What's with the forums?

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Fact of the matter is, you are not allowed to even post things you enjoy about DT on the forums either as your thread gets overrun by the negativity bias and lack of moderation.

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Funny thing about that is, esp during endwalker, you were not allowed to post anything negative or critical about the game. Reddit, Twitter, Youtube no matter where you went you would be met with a white wave of knights who would do everything from downvote you to send you threats to dox you. We lost more than a few good YT creators during the EW white knight wave because so many people took it as a personal slight when someone gave even constructive criticism about the game. And it still happens with certain topics. Say for instance that you do not like Soken's work because of A B or C, give great examples and bring up good, valid points. You are in for it.

The forums on the other hand do not have a downvote system and come with bans if you treat other players here the way you treat them elsewhere. So the forums tend to lean more negative since it is the only place where contructive criticism or negativity is not met with swift social media justice.

You can huff and puff about how ppl on the forums are this or that or want to suppress anything good you have to say and try to be the victim of those big bad Gamers all you want. But the truth is, this is just the only place you cannot control the narrative with intimidation and downvotes.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Ultimately, it's specifically a lack of forum moderation and not funneling feedback into specific existing threads that creates the wall of spam and negativity as people keep making their version of the same topic. The lack of moderation caters to these narcissistic people who suffer from main character syndrome and have the failing brain capacity to not use common sense and post in one thread.

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The cause for lack of moderation is the same cause for the complaints about the game: it's Square Enix. The company isn't doing very well and it shows. Their YoY earnings which just came out show a company on the verge of bankrupcy. Final Fantasy XIV is the only game that's profitable, not because it makes a lot of money, but because they barely spend any money on it. Remember: it's Square Enix. What did you expect coming into this place? This isn't Blizzard or Bethesda. They don't have resources for anything beyond the bare minimum. They can't do anything. It's like expecting SEGA to make a good MMO in 2024. Like, come on.

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Originally Posted by StormChase

I'll admit, I haven't been here that long, but why are the forums so... miserable? I get that people come here to give feedback, but it feels like some people see it as permission to be as toxic as possible. To be clear, I'm not talking about just any criticism. I mean people demanding staff members be fired over mild grievances, claiming there's some kind of conspiracy to ruin the game, portraying anyone who isn't as negative as them as idiotic, that type of thing. I guess what I'm trying to say is at some point, there's a line between criticism and entitlement. Have the forums always been this way? Even before I set up my forum profile I heard they have a reputation.

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Actual constructive discussion and feedback goes into the correct topics for that thing. I've had two of my UI recommendations implemented eventually from the UI forum, for example. And we have some great lore discussions in the Lore forum.

It's only General that is a complete and total septic tank.

I have lurked on and off for awhile. Posted a few times recently, some were negative due to frustrations I had at the moment with the game. Forums in general from my experience aren't on the positive topic side. It is like how if you go to a restaurant and have a good experience you are less likely to leave a review as someone who had a bad one.
Other than trolls posting, I do believe alot of the negative posts are coming from people who love this game and might be worried of the direction after the DT MSQ since we have gotten no feedback from SE. I love the game, i may have posted comments in the past being negative but I want it to get back on track story wise. I would be lying if I didn't admit I am a little concerned the game I play the most might be on it's decline since again, we don't know the direction they will go.

Forums will always be negative but the higher volume of it now I think is because people want the game to course correct since they enjoy the game.

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Originally Posted by StormChase

Have the forums always been this way?

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Yes, they have. Ordinarily, though, you would have pockets of slightly more grounded, well-rounded discussion surrounding criticism of the game to balance out the hysteria. Unfortunately, DT's various failings have acted as a siren call for the more unhinged members of our community as well as anyone with a chip on their shoulder about... certain topics, resulting in the sensation of being permanently stuck at a chain store customer service desk on a Monday afternoon.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

Funny thing about that is, esp during endwalker, you were not allowed to post anything negative or critical about the game. Reddit, Twitter, Youtube no matter where you went you would be met with a white wave of knights who would do everything from downvote you to send you threats to dox you. We lost more than a few good YT creators during the EW white knight wave because so many people took it as a personal slight when someone gave even constructive criticism about the game. And it still happens with certain topics. Say for instance that you do not like Soken's work because of A B or C, give great examples and bring up good, valid points. You are in for it.

The forums on the other hand do not have a downvote system and come with bans if you treat other players here the way you treat them elsewhere. So the forums tend to lean more negative since it is the only place where contructive criticism or negativity is not met with swift social media justice.

You can huff and puff about how ppl on the forums are this or that or want to suppress anything good you have to say and try to be the victim of those big bad Gamers all you want. But the truth is, this is just the only place you cannot control the narrative with intimidation and downvotes.

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The part that always amuses me, however, is how the forum claims every other place on the internet is overrun with "white knights" who love the game, how this forum is the only place on the internet where you can be negative about FFXIV, while simultaneously acting as if this forum magically represents the playerbase at large and it being absolutely dwarfed by the other places that do nothing but praise the game is somehow conveniently irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

The part that always amuses me, however, is how the forum claims every other place on the internet is overrun with "white knights" who love the game, how this forum is the only place on the internet where you can be negative about FFXIV, while simultaneously acting as if this forum magically represents the playerbase at large and it being absolutely dwarfed by the other places that do nothing but praise the game is somehow conveniently irrelevant.

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As do you ppl think reddit/twiitter/yt is the be all say all, while not acknowledging that it is like that because of the reasons I gave. All the rest of the internet is, is badly drawn anime fan pics, because I swear no one wants to actually have a modicum of creativity and come up with their own style anymore, and ppl who want to talk about how FFXIV is the best mmo ever, Yoshida is the best director/producer ever, soken is the biggest musical genius ever, etc etc while ripping apart anyone who disagrees to the point that even those amongst who disagree never speak up. And then you all claim that you represent the majority of players and everything is fine.

Seriously, if you ever desire to expand your horizons and utilize some creativity in your next "art" piece instead of just looking in your "how to draw anime" book yet again, try incorporating some critical thinking in there as well.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

The part that always amuses me, however, is how the forum claims every other place on the internet is overrun with "white knights" who love the game, how this forum is the only place on the internet where you can be negative about FFXIV, while simultaneously acting as if this forum magically represents the playerbase at large and it being absolutely dwarfed by the other places that do nothing but praise the game is somehow conveniently irrelevant.

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So I want to address this attitude head on because it's something that is being discussed on the Japanese forums and discussion boards that FF14 has a very toxic positivity culture, which is stifling to those who wish to discuss their feedback and that sometimes not everything is perfect, somethings do need improving. The reason why this is currently
so damaging one can take a look at Concord the culture of toxic positivity was pervasive throughout the dev team, any criticism and negativity was not allowed which fostered this environment of an echo chamber to where they believed their game was a smash hit when everyone on the outside looking in could see massive issues. That culture has been directly quoted as one of the reasons Concord failed and has cost Sony over $400million. This is being discussed very openly as I said on the Japanese forums, because your behaviour and those like you while your heart is in the right place what you're doing is hurting the game by trying to trivialise and dismiss the feedback paying customers are giving. YoshiP once said that a complaint is worth two compliments, please take a step back and see your behaviour and those like you is only going to lead towards the same situation as Concord.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

The part that always amuses me, however, is how the forum claims every other place on the internet is overrun with "white knights" who love the game, how this forum is the only place on the internet where you can be negative about FFXIV, while simultaneously acting as if this forum magically represents the playerbase at large and it being absolutely dwarfed by the other places that do nothing but praise the game is somehow conveniently irrelevant.

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What posts like that actually mean is "on other sites people have the audacity to disagree with me, but here I can truly express myself in echo chamber threads."

I've seen plenty of negative but constructive feedback on Reddit and Youtube about Dawntrail as of late. I really don't think the forums are the only place you can complain about the game anymore. I've seen really good, well thought out critique of the game on Twitter too, but it is more likely to get people mad and convinced you're just a heartless evil meanie hater over there.

I really think it boils down to YoshiP and the devs mostly telling players to give their feedback here.

The part they leave out though is giving feedback here is basically the same thing as throwing your complaint into the paper shredder. It's been painfully obvious for years the devs don't really pay much attention to the EN side of the forums.

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

I really think it boils down to YoshiP and the devs mostly telling players to give their feedback here.

The part they leave out though is giving feedback here is basically the same thing as throwing your complaint into the paper shredder. It's been painfully obvious for years the devs don't really pay much attention to the EN side of the forums.

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You ever notice that the English forums are also called the "child forum"? Lol

People will say it's because everyone who enjoys the game is busy playing it, but I've dragged myself on all week just to do some roulettes and the queues take so long to pop that I just give up and log out. The CWLSes I'm in are really really quiet, PFs just sit waiting for healers, etc.
The main story that everyone's cared about this whole time is over, and DT did not carry the mantle very well if reactions to the bad writing and new lead character were any indication. Story fans who kept subbing for the narrative are gone. Gameplay bros liked the direction of a lot of the battle content, but like always there wasn't enough of it to keep anyone entertained very long, so now here we are again, in the post-expac lull with 2 more months of nothing to look forward to before we get like... an alliance raid and that's it? This game's problem isn't even hard. Just give folks more things to do so they don't get bored and quit. That, or have a compelling story so they feel compelled to resub for the next chapter. You can't be a story focused mmo with a bland story and bland/lacking gameplay and then make the surprised pikachu face when people don't want to play anymore. This happens so often that you can see the trends on steamcharts. It's happening right now. Big influx of people for the expansion, but then there's nothing to do afterwards so people leave and the game has like a 30% drop.

Hell, as I typed this out I was just sitting in an expert roulette queue. 8pm on a saturday night, 10 minutes and counting. I've been the #1 role waiting list number for like 7 minutes lmao. But yeah! I'm sure allllllll the people who love the game are totally just online and playing it, right?

The forums are a quarantine zone for the worst this game has to offer. It serves an important purpose, and keeps these types of people confined to one easily avoidable space. It's good to pop your head in here to leave feedback when necessary (though I would recommend using the in-game feedback tool to avoid contracting a terminal illness), or ask for technical advice or something, but generally just stay out of here unless you just want to people watch. Most people here are simply here to vent their frustrations. It's pretty miserable for your mental if you stick around here too long trying to engage in good faith.

Edit: Also, it's worth mentioning also that in my experience, the JP forums are a lot more useful and cordial. If you don't mind dealing with the jankiness of machine translation, I encourage you to check it out over there if you find things too ugly on the EN side of the forums.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

Hell, as I typed this out I was just sitting in an expert roulette queue. 8pm on a saturday night, 10 minutes and counting. I've been the #1 role waiting list number for like 7 minutes lmao. But yeah! I'm sure allllllll the people who love the game are totally just online and playing it, right?

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The stats disagree with your anecdote, FYI. You can check SteamCharts to get a rough idea of player retention trends, and Dawntrail's retention levels are comparable to Endwalker's, Shadowbringers' and Stormblood's, at approx. -32%, -32%, -28% and -30% respective player drop off in the first player-count decreasing period after expansion release.

Except the difference now is that we have a substantially larger starting playerbase than we did years ago, so you're actually logging in with more players today than you ever did prior to Endwalker's launch, outside of expansion release dates.

Of course, SteamCharts only tracks players who play through Steam, but that player count is representative of the playerbase as a whole.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Huh... I admit it hadn't occurred to me that the forums are the only place I see most criticisms while the Reddit/Twitter tends to be full of those only praising the game while downplaying/dismissing any problems. Even when the bugged out female Hrothgar cutscene first came out, you had more than a few folks over there calling it "faked" and being made up just to attack Square-Enix... until Square-Enix themselves admitted "yeah, this is real, sorry about that" and fixed it, and the "fake" callers disappeared without a single apology or even acknowledgement that an issue was addressed.

Of course, in the same vein, the forums have definitely had the highest concentration of players spouting off transphobic remarks relative to the Reddit/Twitter, so regardless of whether a place has extreme positivity or negativity, it can make all of those places (and by extension the game's overall community) appear toxic and insufferable, and then you're left wondering if it's "just a minority" or encompasses more of our populace than we want to admit to, and only the risk of being banned stops the most unhinged sycophants and sociopaths from really letting loose within the game its self. (And even then... sometimes the sludge oozes through.)

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Reddit (both of them) are full of negativity towards DT though and so are YouTube comments outside of OST’s.

Regarding the original post from Striker:
Even if we take the notion that Twitter is overwhelmingly positive, it is twitter.
If SE has more than two brain cells left they would know that other games that failed also had twitter on the positive end.
Twitter is full of comments of people who don’t even play the specific game.

Also in my opinion, being hated by twitter is akin to a batch of honor nowadays.
Be it movies, games or other things. Doing what twitter likes often brings the bad end of the romance route for video game developers.
It’s the one thing good about 2024, that this stupid bubble is finally exploding.

You got a bunch of zero life trolls who live on these forums making 100s of post weekly, best just to block their accounts and move on 1000% not worth engaging them or poking them.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

Twitter is full of comments of people who don’t even play the specific game.

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I hope Developers eventually realize Twitter isn't a good place to gather feedback for gaming. It's not a gathering place for gamers, but full of people who want to dictate what games other should play.

This is actually quite normal. I don't mean just for the FF14 forums. All of this behavior is for every forum, every game, every comment section, across the entire internet, it's just human nature. The amount of community places online that are not like this is extremely few and far between. Every game forum I've been to and been a part of has been like this. I go on the Overwatch 2 forums a good amount since I like and play OW2 enough to want to do so. You should go there and see how bad it is for yourself. I haven't been on the FF14 forums long either, but from what I've seen these forums are for the most part like a walk in the park compared to OW.