Why is the FF14 Community So Adverse to Banter?

[JohnLakeside]

I've been playing a lot of Old School Runescape and recently tried Guild Wars 2 and there really is a night and day difference between those communities and FF14's. Within minutes of making my Ironman in OSRS and arriving in Lumbridge, I was already engaging in good-natured banter and trash talk with randos while chopping trees. Just walked up to them and said "sup noobs" or something along those lines and, BOOM, we were off to the races. Similar story with GW2. Just threw in a stereotypical bro-ish message in Map Chat in Queensdale and people were responding and it was fun and good vibes. Also, people actually respond out in the overworld in GW2. Not just when asking for help, but even just for starting a random conversation.

In comparison, I just got out of a duty in FF14 and said "sit lol" to someone who died and they started acting like I called them a slur. I truly do not understand what is going on in the FF14 community and why people can't just relax and learn to not take everything as a personal attack.

What's up with that??? Where are my fellow stereotypical bros at mang.

[Starien]

Here's an old man's perspective.

I have a limited amount of cares each day, and I choose to spend them on positive interactions. I'm swift to mute/block people who are constantly and aggressively fostering discord. Each person has that choice. Just as you choose to present yourself with a bit of irritant, those who are in your space may choose to not interact with you.

So choose wisely, collect data, and realize if you're receiving certain types of replies, the onus is on you to change your presentation, rather than to put reactions on the shoulders of some nebulous community of onlookers, which is comprised of all different types of people. What can you control in this scenario? Yourself.

Trash talk is just fine in smaller settings when you know each person and are on the same page. In groups of strangers, you never know what you'll get, so keep that in mind.

[JohnLakeside]

Here's an old man's perspective.

I have a limited amount of cares each day, and I choose to spend them on positive interactions. I'm swift to mute/block people who are constantly and aggressively fostering discord. Each person has that choice. Just as you choose to present yourself with a bit of irritant, those who are in your space may choose to not interact with you.

So choose wisely, collect data, and realize if you're receiving certain types of replies, the onus is on you to change your presentation, rather than to put reactions on the shoulders of some nebulous community of onlookers, which is comprised of all different types of people. What can you control in this scenario? Yourself.

Trash talk is just fine in smaller settings when you know each person and are on the same page. In groups of strangers, you never know what you'll get, so keep that in mind.

I don't disagree that people are free to mute/block whoever they want. That's their prerogative.

What I disagree with is the framing that a little bit of casual ribbing is somehow "constantly and aggressively fostering discord." That's exactly the cultural difference I'm talking about. In other MMORPG communities or even IRL, something as mild as "sit lol" is often read as obvious banter and either gets ignored or thrown back at you. In FF14, it seems much more likely to be interpreted as genuine hostility. And sure, I can change how I present myself to fit the norms of the community. But that doesn't mean I can't also look at those norms and say, "Man, this community is unusually sensitive to what any reasonable person would realize is some good ol' friendly trash talk."

You saying "people are individuals" is true, but like...okay? Communities still develop shared social expectations. If the same style of interaction gets smiles in most other communities and outrage in another, that's interesting data about the communities, not merely a personal failure to communicate. I also think something gets lost when the rule becomes "don't joke around with strangers until you've already established that they're okay with joking around." A lot of spontaneous good vibes start because somebody takes a small social risk and throws out some dumb banter.

Nobody has to like my sense of humor, obviously. I'm just saying I'd personally rather be in a community where the default response to "sit lol" is a fun-loving banterish response than one where people treat it like a serious interpersonal offense.

[Sunhwapark]

I blame the "Friendliest/Best Community" thing that the game was running with, I'm unsure if it's perceived that way these days though.
Like it was okay for a while and seemed legitimately true when I joined the game around late HW, but going into Shadowbringers and onwards it seems like the influx of players and eventual change to rules made a lot of people be forcefully sanitized in a manner so you can't say anything that isn't 100% positive affirmations since the community is trying to uphold that safe space vibe apparently while also dunking on people in extremely toxic ways in another sentence/post afterwards.

Though to be honest, I can't blame the majority of players for hardly speaking in general these days, it seems like people are foaming at the mouth to write a 50+ page exposé google doc on someone because they wrote "hiiii" instead of "hi" towards them in a random duty roulette.

[Valence]

Most content has either been macdonaldized enough that people just hop in queue, get a party, silently get in and out without any word. Perhaps a polite hello at best.
People doing things in the maps are usually either afk or watching youtube while completing tedious tasks that don't need any brainpower to accomplish.

However people like to banter a lot in places like field exploration areas or similar, I've found — even though the newest ones like OC and CE make you chain gameplay as fast as possible with as little downtime as possible, so obviously it seriously limits how much people can take the time to banter between two cosmic missions or crescent fates.
It can also be the case in netflix roulette as well. Or just in Limsa if you're after another kind of global chat I guess.

[Starien]

What I disagree with is the framing that a little bit of casual ribbing is somehow "constantly and aggressively fostering discord."

I briefly thought this was a case of mistaken identity, but no, you're the guy spamming shout chat at hunts who I blocked within about 15 seconds. My assessment stands.

[Len_]

XIV has the least funny group of people playing it i have ever encountered in my life. And you expect them to banter?

[JohnLakeside]

I briefly thought this was a case of mistaken identity, but no, you're the guy spamming shout chat at hunts who I blocked within about 15 seconds. My assessment stands.

Spamming Shout Chat??? Whaaaaat. Lol here we go with the false allegations. You disagree with something I say and thus throw around false allegations to discredit me. Classic FF14 community behavior. Perhaps you blocked me because I dared criticize ShB's zones in Shout Chat during those Hunts. In any case, I don't recognize your name, so maybe you're just making up that you've even encountered me before.

[Rurulao]

Mostly because confrontational language/behavior can be used as "evidence" to ban you
Example: I was in the Burn dungeon as a Whm and everything went smoothly until one wall to wall mob pull where tank pulled everything to the very wall, I placed my AoE bubble and tank was one step outside of Bubble and wasnt moving inside the bubble, so I decided to use Rescue just to be that one step inside of the bubble, but tank said that I could be reported for Spamming Rescue [btw i was using just once that time].
If for that they can nudge nudge threaten you with reporting, there is no wander the adversity of the banter ingame
.

[White_Devil]

Guaranteed nobody cares enough about the ShB zones enough to plug their ears and go LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU, they did it because you were being annoying like you're known to do
Interesting enough you leave out a lot of convenient details, what duty even was this? More importantly you make it sound like you went out of your way to find them and message them just to bm
And you wonder why people are adverse to banter as you put it? Please change and grow as a person, this isn't Dark Souls.