How did the community become this toxic?

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Originally Posted by Eisah

Isn't that bound to attract elitism?)

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Maybe for some, but for me the more repetitive the content the more prone I am to just flub it sometimes and have fun. I could really care less how 'efficiently' i farm philo/myth. Over the holidays I was off work for 12 days and capped after just 2 days. I still ran AK/WP with people just because I wanted to help out on my server.

I had a newly 50'd WHM in a group that filled a spot for my FC doing CBM hard. I told him that he can just follow along or we can explain everything to him. He was almost afraid to ask, so I just took the liberty of explaining it anyway. We wiped a few times, had some laughs, and went on our separate ways.

I have spent the full 90 minutes teaching people how to speed run WP before, and when we didn't get the 30 myth at the end, no big deal.

IMO the repetitive content gets the elitist tag when you get fed up with it, and IMO that is a product of omgweneedtodoeveryruninfiveminutes. not every cares about that.

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Originally Posted by Taruranto

Everything is instanced and solo-able for most part, exp is easy to get and ppl are forced to group together only for some level 50 content.

Other than that it plays like a single player jrpg with co-op rather than a mmorpg. You know why people remember FFXI community so fondly, despite the drama and shiet? Because the game world was dangerous, everything was designed to force people into cooperation. Those who couldn't deal with grouping with other people wouldn't go past level 20.

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This is not even a disputable point: there definitely needs to be more of this without question.

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How did the community become this toxic?

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Not enough sex, I would wager.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan

Maybe its a problem on the bigger servers?

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Counting that DF is cross server and my bad experiences are all from that...I'd say no. I find Balmung community pretty good itself.

The Duty Finder in particular is really a breeding ground for toxic behavior, the way it is implemented now; and generally instanced dungeons are. There's just far too much punishment and unnecessary regulations in this game.

• talking to friends via /tell in instances is not even possible
• first timers watching cutscenes are usually met with resentment from the group for doing that, or people finishing battles without them, so being punished
• second timers are punished if they get into a random group with first timers by being forced to either wait (sometimes 1min+) for them to finish cutscenes, or do content without the first timers because these are in a cutscene, also slowing them down
• people are locked out from boss battles and therefore punished for being "too slow" or very often watching cutscenes
• kicking others appears to have no real consequences (people come from different servers so the odds you'll ever see them again are low and they get no chance to speak up at all) so people are basically *encouraged* to punish others
• if you leave an instance with mean people or where no one seems to want to work together, you are punished with a 30 minute lock-down
• if you join a duty with a friend, your friend gets kicked for watching cutscenes, and you leave the party yourself because of it, you're punished with a 30 minute lock-down... so you're basically doubly punished for being a first timer, playing with a friend and wanting to watch cutscenes(this actually happened to me and a friend today)

I could go on like this, but the point is that all this punishment and regulation creates an incredibly toxic environment, and a toxic environment breeds toxic behavior and a toxic community. A toxic community then increases the toxicity in the environment, which then breeds even more toxic behavior and an even more toxic community, and so on. It's a downward spiral, and the current system, especially in the duty finder, supports it.

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Originally Posted by Tlamila

Counting that DF is cross server and my bad experiences are all from that...I'd say no. I find Balmung community pretty good itself.

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Maybe my experiences are the outliers. I don't really come across douchey people in the DF. If and when I do, I just ignore them. Thats not a community thing, that is an individual person thing.

In addition, the party finder is a great tool for like minded players to play together; if only it were used more often, considering the DF is veeeerry convenient for a lot of players.

I don't notice the general community being horribly toxic, but CT runs are horrible.

Anonymity in general encourages toxic behavior. All people are innately both good and evil. Every one of us is capable of being evil as equally as we are good. No matter how good you are you still have evil thoughts. In the real world we govern ourselves with our conscious to determine what to act on and what not to act on (in some people the ability to do this is less, thus they appear more evil than another).

However, in the real world when we chose not to punch someone in the face it's generally a decision made after weighing the pro's and con's of doing so before actually doing it. "If I punch him he might fight back and win, I might get arrested, I might break my hand, etc etc etc". Ultimately your final decision is based on the likely hood of whether you'll die or go to jail or have long lasting consequences that will effect other areas of your life "Like losing X as a friend who has a pool you like to swim in because you punched P who's friends Q who's friends with R who's friends with T, etc..."

On the internet, this whole process is broken. Someone pisses you off and you think "I'm going to wipe this whole raid". Now anyone in this situation might go "But If I do that someone from my FC might be in here, they might kick me from my Static BCB group, that would suck" and as such they don't. But let's think for a minute here,

The majority of the player base isn't in a BCB static, doesn't have the EM Primals on farm, and doesn't really have anything to lose. Because we are all anonymous people, what real consequence is there for trolling a raid and wiping everyone because someone made you mad? There isn't one. And in the worst case scenario, you can just Server Transfer to a new character name and start all over.

So why does it appear more toxicity exists now than used to? Simple really, in the past decade the amount of people on the internet and the amount of new generations coming up to play online games has multiplied 10 fold. There are WAY WAY more people on the internet today than in 2003 in FFXI's prime. The more people you throw into an anonymous pile the more likely you are to be trolled and it only takes one troll to turn on all the other trolls "The catalyst if you will", so when that 1 troll comes out, the 100 trolls you thought were nice players come out from under the bridge to partake (chain reaction). The more people that play, the more likely and more often that catalyst will trigger.

Really though, the way people try to handle bad communities is all wrong. Complaining about it is food for the trolls. Crying about it is food for the trolls. Many people enjoy pissing people off when there is nothing you can do about it. It's bullying with no consequences. The more you cave in, the harder they troll.

The best way to deal with it is just that, deal with it. Turn off your "I Care" switch in your head and ignore them. Continue to do what you think is right, but there's a catch "What you think is right, could be wrong, and people will always disagree, thus breeding more toxicty." No matter what, handle conflicts with a calm mind, and maintain your composure, if the conflict cannot be resolved walk away or continue on and forget about it. Problem is, most people playing are too emotionally immature to be able to do that, they act on their feelings and make a bad problem worse.

In the end, just accept it. It is human nature and it is what it is.

If you think it's just this game, you'd be really wrong.

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Originally Posted by Nyaanyaa

if you join a duty with a friend, your friend gets kicked for watching cutscenes, and you leave the party yourself because of it, you're punished with a 30 minute lock-down... so you're basically doubly punished for being a first timer, playing with a friend and wanting to watch cutscenes(this actually happened to me and a friend today)

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Oh yeah, the first tiem I ran AV, I did it because a friend wanted to. At some point pretty soon he gets disconnected from the server, and even if I told others he just had been kicked from server and would be back, the leader kicked him (I think that's how it worked before?) and so I had to drop as well and get the lockout. Was pretty meh.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan

In addition, the party finder is a great tool for like minded players to play together

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I sure met a lot of nice persons, and my only grump was not being able to ever see them anymore. That's the problem, even if you meet good people is nobody you can stay in contact with, cause of different servers, so what's the point? Sure, you get a nice run, but I personally preferr builiding something that lasts more then one hour with people. Which is probably the same reason why most are jerks on DF, they don't bother building something good with one-time strangers.

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Originally Posted by Toranja

Not enough sex, I would wager.

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I agree completely! lol

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Originally Posted by Toranja

Not enough sex, I would wager.

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Let's ask Squeenix to do a compaign to incentivate people to have moar sex? Maybe would help :D

I think like this community is worse than the ff11 community due to the ratio of pan flute music as a percentage of total music in the game.

The soothing, dolcet tones of the pan flutes have been proved to increase feelings of goodwill, joy and good vibes. Like how can you ever be an angry greifer, with pan flutes playing?

Just listen to this

As a ratio of pan flute to non pan flute music in its game. FF11 scores an epic 84.2% on the Osprey Pan Flute index (hereby referred to as OPFI)

ARR only scores a lowly 21.1% on the OPFI

Just for reference CoD has no pan flute music

Pan flutes SE

Pan flutes

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Originally Posted by Xerukm

How did the community become this toxic? Seriously, what happened?

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Housing happened

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Originally Posted by DubstepNinja

I think like this community is worse than the ff11 community due to the ratio of pan flute music as a percentage of total music in the game.

The soothing, dolcet tones of the pan flutes have been proved to increase feelings of goodwill, joy and good vibes. Like how can you ever be an angry greifer, with pan flutes playing?

Just listen to this

As a ratio of pan flute to non pan flute music in its game. FF11 scores an epic 84.2% on the Osprey Pan Flute index (hereby referred to as OPFI)

ARR only scores a lowly 21.1% on the OPFI

Just for reference CoD has no pan flute music

Pan flutes SE

Pan flutes

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/nod

Right on the spot.

I feel so soothed =( I wanted to rage on all of you! :'(

I don't find the community to be toxic. Just the forums. In game it's been rather nice. A few bad eggs here and there, but mostly it's been a treat.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

I don't find the community to be toxic. Just the forums. In game it's been rather nice. A few bad eggs here and there, but mostly it's been a treat.

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People tend to overract and cry for everything, specially over other people crying. (cry can be read as complaining as well)

It's not an FFXIV thing... people can just be jerks...

I hate people sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Hairspray

It's not an FFXIV thing... people can just be jerks...

I hate people sometimes.

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Do you hate yourself too? Or, you're not included in that bunch that you call people =o?

Titan Happened. It is the great divider.

But I must admit that people are also spending less time on the game.

Merge the 2 together and you get high toxicity levels.

Taking me as an example, I got less time to help others. Why? I play less, thus must condense all my daily play into lesser hours. The free time I got is spend begging FC and LS to help me with Titan X. In which I usually get some "need to clear" players to do with me and if I am lucky a pro or 2, making up the shortfall by DF or PF. If I find no one, I try to join PF, but that is hard and annoying with JP Only or CLEAR Only parties abound. Then worst after that is DF!!! After which I proceed to wipe in Titan for a hour or two before the team disbands.

On an average day, after all the above, I have no more mood, time or understanding to go out of my way to help others. But I do try to do so. It is just way harder to do so. Compared to the early days where helping others is easy.

Thus yes, I can agree that FF14 is becoming more toxic.

Well one thing on Ultros lately is i keep getting people telling me i have the ugliest character, i look like a Lightning transvestite and my character is fat. Really starting to get me down. Now i hide behind one of the buildings in Mor Dhona and conduct my business from there.

Not nice at all. Ultros has a very nasty side to it.

so far rage quitting has gone down to one death then QQ, leave party. people stand in AOE then blame everyone else for there death QQ, leave party. you meet the person who thinks there GOD because they have lv90 gear then crys the whole way through and leave the party.
i think its pretty toxic.

Some people play/do things purely for the enjoyment and experience. They like to have "fun" and do things they normally wouldn't (or couldn't at all) in a fictional world. There's quite a high chance that the toxic of this community are actually fairly nice people IRL (or are just closet d-bags because they're cowardly/afraid of doing these same things to people IRL). It doesn't matter where they came from. It's just how we are.

Well, greed can never be stopped, humans will do whatever they can to get their message sent across to get gil XD.

So in the end they decided that PF is the best place.

Well, just ignore them. But of course I hope that SE can also come up with a preventive measure to prevent these greedy guyz from flooding the PF with these. Best way is to legalize report for misuse onto these people.

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Originally Posted by Xerukm

I remember when the game first launched and I started playing, almost everybody was helpful and it was a lot of fun to group up and do random stuff. So what happened? Seriously, what happened?

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Short answer: It's a design flaw.

Long answer: Faceroll leveling from 1-50 conditions players to believe that everything in the game should be fast and easy. When these expectations aren't met in endgame (due to more difficult content + heavy dependency on others), players are quick to criticize and insult anyone who appears to be slowing them down. After enough failed runs, they will simply refuse to party with anyone who might inhibit endgame progression. (hence: " ilvl80+Zenith only, exp, gear check, kick ppl parsing under 'x'," etc..)

It's the community that attracts an Americanized mmorpg. Ffxi had a good community because help from others was the only way to progress in the game. Well it used to be like that at least. Now your getting a community that really doesn't have to interact with one another in order to progress. This attracts people that don't really care about helping out or giving advice. Ffxi in terms of mmorpg is such a unique game that involved everyone playing together as a community. I thought that's what mmorpgs were about but that seems to have change. It's like people would rather play mmo's as if they were single player games.

I just think some people believe it's ok to be jerks because they're on the internet. Those people need to grow up and stop behaving like spoiled brats.

On the other hand, the more people stand up to immature fools, the better the community is.
If you want a good community then you have to work for it. It doesn't happen overnight.
In the end, it's really up to us to make or break this community.

Look at old zam archives and forums for XI.

Everyone was beyond helpful. More than once people offered to help me when I was having trouble completing any of the missions.
Same with Monster Hunter. In mh you have yor elitists but even they are out there to help people reach their goals.

XIV is a great game, really it is. However to play it you really never need anyone's help or guidance. It just makes players selfish.
I don't know if there's anything they could do to fix it since it just comes with creating a casual mmo.


Look at wow, ro2los, wakfu and so on and you can instantly tell by the forum tone how the community of games like these just is what it is.

Endgame community has ALWAYS been this bad in ARR. I remember AK speed runners, and they were not helpful or polite or nice in any way.

The bright side is that really only a small subset of the endgame community is that kind of player. Most of the endgame interaction I've had is fun and positive, particularly lately. Of course there are some very frustrating encounters, but they are the minority. I guess the key is to focus on the positive experiences and enjoy them as much as possible, when you do you start to realize how rare extremely negative experiences are. Or maybe it's better to say it like this : When you go into something expecting a negative experience, you will have a negative experience.

I want friends!

I blame CT. I remember threads like these early on and as a regular DF player I was quick to respond that I wasn't seeing it with 90% of my experiences being pleasant. Then 2.1 came out with CT. I feel the nature of grinding out an instance over and over trying to get that 1 drop before the weekly lockout ended really shortened a lot of peoples patience. At first it was just in CT that felt like a terrible toxic mass of negative energy. But I saw it percolate out to all DF instances. Now it seems really bad to the point I don't enjoy tanking through DF much anymore. I'm hoping with 2.2 and the removal of lockouts in DF content will mellow people out a bit but time will tell.

It is true the community as derived to a bad orientation, but in the least to say, not all is bad. Sometimes reading or players manages to give me hope, while some other times... I'd like to find Machete.

Every FF title ive played is about meeting ppl online or offline, real or npc forming a bond with them and fighting a common enemy. save the world yadayada. the problem is, is when you make it so players dont have to form that bond or even say as much as 1 word to get thru a end game dungeon. it makes a toxic me me me community. yoshi is aware of this. he has his orders though. its just his vision of those orders.

personaly i like reverse trolling. as a tank queing up for a duty like garuda ex and saying this is my first time.
or let the bard who agroed the next pull to run around like a chicken and blame it on lag. cracks me up and makes them sit out for 30 mins lol

I honestly feel like this game's community is worse than any other MMO I have played, including WoW. Just the general selfishness of people is unbelievable.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Some people play/do things purely for the enjoyment and experience. They like to have "fun" and do things they normally wouldn't (or couldn't at all) in a fictional world. There's quite a high chance that the toxic of this community are actually fairly nice people IRL (or are just closet d-bags because they're cowardly/afraid of doing these same things to people IRL). It doesn't matter where they came from. It's just how we are.

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And that's a problem. In this game more than any other, I feel way too many people treat each other as nothing more than pixels, rather than actual human beings controlling avatars. To me, the "In real life I'm actually a really nice guy" excuse is 100% meaningless. It doesn't matter. In this game, we are sharing a virtual world with other human beings. The fact that so few people have just common courtesy and basic human respect for each other just cause they are hiding behind avatars is really sad.

This is nothing new. You have these types of players in other games as well. When people were first complaining about Titan HM, there were people selling and trying to fail others attempts at it then also. At least now we have a vote to kick option.

There are some really great people here. Just the bad usually rubs off on the newer people because they think that this is how it's suppose to be done. Don't let other people ruin your fun. Not worth the stress.

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Originally Posted by Pooky

And that's a problem. In this game more than any other, I feel way too many people treat each other as nothing more than pixels, rather than actual human beings controlling avatars. To me, the "In real life I'm actually a really nice guy" excuse is 100% meaningless. It doesn't matter. In this game, we are sharing a virtual world with other human beings. The fact that so few people have just common courtesy and basic human respect for each other just cause they are hiding behind avatars is really sad.

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The friendliness and respect is still here...it's sometimes the whining and pouting can be excessive and gets some of us riled up. (myself included ;p)

community? what community? in ffxiv there is no sense of community> its all about joining duty finder, party finder and fates without being on a party and having to interact with other people. thats what makes ffxiv(2.0) "community" so toxic you dont have the need to make a good name for yourself.

back in 1.0 and ffxi if you were a douche the whole server would know and you would not be able to progress because you would not get an invite to party or an event, so 99% of people were nice, even the elite if not joining to help, would /tell you some advice.

There are trolls and elitists in EVERY community. To think otherwise is very naive.

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Originally Posted by Yoohre_WildRiver

community? what community? in ffxiv there is no sense of community> its all about joining duty finder, party finder and fates without being on a party and having to interact with other people. thats what makes ffxiv(2.0) "community" so toxic you dont have the need to make a good name for yourself.

back in 1.0 and ffxi if you were a douche the whole server would know and you would not be able to progress because you would not get an invite to party or an event, so 99% of people were nice, even the elite if not joining to help, would /tell you some advice.

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This is the case because there are significantly more people playing. All a jerk has to do is go all Assassin's Creed and blend in with the crowd until their transgressions are forgotten.

Make no mistake, however. There are a few people who's douche levels are so high they're known server-wide.

WoW changed the genre, and the players changed with it. Turns out that if you build a game tailored to greedy and selfish mainstream gamers, your community will become filled with greedy and selfish mainstream gamers. Profit over community, as it were.