Tonight, I ran a mythic Spires of Ascension for a covenant quest. I have pugged a handful of times this expansion, and every time it has gone badly. This time around the tank said that since he didn't need any items from the last boss, and he disliked the warlock in the group for some reason, he left right before the last boss. I think he disliked the warlock because the warlock didn't put down a summoning stone when the priest disconnected. Not sure why that was an issue, though. So I switched to tank (from DPS) and invited someone from my guild and we killed the last boss.
There are a couple of FFXIV discussion boards I follow, where there is a vocal contingent of skilled players who are unhappy that FFXIV severely punishes people for suggesting that other players are not playing well enough. They feel that this causes people to slack off and play badly (with the biggest complaint being healers who don't deal damage). While there is a grain of truth in that, the alternative seems to be how people behave in WoW, where they use elitism to justify bad behavior.
Given the two options, I would much rather have the FFXIV behavior in random groups.
I agree with you on the FFXIV vs Retail behavior. I'd wondered if behavior had improved in Retail, but I guess not. Of course, in both scenarios, the argument that needs to be satisfied is "Who decides that a person is 'good enough'?"
ReplyDeleteEverybody comes to an instance/raid from a different skillset. And if you're in a guild, how a guild clears content can change from guild to guild. Does that mean that you clear content better than others? No, it doesn't, but it sure can seem like it.
I do prefer the FFXIV method because it forces people to figure out how to work together to clear content. If can drop group without penalty whenever you feel like it, there's absolutely no reason to compromise with the group.
You can drop group without penalty (other than a small lockout) in either game. What you can't do in FFXIV is display DPS meters, as FFXIV technically does not allow 3rd-party tools. DPS meters are on a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
DeleteIn practice, this policy creates a strong norm against correcting another player's gameplay in random content.
SWTOR doesn't allow the meters either, which I always thought kept the worst impulses of the LFG crowd a bit at bay.
DeleteBut still, poor behavior without consequences reinforces poor behavior. (Any parent would tell Blizz that.)
This may be from my background (my job is telling people they suck, among other things), but if you cannot tell people that they need to do better, how are they supposed to know? What I find is that there are different ways to tell people "L2P", and in MMOs it's usually the wrong one which is used (= elitism).
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing your job doesn't consist of publicly berating people in front of their co-workers :) Coaching starts with "praise in public, criticise in private" - unfortunately the problem in PUGs isn't the guy who sends you a whisper along the lines of "Hey, did you know you'd do more DPS if...", it's the guy who links a DPS meter for all to read with himself at the top (usually because he's in full mythic raid gear which says more about his guild's progress than his own abilities) and then provides some stunning insight like "git gud".
DeleteAs for the tank in the original post though - that's not elitism, that's being a selfish asshat. Doesn't matter if the last boss doesn't drop anything you want, the rest of the group helped kill the bosses you did want so you can damn well return the favour, or maybe next time you should just do the whole thing solo. And it's not as if a modern instance run is taking up hours of your life either. I mean, if the guy dropped just before the last boss he saved what, a whole 3 minutes of his precious time?
Yeah, that's the problem. If you allow people to correct others in random groups, especially with meters, no one uses tact. If you don't allow corrections, people often don't improve.
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