The Forum Community - in your opinion.

In some ways, I find the forums to be more communicative and coherent than most players in-game.
In other ways, I find the forums to be like a lucid dream after watching a psychological thriller in a foreign language without subtitles.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

The Reddit page is insanely antagonistic to anything that isn't a meme shitpost.
I've never seen another Reddit page with such an overwhelming amount of heavily downvoted posts, it's so common to see totally normal threads sit at like 50-% upvotes.
It's truly baffling and feels like an alternate reality to some extent I even doubt most people there even play the game because holy shit.

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My partner made a really nice drawing of my character once and I thought I'd share it there and they downvoted it so hard I think I lost all my accumulated karma. They claimed it was traced or a modified screenshot. I literally saw how it looked in progress, from sketch to finished, but they were all so certain that it was too good to be a real drawing. I refuse to back there after seeing such awful negative behaviour.

As for the forums here, it's also antagonistic, but much more elitism and demanding of certain behaviour in-game. People talk big here but are probably dead silent in duties. Harmless suggestions get shot down, and the only threads that pass 2-3 pages are about tank pulls, parsing, or trolls that people won't ignore. There's still plenty of normal people, but it's still a cesspool.

https://i.imgflip.com/5ll3tx.jpg

For the most part, I'd say the forum is actually pretty decent. I don't agree with everyone but that's really to be expected. I will say that it really doesn't feel like many people actually use the forum since, for a game with such a large player base, the vast majority of traffic here is generated by a very small number of names.

The one bit of the forum community I don't, and probably won't ever, understand are the people who basically do nothing but complain about the game, the devs, the rest of the player base, etc. Criticism is good, and no one should ever be 100% positive all the time, but there's a few people who seem for some reason attached at the hip to a game they literally seem to hate. I know it seems trite to just say "Maybe you should just move to another game" or "Maybe FF14 just isn't for you" but I struggle to find any other response to that sort of mindset. If actually playing the game causes you so much pain, frustration and annoyance that your only release is to come to the forums to complain about it, maybe you really should just find another game. If you really do believe the devs straight up lie to your face constantly and that the rest of the player base just consists of drooling, braindead idiots who are so bad they're actively choosing to ruin your fun then maybe FF14 really isn't just the game for you.

Oh, and the forums could absolutely use more active engagement and proactive moderation by the community management and development sides of things. There's really no question at all about that.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

I prefer a good old fashioned message board to things like discord or twitter.

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Same, but I've also been using them since I was a kid, so I might be biased or set in my ways. I only use discord for PMs mostly, and the occasional voice chat. Not actual discussion, like with a community.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

https://i.imgflip.com/5ll3tx.jpg

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I think a lot of complaints surrounding the forums are exaggerated. I'll rarely complain about it myself, except when I think it doesn't get enough attention from SE, or their community representatives - that and moderation, I should say.

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Originally Posted by Jadedsins

acting like the input they give should matter just as much as JP. This forum is pretty much proof that I hope this company does not listen to our feedback.

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What a sad way of thinking. "I happen to disagree with some people here, so I hope the devs won't listen to the global fanbase just to spite them, even though there might a good feedback".

Anyway, that being aside... Do we even know if they processed the jp feedback? Because there's a different between "only listen" and "doing it". Maybe they communicate better with the jp forums, but does the devs give the feedback a thought? Because honestly, I don't really see it in the game aside from some big feedback like the missing viera/hrothgar gender (regardless if this means good or bad).

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Originally Posted by Kozh

What a sad way of thinking. "I happen to disagree with some people here, so I hope the devs won't listen to the global fanbase just to spite them, even though there might a good feedback".

Anyway, that being aside... Do we even know if they processed the jp feedback? Because there's a different between "only listen" and "doing it". Maybe they communicate better with the jp forums, but does the devs give the feedback a thought? Because honestly, I don't really see it in the game aside from some big feedback like the missing viera/hrothgar gender (regardless if this means good or bad).

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Like 10 years ago I had asked how they handle feedback, so old info maybe not true anymore who knows but, they said that they collect feedback from all the forums and go over it and that it's a time consuming process. They as well did hire someone a while ago who had said their purpose was to translate feedback.

I think the greatest issue you'd have with our (non-Japanese) feedback and Japanese feedback is there is no need to translate. So it's just easier to collect and understand.

As for taking the feedback in, I do think they do, but you have to look at the stuff with like... a six month minimum window. The team plans a lot in advance so things are not "what should we add for tomorrow's patch guys? Oh- I see this feedback, we should do that!" lol. Also there is a mix of players sometimes don't know what they ask with "that content wasn't designed for you and so that's why you don't like it" (like Ultimate isn't made for the average FFXIV user in mind) or a dev who is just hoping if you give the idea a bit to ferment it'll stick.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

What a sad way of thinking. "I happen to disagree with some people here, so I hope the devs won't listen to the global fanbase just to spite them, even though there might a good feedback".

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you figured out the "husband" and "wives" gimmick whole gimmick, be contrarian and then cry wolf about it :P

I wonder if "he" got banned, considering "he" said that "she" had no interest in the forums anymore in a post like a week ago? and now "she" just happens to come back when "he" stops posting completely and just like before, they type exactly the same down to the littlest quirks
miashino I think mentioned those "two" doing the very same thing "they" are doing on here on other websites, too, but I personally haven't looked it up because I don't care, I just think this whole spiel is odd and weird, tbh

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

It does have moderation, the issue is what they choose to moderate.
You can get banned for like two weeks for saying '' wtf is wrong with you '' to someone who's being racist, but the racist person won't get banned if they're being sneaky about it and aren't being racist against a specific person.
That's why a lot of people get away with it on the forum, because they're not being personal about it ( most of the time at least )..

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Or maybe you're the type who sees and cries RACISM when it really isn't there.

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Originally Posted by Rinhi

you figured out the "husband" and "wives" gimmick whole gimmick, be contrarian and then cry wolf about it :P

I wonder if "he" got banned, considering "he" said that "she" had no interest in the forums anymore in a post like a week ago? and now "she" just happens to come back when "he" stops posting completely and just like before, they type exactly the same down to the littlest quirks
miashino I think mentioned those "two" doing the very same thing "they" are doing on here on other websites, too, but I personally haven't looked it up because I don't care, I just think this whole spiel is odd and weird, tbh

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This forum is turning into some convoluted TV series with all these characters.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

This forum is turning into some convoluted TV series with all these characters.

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if it'd at least be an entertaining one I wouldn't mind :P

They're largely dead. Very little actual gameplay discussion.

Constantly abused by a few people necro'ing ancient 6 month - 2 year old threads.

All in all, it's one of the worst game forums I've seen in a while (IMHO)

It's the best circus I've ever experienced!

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Agree with this ftmp. Think it’s really really sad that they’ve just abandoned their own forums for twitter and reddit, which are just cesspools of toxicity. Twitter also has a much more vocal minority crowd so when niche things get requested there, they’re much more heard and recognized which sometimes leads to many of us getting the short end of the stick when it comes to certain things. SE certainly has questionable priorities when it comes to that.

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Reminds me of BioWare, and other game devs have probably gone this route. BioWare eventually got rid of their very active forums after years of wrestling with their own community and some of their moderators even becoming memes on 4chan. S-E seems to have gone the route of just neglecting this place rather than engage with it. The only reason it's not shut down is likely due to them seeing some value to the JP forums.

The main subreddit is basically valueless. Gamefaqs is like a less-informed version of these forums. 4chan is just waifu pic trading. This is the only decent forum I've found for this game.