The gap between good players and bad players

[Ohaigaiz]

What if you soloed KC? That is an act without skill? Maybe you abused your LS/bank and then that is a skill in manipulating people. Whether that be something to be praised or not.

Manipulating people to get what you want doesn't take skill, just an unaware and oblivious person. This is just a scum and douchebag way to cheat the system. People that get lucky and profit from this are... lucky.

[BRP]

Manipulating people to get what you want doesn't take skill, just an unaware and oblivious person. This is just a scum and douchebag way to cheat the system. People that get lucky and profit from this are... lucky.

Scamming is certainly a skill!

But byte this really has no place in this thread. Not the scamming or the idea that obtaining(or how you obtain) a Kraken Club makes you skillful. I thought I made at least the latter clear in the OP.

[Caudle]

Being a "good" FFXI player involves being prepared, knowing what you're doing in practically any situation without being told, and having the capacity to adapt quickly when something untoward happens. Simply put, the difference between "good" and "bad" players is that the former can be relied upon to perform their duties in any scenario no questions asked, and not fuck things up due to lack of knowledge of their surroundings/enemies. It's all about being well-informed.

Wow, i think this guy pretty much nailed it. What 10 posts in? Well said good doctor.

[dejet]

Lets not be so quick to judge that. All this tells me is that there is a gap.



Those would be situations where the challenge is mostly superficial.

Now gear is going to be play some role, so one can't just ignore it. It would be helpful to include at least minimal amounts of information on gear in situations where they no doubt played a role. EDIT: I think looking to extremes will help paint the image. How far can someone go with no gear or poor gear and so on? On the other hand shitty can someone be with perfect gear? lol

Another way to look at this is to place more attention on individual actions rather than the entire battle. Curing, stunning, holding hate, keeping shadows up, etc.

this is true(somewhat) a pld of mine(no longer in the shell) tanked cerb in lvl 25 gear just because he wished to. so really you could go nude and kill almost anything. but ya maybe get more info.

gear will help make up for less skill.(if you have some skill)
gear will not make up for no skill.
good gear will make a skilled player just that much better.

thats how i always see it.

[byte]

Manipulating people to get what you want doesn't take skill, just an unaware and oblivious person. This is just a scum and douchebag way to cheat the system. People that get lucky and profit from this are... lucky.

A skillful criminal is still skillful whether you approve of the crime or not.

Skill: "the ability, coming from one's knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well: Carpentry was one of his many skills. "

Scamming is certainly a skill!

But byte this really has no place in this thread. Not the scamming or the idea that obtaining(or how you obtain) a Kraken Club makes you skillful. I thought I made at least the latter clear in the OP.

Actually, you said the opposite:

The obvious go-to topic would be the battle system, but various things like sneaking around and manipulating the AH are also fair game if you are able to make a comprehensible argument for it. Anything goes as long as it makes sense.

How is my argument not comprehensible?

Oh I forgot to post my definition..

In my opinion, skill in FFXI is the ability to think and act fast, adapting your setup from a pool of options and moulding your strategy and actions to best suit the situation in the goal of accelerating your success or ensuring it.

Nevermind ._. I just realised this was sort of already posted..

Being a "good" FFXI player involves being prepared, knowing what you're doing in practically any situation without being told, and having the capacity to adapt quickly when something untoward happens. Simply put, the difference between "good" and "bad" players is that the former can be relied upon to perform their duties in any scenario no questions asked, and not fuck things up due to lack of knowledge of their surroundings/enemies. It's all about being well-informed.

[BRP]

Wow, i think this guy pretty much nailed it. What 10 posts in? Well said good doctor.

Unfortunately the question wasn't "What is skill in FFXI?", it is "how wide is the gap between good players and bad players?" Knowing what skill is important going into this, but we aren't even close to being done here. I doubt we will actually come to a concrete conclusion in 20 pages.

[ringthree]

To deny that this takes a level of co-ordination ability and skill to pull off would just be plain deceitful. Not to mention the skill or perhaps persistence is a better word (Thought not always the case) in obtaining said KCs in the first place.

I am sorry, but saying that KC burns take skill because you have to co-ordinate hastes and a BRD two hour is what is deceitful.

[dejet]

Zergs take skill.

i mean ya a drk with a KC might not take skill or a war.

but you need skilled bards(with gear oh wait right gear does not matter in thsi topic right? well for zergs you want well geared bards who have a clue)
healers) have bad healers/stuners and you going to fail.

my 1st LSs kirin zerg screwed up and failed at 30% because people noobed it up. he opened with aga IV and no one stoped him.(you have a zerg you can stop his spells ~_~)

there is a gap... iv doen fafnir with 8 myself. and my LS screwed up with 18 on nidhogg lol.
people just have to learn thats it. the gap growns as people say "its my 12.95 im do what i want" thats when the gap grows at a rate of. like 2^x. when someone is set in their ways and wont change when they screw up.

someone came to fafnir as a 62thf/nin when we had 9 people camping (he has a 75 smn..) lol shit like that you can just see.

ok well getting out of class talk later.

[Thitaubian]

Wow, i think this guy pretty much nailed it. What 10 posts in? Well said good doctor.

Yes he did, there is no question about the validity of what he said, but...
what he said is so general and superficial that it does not allow us any insight into the 'gap' between good and bad players, and that is what I understood this topic to be about.

EDIT: beaten to the punch by BRP

[drwaffles]

Unfortunately the question wasn't "What is skill in FFXI?", it is "how wide is the gap between good players and bad players?" Knowing what skill is important going into this, but we aren't even close to being done here. I doubt we will actually come to a concrete conclusion in 20 pages.

It's enormous, what more is there to be said? You can't do more than give specific examples of the two extremes (I've given an example of what constitutes a horrible player). It's not exactly quantifiable.

[fantasticdan]

I think this will mostly end up a semantics debate as to what people consider 'skill'. Ignoring gear/gil/consumables, the biggest differences between good/bad players are memorization of game mechanics, effort/patience, and common sense.

[byte]

Zergs take skill.

i mean ya a drk with a KC might not take skill or a war.

but you need skilled bards(with gear oh wait right gear does not matter in thsi topic right? well for zergs you want well geared bards who have a clue)
healers) have bad healers/stuners and you going to fail.

my 1st LSs kirin zerg screwed up and failed at 30% because people noobed it up. he opened with aga IV and no one stoped him.(you have a zerg you can stop his spells ~_~)

Exactly. You can't just give a bunch of noobs 75 jobs and expect them to zerg successfully with no experience or knowledge of how to do it. It's an ability that has to be practised. Oh look, that fits nicely into the definition I provided earlier.

I think Good and Bad are subjective, completely a matter of a opinion and based on your own personal goals and perceptions. No one can decide what's good and bad for everyone.
An interesting discussion, nonetheless.

[BRP]

It's enormous, what more is there to be said?

If it was truly enormous then bad players wouldn't succeed at the game would they?

I think there is a large oversight that will be FFXI's downfall in terms of being considered a deep or shallow game.

You can play very efficiently, but if there is no threat of failure and nothing like a point system, what good is it? We must use failure and success to measure a player's worth. There is nothing else to compare it to is there?

This is why it is absolutely important that we point out situations where FFXI is difficult.

Also this says something for activities like Ballista where at least one failure is assured. Ballista is mostly ignored though so what can be said about it? Not as much detail as we can say about PvE.


EDIT: One thing people rate themselves by is time. How quickly they down their target. It is completely fan-made outside of battlefields(so fuck SE when it comes down to it), but is this how we rate ourselves as players? At least in the HNM scene? At the same time we use exp/hour for exping.

[Whaleporn]

The greatest determiner of skill in FFXI is your ability to recruit/attract people to you that increase your enjoyment of the game. Everything else is trying to sidestep that.



CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENT!

[byte]

If it was truly enormous then bad players wouldn't succeed at the game would they?

I think there is a large oversight that will be FFXI's downfall in terms of being considered a deep or shallow game.

You can play very efficiently, but if there is no threat of failure and nothing like a point system, what good is it? We must use failure and success to measure a player's worth. There is nothing else to compare it to is there?

This is why it is absolutely important that we point out situations where FFXI is difficult.

Also this says something for activities like Ballista where at least one failure is assured. Ballista is mostly ignored though so what can be said about it? Not as much detail as we can say about PvE.

If you're effectively saying that good players are good because they succeed and bad players are bad because they don't, well..

FFXI = 60+% Timesink, 30% Luck, 10% Skill

Skillful players can be "Good" players by your definition (They succeed) if they are lucky and/or invest a lot of time.
Equally, complete retards can be "Good" players by your definition because they are more lucky and/or invest more time.

Both types of players can arrive at the same endpoint, which is evident.

[shaddix]

This game(battle(not pvp)) isn't difficult if your baseline is failing, it's ridiculously easy. Simply succeeding in this game, ignoring the efficiency of execution, requires very little skill at all.

[Lyramion]

There are 2 types of "good" players.

A) Players that are good at the shit they do because they got tought to do so. Generally deevolves into a shitty player once something unconventional is scheduled or happens. A lot of WHMs can be put right in here - ha !

B) Players that understood the game mechanics to its fullest. They could basically take any char and job and play it to 90% of its capacity in a few minutes. If something unconventional happens - this is your man.

[Thitaubian]

If it was truly enormous then bad players wouldn't succeed at the game would they?
...
You can play very efficiently, but if there is no threat of failure and nothing like a point system, what good is it? We must use failure and success to measure a player's worth. There is nothing else to compare it to is there?

This is why it is absolutely important that we point out situations where FFXI is difficult.
...

Rdm Maat fight is difficult. Who here hasn't known or at least heard of somebody that leveled a second job to 70 in order to circumvent the rdm Maat fight?

This is also a very good point to consider when we think about 'Why are bad players still successful?'.
Because they are able to circumvent difficult situations they can not master, either by themselves or in groups.

Maat fight to hard? --> level another job which has an easy Maat fight.

CoP static fails Omega/Ulitma Airship BC? --> get a different group with more adequate jobs, more skilled players, better gear, or a combination of the above
(I am guilty of this not only did I ditch my group when we failed many many times, but I recently replaced a Gimp in a group of my friends. We won go us lol.)

[drwaffles]

If it was truly enormous then bad players wouldn't succeed at the game would they?

They generally don't unless they're propped up by good players, which is more often than not the case. Left to their own devices, they probably wouldn't last a week.

Edit: well that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but they certainly wouldn't progress nearly as quickly as competent players.

[Neosutra]

Knowledge of your job.

Knowledge of game mechanics.

Knowledge of mob types and behavior.

Willingness to listen.

These are the things that make a good player.

Add good gear to that and those are the things that make a great player.

Id say half of FFXI players have a reasonable understanding of game mechanics (str/attack/acc calculations, hit rate factors, spell modifiers and enhancers, mob weaknesses and strategies).

The other half neither care to learn, or just havent learned yet.

I know relic plds that dont macro any gear changes for -any- actions.. Some people are happy with the way they play and dont want to change.

It just depends on how serious that person wants to be. There is a big difference between the rdm that is checking the pimped out other rdms and trying to slowly get their best mnd build and enfeebling build, and mimicking the good players they see, and the rdm that wears 3/5ths af and pulls out their sword every event.