New player confused

Hi all a really really noob question, dont say I didn't warn you... but in every other mmo I have been in people chat, trade, general etc, in this one even though I see people there is no chat, I have them all checked so not sure why, I am assuming I need to add a channel, but cant find a list anywhere.
Its so quiet and weird lol

Any help be great!
Thanks

you should see people chatting in the chatbox on the lower left corner, you might just be in a really dead area/server??? i never been to Tonberry so IDK if that is an active server.. if you do see alot of people and still nothing in the chatbox, most likely they are in FC or private chats

unless you're in the end game cities (Rev Toll/Idyllshire) you're probably not going to see a whole lot of general chat activity. Most people chat via their FC channels or Linkshells. You'll join one eventually most likely and you can start branching out from there. Or become helpful and people may start inviting you to their linkshells. :) Have fun!

You could also get an invite to the Novice Network if you are a Leaf (new player). Lots of talking going on there, least on Hyperion anyway.

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Originally Posted by Lucke

You could also get an invite to the Novice Network if you are a Leaf (new player). Lots of talking going on there, least on Hyperion anyway.

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thanks guys, How do you do this?

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Originally Posted by Rads

thanks guys, How do you do this?

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Speak to a player with a golden crown next to their name (a Mentor) and ask them to invite you to the Novice Network :)

Since this game has no world chat, people mostly talk within their FCs (guilds) and Linkshells (private chat channels).
There is an upper limit to how long you can stay in the Novice Network (until you have finished the storyline of the expansion OR played for quite a few hours) so finding a guild and/or some Linkshells that you feel comfortable in before you get thrown out into the cold, chatless world, is a good idea ;)

(Except for a few bad apples, FFXIV's community is actually really friendly though, so if you just try to talk to random people in the streets in my experience, they will reply and it can lead to a fun convesation and even new friendships^^)

In my experience, this is how MMOs are in general nowadays, not just FFXIV. Still, I think FFXIV not having chat bubbles has an especially negative subconscious effect on public communication, but maybe I'm wrong. Besides, at this point it'd be too hard to get used to chat bubbles in the game, I think.

Thanks guys, I dislike chat bubbles, but its extremely weird not seeing chat.. I agree it has negative concoctions :)

This game is absurdly quiet for an MMO to new players.

Sometimes when I complain about it people just say "join a FC," or sign-up for a bunch of linkshells. As if those were easy solutions to a new player.

The problem is I don't want niche/closed group social. I want the open, expansive extrovert experience. I want to meet new people, hear new ideas, listen to others debate about random stuff. Novice Network does a great job of sort of getting there. But sadly, beyond Novice Network this game is bone dry dead in terms of an active social community that isn't hidden behind doors.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

This game is absurdly quiet for an MMO to new players.

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Actually, it's pretty typical of any MMO that has been out for several years with an expansion pack or two, especially one which doesn't encourage 'vet' players to level alts because there is no alt-leveling mechanism beyond a mindless grind of FATEs and now PoTD.

Leveling 'alt jobs' doesn't take you anywhere near the new players, which of course if the QUESTING content which a level-capped character likely already did .. and things are even worse now the FATE grinding has given way to PoTD grinding hidden inside personal instances .. a new player will grow old and die before ever finding parties to joinfor that!

The only point of contact I see between 'vets' and 'newbs' is the daily leveling roulette!

Most mmog are like that these days i think. People like voice chat over types chat and it leaves unwilling or unable to setup the hardware for it behind. English is not my first language and some people have strong accent wit the added sound quality, sometimes i can't even tell if someone is talking to me. I did give it a shot once, bought a cheap jack plug microphone, tried to configure it. Turns out i blew up the voice chat, my output correction was way off or something.

So yeah, send a shout in a major city and chances are a mentor will invite you to the novice channel. Then you may want to work towards mentor status yourself.

The reason you don't see much chatting in the standard channels is because there are no global channels - they are all either limited to a zone or to a small number of people.
I have seen this in many other MMOs that also only have regional channels as well - almost always quiet except maybe in the major hubs where people gather.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Sometimes when I complain about it people just say "join a FC," or sign-up for a bunch of linkshells. As if those were easy solutions to a new player.

The problem is I don't want niche/closed group social. I want the open, expansive extrovert experience. I want to meet new people, hear new ideas, listen to others debate about random stuff.

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You can have up to 8 Linkshells with 218 people in them. That beats out how many people are usually active in the NN by FAR. The only difference is that it is upon yourself to seek out these groups or build such large communities yourself.
I'm in the Lala LS of my server (218 people), the anime/manga LS (218 people), the Linkshells of my 2 former FCs (40-80 people per LS), two big Linkshells of my circle of friends (one for English-speaking ones, one for German speaking ones) which are also both around 30-40 members and in the "Germans on Ragnarok" LS (218 people again). 8th LS is for Static, so that's not exactly one for talking, but yeah.
Especially the big, public ones constantly have members leaving and new ones joining, the topics are never limited to one certain topic and the world feels very open, communicative and alive (so much so, that I tend to ignore the chat quite often because it is so overwhelming ;)).

I very much enjoy the nooby chat. Just ask in /sh for someone to invite you. The chat is very alive on Shiva. I love it^^

I'm not sure about Tonberry, but on a lot of servers, Limsa's lower decks seems to be the most popular place for open chat in the ARR zones (either in the /say channel near the aetherite and its nearby marketboard, or /shout from anywhere). And if there isn't any going on there at the moment, you have the best chance there of getting some started. Try asking advice on something. That can often get people talking.

(Unfortunately, this makes it also a popular spot for RMT spam bots, but once you report and blacklist today's current batch of them, that can keep their garbage from interrupting you.)

But yeah, as others have mentioned, this game's zone dependent chat system severely limits open world chatting as compared to any game that has a public server-wide channel.

The Novice Network confused me as a returnee. I made a new character and read the guides. They mention the NN but they don't say you have to actively shout for an invite. They just say you will be invited by a mentor.

I am leveling crafting so I am in towns synthng a lot. I have gotten many spam invites to FCs. Thank you those few that whispered first. I was waiting on some family returning with me to decide on a FC together, so I was FC-less a while. Not a problem except for the spam invites. But still no invite to the NN!

I've had my sprout now at least two weeks, nothing over L30 and wanted to call attention to the confusion of reading about the NN but still having no idea how to access it, and to point out the contrast between spontaneous NN invites (non-existent) and spontaneous also often asocial FC invites (near as often as RMT!). So, from this perspective it seems less than useful. Added irony, from reading the mentor qualifications, my old character meets them.