The Do's and (Mostly) Do Not's of MMORPGs

[Chanlin]

Playing a white mage on Final Fantasy 14, so this will be mostly from that point of view.

I play 14 as a Paladin mostly, but I have Scholar/Summoner, White Mage, and Monk at max as well.

- If you're new to a fight/dungeon/encounter do not be afraid to tell the group. Especially if it is a raid/boss battle. Everything has mechanics you need to know or the group will fail. Most people will happily explain it to you, and most tanks will take it slow if you ask nicely.

- Do learn how to do a dungeon/encounter/raid before you go. There are plenty of text/visual guides that tell you all about what to expect.

- Do NOT ignore mechanics on a boss. I've had more overconfident groups die to failing to do mechanics because they think their DPS can beat the incoming death attack that is otherwise completely avoidable.
- Corollary, DO all mechanics until the fight is 100% over.
- Corollary 2, If you are the only one left alive and the boss is almost dead (eg 1 to 2% health) feel free to say screw the mechanics and try to end the encounter.

- Do learn how to avoid attacks. Big hint, if everyone in the encounter is running to one side of the arena, it's probably a really good idea to follow them.

- If you pick up threat and the tank isn't coming to you to help, go to the tank, they are probably busy.
-Corollary: If you are running away from a mob and see the tank chasing it and you, stop running.

- Do, For the love of god, learn how and when to use your abilities. Tanks should not always spam their defense cool downs. Do not stun/silence or otherwise disable a mob that does not need it to stop an attack or save someone from dying. See the previous statement about pushing mobs. Your fellow group mates will thank you. PS: For the love of all Eorzea learn what the Limit Break button is and how and when you should or should not be using it.

[Chanlin]

I felt so bad for their treatment of her that I looked her up on the Lodestone (FFXIV's community page) after the dungeon was over (party actually kicked her on the next-to-last boss) and logged on to her server just to console her.

I agree, there is no excuse for chewing someone out for being new and not knowing what to do and being new to a run.

I had the very fortunate experience that, when I was new to the Main Scenario runs, the other tank TOLD the group "We are going slow so I can teach the new player how to pull this instance."

That reminds me to add:

- Do be patient. You do not have to speed run everything all the time.

[Chromatix]

It's not strictly an MMORPG, but some of these tropes are oh-so-familiar from World of Tanks.

One difference is that WoT is fundamentally a PvP game - there are no bots (except in the single, short tutorial mission, and that one doesn't shoot back; it's just a moving target). So the simplistic model of "getting aggro" onto a designated player doesn't really work - and anyway, there's no way for him to regenerate health.

Teamwork, however, is vital to success. Want to know how often it happens? In the standard "random battles" mode... almost never. A typical outcome is that one or more of the several paths through the map are left inadequately defended, so unless the enemy team has done exactly the same thing to the same path, that flank collapses and you will probably lose. Again.

Case in point.

[Akasa]

I've done Sharpwind Mines 2 man before, but the high level has to be 50 and have AOEs.

[Seshat]

DO consider joining a guild (by whatever name). Some are full of awesome people.

If you're new, or if you prefer to game for the story or for casual fun, aim for a casual or social guild. Avoid guilds which are specifically for levelling or raids/ops (by whatever name).

To find a good guild, find a person who seems nice and ask their advice. Ask which guild they're in, and what that guild's focus is.


Good guilds can be a great resource for helping you get through the multi-person content in the game; at the low, low cost of helping others do the same.
They can also be full of fun, interesting people who you'd otherwise not have met.

Bad guilds can be a miserable experience. If you aren't happy in a guild, give it a few days: you might have struck someone who's on their last chance and is about to be booted.
But don't stay longer than that: there are plenty of other guilds.

Guilds which are a bad match for you can also be a miserable experience. The people might be friendly and fun; but if you want to race through hard/nightmare mode content, and they're focussed on doing it slowly to teach people, you're going to hate it. The inverse is also true.
Don't stay in this situation, either.

[firecat88]

I've done Sharpwind Mines 2 man before, but the high level has to be 50 and have AOEs.

Nice And, yeah, our third person was level 52 (my friend and I are only level 21 and we got annihilated when we tried to do the Mines ourselves). We'd never met her before, but she was downright gleeful about the idea of helping us. And she let us pretty much just follow her around while she laid waste to the entire area multiple times.

[Akasa]

That's because it's hard to find people to mentor. If you mentor others you get 3 Gilda.��

[deadbody]

When you are running as a pick up member with a group that is otherwise 7/8th from the same guild. Do what they say. Do not ignore all the advice they give you regarding where to stand, and who to pew pew. If you look you can see that all but one are sporting gear you can only get from further in that operation.

If you insist on ignoring our continued and increasingly curse filled advice as we rack up repair bills due to your case of the stupids, don't be surprised when we refuse to raid further with you. Don't be surprised the next time you ask to join our group we laugh and deride you mercilessly until you put us on ignore.

We like helping people, all we ask is that you do what you are fucking told. It isn't that hard. The places you don't want to stand are colored. Don't stand on colors. Don't stand in stupid. That's all we ask.

[Lachrymose]

We had a newbie in my Praetorium run that got lost and killed because she didn't know what was happening,.

The first and only time I went through Praetorium and ...the last one..I forget what it's called, it was such a free-for-all. I don't think anyone died in either group, but it was super crazy.

Man, I haven't played this since October 2013, and only played for a little less than 2 months, but I feel the need to play it again soon.

I honestly wish though that there were the option to NOT run through dungeons to complete the main story. In my mind they take far too long (Praetorium and the final back to back was probably almost 3 hours if I remember correctly..exhausting) and I always feel super nervous playing in groups in dungeons, even when I started to get decent at BLM.

Hmm..maybe then I need to just stick to the local games and not the online ones.

[Kaylyn]

The first and only time I went through Praetorium and ...the last one..I forget what it's called, it was such a free-for-all. I don't think anyone died in either group, but it was super crazy.

Castrum Meridianum is the second one. Castrum isn't that bad unless you are a brand new (and thusly undergeared) level 50 healer not used to handling giant pulls yet and the main tank pulls an entire section of mobs...and you aren't aware he's gonna do this and cast Regen after the first pull and he keeps running and suddenly you're looking especially tasty to the mobs...

Luckily I had my husband on Skype and in the group with me when I did my first Praetorium run. He warned me that the standard practice for the dungeon was "tank gathers all mobs and runs to the thing you click on, you DO NOT HESITATE in clicking the thing and getting transported to the next section, because if you get left behind the tank you will have all the things hitting you and you won't be able to click it because they'll keep interrupting you". I had this happen to me later on a duty roulette while collecting my tomestones and I discovered at least at that point you can use the teleport that spawns at the beginning to catch up.

Unfortunately there are newbies that come in that haven't had the process explained to them and if you have impatient tomestone farmers in the group they won't bother to explain, and then you have the situation I described in that last post.

Edit: Also it's a good time to get back into the game! The expansion is about to drop!

[Chanlin]

I wish more tanks would realize to make an effort to generate some threat instead of just running ahead on the big pulls. I mean it is seriously a short pause and one or two buttons to flash/overpower/circle of scorn and then keep on going.

I had a tank in a run of Amdapor Keep normal that wasn't doing this. We wiped twice. When I explained he needed to generate threat or pull smaller he complained that he has never had to do that for any other healer. I'll admit maybe I could have kept us alive, but I just don't get why you wouldn't make that little bit of extra effort to make sure the mobs aren't going to turn and eat your groups face. I mean, as a tank, you have one job...

That brings me to one other point I wanted to remember. I will let the attached picture speak for itself as another please do this type thing.

[Kaylyn]

I had a tank in a run of Amdapor Keep normal that wasn't doing this. We wiped twice. When I explained he needed to generate threat or pull smaller he complained that he has never had to do that for any other healer.

I remember my first speed run through Amdapor Keep. I wasn't expecting it. I don't remember if the tank flashed every group before finally stopping for the fight, but I very quickly learned how to time Stoneskin to fall on him just as the last enemy died so I wouldn't do a panic Regen in the middle of the run to the next fight.

Had one guy in a duty-roulette Stone Vigil that...I just don't know. I don't know HOW he made it to 41 because he had no idea how to tank. Me and one other person in the group literally had to TEACH him how to tank, and he improved SLIGHTLY...and we still wound up voting to abandon the duty. I requeued for duty roulette and have NEVER been so happy to see Titan's ugly face pop up.

[RayvenQ]

Couple of things I learned from EVE:

1. Never, ever, ever trust ANYONE, EVER. Just don't do it!

2. If you see someone brave enough to be driving a mining ship, during a community driven event where those specific ships are Kill on Sight, seemingly alone, maybe there's a reason he's confident enough to be out there (Aka some guy tried to attack me, I managed to tank him while calling in a friend, which resulted in about 30 ships arriving, all on my side, and basically locking the guy in position, turning him into a mewling pleading mess begging for his characters life, only to be totally murdered, both ship and escape pod, when they finally got bored)

[AccountingDrone]

Couple of things I learned from EVE:

1. Never, ever, ever trust ANYONE, EVER. Just don't do it!

2. If you see someone brave enough to be driving a mining ship, during a community driven event where those specific ships are Kill on Sight, seemingly alone, maybe there's a reason he's confident enough to be out there (Aka some guy tried to attack me, I managed to tank him while calling in a friend, which resulted in about 30 ships arriving, all on my side, and basically locking the guy in position, turning him into a mewling pleading mess begging for his characters life, only to be totally murdered, both ship and escape pod, when they finally got bored)

Ah, hulkageddon I loved being staked out as bait. If you want a good 'cheat' so you don't have to tank fit your hulk you can have an alt in a throwaway newbie frigate attack you periodically to get Concord to hang out in your belt. If you see Concord ships leaving your belt, chances are you are being set up by someone else getting Concord to go to their belt to open your belt up for ganking.

[RayvenQ]

Ah, hulkageddon I loved being staked out as bait. If you want a good 'cheat' so you don't have to tank fit your hulk you can have an alt in a throwaway newbie frigate attack you periodically to get Concord to hang out in your belt. If you see Concord ships leaving your belt, chances are you are being set up by someone else getting Concord to go to their belt to open your belt up for ganking.

I always kept a loadout of combat drones in my hulk, just to see off the occasional npc rat, was hilarious one time when someone tried to gank me and died to them! Concord only works if you're in HiSec, I never was.