How did the community become this toxic?

[Autumnfire]

Firstly, NPR has been doing a lot of coverage on "cyber bullying" across the board. A lot of it is chalked up to anonymity and lack of accountability.

That aside, I think another part of it is that the game is still fairly new. Regardless of how far anyone has progressed, the length of time we have all been in this together is still relatively short.

But, I am noticing that at least on my server, people are really starting to get to know each other. Even if you aren't in the same FC or LS's, we're just getting familiar with each other and interacting more, and its nice. Its really starting to feel more like a community.

As for the occasional bad egg: Blacklist if you can. Report if needed. But just complaining about it isn't going to induce any change.

[Kiayin]

You mean the expansion that's basically "lol we can't think of interesting new characters and don't want to take the time to conceive and develop a meaningful cast of heroes, so here go back in time to an alternate past and rub elbows with the heroes of old in what should cause several temporal paradoxes but whatever lorelol"? That's like standing in line to get your intelligence insulted. >.>;
This.

Well not everyone sees it that way. I love stories where there's time travel involved and you get to see an area and people that you wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise. It can be done well.

OP: I want to share an experience I've had this past week. I was stuck on my 10 years old laptop, which means I couldn't play FFXIV or any of the bigger mmorpg titles. So I decided to give a browser indie game I'd heard about a try - and I was amazed. The community was extremely small - but everyone who played was genuinely interested in the game and was having fun. People were helpful, they chatted and did things together - they joked about the things they didn't like and even managed to turn them fun. I felt like I had just travelled back in time to 2004.
You are free to draw your conclusions - here's a bunch of my considerations [Wall of text incoming. Excuse my english.]

A mmorpg -especially a theme park- will always, sooner or later, grow stale - since its content is finite and developing new content takes more time than consuming it. What used to make the difference every time you logged in was the people who played with you and the content you created together. Still, being able to solo is a great thing - since even the most social of players would want some alone time every now and then. Social interaction doesn't have to be a must 100% of the time nor revolve exclusively around combat.

One of the problems is that way too many people were led to believe that you can play a mmorpg like a singular player game nowadays -just with other players around. These players think that it will constantly be updated with official content to keep up with them. Their expectations are unreal and the gamers who do not understand this are never going to be happy with the genre. Once they exhaust a game's current content and the novelty wears off, there is nothing more for them to do. Whilst this is not as apparent in sandboxes - the problem is glaring when you switch to a theme park model.

Self-centeredness has also reached a new high - and just an example - it has become common to see players ask for a game designer or artist etc to be fired because they didn't like the design of a new set. Anonymity not only means people go unpunished - it leads to disconnection, to the point that unconsciously we stop treating other players and game developers as people sometimes. So never mind taking into consideration that there are people with different tastes playing this game with you.

Mmorpg's are a very slow evolving market - it takes years to develop a quality one. With such big investments, companies do not want to take too many risks. Gamers are unforgiving and the competition is fierce. Time has become a commodity - and the player base is getting older, busier and more demanding.

People want games to value their time more -which is great - but somehow, the situation has escalated. We have gone from getting rid of artificial, mindless time-sinks to getting rid of the entire world - turning mmorpg's into hub games. It is good and well for there to be a few of those games around - as there's obviously a market for them - but why push every game to be like that? A mmorpg doesn't need to be WoW to be successful. As long as it's mindful of whom their target player base is - a niche game can do perfectly well. It will turn off some players, sure - but its very distinct style will also draw in unexpected people who are curious and can't find that experience anywhere else. See EVE - a solid *10 years old* game with a solid identity - with a steady, even increasing player base. See FFXI, albeit now in decline.

This turn of events has made players sour. There are people who are genuinely unhappy about the direction that the genre has taken - the streamlining, the lack of originality - and want it to go back to its roots. The original mmorpg players have been given the shaft in favour of a bigger market. Their concerns are legitimate - I feel - but some people are simply unable to help themselves it seems, and feel the need to vent their frustration everywhere in a very unseemly manner.

I've heard so many players claim that they want to "get things done". I find this mentality is very puzzling - as most of them sound extremely unhappy. The objective of playing a game is having fun. If you're enjoying yourself, whether you're being efficient or casual about it - it is time well-spent. If you're not having fun, it is time you're wasting. If you choose to keep playing a game you do not enjoy - the only one to blame is you and venting your anger on the community or the developers is not going to make things better. If you do not like the very core of a game - that game is probably not targeting you as their customer- but people do not seem to realize that or want to accept it even when they do.

[Tupsi]

This is the playerbase Yoshi wanted to target for ARR - Even in 1.0 it wasn't this bad, except for people targeting those who said anything slightly negative about it (that ended up being right about ARR being pretty "standard"..or streamlined as people want to call it.)

When you have a game with this design and focus, it's pretty easy for your community to become toxic these days because it's an age of games like DOTA/League of Legends, WoW and tons and tons of failed MMORPGs making people more inclined to not be "serious" about their gameplay and act like it's any other online game where people don't matter, thus the excessive rudeness.

[Hyrist]

I love how we people will take any and all excuse to blame every excuse but themselves.

The game design is a result of common tropes and popular demand and evidence by game sales.


The community CONDUCT is a result of an individual's impatience, online interaction and anonymity. It is encouraged by the accessibility of the game, yes, but in no way is the mechanics of the game responsible for poor human conduct. That blame lies solely with us humans.

And it's not as if developers have been unaware. They've been continually giving us tools in order to deal with the matter, such as the Vote-kick feature, and Party Finder. They are making a concentrated effort to meet us part way so that we can community build while the game still becomes accessible to a wide berth of player styles.

What we should be doing, instead of pointing fingers at SE going "You're to blame for them , make them behave!" Is to turn around and take a look at ourselves and see what we've done to adapt to the mechanics as people and learn how we can better community build inside the structures we do have.

That actually takes an effort to reach across Duty Finder and Free Company lines to start to get to know people outside your sphere of friends. Discuss issues logically, and attempt to resolve conflicts amicably.

Is the community toxic? The forum community often seems to be. The people I play with in game, both within the duty finder and without, are more often than not pleasant. I've had very few bad encounters in DF by making a concentrated effort to be positive.

[Duelle]

This turn of events has made players sour. There are people who are genuinely unhappy about the direction that the genre has taken - the streamlining, the lack of originality - and want it to go back to its roots. The original mmorpg players have been given the shaft in favour of a bigger market.

Genres move forward as time progresses. That'd be like old RPG fans complaining that open world RPGs like Skyrim and action RPGs like Secret of Mana should not exist and that everything should be turn-based combat.

Or if fighting game fans complained about games like Guilty Gear, Blaz Blue or the newer versions of Soul Calibur and Tekken and instead want everything to be like it was in King of Fighters '97 or Street Fighter II. It'd make no sense and give way to stagnant mentalities, and MMORPGs are no exception to this.

Well not everyone sees it that way. I love stories where there's time travel involved and you get to see an area and people that you wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise. It can be done well.

If you've looked at how WoW's lore turned, they've made feeble attempts to create new characters, and when they do they heavily mess up development in some way or do something stupid like cling to the old guard and sacrifice said new characters (building up Liam Graymane only to kill him off at the end of the Worgen starting area comes to mind). The fact they chose to go back to the Horde's glory days pre first war is a blatant admission that they can't come up with anything actually new (not counting whatever conspiracy theories remain on Horde favoritism). Garrosh was the biggest waste of character development I've ever seen, and don't even get me started on the garbage that they called the Fall of Theramore.

I wasn't kidding when I said the turns in WoW's lore played a huge role in the cancellation of my account. >.>

When you have a game with this design and focus, it's pretty easy for your community to become toxic these days because it's an age of games like DOTA/League of Legends, WoW and tons and tons of failed MMORPGs making people more inclined to not be "serious" about their gameplay and act like it's any other online game where people don't matter, thus the excessive rudeness.

One has nothing to do with the other. Even rose-goggle recipient games like FFXI has more than its fair share of assholes. And I say that as someone who was called names for not leveling Ninja for utsusemi, nevermind the crap thrown my way over the years for being a melee Red Mage proponent. People will be assholes, regardless of the design philosophy of the developers.

[Lyrinn]

I personally haven't seen anything that would give me reason to call the community toxic. Sure, there are pockets of bad attitudes and toxic behaviour, but most people I've met have been friendly - or at least neutral.

[Tupsi]

Genres move forward as time progresses.

Genres move forward no one denies that - MMORGs though? They tend to regress to what works. 1.0 was ambitious and 1.23 was pretty amazing it just needed ironing out, but what does he do? Pretty much toss out anything XIV had going for it simply to stick to the 'standard'. Genres can't move forward if developers want to keep doing the same thing. As much as the XIV community hates to admit this, XIV should have been the XI of this era - XI was built around EQ yet it took its own direction with it and did things MMOs still have yet to do properly - XIV/ARR should have been that, that would be moving forward.

Look at the itemization of this game, XIV 1.2x mimicked FFXI and some other MMOs where items had value, but now, ARR mimics MMOs where items have zero value to it, I mean, I understand gear has 'set slots" in terms of programming, but some MMOs with Gear just..makes you want it. Nothing in ARR makes you "want" it because it'll just be replaced in the next update or right after you finish a quest.

That'd be like old RPG fans complaining that open world RPGs like Skyrim and action RPGs like Secret of Mana should not exist and that everything should be turn-based combat.

Not the same at all - For one thing unmodded Skyrim is pretty bad, but that's another story, another thing, Seiken Densetsu games didn't regress when they tried something new, they took what already existed and did something different. They didn't throw out what made previous Square RPGs good, they retained it and built a new battle system and progression. Some liked it some hated, but compare 1.23 to ARR - They could have kept 1.23 and fixed the issues and then build up from there, instead we get a game on an engine that somehow managed to get more clipping than a 2000 developed PS2 MMORPG.

Or if fighting game fans complained about games like Guilty Gear, Blaz Blue or the newer versions of Soul Calibur and Tekken and instead want everything to be like it was in King of Fighters '97 or Street Fighter II.

Also not the same, especially considering most people actually like and still loved the older styled fighting games (ignoring the obvious fact that Street Fighter II's system was a happy accident) because newer fighting games are just...really nothing new and trying too hard to go back how they used to be. There's nothing wrong with newer fighting games, but let's be honest...when you say: "Marvel vs Capcom", which ones would people say they truly enjoyed even when Nostalgia isn't a part of it?

Speaking of Stagnation, ever notice how almost every new MMORPG whether it's mass produced Korean or Chinese MMORPGs or "brand new innnovative!" MMOs they tend to all flow the same and basically be the same game no matter what? MMO genre stagnated because if developers try to move forward, people will despise it because "It's not WoW" or 'why can't I talk to NPCs and auto level by not going into the overworld?' "where's my endless dungeon grinds and main story content you only do once but never again?"

Pretty much every genre, RPGs included, are moving forward but in order to make money these days, MMORPGs can't move forward because the generation of gamers they target aren't open to 'change' or it would be seen as a failure. This is why FFXIV had so much potential if it was properly developed from the get go. Whether you love or hate ARR, no one can really deny it's nothing..special even with the Final Fantasy name attached, as it's been said before - it's pretty much like taking any other MMO and putting a FF mod into it...hell you'd get the same experience making a FF mod for Skyrim.

[Dyvid]

I love how we people will take any and all excuse to blame every excuse but themselves.

The game design is a result of common tropes and popular demand and evidence by game sales.


The community CONDUCT is a result of an individual's impatience, online interaction and anonymity. It is encouraged by the accessibility of the game, yes, but in no way is the mechanics of the game responsible for poor human conduct. That blame lies solely with us humans.

And it's not as if developers have been unaware. They've been continually giving us tools in order to deal with the matter, such as the Vote-kick feature, and Party Finder. They are making a concentrated effort to meet us part way so that we can community build while the game still becomes accessible to a wide berth of player styles.

What we should be doing, instead of pointing fingers at SE going "You're to blame for them , make them behave!" Is to turn around and take a look at ourselves and see what we've done to adapt to the mechanics as people and learn how we can better community build inside the structures we do have.

That actually takes an effort to reach across Duty Finder and Free Company lines to start to get to know people outside your sphere of friends. Discuss issues logically, and attempt to resolve conflicts amicably.

Is the community toxic? The forum community often seems to be. The people I play with in game, both within the duty finder and without, are more often than not pleasant. I've had very few bad encounters in DF by making a concentrated effort to be positive.

This is the best post I've read. Well said.

[cainejw]

I remember when the game first launched and I started playing, almost everybody was helpful and it was a lot of fun to group up and do random stuff. So what happened?

Seriously, what happened?

I honestly believe that Titan HM happened. As soon as everyone hits that point, you have to start becoming exclusionary. The game stops being about the storyline and the push to rock as a team and starts becoming about me, me, me. Your plumes hit me. You're bad. I'm good.

Then you got Twintania which, frankly, is filled with mechanics where your teammates are hazards. They're something to watch out for. Instead of embracing our fellow players and working together, it became about what I did or didn't do.

In terms of the market, housing happened. Yoshi really screwed the pooch on that one. He gave a lackluster system in housing, hyped it up as the newest point of content and enjoyability, made it the centerpiece of 2.1, and then put it behind a massive gil wall. Since everyone wants housing by Yoshi's hyping, everyone's hoarding money as much as possible. However, crafters are still producing more and more goods with fewer and fewer selling. The market is becoming oversaturated with little demand and infinite supply.

Frankly put, Yoshi-P has designed a game that, 1-49, encouraged teams, fun, and exploration. At 50, it switched on a dime to being about individuals, grinding, and repetition. Players are responding to that by having fun 1-49 and then hitting 50 and being greeted by an entirely different, wholly unforgiving endgame that pushes individual responsibility (and blame) over collectivist teamplay.

Which, I have to say, is quite shocking for a game supposedly built on Eastern values.

However, from a community standpoint, there needs to be responsibility for one's individual behavior at some point. You can pin quite a bit of behavior on game design. However, trolling, insults, unrealistic demands, hostility, etc are all personal decisions and much less systemic. The community isn't toxic, but it sure isn't friendly.

[gadenp]

End Game currently have very few things to do. Most of it are locked out per week. Once you cap BcoB, CT, Myth. The only thing left to do are the Trials.

Most people have already done finished Moogle King (no more reason to do it), same with Ultima HM (unless you get new groups which also got issues).

What does that leave people??? Extreme mode.

And in the trials, especially Titan, in which the slights mistake kills you. And in which you have to work with 7 others to ensure you do not wipe. Yes, of cause the community will get more and more toxic.

All the higher end game players have either completed it and do not really want to party with people that have not done so. Shutting newbies out or people that have lag or just not 100% perfect like robots.

Or they have not completed it and have pissed at it and do not want people that can gimp their runs because after 100 wipes, anything that does not help you is annoying and rage inducing (thanks screwy game design).

Thus of cause the whole community will become more and more toxic.

You can of cause level a new char. But leveling now is done in dungeons, in which you speedrun through and thus does not build community too. Or do fates, which is boring and not community building.

For my server it is made even worst as due to difficulty of content, more and more JPS are going JP only.

I guess that I am trying to say, is the game is becoming Goal Orientated. And anything that causes you trouble reaching your Goal is bad and thus removed. Community building is the opposite of effective, efficient and optimal achievement of goals. FF14 game design with all it's lockout and lack of community type content is killing the game.

FYI crafting is not community building. Or the way SE does it, is not.