How Should SE Represent Player Competence?

You know what? I'm just going to starting asking people "Who's mule are you?" right off the bat.

You are the #1 Glazer of all time in ffxi history, Good job.

Maybe I can sympathize due to my own *** where I had to learn something everyone else knew (meva moment), but I think it's worth remembering that a lot of this can largely be accomplished without ever having to learn what those mechanics are. If you dropped a 0 time player in the game and gave them 6 months to get this stuff, they could feasibly do so without ever having to skillchain, learning what x stat is, why y weaponskill does more damage, etc.

Most of us here probably learned what skillchains are and how to burst in Dunes 20 years ago.

A lot of this stuff just isn't outlined. It's not plainly mentioned in most guides, it's sure as hell not explained in the game to any depth, and the leap from doing EP and HTBFs to Odyssey/Sortie is a pretty big jump with a lot of poorly explained or documented mechanics. This is a game of mechanics and math that is covered over by a veneer of somewhat-simplicity (don't forget the social expectations, also) so it's easy to say "I figured this out", especially with how easy to the early game is, then jump into something and be clueless about what is expected.

I don't think you can really represent player competence. Most items people mentioned here have more to do with the ability to form a competence group and keep it together for any period of time. The issue for me is rarely their gear or ability to perform, but the ability for them to take advice and not be a *** when they are corrected. There are LOT of players who view it as a personal affront if you give them a minor correction politely and that's the ultimate "nope" for me. Applies to real life, too..

Here's a scenario:

Group does Sortie. Brings in a friend of a friend that is less experienced, on a new job. No expectation of them to be at the level everyone else is.

This goes on for a while, they "hang around" in case the group needs a filler. After the 10th or so time they do sortie with the same group they have their full set of empy +3, and seen every boss fight multiple times. Let's say they're on blm, an easy job in a mage sortie strat.

They still have not casted a single -ja, even once. Not a single burn. They seem to not have bought breakga, or know what it is. When asked to cast it, they are seemingly afk. They have asked no questions such as "why is everyone casting -ja spells".

When doing anything other than boss fights, they are seemingly afk, but suddenly un-afk when needing to walk to a boss. They don't help with any objectives. They know what manawall is, but die when they try to use it to do something. They have no movement speed gear.

What would you do.

I don't remember anyone doing sc mb in the dunes

Started more around lv30, there werent enough good WS options in the dunes to SC/MB

Tachi: Enpi -> Viper bite when thf got SA at lvl30.

Distortion, and with SA and a decent thief, enough to outright kill lvl30 XP mobs.

It’s a tough damn question, because FFXI is a PvE game and even in PvP games with RPG elements, balance is a complete nightmare. Look at League of Legends, Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, even WoW or FFXIV PvP. It’s chaos wrapped in spreadsheets.

Some private servers have leaderboards showing which linkshell farms the most XP, gil, or clears the most content. Cute, but it doesn’t tell you who’s actually good.

Damage meters or mechanical skill trackers sound great on paper, but in FFXI? Forget it. The weapon skills, the job abilities, the entire combat system isn’t built for competition. They want every job to feel unique, not equal.

And if they ever added an official damage meter, it’d turn the community into an even bigger circus. You’d have the usual toxic nonsense: “Oh look, this guy didn’t meet the DPS standard! Kick the clown out of the linkshell!”

To make it “fair,” they’d have to rebalance every weapon skill quested, relic, mythic, aeonic, prime all of it, vertically aligned by damage. And remove every possible overkill from physical, magical, and WS damage.

Then you’d see nonsense like:

“Your BRD only had 72% buff uptime.”
“Your COR was slacking at 48%.”
“Your SAM didn’t hit 12 million damage in Dynamis.”
“Your WAR’s sortie numbers suck.”
“Your WHM didn’t heal enough.”
“Your PLD only mitigated 25M in damage.”

If people crave competition in a game with RPG stats, there’s already Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, League of Legends. Go bash your heads in there.

Skillchains, yes. Bursts, occasionally but mostly not. BLM never got into anything until Freeze. And that lasts for about 10 levels. Then it's solo goblin pets until 70 then timed nuke parties with all the people you religiously die with every 3 days in dienmais.

Vic, if I wanted some half baked AI BS answer.. I don't and will never want that.

We definitely did, I know because my first job was BLM and we were bursting in some parties. It's when I first learned about it, at least.

Even if you didn't, the point was more that a lot of these mechanics are not laid out in plain language by the game and have to be learned. You can make a decent amount of progress without ever intentionally SCing or MBing, as an example, but most of us know this from decades past.


This is more or less my point that I made poorly. The types of situations where the player is unreceptive to feedback, doesn't communicate, acts like an ***, is botting, etc seem far more frequent to me than those where someone simply doesn't know something and is receptive to feedback or figuring it out.

I don't know how you represent "has a bad attitude" or "doesn't play well with others" because, at least in my observation, that's the bigger issue.

Alright, I gotta add something, and Dodik just handed me the perfect excuse for another post.

So here’s the thing some private servers out there run this *Iron-Man mode*, right? Real masochist stuff. Die once and your character gets deleted, just like that. Pure *WoW Vanilla hardcore* energy. And sure, it doesn’t exactly prove “skill,” but damn, it forces you to play like your heartbeat depends on it. People actually do endgame content like that, too. With coordination, trust, and a good bit of insanity.

I tried it once. The adrenaline? Off the charts. Every fight feels like a boss raid. That reward hit after surviving something nasty priceless. But yeah, sometimes I’d go out without an *Instant Warp* or *Reraise*, living dangerously like an idiot. And you know what happens? You become dead weight for everyone else. Your linkshell starts sweating bullets because now you can’t afford a mistake. Every pull turns into a hostage situation. “Careful, he’s on Iron-Man mode!” It’s tense, it’s chaotic, and it wrecks the chill for the others.

Now, my dear Dodik, let me say this with respect fifteen years ago, I had to post with English that looked like a broken keyboard fell down the stairs. I couldn’t express myself, not the way I do in Spanish. Even with translators, my words sounded hollow.

So tell me, why in the nine hells should I hold back now? Why pretend it’s 2005 on Allakhazam, typing like a caveman? We’re in 2025, man. AI’s been around for three years. People use it for everything. If it helps me speak with my real voice the one that actually sounds like me I’m damn well going to use it.

If that offends your nostalgia, fine. But don’t ask me to turn back time just to make you comfortable. The world moved on. Maybe you should too.

A ver, boludo… pará un toque y escuchame, ¿entendés? Mi idioma de verdad es el español, loco, no ese inglés cortado que manejo solo pa’ entender un poco lo que dicen los otros. ¿Por qué carajo me voy a poner a hablar así? Si hablo inglés es como jugar con la mano equivocada, como Maradona si tiraba un penal con la zurda vendada, me entendés?. Si no te gusta FLACO bueno, pero no me pidas que deje de ser como soy.

Back then it was SATA, or as the JP called it, Fuidama. You'd have someone pull something with a ranged attack and line the tank up behind the mob and the thief up behind the tank so you would both transfer the enmity and make the numbers bigger. I still remember exp parties on bats in garliage citadel from those early days. It's the biggest reason I played and took up thief back in the 75 era. It made experience parties fun.

How do you differentiate attitude from someone that says nothing, responds to no questions or instructions and is happy to just stand there while everyone else does objectives for them.

That enmity boost on pull was really helpful for NIN in early parts of the fight IIRC.

The first party I ever had that considered using skillchains was a party I had around level 20~23 that decided to exp on beetles in Sauromugue Champaign.

They had me close Distortion from Blade: Run -> Iron Tempest, and then the BLM and RDM were MBing it with Blizzard/Water.

None of the damage from it was so big that it was a, "WOW!" moment, but it was memorable because we did kill fast enough that we ran out of beetle spawns in the overworld.

And the leader remarked, "Hell yeah, we're like the high level players!"

You left dunes at 20. 19 or 18 on some jobs for Qufim.

Depended on the party setup as many weapons didnt really have a good SC to make with the starting WS available iirc, if you had the right combo though it was generally worth doing.

Honestly having acid bolts was probably more important in that area, since you'll eventually hit jagils or crabs and that could slow your kills down quite a bit.

SA was 15, TA was 30, still thf was pretty much the go to for DD 30-60, once you could TA /thf things got fun for everyone. Still have fond memories of SA and TA on imps with Spinning slash, SA SS would usually one shot them with SC, TA SS would plant them on the tank.

Good times.

To the thread at hand: player competence is something players need judge for themselves from a variety of factors, and developing that sense is what makes for truly solidly performing pockets of community (linkshells, statics, and so-on).

To Vic: I'm really sorry about this man but whatever AI you're using is making you sound like Sephiroth, which is never as cool as one might hope on a web forum.

Sorry, it's less Sephiroth and more like one of those "Big Dog" tee shirts.

Well, let’s make something clear. I don’t come here to please anyone or chase approval like a lost puppy. I show up, share my thoughts, stay on topic simple as that. If someone can’t handle it, there’s a wonderful little invention called the Block button. One click, and poof, problem solved.

Now, about Sephiroth... never cared for him. Overrated drama wrapped in long hair. Ultimecia, though that’s a true queen. Cold, brilliant, and terrifying. That’s the kind of villain who owns the stage.

My vote is Martel lecturing us every week for an hour telling everyone that they're bad and they should feel bad they really need to get their ***together.