Novice network needs to be removed.

[Amarande]

Objectively, it has to be said that the whole social aspect of FFXIV is incredibly dysfunctional, much as I've met some awesome folks in my time.

There's no ingame global chat channel, the closest you get to one is NN. If it didn't exist, where (outside social media, we'll get to that later) would returning players, newbies, or people whose previous coteries disbanded make new connections? There's not a lot of random interactions (most chats I see in cities seem to be between groups of existing friends), and that's assuming people are really paying that much attention to the chat while in the city. There's no trade chat as there is in WoW (not that trade chat was always that much better, most of the time it was basically like Fox News if Fox News had RMT and content carry ads instead of regular commercials, but you did get the occasional interesting exchange).

Linkshells seem to be chronically completely dead apart from Hunt ones, even hellos go unanswered even if several people are online. Fellowships are mostly just a bulletin board of Discord links and seem to be little used otherwise.

FCs do not serve as the social hubs that one expects of guilds in most games (it not helping at all that the housing system severely impairs FC growth).

You're basically forced off to social media, and even there things are heavily twisted (largely because of social media platforms' policies, which threaten to severely impair Internet socialization on the whole going forward, really. Feels like sadly, we nerds had our 30 ish years of hope, the popular kids have taken over the digital world too now and our future is solitude and the dark insides of lockers. LOL).

[Vencio]

Bloody hell….you’ve nailed it deep further than how I can relate to it in many ways,

Very well put & sadly it is our current modernism of ffxiv & most MMOs in general.

Honestly much rather solitary than go along with the flow of sheeps that just makes me cringe so much (Tik Tok for one & im not old either).

[Leifei]

Objectively, it has to be said that the whole social aspect of FFXIV is incredibly dysfunctional, much as I've met some awesome folks in my time.

There's no ingame global chat channel, the closest you get to one is NN. If it didn't exist, where (outside social media, we'll get to that later) would returning players, newbies, or people whose previous coteries disbanded make new connections? There's not a lot of random interactions (most chats I see in cities seem to be between groups of existing friends), and that's assuming people are really paying that much attention to the chat while in the city. There's no trade chat as there is in WoW (not that trade chat was always that much better, most of the time it was basically like Fox News if Fox News had RMT and content carry ads instead of regular commercials, but you did get the occasional interesting exchange).

Linkshells seem to be chronically completely dead apart from Hunt ones, even hellos go unanswered even if several people are online. Fellowships are mostly just a bulletin board of Discord links and seem to be little used otherwise.

FCs do not serve as the social hubs that one expects of guilds in most games (it not helping at all that the housing system severely impairs FC growth).

You're basically forced off to social media, and even there things are heavily twisted (largely because of social media platforms' policies, which threaten to severely impair Internet socialization on the whole going forward, really. Feels like sadly, we nerds had our 30 ish years of hope, the popular kids have taken over the digital world too now and our future is solitude and the dark insides of lockers. LOL).

It's really a matter of perspective. Making friends is a learned skill just like how we learned how walk when we were all babies. That said, FFXIV has all of the tools needed for people to build good, close knits communities. To simplify it, it's about reaching out to people as you play. Finding people that are into the same content as yourself within the game(savage, extremes, ultimate, chocobo racing, triple triad, hunts, etc). People that like the same things, tend to like each other.

[Feron]

I agree that the channel doesn't really have the level of moderation it needs but I don't think there's a great solution for it because it is a valuable resource for sprouts.

There are way too many mentor players who treat it like their personal instagram account; who are obsessed with creating a clique environment and digging for attention and adoration, spamming obnoxious stupid in-jokes. I'd say its about 75% inane BS and about 25% actually helping sprouts or answering questions. Maybe more like 85/15. IDK.

The kick function does get abused and there's no real recourse for it. Basically, it seems like if you don't like this wild west atmosphere, don't go there. I try to lurk there just to actually help the people who do ask questions, though finding those questions in a page of babbling is sometimes difficult.