How did the community become this toxic?

[Lord_Zlatan]

Isn't that bound to attract elitism?)

Maybe for some, but for me the more repetitive the content the more prone I am to just flub it sometimes and have fun. I could really care less how 'efficiently' i farm philo/myth. Over the holidays I was off work for 12 days and capped after just 2 days. I still ran AK/WP with people just because I wanted to help out on my server.

I had a newly 50'd WHM in a group that filled a spot for my FC doing CBM hard. I told him that he can just follow along or we can explain everything to him. He was almost afraid to ask, so I just took the liberty of explaining it anyway. We wiped a few times, had some laughs, and went on our separate ways.

I have spent the full 90 minutes teaching people how to speed run WP before, and when we didn't get the 30 myth at the end, no big deal.

IMO the repetitive content gets the elitist tag when you get fed up with it, and IMO that is a product of omgweneedtodoeveryruninfiveminutes. not every cares about that.

[Lord_Zlatan]

Everything is instanced and solo-able for most part, exp is easy to get and ppl are forced to group together only for some level 50 content.

Other than that it plays like a single player jrpg with co-op rather than a mmorpg. You know why people remember FFXI community so fondly, despite the drama and shiet? Because the game world was dangerous, everything was designed to force people into cooperation. Those who couldn't deal with grouping with other people wouldn't go past level 20.

This is not even a disputable point: there definitely needs to be more of this without question.

[Toranja]

How did the community become this toxic?

Not enough sex, I would wager.

[Tlamila]

Maybe its a problem on the bigger servers?

Counting that DF is cross server and my bad experiences are all from that...I'd say no. I find Balmung community pretty good itself.

[Nyaanyaa]

The Duty Finder in particular is really a breeding ground for toxic behavior, the way it is implemented now; and generally instanced dungeons are. There's just far too much punishment and unnecessary regulations in this game.

• talking to friends via /tell in instances is not even possible
• first timers watching cutscenes are usually met with resentment from the group for doing that, or people finishing battles without them, so being punished
• second timers are punished if they get into a random group with first timers by being forced to either wait (sometimes 1min+) for them to finish cutscenes, or do content without the first timers because these are in a cutscene, also slowing them down
• people are locked out from boss battles and therefore punished for being "too slow" or very often watching cutscenes
• kicking others appears to have no real consequences (people come from different servers so the odds you'll ever see them again are low and they get no chance to speak up at all) so people are basically *encouraged* to punish others
• if you leave an instance with mean people or where no one seems to want to work together, you are punished with a 30 minute lock-down
• if you join a duty with a friend, your friend gets kicked for watching cutscenes, and you leave the party yourself because of it, you're punished with a 30 minute lock-down... so you're basically doubly punished for being a first timer, playing with a friend and wanting to watch cutscenes(this actually happened to me and a friend today)

I could go on like this, but the point is that all this punishment and regulation creates an incredibly toxic environment, and a toxic environment breeds toxic behavior and a toxic community. A toxic community then increases the toxicity in the environment, which then breeds even more toxic behavior and an even more toxic community, and so on. It's a downward spiral, and the current system, especially in the duty finder, supports it.

[Lord_Zlatan]

Counting that DF is cross server and my bad experiences are all from that...I'd say no. I find Balmung community pretty good itself.

Maybe my experiences are the outliers. I don't really come across douchey people in the DF. If and when I do, I just ignore them. Thats not a community thing, that is an individual person thing.

In addition, the party finder is a great tool for like minded players to play together; if only it were used more often, considering the DF is veeeerry convenient for a lot of players.

[Stormblossom]

I don't notice the general community being horribly toxic, but CT runs are horrible.

[Ryios]

Anonymity in general encourages toxic behavior. All people are innately both good and evil. Every one of us is capable of being evil as equally as we are good. No matter how good you are you still have evil thoughts. In the real world we govern ourselves with our conscious to determine what to act on and what not to act on (in some people the ability to do this is less, thus they appear more evil than another).

However, in the real world when we chose not to punch someone in the face it's generally a decision made after weighing the pro's and con's of doing so before actually doing it. "If I punch him he might fight back and win, I might get arrested, I might break my hand, etc etc etc". Ultimately your final decision is based on the likely hood of whether you'll die or go to jail or have long lasting consequences that will effect other areas of your life "Like losing X as a friend who has a pool you like to swim in because you punched P who's friends Q who's friends with R who's friends with T, etc..."

On the internet, this whole process is broken. Someone pisses you off and you think "I'm going to wipe this whole raid". Now anyone in this situation might go "But If I do that someone from my FC might be in here, they might kick me from my Static BCB group, that would suck" and as such they don't. But let's think for a minute here,

The majority of the player base isn't in a BCB static, doesn't have the EM Primals on farm, and doesn't really have anything to lose. Because we are all anonymous people, what real consequence is there for trolling a raid and wiping everyone because someone made you mad? There isn't one. And in the worst case scenario, you can just Server Transfer to a new character name and start all over.

So why does it appear more toxicity exists now than used to? Simple really, in the past decade the amount of people on the internet and the amount of new generations coming up to play online games has multiplied 10 fold. There are WAY WAY more people on the internet today than in 2003 in FFXI's prime. The more people you throw into an anonymous pile the more likely you are to be trolled and it only takes one troll to turn on all the other trolls "The catalyst if you will", so when that 1 troll comes out, the 100 trolls you thought were nice players come out from under the bridge to partake (chain reaction). The more people that play, the more likely and more often that catalyst will trigger.

Really though, the way people try to handle bad communities is all wrong. Complaining about it is food for the trolls. Crying about it is food for the trolls. Many people enjoy pissing people off when there is nothing you can do about it. It's bullying with no consequences. The more you cave in, the harder they troll.

The best way to deal with it is just that, deal with it. Turn off your "I Care" switch in your head and ignore them. Continue to do what you think is right, but there's a catch "What you think is right, could be wrong, and people will always disagree, thus breeding more toxicty." No matter what, handle conflicts with a calm mind, and maintain your composure, if the conflict cannot be resolved walk away or continue on and forget about it. Problem is, most people playing are too emotionally immature to be able to do that, they act on their feelings and make a bad problem worse.

In the end, just accept it. It is human nature and it is what it is.

If you think it's just this game, you'd be really wrong.

[Tlamila]

if you join a duty with a friend, your friend gets kicked for watching cutscenes, and you leave the party yourself because of it, you're punished with a 30 minute lock-down... so you're basically doubly punished for being a first timer, playing with a friend and wanting to watch cutscenes(this actually happened to me and a friend today)

Oh yeah, the first tiem I ran AV, I did it because a friend wanted to. At some point pretty soon he gets disconnected from the server, and even if I told others he just had been kicked from server and would be back, the leader kicked him (I think that's how it worked before?) and so I had to drop as well and get the lockout. Was pretty meh.

In addition, the party finder is a great tool for like minded players to play together

I sure met a lot of nice persons, and my only grump was not being able to ever see them anymore. That's the problem, even if you meet good people is nobody you can stay in contact with, cause of different servers, so what's the point? Sure, you get a nice run, but I personally preferr builiding something that lasts more then one hour with people. Which is probably the same reason why most are jerks on DF, they don't bother building something good with one-time strangers.

[Livi]

Not enough sex, I would wager.

I agree completely! lol