Fan Census: This is embarrassing

[Caoihmin]

i believe O'bama is speaking on this very issue tonight during his Presidential address. Please tune in fellow Americans.

This embarrassment touches us ALL.

TL;DR -- who cares.

[Miitan]

[RANT]

From personal experience:

1. People in the West have no drive.

My first static (which started on SCoB) started as 8 people who, as a complete team, showed up for...1 raid. Seriously, we had 1 raid as a full static before people a.) stopped showing up on time b.) stopped showing up at all c.) gave feeble excuses for why they couldn't attend...the list goes on. Sure, real life does sometimes clash with raid times and you won't be able to make it, but do you really need to see granny every Wednesday, the one day everyone else can make, when you could see her on Thursday instead? Do you really need to get drunk every Friday night and have nothing to show for it but a splitting headache on Saturday morning? Chances are you don't, but people will slack off and play the Real Life card when it suits them. They will turn up when they feel like it and, when the team goes nowhere, they'll just leave and hope to latch onto someone else who'll carry them through the content.

2. The constant reinforcement of the idea that "Nobody gets left behind".

We're brought up with the mindset that we're all special snowflakes and we can do anything! What was that? I can't do something?

"THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT!"
"MAKE IT SO I CAN DO IT! I SHOULD BE SPECIAL TOO!"
"I'M GOING TO QUIT!"

If we have to put effort into something, like improving ourselves, it's too much for us. We can't do it. The world should change to accommodate us, we shouldn't have to change. Guess what? When everyone is a special snowflake, everyone is the same. I believe there are very few people who are bad in such an irredeemable way that there's no hope, but you can't get better at something if you refuse to put in the effort and if you don't want to put in the effort? That's fine. That's a valid choice. Just don't complain if you don't make any progress.

[/RANT]

Sure there are exceptions to the above, otherwise all of the NA/EU servers would be on <1%, but it goes a long way to explaining why we trail the JP servers by such a large margin.

tl;dr - People in the West don't care enough to beat the content but do care enough to moan about not being able to beat the content.

[Lexia]

[RANT]
Sure, real life does sometimes clash with raid times and you won't be able to make it, but do you really need to see granny every Wednesday, the one day everyone else can make, when you could see her on Thursday instead? Do you really need to get drunk every Friday night and have nothing to show for it but a splitting headache on Saturday morning? Chances are you don't, but people will slack off and play the Real Life card when it suits them. They will turn up when they feel like it and, when the team goes nowhere, they'll just leave and hope to latch onto someone else who'll carry them through the content.

Well RL trumps the game no matter the reason or the importance, even if I'm playing if my best friend calls and says hey want to go do something I will drop the game in a heartbeat.

[Elusana_Celah]

Well RL trumps the game no matter the reason or the importance, even if I'm playing if my best friend calls and says hey want to go do something I will drop the game in a heartbeat.

So like we're all in T13 and on phase 4, Bahamut is at 15% and your friend calls. Do you run to wall, die and leave raid then log off immediately, or do you finish the clear? Cuz what I find with the "RL trumps game" mentality is that people often don't know that there are OTHER people playing the game with them too. So before decisions like this are made, at least consider if it's a good time to leave or not... A boss at 15% isn't a good time. (Seriously I've seen this happen before >_> )

[Lexia]

So like we're all in T13 and on phase 4, Bahamut is at 15% and your friend calls. Do you run to wall, die and leave raid then log off immediately, or do you finish the clear? Cuz what I find with the "RL trumps game" mentality is that people often don't know that there are OTHER people playing the game with them too. So before decisions like this are made, at least consider if it's a good time to leave or not... A boss at 15% isn't a good time. (Seriously I've seen this happen before >_> )

No I'm not going to just turn off the game and leave but I will tell the party that I'm going to head out, but anyways I don't do coil so easily able to get someone to replace me doing something like farming a primal for a pony.

[Ramzal]

So like we're all in T13 and on phase 4, Bahamut is at 15% and your friend calls. Do you run to wall, die and leave raid then log off immediately, or do you finish the clear? Cuz what I find with the "RL trumps game" mentality is that people often don't know that there are OTHER people playing the game with them too. So before decisions like this are made, at least consider if it's a good time to leave or not... A boss at 15% isn't a good time. (Seriously I've seen this happen before >_> )

To be honest, I would hit that wall pretty quick if I think something wrong is going on with my friend or they need someone to talk to. This game is not that big of a deal compared to real connections with people. I love this game, I really do. Maybe a bit too much. But people who are directly in your life matter so much more than the pixels that are on screen or those in different locations. I'm not saying raid members aren't important but as far as who I would be willing to roll out of bed for at 4am if they need me, a raid is not one of those things. I have a list of the things that matter most when it comes to this, it goes:

Children
Husband/Wife
Yourself
Family
Job
Pets
Friends (RL)
Raid

I've seen some marriages and relationships end because people couldn't prioritize that the raid is far less important than their significant others. Beating Bahamut is awesome and all, but when you end up alone because "The raid needs you," you have no one to blame but yourself. And lets be honest 6/8 people in a raid do not care what's going on in your personal life because they tend to not care about their own personal lives. This thread has proven that several times over.

[Mugiawara]

To be honest, I would hit that wall pretty quick if I think something wrong is going on with my friend or they need someone to talk to.

This is true, but this is called emergencies. Just up and leaving on something that can wait is kinda rude. If it's urgent like your cat and dog have one heated debated and one combusted
into fire then yea, it's time to say or not say anything and help them out because that's pretty darn serious.
We can't forget that things DO happen, and if it happens out of your control then it just happens...Something as a friend wanna hang-out on that day could of been
prevented by saying you had plans that night. Your spouse is the same situation but they of course prioritize, and you'd ask them about it first.
This is why people make static's times on days that you can probably know everyone is going to meet up. If the person just stands there and says nothing for 5-10 minutes, I know something happened.
I'm sure people having some sympathy in game to understand your pet blowing up into flames is something that needs
to take immediate reaction lol. I was just going off on what she said, there are multiple situations that can happen here so I'm on both sides on this one.

[Elusana_Celah]

words

I would liked to have assumed people smart enough to realize that if there's an emergency then you need to leave and that's that. I had a raid cancelled cuz our scholar had an emergency literally after the first pull and we were fine with it.

If you live a life where you can't put aside a few hours a week to commit to a raid, don't raid (Again, this does NOT include sudden emergencies). If you need to break away from the raid for things that can wait then you really shouldn't be raiding at all. I spent 2 months trying to get a committed static together and every week we lost 1-2 people from just simply not showing up and giving some reason why they couldn't show up which wasn't an emergency, it was them promising they could commit to a time and suddenly they can't do it anymore and instead of communicating with us beforehand, they just don't show up and wait for us to message them later saying "wtf?"

This isn't respectful to other gamers who do have a few hours a week they can put aside to dedicate to a raid. So it's simply: Don't raid if you can't commit to it. Like that person who said she will leave if any of her RL friends call her, that's fine. She also said that she doesn't raid and she has her priorities set for what she knows she can do. But again, if you just gonna abandon people's raids after you said you'd commit to a time schedule, I don't really care about your marriage or family or friends, I just care that you lied to us about being able to commit and took no consideration to communicate anything with us (again, this does NOT include sudden emergencies).

Are you getting my point here? If you're joining some pony or light farm or any kind of farm in PF or some duty finder group and have to bail out by all means, do it and no one will care. Just don't say you can commit to raid times if you can't. My boyfriend plays the game too and my family and I were never close before I started playing this game anyways due to various reasons, so your examples of a game destroying relationships/families and whatever are non-applicable to me. Even so, if your family has problems with you spending 4 hours a week raiding, you must have the most time constrained life ever. I couldn't imagine living a life where I've no time to myself at all and I am at someone else's beck and call. To each their own I suppose.

TL;DR - everyone's life situations are different and some people can safely invest a couple hours a week to raiding without it affecting their relationships with people. Only a truly spoiled asshole is going to get mad cuz you had to leave a raid due to an emergency.

[Kallera]

Snip

I've done both decisons in this situation in my lifetime.
There is no amount of loot or progression that can replace the shitty feeling of leaving a loved one hanging for the sake of a video game.
I've made rifts with online friends that never healed to help family members in need, because more often than not, the people online are not the people I live with. I don't even know people in my general vicinity who play ffxiv, so the old disclaimer couldn't be more applicable.(where did that go anyway?)

And for all the drama, If an emergency came up in real life I'd ditch the game for it again. If a person couldn't make that decision, then surely they've gone too far.

[Iromi]

Well RL trumps the game no matter the reason or the importance, even if I'm playing if my best friend calls and says hey want to go do something I will drop the game in a heartbeat.

The game is RL in the sense that you are no longer just playing a game, you are dealing with 7 other people and their TIME. It is very rude to continue to waste people's time. Many of them set aside adequate time in advance and to just throw that in their face because "RL >GAEM" is selfish. If you can't commit, don't waste people's time.

People that do that are obviously not meant for statics and such, which is fine. I always give people 3 absences then I politely tell them this static is not for them and it is simply not working.