Why people are bad at the game, and why they never learn to play it.

[Alyx-Greywind]

The game slowly introduces various mechanics in different settings. People simply don't learn them, period. That's how you get players in ShB dungeons still running away with a stack. Largely, the playerbase ignores every learning opportunity the game throws around, and the community lets every learning opportunity slide because people just quickly want to be done with their duty. Or use the fig leaf of "the ToS is too draconic" as excuse. Especially mentors, who should be the ones speaking up precisely when not asked. The people who are asking question or want advice are the same people that could also look up the answers on their own. It is very much the ones that don't who need to be engaged with actively.

If you look at logs for on content Alliance raids, you will often see people with uptime in the range of 60-70%. This isn't a "wrong rotation" issue, or "my class wasn't explained". People are legit afk for a third of the fight. In a combat game. No amount of tutorial, difficulty wall, explanation or anything, will overcome people's unwillingness to actually play the game that they pay for and sink thousands of hours into.

Alliance Raids are super casual so I expect casuals, I expect players who play like they're playing a party game. I'm not expecting players to learn the rotation of their Job, I just expect them to have fun first.

If people want to learn then we have difficulty in the form of Extreme, Savage and Ultimate for that and those players who engage in that content will learn to play at a much higher level.

The game at its base is designed for ease and while the direction seems to be slowly aiming towards a faster paced direction I don't think the MSQ really prepares players for it.

I actually advocate for casual content being casual as someone who enjoys more difficult content, I will say I haven't -quite- dipped my toes into Ultimate but Extreme and Savage I've enjoyed. After a long day at work or a stressful week I actually appreciate the option to have causal modes that I can fat finger my way through.

I have the option for coordinated content at my disposal.

That said if someone is straight up AFKing in content I will be kicking them or attempting to as Alliance Raids make that tricky.