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

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Originally Posted by Melorie

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.

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I prefer the challenge to come from the unique mechanics of the battle and what I see happening on the screen, not from learning a fixed sequence of buttons that you need to perform the same way every time.

It's why I like red mage, where at every turn you just need to do an action based on the current state of your gauge.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I prefer the challenge to come from the unique mechanics of the battle and what I see happening on the screen, not from learning a fixed sequence of buttons that you need to perform the same way every time.

It's why I like red mage, where at every turn you just need to do an action based on the current state of your gauge.

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As I said, taste. I enjoy the fights and the mechanics as well but with how syncing and powercapping works in this game there's very little available when it comes to that. At least a rotation that keeps you involved can save you from a boring fight, that ends up being a huge amount of the game if you're not doing current-content, which is the vast majority of the game. Even the cool fights with interesting mechanics end up meaningless.

Imo I don't see the reason why we can't have both tbh.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

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I feel like some of this explains a lot of what I was feeling. This game feels like a massive creative outlet for all sorts of things and I'm not against it. I appreciate a lot of the different works that comes out of it. It just sometimes feels really overwhelming.

Here's some background on myself I came from a really old game/virtual space called IMVU. I was on there for 3-4 years but at some point it just started dying, and I end up following other people here. I had a trial account for a long while but I wasn't really into this like I am now, but that was also partly due to me being in the phase of going from secondary school to college. When I came back and tried I had more time to spend on it and I actually got into it.

Even coming from IMVU though it's a bit of a culture shock it feels? It's way more cliquey, and it feels weird that people focus so much on purely social stuff when there's activities that you can actually do. A lot of people don't even feel like they're that interested in the game either. You go into any FF14 discord and you find people talking about other games or literally anything else but the game. I've joined specialized discords for different group activities in-game and I've had people in there literally tell me they don't play the game anymore.

There's nothing wrong with people being social, and people can do it however they like, but I guess it's just coming down to a case of me not feel like I fit in. Even if I hadn't gained a taste for playing the actual game and enjoyed doing the content in it, I still don't really think I'd have fit in with the super social cliques on here.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

Even coming from IMVU though it's a bit of a culture shock it feels? It's way more cliquey, and it feels weird that people focus so much on purely social stuff when there's activities that you can actually do. A lot of people don't even feel like they're that interested in the game either. You go into any FF14 discord and you find people talking about other games or literally anything else but the game. I've joined specialized discords for different group activities in-game and I've had people in there literally tell me they don't play the game anymore.

There's nothing wrong with people being social, and people can do it however they like, but I guess it's just coming down to a case of me not feel like I fit in. Even if I hadn't gained a taste for playing the actual game and enjoyed doing the content in it, I still don't really think I'd have fit in with the super social cliques on here.

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This probably has a lot to do with lockdowns, tbh. Although it became more and more prominent with the democratization of mods/add-ons/shaders, I feel like Vyrerus was right when he said a majority of players are not gamers.

IMVU was, in the social circles I've been in, pretty frowned upon, and I mean no offense in that, I never despised it myself, but people around me always thought it was weird, self centric, or creepy. With lockdowns happening, social events came to an halt, so many people turned to ffxiv for those (hence the nightclubs). The society also became much more focused on... self-representation, with instagram and such. So yeah, basically, FFXIV became the cooler IMVU, but in a society that focuses much more on what made IMVU great.

Regarding the fact that FFXIV discord servers don't talk that much about FFXIV... I can't disagree, and I really don't like those discord for that reason, but I still found some nice communities that got me what I asked for, raids, advice, whatever. It's just a mess to navigate within, but it's the same as FCs, you just can't always find the right one right away. If there is a right one.

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Originally Posted by Melorie

I feel like you've summarized it perfectly.



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.

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To be fair, i'm sure they are talking about the basic combos that most melees have. Funny enough, the _____ that the person is talking about doesn't really mess with dancer too much, just consolidates the basic combos into a single button. I'm shocked that the devs don't just add that to the game imo. They complain about button bloat and that would remove a minimum of two buttons for most melee jobs, lol.

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

To be fair, i'm sure they are talking about the basic combos that most melees have. Funny enough, the _____ that the person is talking about doesn't really mess with dancer too much, just consolidates the basic combos into a single button. I'm shocked that the devs don't just add that to the game imo. They complain about button bloat and that would remove a minimum of two buttons for most melee jobs, lol.

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I see. I'm not familiar with melee gameplay. I'm a healer main so I can attest to tendinitis by pressing 1 button 80% of the gameplay in the majority content of the game.

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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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Or they openly talk about their irl issues & drama
like, please I didn't log on to learn this crap. it's probably why I have no friends but I'm here to do video game stuff

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Originally Posted by HeyMcFly

Or they openly talk about their irl issues & drama
like, please I didn't log on to learn this crap. it's probably why I have no friends but I'm here to do video game stuff

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But isn't that how you make friends? Do you strive to have like a separation as of "gaming friends" and "real life friends"? I have meet many amazing people through FFXIV (and other MMOS), that are now part of my life. That's the beauty of social games.
At some point you can't talk about the game anylonger. There isn't even that amount of things to talk.
You're going to talk about the roulette every week? That sounds so boring.

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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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In a way, both are the same thing:

- Instagram is a social, virtual, network to share pictures. Some or most of them are full of filters, editions, etc.
- In game gpose is a social, virtual, network to share pictures. Some or most of them are full of filters, editions, etc.

The only difference is the model. In the first one are people trying to avoid their visual flaws aspects. In the second are people behind a character made ingame. (joking) :3 )

What I mean is: instagram and MMO are both virtual sharing stuff about someone or something someone is doing. No wonder why they have similarities. Of course, Instagram is more close to real life than MMOs, but both are virtual environments with not-so-real people. :)

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Originally Posted by Melorie

But isn't that how you make friends? Do you strive to have like a separation as of "gaming friends" and "real life friends"? I have meet many amazing people through FFXIV (and other MMOS), that are now part of my life. That's the beauty of social games.
At some point you can't talk about the game anylonger. There isn't even that amount of things to talk.
You're going to talk about the roulette every week? That sounds so boring.

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It's all well and good until there is a disagreement about some rl "things" and suddenly the one on the wrong side of the discussion has to make the call if they need to stay silent or double down on what they feel and pray that what they say doesn't infringe the open ended nature that is the ToS. Personally, I would stay quiet in those moments because my personal opinions are not worth losing/getting a mark on my account, lol.