Devs Please Be Careful Not To Disrespect Real Native Cultures In The New World

[Elissar]

Dear Diary: today our forum was a good place and restored my faith in humanity.

[NiceNox]

Not depicting other cultural influences: Racism, lack of diversity
Depicting other cultural influences: Racism, Colonization, cultural appropriation
Depicting other cultural influences correctly with the input and approval from the natives: Racism, commercialization of culture, and mild cultural appropriation due to SQE being Japanese Company.

It doesn't matter how they do it, if people want to get offended, they will find the way to get offended and deem the thing offensive. We can go on and on about how FFXIV is the nest of racisms, cultural appropriations, and insensitivities, but, in the end, what's the point? If we keep seeing wrong in every single thing, labeling everything with the highest of accusations, as well as fearing that the creation will cause even a mild offensive, then where is the joy? Where is the creative freedom? I find the idea of having to do everything "correctly" to be very rigid and quite restrictive; let everything run wild without the fear of offending anyone, after all, it's a game, a fictional world.

[Hurlstone]

I admit, call me a woke-SJW-white-hat-knight-guy but there is a little part of me which is a little worried with how well they will treat the real-life inspirations. Only a little mind, this is not like a badly throughout glam and is a proper take at this culture. One hopes they take more care and respect with such a thing, because you know its right and will result in better more immersive lore. Plus I thought they did a fantastic job with Thavnair, so I have hope things will go OK.

[Striker44]

People who never liked MMOs came in and acted like the person on the left, and now a bunch of us who have loved XIV for years have seen it altered in a such a massive way that it no longer resembles the game we loved. Everything has been watered down and made simpler and less fun for the sake of people who never liked the genre that XIV was and was supposed to be. Just look at the relics as an example. Relics are a standard MMO grind, but now they're a braindead tome vendor because grinding is too hard/boring for people who don't like MMOs. Those people insisted that an MMO should abandon the genre it was supposed to be in because people who don't like MMOs want this game to be something it's not. Bozja and Eureka were designed for people who love MMOs, the Manderville relics were designed for people who hate MMOs. There's also far less content per patch because people who don't like MMOs only want to log in once every four months.

This definitely sounds like a case of trying to act as if you're speaking for a wider community, but you're really just speaking for yourself. For example, I'm part of the "veteran fanbase" that's been playing FF games since FF1 and this game in particular since 2015, and I'm personally very satisfied w/ how the game has evolved.

My take on what happened is simply that time has passed and the primary demographic for MMO's has changed. Back in the earlier expansions, or going back even further to things like FFXI or the early days of WoW, GW, etc., the primary demographic for MMO's was teenagers, college kids, and recent graduates with plenty of time on their hands. Now, those same people are still the primary MMO players, but as a demographic they're now primarily adults with families and full-time careers. Games need to adjust to that. Ultra-long grinds, complex rotations with button bloat requiring 3+ hotbars, etc., your typical MMO player today just doesn't have the time for that.

Remember Wildstar? After WoW first started improving QoL for people with limited time by introducing things like LFG, removing or altering the questlines with "Elites" that usually required groups to complete, etc., Wildstar promoted itself as the "old-school" game that was built around "dedicated" players and the old "higher" level of difficulty. What happened? Yeah, it ran for a few years and then shut down because the playerbase just isn't there. It sucks for the younger generation and adults who might still have that much time on their hands, but life has changed, and the genre has changed to go with it. FFXIV is still designed for people who "love" MMO's, but with acknowledgment of their real-life circumstances and what remains feasible versus not. It's rather presumptuous (and a bit sad) that commentary like yours basically tries to say "if you don't like exactly what I like, then you hate MMO's." No, they don't. They love MMO's, too.

[ReynTime]

South american servers would basically be a double of materia, empty worlds with barely anyone on them, no cross DC travel because of "limitations" too, it'd basically be a wasteland from day 1, so no, no point.

There are more latin american players in FFXIV than there are australian players across every relevant MMORPG.

[TheOperator3712]

There are more latin american players in FFXIV than there are australian players across every relevant MMORPG.

The amount of people isn't the issue. The issue is that a large portion of the target audience for those servers have already been playing the game for years on another region's data center and will have established roots already that make them unlikely to transfer to the new data center. ie, they already have a house on NA, why would they travel to materia/hypothetical LA DC and have to win another one?

[Renathras]

South american servers would basically be a double of materia, empty worlds with barely anyone on them, no cross DC travel because of "limitations" too, it'd basically be a wasteland from day 1, so no, no point.

That may not be true, actually. It could be, but not necessarily. The new US DC has the issue of DC travel existing, funneling everyone to Aether (and to a lesser extent, Primal) to do things. But a SA DC wouldn't have that, so people would be contained within that community. The population of SA+lower Central America is also larger than Auz/NZed. And if you couple that with a South/Central America themed expansion (and if they ever add Spanish translation or at least Spanish subtitles), it could be rather popular.

Not depicting other cultural influences: Racism, lack of diversity
Depicting other cultural influences: Racism, Colonization, cultural appropriation
Depicting other cultural influences correctly with the input and approval from the natives: Racism, commercialization of culture, and mild cultural appropriation due to SQE being Japanese Company.

It doesn't matter how they do it, if people want to get offended, they will find the way to get offended and deem the thing offensive.

This.

Some people want to be offended. They define themselves as defenders of the weak - saviors, if you will - and constantly look for things to be offended by. Worse even than their abject vile attitude and lack of sensitivity, compassion, or consideration for the Humans that they DON'T put in their category of "need protected", or their blatant hypocrisy for not raising similar concerns about peoples and cultures they've decided not to protect, is that they ensure they ALWAYS have something to complain and attack people from their pearl clutching high horse from by setting up no-win situations where, whether people depict or don't depict cultures, they use it as an excuse to attack them.

I swear, modern far left/social justice movement has become the 90s "Sunday morning Church woman" religion. It's full of pearly clutching, "tut tut"ers who constantly talk like they're better than everyone else while looking down their noses at people and kind of being jerks to everyone, all the while thumping their Bible at people. It's either a religion or a cult, I don't know which, but it's got all of the bad parts of religion and none of the good parts.

EDIT:

The amount of people isn't the issue. The issue is that a large portion of the target audience for those servers have already been playing the game for years on another region's data center and will have established roots already that make them unlikely to transfer to the new data center. ie, they already have a house on NA, why would they travel to materia/hypothetical LA DC and have to win another one?

Okay, you had me until house.

All the new DCs released have abundant housing. It's one of the few super positive things about them. You can go to the new NA or to the Aus DC and find housing. That's one of the few things you DON'T have to worry about, at least not at the start.

This definitely sounds like a case of trying to act as if you're speaking for a wider community, but you're really just speaking for yourself.
...
No, they don't. They love MMO's, too.

It's a common enough complaint I think that it's held by a decent amount of people, but not a strong majority or anything. I'm also a MMO vet, been playing since EQ1 in like 2001 or so, FFXIV since 2014. I'm kind of with you. I DO like having grindy stuff to do on the side (it's why I'm a huge fan of Eureka/Bozja) so I and others have that outlet when we want it. But I also think people saying people that don't want that all the time "hate" MMOs are just speaking out of their hineys.

I think the ideal is to mix both. Have Jobs like SMN and Jobs like BLM. They can, in fact, coexist. Have Eureka/Bozja but also have Eden Raids and Island Sanctuary. All of these things can exist at the same time in the same game space, and everyone wins.

But trying to gatekeep and say "If you don't like exactly what I do, you hate MMOs!" is just stupid. 100% agreed.

[ReynTime]

This definitely sounds like a case of trying to act as if you're speaking for a wider community, but you're really just speaking for yourself.

You need to print your character avatar with this sentence right underneath and stick it in your wall, because this applies to almost every post you make yourself.

[swiss_Momo]

Twitter, err I mean X, is down the hall to the left

[Windfire]

I'd like for people to stop telling me what I should and shouldn't be offended about, please and thanks - a native american =.=