Bad in what way? Role playing? Tanking? Healing? DPS? Crafting? Etc.

Most people are in the game to relax and have fun. That is the average player. Nothing bad about that.

It's the same as in other games / MMOs I have played. I have seen people playing for years and still being bad, hardly understanding the basics of their main class.

You just can't see who is on the other side of the screen, some might be unprepared, some might have just 1 arm, others might not care at all, while others are plain stupid and for them You are the noob, while they spam light bow attacks on a magsorc

You mean average trial or PVP players... Reasons for playing the game are many such as community, housing, colliections, trials, PVP, achievements and many others. As some people are new and others trying new aspects there is a learning curve and as said above most don't know about gear, food potions and such. Not everyone cares about beating hard content or parsing its a big world.

is this pvp related?

jcm2606 wrote: »

The lack of adequate preparation I feel is the core problem, but I also feel it works hand in hand with a lack of incentive to improve. Even if the game did a better job teaching and preparing players for late game, unless they get into the top content such as vet trials, achievement runs in vet dungeons, PvP, there's nothing to push players into improving themselves..

Exactly .. most players (ie. the majority) don't WANT to do 'phat lewt' grinds where the only object is to get loot to do content to get more loot to do content to get more loot .. ad nauseum.

Can't speak for PVP, I detest it with a passion and just wish there was one MMO where the developers don't pander to the PVP whiners and destroy the PVE game bit by bit .. er, wait, there is one such game, FFXIV where the devs don't even worry about PVE being 'unbalanced' as long as everyone is able to progress through the content while ENJOYING doing it .. ZOS could do with understanding that concept, alien though ti is to their narrow mindset of homogenizing everything to mediocrity.

As soon as I saw the post I knew who it was.

Maybe what you call "bad" is "average", and maybe it is okay that average players can't complete high tier content like you can? After all, would you want the average player to be able to complete vHoF HM?

With it being an Elder Scrolls game, it attracts players who are familiar with those games and their "play as you want" playstyle. Many new players assume it is a literal Skyrim Online. They can easily do the quests and overland zones with any sort of build, and the game doesn't teach them how to specialize in a role (with skills, gear, rotations) so they take those playstyles into dungeons, trials, and PvP.

So it isn't that they are "bad" players, it's just that they are unprepared and possibly only seeking to play the game the way that they want the same way that they have played the other Elder Scrolls games.

Because the game if extremely difficult to master if you want get past the 20-25k dps cliff. Keeping track of dots, rotations and then still being able to adhere to the strict 0.45 sec GCD the combat system demands is hard for most players.

Unless ZOS fundamentally changes this nothing will change. And honestly, they have given up any kind of support for midcore players with Morrowind.

Average players aren't bad. Average players are, well, average.

Thing is, many people are here primarily for the "Elder Scrolls" part, not so much for the "Online" part. They are not interested in the "Online" content as such, they're only doing it because devs are trying to force them into it with "incentives" (read: by locking stuff they do want, behind the content they don't want). Guess what happens when you force people into doing something they don't want to do? Yes, exactly: they will do it, but they won't put any effort into it.

Don't blame players. Blame the devs. After all those years, they could've finally realized that content-specific rewards are inconvenient for all participating parties. Casuals will be annoyed for having to run content they don't want to get a reward they do want; pros will be annoyed for having to play with casuals; forum mods will be annoyed for having to lock more threads like this; and so on.