Here we go again

[JudgeRAW]

This only works when there's other people who are willing to tolerate you failing repeatedly, and such people are unsurprisingly rare in Final Fantasy 14 given the attitudes that prevail here, on social media, and in-game towards anyone who dies on "sooo easy" content, to say nothing of the hair-trigger accusations and worse that happens in the PF scene even during progs.

Hell, we had people player-killing others in Forked Tower with tank-busters because how dare they use the same entry method they did that Square-Enix themselves implemented. And sure enough Square-Enix buckled and made the entry process easier for premades and hardcore players, while randoms and casuals were told they were literally not worth Yoshi-P's time or money to cater to.

The idea this game has a "welcoming and friendly" community is a myth, especially when it comes towards causal players, and even the game its self became openly hostile towards their presence with Dawntrail. There's no getting up and dusting yourself off to try again when the "favored" part of the playerbase and the developers collectively work together to grind the face of low-skill players into the dirt for over a year, and wouldn't you know it, a lot of those players have been quitting in droves from being "filtered as intended".

I've been playing the game for seven years and can count the number of such experiences I've had on one hand, and it takes nothing to just mute and report those players if you run into them. In my first run we wiped to boss one and I was the only one who died several times to boss two. No one complained, they rezzed me we beat the boss and we kept going. Its not a big deal and you all act like its the end of the world.

[JudgeRAW]

Hi there. Been playing since ARR. What i can say is that personal experience is very subjective. The 'it doesn't happen much to me so it must not exist' doesn't always even out. I would need multiple hands to count out the times someone yelled at me in chat for messing up mechanics on normal content on day one. Though I will admit this game doesn't have nearly as negative of a player feedback loop as playing WOW, it can still get degrading. I will say in game comments have gone down a lot more as they crack down on that with reports. But that feeling of knowing you are the sole reason a wipe has to keep happening is just never a good one.

Eventually yes people can get through it. But the amount of times you might need to step away to take a break or just not feel the energy to bother for that day is a lot. A lot of this content is about repeating the fights for loot and tomes. So its just not a one time carry. And if one just feels the energy is too low too often...well they leave.

As for open hostility, we literally had several expansions of people being beyond upset if healers are not using damage AOE on dungeon pulls or tanks making bigger pulls and everyone demanding each side conform to one another. Regardless of what is right or wrong, the player base does feel hostile now more than ever. Just they say it out of game. I expect this on much harder content, but not everything. (And before any comment is made. I'm a big pull and healers do damage in dungeon sort of player. I'm just bringing up the point where people do get hostile if you don't.)

--edit--
I should also add that yes my personal experience with the game is also subjective. There are some people that have had a perfect in game experience with the community and the game. I'm more trying to say that it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Just like me having a worse time with people doesn't mean others haven't had better luck than me. Just that if the bad and good didn't exist, we wouldn't have people talking about them both.

Frankly, some of this is just an issue of people not wanting to be told they're doing something "wrong" or that there isn't an optimal way to do things. Healers not doing AOEs in dungeons is something that someone could point out and be like "hey you know you could be doing your AOE to be more helpful." Same for tanks not pulling double mob stacks. This is the meta for the game at level 100, thats just the way it is. Thats the way people expect others to play because thats how MOST people do it. If you don't want to do it that way its up to you to say something. FF14 is still an MMO and on some level that still requires some form of communication, no one knows if you don't say anything.

[yams88]

Frankly, some of this is just an issue of people not wanting to be told they're doing something "wrong" or that there isn't an optimal way to do things. Healers not doing AOEs in dungeons is something that someone could point out and be like "hey you know you could be doing your AOE to be more helpful." Same for tanks not pulling double mob stacks. This is the meta for the game at level 100, thats just the way it is. Thats the way people expect others to play because thats how MOST people do it. If you don't want to do it that way its up to you to say something. FF14 is still an MMO and on some level that still requires some form of communication, no one knows if you don't say anything.

Ah shoot. Quick note that I did delete my post but that is before I saw you respond. So please know it was not in response to what you posted. I just kinda realized that maybe spending energy telling others what I feel is probably doing more damage than good, and I wanted to refrain from causing any further strife. Just asking myself what I hope to accomplish with any of this and feeling as though I was hypocritical for even posting to begin with.

But to answer, yes it can be a real downer to know you have been playing wrong the whole time. At least in a 4 person group that is easier to talk about compared to other content. And sadly the game doesn't really come with many options to learn on your own time instead of someone else's. So its a matter of getting that group that will communicate that well so it can be learned.

[Aidorouge]

I've been playing the game for seven years and can count the number of such experiences I've had on one hand, and it takes nothing to just mute and report those players if you run into them. In my first run we wiped to boss one and I was the only one who died several times to boss two. No one complained, they rezzed me we beat the boss and we kept going. Its not a big deal and you all act like its the end of the world.

You're lucky then, because I've been playing for almost three years and yet I've rarely encountered anyone that tolerated my failing of mechanics and dying too much, where it finally hit a critical level when I tried to do Ivalice and the nightmare than turned into over the course of almost a dozen attempts because I would keep getting kicked here or there, including during cutscenes.

But then Stormblood in general was a skill-check I barely got through, which is why I'm still staring at the quests to go find the twins in Shadowbringers months later because I honestly don't think I'll be able to beat it, much less reach or complete anything in Dawntrail.

[SamuraiMiqo]

You're lucky then, because I've been playing for almost three years and yet I've rarely encountered anyone that tolerated my failing of mechanics and dying too much, where it finally hit a critical level when I tried to do Ivalice and the nightmare than turned into over the course of almost a dozen attempts because I would keep getting kicked here or there, including during cutscenes.

But then Stormblood in general was a skill-check I barely got through, which is why I'm still staring at the quests to go find the twins in Shadowbringers months later because I honestly don't think I'll be able to beat it, much less reach or complete anything in Dawntrail.

Would you like help getting through Shadowbringers? If so let me know and we can work on that storyline.

[TaleraRistain]

Would you like help getting through Shadowbringers? If so let me know and we can work on that storyline.

Same. If your server is accurate, you're on NA. I would be happy to pop over to Dynamis from Aether assuming it's not at a time I'm already promised to something else. It's awful that you're getting kicked. There's really no reason. People are new all the time and it's up to us veterans to help them get through things as much as we can. Let me know if you'd like to meet up in game sometime. This is my character. We can friend each other and maybe find some like-minded others. There are some jerks in this game but there really are lots of friendly and helpful people, too.

I have not read the last 20 or so pages of this thread but I did see some good suggestions toward the overall concern. Letting Duty Support rez our characters is a good suggestion. That means that the player could continue on if they weren't quite understanding something. I would hope that would be an option on Duty Support because I personally run DS first on dps and I like dying if I don't get it. It assures me I get the mechanic. But options are good and there should be one to help those who need it. Likewise applying the Echo. This could be another toggle so we could customize our Duty Support experience some. Looking at it from a software developer point of view, depending on how they apply things like the Echo to existing content, this might be a more feasible route than having to take resources to design different difficulty levels. And it does go along with the idea that they have proposed with Quantum of customizing our difficulty level more.