Why do some people seem personally offended by people who have more than 1 character?

[SilverObi]

I've seen people ask out of genuine curiosity but have never got the impression that they were offended in some way while asking. And usually an answer of "oh I just like having different looking characters" is good enough unless someone is specifically trying to pick a fight for whatever reason.

[Kozh]

Yes but look at the downvotes, that's what I said.
It depends on the art too I am not saying that it's a 100% thing.

But even when they have hundreds or thousands of upvotes they still sit heavily in the downvotes too if you look at the %.
And the comment sections are usually FAR more negative too.
Particularly as if you say the art is reflective of the actual game itself, anything that's even remotely suggestive gets the hate brigade out in full force even if it's from the actual game.
Reddit in particular has a VERY vocal group of people who are extremely rude and hateful towards any of that even when it's real people cosplaying.
It's not uncommon to scroll down and see it even when the mods have stepped in and deleted comments and reminded people of the rules, people still do it.

I dunno why some subreddits are worse with this than others, for some reason the Tekken subreddit is actually worse with this.
People on there will unironically label fanart of Ling that is accurate to her in Tekken 7 '' hentai '' because it's cute, that's how ridiculous people are about it.

I don't think that art of male characters really gets downvoted, altho it's more rare to see art of male characters but this extends to art in general most people prefer to draw female characters.
But I do think that there are people who get extremely upset and are extremely petty about female characters that aren't nuns incarnate and they're rampant on a lot of subreddits the FFXIV one included.
Even if it'll get a positive score because of people scrolling through and just pressing upvote the actual comments tend to be far more indicative of the downvoters and it still tends to have hundreds to thousands of downvotes too.

It's true that people just downvote simply because '' it doesn't appeal to me/ I don't like it '' which is extremely petty and I think sort of an abuse of the system.
Just keep scrolling ffs...
But I think that those people are far more active with female characters because people tend to get way more emotionally invested in it when it's female characters and politicize it way more.

Sorry for going off topic, but how do you see the % of upvotes-downvotes?

[MicahZerrshia]

Sorry for going off topic, but how do you see the % of upvotes-downvotes?

When you open a reddit thread, under the main text of the thread there is a % upvoted that gives a general average

[Breakbeat]

Stop using reddit.

Yeah, that's one solution.

Another solution would be to use Reddit as an information retrieval system, which is quite effective, and ignore the silly rabble.

Ditto Twitter, ditto most other social media. It's useful for information retrieval. Shoot a tweet at someone you need an answer from, then get one back. Find a strategy or solution to a problem or a work-around on Reddit. Great.

Mature humans can easily use social media to their advantage without getting sucked into the downward spirals of Reddit / Twitter / Instagram / Snapchat nonsense. Go there, get what you need and leave. Ignore all the thirteen-year-olds devolving discussions about video games into poltical / sexual / social / racial battlegrounds. That's easily noticeable and avoidable.

[Awha]

People often get offended by things they do not understand. For many having a alt in this game is a concept many do not understand.

[Momo_Kozuki]

I plan to have an alt. Several reasons:
-I play the game in Japanese voice first, so I want to try out English voice this time in a new playthrough. I know there is New Game+, yeah, but New Game+ doesn't let me play in a starter city that I didn't start in. And New Game+ doesn't let me feel the sense of progression compared to playing a new alt.

-Appearance-change along with other racial things like emotes and glams. It is an opportunity for me to try out other races outside of checking them on retainers which are very limited. I will never ever fantasia my cute little Lalafell, who I'm so used to look at.
-Speaking of retainers, more alts = more retainers, especially if you already pay for more retainers. More retainers = more storage and ventures.
-You can access other crafting jobs with crafting souls for more exclusive recipes.
-if you are going to play the game for more than a year, a 180-day sub with 8 characters would be the same price of 30-day sub of having one single character.

[TaleraRistain]

Is there a non-gendered word for "mansplaining"? This seems like the most accurate term, but as an IRL man myself I don't think I get to call it that, lol.

Yep, being a condescending jerk. This is why I, as a woman, hate the term mansplaining. Anyone is capable of talking down to another person and being condescending and this term allows us women to get a pass far too often when doing the same damned thing.

As for why alts, as someone with 8 characters on the same server

1) All of my characters came from out-of-game roleplay, a habit I've had since EverQuest. I met my husband when we were 16 in a Vampire:the Masquerade chat room in the 90s. So roleplay in either chat rooms or tabletop is a huge part of our life. And we reflect this in MMOs by bringing our characters into the games we play. We make them in single player and even sometimes incorporate game story points that are neat into their backgrounds and our real life games. So every character has a set look and a set personality where only certain Jobs fit, except my main. I wanted the amaro and she was already a jack-of-all-trades sort, so I figured out a roleplay reason she could be everything. Prior to that, though, even she had roles she didn't touch. The only time I've ever used Fantasia was changing a set of my alts who are twins from Elezen to bunnies, because I never liked Elezen but that race fit them the most when first creating them.

2) I'm a craftaholic. So having alts means I can have fun leveling their crafting all over again and see how improvements have changed things. There's also the storage aspect. I pay for additional retainers, and have my own FC, so I have tons of extra storage if I need it through my alts since I can transfer through my chest. Or just to do odd things. The year we had the Halloween instance that rewarded cookies that give Pumpkin Stew, I rolled my alt through that so many times that she has multiple retainers that are full of nothing but Pumpkin Stew. So I keep my FC house well-supplied with it even now, years later. Having extra retainers also means being able to put up more on the Marketboard, so they each have their own little nest eggs of gil that I could tap if needed. I also needed a couple of them to be self-sufficient in the past when Specialists were a thing.

3) Having alts of different races means I can experience the game from different perspectives. It's very funny to go from Highlander to Lalafell because you feel like you've become The Flash when you're traveling anywhere. And my kitty can be a fashionista and wear anything, especially things that look ridiculous on my Highlander.

4) I don't play my alts a ton since I like a slower pace when I play them, so they have either sprout or Returner icons. This is fun when people think you're new. And it also gives you good insight into how people treat new folks in this game (hint: most people are pretty nice and understanding to sprouts)

5) Prior to New Game+ (which they all pre-date) this was my way of experiencing parts of the story again in real time, refreshing my memory about things I may have forgotten or looking at past events with fresh eyes and knowledge of future events.

6) As some said (and this doesn't apply since I don't Savage) some people have alts so they can keep raiding on their off-days without messing with people's chances at chests.

7) Prior to World Visit, playing with friends on another server. And right now, playing with someone on another data center.

The most important reason and the only reason that really matters, though, is that someone wants an alt so they make one. They don't need to give a justification for it.

And you're right, people act like it's a personal offense when they hear about it. Which they really shouldn't. Someone else having alts doesn't take anything away from them. That person is just participating in a facet of the game that they aren't, just like anything else in the game.

And this game is rather alt-unfriendly, but features that people ask for to make it less alt-unfriendly would benefit those without alts, too. Extra storage in the form of a bank shared across your account, for instance, would still be something those without alts could use. Other things like being able to share houses among all your characters could free up grandfathered-in houses on alts or alts with apartmentments, since alts could have access to their main's house. Being able to mail alts is the only thing that wouldn't really benefit those without alts, but it also wouldn't really do anything to hurt them.

[Lauront]

*Snip*

It can be tricky to establish any real trends in this when it comes to the XIV reddit, but a lot of it is because there is a separate one for fan art, and so people don't like it flooding the sub. Also, the female (but also male) fan art that is basically borderline hentai? That does tend to get downvoted more heavily. That's where it differs to some other game subs in my experience.

I don't particularly care for Reddit as a venue, and it can be extremely arbitrary with the upvotes and downvotes. I only really check it for news on the game, but it's a bit of a cesspit in some ways. Not as bad as Twitter, mind you.

Yep, being a condescending jerk. This is why I, as a woman, hate the term mansplaining. Anyone is capable of talking down to another person and being condescending and this term allows us women to get a pass far too often when doing the same damned thing.

It's really a very silly word, for the reasons you mention.

[RitsukoSonoda]

People often get offended by things they do not understand. For many having a alt in this game is a concept many do not understand.

I just find people offensive for finding things offensive... >.>

I've made alts on here. I don't play them much though because the game lacks a few features that would make it exponentially alt friendly to me. Though I haven't done what I did in FFXI where I paid 3 subs at the same time and had all 3 logged in pretty much the entire time the game servers were up.

[GeminiReed]

I've been an altoholic in pretty much every MP game I've played. My primary excuse has been role/class coverage but obviously that's not a concern here. Another excuse has been to explore different story paths but again, here, there's only three (the starting cities) and that's over once you get the envoy quest. My motivation here is the ability to explore different races and looks without having to burn a fantasia.

I will say this though, without my alts I would not have lasted the 3 years I've put into this game. There are definitely some story beats that are worth replaying but NG+ just doesn't cut it. One of the big problems I have with patch content is how absolutely unrewarding it is. I had hoped that NG+ would grant MSQ xp... alas they castrated it. I wonder (and desperately hope) that NG+ is Square's way to gather metrics on exactly how popular story content is on its own merits.