FFXIV Research

Hi everyone,
I am posting this recruitment flyer on behalf of a friend of mine, who is not a member of this forum:

I am a researcher interested in reward systems and group behavior. I am writing to ask your help in completing my master’s thesis at Texas Woman's University. I am studying the commendation system available to players of Final Fantasy XIV and I am interested in the likelihood of avatar gender differences in how these commendations are given out. All you need to do to help me complete my study is to simply post the total number of commendations you have received for your primary character as it is listed on this forum. For those who comment, I will also record information listed on the profiles of your avatars as they are listed on the Lodestone character search engine. I will be recording information on displayed class, presence in a free company, and avatar gender. (continued)

(cont.) I will not record any information that identifies players and all recorded data will be destroyed at the conclusion of this study. Participation in this study is voluntary and you may withdraw at any time. If you withdraw from the study, you may request that you information is not used in the study. If you have any questions or concerns, you may send an e-mail to twuffxiv@gmail.com with specific questions and concerns about this study – this is an account not associated with anyone other than the researcher. There is a potential risk of loss of confidentiality in all email, downloading, electronic meetings, and internet transactions. I will be posting this request to several different forums, so please only respond to this request once. I didn’t see any explicit rules regarding these kinds of posts, but if there is one that I missed or if the moderators for these forums would be willing to work with me to address any concerns, I would very much appreciate it. Thank you so much.

so do you just want commendation numbers or commendation numbers and gender?

Hello when I commend it has nothing to do with avatar gender. It’s about gameplay. If players play sticks out, I commend. If no one does I don’t commend at all. I’m a little confused why people would commend because someone is a male or female character

I think this is something more for general discussion.

Hi everyone,

Overall, I am just looking for a general trend in the way commendations are distributed. I'm not necessarily interested in why someone would commend a male or female character specifically - that is far beyond my interests. All I need for the purposes of research is just the number of commendations associated with the character you use most frequently.

Just a heads up, people use fantasia A LOT , i played as only a male character for maybe a year , then female of many different races for a year and a half.
And just to add my 2 cents, gender is definetly smtg i never value in giving comms, i dont even look what people look like in dungeons, and i can assume that most people think alike in this regard.

For the record, a players avatar is rarely taken into consideration, at least for me.
I joke about how terrible Lalafells are (and boy let me tell you...) but at the end of the game if you've done your job well it matters not. I rarely look at someones gender, they'd be lucky if I see their race. Let's not even get started on facial attributes! The game is designed to be played fully zoomed out, and not spent looking at finer details.

Basically, I'm a DPS and you're a tank you're getting my commendation for allowing me to actually participate, unless you're terrible. Then it goes to the healer.
Flip-side I've gotten 5,074 commendations, mostly as tank or healer. The trend to comm either the flashiest DPS, highest DPS, or the tank/healer seems pretty prevalent and has been since the start of this feature.

So I don't mean to dismiss your studies, but character gender very likely has little to do with commendations as a whole. But by all means take my data.
5,074 commendations. Female Miqo'te.

I'm all about getting empirical data on games, but the information you asked for will not yield the results desired.

You would also need to account for frequency. Person 1 having 1000 commendations and Person 2 having 500 means nothing. The Person 1 with 1000 could run commendation-giving activities 5x more than guy 2. Or have played for 3 years instead of 1. Either making person 2 the one more likely to receive commendations but not accurately represented in your study.

Raw numbers will not be very helpful for that kind of study without the number of commendation giving activities. You will likely just end up with a list of high commendation players that have played far more frequently and longer than the low commendation players nullifying any useful information for your thesis.

Gender plays no part in my commendations.
When I play a healer, I usually commend the tank. Unless the tank sucks during the run (like wearing non-plate armor that requires me to spam heal), then I commend one of the better played DPSes.
When I play a tank, I usually commend the healer. Unless the healer sucks during the run (such as letting the party die over and over), then I commend one of the better played DPSes.
When I play a DPS, I usually commend the other DPS. Unless the other DPS sucks during the run (such as sits in the corner and doesn't do much), then I usually commend the healer, unless the healer sucks during the run, in which I will commend the tank.
If the group quickly leaves the dungeon after the run, I usually commend the last person left, unless I'm the only person left, in which I don't commend anyone.
I've yet to encounter a situation where everyone sucked so bad I didn't commend at all.

I also usually just commend the last person still left, since people often leave immediately before I even have the chance to even open the menu. Once they leave, you can no longer commend. The rewards are so useless, I could really care less about receiving a commendation. Like others I honestly have no idea of the race or gender of the avatar of others when in a dungeon. I don’t even look at the avatars closely, just the health bars next to the job icon and aggro indicators. To me, it is just “tank, healer, or DPS”.

Number of commendations are meaningless because different players run dungeons at different frequencies and some stick around for a while and others exit immediately which prevents them from being able to receive a commendation. Because you can change your gender with a potion that everyone gets, many avatars have been both genders (mine has been both male and female, and different races). Commendation totals don’t take that into consideration. People also switch “jobs” all the time and I think most people, who don’t commend Randomly, favors a certain job role. It is common for SCH/SMN jobs to have SCH do dungeons for shorter queues and SMN for solo quests, because the higher DPS helps to complete them quicker and both share the same base class and level together. As a result, just looking at job levels is worthless and misleading. There are also many solo ways to level. Generally tanks and healers get more commends than DPS, in my experience, but it is all pretty random.

I am sorry, but I hate studies that try to prove some kind of stereotype by selectively choosing the bits and pieces of data they want to focus on or ignore in order to try and validate some bias that will get them published.

The commendation system is simply a terrible way to gather any kind of useful phycological research data. It is too random and there are simply too many conflicting reasons why people give them and to whom. Using such is more likely to return a flawed or false conclusion than a true one. That kind of reckless “research” only serves to discredit legitiment research studies that use proper controls, by association, and it lowers the public’s trust in general of scientific research. How about you do a study on that instead.

Also, this is certainly the wrong forum board for this. This is area is for discussion of tank role jobs.

I have to put this out there. I mean i like the idea of doing these studies. however... in this game its so hard to tell a characters race let alone if its a female or male. mostly it comes down to if you actually did your job. mostly your tank or your healer is going to get the comm. i usually give to a dps that stood since i tank and my friend heals and im not allowed to commend him. you can use my data as well i have 80 some comm and im a male "human" highlander. im pretty well just started really doing the roulettes so thats why my stats are so low.

To reflect on what the others said, your numbers probably won't yield anything good due to all the random variables. IE: Has the player ever changed gender in game? If so how many comms did they obtained while female? How many while male? How long have they been playing for and how many instances have they done that has rewarded them with a commendation? --- A better way to approach this would be to gather a group of people and split them between males and females evenly and then further split them into their designated roles and have them run a certain number of dungeons.

But as others have said it's more based about how you play your job. I've found that communication, building rapport, and playing your job half way decently nets you commendations. That and the models in this game are kinda...weird looking. Think there was even a post a while back asking why females lacked curves to put it nicely.

In light parties, the comm by default goes to the healer, unless there's a new person and he doesn't mess up. In full parties, it goes to the other tank, healer, or whoever is still left when it ends for me to comm. The only time I'm even aware of a groupmate's race or gender is when he's dressed in a way that grabs my attention.

when i play tank then my co-tank has highest priority for my commendation. when there is no co-tank or the co-tank wasn't good then i will give it to a healer, except the healers were bad too^^ of course when someone actually impressed me, then he will get the commendation, regardless of role. like a bard who uses palisade on me or whatever ^^
also when i was spinning the mobs a lot and messing up the positionals for the meele, then i will give him the commendation as a compensation xD

in 24 mans i often give it to the only person person without weakness at the end >.>

oh and i will never give it to a person with a stupid name, like Cloud or Sephiroth...

i don't take gender into consideration, but sometimes i just give it to a Lalafell just because :O

and to answer the OPs question: i call 4655 commendations my own ^_____________^
- after more than 4 years and over 15k hours of playtime with countless dungeon runs...