I don't wanna be excellent

11 Oct, 2025

Final Fantasy 14 doesn't have "damage meters." Or, rather, it doesn't provide for them in any official capacity, nor does it have a dev-approved mod scene that produced one like WoW did. It certainly does have damage meters in the sense of people running parses on their output, which is technically against TOS but what do I care, unless they're using parse results to be jerks to others in-game, at which point I think they should be launched into the sun.

It would be easy to think, given that intro, that this is a post about someone being a dick to me because of a parse, but it isn't, actually.

I just ran an Expert roulette (for the non-FF14 crowd, a daily dungeon run of current-level content), as DPS; Ninja, which I don't play very often, if you're curious.

FF14 dungeon groups are small: a mere 4 people (1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS). There is something about doing them with strangers when I queue as DPS, however, that trips some problem switch in my head about shit, fueled by a lot of different conflicting factors both internal and sociocultural, but it goes something like this:

• We start by asking: "Am I pulling my weight?"
• Lacking hard data (i.e. damage meters) I look for other indicators
• None of those indicators are actually useful for answering this, so in absence of data my anxiety takes over
• "I must not be" and thinking that the other people in my group think I'm a loser and are complaining about me to each other

This is, and I say this with full self-awareness, crazytown shit. There is absolutely no logical reason whatsoever to think 3 strangers are devoting any mental cycles to even thinking about me at all, let alone thinking specific things about me.

But it's never that easy:

For starters, when I run dungeons with friends and we have a rando in our group who isn't doing too well, I definitely will complain on voice chat if it's a serious problem! Not to the person (unless it's like... so egregious that's unavoidable, which happens almost never), but to vent my frustration... but the problem is we so often understand what strangers do (or might do) through the lens of our own behavior. So, in my head, I'm always in danger of being That Guy to someone else, even if I'd never hear them say so¹.

A much bigger issue, however, is that the consistent drum beat of 9.5 years of therapy was how frequently I start from the position of "you are bad/have no worth" right at the beginning of any activity/interaction and this is no exception. The feeling that I have to work extra hard to prove that I have the right to even be there at all, that I have to make sure people are happy with my performance so they don't abandon or hurt me, is very, very powerful for me.

Perhaps a little less seriously, but still impactful: I do want to be "good" at what I'm doing, in a game. I'm never going to be ZOMG Top DPS in FF14; that requires more work than I am willing to put in. I'm rounding the corner to 50 and those days are over. But I pay attention to mechanics, I try to find efficient and effective ways to play my job/class, and so forth. Again, though, this is predicated on the idea that I need to be "useful."

On some level this isn't entirely bad. I think it's actually healthy, when you're doing a cooperative activity with strangers, to give it a good effort and try to participate effectively, for whatever definition of "effectively" is appropriate to what you're doing. Or maybe not "healthy," but definitely courteous, and I actually do try to be courteous with people, for "energy you put into the world is what you get back" reasons.

And I could probably "fix" this problem by giving up and running a parse myself, so I'd have hard data instead of no info, but... I don't think that solves the core problem and would instead create a new set of problems, where if I'm behind the other DPSer (or worse) I would start torturing myself over it and becoming increasingly self-critical. So "fix" probably isn't the right word here, either.

In truth, though, I think the "solution," insofar as it's possible that there even is one, is this:

I don't owe anyone excellence.

I don't. You don't. Nobody does. I can show up to a dungeon and do an extremely mid job and absolutely no one would be damaged in any meaningful way. In fact I could show up and do absolutely shit DPS and as long as we finish the dungeon at all, I did my job.

But in co-op online gaming spaces, I think we have convinced ourselves that we are owed other people's excellence at all times. That if an MMO random group DPS isn't doing THE MAX POSSIBLE DPS A HUMAN CAN ACHIEVE then they are without worth and wasting everyone's most valuable resource, Time™.

And we're not! We aren't, folks. It's fine to be disappointed when someone isn't doing as well as you want, because that's your emotions and that's life and we don't have a lot of control over what, how, or even when we Feel Things. But that person doesn't owe you fuck all.

I think I need to work on internalizing this for myself more. And it's hard! I sometimes play with folks who really are Super Good DPSers, and even when it's friends I trust, this stuff can kick in, because I want to be As Good As Everyone Else, and if I get worried that I'm not, this exact mental spiral happens even without strangers getting involved.

If you've spent most of your life thinking you have to "make up" for the mere fact of your existence, even with people who care about you, it can take a serious toll. I've spent the better part of the last ten years working on that, pretty explicitly, and I still slip and worry my friends secretly find me tiring or stupid, all the time.

You don't have to, though. It is okay to simply be here, and it is a kindness to yourself to realize that being excellent is an above and beyond, thing. It's okay to show up and do the job and maybe not even be terribly good at it.