Final Fantasy XIV and a Culture of Enabling

[Lanadra]

What can we do about it?

On 'creepy habits' such as all the recent ERP drama, it's simple: Keep reporting it whenever you see it, just as Yoshi-P has kindly asked us all to do, the ERPers can whine, but when they blatantly try to cheekily advertise their 18+ content in PF, they deserve to be reported for it and thrown into the Gaol for it.

As far as your point on 'enabling poor play and coddling players' goes: Nothing. Because you don't get to decide how others play the game no matter how much you want to, people often meme and semi-complain about the tired line 'you don't pay my sub', but the harsh reality is.. it's true, you cannot dictate how others play, at most you can kick them for being an obvious dead weight (if using DF) or just not accept them into the party in the first place (if using PF).

No, people are not going to get penalized by SE for playing poorly and they're not going to get penalized for not doing things the way others want them to do things. You can do nothing.

[ReynTime]

I'm tired of repeating this, but the game "enables" people. It's not designed to properly teach players why they're doing something wrong and how to fix it. The huge gap between MSQ dungeons/trials and most of the optional content is a symptom of that.
Even for offline games, most people don't go research/look up guides online. If the game doesn't teach them (not necessarily using a tutorial) through its design, they don't learn.

The other reason is people mistaking "wanting to play the way you prefer" with "trying to play your role decently". But thanks to the above problem it's your word against their misconception.
You know what really is rude? Wasting other players' time because you think not trying to learn your job is "playing the way you prefer" and that others should just leave you be.

[Puremallace]

I think what you're seeing is a symptom of a few things, both a bit SE's fault and nothing to do with SE.

1. Lack of actual long term, goal driven content. We've had the same rinse and repeat tome farm and DDR battles since 2.0. Now everyone just sits in town and glamours up. There's a lot of validity in the common joke about glamour being FFXIV's endgame. And its not healthy for an MMO. A lot of what you're seeing with the RP nonsense is just very bored people with nothing to do but look pretty.

2. There is little to no actual social ramifications on a community level for being well... an idiot. Instances, server chats and multi world is great for a lot of reasons, but the big downside is no one knows who you are in the giant sea of constantly different people. In other MMO's, if you acted the fool, people would quickly remember your name and soon you'll find yourself missing content because no one would team up with you. That truth helped regulate player behavior far more then GM's or devs ever could.

It's not that different then real life in some ways. When you give everyone everything and little drive to do anything else... added with the fun mix of not having to face repercussions for much... humanity tends to get pretty weird.

Why in gods name do you people think everyone play this game the same way as you. You want to know the nice thing about FF14 compared to WoW? I can get a nice set of gear, see the content and not have to deal with hardcore raiders or pvp'rs.

Not everyone is playing FF14 to savage raid or do Ultimates. Why does it matter to you that people are doing Glamour in FF14 as their end game? Are they happy? I would take FF14's end game gearing system over ANY other MMO's end game gearing any day of the week.

If you want to know why these people are "idiots" then look in the mirror. FF14 actively discourages joining FC's and forming really guilds because of this horrible static system this MMO has from a period of time when it was dying. You would NEVER talk to a guildmate the way I see people talk in FF14 in Savage. You would be kicked for toxicity and held accountable by a guild leader.

[Liam_Harper]

I can think of a few reasons why people don't feel like following strict rules or conforming to OTHERS ideas of how they should enjoy this video game.

But it's not a solo game, it's a team based activity. Nor are the rules strict. There are exceptions where players can be toxic and expect too much but for most people it's generally basic things like "get your job stone", "use some aoe in dungeons", "don't use gear 50ilv too low", "don't stand around and do absolutely nothing for 70% of a dungeon as healer", "use some cd's as a tank", "be open to friendly advice". You know, work with your team.

You don't pay their sub, so if you aren't going to contribute to the group because it's more fun for you, they have no obligation to carry you when it's not fun at all for them.

[Keramory]

Why in gods name do you people think everyone play this game the same way as you. You want to know the nice thing about FF14 compared to WoW? I can get a nice set of gear, see the content and not have to deal with hardcore raiders or pvp'rs.

Not everyone is playing FF14 to savage raid or do Ultimates. Why does it matter to you that people are doing Glamour in FF14 as their end game? Are they happy? I would take FF14's end game gearing system over ANY other MMO's end game gearing any day of the week.

If you want to know why these people are "idiots" then look in the mirror. FF14 actively discourages joining FC's and forming really guilds because of this horrible static system this MMO has from a period of time when it was dying. You would NEVER talk to a guildmate the way I see people talk in FF14 in Savage. You would be kicked for toxicity and held accountable by a guild leader.

I think you may have misunderstood that my 1 was connected to 2. If I wrote it that way I do meaningfully apologize. That was not the intention.

I don't think you're an "idiot" for enjoying glamming up and sitting in town. 2 was meant to be an isolated problem we have as a community because of everything I mentioned in 2, not 1. It was simply meant to be put... there isn't true social repercussions in the community for being an idiot due to its size, instances and cross servers. That's all. An idiot in my mind is someone who acts poorly to others. Thats it. Has nothing to do with how you spend your time in game.

Now the part I have a feeling you may not like is I do stand behind my number 1. People are clearly so bored in an MMO with such a massive world that they're now just hunkering down and creating RP/ERP taverns. I blame that completely on there being little else to find interest in content wise after a few years on this game. I do think though that you're confusing me with some elite player who thinks savage is the only content worthy of dev attention. If you look at my game achievements you'll quickly find out I'm not that person lol. I just think there isn't much in terms of long goal progression of almost any kind in the game (traveling, leveling, gearing up, goals) and thats continuing to lead to crazier and crazier things were seeing in the forums now.

[Awha]

I'm pretty sure I shared this particular story before in the 'Tales from Duty Finder' thread, anyway for this: berating me for not greeting the party in chat, refusing to heal me (as tank) unless I do so - at the expense of a wipe. Aside from that, griefing in a more general sense would be things like: intentionally blinding party members with RDM LB3 during mechanics, Rescuing players to their deaths, provoking a boss who then cleaves the whole party, etc. All commonplace in this game.

I know you did not ask, but I think commonplace really depends on the content you normally run. As someone who does many of those things. I do not see it as common place unless you are often running not relevant content. Cause personally that is roughly the only times I see intentional actions that may lead to wipes being done from experience.

Granted personally other factors have to be met like if I have at least one friend in the group and it is older content I am going to do my level best to kill said friend even if it may lead to a wipe. Though I do not think the actions of people in older content should be used as the metric to judge a community by if that makes sense. Cause as you mentioned causal toxicity is a thing but I do think it is only a thing cause the bar is so low that often times people can mess around and still clear the content sure a wipe may happen but in the grand scheme those are just more bleeps out of many where they go off without a hitch.

Though if these actions take place in relevant content or progression content for majority then that is uncool but for the most part if it is a learning partt even for older stuff I rarely see people screwing people over like that.

By relevant content I mean based off the group. Like if is new for majority of people in the group.

Se

SE does not give people a reason to care about normal or easier content which is why we have this issue where people think such things are common place in the game.

[Caurcas]

Why should the fun of others come at my expense? What happens when there is no one left to carry? What if nobody does their job quest? This is what you people defend.

[Arillyn]

Now the part I have a feeling you may not like is I do stand behind my number 1. People are clearly so bored in an MMO with such a massive world that they're now just hunkering down and creating RP/ERP taverns. I blame that completely on there being little else to find interest in content wise after a few years on this game.

I blame the ERP taverns on some people who saw some Kotaku articles about someone who has a brothel and makes lots of gil with that and then were like "oh snap! I can do that too" even though it has nothing really to do with RP nor any content drought. It's about people thinking they can make a lot of gil by selling cyber sex.

Edit: On topic - if anyone is enabled it's because as someone said before - the game isn't always great about teaching some things in the game itself. Also, some people just have really bad days where nothing goes right. I know I have days like that. While I always do the best I can (I really try not to be a burden on my teammates in an encounter) there are days my coordination is just completely off.

[Keramory]

I blame the ERP taverns on some people wo saw some Kotaku articles about someone who has a brothel and makes lots of gil with that and then were like "oh snap! I can do that too" even though it has nothing really to do with RP nor any content drought. It's about people thinking they can make a lot of gil by selling cyber sex.

That's definitely part of it. Kind of mentioned the same thing in another thread about the topic. We're not even talking about RP for the most part anymore. It's just a way to make "quick cash". At the same time though, least most servers I've been on, gil really isn't all that important or difficult to come by. I do think on some level people are enjoying their pretend hostess/barkeep work or w.e. To which I'd argue if we had more to do in game that wasn't over in a week of doing it, people would be a lot more occupied with other things then playing essentially IMVU with better graphics.

[Arillyn]

That's definitely part of it. Kind of mentioned the same thing in another thread about the topic. We're not even talking about RP for the most part anymore. It's just a way to make "quick cash". At the same time though, least most servers I've been on, gil really isn't all that important or difficult to come by. I do think on some level people are enjoying their pretend hostess/barkeep work or w.e. To which I'd argue if we had more to do in game that wasn't over in a week of doing it, people would be a lot more occupied with other things then playing essentially IMVU with better graphics.

Could be. And while gil isn't hard to get - I can't tell you how many people I know who have no idea how to make it and think having $500k gil is a big deal.