Antidotes are very useful, actually. Status restoration items are on a different cooldown timer than potions, so using an antidote doesn't preclude using an X-potion if the situation calls for it. The only reason you wouldn't want to use an antidote thanks to the cooldown timer is if you wanted to use something like a Spine Drop instead. My healer appreciates it when I use antidotes too, since every cast of Esuna uses up a turn of the global cooldown that could be spent on something else. Not a big deal if I'm the only guy being poisoned during a fight against weak foes, but definitely a big deal if everyone in the party just got poisoned during a hectic boss-fight. If the goal is to "not cause trouble for the rest of the party", then antidotes are a very useful thing.
Antidotes are not useful. The gargoyle fight
in beta needed antidotes, sure, but they weren't that useful anyway because the item cooldown is not nearly as short as the time it took for the gargoyle to cast poison on you again. Antidotes see little use from 1-50, and a healer is much better than antidotes. There's not much use for them at all.
Why do you think alchemists were the crafting class to be laughed at back at launch? Because potions were quite useless then, and even now only the high level potions are usefulfor endgame raids, not for low level play.
The gargoyle is not an example of how the developers used game content to instruct players in how to play the game better. If it had been, what would the gargoyle have been teaching? How to use items that take too long to cooldown to be useful? I beat it in beta through Cure only, because when I used antidotes the item cooldown was not short enough to mitigate the next poison anyway.
There are guildhests, dungeons, class quests, job quests, and various story instances that teach you how to play your class. The problem here isn't that there's no game content to teach people how to play better. What crazygambit is asking for is game content that will teach one guy before dungeons happen how all the other classes play...and to keep teaching them before dungeons as you level up, given that classes get new abilities as they level.
But it's already available! This game content is known as dungeons.
Knowing stuff like "who has sleep magic", "what breaks sleep", "can this class use AoE attacks", and so on is very useful knowledge even at level 15. Leveling dungeons like Qarn, Cutter's Cry, Stone Vigil, and Aurum Vale are not easy dungeons. They only seem easy for people who are surrounded by a player-base that has done them hundreds of times. When I was first leveling up back in the first couple months of the game, we wiped a ton of times on those early game dungeons. Back before the Duty Roulette was implemented, most of the people were newbies challenging the dungeons at the minimum entry level, and were not propped up by experienced players coming in at the level synced maximum.
Useful, but you don't
need to know. When I played thaumaturge in a dungeon, I tell the party straight up that I am sleeping extra mobs. If they continued to punch slept mobs, then it became their responsibility and not mine. When I played scholar, in Cutters and Brayflox I would tell the party ahead of time that I don't have a cure for ailments, and to please try and avoid getting statuses.
The responsibility for smooth progression through a dungeon does not lie solely on one player. The exacting knowledge of what other classes do is not necessary for all dungeons from 1-50. Is it useful? Yes. Is it necessary? No.
In short, additional game content to teach single classes about other classes is not essential to completion of the game. Ultimately a player doesn't understand fully how the other classes play without playing those classes anyway.
I wiped a ton to Cutter's Cry and Aurum Vale too. But I didn't need to know the exact abilities of the tanks or dps to beat these dungeons. Would the knowledge of how other classes played been useful? Probably, but for dungeons, understanding the mechanics of bosses and handling pulls in moderation play a much more important role in completion than knowing what other classes do.
Anyways, I think your arguments are all over the place. You argue that players don't need to know the capabilities of their fellow party members, but then claim that there are insufficient tutorials for the game. You also claim that certain knowledge is "obvious", and presume that everyone in the endgame looks up stuff online (which isn't true). What exactly are you arguing for? You seem to be defending people's lack of knowledge by saying that it doesn't matter, then immediately lambasting the game for not teaching players better. Which is it?
You're not actually grasping my argument. I didn't claim there are insufficient tutorials for the game. I stated how the people who reached 50 and still don't know how to play the game will just not know how to play the game, with the implication that they skipped the tutorial text and mashed buttons and survived through echo, gear, and carries by other players. Those people who don't know how to play their classes, no amount of tutorials can help because they are simply not paying attention.
Certain knowledge becomes obvious after experimentation. It's possible to get through the game without using an item at all, so that's something that doesn't have to be known, but if you do use an item, the cooldown is readily apparent. Raise is not a spell that other characters need to be familiar with because it's not in their stable of abilities, so why should they be the ones worrying about the white mage's MP when that is the white mage's job? Focus on your own abilities, learn them inside out, perform to the best of your abilities, before worrying about how badly someone else is playing. That's common sense, no?
There is also knowledge that is actually obvious. You don't need a tutorial to teach you the green bar is your health. You don't need a tutorial to learn the chat box is a chat box. You don't need a tutorial to learn how to press start to get to the menu. It's the same reason you know clicking the red X button closes the window/program. You learned these elements through frequent gaming, and can translate the symbols into your experience in any game without a necessary tutorial.
There is a line between story play and endgame play, and that is why there is a distinction when it comes to necessary research for endgame raids. Usually the people who don't look up stuff for endgame are a burden to others because their style of play is learning through playing, they don't feel like looking things up, they don't want to spoil themselves, etc., but they waste a lot of time learning mechanics they could have laid out strategies for beforehand. Even parties that prepare have trouble clearing these instances. This is the point where the extra knowledge is essential.
But for 1-50? If you know your class, you can survive all that without ever knowing Raise costs a ridiculous amount MP. You can survive without knowing what the black mage rotations are, you don't need to know what the different monk stances are. You don't need to know that Scholar gets ailment cure later than White Mage does.
The dungeons themselves serve as the places where you learn party play and presumably observe the abilities of your allies. The social aspect (the MMO of MMORPG) provides the means by which you can become familiar with other classes, mechanics, and other activities. That's why asking for more game content to explain other classes doesn't make sense, because the mechanisms to learn about them already exist.
