[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Wrecktangle]

Wow...I have some comments about that. Not all players care about much of the below, it is one of the reasons why WoW is now my secondary MMO. I have been top DPS in mulitple guilds doing advanced content in WoW, and tanked what I didn't dps.

Try to remember the original reason for my examples and think from my POV. The poster I quoted had stated that "I remember when blizzard started giving out free boosts with expacs it lead to tons of people feeling entitled to clear everything and do everything with no effort at all."

The reason I cited those examples were because they were heavily implying that FF14 doesn't suffer from the same exact problem, which is inaccurate. I then cited those anecdotes to better help them understand my logic. You arguing the validity of my anecdotes is pretty irrelevant to that discussion point. They clearly demonstrate that I'm right. That there is rampant entitlement and "carrying" occurring in FF14 right now.

[*]How many 24 mans have I joined where I was top DPS as a tank So? Did you get the thing done? If it isn't advanced content who cares?

I've looked over the logs time and time again when these things pop up. It's not about gear or people being bad. It's always the exact same issue every single time. It's people being lazy. It's people who only push buttons once every 8-12s. That's freeloading and it shouldn't be tolerated because it's disrespectful to other peoples time.

I'll echo it here again since you may not know me. I will help, teach, or play with a bad player ANY day of the week with a smile on my face. I don't tolerate ignorance or laziness. If you're matched with a team you OWE them your best effort regardless of your performance level. And no, pushing buttons every 8s is no ones best effort.

[*]How about dungeons where I had players doing less DPS than I was doing more than a full expansion ago? Again who cares, makes it feel like you are promoting yourself here. Maybe you are an elite player, by definition that means that others won't be. What is the problem?

This has nothing to do with me. It has to do with others not pulling equivalent weight. It's not about performance. I'm not asking for top tier DPS or speedruns from the community. All I ask is that they try. And for reference I've done testing on this. You can literally mash 1 button over and over again and do more DPS than the previous expansion. If you are doing less, it's because you're purposely choosing to disrespect your teammates (barring repeated deaths, but that's a separate issue with more nuance).

[*]How about FFLogs or parsers and the general lack of accountability or responsibility among the community? I play FFXIV to have fun, i did the whole WOWLOGS and DPS Parses thing already, as long as the boss dies and I am not too much of a burden the focus on the fun.

While I appreciate the insight into your personal reasons here, your comment really doesn't do anything to address what I said. That there is a staggering if not downright toxic divide in the community with regards to parsing/logs and that toxicity is bred from the friction between players who care and players who don't being forced into the same puddle (if WoW does only a single thing perfectly IMO, it's that it segregates its playerbase into like minded players VERY well).

To be fair, that list could be entirely transplanted to WoW with similar effect. Just replace 24 man with LFR.

That's my whole point though. Is that it exists in both games. The poster I quoted very heavily implied that FF14 doesn't have this issue.

I'm confident in my ability to learn, but I've been around long enough to know some people aren't as good at that and I'm not a fan of "learning" parties simply because without a dedicated group of good players there's not much learning going on except the names of which players suck the most/ are having a bad day because the group can't last long enough in the fight to learn anything.

In my experience with Extreme Primals and Savage Pugs, learning parties are 100% the best way to go. It's the only time that people are really on the same page.

My experience with you personally as a player who actively engages in this type of content, really just made it more apparent that there are all types of players at all types of skill levels, but if it's done anything it's really highlighted the fact that people like you (genuinely decent people who are just wanting to play at that level of game play for the fun of it and are willing to help others out) tend to stick together and are therefore pretty rare to find out in the wild , so to speak. Which highlights another thing that's been said a million times in every MMO ever: Finding a good guild/ group of people to play with can make all the difference in the world as to your experience with end game content.

One of my favorite things to do in FF14 (not as much in WoW) is to help people. I love just hopping in random learning parties and helping teach people, or before my permaban from OF helping other people learn how to tank etc. I get great joy from helping someone who is genuinely interested in learning.

There's a lot of it in WoW too, the big difference I notice is that WoW allows for you to deal with those players. I can remove someone from my group if they're holding the rest of us back. There are tools like Recount and Warcraft logs that allow me to break down where my group is going wrong and how I should fix it. If that means replacing the guy who dies on all the mechanics, or the guy who's doing less DPS than the Resto Shaman with someone better, Blizzard are okay with me doing that. Other people in the group are usually okay with it too.

With FF14 people tend to be upset by it. Justifying it with reasoning like "They were doing horrible DPS" doesn't seem to really fly with either the playerbase nor with Squenix. Holding those who are a problem to account is a minefield in FF14.

What I do have are expectations of other players. I know to some that's a dirty word and they're going to immediately jump to the conclusion that my "expectations" are that everyone around me is armed to the teeth and performing at 110% of their Jobs maximum. That couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, I set my expectations at having a minimum level of respect for the people you're playing with. That you respect their time by not intentionaly wasting it. That you respect what the group is trying to achieve and are willing to work towards that.

Couldn't agree more and if I wasn't clear originally. I do wholeheartedly agree that it exists in both games, which was the entire point of my post.

Impatience doesnt always mean they are bad players. Some people work full time and dont want to slog through 3 months just to be able to play with their friends. Instant gratification can lead to entitled players, but fixing 1-50 doesn't have to be only instant gratification.

Bingo.

and to the entitlement and dead weight of FF14 theres ALOT less of it in ff14 then there is in WoW.

That is your opinion. My experience has been the complete opposite. I listed numerous examples. I can't list any meaningful ones except for maybe like 3 in my entire 14 years with WoW. One was a guy who bought his account. Another was a priest who was so bad, that we abandoned a M+ key before the first boss. He just kept dying to Volcanic repeatedly and never said a word.

Let me ask you this. Do you use FFLogs/ACT? If your answer is no, then frankly you don't have nearly enough information to make your claim.

And just to add another bit. I was leveling RDM for fun. I had gear 30 levels too low for me and a level like 12 ring. I deliberately went in and did NOTHING but spam impact over and over again in the 24 man we were doing. Not only did no one say a word to me or kick me (they should have). I got commendations, and managed to out perform 2 other DPS.

What I did was not ok. I felt terrible for doing it, but it was for science and needed to be done.

[The Casualty]

I've looked over the logs time and time again when these things pop up. It's not about gear or people being bad. It's always the exact same issue every single time. It's people being lazy. It's people who only push buttons once every 8-12s. That's freeloading and it shouldn't be tolerated because it's disrespectful to other peoples time.........

......This has nothing to do with me. It has to do with others not pulling equivalent weight. It's not about performance. I'm not asking for top tier DPS or speedruns from the community. All I ask is that they try. And for reference I've done testing on this. You can literally mash 1 button over and over again and do more DPS than the previous expansion. If you are doing less, it's because you're purposely choosing to disrespect your teammates (barring repeated deaths, but that's a separate issue with more nuance).

Amen. It's also unfortunate that a fair bit of content is designed where you can slide with only half of the people there putting in any semblance of effort.

I'm not a big fan of a "we cleared it so what" attitude. I'm sure I'm not the only one who works a job, has a family etc... Many of us are busy. When playing FFXIV, I REALLY do not want to spend 4-5x as long as it should take on content and have the only hang up be that other people literally do not want to play the game or take any time to learn even the most basic mechanics like combos. I want to clarify too, that I'm not counting new folks or people who look like they are trying. It's the people who are intentionally wasting everyone else's time that really get to me.

Wreck isn't exaggerating if you know what you are looking for or run fflogs. In any given 24 man there will be people who have significant delays in their ability usage - so bad that they have 1/4 the apm of an average player. You might see melee DPS/tanks who are doing uncomboed weaponskills in no specific order, or Black Mages who sit in Umbral for the entire instance, and healers who rely on their co-healer to do the healing and then do absolutely nothing for the entire instance.

I did Void Ark with some friends last night. On the first boss there was a monk who did a whopping 292 DPS. Compare that to the top at 2.27k. 292 DPS wasn't even good in the second coil of Bahamut with i100 gear. They could have spammed nothing but bootshine and done significantly more damage. The 3rd boss had 4 DPS below 700, none of them had any deaths. While I wasn't watching what they were doing, they were all doing low enough that they would have to intentionally be playing that poorly.

For comparison, one of them was a BLM doing 632. They were synced down from 70 and at ilevel cap for the instance. Stripping my lv 64 BLM down to only a weapon and right side accessories, leaving me with an ilevel average of 146 - far below what could get into Void Ark and only using the abilities from the first 5 levels of Thaumaturge - Fire, Blizzard, Transpose, I was able to exceed that on a dummy.

In situations like that, it's less of "we cleared" and more of "everyone else cleared and you happened to be in the instance while we did it."

[Dugna]

That is your opinion. My experience has been the complete opposite. I listed numerous examples. I can't list any meaningful ones except for maybe like 3 in my entire 14 years with WoW. One was a guy who bought his account. Another was a priest who was so bad, that we abandoned a M+ key before the first boss. He just kept dying to Volcanic repeatedly and never said a word.

Let me ask you this. Do you use FFLogs/ACT? If your answer is no, then frankly you don't have nearly enough information to make your claim.

And just to add another bit. I was leveling RDM for fun. I had gear 30 levels too low for me and a level like 12 ring. I deliberately went in and did NOTHING but spam impact over and over again in the 24 man we were doing. Not only did no one say a word to me or kick me (they should have). I got commendations, and managed to out perform 2 other DPS.

What I did was not ok. I felt terrible for doing it, but it was for science and needed to be done.

less an opinion and more an actual fact, and if you only have 3 meaningful it means you never ran outside your guild cept for rare occasions.

You don't need to use FFlogs/ACT to have an opinion on anything in ff14 either raiding or more, because none of the content is tuned around that shit in the first place unlike WoW. Did you do the mechs right on a EX trial? good thats basically 95% of the fight, the other 5% is you being decent at dps.

Ohh and doing the alliance raid roulette while lvling is like doing LFR but nerfed to the ground, as long as you stand in the shit or don't stand in the shit you need you will kill that boss. so you taking gear of like that tells nothing besides you met 2 afk or people just wanting to lvl from the roulette. None of the lvling content that includes old content being put into the roulette is even aimed to challenge people for a reason. Its how SE designed it.


In actual FF14 news though, GARO temp event looks to be soldified to be ending on 5.1 glad its 5.1 meaning after lvling stuff in SHB I can get all the sets and such

[Katchii]

I've looked over the logs time and time again when these things pop up. It's not about gear or people being bad. It's always the exact same issue every single time. It's people being lazy. It's people who only push buttons once every 8-12s. That's freeloading and it shouldn't be tolerated because it's disrespectful to other peoples time.

I'll echo it here again since you may not know me. I will help, teach, or play with a bad player ANY day of the week with a smile on my face. I don't tolerate ignorance or laziness. If you're matched with a team you OWE them your best effort regardless of your performance level. And no, pushing buttons every 8s is no ones best effort.

This has nothing to do with me. It has to do with others not pulling equivalent weight. It's not about performance. I'm not asking for top tier DPS or speedruns from the community. All I ask is that they try. And for reference I've done testing on this. You can literally mash 1 button over and over again and do more DPS than the previous expansion. If you are doing less, it's because you're purposely choosing to disrespect your teammates (barring repeated deaths, but that's a separate issue with more nuance).

100% agreed. As long as you are being respectful of the fact that other peoples time is at stake here and you're doing your best to get the job done as efficiently and effectively as possible I don't really care.

While I appreciate the insight into your personal reasons here, your comment really doesn't do anything to address what I said. That there is a staggering if not downright toxic divide in the community with regards to parsing/logs and that toxicity is bred from the friction between players who care and players who don't being forced into the same puddle (if WoW does only a single thing perfectly IMO, it's that it segregates its playerbase into like minded players VERY well).

I don't think you need to actively use logs/parsing to know when a person is actively trying, it just makes it a LOT easier and makes it possible to pinpoint exactly what they're doing wrong. I'm usually just caring enough to simply point out "you're doing it wrong" and give some pointers. I'd say 1/3 of the time it turns out well, 2/3...not so much. Hostility or some kind of attitude from the player or from others in the group the vast majority of the time, or just flat out ignored. I personally don't use logs, just because I don't want to have to deal with setting it up and don't care that much about the numbers, but I do care a LOT about people doing their job in dungeons and trials. 24 Mans I honestly don't care. Calling someone out in that environment is a lost cause, same as calling someone out in LFR is. I just suck it up and provide encounter advice when I see people struggling. As long as it gets cleared I don't care.

That's my whole point though. Is that it exists in both games. The poster I quoted very heavily implied that FF14 doesn't have this issue.

Agreed then.

In my experience with Extreme Primals and Savage Pugs, learning parties are 100% the best way to go. It's the only time that people are really on the same page.

Don't disagree with this sentiment, in my experience there's just a lot more frustration than there is learning. Granted, by the time I get to the point where I'm learning those things, which is a few weeks after it launches or later, the "good" players have all already been there done that and usually aren't interested in joining one which leaves the "not so good" players. (using big brackets, I know there are a bazillion different kinds of players, this is for generalization) I've joined probably 15-20 learning parties, started ~10 and not a single fucking one ever even got to phase two of the encounter, or did so on the first try and never again, because many of the players who joined couldn't consistently follow the mechanics...like they were starting from scratch every time the fight started.

I just have very little faith in the ability of a PuG group to be genuinely good players that can get shit done in environments like that, where a good healer/ clutch player can't save you from your mistakes.

One of my favorite things to do in FF14 (not as much in WoW) is to help people. I love just hopping in random learning parties and helping teach people, or before my permaban from OF helping other people learn how to tank etc. I get great joy from helping someone who is genuinely interested in learning.

I'm not as benevolently minded as you in this regard, but I have absolutely no problem teaching people who WANT to learn. I have no patience or tolerance for people who are willfully ignorant or refuse to acknowledge that they could possibly learn something.

That is your opinion. My experience has been the complete opposite. I listed numerous examples. I can't list any meaningful ones except for maybe like 3 in my entire 14 years with WoW. One was a guy who bought his account. Another was a priest who was so bad, that we abandoned a M+ key before the first boss. He just kept dying to Volcanic repeatedly and never said a word.

Let me ask you this. Do you use FFLogs/ACT? If your answer is no, then frankly you don't have nearly enough information to make your claim.

And just to add another bit. I was leveling RDM for fun. I had gear 30 levels too low for me and a level like 12 ring. I deliberately went in and did NOTHING but spam impact over and over again in the 24 man we were doing. Not only did no one say a word to me or kick me (they should have). I got commendations, and managed to out perform 2 other DPS.

What I did was not ok. I felt terrible for doing it, but it was for science and needed to be done.

Just re-iterating that I don't fully subscribe to the idea that it's a requirement to use FFLogs and such to understand or have a good grasp of people's performance and know that there's a pretty significant population in both games that are dead weight.

I think the statement you're referring to is off-base as well, I just think you don't need to look at logs to be aware of it.

Amen. It's also unfortunate that a fair bit of content is designed where you can slide with only half of the people there putting in any semblance of effort.

I agree somewhat. Most content when it's current absolutely requires the majority of, if not all, of your group to put in effort to clear. However, this changes pretty rapidly once people get geared enough to outgear the content, in which case it does take less effort overall and you could have a group almost entirely carried by a half decent healer or tank.

I'm not a big fan of a "we cleared it so what" attitude. I'm sure I'm not the only one who works a job, has a family etc... Many of us are busy. When playing FFXIV, I REALLY do not want to spend 4-5x as long as it should take on content and have the only hang up be that other people literally do not want to play the game or take any time to learn even the most basic mechanics like combos. I want to clarify too, that I'm not counting new folks or people who look like they are trying. It's the people who are intentionally wasting everyone else's time that really get to me.

Overall, I'm more in the "we cleared it, so what" attitude than the other extreme, but only because I don't care about actual number outputs not because I don't care about performance. If people are saying this when people are being lazy, screwing up constantly, or screwing around...I have no tolerance for it. If you sign up for group content, do the job you signed up for and do it to the best of your ability, otherwise you're deliberately not carrying your weight which is disrespectful of everyone else's time. If you're not going to PLAY, why are you playing?

Wreck isn't exaggerating if you know what you are looking for or run fflogs. In any given 24 man there will be people who have significant delays in their ability usage - so bad that they have 1/4 the apm of an average player. You might see melee DPS/tanks who are doing uncomboed weaponskills in no specific order, or Black Mages who sit in Umbral for the entire instance, and healers who rely on their co-healer to do the healing and then do absolutely nothing for the entire instance.

I did Void Ark with some friends last night. On the first boss there was a monk who did a whopping 292 DPS. Compare that to the top at 2.27k. 292 DPS wasn't even good in the second coil of Bahamut with i100 gear. They could have spammed nothing but bootshine and done significantly more damage. The 3rd boss had 4 DPS below 700, none of them had any deaths. While I wasn't watching what they were doing, they were all doing low enough that they would have to intentionally be playing that poorly.

For comparison, one of them was a BLM doing 632. They were synced down from 70 and at ilevel cap for the instance. Stripping my lv 64 BLM down to only a weapon and right side accessories, leaving me with an ilevel average of 146 - far below what could get into Void Ark and only using the abilities from the first 5 levels of Thaumaturge - Fire, Blizzard, Transpose, I was able to exceed that on a dummy.

In situations like that, it's less of "we cleared" and more of "everyone else cleared and you happened to be in the instance while we did it."

It's not an exaggeration, but I do think the frequency may be overstated a bit...at least it seems that way based on my experience. I've seen it plenty of times, but not at a frequency where I would call it normal. I wouldn't call it an exception either though... it's infrequent, but not rare.

I'll never understand why players do this, I understand the logic, but not the choice to do it. Many times it's players just grinding to get to the next gear level or whatever and are "forced" to do things they don't enjoy because it's the efficient (or sometimes only, as as the case of Eureka) way, but couldn't give two shits about it so they semi-afk in these dungeons/areas. If you're so uninvested in the game where you can't even push yourself to actually PLAY the game when you're playing...why the hell are you signed in and playing the game? If you're so disinterested, why not find something else that you actually enjoy doing?

[Advent]

Probably because they're entirely driven by the reward, but the content is not engaging in the slightest. I sometimes find myself nodding off in the 24mans. But I have to do them for the coins or else I can't upgrade my tome gear at all. I really wanted a eureka weapon, but it was so dull and boring during the first 10 minutes trying to kill on damn mob that I left and never went back. Didn't make me any less bitter about not having the cool weapon I wanted though.

[Granyala]

Hmm I find the 24mans quite fun but then again I only go in with friends and ACT.

[Eleccybubb]

Booted up Cerbs NN last night to see if I could try and help anyone and bloody hell was literally 2 people having an argument over "wah I don't like you" and "you don't like me" shit basically.

Honestly I just feel like the servers gotten a lot more dramallama as of late and tempted to just go Light for a fresh start. Most of my friends are on Phoenix or Zodiark (some moved cross DC) and I just stayed on Cerb for a few ingame ones.

Not saying Cerb is the only server with drama because that's would be a stupid thing to suggest but it's been a lot more noticeable lately.

[Granyala]

What is "NN"?

I see no more drama on Cerb compared to any WoW server I've seen so far. Just the usual stuff.

[Eleccybubb]

What is "NN"?

I see no more drama on Cerb compared to any WoW server I've seen so far. Just the usual stuff.

Novice Network. Any time I've gone in as of late just been the same people arguing when I just want to help people.

I ended up moving to Light anyway. I'm not singling Cerb out nor did I mean to I just meant that from my perspective it seems there's a lot more drama as of late. As I said most of my RL friends are on Light servers and took advantage of the free transfer (wish I had) so I figured I'd just make a fresh start there.

[Granyala]

Ah okay, thanks for explaining.
Never really looked into the NN, don't care all that much for random spamming.

[Eleccybubb]

Ah okay, thanks for explaining.
Never really looked into the NN, don't care all that much for random spamming.

Yeah I just like to try and help players and give new players who may want it a bit of a social experience but when you've got idiots arguing over why they hate each other well meh...

Of course it's not exclusive to Cerberus at all. However it just feels like that it's a bit more drama infested these days.

Of course drama exists in any MMOs but with FF14 I feel it's more noticeable.

[The Oblivion]

I got the game last weekend, got to 58 tonight after buying the story skip. really been enjoying the game play, started as BLM but it was SO slow, went BRD at 15, got bard to 52, tried red mage, and now thats at 58. hoping to pound out the main story as fast as possible and get to end game content.

Overall i am a big fan of the game, but the average player in this, is much, much worse then any other mmo i have ever played. I watch streamers clearing the hardest raids and just performing awful with very little knowledge of their own jobs priority system. Luckily I got into a raid guild with in IRL buddy, so hoping the problem will resolve itself. we will see.

all in all, super fun game, my only complaints are about the players ive been stuck in dungeons/roulettes with, and the lack of addons. cause my god, the ui is not good. LOL

[Poppincaps]

Now that finals are over I got a chance to really do the FFXV stuff. I think it's cool, although I don't think it should be a limited time event. I'd like it as a permanent addition, like (seemingly) the Monster Hunter collaboration. I do think the fact that most of the cool rewards are locked behind the Golden Saucer is a weird decision, although as someone who hasn't done the Golden Saucer before, I thought it was pretty cool. It's a fun little distraction that you can dip into for a bit of variety.

The bosses in the quests were cool too. Overall, I like what they did with it.

[Onikaroshi]

Yeah I just like to try and help players and give new players who may want it a bit of a social experience but when you've got idiots arguing over why they hate each other well meh...

Of course it's not exclusive to Cerberus at all. However it just feels like that it's a bit more drama infested these days.

Of course drama exists in any MMOs but with FF14 I feel it's more noticeable.

On Zalera we just get trolls lol, but for the most part the NN is either normal conversation or actual game mechanic conversation.

[Wrecktangle]

In situations like that, it's less of "we cleared" and more of "everyone else cleared and you happened to be in the instance while we did it."

I usually call this the "equivalency test". If every single player played as poorly as your weakest link would you have cleared or still had fun? I.e. in my shield lob only tank example, what if I had done nothing but spam piercing talon? I'd be TP starved doing literally no DPS. What If the other DPS did it too? What if the healer only used Cure or god forbid decided to only use Stone? This would fail the equivalency test. People wouldn't be having fun, and even if you managed to clear, it'd be an abysmal experience.

I encounter an equivalency fail probably a good 50%+ of the time I queue into content, even PF content.

less an opinion and more an actual fact, and if you only have 3 meaningful it means you never ran outside your guild cept for rare occasions.

I'm not confident that you know what a fact actually is. What you're citing is patently what is called an opinion.

You also make assumptions that you don't have the data to backup. I am an avid pugger, in both games for all levels of content, including Savage and Mythic.

You don't need to use FFlogs/ACT to have an opinion on anything in ff14 either raiding or more, because none of the content is tuned around that shit in the first place unlike WoW. Did you do the mechs right on a EX trial? good thats basically 95% of the fight, the other 5% is you being decent at dps.

So to confirm - you are admitting that you don't use ACT/FFLogs correct?

Ohh and doing the alliance raid roulette while lvling is like doing LFR but nerfed to the ground, as long as you stand in the shit or don't stand in the shit you need you will kill that boss. so you taking gear of like that tells nothing besides you met 2 afk or people just wanting to lvl from the roulette. None of the lvling content that includes old content being put into the roulette is even aimed to challenge people for a reason. Its how SE designed it.

None of this discounts what I experienced or justifies those players actions nor does it have anything to do with difficulty level.

I don't think you need to actively use logs/parsing to know when a person is actively trying, it just makes it a LOT easier and makes it possible to pinpoint exactly what they're doing wrong.

I've only ever noticed absolutely egregious examples because I'm usually far too busy managing my own play to actually micro manage others live performances, let alone MULTIPLE others. I'm not saying you NEED it to see it, but without it, it's a trivia game in the best scenario and Russian roulette in the worst. I could pretty trivially play at 30% of my optimal performance and make it look normal to the average player, and without ACT probably wouldn't notice unless they were knowledgeable about PLD and really watched me, Do that without impacting their performance? I'd bet against it TBH.

Granted, by the time I get to the point where I'm learning those things, which is a few weeks after it launches or later, the "good" players have all already been there done that and usually aren't interested in joining one which leaves the "not so good" players.

Fair point - if I can STRONGLY recommend that you try to pug the first week. Every Savage pugger knows that if you don't clear 1/2 the first week, you're stuck with the riff raff. You can clear the 3rd fight usually second week and be ok, but it gets dicier each week.

I just have very little faith in the ability of a PuG group to be genuinely good players that can get shit done in environments like that, where a good healer/ clutch player can't save you from your mistakes.

Some of the best players I've played with were from PUGs.

It's not an exaggeration, but I do think the frequency may be overstated a bit...at least it seems that way based on my experience. I've seen it plenty of times, but not at a frequency where I would call it normal. I wouldn't call it an exception either though... it's infrequent, but not rare.

It just depends entirely on what content I'm doing. Savage/EX Trials? It's every PUG. There's always at least one player that you have to generally remove for one reason or the other and replace. Normal Mode raids? Usually 1 player that SHOULD be removed, but won't. 24 mans? usually a good 3-4 that should be kicked. Dungeons? Probably 1/3 of the time I have an equivalency fail.

Booted up Cerbs NN last night to see if I could try and help anyone and bloody hell was literally 2 people having an argument over "wah I don't like you" and "you don't like me" shit basically.

Honestly I just feel like the servers gotten a lot more dramallama as of late and tempted to just go Light for a fresh start. Most of my friends are on Phoenix or Zodiark (some moved cross DC) and I just stayed on Cerb for a few ingame ones.

Not saying Cerb is the only server with drama because that's would be a stupid thing to suggest but it's been a lot more noticeable lately.

NN is consistently awful on my server. Just your average "mentor" with every job at 70, who can't even read at a kindergarten level, but is somehow a guru on all things, except pushing buttons every GCD. Hint: Most of the time it's some wannabe elitist who wipes on normal modes.

all in all, super fun game, my only complaints are about the players ive been stuck in dungeons/roulettes with, and the lack of addons. cause my god, the ui is not good. LOL

I'd be curious if you had specific examples of the players you've been "stuck" with. For science of course.

[Katchii]

I usually call this the "equivalency test". If every single player played as poorly as your weakest link would you have cleared or still had fun? I.e. in my shield lob only tank example, what if I had done nothing but spam piercing talon? I'd be TP starved doing literally no DPS. What If the other DPS did it too? What if the healer only used Cure or god forbid decided to only use Stone? This would fail the equivalency test. People wouldn't be having fun, and even if you managed to clear, it'd be an abysmal experience.

I encounter an equivalency fail probably a good 50%+ of the time I queue into content, even PF content.

I get where you're coming from, but I don't really think that's all that fair. The chances of a group comprised of nothing but failures is exceedingly low. If you have to ask the question, as a theoretical "would we have cleared it...?" then I find it somewhat irrelevant.

Maybe I've just "accepted" the fact that you'll run across those kinds of players, and so long as we're still still moving along and they're willing to learn and try, I'll just keep chugging. If they're an asshole about it and refuse to learn, I'll kick them the first chance I get for harassment. The problem is, in many cases, by the time the group is allowed to kick we're halfway or more done with the dungeon, and if it's a tank or healer, we'll wait longer than if we just sucked it up and got it done with the slacker.

I've only ever noticed absolutely egregious examples because I'm usually far too busy managing my own play to actually micro manage others live performances, let alone MULTIPLE others. I'm not saying you NEED it to see it, but without it, it's a trivia game in the best scenario and Russian roulette in the worst. I could pretty trivially play at 30% of my optimal performance and make it look normal to the average player, and without ACT probably wouldn't notice unless they were knowledgeable about PLD and really watched me, Do that without impacting their performance? I'd bet against it TBH.

The kind of content I do, which is just dungeons, normal raids and trials and 24 man stuff, at least for now maybe I'll do Savage stuff at some point, the difference between a 15 minute run and a 20 minute run isn't THAT noticeable. So you're right in that I likely don't notice every example of it, but after doing that kind of stuff enough, you get a good gauge on how long stuff should take to kill, how low your tank gets on health before heals, etc... so you can kinda feel where the gap is.

If I used ACT/FFLogs I'm sure I'd be able to to notice everyone who slacks a bit or under performs. Maybe I'll check it out... I tried it once a while ago and I honestly just hated having it on my screen, aesthetically. I'll look into customization options and such to hopefully make it far less intrusive and distracting.

Fair point - if I can STRONGLY recommend that you try to pug the first week. Every Savage pugger knows that if you don't clear 1/2 the first week, you're stuck with the riff raff. You can clear the 3rd fight usually second week and be ok, but it gets dicier each week.

Because of how I play, my gear level usually isn't close to where it would need to be, or where I'd be comfortable, for taking on that content which is why I don't usually get around to trying until a couple weeks later.

Some of the best players I've played with were from PUGs.

Same here, but they're a diamond in the rough in my experience. But I also don't PUG savage and Mythic stuff like you do where people like this tend to gravitate towards. By the time I'm PUG'ing that content it's mostly dregs, which is why I usually stay away from it. It's just not an enjoyable experience.

It just depends entirely on what content I'm doing. Savage/EX Trials? It's every PUG. There's always at least one player that you have to generally remove for one reason or the other and replace. Normal Mode raids? Usually 1 player that SHOULD be removed, but won't. 24 mans? usually a good 3-4 that should be kicked. Dungeons? Probably 1/3 of the time I have an equivalency fail.

As I said, I don't do the higher end content where high end performance is a requirement. Mediocre performance, as a group, is enough to clear most stuff in this game. Equivalency fail, I think is a bit of a false metric as I said before. No I don't think a group should have to carry someone like that, but it's all about time for me. If it's going to take an equivalent or more time to replace that person, why not just finish the run? Especially as a DPS queuing though...even if a dungeon takes three times longer than it should, that's STILL better than having to wait in the duty finder queue again most times.

NN is consistently awful on my server. Just your average "mentor" with every job at 70, who can't even read at a kindergarten level, but is somehow a guru on all things, except pushing buttons every GCD. Hint: Most of the time it's some wannabe elitist who wipes on normal modes.

I've never even been on it since the first week it was in the game, for this very reason. It's full of absolutely whiny babies and idiots.

[Wrecktangle]

I get where you're coming from, but I don't really think that's all that fair. The chances of a group comprised of nothing but failures is exceedingly low. If you have to ask the question, as a theoretical "would we have cleared it...?" then I find it somewhat irrelevant.

The equivalency fail test is merely my measure to determine if someone is being disrespectful to my/others time. Nothing more nothing less. It's not really about the chance of it happening, but more so would other people have fun if I played like they did?

The kind of content I do, which is just dungeons, normal raids and trials and 24 man stuff, at least for now maybe I'll do Savage stuff at some point, the difference between a 15 minute run and a 20 minute run isn't THAT noticeable. So you're right in that I likely don't notice every example of it, but after doing that kind of stuff enough, you get a good gauge on how long stuff should take to kill, how low your tank gets on health before heals, etc... so you can kinda feel where the gap is.

It's not about the difference between a 15 and 20 minute run. See below a post I made last year.

So on the OF a lot of the time people say that DF runs are never as bad as we say. I needed to cap tomes last week and I still want my skalla tank gear so I ran it 3 times to cap here are my results.

Run#1


Very good WHM, downright awful DPS. They weren't even that low ilvl (320 ish). 21 minute run.

Run #2


Dear god. I almost died here. Imagine if the healer was a 0 DPS healer. I would have lost it. So much dead weight. 26+ minute run.

Run #3


1 Good DPS (i330-340 SMN), 1 good SAM (i300-310) and a good healer. 16+ minute run.

Looking at the data, none of these were "good runs" in that every single person was geared and knew their jobs. In the 3rd run, I got good players, but the healer and the SAM were both very low (ilvl i300 weapons). I'll be curious to see how my next set of skalla runs goes.

Bonus:

My O6N run.



Almost took as long to kill as my savage clear...

[Katchii]

The equivalency fail test is merely my measure to determine if someone is being disrespectful to my/others time. Nothing more nothing less. It's not really about the chance of it happening, but more so would other people have fun if I played like they did?

That's a fair assessment then, I guess I kind of do the same thing then, just without really thinking about it. It's more of a drive to just play the game as well as I can...that's why I signed into it to begin with, and not ever wanting to be a burden.

It's not about the difference between a 15 and 20 minute run. See below a post I made last year.

Yeah that's a pretty big difference, ~10 minutes and that's between a "bad" run and a "decent" run. I'm sure a "great" run would shave off a couple more minutes at least. That said, the main issue for me is two fold: 1) By the time you're able to actually kick someone (isn't it 15 minutes after the duty starts? or is it 5?) you're mostly done, usually. 2) I'm a DPS the vast majority of the time, so the only people I'd kick are either the other DPS, the tank or the healer.

So, a few points:
1) I'm decent enough both skill and gear wise to chug us along without the need to kick and replace the other DPS, but I wouldn't kick them JUST for being bad, they'd have to be unwilling to improve or be an asshole on top of that, and that's pretty rare in my experience. But in those rare cases, it has been totally worth it.
2) Kicking and replacing is a gamble in itself because you're hoping you get someone better...you may not, and may in fact get someone worse.
3) Kicking a tank or healer usually results in a relatively lengthy wait, which kind of makes kicking them pointless if the point was to save time. The amount of time saved by getting a good player usually doesn't outweigh the amount of time it takes to wait for a new player and then catch up to where you "should have bee" in the dungeon and then finish it.

Bottom line, for me anyway, is in most cases it's just not worth it. If I'm really THAT desperate to do quick dungeon runs, I'll make a DF group with restrictions which I only ever did a couple times back in ARR for the relic quest chain. Nothing else since then has been difficult enough or aggravating enough for me not to be able to do it with a PUG....some PUGs just took longer than others.

[Granyala]

I think it is 5 minutes, 15m is the time it takes in WoW to be able to kick.

I just had a lengthy discussion about this topic in the official forums and I still maintain that it is more efficient to drag the underperformer through compared to waiting for a refill (esp if it is a tank) and risking an aborted run.

Don't get me wrong:lazy play aggravates me as much as the next @Wrecktangle but ultimately, it's a friggin dungeon, we won't wipe and I'll have some other entertainment running next to the window anyway. So big whoop.

I do get a chuckle now and then watching ACT trying to figure out how any person can be THAT bad.

[Xilurm]

Has FFXI ever received a revamp of its quests to make it easier for players to catch up?