Why is there so much animosity between raiders and RPers?

[Doru]

I run a Static, and I also run an RP Community. I'm pretty involved with a couple writing circles in Crystal, and I've (honestly) never much seen animosity towards Role Players or the like. I know one Heavy RP FC that has an Officer that helps mentor in the Balance Discord.

The idea that people dislike one category of players of how they choose to enjoy the game is just absurd to me, and thankfully little seen in Crystal (to my experience). You go to Ul'dah in Balmung and you'll see a couple <Perfect Legend>/<Ultimate Legend>s walking about and socializing.

I think this 'animosity' is a largely forum thing, truth be told. I quite genuinely made an account here after scoping out the whole PF finder thing for myself when I saw this thread.

Forums are full of people with extremely strong opinions and little place to put them, I wouldn't place too much stock in what you're seeing here compared to what's actually in the game.

[Krotoan]

Forums are full of people with extremely strong opinions and little place to put them, I wouldn't place too much stock in what you're seeing here compared to what's actually in the game.

This. 90% of the "drama" I see here is not represented in game in any visible manner. Forums in general are a fraction of a fraction of the actual population.

[Jojoya]

There really isn't much, if any, animosity. Plenty of players are members of both communities.

It's mostly people trolling for a reaction. Eventually you learn find the constructive discussion and ignore the rest.

[SecretIsland]

Most really don't care about what the other is doing, and a lot of players do both. Don't mistake vocal minorities for representatives of the entire group.

However I will add tropes that can explain why there is some friction:

"Raiders are elitist and love to show off whenever possible, even if it means putting other people down when it's not even needed"

"Rpers are creeps who get up to some really weird sexual stuff online. Some even ask for gil for their...services. Ew."

While there are people that the above quotes do apply to, the truth is they're a minority. Most raiders just want to do challenging content, perform well enough to feel pride in it and care little for what non-raiders do. Most rpers just want to meet other rpers and have fun creating stories and events without being dodgy about it. The problem with vocal minorities is they are loud so they're easy to spot, which makes it easy to mistake them for being a larger group than they are given those who aren't vocal keep to themselves and therefore appear far less visible.

Some people don't consider rp to be content because there isn't any specific rp content unlike lets say raiding that uses raid specific content...but what these people fail to understand that just because the content is player generated doesn't make it not content. If someone is logging in specifically to rp, then they are still logging in to engage in something that this game provides...which makes it content. SE may not be creating the rp themselves, but they are providing players with the tools to create rp content.

Almost everyone knows raiding can be a lot of work, especially in the competitive section of the pve community. However good rp also takes a lot of work. People dedicated to rp spend a lot of time constructing back stories for their characters, they research lore to make sure their character fits into the world and so they can effectively rp with others, they work in teams to create events that can have big arching stories that link with player back stories and other events...and all this needs a lot of planning to be done well, and they spend a lot of time furnishing housing to create unique areas of the game specifically designed for their rp goals.

I have a lot of respect for both groups but I suppose it's because I have done both. I used to be a hardcore raider in WoW so I understand the work that goes in to being a top tier player in this game. I have done a lot of rp in other games, and helped to create a rp event for my fc (literally took weeks of planning) so I understand the work that goes into that as well.

Furthermore every group has bad eggs. Every single group be they pve, pvp, hardcore, casual, rp, a mix...there are meanspirited people everywhere. There are creeps everywhere. That's just life.

No community in the mmo genre attracts more bad eggs than the other, they merely attract different brands of it. For example raiding attracts divas who love nothing more than to gloat and bully and use their raid experience to do that, rp attracts weirdos hoping to use "it's not real it's just rp" as an excuse to get away with being an awful and/or creepy person, some casual players use "casual" as a crutch to get away with doing as little as possible, some pvpers genuinely believe anyone who doesn't pvp is a sore loser coward and laugh at people about it.

Every group is as bad and good as the other, just for different reasons sometimes.

There isn't a massive rift between rpers and raiders. Most are just ordinary people who just want to have fun in the game and don't pay much attention to those who do content they're not interested in. Those who are fighting each other are either enjoying creating spite, or are trying to defend themselves against stereotypes that aren't as prevalent as some may imply.

The reason why there appears to be a rift right now is due to the actions of some GMs enforcing rules that seemingly do not exist that hinder rpers. Which brought on the debate as to whether PF is only for combat content or not...despite no official information anywhere saying that it's only for combat. It's a hot topic because it has put the accounts of many players in danger so a huge number of people are going to have strong opinions about this.

And finally...rp events can have combat so...just because a group is advertising for rp doesn't automatically mean they have no intention of doing combat during rp. The rp event that we organised for my fc mostly took place in dungeons, and we were synced to minimum ilvl.

Thanks for the comprehensive overview. I don't know much about either raiding or RPing so this is very much appreciated.

I've been thinking about this for a while, trying to get my words together. In the end I think I'm best served by staying out of any RP-VS-Content politics; it shouldn't matter what you like to do. We're all paying our monthly sub to play the game how we want to.

Ultimately, though, there just isn't a comparable system to PF for RPers. Fellowships, Linkshells, FCs, and any outside forums have to be joined in advance to be effective--and they have membership limits; PF is used because anyone can post and anyone can see at any time with no applications or searching. Shout Chat? Spamming chat channels /is/ an offense against ToS and also gets very messy quickly while people are trying to have actual conversations in a global channel.

Yeah, I personally don't care about what others do, but it seems like people have a zero-sum mentality since developer time is limited.

In my experience, in games other than this, rpers and raiders were one and the same. It was always the person highly invested in their character that wanted to slay the biggest, and baddest dragon. Taking home a new top, title, or mount to show off at the pub for IC night was very incentivizing for that entire community. Same with PvP. Hell, rpPvp servers on WoW were a sight to behold back in the day, or even further back in the free-for-all of Ultima Online.

FF14 kind of has toxic causuality which brushes against the classic toxic elitism for one of the most volatile environments for discussions about the game. It's a fascinating ecosystem.

Interesting. I can concur that the community on social media (the forums and Reddit) is pretty different from many communities I have experience with, and most interestingly, from the game itself. I can't even begin to imagine encountering people in the game whom I've met on the forums.

I run a Static, and I also run an RP Community. I'm pretty involved with a couple writing circles in Crystal, and I've (honestly) never much seen animosity towards Role Players or the like. I know one Heavy RP FC that has an Officer that helps mentor in the Balance Discord.

The idea that people dislike one category of players of how they choose to enjoy the game is just absurd to me, and thankfully little seen in Crystal (to my experience). You go to Ul'dah in Balmung and you'll see a couple <Perfect Legend>/<Ultimate Legend>s walking about and socializing.

I think this 'animosity' is a largely forum thing, truth be told. I quite genuinely made an account here after scoping out the whole PF finder thing for myself when I saw this thread.

Forums are full of people with extremely strong opinions and little place to put them, I wouldn't place too much stock in what you're seeing here compared to what's actually in the game.

Makes sense. I definitely do not see any of this type of behavior in the game, which I think actually makes the forums even weirder. What are these vocal minority doing since I certainly have never encountered such animosity and drama in the game, though I accept that my time in the game was limited (so maybe I will one day!)

There really isn't much, if any, animosity. Plenty of players are members of both communities.

It's mostly people trolling for a reaction. Eventually you learn find the constructive discussion and ignore the rest.

Makes sense. I've already had my fair share of encounters with trolls and it does seem like the forums attract a lot of such types.

[TaleraRistain]

Everyone else has explained the RP versus raider thing so I'll just focus on the Ultimate cancellation.

Ultimate is special raiding content past Savage. It requires very precise balancing and thus a significant amount of development work.

Yoshi-P announced recently that the Ultimate that was scheduled for 5.5 was being delayed to 6.1. He explained that the decision was between getting the Ultimate out or delaying the Endwalker expansion further. Endwalker is already late for an expansion since they usually come out in the summer. But their development cycle is about 3 months behind due to COVID.

It was nothing to do with any other specific content in the game. But some just latched on to the idea that Ultimate was cancelled and made up their own reasons. The reason is because they chose getting Endwalker out which everyone, even Ultimate players, can enjoy versus getting the Ultimate out for the 1% of players who would experience it.

[VeradBV]

They're nerds.

[SecretIsland]

They're nerds.

You don't have to be so rude honestly.

[VeradBV]

You don't have to be so rude honestly.

To whom? The clannish exclusionary fandom or the other one?

[Laphicet]

Everyone else has explained the RP versus raider thing so I'll just focus on the Ultimate cancellation.

Ultimate is special raiding content past Savage. It requires very precise balancing and thus a significant amount of development work.

Yoshi-P announced recently that the Ultimate that was scheduled for 5.5 was being delayed to 6.1. He explained that the decision was between getting the Ultimate out or delaying the Endwalker expansion further. Endwalker is already late for an expansion since they usually come out in the summer. But their development cycle is about 3 months behind due to COVID.

It was nothing to do with any other specific content in the game. But some just latched on to the idea that Ultimate was cancelled and made up their own reasons. The reason is because they chose getting Endwalker out which everyone, even Ultimate players, can enjoy versus getting the Ultimate out for the 1% of players who would experience it.

A correction, in a recent interview YoshiP said that they were aiming for 2 ultimates in Endwalker, thus an ultimate was cancelled, though not the Dragonsung one, as we are not getting the 4 ultimates across the 2 expansions that were originally promised. And the wording of the statement also can be interpreted as them saying that the Dragonsung ultimate has a chance of being the only ultimate in Endwalker.

[Batbrat]

Oh this ones easy.

Because Raiders tend to think that these groups are completely separate, which they are not.
THEY personally might not ERP, but some of their friends do. I don't say that in a "maybe they-" oh no, some of their friends do.
Just because you go to work doesnt mean you come home, read the bible, and go straight to bed.
As this is true in real life, it is true online as well lol.

I think part of it is also like aaaaaaaa moral high ground issue. 'oh i dont want to be seen as a filthy-' you're not anymore pure than anyone else regardless of any situation. And if you think you are, let me look at your computer unsupervised as well as your phone then. Go on go on!! Let me see your browser history, your downloads, your likes, your lists-that's what I thought. 'b-b-b-but there might be kids around!' Some of you have siblings. Think carefully how that happened. Before you scold any of us, scold your parents first for doing the same thing.