What is up with this toxic community

[Seig345]

I'm assuming it's either an influx of players who only grind to the edge and then take a break returning for the new patches/prepping for Stormblood; or, it's that a lot of them are ready for it and have left until the expansion comes out so statics are breaking and you're seeing people who used to have regulars now having to deal with less experienced players and being grumpy about it. Throw that in with the fact that there's always a risk of getting a grumpy player in DF from time to time and it might feel like an increase in "toxicity".

I've learned to just not let those kinds of players get to me, along with not letting my limited amount of play time get me worked up if I'm having a bad run of wipes (PotD recently, for instance). Some days I just "stay home" on Sargatanas and work on leveling one of my gather/craft classes up a little.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I suspect it has to do with content difficulty being made easier. This inevitable causes mid and hardcore players to blend into the casual, inexperienced or downright bad crowd. Unfortunately, these two subgroups of players do not always mesh well together, especially when it's bad players. Zurvan stands as a prime example. His mechanics are too easy to skip, thus the "must skip Soar" meme was born. It isn't difficult to do mind you but plenty of raiders aim for efficiency whereas more casual minded ones aim to just have fun. Once again, that doesn't always blend well.

[MiaGrey]

I've posted a few time here about the in game community and culture. People get pretty touchy when you start comparing this game to its predecessors (XI, UO, EQ).

You have a lot of people who take any criticism of this game personally - as tho they're insulted by proxy because they enjoy it.

I posted fairly recently and so most of the comments on my thread (complaining about the lack/quality of community in XIV) were negative and to the tune of "if you don't like it here leave".

Well I did some digging and found a thread from years ago which brought up the same issue as mine did but it was full of positive feedback from fellow XI/UO/EQ players. The only thing I could conclude is that all those old XI players have abandoned the forums or quit the game.

Further forum crawling just turned up even worse news, I started seeing posts by people who had been active on the forums for long periods of time commenting to the effect of: "The devs never reply to these types of threads regardless of how much activity they have - they only ever comment on feature requests like new minions."

That was hard to read because I knew it was true having crawled a ton of those threads. There is seemingly no acknowledgment from anyone on the other end that this is even a problem.

There are so many things hindering the in game community - we can all debate on which mechanics specifically need to be modified but it seems even getting a consensus on whether or not there is a problem is a struggle.

I really wish I could know what their reasoning is. Is it true that long-term / hardcore players (or however you'd want to classify the XI/EQ/UO folks) are really the smaller pool? If so by how much... I mean, most of the people I'm aware of have been playing XIV for years now, would they really have left / not played if the game was slightly harder and slower paced? Ok so you're pulling from WoW's player base because why? You figure there's only X amount of MMO players and you have to poach from the competition? I suppose, maybe they know something I don't. I always figured if you built an amazing game people would play it - i.e. UO/XI/EQ.

I understand that those games weren't for everyone - but I feel like there are several options for people who want to just chill after work. The whole point of doing this thing online IS THE COMMUNITY? Right? Why not just play an RPG or GTA or some FPS? I mean, treating an MMO like this where everything is instanced with people you never see again and everything except end-game grinding is made solo-able, I honestly have to ask, why is this even online - is the "community" truly nothing more than RP/ERP hook up channels and "glamour" compliment fishing in town?

I predict it's only going to get worse, there seems to be no player consensus on this forum that there is even a problem and in the rare cases where there is there's no acknowledgement from the devs.

I'm a little salty about this if you can't tell.
I realize there are other game on the market that are harder and more closely resemble the older MMO's but they're not as pretty, they don't have Mithra's... I mean 90% of why I played XI vs. anything on the market at the time was because of it's art direction, ditto XIV...

I'm only here playing this because there is no alternative at the moment. Maybe there never will be again. Maybe it will have to wait until a smaller company willing to take risks can enter the market with mainstream graphics before this genre gets shaken up and pushed into the next gen.

[Osmond]

I just look at it as the people who want to get things pretty quick and just take a break after. So they want people who have a high % of wins and not to have fun w/ the game.

[Magic-Mal]

.

There's.. not really anything FFXIV can do to fix that "issue". Really. The issue, at its core is that FFXIV isn't FFXI and that can't be fixed unless Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Re-Reborn is created or a FFXVII is like FFXI. Almost anything from XI will probably kill FFXIV or be viewed badly. Such as no teleporting or waiting for a boat.

That will not fly in XIV. Truly... the best advice someone could give is to just not play XIV. It's like being upset that Destiny isn't like Call of Duty. What can the makers do?


Also... Mithras aren't in XIV either : P. We have Miqo'tes! Different!

[Sigmar_Heldenhammer]

Some people are assholes. I don't know why anyone is surprised by this.
The more popular a online game becomes, the more people it attracts.
The more people it attracts, the number of assholes goes up.
Just ignore and move on.

[AsukaHamano]

tbh i don't really mind players being toxic in the game as its an MMO and toxicity always comes from people who harbor a fetish for being pampered and being treated like a special snowflake.

But i PAID for this game! Your wages come from me so you HAVE to make the game the way I want it! No? You cant do business like this, you just lost a valuable customer! storms off


Of course that doesn't make it right but the toxicity is being aimed at newer players and its made the mentor "features" almost useless considering I've seen most of the cancer to new players come FROM mentors (granted its not very often).

"Oh you don't know the level 50 dragoon rotation yet? fml why i have to put up with weak dps".

There's definitely a more "refined" air of toxicity now but as was said in this thread before, its simply due to the state of the game currently with the new classes announced and end raid tier being the only real progression now until SB.

[Clethoria]

1. T for Teen
2. Server population can be taken into account
3. Forums are a very, very vocal minority

Honestly, I found XIV's community to be the most civil, peaceful, and helpful I'd ever seen in years back when I only played on Sarg. Play on a less than overcrowded server and ignore the echo chamber that is the forums and it really changes things.

Also, forums are horrible by default for the fact that people are trying to get the most up boats for having "Ha! I bet I showed him!" levels of responses. The passive aggressiveness to skirt mods and reports only taints the population even further. Because apparently telling someone "You're a snarky little shite that needs to take your arse back to reddit" is too mean or something.

[Xlantaa]

That "Wonderful Community" was lost when people started hate other who don't pull enough parse numbers, who don't play like them, and only for a reason of being new. Look at this forum threads "Please Yoshida, add a function to block newies for our DF/PF" or "People DPS sucks, give us a parser to tell everyone they sucks". That kind of request says everything.

I remember first days. I was a fresh level 50 tank with some Artifact+ gear. I run near a group of raiders about to enter first Coil. I got a /tell form his leader. He invited me to go with them because need a PLD. I told them I never raid before and I was very new. They didn't care and invite me anyways. We run to T1 to T4. And played some T5. Even let me got some gear, thanking me for help them. I got this case several times.

2.2 comes out. Everything change since then. No more kindness, no more help. Only rage and numbers. Only elite allow to play high level. Only elite allow to decide everything. Newies? They consider they suck and suggest put away will a wall if possible. That is how is becoming now. And people is happy, and support it. I am not more happy. I now play more with friends and solo DF most of the time because this is becoming LoL community. Open Party Finder and you will see it.

This community is now far away form being "nice", like few years ago. Still, I will agree, in comparison with others MMO, is better. But, still, is changing more everyday. And will end like every other MMO community.

[ErikMynhier]

Maybe it cause I'm on Balmung but I have never found there to be a "wonderful community", but then again Balmung does have it reputation for a reason.

True that.