What happened to players?

[Altheras]

Not true. Shinies! LS on Midgardsormr is full of nice folks. We pride ourselves on it. We have even been tossing around the idea of weekly cutscene runs of CM and Prae, for new folks on the server that want to run through it how it is meant to be run.

D= One of my officers beat me here. >.>

[Eekiki]

D= One of my officers beat me here. >.>

They must be punished!

[Altheras]

One thing to keep in mind is we have a lot of FF players just now trying FFXIV who never tried FFXI and who have never played any other MMO. I've run into quite a few of them. They have that solo gamer mentality and they are used to dealing with NPCs rather than real people, which doesn't help matters at all.

Also, I see FAR too many people blaming WoW for all the problems in this community. The truth is, you can't blame WoW as a game, but more accurately you CAN blame the 'random dungeon finder' system introduced in WoW in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, which has since seemingly become the norm across most MMOs released since.

Before the dungeon finder was added, you had to form a group of people on your own server, walk to the dungeon together, and then do the dungeon with these people from your own server. There was no anonymity. Instead, people made lasting friendships and got to know people. If you played on a Normal or RP server the instances of people being total jerks was relatively low. I can't really speak for the mentality on PvP servers as we know what sort of attitude open world PvP games attract. Still, I have to say that WoW used to have a great community, and now it doesn't. Modern WoW and the dungeon finder killed its own community. :/ The situation was made even worse when they added the 'Raid Finder'. Before it, even though you could do randoms with 5 man dungeons, you still had to look to the community on your own server for raiding and end game content.

I know we do have a lot of WoW players on this game, but the majority of the 'now now now' crowd just stayed on WoW. Most of them did not subscribe. Most of those people who are here from WoW probably came here hoping for a better community, as well as a ton of people from FFXI who also came here hunting for the kind of community they were used to on FFXI.

I think the real key to building a community we can be proud of, is to slowly weed out those with bad attitudes. Don't play with them, don't help them finish dungeons, and join linkshells and FCs with positive attitudes. Over time the good groups with decent people will grow stronger and slowly but surely the elitist people with bad attitudes will find themselves more and more isolated, forced to play with only like minded individuals. I've already seen the number of bad attitudes take a serious nose dive now that the free trials have all run out. I think with 2.1 and 2.2 adding even more to do, that less people will be bored, and thus have better attitudes. A lot of people can be real jerks when they're bored.

If you aren't enjoying something because of someone else, black list them. If they are in a random group, leave the group, they'll be forced to find someone else, or maybe no one at all. If enough nice people take a stand and stop playing with those who have bad attitudes, then they'll either realize that maybe they do need to respect others, or eventually quit because they have no friends, no one wants to help them with anything, and they aren't having any fun.

I believe that with time and effort we can make this a good community, we just have to have patience, and give the game time to grow and add new features to duty finder and other things that help build community and increase accountability.
We are the community. Each and every one of us. Only we can make it what we want it to be.

[Kantide]

^ This. My company is founded on the principle of politeness and remains to be a driving force in what we do on hyperion. If we can all keep the good players away from those who are rude and impatient, they will slowly leave. We can never be rid of them however we all can mitigate the damage they can do and a lot of them feed off of reactions from others.

[Rivienne]

One thing to keep in mind is we have a lot of FF players just now trying FFXIV who never tried FFXI and who have never played any other MMO. I've run into quite a few of them. They have that solo gamer mentality and they are used to dealing with NPCs rather than real people, which doesn't help matters at all.

Most of those who are just used to the offline mode are fine with playing other players so long as the other players are nice, and behave well and more importantly can ease them into things. Problem is more the experienced players who don't know how to deal with inexperienced players, or ease them into the different concepts that come with this kind of group environment. There are a lot of folks who have been playing MMO's for so long they are completely disconnected from what it is to be new to the genre. I have run into this with my sister occasionally. I am new. She is not. She is a speed runner, I am not. Mostly she was wonderful in easing me into the idea of playing with other players, but every so often her "why don't you already know what to do/why does it take you so long to get this right" came out and I would have to remind her I only just started. It is hard to grasp when you have been doing something for so long, that other people who haven't are going to see things completely different from you.

This can easily turn into frustration and over time downright hostility towards those who are "slowing you down" or just generally "bad players". Hard to maintain a civil attitude towards other people when you can't seem to recognize why they aren't capable after a few days of what you are after many years.

This isn't to justify rampant bad behaviour, but just to explain why it sometimes happens, even to the otherwise well meaning people, and also why it seems to be more common now then it used to be: people have been playing that much longer, and the entire genre has been out that much longer.

[Altheras]

This can easily turn into frustration and over time downright hostility towards those who are "slowing you down" or just generally "bad players". Hard to maintain a civil attitude towards other people when you can't seem to recognize why they aren't capable after a few days of what you are after many years.

I agree with you entirely. Intolerance for those who are new is an ugly thing. I always do my best to be patient and offer helpful tips to people, especially if I suspect they may just be totally lost and really need the help. How they take it is up to them. Sometimes they just get ugly in response to my offered help, but more often they are truly grateful and have a lot more fun when my suggestions help them out.