Do people on these forums only complain endlessly?

[Theodric]

So some claim at every possible opportunity, yet the existence of people speaking out against Endwalker and expressing their concerns with the story suggests that it isn't overwhelmingly well received and instead received mixed reactions. By all means, feel free to take modern day gaming 'journalists' and influencers at face value but many of us are sceptical when their continued income and success relies on just parroting whatever honeyed words will secure them future invites to media tours. To say nothing of the way in which a portion of this fandom conducts itself given that some of the streamers who have criticised the game - as well as individual players - have received death threats for doing so.

This very thread has some very unhinged reactions towards people lightly questioning the narrative surrounding Venat so it strikes me as rather strange to double down in such a manner. Strange, but not at all surprising I suppose.

[Striker44]

So why do most people like Venat then and don't have a problem with her actions? Are we going to jump to saying they just don't care about genocide? Or could it be that they don't see what she did AS genocide, especially given the culture of the Ancients? When you frame the discussion as "it's genocide. period.", it makes it VERY hard to have a rational discussion.

Let me be clear, I can see why someone would argue that what she did was completely insane, and wrong.

Oh, and about the "bitch" comment, that was just an extreme example. I have no desire to "win internet points" as someone mentioned, I'm not sure why I would care, what internet points are available here exactly anyways?

From my perspective, it's not a matter of considering/not considering something genocide or caring/not caring about it, but recognizing the lack of a viable alternative. If Venat doesn't act, the Ancients go through with their plan of sacrificing people to summon Zodiark, sacrificing more people to bring about an explosion of life, and then mass genociding that life to bring back their previous sacrifices. Genocide would have occurred no matter what Venat chose to do or not do, so it becomes irrelevant.

I compare it to the famous mine shaft problem in philosophy. A rock is falling down a mine shaft and will crush 4 people. You can pull a lever to send the rock down a different shaft, where it will crush 1 person. What do you do? If you pull the lever, you intentionally cause the death of that 1 person. If you don't, you never "directly" kill anyone, but you also guarantee that 4 people will die instead. The basic matter of the act that someone dies is irrelevant because someone dies no matter what you do. Venat chose to pull the lever and bring about the death of less people while allowing a massively larger amount of life to occur and have a chance, instead of doing nothing and seeing that life be destroyed in place of the remaining 1/4 of so of the Ancients.

So some claim at every possible opportunity, yet the existence of people speaking out against Endwalker and expressing their concerns with the story suggests that it isn't overwhelmingly well received and instead received mixed reactions.

There's literally hundreds of thousands of active players in FFXIV right now. There's maybe a few dozen of us here on the forum. The mere existence of a minuscule handful of people in comparison "speaking out" about something in and of itself is utterly meaningless. That "existence" of people will be present for literally any position on any topic you can create, even if we know it's completely and utterly lopsided in favor of one side.

[Kazhar]

There's literally hundreds of thousands of active players in FFXIV right now. There's maybe a few dozen of us here on the forum. The mere existence of a minuscule handful of people in comparison "speaking out" about something in and of itself is utterly meaningless. That "existence" of people will be present for literally any position on any topic you can create, even if we know it's completely and utterly lopsided in favor of one side.

You say, while using polls from GameFaqs and Reddit to help with your daily fallacious appeal to majority.
If you want to dismiss a 600 hundred page thread as a complete outlier in your stats, you'd have to admit that the same could be said of many of your own sources and completely made up numbers (Weren't you the clown who, only a few days ago talked about how 95% of players agreed with whatever your stance of the moment was?)
Or you adopt the more reasonable, less hypocritical stance that each social media platform, this one included, represents a certain demographic of players. Square Enix themselves certainly seem to believe that the forums represent something since in some cases (the Hrothgar hairstyle drama), they directly came here to ask the opinion of the playerbase. Not on reddit. Not on gamefaqs. Here.

[Silverbane]

(Weren't you the clown who, only a few days ago talked about how 95% of players agreed with whatever your stance of the moment was?)

95% of the players agree with a stance I hold at this moment. Really really.
I just wish I knew which stance ...

[Raoabolic]

Badly received?

*Looks at multiple reviews worldwide which sang Endwalkers praises*

*Looks at Aveyonds's post*

*Laughs*

YOU didnt like it.

A lot of other people..DID.

A lot of people also like games becoming a "service". Doesn't mean that there is plenty wrong with the subject being discussed. lol

[Theodric]

I've said as much already in the past but the primary purpose of this forum is to discuss the game and provide feedback to the development team. That aside, I've also seen the fall from grace of World of Warcraft first hand and a large part of that game's collapse can be attributed to devoted players rushing to stifle any negative criticism whatsoever.

It wasn't the only reason, though a lot of us saw the writing on the wall and spoke up in an effort to mitigate problems as we saw them emerging. Such players encountered eerily similar to rhetoric to what is now being spouted within this very thread regarding a supposed 'majority' that is absolutely fine with everything, apparently.

[Midareyukki]

I mean, what else would they do? Sing kumbaya? If we wanted random posts no one cared for, we'd have Reddit.

Edit: Wait, we do have random posts no one cares for. Nevermind, I stand corrected.

I've said as much already in the past but the primary purpose of this forum is to discuss the game and provide feedback to the development team. That aside, I've also seen the fall from grace of World of Warcraft first hand and a large part of that game's collapse can be attributed to devoted players rushing to stifle any negative criticism whatsoever.

It wasn't the only reason, though a lot of us saw the writing on the wall and spoke up in an effort to mitigate problems as we saw them emerging. Such players encountered eerily similar to rhetoric to what is now being spouted within this very thread regarding a supposed 'majority' that is absolutely fine with everything, apparently.

Some people do nitpick and only focus on the negatives.

But jesus, the amount of people going insane just because someone pointed out a negative or said something was lacking is ridiculous.

I think those people expect any and every negative feedback to always be balanced by a positive comment. Which is just unrealistic. And the same goes for them: blind positivity without addressing flaws or at the very least that "stuff can be improved upon" is what kills games.

[Hurlstone]

So some claim at every possible opportunity, yet the existence of people speaking out against Endwalker and expressing their concerns with the story suggests that it isn't overwhelmingly well received and instead received mixed reactions. By all means, feel free to take modern day gaming 'journalists' and influencers at face value but many of us are sceptical when their continued income and success relies on just parroting whatever honeyed words will secure them future invites to media tours. To say nothing of the way in which a portion of this fandom conducts itself given that some of the streamers who have criticised the game - as well as individual players - have received death threats for doing so.

This very thread has some very unhinged reactions towards people lightly questioning the narrative surrounding Venat so it strikes me as rather strange to double down in such a manner. Strange, but not at all surprising I suppose.

Personally speaking, I think its also the apparent scope of mixed reviews that people may have an issue with too. I think its fair to say that there seems to be a number of players here who have more issues with Endwalkers story then previous expansions and in time opinion of it will likely fall more then it will rise, but is that enough to objectively call its reaction mixed or bad like some say? We are after all an extremely small minority of players who seek out social sites to discuss things and even then, there are still plenty of players here who disagree with the negativity. When one looks at the wider reviews for the game, most do point in the positive direction. I agree that critical reviews, influences etc. should always be taken with a grain of salt. In my view art is always an subjective medium that only an individual can judge anyway. That said, most player reviews seem to match the critics too and it feels unwise to just completely ignore them when trying to get a gauge of what the overall play reaction may be.

Yes yes, I know, I know! Echo chambers and exaggerations exist on Reddit, Twitter etc. but if we must be critical of every opinion that comes from said places that are not here for fear they may be ‘tainted’ by such toxic positivity, then how on Etheirys can anyone reach any conclusion, subjective or objective? It bares reminding that whilst it may be easier to expressive negative criticism here on this forum, that does not mean it is free of such closed echos and dressing up agendas as critical debate either. Toxic negativity is still a thing, you know.

In the end, no matter how much we argue, we just have to hope that SE take multiple sources and player types into account when trying to judge these things. Also it of course goes without saying that death threats of any kind are horrific and another reason why people on every side of the debate need to be reminded that this is a bloody video game.

[Midareyukki]

snippy

You're right in that we shouldn't take the forums, or any small group as a sample to collectively refer to the whole community. Youtube's FF14 community sings Endwalker's praise, Reddit is somewhat mixed but on a favourable hill, while the forums definitely is split with people whose opinion of the game was lowered by Endwalker's flaws, people who agree EW has flaws but their opinion of the game hasn't been lowered by them alone, while others see no problem and so their opinion remains favourable.

But we also need to know where those people come from:
- Youtube is made up of Content Creators whose main focus is to enjoy and broadcast the game. Unless they have something else they and their fanbase enjoys, they likely won't say anything too negative.
- Reddit's environment is full of people who like the game and hold almost no criticism for it. Whenever there is criticism, either it gets promptly justified and downvoted and we never see them again, or it gets discussed a bit and it doesn't lead anywhere. Also, it's not a place the devs look into for feedback, so there's little point in complaining there.
- The forums are specifically what the devs claim to pay attention to. So there is an incentive to post criticism of the game and complaints here. So it's far less filtered.

I will say that only one of my friends even sets his eyes on the forums, but all of them collectively are a mixed bag. You have the ones who are displeased, you have others that agree there are flaws but carry on because it doesn't affect them and you have those who just say "the game's a game" and move on. And you'll likely see this from the majority of the fanbase with varying intensity. All in all, we all keep playing and paying a subscription for a reason. If we didn't like it, given how supposedly more on the adult side the FF14 fanbase is, we'd know it's not for us and we'd drop it.

And I think that's the positivity we should all have: if we play it, it's because we like something about it. If we complain, it's because we want improvements. If we have zero faith, then it's just simply not for us and we're wasting time.

Even in controversial threads, you have people reasonable enough to draw a line between a complaint and an unreasonable expectation. If you do nothing but stick to your guns and not try to get the other side and concede when they're right, then that's on you. The issue is that for a lot of people, the mere fact you agree with the topic at all means you're seeking an echo chamber. And it's way too easy to accuse others of doing that when you really only read one or two of their posts. You don't know where they stand at all, you only know where they stand on one particular answer with a character limit.

Some people are obvious trolls, but that's not the case every time. So many threads get derailed and people in them get insulted just because people disagree with the topic and think those who agree just want an echo chamber.

[Hurlstone]

snip

A fair point. Agendas and biases are found in ever corner of social media, and no individual will be free of them. None of us are impartial, and it really dose not helped when comments in communities can be drowned out by whichever side is dominate. At the same time, I just feel it can be disingenuous how those other sites are completely written off by some here. Positivity there is not always gonna come from a lack of ‘critical thinking’ or ‘herd mentality’ as some say. Heck, I have seen people say that art commissions posted on Reddit and Twitter are a symptom of its toxic positivity and that just seems… bonkers to me.

I will say that only one of my friends even sets his eyes on the forums, but all of them collectively are a mixed bag.

Interesting! Funnily enough of the people I know who play and have beaten Endwalker, they have all said they loved the story haha. I think individually we will all get different reactions like from our own circles.

And I think that's the positivity we should all have: if we play it, it's because we like something about it. If we complain, it's because we want improvements. If we have zero faith, then it's just simply not for us and we're wasting time.

Indeed, whilst there are certainly people who do seem to like just wasting time and trolling for fun, I think most of us on both sides of this debate simply do want the game to improve and continue on its adventure. We just disagree on where the quality currently falls on the scales. Plus, we are talking about lore here. Whilst story is more important here to the game then in other MMOs, I suspect more players (Not us, story and lore is why I play haha) are concerned about getting their voices heard on things like job balances, new gameplay modes, race features, housing etc.

Even in controversial threads, you have people reasonable enough to draw a line between a complaint and an unreasonable expectation..

Some people are obvious trolls, but that's not the case every time. So many threads get derailed and people in them get insulted just because people disagree with the topic and think those who agree just want an echo chamber.

True enough. I think there are many people on both sides of the debate that want to debate these things in more civil manner, but it does not take long for such issues to fall into a barrage of veiled insults and false narratives. I personally feel its often weighed in one direction more then the other here, but like you said, we can only know where people stand on these things in a limited way.