Let's make this viral- Improving our community

[Kerberon]

It's just wowitis. MMO's got popular this brought them to a larger audience, mostly wow did this. With a larger group comes more conflict and with the anonymity of the internet more _______. There is nothing that can be done to fix this.

[Macka]

Sorry, I guess I used the wrong term. I think the word I am looking for would be offense or libel (in the judicial sense)

Everything in your post would be considered harassment and last I checked harassment is against the ToS.

[Jynx]

It's just wowitis.

It's been around alot longer than WoW, it's just the random duty finder and lack of needing to play nice with others outside of them make it easy to troll and have zero blowback from the community.

[stupiddog]

Everything in your post would be considered harassment and last I checked harassment is against the ToS.

I agree with you that all of these do. And if all players (and the GMs) would, too, I am sure the problem would be much smaller.

However, what makes something count as harassment and what not will differ to a great extent depending on who you ask. If this forum had a "poll" function, I predict that a number of players may find some or even all these points perfectly acceptable.

Bottom line: The term harassment is such a rubbery thing, one can use it to label everything one does not like as such.

[Kerberon]

It's been around alot longer than WoW, it's just the random duty finder and lack of needing to play nice with others outside of them make it easy to troll and have zero blowback from the community.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought wow was the first to do multi-server random dungeon queues in such a manner.

[Mahri]

There is nothing that can be done to fix this.

Wrong.

There's much that can be done. However, it requires effort on part of each and every individual. Taking on a self-defeating attitude like this is the only thing stopping you from being part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

You don't have to be a saint. You don't even necessarily have to say much. A simple word of encouragement or positive acknowledgment to someone new, or to someone who's hit a snag, can work wonders in turning things around for them, and goodwill inevitably spreads.

This is a cooperative game. There are no factions. PvP is an accessory at best. Another player's progress costs you absolutely nothing -- and yes, this even goes for loot. Someone gets something you also wanted? It was never yours to begin with and you are no more entitled to it than they are. If you think there's any real competition, you're deluding yourself.

The entire game is built with collective progress and effort in mind, and it is at its most enjoyable when everyone has grasped this.

[stupiddog]

What I did was to prepare a few macros with the shortest possible (but IMHO still useful) explanations for each boss. This way, I can quickly serve them to anyone who is new in a fight/dungeon, and all it takes for me to do is to activate the macro. As far as I can tell, that little service is well-received. I can share them if anyone is interested in copying or improving the texts. (Just need to find a way to extract them from the PS4 :-/ )

[Kerberon]

Wrong.

There's much that can be done. However, it requires effort on part of each and every individual. Taking on a self-defeating attitude like this is the only thing stopping you from being part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

You don't have to be a saint. You don't even necessarily have to say much. A simple word of encouragement or positive acknowledgment to someone new, or to someone who's hit a snag, can work wonders in turning things around for them, and goodwill inevitably spreads.

This is a cooperative game. There are no factions. PvP is an accessory at best. Another player's progress costs you absolutely nothing -- and yes, this even goes for loot. Someone gets something you also wanted? It was never yours to begin with and you are no more entitled to it than they are. If you think there's any real competition, you're deluding yourself.

The entire game is built with collective progress and effort in mind, and it is at its most enjoyable when everyone has grasped this.

My being nice does not stop trolls, or trollish behavior. My or your behavior does nothing to control or influence people that would behave in such a manner. You can't change them, the battle can't be won. When mmo users decline back to the core users that used to play before the population of mmo's surged, then you will see the problem getting solved, not till then.

[Tyla_Esmeraude]

I agree the Duty Finder helps breed rude/inconsiderate people, but I don't think this feature will go away, ever... it has its pros but it has a big con which is exactly the lack of reputation importance. How could we go about this flaw in the game design, how could SE help improve this? What can we do to help?

One suggestion I've read somewhere in the forums was for the misbehaving people to never get grouped up with others if they've been reported several times and instead get grouped up with people with the same bad behaviour. Not sure if I read this officially, but I think we will be able to blacklist people across servers soon , though, will we not get grouped with these blacklisted people then?

I, too, have ran into a few jerks before which made me distasteful of DF, and even more so of PF, that I don't like the thought of having to farm sold/myth and have been avoiding it since. I bet there are many players who are on the same boat. This results into less interaction with other players. Which is not a good thing for trying to build a community.

Hell, even at low level dungeons, I've seen tanks saying "this is my first time, bear with me" first thing, instead of a Hi. It's like they are already being defensive, scared of being pointed at, which is sad.

The only time I have fun doing dungeons is when I'm running the low level ones because there are new people and they seem more chill and social, which I like because then I feel relaxed and can focus on my job without being stressed and can chat for once. Just having a good time like it should be.

I support the plea 100%.

[whoopeeragon]

I try my best to foster a nice community by doing my part. Although the game itself doesn't provide much avenues towards it, if you make the effort, it shows and it improves everyone. Although most of the things I do are on the spur, and without planning, I hope it benefits the people I help. Some examples are:

Open World:
- If a new person in a city /s or /y for help, I usually respond and offer to guide them. If they do, I typically take them around the city, help them unlock all the aethernets, while explaining a few things they will learn eventually but better to know beforehand (ability to switch classes, retainers and inn rooms, guildleves challenge log hunting log). After that, I give them around 5-10k depending on how tight on money I am myself, just to help them get started (I'm not much of a crafter so I rarely have HQ stuff to give).
- Popping by a FATE, and someone trying to complete it, I usually go and help them out. As a WHM as well, I regularly un-level sync and apply a regen/heal on a tank/dps who's taking lots of damage.
- With the alexandrite maps, if I happen to pass by someone struggling to complete it (solo) I switch out to WHM/SCH and heal them so they can finish it faster. Have had around six of seven of these, and all of the people I helped were grateful.

In duty:
- If someone in the duty I'm in is new, I usually observe them over a period to see how well they were doing on their job/class, and if they weren't performing well/didn't know rotations, I did my best to explain them and help them out. Example of this was two new BLMs in Brayflox, who weren't using AoE's optimally. I taught them the AoE rotation, and by the end, they were happy.
- Passing on gear that someone in a party requires/needs. I can forgo 850 seals so someone can replace their ilvl48 aetherial jewellery with Darklight.
- Communicating and explaining fights to new people. It helps immensely to give a brief run through to those who want to know.

There are more, but those come to mind. I support any attempt to make our community better and more acceptable.