"Play XIV if(cont)" and"you have a responsibility to" are not statements that coexist

[LariaKirin]

Look this nice community everyone praises FF14 stops at the party finder for Savage fights and getting this harmonious static group concept that was developed when this MMO was 7/8 of the way to being dead over 7 years ago is not my idea of fun. There is a good reason FF14 is not known for its raid content and this static stuff, memorizing 12+ min fights and maintaining perfect rotations to keep from getting yelled at is why.

You can paint whatever rosy picture you want but when it comes to Savage raiding that is easily the biggest turn off for most new players who would just go back to WoW if they wanted that much of a toxic experience. I avoid it and I am definitely not alone in that opinion. It is a night and day experience with this MMO that makes a lot of people stop trying.

If the high end communities goal was to drive as many people away from savage then they have succeeded without a doubt. There is a reason Delubrum Savage was dead content within a week and they had to change the rules for how to queue for it and it is not because the content was boring.

The easiest way to fix all of this for Square Enix would be to give HEAVY incentives for FC's to form into more coordinated raiding groups with bigger Savage raids of 16+ people. That alone would kill this static clique stuff you see and force people to organize into groups that see each other more often then once every content patch cycle.

If you find yourself constantly having a bad experience in Savage, perhaps you should look at the common denominator. You are in complete control over the choice of people you raid with and if a group does not satisfy you, all you need to do is find a new one.

You can paint whatever rosy picture you want, but people are people and FFXIV does not have special people. No amount of boasting about the shallow appearance of the GCBTW is going to change the fact that behind that nice exterior lies a completely broken permanent warning system. You don't see the level of so-called "WoW toxicity" because of fear, nothing else. Instead, people have adapted to be passive aggressive or to avoid interaction with strangers completely.

The higher you go up the hardcore ladder, the more freedom people have to be "toxic", because it's not perceived as toxic in the first place. This is what happens in an environment where you don't expect people to crumble and report you at the slightest hint of criticism or for saying "Hi" the wrong way.

FC raiding will make things worse. When a static has drama, it eventually disbands and people go their own way. When a FC static has drama, it spreads like wildfire and starts affecting everything else the FC is doing together. This is an extremely bad idea.

[Penthea]

FC raiding will make things worse. When a static has drama, it eventually disbands and people go their own way. When a FC static has drama, it spreads like wildfire and starts affecting everything else the FC is doing together. This is an extremely bad idea.

Speaking from personal experience in WoW when guild drama gets out of control due to a raid issue it's often because the leadership messed up somewhere:

1: There is one set of rules for the leadership's friends, and another for everyone else. These can be rules about behaviour or combat performance, or even both.

2: The leadership and the raiders heavily associate with one another and mostly ignore everyone else, which then creates a divide within the community and that leads to some raiders feeling superior while those on the other side of the fence can end up feeling resentment.

The above two are the issues I have seen happen almost every time a guild had raid related drama. It was quite rare for a big issue to happen that wasn't connected to someone in leadership messing up in a big way.

Personally if the above happens then the fc/guild deserves to fall apart. The effects of bad leadership will show its ugly head sooner or later with or without raiding. It just so happens the pressure that comes with raiding can make it appear sooner, which can make people mistake raiding to be the issue and not the leadership itself.

FC based raiding can work and it can be great. My own team is fc based. Though in the beginning it was difficult to fill spots we have gotten to the point in which we can often recruit for our raid team from just within our fc. This is a good thing because we know the person already so we know we're not going to run into problems like a bad attitude or poor performance. So while having a fc based raid team does take more care to maintain than a non-fc based team, the upside is we already have a pool of candidates we know who are a good fit before we even start looking for a replacement.

However even though my raid team is fc based I am completely against making raiding an exclusively fc based activity because I think people should have the freedom to make their teams however they want without having to leave their fc.

I think it's great that players have more choice in the sort of teams they can join instead of being pigeonholed into only one path to find a team. I raided in WoW and because raiding there is mostly guild based it always meant that if I wanted to join a new team I had to leave the guild. It was difficult because sometimes I was happy with the raid team but I was not happy in the guild itself, or the reverse. I often found myself enduring one thing to keep the other. It was incredibly difficult to find a guild that was great both during and outside raids. As it is now in FFXIV players are not constantly forced to choose between a community they love and a good raid team. And it should stay that way.