No Community

[Adventica6]

Just because you don't want to be social and make friends doesn't mean there isn't a community.......

[Omegabear]

Just because you don't want to be social and make friends doesn't mean there isn't a community.......

Of course there is a community. What made you think that I thought otherwise?

[Anatha]

If you can't make friends in this game, if you find yourself not caring about your behavior in duty finder... I have some news for you:

You are the problem.

[Omegabear]

If you can't make friends in this game, if you find yourself not caring about your behavior in duty finder... I have some news for you:

You are the problem.

That's a commonly recycled sentence that I see every now and then. I have a healthy circle of friends, and they are nothing like the general MMO community. They are mature, patient and pleasant to converse with. Even when we can't see each other as often now that we're all married, we stay in touch very often and it's as if we still hang out often.

[Claviusnex]

That's a commonly recycled sentence that I see every now and then. I have a healthy circle of friends, and they are nothing like the general MMO community. They are mature, patient and pleasant to converse with. Even when we can't see each other as often now that we're all married, we stay in touch very often and it's as if we still hang out often.

This where I'm at. I'm not here to develop a lot of friendships as I have plenty of those and family in RL. We did have a small family and friends guild on WoW but none of us has been on for a couple of years. Another reason I don't care to look being an older person with grandchildren I don't feel like spending hour after hour hunting down folks also at my stage in life so we have something in common. The game does a good job of supporting me to play mostly solo and to find groups when needed.

As to the discussions about discord and other outside game communication methods ruyining in game chat. To that I say I like it. I don't have my chat filled with inane comments and bad attempts at trolling. Instead it contains things like how/where/what do I do questions, world boss positions or folks asking for open world help and all easily seen because of the lack of clutter.

[LydellStorm]

just want to throw in I'm a lot like many others, played a little years ago and only recently started to get back into it on a serious level and really dont know for how much longer...

It's not uncommon for me to die during a boss fight and never be revived purposely, because I don't understand the boss mechanics, because nobody explains anything or talks at all.

It's honestly hard to even think of think as an MMO with how dead the community seems to be, even toxic at best making fun of new players for asking questions on dungeons and boss fights.

[lockey_breezewalker]

One place where i see SE has missed a golden opportunity is the housing wards. Sure, you might stumble upon one of your close neighbor once in a while, or one of the few RP free company on your server might host an event, but for the most part, they are deserts.

This is the place our characters are supposed to unwind and relax when they are not out saving Eorzea from the most recent menace. There are a few things that could be done to improve the activity there.

First, why not add FATEs that are non combat related (ex: Cleaning up trash, carry fireworks to start a show, cleaning the pool, etc...) that would give players housing credits they could spend to get special furniture.

Then you could add up a weekly ranking for each ward depending on how much points their occupants have won, awarding the highest ranking ward in each housing district a small banner at the entrance that would basicly say "Best Ward in Town"

Lastly, what if you could have an option to set your character in one ward, doing a certain action when you logout? It could be brooming the front of your property or appartment building, or walking around the market area shopping, or just relaxing/swimming in the pool or beach. Sure it might not create social interaction, but it would liven up otherwise empty instances.

Right now, i feel housing districts are for the most part used for three things : Cheap teleportation, Airship/Submarine voyages, and fill the decorating desires of a small proportion of the population (Im not saying its a bad thing, so dont hate me). Having a sense of belonging would help to connect with others and improve the otherwise pretty dry social community.

[Fhaerron]

I'm a bit in the same boat OP.

I guess, for me, this community just doesn't 'fit' with me.

I’ve played MMO’s since around 2005, my first one was Guild Wars 1, later in 2007 I also started with World of Warcraft (those 2 are still my most played games), I have also played RIFT, Star Wars: the old Republic, The Elder Scrolls Online & Bless Online.
Destiny 1, Destiny 2 & Tom Clancy’s The Division as well (I list those separate as they are not like the traditional MMO’s but they all are online only and you also have ‘raids’ where everybody has to do certain mechanics).

In all these games I’ve had friends and/or clan or guilds. I was constantly doing group content and had a lot of fun and made some good friends.
Back in Destiny 1 I was an organizer for one of our EU divisions (we were a big international clan), I leaded 5 runs / week, sometimes joined on other organizers their run if they needed a hand and whenever there were no run or anything happening I would get frequent PM’s from people If I wanted to do stuff together.
In the other games I’ve never been in any organizer or leading position (apart from Guild Wars 1 were I was an officer in a pretty successful guild), but there was always something going on that I could join or ask others if they want to do content X or if they want to help me with something. Or just to play together just so I wasn’t alone.

I joined FF XIV pretty late, my account is back from 2013 somewhere but I only played the first month back then, then I played again for a bit in 2016 where I made a new character on the Moogle server and then finally since early 2017 until like a month ago.
Despite my weeb side being hyped by SB I really didn’t liked it and found the story so much better in HW. I finished up the HW stuff just before the EA of SB.
The start of SB was quite ok but soon after everything I was hyped about in SB was a total disaster like the swimming and diving …

Anyway, I’ve constantly read how an amazing community FF XIV has and how toxic WoW was and other game communities are but for me it’s been the total opposite. I’ve played WoW for 11 years and I have over 15K hours in it (that’s only my main) and I have 3 people on my ignore list.
I have around 2.3K hours in FF XIV and I have 80 people on my ignore list … and I cleaned it out 4 times already.

I’ve tried to join multiple FC’s but they’ve always failed, I was in a pretty decent one back at start of SB and we also raided together for like 2 weeks, but we had a few people wo were underperforming and showed no signs of improving themselves, drama started some people stopped raiding and some left and eventually the leader also stopped. The majority of my time I stayed FC-less.
I have always had a hard time finding ‘decent’ (or maybe I should say fitting) people to do stuff with, most of the people I’ve seen are the ones hanging around in Limsa 24/7 taking thousands of screenshots daily post on twitter and say ‘look how cute I am’.
That’s all nice and all but I don’t really care about that stuff.

I have one friend in the game, I’ve played with her for many months, she’s actually a bit in the same boat as me also being alone all the time in the game. And It’s because of her that I still played for so many months and we still talk on Discord.

Other ‘friends’ I had always ended up in drama fests while I’m not here for any of that. Other ‘friends’ I had were those that play 24/7 now I have a full time job, 3 hour daily commute and evening school so I can’t really play 24/7 so those end up leaving you instantly even though I’m only 4+ hours every evening.
And then lastly the other ‘friends’ I had were people I met on this very forum, they all looked nice and friendly in the beginning but not so long after they stop talking and remove you out of the blue.

So one could say I’m the ‘weird’ one and the one at fault because it happens with everybody?
But then what about the communities on those other games were I have friends and people to play with?
So it got me thinking, these communities are all very different from each other and this one just doesn’t ‘fit’ with me.
Only thing I ever wanted was a handful of friends I can do in game stuff with and some others were I can talk with or both combined even. I was wrong to think I’d find that here.
At least that’s how I think about it now.
No tl;dr version, Sorry it’s so long, I actually was surprised myself too when I finished writing this but I want to give some background info and I’ve always been bad at keeping it short.
For those who read it well nice of you. For those that didn’t well nothing I guess?
I wrote this in word so I hope my editing will not go to waste when I copy paste this.

Extra note: I obviously have a sub currently, otherwise I wouldn’t been able to talk. My account was inactive actually but when there was 1 day left on the house demolisher I got an extra month and logged back in so my house wouldn’t be gone. Not sure what I want to do with that later but at the very least I’ll check out the new expansion.