The outpour of malicious players in this game has increased a lot by the last year - around the time Heavensward was released. That's when my group and I kind of noticed that a bit of the maliciousness of WoW mentality was beginning to find its way to FFXIV. When I rejoined the game from 1.0 back in 2014 I thought that the community at the time was pretty great and that there was a lot of people to help each other out. Without some of these people I wouldn't be where I am today. Even some of the people who I knew were good players have either transferred to other servers or are outright venomous themselves.

Now, I'm faced with the elitist class with "No BONUS" PFs when trying to jump into an EX fight (Seph EX, Eggnog EX) despite knowing the fights inside and out from countless videos and POV for different roles. We've officially arrived to the point where this is the norm. People even suffer from wankers cramp and rage quit after one wipe in a damn learning party. It's a learning party... what were you expecting when you joined?

I also don't run statics at all because I know how draining that can be mentally and emotionally. I also have a career and a marriage that takes a much higher priority than a virtual world.

I've resigned in any faith that I'll never clear them and it sucks because I did want a few weapons from each of those dungeons.

Then of course, there's bird/horse farm PFs - the other day I joined a Bis EX bird farm and one of the DPS could not stop whining about the composition (2 tanks, 2 healers, all DPS) as he was telling us that we didn't need the two healers. We wiped the fight because of a mechanic that was missed, he spazzed and then rage quit immediately after. Drinking the salty AF Kool-Aid no less as his reasoning for this was that he didn't have time for that kind of nonsense and he only does guaranteed clears. I looked at his classes... he only had 2 60s and the one he had on display had considerably less than stellar gear, but enough for the fight so really, he was one to talk if he wants to size up that situation. (By the way, we did about 12 easy clears when he left so yeah)

Of course, there's also people with the sense of being OP with gear and not having to do mechanics so they hang back and are generally lazy - Sorry sweetie, but you still need to be able to do some mechanics.

Then you have the current debate of "early pulling" on hunts and how some people argue that it isn't early pulling because if you're the one to discover it, you're the one who can do whatever you want and you don't need to wait on people. While I can't argue this, I can argue my previous statement on the FFXIV community being completely friendly back in the day and now, you have people that just doesn't GAF about the community - they're in it for themselves. I also have a gripe with people who ride on the tail feathers. What bugs me is that I miss a hunt because I am looking for another hunt pop. Just remember that when the dust settles people will still remember your name and it will hurt when you want to do a run and no one will want you because of your piss poor attitude.

Has it come to the point where salty behavior of any kind is the social norm? Please don't confuse "norm" with "acceptable" because the two are different and some people do have issues telling one another apart.