Can we dial back the forum vitriol...?

[SaitoHikari]

There are a few things on these forums that aren't even worth discussing, and some vitriol could be prevented entirely by applying common sense rather than hitting the New Thread button. Do we need like 4 different threads essentially circlejerking about healer DPS, with some essentially boiling down to 'listen to ME and not all the other fools'?

Then again, the other notable FFXIV community, the FFXIV Reddit, is pretty circlejerky too for an entirely different reason. And both places are largely bad places to visit if you're someone that just wants to find simple advice. This forum's 1k character limit discourages guide writing (sure you can bypass it through editing, but it's annoying that it's even a thing) along with the moderation's scorched earth tactics essentially resulting in a lot of guide writers having been inadvertently booted off the forums for standing up to actual trolls. Reddit's free-for-all content layout and flavor of the day attention-seeking upvote system buries everything useful within a day or two, and the search algorithm is a nightmare to navigate through.

There aren't any viable alternatives because we won't give any alternatives a chance. And if there's anything that my stint at moderating an official forum for a different MMO taught me, the only reason that this is a thing is because the majority, deep down, thrives off of the drama in some way. In the English side of forum communication, it appears everything has to be perceived as a personal slight in some way.

[RichardButte]

I can't help but see this here as a guise to make later attempts to insert ones own ideas into the game through a lack of people voicing their opposing opinions.

Absolutely not.

I specifically said "It's one thing to say, "I just don't feel that feature would be necessary or worth the dev team's time."" to avoid saying anything along those lines.

It really is the total lack of any form of empathy that results in the aforementioned sentiments like "I wouldn't use that so neither would anyone else!" or "I don't have that problem so it's not a problem." that are the problematic ones.

People can absolutely disagree with a suggestion while still being civil in doing so. That is what I'm pushing for.

[VanilleFang]

There was a thread I may have come off a little... abrasive if you will, but it just appeared, at the time of my posting, that the OP was intentionally trying to mislead us. Not only did they mention that the thing they were complaining about was impossible to read without squinting (next to a picture that was incredibly small and illegible) but upon opening the image in Imgur it was very easy to read, sans absolutely abysmal eyesight.

Someone in said thread also mentioned dyslexia and/colourblindness as possible causes for the person's issues but I doubt this. Dyslexia, as far as I am aware, does not make something illegible by virtue of its colour, and you can't fix colourblindness by squinting. Also, the only way I could see colourblindness effecting you ability to read white text is if you see everything in black and white.

[RaizeGraymalkin]

I've said it many times. In the actual game the community is pretty solid. The online forum community though (this place, reddit, etc)? It's like a whole different group of people, and not for the better.

There is far too much hyperbole that gets tossed around and all the stupid "delete" bullshit, etc.

[RichardButte]

Some contrarians bring up valid points, and everyone has an opinion anyways. Welcome to people. I guess?

I ended the post by saying "It's one thing to say, "I just don't feel that feature would be necessary or worth the dev team's time."" to make it clear that it's fine to disagree, just with civility and with at least attempting to understand where the person offering a suggestion is coming from first.

There are many posters who are immediately dismissive of ideas for reasons like the ones I mentioned, like "I don't have this problem so you shouldn't either.", completely ignoring all of the factors that may have contributed to the OP making the suggestion in the first place.

[Vhailor]

It's one thing to say, "I just don't feel that feature would be necessary or worth the dev team's time."

It's another matter entirely to react like the above bolded quotes (and we've ALL seen reactions like that, no matter how reasonable or helpful a suggestion may be...).

I agree, though I can also understand why many players have relatively little patience at this point. Traditional "hard-core" gamers (i.e. those for whom it's not just an idle hobby) have been pushed out of MMOs over the years as companies seek to appeal to a broader audience. FFXIV has been particularly visible about this, in my estimation. Glamours and cutesy furniture or mounts abound; difficult fights are, more often than not, nerfed into oblivion; battle mechanics get simplified in oft-problematic ways, damaging how jobs play.

Now, none of this is intended to justify the vitriol that often appears on the forums. Nobody needs to be rude. But I can empathize with people who, at this point in FFXIV's lifespan, are past the point of being constructive and are mostly just pissed off.

[MyaValentine]

just pissed off.

well, I think OP means stuff like quality of life not Fights I personally hate when "please nerf this..." threats appears but I think op means QoL like the function of auto gear up which is indeed a godsend or one of the highly requested by the ps4 community and #1 cause of exactly what OP is talking about PARSER. make 1 parser threat and you will see countless comments as the examples he named.

[Princess_Momoka]

What about the 95%+ chance of HQ, but get failure? It's happened to me, and probably lots of others...then get a sub 10% to HQ and get HQ.

I do not remember the highest NQ I got, but that 0 quality/ 1% chance does exist. I make tons of speed crafting that I break on quick synth so it is bound to happen when yo do it 100+ times.

[YitharV2]

But you don't pay my sub!

Then again, the other notable FFXIV community, the FFXIV Reddit, is pretty circlejerky too for an entirely different reason. And both places are largely bad places to visit if you're someone that just wants to find simple advice.

There's a daily megathread to ask questions. That being said, my opinion of r/ffxiv has lowered considering they banned DF posts. Although if you're looking for guides or openers the Balance Discord is probably a better place to go, and you can ask questions there too.

[KisaiTenshi]

FFXIV's community is on the whole pretty amazing, especially when we're talking about in-game. It's miles ahead of WoW's and we probably have a lot of the wonderful in-game tools that not only encourage but REWARD players for helping out newbies, being a team player, and generally NOT being a gigantic assclown.

However, I can't always say the same for these forums...

While there are plenty of helpful, rational people who post here, there's a mentality that occasionally pops up that is a massive detriment to the forum-going experience.

...

There's three kinds of arguments that take place in gaming forums that are openly hostile:

A) A plea to the developers (to nerf, buff, or change the game to the whim of the poster) - These will quickly get shot down by players who like things the way they are, and because the FFXIV devs are receptive to both positive and negative feedback, people feel the need to shut down any discussion of features that they feel change the game in ways they are not receptive to.

There is a concept known as "feature creep", and "micromanagement" and these things do not belong in games. Micromanagement is fun for people who think spreadsheets and programming is fun. For example, if the FFXIV game client offered Mabinogi-style pets and pet AI (which was quite scriptable) I'm sure people would love the ability to make their Chocobo be less stupid, and maybe have their summoner/arcanist/scholar bets be less stupid. BUT because people will abuse the hell out of this to harass people, it would lose all the useful features over time and eventually people will resort to modding to make the pets behave in ways that the game client doesn't natively support. Hence I've never suggested such a feature because as much as I think it would be useful, it would be useful to the 2% of people who can understand the scripting language, and end up being leveraged by RMT to spam users or should there ever be a mining/harvest/fishing/sheparding pet it would be used for nefarious purposes.

A subset of this is the "doesn't know how to use the search button", where someone will create a new thread on something that is still somewhere in the last 5 pages of the forum or discussed in the last 4 weeks, and people get upset because they though the argument was dead/done.

B) A plea to players to do, or not do a certain behavior - This is entitlement attitude at it's most oblivious. You can come to the forum and vent about some kind of behavior, but the minute you start calling the player names rather than explaining why the behavior has disturbed your experience, you've lost the high ground. Do not punch down. That player might be new, might be having a bad day, might have screwed up, but if you are venting on the forum by calling them names, you are specifically aiming to embarrass them. This sends the message to other players that you are incapable of adapting to play styles, or incapable of de-escalating a situation.

We all have bad experiences, but we do not learn what people consider bad unless someone else posts about it. Hence, any complaint that is not followed up with a solution is not helping.


C) Namecalling, Ad hominem attacks, and straw man arguments to try and turn the opinion of the forum against a poster or to dogpile on someone that they don't like. This is troll tactics 101, you don't like what someone says, so you go look at their lodestone and try to say "this person hasn't done ___, therefor they are full of ****", you drag comments from old threads into new threads, you go look them up on twitter, facebook, youtube, parser sites, hacking sites, bot sites, and try to find something posted outside the forum to the forum to "prove" this person should be ignored or even banned. When in that person doesn't back down, call them a troll, advocate for putting them on the ignore list, etc.

This always happens in discussions dominated by raiders. "You haven't done (something) EX, you don't know anything, get out of here", the reality is that that like argument A, they don't want the developers to take this as a cue to nerf/change something, so they just point to anyone who hasn't cleared the content as being incompetent or unskilled at the game as a whole. Consider that the game caters to all audiences, certain gameplay styles are simply bad to apply to all content in the game. Take the Healer DPS argument before and after 4.0, Before 4.0 you were considered lazy if you weren't DPS'ing because of a myth of healers having downtime, rather than they were playing in a lazy way that the developers had not intended due to gear power creep. Post 4.0 now the complaint is that healers are DPS'ing instead of keeping the party alive. This is the monster you created though encouraging bad healer play styles relying on HoT's to DPS more, now you own it because the developers decided that's not what they want healers doing.


If people want respect in an online environment, they need to resist acting like a baby and shouting down everything you don't like. There is a reason they limited the number of posts people can post per day, as that discourages people from engaging in lengthy arguments with the same people, and dominating the forums with fights between those people.