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

[RyuDragnier]

I miss what the Lore forum used to be like.

Same, but I have a feeling it sadly will not return to how it was unless everybody agrees not to discuss certain...topics. They've been starting fires, and I myself have been checking out of the Lore subforums due to those fires.

[Vyrerus]

I've been filling the between-patch downtime with Final Fantasy XI, which was Moose's game of choice for years, and it is a very different kind of animal than FFXIV, with few recurring characters and most expansion stories running largely independent of one another. With XIV, the newer lore was definitely crafted with planned story beats in mind, so there's simply less to talk about that isn't in some way informed by the characters and larger story.

That's also what I'll be going back to now, since there really isn't much left here that interests me. I wish at least Cillia had left contact info.

I need to go back and try to progress the Voracious Resurgence at some point. I played XI continuously for over a decade myself, and then off and on after XIV sucked me in.

I'm still currently subbed, because I started up an LP of it towards the autumn of last year. I stopped it cold due to Endwalker, but managed to record and upload all the way up through Rise of the Zilart. I haven't been progressing my main or the LP character at all since I stopped though. And yeah, there's some posters I miss seeing too.

[Anonymoose]

Full Disclosure: I got a private nudge I was mentioned, lol.

I don't know if "not worth visiting" is the precise term I would use, but I can definitely see why someone summarizing my sentiments would choose those words.

I'll try to articulate my feelings as best I can: A small percentage of every fandom inevitably reminds me of this old tweet...

@SamSykesSwears
Stages of a Toxic Fandom:
1. I love this
2. I own this
3. I control this
4. I can't control this
5. I hate this
6. I must destroy this

...and they tend to have more free time and passion to engage in that behavior (and more conviction it's worth it to do so), than I will ever have. For better and worse, the popularity of FINAL FANTASY XIV is so high that said percentage is quite a lot of people in raw numbers. Several spaces where FFXIV discussion takes place have had their vibe (for lack of a more concise word) annihilated by small-but-loud trends somewhere in the ballpark of "my opinions are facts, the story is bad if it doesn't cater to my preferences, and I don't care if I ruin experience of others who are trying to enjoy talking about it".

This game is for millions of people. It's going to let you down and frustrate you sometimes, because if it catered to just your personality it wouldn't be a game for millions of people. The devs sometimes makes choices that frustrate me, too, but I can usually see why those choices were made. I can understand that there will be people who love it, too, and that day just wasn't my day to share in the preferences catered to. Often I'd argue that the game is better for more people by choosing to let me down that day, and I learn to love what I had a negative reaction to at first in a different way.

But I play, analyze, and talk about this game for fun. I pay a subscription fee for the privilege of having fun.

Being inundated by toxicity and vitriol isn't fun.

And that's the question I've been made to grapple with when it came to engaging this space, which I used to be a multiple-times-per-day occurrence that I valued dearly:
Why am I participating in an activity for the sole purpose of having fun and not having fun? Why am I investing my time and energy into something that makes me miserable?

In the words of the great hockey philosopher Ilya Bryzagalov: "It's only game. Why you heff to be mad?" I, too, miss the version of the Lore Forum where people could disagree and have dramatically different interpretations of this fictional pile of pixels we all share a love of without ruining each other's ability to have fun talking about it. But if that's not what the space is mutually committed to being, I question the personal wisdom of ruining my own day. If you are surrounded by misery in the space you carved out for joy, you must needs curate your space better. "Maybe I'm just not the target demographic for what this space wants to be, anymore." (Honestly, I still talk with people about XIV every day, but more often now in spaces where constant combative negativity and personal attacks are considered unwelcome.)

Anonymoose was largely before my time. I vaguely remember him making a review post about EW, only getting to Garlemald or the moon, and never continuing. It made me wonder if he didn't like the story after that point.

NGL, this part was just the terrible decision on my part to start grad school right before a global pandemic broke out, lmao. If you've never tried to simultaneously navigate academic and professional lives while all the systems and administrations collapse and the field is devastated by having half the workforce and twice the clientele...I don't recommend it. I thought I would have more time after October 2021 but it didn't start letting up until May 2022. A lot of text-based efforts got triaged.

[Azilenmity]

Greetings!

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