not many people on the forums?

Everyone says this game is really popular but to me it seems like the traffic on the forums are very slow and almost dead?

Because we're all playing the game

Its mostly due to the limitations that will turn people away early on

The amount you can post on threads daily is limited to your character level. Lets say you're lv 30, you can post less than 10 post per day. Additionally, you can only have 1000 character limit, which can be bypassed but not many know about it.

Compared to Reddite, for example

Not really dead, or even remotely close.. Doesn't help this is the na forums and its 1am, smack dab in the middle of America . also what's forum population have to do with the game? Lol. All you'll find here is a few randoms like me(because I'm laying in bed browsing forums befor I pass out) and a bunch of trolls and the angry kids. The rest of them spend more time on the game.

I'd be surprised if more than 20% of the game's population know the forum exists (or even really care about them).

We are mostly on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/

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Originally Posted by MiniTofu

We are mostly on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/

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Even that is just a portion of the overall playerbase.

Not to mention that things like forums aren't as popular as they used to be a few years back. I've seen a huge decline of forum usage over the past few years. It's still being used, but not as frequently visited by users. Other social media and other ways of communicating has taken a bigger spotlight.

I'm honestly surprised with the amount of people using this forum in this day and age.

Also, German and French have their own section, that cuts activity from the English section.

People rarely visit forums, or know about them.

The forum community in most games consist of about a handful of the players.

Not to mention the popularity of alternate forums over the official ones like Reddit.

My FC has 170 members and I do not know anyone who visits forums except me.
Many people just prefer to play and chat with their FC mates and friends, they don't feel a need to visit forums. :)

Anyways I watch forums and reddit daily and I don't think they are dead. :)

The forums have a daily post limit that I've actually reached once and it's incredibly annoying. Having to edit your post to bypass a pointless character limit is also awful. I also received a 2 week ban for being rude to a girl advertising her youtube channel by using her cleavage and encouraging you to subscribe because she's a 'hot chick'.

Kinda discouraging here tbh.

Then, this forum require you had at least purchased the game once and done at least one character in. It filters out people talking of a game they don't play.

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Originally Posted by Elusana_Celah

The forums have a daily post limit that I've actually reached once and it's incredibly annoying. Having to edit your post to bypass a pointless character limit is also awful. I also received a 2 week ban for being rude to a girl advertising her youtube channel by using her cleavage and encouraging you to subscribe because she's a 'hot chick'.

Kinda discouraging here tbh.

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The reason is because people in Beta forums screwed it up for the rest of us.
Being trolly and crap so we took the heat with limitations. I am 100% sure we weeded out MOST of those people from 2013
and these limitations needs to be removed now, it's harder to have discussions.

Also watch out, if you get another ban you'll get perm ban and there is no way from coming back, period.
That said, most people got banned on here because getting banned is easy.

@Elusana's below post: The only way you'll get reported is not so much the admin's on the watch...
it's because people are reporting those posts.
[I know what topic you're talking about, I didn't have an active sub to post in it.]
Then again, some people were being completely cruel to her even though her title was so stupid
and it was obvious attention bait...people just got sucked in and the ban hammer was ensured. Tread lightly.
I know personally because I've been banned too but not a single ban in almost a year on this account lol.
It went from 1 warning, to 2 warning but escalated into a perm...So I'd try and be on my best behaviour.
Friendly advice to others also.

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Originally Posted by Mugiawara

Also watch out, if you get another ban you'll get perm ban and there is no way from coming back, period.
That said, most people got banned on here because getting banned is easy.

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Meh. These forums are definitely over-moderated. That post I mentioned had a ton of people just as irritated as I was and the admin just walked in and banned a ton of people including me but never closed the post or anything? Now I'll get perma-banned if I'm banned again?

Behold, the reason the forums feel dead.

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Originally Posted by myahele

Its mostly due to the limitations that will turn people away early on

The amount you can post on threads daily is limited to your character level. Lets say you're lv 30, you can post less than 10 post per day. Additionally, you can only have 1000 character limit, which can be bypassed but not many know about it.

Compared to Reddite, for example

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Also, Rogue/Ninja STILL doesn't count as a real class for "unlocking" the forum. I started as pugilist and switched to Rogue, and it wasn't until I switched to Dragoon and levelled that up that I could finally post on the forums.

And 1k characters per post is a ridiculous limit, this isn't Twitter. I'm constantly writing out long posts and then having to delete half of it or double-post, to the point that I just stop bothering a lot of the time.

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Originally Posted by NinjaTaru72

Doesn't help this is the na forums and its 1am, smack dab in the middle of America

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everyone knows english forums are obviously NA forums xD

Who cares about all the other English speaking countries, or every country not represented (Spanish, Portuguese, Russian...) ?

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Originally Posted by Elusana_Celah

Meh. These forums are definitely over-moderated....

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If the forums are over-moderated, it begs the questions, "Why is it that requests we make, such as more attention to banning RMT, are completely ignored even though there are more threads than are necessary requesting that SE please focus more effort and attention on banning RMT to improve the game for all existing players as well as any new players who may join in the future?" It seems that the community mods selectively choose which threads they care to reply to even if those threads have little to no impact on the experience of the vast majority of the player base. Sorry, but I'm a little sour about the fact that it seems that pretty much all of our requests for more RMT banning to occur have been flat out ignored.

If a community Mod sees this, please, for the love of the twelve, pass it on to Yoshi P and the Dev Team that the playerbase have absolutely had it with being constantly inundated with RMT /tells to the point that most people prefer to play with /busy status causing them to be unable to be contacted via /tell, accept trades, receive invites, etc.

The RMT problem is out of hand and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Some of us are getting the impression that RMT sub fees are more important to SE's bottom line than allowing the entire player base to have an enjoyable experience while adventuring in Eorzea.

When my arcanist was level 38 or so I was only able to do two posts. I remembered waiting until the next day to post again, but it continued saying that I reached the limit. It was already 5pm over the 24 hrs, yet I was not able to post.

Just gonna say it - there's not really much to discuss either (at least compared to other games I've played). Everything that can be said has been said and now it's just beating a dead horse.

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Originally Posted by minipope

Everyone says this game is really popular but to me it seems like the traffic on the forums are very slow and almost dead?

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Which is why it's universally true to say that forums are a god awful way of judging the activity for *anything*.

The posting restrictions prevent anyone from flooding the forum with a bazillion one line replies, and the character limitation on a new post or reply (which can be overcome by editing) also tends to keep things reasonable.

If you read the forums, you'll see the traffic, and if you post, you'll soon encounter the posting restrictions.

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Originally Posted by MugenMugetsu

it begs the questions, "Why is it that requests we make, such as more attention to banning RMT, are completely ignored even though there are more threads than are necessary requesting that SE please focus more effort and attention on banning RMT to improve the game for all existing players as well as any new players who may join in the future?"
**snip**
If a community Mod sees this, please, for the love of the twelve, pass it on to Yoshi P and the Dev Team that the playerbase have absolutely had it with being constantly inundated with RMT /tells to the point that most people prefer to play with /busy status causing them to be unable to be contacted via /tell, accept trades, receive invites, etc.

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Do you honestly believe that a) the community managers are unaware of the issues with RMT? b) Yoshi and the Dev team are oblivious to the issues of RMT?

Of course they are aware, and there is a task force set up to handle RMT, it's simply not handling it fast enough for you, me or anyone else. That's due to RMT efforts quickly ramping up and overwhelming the capacity of the task force to properly investigate and act on reports (such as they are). It's also due to an increasingly large number of utterly ignorant and inconsiderate players particularly on NA/EU servers who don't give a damn about anyone else and purchase gil from these RMT slimeballs. Without a market there is no RMT, without a growing market, there is less RMT ramp up.

I love how people always blame SE when the simple fact is if it were not worth their while to advertize, RMT would not advertize. more advertizing means a larger market which means more players are buying gil. It's those fools who need to receive the loving attention of a big fat banhammer every bit as much as the scum that sell gil in the first place.

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Originally Posted by MugenMugetsu

off topic rant

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There's already so many threads about RMT. Do you really need to bring this up here? -.-

@OP - in every game I've played, only a fraction of the playerbase uses forums. It's pretty typical.

Do you know why the forums are dead? As soon as you express your opinion in any negative fashion, you'll be slapped with a 10 day ban with no way to talk to a person in any reasonable fashion to litigate your cause. The forums are here, I thought, so that we as players can discuss the good and the bad side of the game and it's process, to include the forum. However, once an issue comes to light in the forums, there is absolutely no way to get a hold of anyone from the forums through any channel in the Square Enix business except through the same forums you were banned for.

Let's talk about excessive enforcement now. The limit on a posts per day, the limit on words per post, and now the excessive limit on time banned for a first time offender and the completely objective judements of what they feel the rules mean when any candid comment rubs them the wrong way. On top of that, there's no way to talk to anyone about your post and when the ban hammer comes down, you are completely locked out entirely from the forums. To top it off, the same comments I made were made a hundred times over and I actively see those that should have been "banned" for making the same comments active and carefree.

I for one will not frequent the forums again, and this just chalks up another strike for Square Enix. The steady decline of caring about the player base, the elitist attitude from the corporation as a whole, and the lack of quality games (in my opinion of course) is giving me cause to no longer support any Final Fantasy's. As a gamer and an avid supporter of Final Fantasy for 20+ years, it's truly a shame that it's fallen so far.

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Originally Posted by JimboTCB

And 1k characters per post is a ridiculous limit, this isn't Twitter. I'm constantly writing out long posts and then having to delete half of it or double-post, to the point that I just stop bothering a lot of the time.

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A work-around for this is to write out your entire message, and then copy it, delete it, replace with xxxxxxxxxxxx (or something that is 10 characters) and then submit. Edit your post right away and paste in your original reply.

It's a bit lame we even have to do that, but it will work.

People talk negative things about this game all the time. It's only the people who can't critique without resorting to hyperbole or insults that get banned.

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Originally Posted by minipope

Everyone says this game is really popular but to me it seems like the traffic on the forums are very slow and almost dead?

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Agreed. Forums could be utilized more.

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Originally Posted by minipope

Everyone says this game is really popular but to me it seems like the traffic on the forums are very slow and almost dead?

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Forum dwellers are ALWAYS a very small percentage of the actual population.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

People talk negative things about this game all the time. It's only the people who can't critique without resorting to hyperbole or insults that get banned.

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It' not the hyperbole per se it's how they handle the hyperbole, and how insulting they are...and how many times people report the post to complain...lol.

Seriously though, earning a forum ban is in most ways quitedifficult, although there are specific areas of discussion that have a more 'zero tolerance' approach.

Everyone gets banned for having an opinion that doesn't hold your hand and tell you you're special before going to bed.

The SJWs and White Knights got anyone with any real criticism banned months ago.

/thread

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Originally Posted by minipope

Everyone says this game is really popular but to me it seems like the traffic on the forums are very slow and almost dead?

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its because most of us on the forums are the ones who like being vocal about things in games, or are complaining about something/felt the need to post after random lurking.
a lot of people just browse, no need to post. the game doesn't obligate it, but this exists so people can have a voice (a minor voice, but a voice)

I have never been banned nor even received a warning on anything and I have engaged in many of the more heated discussions on these forums, although I knew better than to engage in obvious troll threads and flame wars.

You can voice your dissenting opinion and have meaningful discussions without repercussion as long as you do so respectfully. Its not so much what you say, its how you say it. If you want to converse with others and not piss people off and get reported/banned/etc., leave your ego and attitude out of it. If you make nasty, insulting or demeaning responses or remarks to people on the forums, you're likely to rub someone the wrong way and that can lead to being reported and potentially banned. I myself have only reported someone once in the entirety of my times on the forums and that was for making a slew of racist remarks in a thread and completely derailing the discussion and then refusing to stop.

If you are constantly getting "regulated" on the forums, maybe you should take a look at your own conduct and not just try to point the finger elsewhere.

I agree that they should remove the character limit after you have reached a specific "rank (based on the stars)" for posting though. It can be a pain when posting from a phone.

It's because everyone's perma'd, since mods ban you for everything, legitimate or otherwise.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

words

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So power to the people who can troll, irk a lot of people and get THEM banned while he/she walks away untouched. That's how these forums are moderated. Good passive aggression and good trolling can get you quite a lot of lolz here.

Plus the banning practices here are unforgiving. Perma-bans are handed out faster than speeding tickets on an interstate highway.

I know I fell into that trap and got a 10 day time out for it.

Like someone said on Page 3, all it takes is people to report your post enough times regardless of however constructive or aggressive your post is to get someone banned. I've heard of it happening to numerous people before, so it leaves me with the impression that I can't have an opinion on here, and I just end up avoiding the Official Forums mostly.

Please leave your opinion at the door.

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Originally Posted by minipope

Everyone says this game is really popular but to me it seems like the traffic on the forums are very slow and almost dead?

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I can say for myself and for 99% of our FC that, no one is on it because it's typically filled with a lot of QQing and other garbage. Occasionally I stop in to see IF, there is anything worth commenting on. Such as this post.

Hope you enjoy the game! ^.^

Edit: Found this

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Originally Posted by NinjaTaru72

All you'll find here is a few randoms like me(because I'm laying in bed browsing forums befor I pass out) and a bunch of trolls and the angry kids. The rest of them spend more time on the game.

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And this is my back up to what I said. ;)

Most people don't care about forums at all. Probably 70-80% of people play the game and don't touch the forums. Forums should never be used as an indicator of a game's popularity.

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Originally Posted by Reinfeld

Just gonna say it - there's not really much to discuss either (at least compared to other games I've played). Everything that can be said has been said and now it's just beating a dead horse.

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This is actually a really important point. Early 2.0 the forums were booming, every major patch with new relevant content the forum get a bit of a boom, and the rest is just a lull since there's not much to talk about. It's unfortunate, but content discussion can only last so long and there's not entirely much complexity to the combat system itself, so min/maxing discussion usually devolves into secondary stat weights and all that noise. Most people have better places to spend their time than a forum anyway. :P