Genuine Question Here

[IkaraGreydancer]

Gotcha. Thanks for that you 2 lol

[Semirhage]

There's a set of posters on the forums who love to speak as if they're authorities on the "toxicity" of difficult content despite never participating in it. Casual and proud, hate skill ceilings, yummy yummy gimme more dumbing down of the combat system. They "don't care" that other people enjoy skill expression, but God forbid they ever STFU about it. It makes one suspect it's some sort of personal failing raising its head.

Those people are at the very least fun to cackle at every time they hang their butts out the window and claim they're well-adjusted, so I say keep 'em around. I can imagine being good at something and wanting to be better. I can imagine being casual about something and actually not caring about improving. The sort of person who's terrible at something, thinks that makes them better, and cheerleads the removal of skill expression from a hobby because they're totally -not-jealous? Now that's a whole mess of entertainment.

[Theodric]

Then I'd have to ask. Why are certain viewpoints shunned off here in regards to the game? We all understand here that we're not going to always see eye to eye but there's a looming issue where more positive views are treated as lessers/game ruining. It's why I bring up the concept of separation

Who knows? At the end of the day you can be entirely polite and reasonable, even offering to agree to disagree or work out any potential misunderstandings before they escalate only to still be treated with utter contempt and/or passive aggressive tribalism.

The game attracts players from all over the world from many different countries, cultures, belief systems and personality types - not everyone is going to be any given poster's particular cup of tea and that's just the nature of reality and society in general.

The first step should be to try and agree to disagree and if that doesn't work then the ignore function exists as a last resort. There's always going to be individuals or even groups who bear grudges and assume the absolute worst about anyone that they clash with, though there's ways to mitigate it without anyone having to 'leave'.

It's just a case of carefully curating one's interaction with the forum.

[Aravell]

Would those who have issues with the game in its current state prefer those who don't share said issues leave these forums? Ive seen alot of talk of you guys being silenced n such by these people and them being the reason the game is in an apparent decline. So I ask this just to see what the opinion on that is. Would you guys prefer if the space was more for just negative feedback?

I personally don't believe that anyone should be forced to leave the forums. A forum is a place for discussion, people come here to bounce ideas off each other, what would a forum be for without an opposing viewpoint? It would, however, be nice if there was a lot less or none of the usual "You're too negative" "You're too positive" "Why do you even pay for this game?" "You're a troll" "You're probably Titanmen", all of those statements are completely dismissive and shows that discussion isn't the main aim.

Some may say that some people only ever criticise the game, but so what? They have as much of a right to be here as you. It would be a different case if they were being disruptive and hateful, but if they're just stating their own criticisms, I don't see the issue with letting them do so.

[Batbrat]

The fact that any of you remember who the other people around here are is legitimately mind-blowing to me.
Also every time there's a "troll" thread, it's like 5 pages of people going "omg troll"-which directly "feed"s it and makes it take off that much faster. Zipping it yourselves would fix your problems but apparently time and time again thats proven to be too difficult for a lot of you. inb4 'well UR responding!!!' yah one time out the past 10 that have skyrocketed into popularity thanks to relentless town crying such as the likes I see here. Anyway disagreeing is fun, highly recommend it. Stop being agreeable. Kumbaya is dull, embrace riling others up. Even if you actually agree, just disagree to see what happens. Test the strength of your communities.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I just come here less and less. Forum is low quality and i blame SE for allowing the boards to be in the state they are.

Half the time being here isn’t worth the time or energy.

But to answer OPs question I’d gather the answer is no. There wouldn’t be anyone to have petty arguments with or insult.

[Avatre]

If you believe this to be true as I said to Decay, why comment? Just to leave an insult to feel better? You're only contributing to the very problem im mentioning. There is no pot stirring so long as people stay civil which they have so far. So I'll ask you as well to take that elsewhere.

Honestly, the forums need both types of people. What it doesn't need is the people on either side who directly attack anyone who has a differing opinion. If it is all one sided "criticism" - yes, quotations because 90% of the time it's not even constructive, just saying something is bad and not WHY it's bad - then the game will never end up in a place that it can be enjoyable to the majority of people. It is entirely impossible to please everyone, so the devs need to make compromises on things so that the larger majority of silent players can enjoy it.

As for people stirring things up....yeah, they are always going to be doing that due to how none of them seem to ever have anything happen to them when the mods actually do something.

[ZephyrMenodora]

The fact that any of you remember who the other people around here are is legitimately mind-blowing to me.
Also every time there's a "troll" thread, it's like 5 pages of people going "omg troll"-which directly "feed"s it and makes it take off that much faster. Zipping it yourselves would fix your problems but apparently time and time again thats proven to be too difficult for a lot of you. inb4 'well UR responding!!!' yah one time out the past 10 that have skyrocketed into popularity thanks to relentless town crying such as the likes I see here. Anyway disagreeing is fun, highly recommend it. Stop being agreeable. Kumbaya is dull, embrace riling others up. Even if you actually agree, just disagree to see what happens. Test the strength of your communities.

The reason that happened is because the forums were flooded with troll threads and the mods allowed it to happen for months or even years. It got truly exhausting when the first two pages of this forum were all low effort necros or low effort bait threads, lots of which tried to target people of different minority groups while trying to very loosely tether it to XIV. Most posts over the past months were not designed to actually discuss the game and due to sheer exhaustion over the lack of oversight here - you saw those same 5 pages as a result.

[SannaR]

The fact that any of you remember who the other people around here are is legitimately mind-blowing to me.
Also every time there's a "troll" thread, it's like 5 pages of people going "omg troll"-which directly "feed"s it and makes it take off that much faster. Zipping it yourselves would fix your problems but apparently time and time again thats proven to be too difficult for a lot of you. inb4 'well UR responding!!!' yah one time out the past 10 that have skyrocketed into popularity thanks to relentless town crying such as the likes I see here. Anyway disagreeing is fun, highly recommend it. Stop being agreeable. Kumbaya is dull, embrace riling others up. Even if you actually agree, just disagree to see what happens. Test the strength of your communities.

Stay around long enough and I'm sure even you will remember a name or two. People here have either been here for years or have had pointless "discussion" about something and when you see the same poster names pop up over and over again it becomes easy to recognize names.

As to the OP I would loathe it if the general discussion section just became a negative echo chamber. I'd also would loathe it if it became the opposite. As I said in another thread at least a month ago the few things I tend to have problems with are either so niche or don't affect my enjoyment of the game to the point I feel the need to make a thread complaining about it. Though there have been times when I have made complaints people either A) have not taken me seriously or B ) they feel that my complaint would only dig into their playing of the marketboard. Or some other thing.

I do however feel the subsections at least the one I post a lot in and the few I occasionally lurk in aren't as bad as it is here. It would be nice if more people's opening responses weren't loaded the way many here tend to be. Or that their first response to some one else's reply wasn't loaded with such aggressiveness. It's not fun that both extremes have made it uncomfortable for those in the middle or who try to have an honest debate about various topics to even want to bring them up.

We probably wouldn't have so many threads commenting on the moderation, the perceived lack of it or the confusion about why certain posts or threads get delt with while others don't. Part of the problem I think is not enough people report threads that clearly were maid to just stir the pot. Or posts that also probably should be delt with. Then there are the times where it feels as a mass report wave happened out of spite. As I'd like to think that most are above reporting someone's post or thread just because they don't like a person. Yet there have been people who have openly expressed the wish for others to be permanently removed. Even if it's not entirely been stated as such.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Stay around long enough and I'm sure even you will remember a name or two. People here have either been here for years or have had pointless "discussion" about something and when you see the same poster names pop up over and over again it becomes easy to recognize names.

As to the OP I would loathe it if the general discussion section just became a negative echo chamber. I'd also would loathe it if it became the opposite. As I said in another thread at least a month ago the few things I tend to have problems with are either so niche or don't affect my enjoyment of the game to the point I feel the need to make a thread complaining about it. Though there have been times when I have made complaints people either A) have not taken me seriously or B ) they feel that my complaint would only dig into their playing of the marketboard. Or some other thing.

I do however feel the subsections at least the one I post a lot in and the few I occasionally lurk in aren't as bad as it is here. It would be nice if more people's opening responses weren't loaded the way many here tend to be. Or that their first response to some one else's reply wasn't loaded with such aggressiveness. It's not fun that both extremes have made it uncomfortable for those in the middle or who try to have an honest debate about various topics to even want to bring them up.

We probably wouldn't have so many threads commenting on the moderation, the perceived lack of it or the confusion about why certain posts or threads get delt with while others don't. Part of the problem I think is not enough people report threads that clearly were maid to just stir the pot. Or posts that also probably should be delt with. Then there are the times where it feels as a mass report wave happened out of spite. As I'd like to think that most are above reporting someone's post or thread just because they don't like a person. Yet there have been people who have openly expressed the wish for others to be permanently removed. Even if it's not entirely been stated as such.

I full well expect to be banned if those 26 people who liked the post saying to report me actually does it. All because people dislike me n my view on things. It's a catch 22. You're screwed if you offer counterpoints to criticism, you're also screwed if you open a dialogue to try n understand what exactly the criticism heavy side wants with the forums. There is no winning. Honestly have respect for people such as Theodric who didnt write the thread off as "bait" n still commented on this despite me and him butting heads quite a bit in the past.

I think a healthy dose of both praise and criticism would be best but I just don't think this space is capable of it sadly. It'd take a HUGE attitude shift but that can't even begin to start when folks trying to understand are being written off such as myself.