Final Fantasy XIV and a Culture of Enabling

[Lanadra]

Yeah it’s unfortunate. Like i said before the two places they do gather info from(twitter and reddit) are the ones more vocally the casual playerbase. It’s why apparently dungeons are going to get streamlined more than they already are which is really sad. Seems like instead of trying to teach players they’re just pandering and coddling them. In a business sense i get it, it makes more money. It just sucks to see them go down that route especially when they can’t even fund their own game :/

And yet all of you keep wondering 'what can SE do for me in this?' instead of 'what can I do to resolve this issue for myself?'. More than a few of us have repeatedly told OP to do things like queue with a premade or using PF to avoid much of the issue, it keeps being ignored because it's not the solution OP wants. And hey, I can understand that, I personally see nothing wrong with SE doing things to inherently encourage self improvement as people play, rather than a philosophy of solidarity, ergo, others can and should make up for one persons deficiencies. Quite bluntly put however, as that is apparently needed, SE 'ain't gonna do shit' about it. So, what can you, any and all of you who have been collectively bemoaning the 'at least half' of your 'superbad' DF runs, do to resolve this issue for yourselves?

I can say a lot about Awha's chosen method, namely, very liberal usage of vote kick, but at least they are using means offered to them in the game to attempt to resolve this issue for themselves. The rest of you just keep complaining and only saying what SE needs to do, which they won't, or what the 'superbad' players being discussed need to do, which again.. they won't. You can queue as a premade, you can use PF, you can kick these bad apples, you can report them if they're griefing on top of refusing to make an effort, which one could perhaps under certain conditions also consider to be griefing in and of itself.

When it is so clear that SE has no desire to change this 'culture of enabling' the question should be 'what can I do to resolve this issue for myself?'. Because the easiest solution, namely SE doing something about it from the developer side, has already been eliminated.

[LittleImp]

This argument is incredibly difficult to have, because the 'casual' side of the debate is always super disingenuous and constantly resorts to bad strawmen.

Ya'll totally know people aren't screaming at players for letting trick attack drift 5 seconds, or not using a midare-first opener in the right context. These threads usually revolve around players who refuse to adopt literal one-button changes to their gameplay that significantly increase QoL for their team. That means things like using aoes, or dpsing as a healer.

I spend a lot of time immersing myself socially with super disparate groups of people in this game. I've sat in calls for hours with everyone from super-toxic socially stunted parse runners to 'casuals' that will literally start hyperventilating and crying if you do something that makes them too nervous.

In that time I've gotten the chance to meet A LOT of these types of people that perform obstructively poorly in DF. 99% of the time, it's an attitude issue stemming from a weird self-centeredness. A lot of them are permanently on edge, and will babble incessantly over voice about how they feel strangers are judging them. The moment a stranger speaks up, it's all I knew it! and then they usually flip out and either verbally abuse the person or grief the dungeon intentionally.

I think that a lot of it stems from struggles with self-esteem and self-worth. Many of these types of players will often try to spin the way they play as somehow actually being superior to the way real good players play. You see this a lot when people get into arguments about cureboting, or not using aoes. You even see it among people that respect mechanics super hard and parse extremely poorly in savage. More often than not, if someone reaches endgame playing like that, they'll have some kind of rationale for why they do it. Admitting that they can improve is damaging to their self-esteem, so they'd rather just double down and rationalize why they play the way they do.

[KizuyaKatogami]

And yet all of you keep wondering 'what can SE do for me in this?' instead of 'what can I do to resolve this issue for myself?'. More than a few of us have repeatedly told OP to do things like queue with a premade or using PF to avoid much of the issue, it keeps being ignored because it's not the solution OP wants. And hey, I can understand that, I personally see nothing wrong with SE doing things to inherently encourage self improvement as people play, rather than a philosophy of solidarity, ergo, others can and should make up for one persons deficiencies. Quite bluntly put however, as that is apparently needed, SE 'ain't gonna do shit' about it. So, what can you, any and all of you who have been collectively bemoaning the 'at least half' of your 'superbad' DF runs, do to resolve this issue for yourselves?

I can say a lot about Awha's chosen method, namely, very liberal usage of vote kick, but at least they are using means offered to them in the game to attempt to resolve this issue for themselves. The rest of you just keep complaining and only saying what SE needs to do, which they won't, or what the 'superbad' players being discussed need to do, which again.. they won't. You can queue as a premade, you can use PF, you can kick these bad apples, you can report them if they're griefing on top of refusing to make an effort, which one could perhaps under certain conditions also consider to be griefing in and of itself.

When it is so clear that SE has no desire to change this 'culture of enabling' the question should be 'what can I do to resolve this issue for myself?'. Because the easiest solution, namely SE doing something about it from the developer side, has already been eliminated.

What i can do? What i’m doing is raising awareness to it. You may want to have people forced into a corner and resort to using pf, but some of us don’t want to resort to that when we aren’t asking much from the community. It shouldn’t be up to whether SE has no desire. We’re the community. We’re the ones giving them money and we have a say in what we want. It’s called raising awareness to the issue. People keep using straw men to try and counter the arguments and solutions people have made for this issue but then people like you just want to hide it and don’t think it’s worth talking about? Give me a break. Maybe if we’re loud enough something will change. That’s how it’s been in the past. Is it unlikely? Yes. Doesn’t change the fact it needs to be said because, just seeing some of the posts in here, people are still delusional and enabling this kind of behavior. It’s toxic, it’s lazy, and it’s ridiculous that it even became a problem in the first place.

[Awha]

What i can do? What i’m doing is raising awareness to it. You may want to have people forced into a corner and resort to using pf, but some of us don’t want to resort to that when we aren’t asking much from the community. It shouldn’t be up to whether SE has no desire. We’re the community. We’re the ones giving them money and we have a say in what we want. It’s called raising awareness to the issue. People keep using straw men to try and counter the arguments and solutions people have made for this issue but then people like you just want to hide it and don’t think it’s worth talking about? Give me a break. Maybe if we’re loud enough something will change. That’s how it’s been in the past. Is it unlikely? Yes. Doesn’t change the fact it needs to be said because, just seeing some of the posts in here, people are still delusional and enabling this kind of behavior. It’s toxic, it’s lazy, and it’s ridiculous that it even became a problem in the first place.

It is unlikely yes, and I get the desire to not want to have to use PF. That is why people need to double down on the behavior many will view as being an asshole. Run into someone that find lazy or whatever try to remove them. Many will be shocked at how often the vote will pass. Speaking out the forums will not amount to much change in this regard because the reality is this I bet their data supports that majority of their player base falls in the causal mindset that you and I are against.

I respect the idea to try to force change, but the reality is our concerns are not even bleeps on SE’s radar, and we never will be. So we have to do what we can to control our own experience. Many things could be done to help the situation on part of SE, but it will never happen.

[Lanadra]

What i can do? What i’m doing is raising awareness to it. You may want to have people forced into a corner and resort to using pf, but some of us don’t want to resort to that when we aren’t asking much from the community. It shouldn’t be up to whether SE has no desire. We’re the community. We’re the ones giving them money and we have a say in what we want. It’s called raising awareness to the issue. People keep using straw men to try and counter the arguments and solutions people have made for this issue but then people like you just want to hide it and don’t think it’s worth talking about? Give me a break. Maybe if we’re loud enough something will change. That’s how it’s been in the past. Is it unlikely? Yes. Doesn’t change the fact it needs to be said because, just seeing some of the posts in here, people are still delusional and enabling this kind of behavior. It’s toxic, it’s lazy, and it’s ridiculous that it even became a problem in the first place.

You will accomplish nothing in this regard. I don't want to 'hide' anything, hell I literally told you that I see nothing wrong with SE doing what you guys want if they felt inclined to, there's only benefit to be had from the perspective of anyone who doesn't fall into the 'too lazy to even bother with basics' category. The reality however is still that SE won't do shit about it and that thus it's more productive to do what you can to alleviate the issue as much as possible for yourself. Again I may not agree with Awha's kick happy nature but at least he understands that it's up to you to curate your experience because SE will not act. And no matter how much of an ass move I think silent votekick is.. it is still a method of ridding a DF party of an undesirable deadweight.

[Kikoten]

Greetings, fellow players. To get to the point, Final Fantasy XIV has a terrible culture of enabling. Enabling what? A lot of things. Bad habits, such as kicking people from novice network for trying to correct poor play. Creepy habits, such as the various illicit PFs and what happens there in. Enabling poor play and coddling players is probably the most visible. Such as for example a mentor got dogpiled on in Siren's NN for trying to correct a player whom had not done their job quest, because they "didn't feel like doing them". Honestly this probably the most toxic aspect of this game and its community. What can we do about it? It seems to infect almost every corner of this game.

I'll take that over what WoW's community has to offer.

[ZedxKayn]

I'll take that over what WoW's community has to offer.

Rent free.

[Awha]

You will accomplish nothing in this regard. I don't want to 'hide' anything, hell I literally told you that I see nothing wrong with SE doing what you guys want if they felt inclined to, there's only benefit to be had from the perspective of anyone who doesn't fall into the 'too lazy to even bother with basics' category. The reality however is still that SE won't do shit about it and that thus it's more productive to do what you can to alleviate the issue as much as possible for yourself. Again I may not agree with Awha's kick happy nature but at least he understands that it's up to you to curate your experience because SE will not act. And no matter how much of an ass move I think silent votekick is.. it is still a method of ridding a DF party of an undesirable deadweight.

Sadly I think a lot of it has to do with the notion that people do not want to be seen as an asshole. Though I do think they have to question which is more important their own play experience or the perception their actions may have from the community at large.

Cause I do agree silent kicks does little to solve the core issue, but if people are not willing to take the steps to solve the core issue by trying to raise people up at their own expense then I do think they should just double down on being an asshole.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I'll take that over what WoW's community has to offer.

Wow’s community can at least push buttons and isn’t lazy in dungeons it seems. I’d take that over the toxicity that is casual enablement and sensitivity that this community seems to live off of.

[Caurcas]

A community solution would be something like what has been done in JP datacenters in which a blacklist is held outside of game for offending players. This is actually toxic but at the same time a clear solution.