Why is the FF14 Community So Adverse to Banter?

[Aidorouge]

Yeah, I remember there was some time where you could use those festive items so people would pop open the champagne bottle over a corpse in Frontlines, I think it's disabled now though. People still do the /sweep and other nonsense emotes though despite the fact that we instantly revive upon dying nowadays, I cringe a bit when I happen to see when someone on the team doing that to someone else.

I don't really mind it when it happens to a player who was literally asking for it by chasing one dude across the map only to end up swarmed by the rest of the enemy team at spawn. I can't count the number of arrogant melee (usually a NIN or MNK) who end up in the dust pan, lol.

Then again, there was also a time when I thought it was dumb that we didn't have chat in Crystalline Conflict ...but now I yearn for the day when its disabled in Rival Wings and Frontlines because most of the time its just people shouting over and countermanding each other. Might as well make the usual "pings" into chat commands like CC and call it a day.

[jomas_45]

Another reason people may not talk in chat is because they're on controller. I only really get to chat during downtime.

Plus I didn't play games for ages because of bro culture, so it's nice to see a game that doesn't do that.

[Carighan]

What was so bad about it?

It's far quicker to list what wasn't bad about it, which is:

[VeyaAkemi]

Oh and I hate discord and much prefer chatting in game or on something like vent, cannot wait for discord and all the nonsense that comes with it to be a thing of the past.

Gonna be real, I don't think Discord will ever be a thing of the past, or rather, Discord itself might be eventually, but it will just be replaced by a program with similarly functionality, just like Discord replaced programs with similar functionality before itself, it becoming more ubiquitous is just a matter of the program itself becoming more practical and being mass adopted as a result of that practicality.

[MsMisato]

What was so bad about it? Maybe some people said bad words or whatever, but is it really the best decision to disable chat for all people just because of a few bad apples? Once again, if someone is saying something you don't like, then you have the option to INSTANTLY solve your problem by muting them. Just seems a bit overboard to restrict chat for all people, even for those who want to engage in reasonable, friendly competitive banter.

it can be. PVP especially in CC is heated. When it come to CC PvP even causal CC PvP people will be sweaty. In CC even with the pre made text messages the game has, people found ways to be abuse even that.

Frontlines is just as bad even though its alliance side. Even down to emoting can be frowned upon and land you a visit mordian gaol cant even RP an ascian during FL lol. But its easier to report people being like really sweaty in the chat. However, on the flipside, alot of players don't think they need to help or contribute but can be reported just easily in that mode because you are affecting the result of team play.

[MediArgentum]

I don't need to banter with a random pud on the internet. Anyone who needs to go out of their way to try and "banter' with randos are often people you don't want to talk to in the first place.

This is the exact language and attitude I was talking about demeaning people. There are tons of people who enjoy light-hearted back-and-forth with people they meet in a game.
Of course there's levels of banter.
Of course you'd crank it up for friends but not so much for randos.
It's still in the same realm. It's still a way of connecting people, and that connection is the heart and soul of MMOs. It's fine if it's not your way of connecting with others, you are very welcomed to play the game in your ways, but don't grandstand as if you were a better person than them because you don't like their way of having harmless fun.

[Pixieh]

I love this game but I am so tired of the toxic positivity here. It's reached a point where you can hardly say anything without getting accused of something or another.

It's happened so many times that I was trying to teach a sprout in a group how to do a mechanic while someone went off on me for being rude somehow. The sprouts always thanked me and had no idea why that random person went off.

[Carighan]

Gonna be real, I don't think Discord will ever be a thing of the past, or rather, Discord itself might be eventually, but it will just be replaced by a program with similarly functionality, just like Discord replaced programs with similar functionality before itself, it becoming more ubiquitous is just a matter of the program itself becoming more practical and being mass adopted as a result of that practicality.

It's also important to keep in mind that the proliferation of "chat tools" (in general, even though as of right now Discord is of course by far the dominant one in gaming space) inherently reduces the amount of chat and banter in MMORPGs.

Back in the EverQuest days, in a lot of ways, EQ1 was a very, very elaborate minigame we all played together while socializing. But we needed EverQuest to socialize in the first place, IRC chatrooms existed but weren't the same form of getting to know strangers. It was our chatroom, and we happily engaged with it, that we all played together gave us a shared motivation but it wasn't the main one. This is also why older MMOs got away with being so tedious and requiring so much time and organization and communication, because we wanted to organize and communicate anyways.

Nowadays a combination of readily available chat tools, everyone being online 24/7 anyways and the sheer amount of players results in a lack of a need for this. Everyone can already talk to whoever they'd desire to, and can easily find new people to talk to if desired, too. The need for an MMORPG as a socialization tool is just no longer a thing.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

While I have my fair share of criticism with the game's social aspect, this is almost definitely not one of them. The game may be leaning a bit too much towards being restrictive while also not having enough GMs to moderate in real time (I think the latter is really important). However at the same time I'm also never a fan of those 'stereotypical bro'-spaces that OP describes. More often than not, it's used freely to cudgel their way to be rude, callous, and/or inconsiderate without being held accountability. Besides, these 'bro spaces' is already almost everywhere in the internet. What's the problem having just FFXIV not being your typical bro space?

As for the actual comments... I don't find them funny. It operates under the assumption that the other stranger being your 'typical bro' when you could be possibly talking to 'non-bro'. It's cheap at best, and rude at its worst. I would just simply shrug off or ignore the comment.

[JohnLakeside]

While I have my fair share of criticism with the game's social aspect, this is almost definitely not one of them. The game may be leaning a bit too much towards being restrictive while also not having enough GMs to moderate in real time (I think the latter is really important). However at the same time I'm also never a fan of those 'stereotypical bro'-spaces that OP describes. More often than not, it's used freely to cudgel their way to be rude, callous, and/or inconsiderate without being held accountability. Besides, these 'bro spaces' is already almost everywhere in the internet. What's the problem having just FFXIV not being your typical bro space?

As for the actual comments... I don't find them funny. It operates under the assumption that the other stranger being your 'typical bro' when you could be possibly talking to 'non-bro'. It's cheap at best, and rude at its worst. I would just simply shrug off or ignore the comment.

Idk, I've encountered way more rude and unpleasant people in FF14 than Old School Runescape. I'm a POC and yes OSRS probably does have more overtly bigoted people in chat, but thats usually shut down quick and ignored.

I'll give an example of the specific type of rudeness that I see quite often in FF14.

I was doing FATEs in the DT zones a few days ago and I stumbled upon another RDM doing the same FATE. I said, "Change classes lil bro. There can only be one RDM in this town." Harmless imo. The person responded "Kindly f*** off. I'm not interested." I'm not offended by them not wanting to talk or vibe, but it is concerning that that sort of reaction is not uncommon. Idk if they were a girl who thought I was flirting or what, but like...I can't recall ever getting that sort of reaction in OSRS. And if she did think I was flirting, then that points to another problem in the community. That is, the e-dating culture. And it is definitely NOT the bro-ish players doing the e-dating lol. We're just out here for poops and giggles and vibemaxxing. I just think FF14's social climate is terrible for the health of the game. FF14 does have a bad reputation due to its community and I genuinely feel like that is a hindrance to potential players joining. Whenever I'm at Gemstone Crab in OSRS, I try to get people to try FF14 and I often get people saying they think FF14 is a game for softies and no-fun havers. That is our actual reputation.