Do people not care enough or does the game do a bad job at teaching?

[RitsukoSonoda]

(Cross posting this from Reddit)
This will prolly look more like a TFDF post rather than a debate one but will try my best to lead it the other way


For the past few months since i became a mentor i've been doing said roulette, with the number being at 850 at the moment, and with it i've seen pretty much all cases, with the last one happening a moment ago being the one who made me wonder.

This was a SAM, tower of Zot, multiple jobs at 90 already who basically didn't knew anything about their Iajutsu, noticed when pulls were taking longer than normal and only saw 1 of the buffs on their chars and never a Tenka Goken(SAM AOE Iajutsu) and later on a midare

Then i proceed to take like 5 minutes explaining everything to said person, lucky enough the other 2 on the party didn't bother

My first train of thought was, of course, "C'mon man people don't bother to even look a guide", along the multiple Cure 1 healers and other things that should be considered basics at higher dungeon levels

But then after said dungeon i thought as well and as dumb as it sounds, does the SAM quest ever requires you to do said skill even once?

We're talking about in order to clear the whole thing a person could just smash 2 keyslike this one was doing and still make it through

Main questions i want to ask and kinda of a TLDR

-Main one of the post, do you think is a people problem for not caring enough or from the game for not being more exigent on content?

-As a bonus and again maybe will be more of a TFDF thing, tell me if you've encountered a similar experience

The issue IMO is that you can progress the MSQ without actually learning how to play the game. You just get other ppl to carry you through 4 player duties and basic mode 8 player trials then fail the solo instances immediately so you can set it on 1 button mode.

[Gemina]

(Cross posting this from Reddit)
This will prolly look more like a TFDF post rather than a debate one but will try my best to lead it the other way


For the past few months since i became a mentor i've been doing said roulette, with the number being at 850 at the moment, and with it i've seen pretty much all cases, with the last one happening a moment ago being the one who made me wonder.

This was a SAM, tower of Zot, multiple jobs at 90 already who basically didn't knew anything about their Iajutsu, noticed when pulls were taking longer than normal and only saw 1 of the buffs on their chars and never a Tenka Goken(SAM AOE Iajutsu) and later on a midare

Then i proceed to take like 5 minutes explaining everything to said person, lucky enough the other 2 on the party didn't bother

My first train of thought was, of course, "C'mon man people don't bother to even look a guide", along the multiple Cure 1 healers and other things that should be considered basics at higher dungeon levels

But then after said dungeon i thought as well and as dumb as it sounds, does the SAM quest ever requires you to do said skill even once?

We're talking about in order to clear the whole thing a person could just smash 2 keyslike this one was doing and still make it through

Main questions i want to ask and kinda of a TLDR

-Main one of the post, do you think is a people problem for not caring enough or from the game for not being more exigent on content?

-As a bonus and again maybe will be more of a TFDF thing, tell me if you've encountered a similar experience

I seem to remember the SAM lv60 quest being one of the most difficult for me to clear. Mitigating, self-sustain, and high damage all play a role in facilitating the fight against Musosai Sensei. While I do agree the game does not do the best job of teaching players how to optimize their skills, I think SAM isn't the best example of that. Skip potions would be the more likely culprit for high level SAMs whose blades are duller than a sugar spoon.

Also, having multiple or all jobs as max level is not indicative of skill. It's very easy to max out a job without even stepping into content that pushes the limits of its skillset.

[DixieBellOCE]

(Cross posting this from Reddit)
This will prolly look more like a TFDF post rather than a debate one but will try my best to lead it the other way


For the past few months since i became a mentor i've been doing said roulette, with the number being at 850 at the moment, and with it i've seen pretty much all cases, with the last one happening a moment ago being the one who made me wonder.

This was a SAM, tower of Zot, multiple jobs at 90 already who basically didn't knew anything about their Iajutsu, noticed when pulls were taking longer than normal and only saw 1 of the buffs on their chars and never a Tenka Goken(SAM AOE Iajutsu) and later on a midare

Then i proceed to take like 5 minutes explaining everything to said person, lucky enough the other 2 on the party didn't bother

My first train of thought was, of course, "C'mon man people don't bother to even look a guide", along the multiple Cure 1 healers and other things that should be considered basics at higher dungeon levels

But then after said dungeon i thought as well and as dumb as it sounds, does the SAM quest ever requires you to do said skill even once?

We're talking about in order to clear the whole thing a person could just smash 2 keyslike this one was doing and still make it through

Main questions i want to ask and kinda of a TLDR

-Main one of the post, do you think is a people problem for not caring enough or from the game for not being more exigent on content?

-As a bonus and again maybe will be more of a TFDF thing, tell me if you've encountered a similar experience

The game doesn't not do enough to challenge said players to make them learn to play properly.

It holds their hands every step of the way as if they cant function under normal circumstances, this is the end result of setting the level of difficulty at the lowest common denominator. People even struggle with the MSQ now, and if they cant beat it at current difficulty, then there is no helping them get better, they choose to not learn to play.

[AwesomeJr44]

Everything in normal content is designed to have a near 100% clear rate with any group, rather than having players actually put effort into succeeding. That SAM can get carried through nearly all normal content simply because it's designed that way. FFXIV is designed to allow you to be the dumbest most brainless moron on the planet and still clear everything that is normal content. Unless the majority of the team is that bad, the other teammates will be able to carry that dead weight. It'll be unfun for them, but they can do it, so the dead weight player is never forced to actually carry their own weight. It's not a very good design choice tbh.

[Ghost_of_Ebina]

If this happened in normal content it is not a surprise.
For Square-Enix, it doesn't make sense to design their content to require too much "gamer" style skill / thought -- they want to capture casual players.
Plenty of people quit playing when the game requires too much from them (and there are valid reason sometimes).
They have jump potions as part of their online shop, which means SE is happy to have players who don't understand how their job works.

As for how others should pull the same weight, I suppose that's part of playing an MMO with random strangers -- you never know what you'll get and it can help to have some sense of humor to enjoy crazy situations. I doubt no system can be set up to compensate for the chaos that random assignment of strangers can bring.

With that said, the point that the mentor system needs to be adjusted seems to make sense to me.
How should the mentor system be changed?

[ICountFrom0]

Notice that folks get stuck at the solo duties that have DPS checks until they are able to get massively overpowered equipment and then glide through. Using overpowered equipment to make up for a lack of skill seems to be standard.

My personal dream project would be a re-release of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest as some kind of mostly self playing easy mode cell phone game with epic music, then we get a crossover event where it becomes the tutorial zones for the game.

Maybe we go one step further and the use of a skip book puts you in there with mandatory clear before exit.

Smithy's lessons clearly have mistakes right now. You'd need to have those fixed too.

I want to assume that it's not the people, that if we make sure the resources exist in game that people will be able to find them and use them.

.... then I remember how many questions in novice network are answered by the active help that they just closed....

[TaleraRistain]

Some job quests give rotational hints, I played RPR recently and the job mentor basically lays out for you the main rotation flow and positionals in chat while you're fighting, but SAM doesn't do that, it gives you enemies and you can do them "correctly" or faceroll and struggle, and maybe wipe and do them on very easy. I might be recalling the first fight wrong though.

I was really impressed with that in the RPR quest, especially how she even explained positionals.

As to the OP, I think it's both. You will get a random person who isn't trying but most people out there are and there are some small things like the RPR quest the game could do to help. People also forget that rotations aren't something the game comes up with. The community crunches numbers and then puts out the one true rotation. I think the most we're ever going to see from the game itself is something like the RPR quest, where she explains the abilities and what they do and how they can work together, but doesn't outline a full rotation.

[Kaurhz]

It's both.

Some people just don't want to learn, yet in the same vein the game doesn't do very much to incentivize people to learn in the first place.

[Ayche]

People strive as far as they desire and that is fine really.
Like dungeons are the most routine combat content in the game, and people will do them at their comfort level.
Usually anyone who has passing interest in anything harder, like extreme trials, will step up their game to match if they really want to clear it.

[MaxCarnage]

I would say there's 3 contributing factors;

1. The game doesn't teach you very well. There are some job quests that encourage proper rotation or positionals, but people can just fail and do it on very easy. And the dev team is trying to make content as accessible as possible. When Yoshida has said before that Alliance Raids are designed to allow unskilled players to get carried, that's a problem.

2. Players don't care enough to try. Obviously it is possible to be an above average player even without the game holding your hand. But even if the game did tell you the ins and outs of your class, people just don't care. Either saying things like "who cares, it's just X" or "I playthis game to have fun, not to take it seriously and make it a job". They value their own fun over the fun of others and that's a problem.

3. Other players support their lack of effort. Whether it be a "leave it alone, they're doing fine" or even in this thread, "people are allowed to play at their own comfort level". I wasn't aware that spamming medica II 5 times in a row or not using CDs as a tank was a "comfort level". There's always going to be people enabling lazy, bad play.


So unfortunately, while all of these factors are there, we're just going to continue in the same direction we already are.