How did the community become this toxic?

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Originally Posted by Yoohre_WildRiver

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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That's because almost nobody played late in 1.0.

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Originally Posted by Yoohre_WildRiver

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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You must have been sheltered in both games then.

The players were bad on WoW because the game design made them that way and since FF XIV bases itself off WoW, we get the same result here. There is no incentive to be nice to people, or to work together. DF puts you with people you may never see again, so people don't care about them.

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Originally Posted by Kyoraki

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.

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I find it so stupid that FF players love to keep blaming WoW. I take it most of you haven't been exposed to anything other than FF and WoW, because WoW didn't start any of this. If you guys have ever played EQ, RO, UO, etc. you'd realize that the communities of each are FILLED with terrible selfish people. But you guys are looking through your rose-tinted FF glasses and biased anti-WoW rage that you seem to think only WoW had selfish people.

Here's a shocker: FFXI had some crappy, selfish people too! Yep. Didn't see that coming, did you? No way in hell I was gonna let someone else tag that NM for that expensive item before me, even if he's been there hours before I got there. Oh, FFXI had the best community? Hell no. FFXI, at least if you were in the hardcore HNM scene, was extremely cutthroat. And people weren't nearly as forgiving with new players, or players who weren't playing the ideal way.

The whole close-knit thing in FFXI due to forced grouping? Yeah, that was nice. Except it also made for the absolute biggest drama I've ever seen in an MMO. So much drama. Logging on was like watching a soap opera, and you'd even get the latest drama from other servers. "Did you hear about Randomnoob? I hear he got kicked from UberSauce LS, and his character was being played by someone else! Can you believe it??" WHO CARES!? Best community? Not even close. I'd give that award to RO. I'd rank FFXI's community next to EQ and WoW's.

I met some of the most incredible people on WoW, and some bad ones. I can say the same for any other game I've played. Seriously, think before you make such nonsensical comments.

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Originally Posted by Capita

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it really is insane how people blame wow for everything and think that it was all rainbows and butterflies in FFXI...

Try showing up to a party (even an exp party!) with some unconventional job setups (PLD/RDM, DRK/BLU, WAR/DRK were all greeted with immediate hostility for me, and this was back in the golden days).

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Originally Posted by Capita

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Good or bad, at least those games actually had a community. You can't build a large server community when all you need to play the game is to stare at a duty finder lobby that pairs up random people across servers. Of course people will be encouraged to act selfishly when they will never see those players again! We need to get rid of these shortcuts if we ever want to see the community grow either way.

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Originally Posted by Kyoraki

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And regardless, blaming WoW is useless and baseless. Duty finder doesn't stop you from creating your own groups and doing stuff the way you want to, it just gives people another choice. WoW has nothing to do with FFXIV's community. WoW doesn't make people undercut you as much as they can; WoW doesn't make people troll you; WoW doesn't make people leave your CT run when their item doesn't drop. The community being the way it is, is due to people being inherently selfish, and it has nothing to do with WoW. Blaming Blizzard for how the community acts is very stupid.

I actively try to be nice and humble. If i mess up i dont blame anyone else or seek to find a scapegoat. I want to make a name for myself on my server.

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Originally Posted by Capita

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Yes, because people create their own parties instead of using duty finder all the time, right? Right? The game heavily encourages you to use shortcuts like this, and it's of little surprise that people use that to invent shortcuts of their own. Why bother sticking around when the Duty Finder will match them up with another bunch of strangers within seconds? Blizzard aren't to blame for the mmo community, but they ARE to blame for providing the tools that brought it down.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan

(PLD/RDM, DRK/BLU, WAR/DRK were all greeted with immediate hostility for me, and this was back in the golden days).

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I don't blame them lol.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan

Try showing up to a party with some unconventional job setups (PLD/RDM, DRK/BLU, WAR/DRK were all greeted with immediate hostility for me, and this was back in the golden days).

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Yeah... I don't really blame them. PLD/RDM would only be good for Phalanx and Stoneskin really, /WHM would offer more MP and more mind along with auto-regen, while /WAR more attack, self buffs for attack and defense, and provoke. DRK already has MP based debuffs and stun so BLU wouldn't offer much to the table since /WAR or /SAM would offer much more attack (because dark knight). /DRK and /PLD were considered useless as subs since they don't offer anything significant as subjobs.

I remember joining my first Yuhtunga mandy EXP group (I started XI in like 2008)... Was RDM30/BLM10. Got IMMEDIATE hate because I hadn't leveled BLM up to at least 15 and I wanted to melee and nuke since we had a WHM in the party. Got booted from the party because I argued that we already had a main healer AND someone PLing. That group made me switch from RDM to DNC for a very long time. I didn't want to be the off heals/refresh mage, I wanted to be support/DD lol.

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Originally Posted by Kyoraki

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Blizzard aren't to blame for anything. All they did was make their game more accessible. Blizzard didn't tell Square to add a duty finder, and it sure as hell didn't make people use it. Is it more convenient? Sure. But blaming them for adding a feature into THEIR game for something that's in this game is just dumb, and all you're doing is adding to the baseless anti-WoW sentiment that FF players have. ANet didn't add a duty finder to GW2; that was THEIR decision, and they're doing pretty well. Square added one, and that was THEIR decision. So blame Square for going that route, not Blizzard. But I guess it's easier to blame an outside force than the real problem.

Regardless, no one's forcing you to use it. In fact, I find it much more efficient to farm dungeons by forming a group on my server than getting stuck with randoms.

the problem lies in human themselves. they can come from wow, league, cod or anywhere else, and adapt to their asshead personalities and then they spread
like a virus. that's what happened. ppl take it and bring it over here and some of us just ignore or immune that virus.

the thing is....you guys have the option to NOT be rude. how hard is it to nicely tell someone or point a tip out to a healer or whatever, instead of ripping they head off abt it. is it seriously that hard to be nicer, than to be mean? please remember, we are people with feelings outside the game. calling ppl tards, or have austism...how do you not know they do have autism? my lil brother has autism, he plays BF4 and i hope to god no one calls him out for anything.

duty finder is an awesome feature, but we should of seen jerks comin' from it. it's a trade off, also have a choice to not use it.
at the end of the day, we will always have someone being a doodoo head. i'm happy to find a good fun fc for now and i feel like levithan
is a good server for me. you're just taking a risk by joining DF since they come and be rude as hell if they please. :/
i only blame the ppl taking after rude personality, i play league and i dont act mean, ppl play wow, they can be nice ppl but it's the others fault
for following the bad seeds.

Even if Duty Finder was removed and you had no choice but to play with people from your server, you would still come across rude people now and then. Blaming rudeness on Duty Finder is ignoring that some people are just d-bags. DF only makes it easier to do without as many consequences.

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Originally Posted by Luxx

the problem lies in human themselves. they can come from wow, league, cod or anywhere else, and adapt to their asshead personalities and then they spread
like a virus. that's what happened. ppl take it and bring it over here and some of us just ignore or immune that virus.

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Exactly.
An ass is an ass. No matter creed nor stock. How you react is what matters.

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Originally Posted by SummonerSenah

Even if Duty Finder was removed and you had no choice but to play with people from your server, you would still come across rude people now and then. Blaming rudeness on Duty Finder is ignoring that some people are just d-bags. DF only makes it easier to do without as many consequences.

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Except it's been more proven that DF/Dungeon Finder type systems breeds it more because you'll almost rarely ever run into them again - Unless they happen to be on your server. Go to 4chan, see how people act there and see how many people leave contact information.

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Originally Posted by Gramul

Exactly.
An ass is an ass. No matter creed nor stock. How you react is what matters.

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Pretty much. I always try to be kind and courteous to other players. If there is an issue I address it in the same manner. I've rarely had a bad party.
Most issues I've had seem to be with young "punk" kids. (either that or they're really immature adults). But kids will be kids, and they generally will settle down if you ask.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Except it's been more proven that DF/Dungeon Finder type systems breeds it more because you'll almost rarely ever run into them again - Unless they happen to be on your server. Go to 4chan, see how people act there and see how many people leave contact information.

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It doesn't "breed" it. It's just that people are more comfortable showing their true colors to anonymous people than to someone who can retaliate in some way. In other words, they weren't "bred" to become asses, they were already asses.

Personally, I'd rather meet a genuinely nice person than someone pretending to be nice just to progress. In fact, I think the biggest problem with duty finder isn't meeting the bad people; rather, it's not being able to meet the nice people again.

Competition breeds hostility. Imagine a game where all you do is going around the world hunting seeds and growing plants, you would see people helping each other out all the time. The way this game, and mmos in general are designed is that there is going to be a gear disparity at end game based on time/commitment/skill and that's where some people take it too far. The hardcores berate the casuals for holding the game back, the casuals are bitter at the hardcore for making the game too time dependent. The atma grinding issue is a perfect example.

There is a lack of content that breeds cooperation, but instead many that breeds competition. Aside from coil, how many people really play for the sake of playing together? As a blm running dungeons, I instantly give commendations to bards that play foe. Up to date, I have given less than 5 commendations. So much content can be done solo that people forget that mmos at the onset were meant to be cooperative games (EQ 40 man raid, wow AQ 40 raid). That is why open world content where players have to work together to down a bosses would be a refreshing change to this game (not the zergfests that fates are, think Lord Kazzak in Wow).

But all in all, this toxicity of the community in this game is still carebear compared to some other pvp games out there. You will only know toxic when you have been corpse camped for hours because some jerk out there decides he has nothing to do better with this time then to grief a totally random stranger.

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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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Really? FFXI had tons of douches and I'd say even more elitists. You are a DRG/SAM? Nope, cant join my party. Don't have sniper rings? Can't join my party. You play on a PS2? Why do you even exist? Get me killed in a party and cause me to delevel? You are a horrible human being.

Its so dumb to act like WoW caused people to be assholes and FFXI was a beacon of good behaviour. You couldn't be more wrong.

Players no longer have time to play games anymore so anything that impedes progress will feel the wrath of their rage. Players are also less helpful now because they don't have the time as well.

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Originally Posted by Doo

Players no longer have time to play games anymore so anything that impedes progress will feel the wrath of their rage. Players are also less helpful now because they don't have the time as well.

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By "Players" I assume you mean those of us who have graduated and have jobs now.
Because I'm pretty sure teen gamers still exist with pretty much the same free time we had back then.

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Originally Posted by Gramul

By "Players" I assume you mean those of us who have graduated and have jobs now.
Because I'm pretty sure teen gamers still exist with pretty much the same free time we had back then.

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I dunno, I refer to them as players because they play the game.

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Originally Posted by Doo

I dunno, I refer to them as players because they play the game.

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I'm just saying, there are no more or less players with the capability to play as long as we did back then. Maybe I misinterpreted the way you said "players" as a generalization. If that's not the case, I apologize.

Cooperative communities always run the risk of becoming 'toxic' when there's no proper way to vent the natural tendancy of the overall gamer population to self-compete. In most multiplayer games, victory comes at the expense of a loss on the other side. In a game like this, stunted progression supplants 'loss', and rapid progress is considered 'winning'.

"Elitists" only want to be associated with 'winners', and look for ways to maintain their own rapid progression while e-peening to as many people as possible in an attempt to make as many people as possible feel like they're not progressing 'fast enough'. In a game where there's no other way to 'compete and win', it mostly boils down to time investment, ego-stroking, and going around with a shite attitude that everyone around them is holding them back.

Most of the rest of the community isn't nearly as toxic as the elitist mentality, not even the cut-throat market moguls.

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Originally Posted by Gramul

By "Players" I assume you mean those of us who have graduated and have jobs now.
Because I'm pretty sure teen gamers still exist with pretty much the same free time we had back then.

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I have 2 teenagers, and I can promise you neither of them will ever give a shit about this model of MMO. I'm not saying all teenagers are like that, but both of them are really only interested in games more focused on aesthetics, where they can design/build things, or experience other user created content, without being gated. Roblox, Minecraft, Sims, Gary's Mod, etc.

They are crap games by my standards, but they've grown up watching older family members play EQ, WoW, FF11, and never ever, ever, ever have they expressed an interest to play themselves.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrK

I have 2 teenagers, and I can promise you neither of them will ever give a shit about this model of MMO. I'm not saying all teenagers are like that, but both of them are really only interested in games more focused on aesthetics, where they can design/build things, or experience other user created content, without being gated. Roblox, Minecraft, Sims, Gary's Mod, etc.

They are crap games by my standards, but they've grown up watching older family members play EQ, WoW, FF11, and never ever, ever, ever have they expressed an interest to play themselves.

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This generation of gamers was raised on Minecraft, CoD, and LoL. If they're not looking for open world freedom, they're looking to have sexual relations with your mother.

Thread: TL;DR

I think some servers have better/worse communities than others. For example my server seems rather nice/helpful but some of the people I meet on duty finder from other worlds are awful. On the other hand, I've heard people comment that players on my server are terrible (skill-wise).

Back in 2.15 we (my server) had a lot of FC's selling Extreme Primals (and they had a pact among themselves to keep the prices fixed) but this was primarily to raise funding for their housing. They all stopped selling after they got their houses. So blame that one on the economy (2.2 sees an influx of more moneys to fix the gil shortage).

In any (gaming) community you're going to see good and bad players (attitude-wise). That's not the fault of any one generation, that's just human nature.

A lot of the "services" being sold (particularly involving power-leveling) are RMT. Don't blame the community for them.

Welcome to the internet, that basically the only to sum it all up.

Too many people just blaming their problems on someone else aka wow, rather than just admitting they're being jerks and becoming nicer people. So many people I've met justify their own bad attitudes by saying its because of WoW players ruining the game. Even WoW's community isn't as bad as this one.

I think too many demanding people, particularly old XI players, who want the game to be something it's not, and just in general the nature of people today, whether in this game or another or rl, is to expect everything they want should be handed to them. I don't even mean they want it easy, just that they feel if they yell and scream enough they should have what they want.

I blame Obamacare personally.

This game is also total troll bait. It only takes one or two bad apples to wipe a crystal tower run, extreme primal, or dungeon, . A lot of the content is easy but expects people to be some level of decent.

The duty finder does allow for a certain level of anonymity and for people to be mean without any consequences since chances are you never see those people again; but you could say that about the internet as a whole.
I think part of it is the ease of the game, in some of the older more "hardcore" games had more barriers between the player and endgame and would filter out some of the less mature players.

At the same time, certain content break the learning curve (e.g. titan) and don't serve as a barrier because people can be carried through with little trouble.

It's not WoW players; FFXI was full of players like this too. Some people have low self-esteem and need to take it out on others, unfortunately.

the difference was in XI and WoW I had maybe 5-10 people on my blacklist. in XIV I have closer 60 without counting RMT bots. Maybe I've lost all patience for stupidity at my ripe old age of 22, but there is certainly something in the water here that makes everyone awful.

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Originally Posted by Xerukm

Seriously, what happened?

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Hello Xerum.

I don't know if you'll ever read this and I didn't check the other pages so excuse me if I'm repeating something that was already mentioned.

In 1.X the community was small, so small that if a player would act like a douchebag the remaining players would punish him by not playing with him.
Meaning that player would not be able to do the Hlvl content of the game.

Also everyone knew everyone in those small comunities and that made them friends, that's why lots of v1.x player still stick together.


Now it's different, there are so many players that if you don't friendlist someone you might actually never see him again.
And that's exactly why people are more toxic now, they don't care for eachother since it won't affect their game experience.

Also wow players /joke

PS: this has absolutelly nothing to do with the game not being like XI or not being like XIV 1.X, it's purelly a community toxic phenomena.

I suppose we can sum up the reason why this and many internet community groups, in gaming and pretty much anything popular tends to get toxic in two words.

Disposable People.


We're free to spew whatever bile and arguments we want because we don't care about the person across from us. By many people's concern they'll likely never play with that individual anyways and even if they did, there are hundred of thousands or even potentially millions, depending on the context, that you can simply replace them with, and find people with your own particular sensibilities, no matter how fringe they are in truth.

This creates little pockets of clique like echo chambers where people pad one another's egos. They're never faced with the reality of consequence because they can simply discard that grouping for another that suits them better. There's little to no actual investment in a community of faceless individuals who in can in no way affect your life aside from an argument

Therefore, everyone here has no tangible worth, aside from the worth another imparts upon them. Apathy and the way of the Sociopath are encouraged in such environments. And with little fear of swift retribution or consequence due to a business-centered enforcement policy, there's literally nothing preventing us from treating each other as exactly what we are to one another: Disposable People.

There isn't enough accountability. Negative behaviors don't get punished, and so they continue.

Squenix establishing a real GM presence in this game would be a great start to remedying this, but that would require money which they don't have or don't want to spend. And ideally they should ban the worst offenders in order to make the community better, but that would result in a loss of revenue. So I don't really expect this to happen.

It's the same reason that McDonald's has a different crowd than a nice French restaurant. When you cater to the masses, you get the masses.

Ever shopped at Whole Foods... and then Wal-Mart? Much different.

People blame WoW players... but that's not true... WoW was the first successful mass marketed game... now that this game uses the same strategy - it gets the same type of players. That's not WoW's fault.

A couple of people have hit the nail on the head here- there's just no accountability for players being jerks. And the reason, in my eyes, is XIV's overdependence on cross-server interaction. If content was at least limited to the server, you could avoid players that are toxic and eventually enough of the server will shun them that they'll get the message. But with so much cross-server content, there's far too little punishment for people who abuse their position/kickpower/gearentitlement/etc, nobody ever really has any consequences for the actions they take.

My biggest advice? Make a linkshell, and when you find somebody on your server you enjoy playing with, ask them if they want to join. In my experience they do, and now I've got a fairly stable base of cool players on my server that I can run dungeons or coil with.

The community became toxic in my opinion due to the design of the game. This game frustrate players, the lockout system, the extreme grind, many quests, primals mechanic, lag just lead people to be less and less forgiving because everyone doesnt wanna waste time.

It might sound stupid but people usually rage and lose their patience because the game itself leads you into a stupid grind/time sink, on repetitive content, with all the major problems we all know. Coil lockout on job and class was one of the most stupid thing they did, second was the myth/phylo/soldiery lockout. You should never limit any kind of player to play the game.

my2cents

I think the real toxicity comes from the fact that SE is fairly catering to the casuals AND the hardcores. Every other patch is meant to cater to one or the other: 2.1 was casual and 2.2 was hardcore.

This naturally polarizes the community into two camps that will constantly be at each other's throats. Like right now all of the casuals are complaining about Atma farming and the best gear being in Coil. Next patch, all of the hardcores are going to complain about SE going "backwards" and being bored because they finished everything.