Quote Originally Posted by Kazuke_Miso View Post
The DDR raid design is honestly also just bad for actually playing together frankly. By Endwalker, I felt that raiding is just waiting for the slowest player to pick up the mechanic. It really breeds a toxic mindset because the game punishes you for other players' mistakes. In HW and SB I remember raiding feeling like trying to contribute to coordinate and play as a team. There's a lot more "wholesome" team gameplay with all the synergistic actions that jobs had. It felt like coming together to defeat a boss by helping each other. Body checks have honestly ruined raiding for me.
Tbth, I can't move past my thought that the lack of toxicity in your earlier experiences was more due to the people around you than the difference of mechanics back then vs now. From my experience with other games and genres, ANYTHING that's functionally related to the concept of "team play" will breed toxicity. Now it's someone floor tanking and dragging down the party's damage dealing, back then it'd be someone un-optimally performing their rotations or using their buffs wrong and dragging down the party's damage dealing. Just more of the same, rudeness or cruelty come naturally.

Ofc, I don't mean to invalidate your experiences. Just making conversation. I wasn't playing FF14 in those times. This is more a personal thing that I can't parse your experience due to how I normally see people act.