Why is everyone so silent in the game?

[DBriggs304]

It's simply because there no "General" chat in game or there would be more chatter. I always hear more in main towns through /say and NN is constantly active.

[Kaurhz]

OK...I'm going to say what a lot of people are tiptoeing around.

If the chat turns to anything remotely political and your position isn't 100% hardcore leftwing you will be reported as engaging hate speech (whether it fits any rational definition of "hate speech" or not), but the attacks from the other side don't get the same classification. The way the new ToS update is worded supports that too.

If you comment on someone playing other than telling them good job, you will also often be reported.

Also, as much as most of us dislike Reddit, the advice they give constantly to anyone who gets even slightly offended or upset at something someone said is "report them". Literally that is their advice like 100% of the time.

EDIT: This community loves to scream across the internet about how awesome it is. But anyone who pays attention knows it's basically the "peace of the gun".

People can hate on other MMOs and their toxic communities, but none of them can hold a candle to the passive aggressiveness in this one and the attempts to silence anyone they dislike.

Like practically every discussion of politics everywhere. An objectively productive discussion can easily turn into a slugfest of adhominen regardless of the game, or place.

If you comment on someone that has the vibe of you being insulting or demeaning to another person then yes they are going to report you. Again, going back to the whole "Why was I banned I did nothing wrong" - despite more often than not the person is exhibiting a behaviour that goes against the terms of service.

Linking someone a guide is not going to get you banned. Encouraging people to get better is not going to get you banned. Suggesting that someone maintains their DoTs is not going to get you banned. Telling someone they suck at the game and they should uninstall the game is an offense, as is telling someone they don't belong in an area of content.

There's a lot more people that are utterly devoid of reflecting on their own behaviour that they don't see how their own actions are interpreted as to what there are people reporting you for telling them to keep up their DoTs.

Sure the community has toxic areas to it, very much so, in all areas of the game. But to even remotely infer that this is why people are silent is asinine, and going beyond with hyperbole. If anyone even feels like they need to never speak in-game due to your reasons then I would argue it has a whole lot more to do with them not being able to express themselves in a relatively polite manner than it does someone reporting you and getting you banned for linking a guide or telling them to maintain their DoTs.

FYI: There were no updates to the terms of service itself, at least the clauses of which people need to adhere to. They merely clarified their pre-existing terms. They've been reportable long before this. But seemingly people have an issue with understanding what actually constitutes as rude behaviour. Ironically, there was already a thread on this, and low and behold some of the people complaining that you could be reported for anything were also the folk subsequently pushing out passive-aggressive remarks, or even outright rude remarks.

[ReynTime]

In all seriousness the number one reason is, why use a chat at all if you don't have a <call.5>.

[Lunalepsy]

I'll be your friend!

[KizuyaKatogami]

I’m just quiet because i don’t want to risk people getting upset when i talk. Already had an issue where i used the word “triggered” and someone gave me an essay of a talking down to. This community is wild.

[Amarande]

The game systems' heavy (much heavier than almost any other MMO except the first Guild Wars, really) focus on instanced duty content is a large part of it, I think.

The overworld, for all its beauty, goes almost criminally under utilized after MSQ is done. Sadly, I suspect this is necessary due to the limited facilities SE has for detecting bots; the Special Task Force is small and Japanese law severely limits cheat detection software as most particularly, scanning the user's system to automatically report suspicious software - the normally used method among Western and Korean games for cheat detection - is a privacy violation in JP. As a result, SE has more or less to design the game to mitigate the effectiveness of botting in order to keep its impact under control. So apart from a scant few beast tribe dailies a day, gathering, FATEs, and hunts, there actually really isn't a lot of repeatable overworld content in XIV, unlike even other GCD tab target MMOs like SW:TOR and WoW, to say nothing of Sandbox types like BDO.

As a result the vast majority of player activity is spent in instanced duty. This puts a damper on ingame communication in several ways; not only does it impact "outward" chat activity, it even has a noticeable effect on FCs and linkshells, which I have found tend to be much quieter than guild chat in any other MMO that I've played.

- Because you're usually in a party for instanced duty, by far the most active chat if any tends to be the Party chat. Even in busy FCs, people tend to much more often talk to their parties than the guild at large, which I've actually found to be a weakness in XIV as unless you are lucky or cliquey enough to get in on one of the day's FC roulette parties, even being guilded is often rather lonely.

- Because most activity takes place WITHIN an instanced duty, forming bonds in the first place can be difficult, not least because of the fact that XIV entirely forbids whisper/tell chat either into or out of a duty. Where a WoW player's DBM addon might let you know they're busy in a boss fight if you message them during a dungeon, XIV simply won't let you send such a message at all. (This appears to be a deliberate design decision; it isn't the server infrastructure at play since Cross-world tells are a thing, plus GMs can still send you tells whilst in duty).

- Even if there wasn't the aforementioned chat limitation (and no global general chat outside of Novice Network, which explains a lot about NN culture as well) the fact that most of the time you're actively playing you ARE in a duty party, and people prefer to run things at the fastest possible pace, simply leaves little time to chat unless someone is waiting in a queue as DPS or you're in a Praetorium cutscene.

[Darkobra]

People in this game spend more time hugging and licking and prodding and roleplaying. I'll pass.

[Genbe197]

Maybe its your server, Mine is constantly full of chit chat, Primal data center dungeon chit chat all the time as well.

[Lauront]

OK...I'm going to say what a lot of people are tiptoeing around.

If the chat turns to anything remotely political and your position isn't 100% hardcore leftwing you will be reported as engaging hate speech (whether it fits any rational definition of "hate speech" or not), but the attacks from the other side don't get the same classification. The way the new ToS update is worded supports that too.

If you comment on someone playing other than telling them good job, you will also often be reported.

Also, as much as most of us dislike Reddit, the advice they give constantly to anyone who gets even slightly offended or upset at something someone said is "report them". Literally that is their advice like 100% of the time.

EDIT: This community loves to scream across the internet about how awesome it is. But anyone who pays attention knows it's basically the "peace of the gun".

People can hate on other MMOs and their toxic communities, but none of them can hold a candle to the passive aggressiveness in this one and the attempts to silence anyone they dislike.

Well said.

[Zelarned]

Most people just use out-of-game apps to communicate with things regarding the game. Even then, most just aren't willing to do with strangers. Everyone's here to do our dailies and log off.