How Should SE Represent Player Competence?

Master trial weapons only talk about how much time you spent on a fight that only gives you an epeen lockstyle weapon.

V25's and Master Trials are the pinnacle of excellence. Unlike ML50 that can be botted by no skill idiots, you know someone with a V25 Bumba and Master Trial weapons have earned that stuff through sheer dedication and skill.



dammit

It may well be an Asura thing. However, I don't see much difference between people who buy MLs or bot them themselves.

And disclaimer, I know a fair number of ML50 players that are very skilled players. I'm not generalizing or saying I pass judgment on them (well maybe a little bit) just that I tend to take it as a huge red flag if I don't otherwise know the person.

Like if I'm filling out a PUG for some random thing, Peach Power or RP run or something, I'll take a rando ML20-30 person over an ML50 person any day of the week. I won't even ask further questions, if I see ML50 and don't recognize your name then you can just keep walking.

I cannot believe this made it to page two without anyone bringing up the ultimate way to test the competency of players:

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/56018/momoria-ls-recruiting-test-u-on-nm-before-join

Maybe the small servers are different from each other, but on my small server there are LOADS of people with ML50 who have no idea what they're doing, because they botted and/or bought ML50. We have someone in my LS who's ML40 (or 45?) on a job and has only Ambu gear and hasn't touched basically any endgame at all.

I think the best suggestions for how to show someone is "gud" would be the thing people suggested about clearing content on many different roles. People who are REALLY good but only at a specific job/role don't impress me anywhere near as much as people who can swap from WHM to PLD to SAM to RNG to BLM on a dime. These people are, in my experience, exceedingly rare though. Especially those who actually know the detailed nuance of each job and not just "yeah I have that job, it's ML50 and geared, but I don't have the first *** idea what to do on it"

Everything else is cheesable and frankly, there are lots of people I've played with who have been carried HARD through a lot of content, including some of the hardest ***in the game. While the fights are very challenging, there's always a couple jobs you can throw an idiot on and they don't have to do anything too complicated while you walk their happy *** across the finish line.

If I had to pick something in the current game, I think the most impressive things to me ATM are the super hard master trials (maybe there's only 1 right now?), St5 Prime weapons, and R30 Nyame/all Ody bosses V25 (easy to cheese, but not on Carbuncle).

While prime weapons/Aminon aren't actually all THAT skilled/difficult to get, it shows me that you have at least some social skills to be able to (probably) regularly do well in Sortie and (definitely) clear HM Aminon a bunch of times, which is no simple task. Prime AG are quite uncommon on Carbuncle, to the point where I still turn my head when I see one and I'm surprised, even a couple years into the release of them.

I don't think being ML50 makes a difference either way.

They can be ML50 and be great, or they can be ML50 and not know basic mechanics.

I can't say I've ever seen an ML40+ in ambu gear though, that definitely screams "bought account" or something wrong.

Maybe just the group have been lucky to play with, but seen and played with several people that play tank, dd, support and mage all on the same character, or multiple characters, very effectively.

As in doing sortie on a tank and knowing what to do and when, playing rng and being real good, playing mage and being real good. I on occasion play whm for example but don't pretend to be as good as the best whms.

Anyway for OP, I think playing the "hard" jobs is a good indication of skill and knowledge. For me those are tanks, whm, rdm, and some support like brd.

Brd can be hit and miss, you have uber career brds that do everything and you have "bards" that sing then want to afk and get annoyed at being told no, you have to do more.

But if they have v25 clears on tank, whm and rdm or sch, or even tank and a mage job, that's pretty top tier for me.

For sortie IMO it's more about gearing not really skill. Once you know the fights and have geared for them correctly, odds of going wrong are slim.

The niche jobs are niche, you don't see a lot of great rngs because you don't see many people that even play rng much, let alone know how to play it effectively.

Buy a new account after each ban, then tackle V25 to prove your strength and dedication. Clear Bumba V25, get banned again, then jump into Sortie or Nyzul with Tako and get banned once more — rinse and repeat until everyone recognizes you as one of the elites in our community, and you becomes someone’s favorite customer.

Vanilla onry.

If you plan on playing with them more than once, I'd say all that really matters is that they have a high school (or greater) reading comprehension and can take constructive criticism. Everything else is derivative from those, IMO.

How should SE represent it?

Well they shouldn't. You should represent it by being good, and encouraging/teaching others to also be good :)