"Everyone's so open and friendly" is a lie

[Izscha]

Multiple people have spoken at length of their experiences with the more dangerous and creepier elements within the community. Within this thread and elsewhere. As such, I don't think it can be brushed off as a tiny minority at this point.

There's also a large portion of players who, willingly or unknowingly, cover for the abusers in turn. They downplay the problems that exist. It reminds me very much of Yotsuyu's background, funnily enough. Plenty of people come to recognise that abuse is happening, but they are all to happy to maintain the lie that everything is fine or that it isn't a 'concern' because it isn't affecting them directly.

It also doesn't take much for vocal elements within this community to get incredibly enraged. Again, as posted about repeatedly earlier within this thread, simply liking or disliking the 'wrong' characters is enough for many individuals to get horrid death threats and persistent campaigns of harassment both in-game and outside of it.

Aren't you the one that wanted to do RP stuff as garlean and got ppl harassing you for it ? iirc
I may be wrong but i thought it was you.

[Theodric]

Aren't you the one that wanted to do RP stuff as garlean and got ppl harassing you for it ? iirc
I may be wrong but i thought it was you.

Yeah, it has happened to a number of people who attempted to role-play a Garlean or some other form of antagonist. Even people portraying defectors are targeted at times. The game seems to have a large number of individuals who see their character as 'themselves' and as such act like anything in opposition to their self insert is the worst, most brutal thing ever to exist.

I stopped bothering with the FFXIV Reddit altogether simply because a single mention of anyone liking the Ascians or the Garleans has a habit of devolving into accusations of those people being 'terrible people'. I can only assume there's a lot of people playing this game who do not realise that fictional characters are just that - fictional.

It sucks a lot of the fun out of the game, though I've found things are much calmer over on the European servers for what that is worth.

[Izscha]

Yeah, it has happened to a number of people who attempted to role-play a Garlean or some other form of antagonist. Even people portraying defectors are targeted at times. The game seems to have a large number of individuals who see their character as 'themselves' and as such act like anything in opposition to their self insert is the worst, most brutal thing ever to exist.

I stopped bothering with the FFXIV Reddit altogether simply because a single mention of anyone liking the Ascians or the Garleans has a habit of devolving into accusations of those people being 'terrible people'. I can only assume there's a lot of people playing this game who do not realise that fictional characters are just that - fictional.

It sucks a lot of the fun out of the game, though I've found things are much calmer over on the European servers for what that is worth.

Tbh i try to avoid the RP community as much as possible because that's really not my thing, but the few thing i did see did prove me that indeed some do really take this stuff way too seriously and would have no problem harassing someone else over it.
And i do get why ppl would like the ascien or garlean, even in this game they do show countless time that it's far from being just "good vs bad" type of things.
Even then, if you want to be a villain as a RP who the heck are they to harass you over it lol
I really dont get it, that's the point of role playing, and not everyone wants to be the good guy, we need villains in our stories not the generic "i'm op and too good to everyone" kind of characters.
Hope you won't have much problem with this kind of ppl, if that's what you enjoy go ahead.
And reddit yikes really i can't stand it, even ppl on this forum are more open minded than most there and it says a lot.

[KittyKet]

Yeah, it has happened to a number of people who attempted to role-play a Garlean or some other form of antagonist. Even people portraying defectors are targeted at times. The game seems to have a large number of individuals who see their character as 'themselves' and as such act like anything in opposition to their self insert is the worst, most brutal thing ever to exist.

I stopped bothering with the FFXIV Reddit altogether simply because a single mention of anyone liking the Ascians or the Garleans has a habit of devolving into accusations of those people being 'terrible people'. I can only assume there's a lot of people playing this game who do not realise that fictional characters are just that - fictional.

It sucks a lot of the fun out of the game, though I've found things are much calmer over on the European servers for what that is worth.

I see this everywhere, yeah. There is a huge, weird thing going on in fandoms where your taste in fictional characters directly reflects who you are as a person. And if you like villains or antagonists or any character who is less than perfect, or ships that are less fluffy than your average coffee-shop-AU-fic, then you are an abuse apologist and you are "normalizing" toxic relationships. It's insane.