Peer pressure, FFXIV's reputation, & subscribing

[Neptune]

I'm not sharing this story to flame the debate over whether or not the game is worthy of subscribing to or not.

I recently met another gamer and after we discussed online games, he mocked me for paying for FFXIV for over a year. I pointed out that they never started charging and with that stated he could see why I played since it was a free trial. Even then he still mocked me for paying for the game in the first place. Maybe he is behaving poorly for outright mocking someone over what game they play, but the point of note is that he had a basis for his mockage that is traced back to the bad reviews.

On another occasion we were at a game night with some of this gamer's friends and he was trying out the game. He was mocked by his gamer friends for playing FFXIV, "that horrible game". I gave him my buddy pass and I suspect he probably keeps a low profile about playing FFXIV when around his other gamer friends, to avoid dealing with the harassment. Lol.

Disregarding the ethics or whether this guy's friends have good reason to mock him for playing FFXIV or not, the truth of the matter is that peer pressure is going to be a factor in people's lives once subscription fees are brought into the picture. Peer pressure shouldn't be the reason SE decides to reverse their decision about subscription fees, but it is going to be something gamers deal with from here on out. It's rare to be chided by a fellow gamer over your taste. Even gamers from separate genres like CoD shooters, Halo, or fighting games tend to respect each other as gamers. I feel sorry for some of the people that are going to run into peer pressure.


This game has a super bad reputation and playing it makes you look bad. PAYING for it makes you look even worse to those that read the bad reviews.

So how should you deal with peer pressure? If you really enjoy the game you have to stick up for yourself. It would suck to lose social standing with anyone in your circle, but if you truly enjoy playing, it might be worth it.

What should Square Enix do about peer pressure and the bad reviews? It's Square Enix's problem. When the game is re-reviewed they will have their chance to address some of the criticism of the bad reviews and make this a game everyone can be proud to play. One troubling note is that they announced they want to change over to the new client and server AFTER the PS3 release. There will be no forgiveness from the game reviewers if they do that. So let's hope they show some common sense and try to clean up their mess before inviting the world in.

If you have a story about how peer pressure or FFXIV's reputation surfaced for you, please share it.

[Adol]

People feeling pressured to not play a game?
They need to man up.

[Charismatic]

Haha, the other day my coworker gave me the dirtiest look when I mentioned that XIV is going to be moving to p2p and he was basically like "you have to be kidding me, you're going to pay for it?" (we'd been talking about me getting into XIV recently). Was hilarious to me, I just told him that as of the last few large patches I've finally been having a bit of fun with it and by the time the next patch comes out it should be better, so yeah... I'll pay.
He just shrugged and that was the end of it. Not really a big deal.

[quantumsaint]

I was at a party last year and they started passing the buddy passes around. I was hesitant to try it at first, because I had heard so many negative things about it, but my friend was like, "Come on man, just try it, you'll like it." So I get home and get everything ready. Once I fired it up, my pupils dilated and I could see colors. Oh man, and the audio! Never had such sweet sounds caressed my ears. I was hooked. I started using it every day, but each day I had to use more and more to get that same level of satisfaction that I had previously. I became a wreck. I started skipping meals and staying up later, just to keep using a little longer. Fast forward to months later, and I see my friend that introduced me to it. I ask him why I haven't seen him around lately and he tells me he's no longer using, he's found something better. Something better? I ask. WoW, I said. What could be better than this? LoL, he said, pretty much anything is better than that. So I go home, bitter, swearing off my friendship with the traitor. I go to use some, just a little to take the edge off, but it has no effect. His words continue to ring in my ears...anything is better than that...better than that. That...that...I stop using. Cold turkey. All day long I'm thinking about ways I could have been a more responsible user, but it's too late - I'm dead.

/fiction

[Neptune]

Haha, the other day my coworker gave me the dirtiest look when I mentioned that XIV is going to be moving to p2p and he was basically like "you have to be kidding me, you're going to pay for it?" (we'd been talking about me getting into XIV recently). Was hilarious to me, I just told him that as of the last few large patches I've finally been having a bit of fun with it and by the time the next patch comes out it should be better, so yeah... I'll pay.
He just shrugged and that was the end of it. Not really a big deal.

This is good, of course it sucks that you got a dirty look in the first place, but I'm glad it wasn't a big deal.

I was at a party last year and they started passing the buddy passes around. I was hesitant to try it at first, because I had heard so many negative things about it, but my friend was like, "Come on man, just try it, you'll like it." So I get home and get everything ready. Once I fired it up, my pupils dilated and I could see colors. Oh man, and the audio! Never had such sweet sounds caressed my ears. I was hooked. I started using it every day, but each day I had to use more and more to get that same level of satisfaction that I had previously. I became a wreck. I started skipping meals and staying up later, just to keep using a little longer. Fast forward to months later, and I see my friend that introduced me to it. I ask him why I haven't seen him around lately and he tells me he's no longer using, he's found something better. Something better? I ask. WoW, I said. What could be better than this? LoL, he said, pretty much anything is better than that. So I go home, bitter, swearing off my friendship with the traitor. I go to use some, just a little to take the edge off, but it has no effect. His words continue to ring in my ears...anything is better than that...better than that. That...that...I stop using. Cold turkey. All day long I'm thinking about ways I could have been a more responsible user, but it's too late - I'm dead.

/fiction

lol!

[Atoli]

Well, I don't really have a story of my own to tell, because..seriously, if you are too ashamed to tell your gamer friends which game you play just because you could be harrassed for it, you either need to man up or just find real friends o,O

But I really noticed how bad reviews influenced the reputation of FFXIV, even a year after release (and after all those great changes we got).
A little while ago I was talking to a friend about it, tryin to convince her to try it out.
I was all hyped up about all the great stuff we got with patch 1.18 and 1.19 and I told her about all the fun things and awesome stuff she could do if she joined us (me and another friend who are playing FFXIV) and somewhere in between, I guess the sentence "Oh, and the graphics are way more beautiful than in WoW." slipped out.
As if she had waited for me to say that, suddenly she started talking about how she would never try such a bad game of which the only good aspect is the graphics, that she is not playing a game to look at pretty scenery but to DO stuff and that's impossible in FFXIV, bla bla bla.
I went like: "Erm..okay, I just told you about all the stuff you can do, it's not like it's just beautiful and nothing else. Why do you think so?"
So she told me how she read reviews about it saying SE only concentrated on graphics when they made it and everything else is just horrible.
She didn't care that those reviews were outdated, about all the stuff I explained to her, FFXIV was just a really bad game to her for no other reason but some old reviews.
It even went es far as to her calling me a "graphics whore" so..we kind of had a fight about it x)
Needless to say, she refused to at least try it out.

Haha, I told a story of my own after all
But I wouldn't call it "pressure".
But I really hate the stubborness of many people.
If you look at comments on youtube or websites about gaming, everyone has a mindset along the lines of "Even if FFXIV becomes the best MMO one day, I'm still not gonna try it."

[viion]

when I moved to Italy all my coworkers said they quit XIV right away n binned it, they really dont like me talking about it anymore, even tried to show them v2 but they said they've been let down once so they dont have any faith, just "i'll believe it when i see it".

[Tenshi]

I work in the game industry and yeah, just about everyone around me has heard grim things about FFXIV. Instead of being rude or dismissive, though, when they find out I'm playing they're honestly curious about it and ask why.

Usually what I do at that stage is to boot the game up on my work laptop, explaining a little about the history of the game as I do so. I then log in and let them wander around a bit.

Almost unanimously at that point they are blown away by the visuals and questions change from "why do you play" to "when do you play and what class should I focus on."

[Antanias]

I just tell people to go f*** themselves when they mock me for playing ff14. I make my own decisions about which games I play and I do my best to enjoy those experiences

[Gramul]

At this point, it dosn't even really matter so much. Square is committed to this game and they won't just stop production midway through, even with one subscriber. They'll keep working on it to the relaunch, which I can assure you will receive better reviews and more subscribers simply on the princible of improving the main complaints people had for the game in the first place.

The only thing that could kill the game at this point would be if Square itself went under.