The great streamer Asmongold is joining FFXIV

[Krotoan]

If someone is going to physically assault another person for trash talk in a video game, frankly they need to get over it. That's way too far, not to mention illegal. Just because one person called another "bad" at some video game, that doesn't give them the right to introduce "real life consequences" or harm someone else over it.

While I agree physical assault isn't WARRANTED, it's one of those things you have to risk if you're going to start badmouthing someone to their face and is likely a factor in keeping in-person trash talk at least about the game. However I'm also speaking of watching the facial expression and result of verbally destroying someone as well. LOTS of people will not do this if they actually have to watch someone crumble. It's easy to take down someone if you can reduce them to text and a game character, much harder to deal with an actual human being getting hurt by your actions (mentally or physically) and reconciling with yourself what you just did.

All in all the argument that "it's just trash talk" goes out the window when it's admitted that if you tried saying the same things to someone's face, you wouldn't be willing to deal with the consequences.

Trash talk is absolutely a part of sports. For example, you can see it heavily in MMA prior to fights.

You mean the ones where the two guys then proceed to beat the ever-living stuffing out of each other? ... Yeah I'm thinking maybe using the same standard for a video game isn't very honest. Trash talking when not associated with then violently physically harming another person is usually just about the current game being played and while accepted isn't encouraged or a main attraction. Otherwise you'd have mics on every player on the field to keep up.

I also think there's a difference between being a "bad sport" and "trash talking". I'm not referring to actual personal insults either, when I refer to "trash talk". Many in this game take any sort of criticism of the story, or characters as a personal slight. Even simply asking another to play at an adequate level is a lot of the time considered a personal attack here!

Then you're strawmanning the heck out of what kind of "trash talk" people have a problem with. The issue is when it DOES actually become personal attacks or denigration. "we're going to win" or "you guys suck" are harmless trash talk. Sure. Telling someone "hey could you do basic AOE rotations"? .. Fine.

"God could you guys kill stuff any slower?"

not fine.

The community here (in the forums) is especially touchy, I can concede that. But in game? Most of the time people just ignore you if you're a jerk. The game community just is a game community. It's not this hive of two-faced secret bigots or a wonderland utopia. Generally I personally find I encounter more nice than not people and my personal past experiences with some other MMO's have skewed the other way slightly. I'll agree that advertising FFXIV as some sort of carebear "we wuv evvwy buddy!" land is wrong. But it's pretty bad to present it as "everyone who think's it's a nice place and has had a good experience is just fooling themselves" as well.