Why Are the FFXIV Forums So Bad?

[Orinori]

These forums are infested with trolls that use various sock puppet accounts and post multiple bait threads every single day. Occasionally they get suspended or banned, but they invariably come back with another not-so-subtle forum alt and start all over again.

To the unfamiliar, it may appear like some of them are posting legitimate conversation topics and getting undue hostility out of nowhere. But often, it's because they are a known troll who doesn't mean anything they say and are just trying to stir up drama. Typically, if you see someone who only joined the forums in the last month and they keep making new threads constantly, they are a bad actor. Another big red flag is if you look up their character on the Lodestone site and see that they have paid to boost all their crafters and maybe one battle job to max level, despite not even playing the game. One such example even admitted they don't play, they made a whole topic just to say so.



Really? My experience here has been pretty much the polar opposite. These forums are basically the Hate Olympics to see who can screech the most about how terrible FFXIV is. Every day, it's people saying the game is dead, Yoshi-P owes us an apology, the devs are lazy and incompetent and don't care about the game anymore, everyone has quit FFXIV for <insert new game just released>, FFXIV hasn't been any good since Heavensward, etc. Now, there are of course legitimate criticisms and complaints to be made about the game, but the way people go about it here can be really irritating and tiresome.

It comes in waves. They'll latch onto a topic like "The FFXIV community is so toxic" and then create new threads about it for days on end. It was their personal mission to make sure everybody knew how sick and evil FFXIV players are. And if anyone gets the least bit snarky back, they're just like "See!? Did you see that everybody!? Way to prove my point!! #GCBTW."

Recently we had a run where somebody would post literally every video they could find of streamers listing off all the problems with FFXIV. Nothing wrong with wanting to talk about it per se, but that's just it, they didn't even have anything to say. They just wanted to post something negative, and leave. Sometimes there was more than one thread about the same video.

Oh.. o.o thats definitely not what I've picked up but I've only been on the forums a few months now, so maybe I'm just seeing a small slice

[Sebazy]

Just curious, in-game its pretty pleasant, most people are reasonable and easy to talk to

That's because in game you can quite literally cop a ban for cut and pasting NPC dialogue if someone reports you over it.

I still laugh to this day at an old friend eating a temp ban in a dungeon for politely asking to be kicked as he had a raid starting shortly that he didn't anticipate and got reported for it. Doubly ironic as that was probably one of the few times he was actually ever polite =(

Here on the boards, the stakes aren't as high (Can confirm, you don't lose your character in game if you take a ban here), the rules and lines are much more clearly defined and overall the moderation would appear to be much laxer with things seemingly taking a sizeable mass report to get acted on perhaps the Mods here are kind of inconsistent in how they tackle posts that go past what's acceptable.

[NekoMataMata]

I'm really not baiting, though in hindsight I didn't mean to have the rude vibe the OP had, I was more or less in a joking manner trying to explain the demeanor and how ridiculous it is given the assumed average age of forum users.

I was actually genuinely curious why the forums just seem like an entirely different atmosphere and why this exact thing you're demonstrating here happens. There has been a ton of super interesting and helpful answers, basically summing up to lack of moderation and anonymity combined with a lack of punishment being tied to SE account.

It's genuinely hard to tell if this is real.

If you're a different person then you have my apologies. The forums has a ton of alt accounts posting attempts to bait the forums, and honestly, we don't know how many bad actors there are either.

It's at the point where I can't even tell if you're real, because the main culprit who has a small army of alts has made high effort "new person posts" that we believed to be genuine, only for the forum account to start necroing their threads a few months later.

[Orinori]

It's genuinely hard to tell if this is real.

If you're a different person then you have my apologies. The forums has a ton of alt accounts posting attempts to bait the forums, and honestly, we don't know how many bad actors there are either.

It's at the point where I can't even tell if you're real, because the main culprit who has a small army of alts has made high effort "new person posts" that we believed to be genuine, only for the forum account to start necroing their threads a few months later.

Thats pretty intense, no I'm no alt, I play very regularly this is my main. Although it does spread some light on all the alt comments lol I was very confused, and if thats going on I could understand everyone being on guard
You can feel free to check my mediocre logs kekw

[Theodric]

That's because in game you can quite literally cop a ban for cut and pasting NPC dialogue if someone reports you over it.

I still laugh to this day at an old friend eating a temp ban in a dungeon for politely asking to be kicked as he had a raid starting shortly that he didn't anticipate and got reported for it. Doubly ironic as that was probably one of the few times he was actually ever polite =(

Here on the boards, the stakes aren't as high (Can confirm, you don't lose your character in game if you take a ban here), the rules and lines are much more clearly defined and overall the moderation would appear to be much laxer with things seemingly taking a sizeable mass report to get acted on perhaps the Mods here are kind of inconsistent in how they tackle posts that go past what's acceptable.

Unfortunately the terms of service is all too easily weaponised. Which in turn either causes people to get banned for stuff that could very easily be overlooked by any reasonable individual or they end up having to maintain a completely different style of speech to how they normally operate.

I know there's a lot of people who just don't bother socialising in this game because of it - which is a shame, since MMO's are meant to be social experiences at their core.

[EZGIL]

[Jeeqbit]

It's genuinely hard to tell if this is real.

If you're a different person then you have my apologies. The forums has a ton of alt accounts posting attempts to bait the forums, and honestly, we don't know how many bad actors there are either.

It's at the point where I can't even tell if you're real, because the main culprit who has a small army of alts has made high effort "new person posts" that we believed to be genuine, only for the forum account to start necroing their threads a few months later.

I know it looks suspicious given the language and tone of the OP, but the join date isn't this year and other details look normal and not like an alt.

[ChrysOCE]

Sorry, but what a ridiculously phrased and loaded question. Why take this seriously at all, when they finish off with: So what made you all this way? Was it years of neglect and moderation from Square-Enix? Lack of healthy social lives? Mental illness? I'm curious

[Renalt]

Weirdly enough...the forums is why I have paid a sub for so long this last year. I find most of you to be good people and that's why I stuck around. However even I know it's weird to pay a sub to access just the forums so I've canceled my sub and it'll expire in a couple months.

[Orinori]

Sorry, but what a ridiculously phrased and loaded question. Why take this seriously at all, when they finish off with: So what made you all this way? Was it years of neglect and moderation from Square-Enix? Lack of healthy social lives? Mental illness? I'm curious

I'm not understand totally your question? What do you mean by loaded