Cultural Differences, North American Strangers

[Orophin]

playing MMOs for over 10 years now, last played at around 2007...
FFXIV is the first MMO where i felt lonely in the field even with dozens of players around.
no need to form parties in the field, no real need to form parties with people from your own server, no need to talk really.
feels like playing a single player rpg with simulated players..

i joined a LS because i just felt so lonely and was getting sick of that empty chatlog.
what's going on with MMOs these days? :/

I think there's a lot of people that want to experience a game that changes occasionally through updates but want to do it from a single player standpoint. This shift occurred with MMOs starting with WoW and most other ones released after that point.

[CianaIezuborn]

Sasakusaku, I will try to clairfy, I'm not really a mean person so i'll try to clear precisely what I mean. Through the story progression you only are forced to group with strangers temporarily, fates and DF last from a few minutes to an hour and you never see these people again unless you go out of your way to try to friend everyone you see in a fate or dungeon. What i'm talking about is that there should be mechanics which promote real grouping on your server, of the sort where you need to form bonds and real friendships with like minded individuals just to progress through the game. Some people play mmos because they want to be the most badass and show off their gear. Ya know, i can be badass by playing Devil May Cry...I play mmorpgs not just to play a fun game, but primarily to be SOCIAL in a fun game. In this game you are not really urged to make real bonds until you get to the point that DF during end game content becomes almost a negative. Do you see what I mean here?

On the other hand, when i read about the DF and fate situation on JP servers, as soon as you get into a DF dungeon people are automatically chatting and saying things like nice to meet you and such and so it appears that on their side, the mechanics we have work well to form friendship relationships for them via random stranger grouping. That simply isn't the case on our end.

I think Jayrune put it best with "if you want to be social, be social". I'll throw my two cents in to the pot though.

I tank. When I'm in a dungeon/party/whatever with my FC mates or friends, I'm social, though usually in Ventrillo. I prefer to party with them, for the social aspect and the obvious advantage to having static groups. When I do use the duty finder, or hell even if I form a pug group to take into the duty finder, my objective and my responsibility to the group is to pull my weight to get us through the content. I didn't hit Join Duty to play some weird game of FF14 chat roulette hoping I'd get paired up with a cute cat girl that I can dance around with and talk about my feelings. I'm there for the big Duty Complete message at the end and I'm assuming the rest of the folks are too.

The most I usually say involves 3 lines at the beginning, 1 at the end, and fight strats if neccessary.

"Hey guys"
"Anyone not know the fights?"
if "I don't" then
"Alright I'll pause before tricky encounters and summarize"
else
"Alright, pulling"
finally
"Thanks for the run guys"

To that extent, you won't see me chatting you up in party chat, I'm concentrating on holding aggro, marking targets, tagging patrols, and over all making sure we get through this bus ride without a hitch. I don't mind if you want to sing Kumbaya on the way, but don't expect me to sing along and keep your eyes on the road. My social responsibility is to be civil and courteous to people I meet, but that doesn't mean I have to be your friend. I have friends, I like my friends, I like the fact that I get to choose my friends. If I had the urge to sing Kumbaya, I'd likely sing it in Vent with my friends.

That could be considered a cultural difference between American and Japanese, though I doubt it from anecdotal evidence that I've encountered from the very limited amount of Japanese born people I know.

Regardless of the cause though, you might think the guy on the bus is rude because he won't have a conversation with you, but know that he thinks you're rude for not leaving him alone and letting him ride in peace.

[Sixmp]

Regardless of cultures i would say this in one respect is accurate. If you are a powerful hero you would not need help walking around outside populated areas. Therefore no need to group. If something did happen while moving around in these areas you would group together in the way of FATEs. You wouldn't be forming a party, you would be rushing to each others aid.

I played FFXI and it was fun for a while but then i began to question what is or is not fun, was i really having fun killing 100s of mobs over and over with a group of six people for exp? I realised the fun had nothing to do with the people i was with personality wise, it was all to do with numbers. If the exp was really fast i was having fun, if the exp was slow i found myself becoming bored.

I then realised that it was not actually a fun thing to do. (for me at least)
The same thing applies to other aspects of MMO game play. I then started playing BST (solo job) on FFXI. I found myself having more fun than i ever had in any game, i was not playing in parties i still took part in the world in other ways.
I saved many parties from wipe by pulling mobs off them, would have a chat with them while they recovered.
I would raise people or give directions to lost people, i found myself actually feeling more part of the world playing solo than i ever did playing in parties.
To me that was taking part in the world far more than the 6 man party grinding mobs for exp.

[Crica]

because everyone in the ENTIRE US of A has the same cultural backgrounds, right?

/sarcasm off

anyway, if no one asks for help, i just play the game with them

im not gonna give ppl spoilers, they are there to experience the game, not be told the game (UNLESS they ask for spoilers, then i dont mind)

and im from US of A with a cultural background of "live and let live" and "if ya aint got nothing nice to say, stfu"

[Kantide]

The grouping aspect of the game starts primarily at 50, earlier if you want it to but by no means are required.

Where do most players spend most of their time? Level 50.
Where is most of the content requiring groups? Level 50.

I am not seeing the point. 90% of the groups I have run at 50 have been made from friends or people on my server, not the Duty Finder (mainly due to most of the players using DF being toxic, not that all are, but this is probably the reason they have resorted to it being unable to make friends on their own server due to bad attitude).

Contrary to this, I have found a few people in DF on my server who I had join my FC because they were AWESOME people. It takes all kinds.

[Dastard]

I read every post.

(I lied)

But...I think you're over-thinking this.

[LiadansWhisper]

Here in America during Hurricane Kattrina we had people robbing stores and stealing tvs, noone cared about anyone.

While I agree with the general tone of the post, I just want to let you know some things that you're apparently unaware of.

During Katrina and afterwards, thousands of Americans - both from outside of Louisiana, and from within our state - converged upon the greater NOLA area to help.

There were fishermen who brought flat-bottom boats into New Orleans under the aegis of the Lt. Governor to search for survivors. They were actually turned away by FEMA, who had no boats to go do searches of its own. The Lt. Governor overruled them and sent the boats in anyway. These weren't people paid to do anything. They volunteered out of their own kindness.

In Baton Rouge, where I was living at the time, the entirety of LSU made room for not one but two hospital facilities, one of which was an urgent care facility. These were staffed primarily by volunteers, including myself, who worked 12 hour plus shifts, unpaid. I spent over 56 hours the first week volunteering in the hospital that was set up. I let multiple people use my personal cell phone to try to contact their relatives, as the cell phone towers were down but the text services were still running (on battery power, which later gave out).

In Downtown, there was a red cross shelter that set up in the Convention Center. Nursing and Medical students volunteered countless hours of their time, as did local Red Cross volunteers.

In my home town of Shreveport, there was a shelter that existed for several months in the Hirsh Coluseum. This was staffed, again, by volunteers.

Texas, Arkansas, and several other states took in thousands of refugees, made sure they were fed and clothed and housed for as long as it took to get them back home. Even though some of them had no homes left to return to.

When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast this past year, my hometown raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in both cash and food/necessities that were shipped to the victims to try to help out. Our local Red Cross offices sent several hundred volunteers to help.

Don't tell me that Americans "don't care." Don't tell me that no one cared during Katrina. We cared, even if it didn't get on the news.

[Terius]

snip

You misunderstood. OP likes anime and Japan, they are perfect and anyone else is bad.

So many posters with this attitude. "Omg guys Japan are so much better in every way!"

[Renkei]

Nice People do Exist in this country(USA); As much as i hate it here... They just happen to be pretty damn rare... It just so happens that the Majority of people here are disrespectful and take advantage of the anonymity of the internet; and treat everybody terrible because of there own EGO's.

I'm pretty sure its a fact that the Majority of America is really a culturally Messed up country, Think about it, Does our society even have a culture? we Kind of had a unique culture in the past, but does any of that still exist?
If you think about The United States Of America....
We Aren't Exactly a country built on hopes and Dreams...

[Shougun]

We cared, even if it didn't get on the news.

We like hearing bad things about ourselves lol

And so does everyone else XD, at least when I went else where the top news of us is just whatever most silly thing they could find and not whatever good things we were doing instead.

You misunderstood. OP likes anime and Japan, they are perfect and anyone else is bad.

So many posters with this attitude. "Omg guys Japan are so much better in every way!"

Not sure what other cultures call it but there's always this "group of people" that talk bad about themselves and unreasonably hold another culture up (usually willfully ignoring facts to do so, in my experience at least only a few were blissfully ignorant).

I know what you didn't mean it but liking Anime doesn't automatically fit the bill of weeabo :P

Oh just thought of what to call them. Grass is greener on the other side people. Funny cause grass has bad meaning on these forums. Also I dont think I got to say it because I didn't want to make a forum post about it (and be unreasonably flamed again) but I noticed your shadow and detail changes SE- it blends very nicely now . Curious if DX11 will add plant transparency *drolls and derails at the sametime*