Lore Forum Decorum - Just What is Meant by Good/Bad Faith?

[SentioftheHoukai]

The fact that so many people are spending time to debate/discuss elements of the story just shows how passionate we are about it. Why is any type of criticism or any opinion that doesn't simply say "the story was amazing" met with replies like "if you hate the story so much why are you playing?" Asking for higher stakes in an end of the world scenario doesn't have to mean everyone dying or having a villain win.

To give you an example: one of the things I loved about Shb was the tension you felt as your character dealt with the light corruption. Of course, as the audience we all knew that we would be ok in the end, but we didn't know how. Sitting there watching my character almost turn into a lightwarden was one of the most edge-of-your-seat moments I've had in this story, and it was so well done! I wanted something like that in EW and I didn't feel that from the final zone at all.

One thing that would've put me at the edge of my seat is having one or more of the scions almost give into despair and seeing them start to turn. Rallying together to encourage them and bring them back from the brink of turning would be a wonderful scene. There are so many ways to bring that tension and I just did not feel that at any point with our character or the Scions. Nobody had to die to give us that tension either.

ETA: **There are so many ways to bring that tension and I just did not feel that at any point with our character or the Scions (except for the body swap part which ended pretty quickly. I wish they would've done more with that).

I second this notion. As you stated, Zenos didn't necessarily to kill and/or maim a Scion or two to up the ante a bit. Even a few wounded would've done the trick rather nicely, but as it stands we resolved most of Endwalker like a shounen protagonist and have much less motivation to prevent something like Zenos' bodyjack from ever happening again. Come to think of it, Endwalker just fails overall as far as the stakes are concerned. The Final Days didn't feel very final, at best we get like one cutscene of the Eorzean provinces having people almost turn into Blasphemies, but never actually turn.

[Absimiliard]

...

We're at a point now where it seems people just immediately assume any statement they personally disagree with is being made in bad faith, and it seems to still be getting worse with time. It's made having worthwhile discussions exceedingly difficult. People dismissing the EE was already problematic enough, but we're now at the point where a significant number of posters won't even accept screenshots taken in-game as evidence. Some of them won't even take developer commentary.

[Lyth]

I don't think that the cliquish behavior itself is anything new, looking back at some of the older threads in here. It's kind of fascinating observing historical lore forum politics.

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make in engaging with game lore is to become overly attached to an idea. It's fun to make predictions and debate, because it makes you go back and scrutinize the text in more detail. But we could always encounter new information in the next patch or two which debunks our entire discussion to date. Even with the storyline that has most recently concluded, there are some fairly large information gaps that are likely tied in to both the Pandaemonium and Myths storylines. Often, the reasons for an event may not become fully apparent until later. Who knows, perhaps Chekhov's bodyswap might turn out to be an example of one.

I don't think that the 'bad faith/disingenuous/liar liar' labels really matter that much, because most people by and large recognize them as ineffective rhetorical devices. The problem moreso is that it's relatively rare to find people able to hold a civil debate without it escalating into something needlessly aggressive, and some of the coordinated bullying/harassment behaviors that invariably follow are really worrying. I really want to see the latter topic get addressed at the next Q+A.

[Naria]

Ah, yes. The third part of the triumverate: "people need to die for reals or I can't stay engaged." This is a proper Lore thread now.

To be fair, I am one of the ones that does complain probably more than necessary about all of the death fake outs, and this had me laughing at how true it is. I've always lurked more than I've posted on Lore and the forums in general but I'm doing a lot less of both these days. Reading threads tends to results in a negative mood more often than fun or a new perspective/knowledge now. I do miss the days when lore was the one of the mostly sane places on the forums. When I get poked I tend to poke back and that's just not what I want to get caught up in FFXIV or fandoms in general. I'm here to have fun and to preserve that fun I'm finding it better to disengage with the forum.

[Lyth]

I think that this is the best place to discuss the concerns around alt account posting on this subforum that have recently come up in another thread. This is more of a meta discussion, but it's always a good thing to have the appropriate awareness and to be able to judge it for yourself.

There are several motivating factors that drive people engage in this sort of behavior. Roleplaying is perhaps one reason. Influencing popular opinion is another. One individual posting or upvoting across different accounts might give the impression that a view is much more popular than it actually is. In some cases, you might be bombarded with responses from the same person across different accounts to pressure you into backing down.

A final motive for this is to make statements that the poster in question doesn't want to be affiliated with or held accountable for. I think this last one is probably the most dangerous one, and is the one that worries me the most. Some people might feel that posting on a throwaway alt account is a free ticket to being openly abusive and insulting to others without putting their main posting account at risk of punishment.

The easiest way to detect and address this is at a moderator or administrator level, simply because there's a lot more transparency around who is actually posting.

There are plenty ways to judge this for yourself as well, though. It's extremely difficult for someone to disguise their 'writing voice' for an extended period of time, so you'll see them slip in and out of it. It's also difficult to maintain uniquely different personas, and you will frequently see recurring patterns, themes, signature styles, and obsessions spill out across several alts.

What first caught my attention was a copy-pasted in-game quote. There was a text line featuring the player character's name, except that it did not match up with the poster in question. This was very quickly edited, but the original post was fortunately permanently snapshotted in a reply quote. That gave me the first link that I needed.

Character names can be changed, of course, but that doesn't mean that they don't carry personal significance, if you know where to look. And that's pretty much how I was able to confirm the rest. Again, none of this is hard. The entire thing was careless. But you just need to have the index of suspicion first.

I just wanted to take a moment to look at some assorted responses that I've recently come across with regards to this topic.

I know the person of which you speak as personally as one can know someone on the internet (that is to say, I interact with them more..... personally than they'd ever deign to entertain you with) and I know for a FACT that they are not, in fact alts of the same person. Despite them, and I quote, "Now sharing the same face". Isn't that rather unavoidable when you play an MMO with 4 face options per race/gender combo?

This was absolutely fascinating to me, because I hadn't actually shared any identifiable details about my discoveries. So I continued to observe.

Seeing as how I'm as far from a male Hyur as is possible and don't intend to change.

And again, this is really interesting, because at no point did anyone mention any demographic features of the characters in question.

Piecing together your own statements, one can infer that you are discussing the following:

• Two male Hyur characters who use the same face option
• One character has changed their appearance to do so

I imagine that narrows the subject of your discussion down somewhat. Everyone goes for the exciting character backgrounds, unfortunately. You're probably more likely to encounter someone claiming to be part-Garlean nowadays than you are to actually see a Hyur character. But that was an interesting little puzzle. Forging on ahead.

The upvotes are probably not representative at all and are a particularly easy metric to game, if one has the wherewithal to do so, anyway.

This is an older quote related to the subject, but I don't think that this statement has ever really been correct. Voting patterns are an incredibly easy way to tell at a glance if someone is gaming the system. Even when people agree with us, not every comment is met with the same level of enthusiasm. And again, this is generally even easier to see at a forum moderator/administrator level, because a vote is not just a number.

I'm sure names could be hidden to avoid falling victim to the naming and shaming rules, too, if that's the reason for holding back!

Names are always important, Theodric. Especially when roleplaying a character. You can choose to forget them, but you can't truly discard them.

I will say, however, that it is probably worthwhile to look at the rules. It's an interesting read.

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Ultimately, the place that this topic needs to be discussed and resolved is higher up, ideally in one of the live letter Q+A sessions. There's an increasing perception in the broader playerbase that the forums have run into lot of issues around toxicity, insults, brigading, and alt posting. That in turn deters them from posting in here, which limits its effectiveness as a community feedback tool. I'm grateful that this problem is starting to get highlighted in streaming circles as well, which means there's momentum for change. It's just a question of making the dev team more aware of it.

In the interim, though, I encourage you to be critical of what you see in here, and take heart. Things will improve for the better. One thing that does give me hope is that fact that I still see interesting discussions on the actual game lore in here, off the frontlines where all the angry shouting takes place. And hopefully moving the story focus away from the Amaurotians will help to alleviate some of these old grudges.

'The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day.'

[Lauront]

That has to be the most insane piece of fiction I've read in this circus show in a while now. Perhaps something a professional can assist with.

This might be a difficult concept for you to grasp, but because I maintain sources on this topic, you do realise someone might approach me for these? Far less exciting than whatever far-fetched conspiracy theory you've put together, I suppose.

[Theodric]

We also know each other quite well given that we live together under the same roof. I'm sure there's a decent amount of people who have had lengthy discussions with us both in real time in-game or elsewhere who can attest to our actual existence as separate entities.

At this point, it's honestly getting pretty creepy to see how far removed from reality certain posters will position themselves in order to avoid acknowledging that some people simply don't think Endwalker was a satisfying conclusion to a decade long story.

Then again, this very same conspiracy theory is coming from the same Viera who openly fantasised about killing people who liked the Ancients, so...

[MilkieTea]

We also know each other quite well given that we live together under the same roof. I'm sure there's a decent amount of people who have had lengthy discussions with us both in real time in-game or elsewhere who can attest to our actual existence as separate entities.

At this point, it's honestly getting pretty creepy to see how far removed from reality certain posters will position themselves in order to avoid acknowledging that some people simply don't think Endwalker was a satisfying conclusion to a decade long story.

Then again, this very same conspiracy theory is coming from the same Viera who openly fantasised about killing people who liked the Ancients, so...

I find myself disagreeing quite heavily with posters whom I have no personal beef with, when it comes to Endwalker...
And yet you'll never see me engage in behaviors such as this, it's insane to me. It's QAnon levels of conspiracy; it's assuming that someone who ordered cheese pizza at a particular restaurant was actually secretly indicating that they wanted to engage in certain unsavory acts levels of conspiracy.

I have to wonder what these kinds of people do in real life when two people hold the same disagreement.

[Necrotica]

Lyth is fun.

Keep searching through forums posts from 6 years ago. The truth is out there!

[MilkieTea]

Lyth is fun.

Keep searching through forums posts from 6 years ago. The truth is out there!