Quote Originally Posted by HighlanderClone View Post
Here's the thing about people who say only the official forums are critical: they want to gaslight you into believing you are in an echo chamber. When really if you go on all kinds of different discussion hubs like I do you can clearly tell that it's a lie. The reception to this expansion is at best mixed right now. Once Metacritic goes live we'll see even more criticism.
This is a perfect distillation of why, this has been such a frustrating experience for me.

I haven't even really gotten started on yhe story yet.
I haven't said anything about the expansion being good or bad, or about the validity of the ctitism.

I made comments about a couple people's obvious, seething hatred of a fictional cat, and their utter contempt for people who disagree with them.

Then I get told I'm delusional because someone else brought up expac heat, and I thought it was mostly forum drama (specifically the seething hatred of a fictional cat) and cited another thing that the forum is taking more seriously than the general ff14 playing public does at large, because "lots of people don't like the story and find healer boring to play" despite the fact that I never defended either thing.

Then you come along and talk about gaslighting. And nearly every single person in this thread, has consistently put words in my mouth or build a broader straw man about what I said.

It's fucking *weird* and a real distillation about everything I've been saying.

This will be the last post I make on this thread. I feel like I pushed this more off topic than I intended and honestly, I'm not adding to the conversation anymore. But I have frequented many forums about games, and none have done this, exactly.

It's less about the validity of any paticular opinion, just how wildly defensive the regulars seem to get.