up with coffee thing and never have been able to)

[angienessyo]

* There's a distinct lack of "mid end" content anymore, you get a choice of stuff that anyone who's got any decent MMO, or RPG, or even video game skills at all is going to squash like a bug, or stuff that requires near-perfect play to even hope to clear. What's someone who's pretty handy with games but has less time and energy to practice and is getting older (I'm in my 40s, I'm not a Monster-fueled teenager anymore. Heck, caffeine seems to barely do me any good anymore either!) to do?

This doesn't even seem to just be a XIV issue either (few games still have a smooth endgame progression instead of this cliff, and the ones that do, like WoW, the middle content tends to suffer from reward-tiering issues).

That's for sure a problem I hope they work on at some point. While I'm able to do stuff like savage/ultimate, the only midcore content I can think of is like, EX trials. Normal raids, dungeons, and 24 mans are more for the casual player. More hardcore players have savage/ultimate. Midcore only has EX/unreal.

[JamieRose]

I have horrible social anxiety issues and a bad history with savage raiding, ergo I don't do most group only content. I have been trying to do the latest ex raid, but it takes it toll on my psyche.

I really enjoy the lore and I always look forward to new story content. I also tend to find myself drawn to activities a bit off the beaten path, like mahjong or triple triad. My favorite thing though is decorating my house and of course making new glamours. I really get to indulge myself in dressing up which is something I don't get to do IRL. As for how it relates to my character, she too is very shy but breaks out when she's showing off her creativity with fashion or housing design.