Why is there so much animosity between raiders and RPers?

[Zer0]

I've never seen any negativity towards RP'ers. What I have seen negativity to is ERPers. That needs banning and swiftly. The entire argument is the only RP you ever seen is stupid ERP crud. That isn't roleplaying. That doesn't have a place here in this game. That needs to be banned. Regular RP is fine and isn't being touched. It's the ERP crowd that has infested the game and housing districts alike. They've become unavoidable really. They're truly a boil on the RP community. I welcome their banning. Long overdue.

[Kanehana]

Honestly never really saw that side of all this till today (but that's mostly because I just casually play the game, craft stuff, look pretty, and the pressure of raiding gives me anxiety.)

I've been following this uproar as well (all 70+ pages of that particular thread), seeing it pop on Twitter here and there, and skimmed Reddit threads. I don't know if it's a rivalry? It just seems like there's a general disdain for ERPers since, from word of mouth, they cause a lot of problems on an interpersonal level, infamous for spamming /shout messages everywhere, and the like. And even then, raiding and RPing can be done separately - if you're raiding, you're expected to show up on time and prepare yourself, and you could just... IDK, roleplay on your downtime? So I honestly think that whatever rivalry there is, is just a very small amount of cases.

But that's just my speculation. I'm still weirded out about why this is even happening, and the most we can do is just wait for an update or some clarification.

[Nafreyu]

Hold on, didn't you have another post asking for why X group had conflict with Y group?

I think if you have a confirmation bias for observing 'fights', you're gonna find what you're looking for. On any forum on the internet.

I recall you first mentioned Reddit. I mean... what else do you expect from that trash platform?

Please stop using that platform as a measure of the conduct or the behaviour between others in game. Observe and make your own informed opinions, and choose the circles you travel in.

[SecretIsland]

Hold on, didn't you have another post asking for why X group had conflict with Y group?

I think if you have a confirmation bias for observing 'fights', you're gonna find what you're looking for. On any forum on the internet.

I recall you first mentioned Reddit. I mean... what else do you expect from that trash platform?

Please stop using that platform as a measure of the conduct or the behaviour between others in game. Observe and make your own informed opinions, and choose the circles you travel in.

I understand it's a niche situation but I'm still curious why it happens. As you can see in these forums there are also people celebrating the RP PF ban as well, claiming that RPers lead to the loss of an Ultimate. I'm simply curious why they think so. Of course, these phenomena are limited to a subset of the community, but I would like to understand why so as to avoid it in the game as much as possible.

[Zer0]

Honestly never really saw that side of all this till today (but that's mostly because I just casually play the game, craft stuff, look pretty, and the pressure of raiding gives me anxiety.)

I've been following this uproar as well (all 70+ pages of that particular thread), seeing it pop on Twitter here and there, and skimmed Reddit threads. I don't know if it's a rivalry? It just seems like there's a general disdain for ERPers since, from word of mouth, they cause a lot of problems on an interpersonal level, infamous for spamming /shout messages everywhere, and the like. And even then, raiding and RPing can be done separately - if you're raiding, you're expected to show up on time and prepare yourself, and you could just... IDK, roleplay on your downtime? So I honestly think that whatever rivalry there is, is just a very small amount of cases.

But that's just my speculation. I'm still weirded out about why this is even happening, and the most we can do is just wait for an update or some clarification.

There has been a massive rise in the amount of ERP spam. Most cities is dominated by /shout of (18+) crap being done endlessly. Party Finders listing it. And housing districts on some servers infested with ERPers going into other peoples houses and ERPing. It's disgusting and vile and getting annoying to everyone. It's always existed but people used to keep it to themselves. Out of the path of regular people. In their own little linkshells and out of harms way. And it was fine for everyone, if I didn't see it it's not a problem to me sort of thing. But now it is in visibility of everyone so it is a problem to me. And I'm glad they're cutting off the head of snake so to speak.

[Zer0]

I understand it's a niche situation but I'm still curious why it happens. As you can see in these forums there are also people celebrating the RP PF ban as well, claiming that RPers lead to the loss of an Ultimate. I'm simply curious why they think so. Of course, these phenomena are limited to a subset of the community, but I would like to understand why so as to avoid it in the game as much as possible.

The hardcore crowd just likes to blame anything and everything casual. The real reality isn't that "RPers" caused the lack of ultimate. But development time in general is limited and they cut what has the lowest general audience view. It's pretty simple really. If you have limited development time you're going to cut what the lowest amount of people see. And the hardcore crowd is the same in literally every single game. They have the exact same mentality in every single MMO ever. Since the dawn of time. So most experienced developers know that and ignore them.

[Khetz]

I've been thinking about this for a while, trying to get my words together. In the end I think I'm best served by staying out of any RP-VS-Content politics; it shouldn't matter what you like to do. We're all paying our monthly sub to play the game how we want to.

Ultimately, though, there just isn't a comparable system to PF for RPers. Fellowships, Linkshells, FCs, and any outside forums have to be joined in advance to be effective--and they have membership limits; PF is used because anyone can post and anyone can see at any time with no applications or searching. Shout Chat? Spamming chat channels /is/ an offense against ToS and also gets very messy quickly while people are trying to have actual conversations in a global channel.

[Penthea]

One thing I don't understand though is the animosity between raiders and RPers apparently.

Most really don't care about what the other is doing, and a lot of players do both. Don't mistake vocal minorities for representatives of the entire group.

However I will add tropes that can explain why there is some friction:

"Raiders are elitist and love to show off whenever possible, even if it means putting other people down when it's not even needed"

"Rpers are creeps who get up to some really weird sexual stuff online. Some even ask for gil for their...services. Ew."

While there are people that the above quotes do apply to, the truth is they're a minority. Most raiders just want to do challenging content, perform well enough to feel pride in it and care little for what non-raiders do. Most rpers just want to meet other rpers and have fun creating stories and events without being dodgy about it. The problem with vocal minorities is they are loud so they're easy to spot, which makes it easy to mistake them for being a larger group than they are given those who aren't vocal keep to themselves and therefore appear far less visible.

Some people don't consider rp to be content because there isn't any specific rp content unlike lets say raiding that uses raid specific content...but what these people fail to understand that just because the content is player generated doesn't make it not content. If someone is logging in specifically to rp, then they are still logging in to engage in something that this game provides...which makes it content. SE may not be creating the rp themselves, but they are providing players with the tools to create rp content.

Almost everyone knows raiding can be a lot of work, especially in the competitive section of the pve community. However good rp also takes a lot of work. People dedicated to rp spend a lot of time constructing back stories for their characters, they research lore to make sure their character fits into the world and so they can effectively rp with others, they work in teams to create events that can have big arching stories that link with player back stories and other events...and all this needs a lot of planning to be done well, and they spend a lot of time furnishing housing to create unique areas of the game specifically designed for their rp goals.

I have a lot of respect for both groups but I suppose it's because I have done both. I used to be a hardcore raider in WoW so I understand the work that goes in to being a top tier player in this game. I have done a lot of rp in other games, and helped to create a rp event for my fc (literally took weeks of planning) so I understand the work that goes into that as well.

Furthermore every group has bad eggs. Every single group be they pve, pvp, hardcore, casual, rp, a mix...there are meanspirited people everywhere. There are creeps everywhere. That's just life.

No community in the mmo genre attracts more bad eggs than the other, they merely attract different brands of it. For example raiding attracts divas who love nothing more than to gloat and bully and use their raid experience to do that, rp attracts weirdos hoping to use "it's not real it's just rp" as an excuse to get away with being an awful and/or creepy person, some casual players use "casual" as a crutch to get away with doing as little as possible, some pvpers genuinely believe anyone who doesn't pvp is a sore loser coward and laugh at people about it.

Every group is as bad and good as the other, just for different reasons sometimes.

There isn't a massive rift between rpers and raiders. Most are just ordinary people who just want to have fun in the game and don't pay much attention to those who do content they're not interested in. Those who are fighting each other are either enjoying creating spite, or are trying to defend themselves against stereotypes that aren't as prevalent as some may imply.

The reason why there appears to be a rift right now is due to the actions of some GMs enforcing rules that seemingly do not exist that hinder rpers. Which brought on the debate as to whether PF is only for combat content or not...despite no official information anywhere saying that it's only for combat. It's a hot topic because it has put the accounts of many players in danger so a huge number of people are going to have strong opinions about this.

And finally...rp events can have combat so...just because a group is advertising for rp doesn't automatically mean they have no intention of doing combat during rp. The rp event that we organised for my fc mostly took place in dungeons, and we were synced to minimum ilvl.

[LisSquid]

In my experience, in games other than this, rpers and raiders were one and the same. It was always the person highly invested in their character that wanted to slay the biggest, and baddest dragon. Taking home a new top, title, or mount to show off at the pub for IC night was very incentivizing for that entire community. Same with PvP. Hell, rpPvp servers on WoW were a sight to behold back in the day, or even further back in the free-for-all of Ultima Online.

FF14 kind of has toxic causuality which brushes against the classic toxic elitism for one of the most volatile environments for discussions about the game. It's a fascinating ecosystem.

[Ralph2449]

As someone who is very new to the world of MMOs, I'm very lost

Very understandable, for many of us who have played many mmorpgs we can sometimes see some patterns occurring which lead to the game changing for the worst(Based on our preferences obviously).

Now if you ve played other mmorpgs like WoW for example you see what happens when a dev team focuses heavily on high end content and treats casuals as 2nd class citizens, what it does to the game and even worse what it does to the community of said game. In WoW for example the community is one of the worst and that has been caused due to years of bad decisions that focused on high end heavily to the point the community believes anyone who doesnt have mythic/m+/arena rating achievements is "bad", "their opinion doesnt matter" and they see casual and solo content even challenging solo content as "inferior" and "irrelevant" not deserving of decent gear rewards. The mentality is so bad that it has lead the devs that focus on high end to strip away all good rewards from casual/solo content because the high end players complained they had to play the rest of the game instead of just raidlog only, and in the latest expansion because of that the devs couldnt think what rewards to give casuals so they gave us some irrelevant, timegated ridiculous grinds that dont even give player power.

Based on that experience and knowledge I would guess many including myself wouldnt want to see FF14 go through the same path and sadly that path begins by focusing more on the high end which is why people are very defensive when they see high end players complaining and demanding more focus on said high end content, kind of a slippery slope.