Do you ever think about how people play games to escape yet...

I just play the game, bro. The only time I say no to real life crap bleeding into the game is when people start trying to bring in their politics and social issues.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

There's a massive crowd of people on FF14 that seem determined to bring real life aspects to the game?

A huge part of ffxiv's culture is gpose, but there's such an obession over it that it's almost like being on instagram. I haven't looked at my insta since the pandemic ended, but I was recently thinking and it just hit me that FFXIV is basically virtual insta at this point.

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Did you forget about the 2 Ms in MMO? I wonder what goes through people's minds when they play online games.

I don't know.

I play to have fun?

I talk with friends on Discord, on Discord I don't have some random anime profile pic with cat ears, I have a picture of myself when I was on vacation last summer.
I don't use a voice changer to make my words sound like 'nya' and make purring sounds no I just use my own voice, my real voice.
I also don't talk about myself in third person, I always use first person.
I sometimes take pictures when funny stuff happens (in real life), then send that to my friends, have a laugh about it but other then that also just talking about our days against each other, etc.
Few months ago I also meet up with some and soon I'll go visit them again too!

So yeah, I just play to have fun. I enjoy my life, I work really hard too and that's why I like games to wind down and have fun and spend more time with friends.
And my friends, they are everything to me, I love them. There's nothing I wouldn't do for them.


Maybe I just didn't understand the intend of your post?
I just am myself and play to have fun (and make new friends, connect with other friends). :>

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

There's a massive crowd of people on FF14 that seem determined to bring real life aspects to the game?

A huge part of ffxiv's culture is gpose, but there's such an obession over it that it's almost like being on instagram. I haven't looked at my insta since the pandemic ended, but I was recently thinking and it just hit me that FFXIV is basically virtual insta at this point.

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I used to be on instagram. It's not the same.

Besides, gpose is my escape.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FpL6K69aUAAQcDq?format=jpg

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Originally Posted by Caddo

Lmao what is that monstrosity in that picture? Thanks for the good laugh.

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Sad thing is this isn't even that bad compared to the others.

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Originally Posted by FlatLined

Sad thing is this isn't even that bad compared to the others.

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I've legit seen some stuff made for Hrothgar that I wish I could unsee.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

I've legit seen some stuff made for Hrothgar that I wish I could unsee.

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Imagins stuff what Hrothgar stuff it could be people make...

:rolleyes:;):mad::eek::cool:

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Originally Posted by Hurlstone

Imagins stuff what Hrothgar stuff it could be people make...

:rolleyes:;):mad::eek::cool:

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Would you like to turn your character into a bunch of German Regensburgers? Because that's a thing.

Key thing that i noticed on reflecting real life is always the steps they take to remove Gil from the economy.
It doesn't hurt those who already have it, but like IRL it hurts those who don't have it and makes it harder for them to get it.
The changes to the teleport prices being a big example of it.

Never won the lottery IRL? Dont worry, you wont win the Jumbo Cactpot and thats not even a meaningful amount of currency AND is a requirement for an achievement, totally locked behind RNG, The devs show a lack of understanding of probability as well with this with their "Keep playing, you will win in time." I have played every week since the release of Goldsaucer, this statement is a lie lol.

People play games to escape reality, not be reminded how how bad their luck is or how the wealthy stay ahead while the rest do not.

Just a couple of examples that id love too see changed but wont hold my breath XD

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

Would you like to turn your character into a bunch of German Regensburgers?

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Would it have to be pork? I prefer chicken sausage, particularly with herbs and green onions.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

Would it have to be pork? I prefer chicken sausage, particularly with herbs and green onions.

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Pretty sure it's ground-up behemoth. You'd have to ask the mod maker. Whatever it is, it's definitely not made with pork nor chicken.

And if you think anything green is in there, you'll be incredibly disappointed.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

Pretty sure it's ground-up behemoth. You'd have to ask the mod maker. Whatever it is, it's definitely not made with pork nor chicken.

And if you think anything green is in there, you'll be incredibly disappointed.

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If I bring my own Behemoth, I'll bet I can have green bits.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Or, hear me out, those people not doing the content elephant be doing the content even if it had a broader range and more content released.



These people are only here to mod the game and play second life. That's it.


Also, can I just say I don't understand why mods like these are so popular? They look awful. I'm not going to say the current models and textures we have are amazing HD masterpieces, but almost every gpose modder I see just has their character full of terrible looking flat textured models.

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Only thing I'm gonna say here.

Stating that all people who use mods are just here to play Second Life is not true at all. While yes, there are some who enjoy the passive side of the game, there are many who also run Ultimates & Savage, achievement/title hunt, pvp, lead FCs...I get the club scene is huge but it's not really fair to blanket everyone under that assumptions when some don't even touch nightclubs with a ten foot pole and are just using mods to further their own character customization.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

*Old man croaky voice* "Back in my day!!"

Escapism always existed. People just failed to learn how to deal with it. If it's not videogames, it was roleplaying, if not roleplaying, it was reading and writing crap. Even before the internet became a major thing, you had people utterly lost on television shows. Now, are we only going to blame the younger generations for it, or have the older generations do a trash job at teaching them better?

^^ just saying, older peeps: stop blaming youngsters' issues only on the internet and start looking into who failed to properly teach them the values you want them to exhibit~

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You will never experience ever how things were before and why MMORPG games are dead with only two main games destroying themselves (ffxiv/wow).

Back in early 2000's MMO games were something so unique and every experience special. Now if you reach level 90 nobody cares because it's braindead easy.

Now we have an avalanche of people trying to emulate their "real lifes" while catfishing left and right with nothing but lewd content or sex humor 24/7.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

You will never experience ever how things were before and why MMORPG games are dead with only two main games destroying themselves (ffxiv/wow).

Back in early 2000's MMO games were something so unique and every experience special. Now if you reach level 90 nobody cares because it's braindead easy.

Now we have an avalanche of people trying to emulate their "real lifes" while catfishing left and right with nothing but lewd content or sex humor 24/7.

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Dungeon Finder won't change anything, they said. Server communities will still be a thing, they said. Eh, not like it matters considering "catfishing" has been a thing since the 2000s except everyone called them a ____ and moved on looking for a healer in shout. Can't go back to 2000s era internet when everyone is ready to weaponize the ToS and dogpiling people based on the latest moral crusade, lmao.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

Dungeon Finder won't change anything, they said. Server communities will still be a thing, they said. Eh, not like it matters considering "catfishing" has been a thing since the 2000s except everyone called them a ____ and moved on looking for a healer in shout. Can't go back to 2000s era internet when everyone is ready to weaponize the ToS and dogpiling people based on the latest moral crusade, lmao.

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Even weaponizing the ToS wasn't as big a problem in the olden days. The problem is that companies cheaped out (I think SE might be the only major one left at this point that really looks into every report by hand instead of just blindly going off - and sometimes, based on anecdotes regarding WoW players, apparently solely off - of how many people submitted a similar report against a particular account) and defaulted to automatically actioning everyone who gets a large number of reports against them in a short period, without regard for whether those reports are even founded, essentially handing over even ToS enforcement to a vote kick style process.

That actually goes beyond moral arguments (which, judging by the amount of toxic chat that persists in MMOs, have really not wielded much power) and even becomes a literal competitive tool.

A big example is WoW Classic, where the return of competition for world raid boss tags (Retail world bosses meanwhile are shared credit, like Hunts) resulted in a complete and sad joke on some worlds as instead of competing normally, guilds (armed with 40 people in attendance, more than enough to trigger a suspension) would simply mass report the competing guild's raid, forcing them to spend their time filing ban appeals with Blizzard while the report abusers got to kill the dragon unopposed (keeping in mind that world bosses in older WoW tend to respawn about as often as S ranks here, unlike retail where they respawn quickly but have a weekly gate on rewards).

It's a good thing SE does still review reports by hand, one can only imagine what Hunt culture would be like by now if they did things this same way.

Server communities eroding has been a very real problem on the other hand, though: every time SE has opened cross server barriers to an activity, it has turned out much the same as WoW, where multiple diverse communities were ultimately telescoped into a single hivemind, normally under the control of the most serious and hardcore players (to return to the original topic, the kind that often even attempt to bring even more onerous RL aspects into the game, such as being expected to have a work-like mindset to group events) thus leaving more laid back players with less and less power, their arguments dismissed as "Complaining To Complain" by the dominant group. And yet, we get steadily more cross-server XYZs anyway ...

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

Maybe, but considering how most social media has harmful effects on peoples mental health, is that really something you want to emulate?

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so you mean mmo never have harmful effects on people's mental health before?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

Dungeon Finder won't change anything, they said. Server communities will still be a thing, they said. Eh, not like it matters considering "catfishing" has been a thing since the 2000s except everyone called them a ____ and moved on looking for a healer in shout. Can't go back to 2000s era internet when everyone is ready to weaponize the ToS and dogpiling people based on the latest moral crusade, lmao.

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DF and any matchmaking ruined everything in MMORPGS.
The whole point of getting into an MMORPG was to explore and create communities, discover new ways to play , seek for help, be the best guild or make parties to go hunt a strong foe and not getting your hand hold without any risks to the point that you don't even need to interact with anyone in order to beat the game.

Most people here don't even know how it feels to wait or scout for a priest player to ask for some buffs in order to make the dungeon a bit easy.
Here 23 years later what we have now?

-Click on menu
-Click on Duty finder
-Click on the dungeon I want
-Wait between 5-15 minutes.
-Teleport in to the dungeon from any point.
- o/
-o7
-The only risk it's our healer/tank dc or felt to sleep.
-Mobs don't drop anything, not even money or experience
-Straight corridors, item level doesn't matter, party composition neither.
-Dungeon ends, nobody sees each other in their life's again.
-Repeat.

Then I suppose this is what "modern gamers" wants, instant gratification and rewards even for the minimum effort.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

You will never experience ever how things were before and why MMORPG games are dead with only two main games destroying themselves (ffxiv/wow).

Back in early 2000's MMO games were something so unique and every experience special. Now if you reach level 90 nobody cares because it's braindead easy.

Now we have an avalanche of people trying to emulate their "real lifes" while catfishing left and right with nothing but lewd content or sex humor 24/7.

---

First: I don't care to.

Second: I was young, WoW didn't exist so much less did FF14, and I remember people ERP'd in Second Life (notorious for its sims-like content) and yes even bleeding Runescape of all things.

It's really not anything new. Older people are just reacting so strongly because it's far more widespread now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

Then I suppose this is what "modern gamers" wants, instant gratification and rewards even for the minimum effort.

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I expect the problem is that usual bugaboo, real life.

Most decent people would probably LIKE to have a more vibrant community, especially when they realize how much matchmaking enables poor player behavior (because the likelihood of being seen again by the same people, or even actually being remembered when you are, is low; not to mention blacklisting is not honored by DF which ... yeah, but there are reasons, especially when groups as large as Alliance Raids and Frontlines need to be supported).

The problem is not so much minimum effort though - it is minimum time. People tend to have less free time as they get older, while the amount of time needed to learn an equally complex task soars, if one can even reach the same level at it as those starting younger at all (example: Chess). For many folks, and especially so among older school gamers, gaming is first and foremost a hobby: a lifelong passion, not some kind of sport-esque career to be expected to drop in favor of the younger and spryer as age and RL take their toll.

Heck, for that matter, even today's younger set struggle to find time for hobbies, what with all the stuff they are pressured to have-to-do, especially if they want to get into a decent college and not end up a freight jockey or customer servant for the rest of their life.

Then you have the people who are very privileged in terms of free time (such as WFH workers and people who were on the bonus unemployment during the pandemic) who seem to expect that others need to magically rearrange RL to have the same amount of free time, or bow out because of their "inexperience" or "not wanting to put in effort" "dragging down" the temporally advantaged player. Isn't that at least a little unreasonable?

Objectively: the main lament I have with DF is that it tends to necessitate that nearly all content be very mechanically bland and/or jobs be super samey, because you can't count on a group having a particular mix of jobs. Failure to concede this necessity leads to the donnybrook that dungeons at WoW Cataclysm launch were, and I expect this is the elephant-in-the-room that is why essentially no MMO publisher since has attempted to supply advanced matchmade content.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

DF and any matchmaking ruined everything in MMORPGS.
The whole point of getting into an MMORPG was to explore and create communities, discover new ways to play , seek for help, be the best guild or make parties to go hunt a strong foe and not getting your hand hold without any risks to the point that you don't even need to interact with anyone in order to beat the game.

Most people here don't even know how it feels to wait or scout for a priest player to ask for some buffs in order to make the dungeon a bit easy.
Here 23 years later what we have now?

-Click on menu
-Click on Duty finder
-Click on the dungeon I want
-Wait between 5-15 minutes.
-Teleport in to the dungeon from any point.
- o/
-o7
-The only risk it's our healer/tank dc or felt to sleep.
-Mobs don't drop anything, not even money or experience
-Straight corridors, item level doesn't matter, party composition neither.
-Dungeon ends, nobody sees each other in their life's again.
-Repeat.

Then I suppose this is what "modern gamers" wants, instant gratification and rewards even for the minimum effort.

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Don't forget PvP battlepasses!
...yech...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

Don't forget PvP battlepasses!
...yech...

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Honestly, the battle pass format has its merits, as long as it's not the typical cash grab battle pass you see in so many games (where sometimes you literally can't even finish the battlepass through actual gameplay even if you are an unemployed Monster-fueled teenager, after a certain point you HAVE to pay - and often pay plenty - to mathematically get enough points).

XIV's implementation is not monetized, so there's that.

It means that rewards are granted through sustained interest and participation, which (ideally) helps maintain said interest at all levels (and if anything XIV struggles to encourage player participation in PvP at all outside of the small cadre at the top of Feast and now CC - who mostly to my understanding stop playing once they've secured their berths). The more you play, the more you get.

Contrast a system that's heavily made to benefit winners (like the OLD XIV PvP system, where once you farmed enough easy-to-accumulate wolf marks from Frontlines to get the glams you wanted, you were done, because anything "special" was exclusive for top Feast players and frankly, apparently even if you had the moxie, the system was ridiculously gamed at that level anyways).

Now you have a rewards system where only a tiny few players per year get anything of note and everyone else gets peanuts. Once players realize they're not going to be in line for the championship in such a system, they tend to quit. Most have had their fill of the actual gameplay by that point, so they're looking at all grind, no rewards. The few remaining "gold tier" or whatever players start to find they can barely play even if they want to, because there's no longer enough closely rated players to pop queues in reasonable time (they're all clustered at the champ level and at the ultra casual sandlot level that doesn't really care about winning, and based on the experiences of friends in multiple games, this does seem tied to the reward system, not to any specific game).

Summary, monetized battle passes are slimy, but non-monetized battle passes may actually be a good way to encourage continued participation outside the champ level, and XIV desperately does need this.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

DF and any matchmaking ruined everything in MMORPGS.
The whole point of getting into an MMORPG was to explore and create communities, discover new ways to play , seek for help, be the best guild or make parties to go hunt a strong foe and not getting your hand hold without any risks to the point that you don't even need to interact with anyone in order to beat the game.

Most people here don't even know how it feels to wait or scout for a priest player to ask for some buffs in order to make the dungeon a bit easy.
Here 23 years later what we have now?

-Click on menu
-Click on Duty finder
-Click on the dungeon I want
-Wait between 5-15 minutes.
-Teleport in to the dungeon from any point.
- o/
-o7
-The only risk it's our healer/tank dc or felt to sleep.
-Mobs don't drop anything, not even money or experience
-Straight corridors, item level doesn't matter, party composition neither.
-Dungeon ends, nobody sees each other in their life's again.
-Repeat.

Then I suppose this is what "modern gamers" wants, instant gratification and rewards even for the minimum effort.

---

Filing this under "person who never had to deal with two or three guilds controlling the entirety of end-game content and preventing you from ever playing on their level if you didn't kiss the ring or pay your tithe."
Classic WoW's clique issue is something the nostalgia-obsessed never want to remember, even though it was a massive part of many of those servers. If you weren't part of the club, you didn't get to play the game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simple_Barghest

Filing this under "person who never had to deal with two or three guilds controlling the entirety of end-game content and preventing you from ever playing on their level if you didn't kiss the ring or pay your tithe."
Classic WoW's clique issue is something the nostalgia-obsessed never want to remember, even though it was a massive part of many of those servers. If you weren't part of the club, you didn't get to play the game.

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Fun fact, the guy who made HNM (rare spawn boss monsters) in XI such a pain to camp because he instaclaimed the mob with instavoke scripts and addons co-created Discord! Food for thought.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

Fun fact, the guy who made HNM (rare spawn boss monsters) in XI such a pain to camp because he instaclaimed the mob with instavoke scripts and addons co-created Discord! Food for thought.

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I'm simultaneously confused as fuck considering this is trivia I'm not sure how to verify, and yet... That doesn't seem out-of-place at all considering Discord's inherent leanings to clique behavior.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sililos

Key thing that i noticed on reflecting real life is always the steps they take to remove Gil from the economy.
It doesn't hurt those who already have it, but like IRL it hurts those who don't have it and makes it harder for them to get it.
The changes to the teleport prices being a big example of it.

Never won the lottery IRL? Dont worry, you wont win the Jumbo Cactpot and thats not even a meaningful amount of currency AND is a requirement for an achievement, totally locked behind RNG, The devs show a lack of understanding of probability as well with this with their "Keep playing, you will win in time." I have played every week since the release of Goldsaucer, this statement is a lie lol.

---

Teleport prices didn't "go up" universally, no matter how loudly people were shrieking about it at the time. I compared the prices from that first image and some categories had improved, especially ones you'd be likely to do regularly.

And from memory I'm pretty sure that the achievement/title relating to the Jumbo Cactpot was a cumulative total, not requiring a direct win, unless there is a second achievement that doesn't reward any tangible prizes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

Here 23 years later what we have now?

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People hating on others because they "don't know how things should be done" or "don't know how to have fun", I guess ?

The communities you're talking about still exist in high level content, on raiding discords and such. Behave like an ass, and you're gonna be flagged for it, behave well, and you're gonna be commended by others.

And yes, there are people that only want to do gpose and daily roulettes, but you're both misinformed and petty if you really stand by those takes... What they do with their time/characters is of no importance to you, and I'm tired of people sticking their nose into others business when they have no reason to.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simple_Barghest

I'm simultaneously confused as fuck considering this is trivia I'm not sure how to verify, and yet... That doesn't seem out-of-place at all considering Discord's inherent leanings to clique behavior.

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In XI he was Stanislav. Made a name for himself by doing those things and then when an LS would get cozy with him he would steal high priced and sought after items in the LS bank. You can read more about it at your local XI forums!
Think I forgot, Stan? That was pretty funny, almost as funny as the great salvage ban. It's one of those things where the lesson is "don't trust online people unless you REALLY know them." lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

There's a massive crowd of people on FF14 that seem determined to bring real life aspects to the game?

A huge part of ffxiv's culture is gpose, but there's such an obession over it that it's almost like being on instagram. I haven't looked at my insta since the pandemic ended, but I was recently thinking and it just hit me that FFXIV is basically virtual insta at this point.

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This always happens people will troll, or bring in political stuff into chat all the time. However maybe because I'm on the newer servers but the amounts I see in this MMO compared to WoW is as different as night and day

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mcg55ss

This always happens people will troll, or bring in political stuff into chat all the time. However maybe because I'm on the newer servers but the amounts I see in this MMO compared to WoW is as different as night and day

---

Political stuff rarely seems to be a big thing from what I've seen (at least in NN, which tends to be the most active and noticeable ingame chat). You get the occasional political troll (and some of them can be pretty persistent about coming back on alts for quite some time before giving up - or perhaps running out of different addresses/credit cards to create new accounts with after they get banned? ...), but that's a minority of things, especially compared to WoW where trade chat on larger Alliance servers is practically FOX News apart from the ads being for guilds and carry services instead of Medicare Advantage and your car's extended warranty (trade chat on larger Horde servers is such an endless ticker of guild and carry ads that conversation of any kind is usually impossible anyways).

Most conflict and perception of "trolling" (which is a fuzzy term anyway, as the nature of internet arguments is that one person's spirited disagreement is ALWAYS another person's trolling, just as "toxic" usually gets applied as an umbrella to "any culture I don't agree/feel comfortable personally with") seems to derive from disagreement over the conduct of battle content (e.g., should sprouts be expected to keep up with speedrun culture for the sake of burned out teammates just there for the roulette, or should everyone be expected to aspire to Savage/Ultimate raider precision regardless of how casual the content they do is, or the eternal debates about PF etc. etc.).

The one thing consistently chill is crafting. It's weird. People will get more bent out of shape over dungeons taking a few minutes longer than over blowing up over a million gil's worth of mats by a macro error or fat fingered craft action ...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

In XI he was Stanislav. Made a name for himself by doing those things and then when an LS would get cozy with him he would steal high priced and sought after items in the LS bank. You can read more about it at your local XI forums!
Think I forgot, Stan? That was pretty funny, almost as funny as the great salvage ban. It's one of those things where the lesson is "don't trust online people unless you REALLY know them." lol.

---

Well let's take a look he-

Quote:

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Quote Originally Posted by Stanislav

exactly
especially when we publically admit it haha

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ghat DAMN.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

DF and any matchmaking ruined everything in MMORPGS.

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I agree to an extent. Being a year one Everquest veteran exploring was a great part of the game. However, after awhile you don't feel that threat of running through a zone to get to a camp spot. Then the game boiled down to:
Sit in a corner while the monk pulled a mob, the tank peeled it off, and the monk ran to get another.
There was no more exploration, it was just camping a spot. Plane of nightmare is the best example. Zone in, stand at spot shouting for 20 minutes until a group needs to replace X class ... you run there and sit down, waiting for the pull.
The community aspect came from sources such as guilds, friend lists, or outside websites. Yes you made friends with group members, but that didn't change with DF. I still get one or two new friends a week in DF. So, yes 2000s MMOs had no DF, and had exploration, but it became stale after the first few times going to the same camp spots. We traded camping with dungeon runs. Both can become boring. Communities are made from people gathering, not from pixels on a screen.

I feel like this is more about how FFXIV truly tailors towards second-lifeesque characteristics and brings communities that are more inclined to enjoy games such as The Sims and other simulations games. The amount of fashion customization and the high quality of animations make this possible. Thus, you get more people interested in these aspects of the game instead of other MMOs.

If you're familiar with the sims community, animal crossing, poupée and that famous mobile dress-up game and other simulations-like games this is not uncommon.

We're also in a more visual era, there's a huge amount of communities that loves doing storytelling through screenshots in a lot of different games. This isn't much different from "fakes" you had in social media back in the day like myspace, orkut, etc. It's a creative thingy that it's been getting bigger and bigger given how easier it is nowadays to edit a photo and make an instagram and such.

Personally, I don't believe that the whole "escape from real life" thing. I play the game because it's my hobby, NOT my escape. A leisure isn't a escape from your life, it's just a leisure. If anything I feel like people bring very little of their real life inside the game and act like they're inside a bubble where they can only talk and discuss things that are game-related or about their own character, which makes the whole social part of the game really boring. I kinda miss when I actually made friends with people that played games and not their characters tbh.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Melorie

I feel like this is more about how FFXIV truly tailors towards second-lifeesque characteristics and brings communities that are more inclined to enjoy games such as The Sims and other simulations games. The amount of fashion customization and the high quality of animations make this possible. Thus, you get more people interested in these aspects of the game instead of other MMOs.

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I think it also is a major influence that the "venue RP" style is arguably about the only really enjoyable social option left for the working adult, particularly one of medium gameplay skill whose RL is not amenable to a static group.

As I suggested in another thread, pickup group gaming really does seem like it only functions well when the situation is either very easy (i.e., where you don't really have to worry about skill at all, like roulette level content or unsync farms) or where you have an exclusive player pool of high skill players (in order to help overcome the natural disadvantages that come of not having a team that's well familiar with each other - also because many high echelon PUG players actually do know each other so some of the benefits of staticing are realized anyway).

In the middle (such as a working adult attempting to push higher tier content without the benefit of consistent group mates), it's usually a mess, which is why you get 40 bazillion threads hither and yon grumping about the pain in the rear that attempting to PF (or really PUG in any game) non trivial stuff so often is.

If this is true, then eventually, all that reasonably leaves most of us to do is roulettes, simple content like maps, hunts, and past xpac mount/glam farms, and ... yep, Second Life style social clubs - which in turn FFXIV does tend to unusually foster (the housing system here benefits heavily, as most other MMOs don't lend themselves nearly so well to customized meeting locations due to either not having enough housing customization, or it being too clunky to travel to a housing area as a group unless everyone is part of the same guild).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Amarande

I think it also is a major influence that the "venue RP" style is arguably about the only really enjoyable social option left for the working adult, particularly one of medium gameplay skill whose RL is not amenable to a static group.

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That is true as well! The perhaps most social "interaction" I had with FFXIV during gameplay was while fishing and eureka (at it's peak), and even so, the style of the combat of the game doesn't always allow people to type and talk. The rest is mostly hello, gg, bye.
Then you get these venues where everyone gathers there and spam bnee knees but that doesn't actually create memories inside the game with other players, you know? I don't mean to say that FFXIV must have a old-style grind, but I remember many of the group-levelings/group-grinds I did in older MMOs and had fun exchanges there while also progressing towards something in the game. Even in game events like Guild Wars or LOTRO you actively do stuff and progress it and talk with other players in the process while FFXIV is just... do a quest. End of story.

Players also have to be quite creative in order to create their own events and are somewhat limited - little amount of mini-games in general. The IS is solo, Blue Mage Carnival is solo, you can't queue for PvP with a friend, so and so. I actually enjoyed the variant dungeons, even with all it's faults, because it gave me a much needed content for 4 players, given that getting 8 people to clear something is often a pain, but having a group of 4 friends is somewhat doable.

Anyway, you have a point. The way the "being social" is allowed in the game is quite limited too.

We live in a time where "influencer" is actually a legit "job", why would something like this even considered weird? Or among others:

- People commission art of their characters and post it on reddit.
- People try to squeeze every last bit of performance for cute little number on FFlog.

So the whole instagram mentality exist in many form rather than just modding. And it's not just MMO, it's the modern culture that promote this stuff hardcore. I got my Fire Emblem Engage last week, it's a tactical RPG franchise. Guess what it came with this time? A feature to create your own post card to share around! I looked at it and was like "eh?".

Also, people may play game to escape life, but also to fantasize about what they can't do in real life. It's why The Sims has been a successful and long running franchise.

Honestly, the reason why FFXIV has such a heavy lean towards purely social content and interweaves so much with social media posting is because the majority of our playerbase are not gamers first and foremost.

They are writers, artists, photographers, creatives, and what have you. They aren't subscribed to XIV for its gameplay. They're subscribed to create social circles, share glams etc. There's a whole bevy of folks who want the gameplay dumbed down as much as possible, all combos consolidated into single buttons, and for Trusts to be available for all content.

Escapism for them is different than it is for others. They're not really into FFXIV because it's a fantasy world. For them it's just another place for them to get a muse from. Another place for them to find someone like minded who wants to talk about FFXIV and how it's just like their other favorite fiction, be that Buffy the Vampire Slayer, LoTR, or anything else.

Basically, some folks escape by slaying dragons. Others escape by drawing a still life of that dragon, and then showing it to all the people who know what that dragon is, and can comment on how accurate or cool their artistic interpretation of it is.

There's also the beauty angle of it. In FFXIV, even without mods, all of the player models have idealized body types. Some people want them to reflect the real world, while others take extreme comfort in the fact that everyone is presented as beautiful (less desirable face models not withstanding).

Anyway, it's only human nature to want to socialize with others like you. That's all it is, really. The game doesn't hard enforce you having to do battle content(or anything really) when you login, and so it attracts people who don't want that, or can handle doing the bare minimum to get access to what they want (glams, areas, vistas, venues etc).

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

Fun fact, the guy who made HNM (rare spawn boss monsters) in XI such a pain to camp because he instaclaimed the mob with instavoke scripts and addons co-created Discord! Food for thought.

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Man, every time I go to an FFXI heavy space, and remember just how many successful programmers/software guys used it as a playground to further their abilities/get better careers etc. all while being terrible people in game, I wretch a little.

There I was, being a morally upstanding dumb ass, when I could have been cheating the whole time, teaching myself stuff, and being at the top of the pecking order. Oof.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Honestly, the reason why FFXIV has such a heavy lean towards purely social content and interweaves so much with social media posting is because the majority of our playerbase are not gamers first and foremost.

They are writers, artists, photographers, creatives, and what have you. They aren't subscribed to XIV for its gameplay. They're subscribed to create social circles, share glams etc. There's a whole bevy of folks who want the gameplay dumbed down as much as possible, all combos consolidated into single buttons, and for Trusts to be available for all content.

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I am "a gamer" and I still think it's silly having each step of a combo on a separate button. No other game I've played has that, except maybe if the combo is all that you have, and even then it's probably because you're expected to use those buttons in varying order to perform different attacks.

Having three buttons purely so you have to hit 1-2-3 instead of 1-1-1? This game is the only one I can think of.

Also, people can be creative in FFXIV and still enjoy a challenge in the gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

SNIP

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I feel like you've summarized it perfectly.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I am "a gamer" and I still think it's silly having each step of a combo on a separate button. No other game I've played has that, except maybe if the combo is all that you have, and even then it's probably because you're expected to use those buttons in varying order to perform different attacks.

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Regardless of your personal experience, this is by far the MMO where I have meet the biggest amount of people that barely plays other games. Or other MMOS. It's actually a curious thing about it. And many of them don't really care about the gameplay aspect, at all. They sub because they have this social experience.

There are probably people that aren't like that, obviously, but that doesn't really exclude the point.

As for the combo, I don't see how pressing one button can be more fun than actually getting your dance of buttons right, but eh, it's taste.