Gender ratio

[MoroMurasaki]

My friends are great, of course, but sometimes it feels pretty alienating and I miss normal girl talk. Is this a common thing?

I can very much relate to this bit specifically.

I play this game with some awesome guys between my boyfriend, friends from the forum and my FC and yet I only know two (maybe 3?) girls who play.

One thing I've learned though is that a lot of girls just don't tell anyone that they're girls because they think they'll be hassled about it. While this isn't an experience I've had much of I understand the idea behind it.

But yeah, one thing I tend to not get much of on here is girl talk. Even something superficial like my complaints about the two wildly different pigmentation options for eye shadow and blush and how both are pretty much not things you do irl are met with silence/jokes usually.

Stick it out OP. There are girl gamers out there, just apparently we camouflage.

[Risvertasashi]

Lately I've been aware of just how few other girls I've met; I know two in total, in both my FC and FL/ hang-out group, and over the two years I've been playing I've only met a handful (almost always my FC leaders.) My friends are great, of course, but sometimes it feels pretty alienating and I miss normal girl talk. Is this a common thing?

Just my own anecdata/experience but almost every raid group I've had or known indirectly, has had 1 female player, which is a 1:7 ratio. There might be slightly more on the social side of the game but we don't tend to use voice as much in non raid settings, so it's hard to tell. I've definitely been in some FC discords where the ratio is much more balanced.

One thing I've learned though is that a lot of girls just don't tell anyone that they're girls because they think they'll be hassled about it. While this isn't an experience I've had much of I understand the idea behind it.

If you play a game like overwatch, I think you'd understand instantly. FFXIV is really one of the better communities out there. A number of others still think it's the 18th century, apparently...

[PandaMonium]

Maybe you just weren't lucky? I'd send you a friend request but I'm playing on a different Data Center :-/
I'm a female and meet a lot of female players around. I wouldn't say that the ratio m/f players is 50/50, rather something like 70/30, but it's definitely not a non-existent thing.

I would like to disagree with a previous post in this thread that all (most) of girls are hiding or playing male characters because they were harassed or got some kind of a bad experience. To your bad personal experience I can oppose mine: I play MMOs for about 15 years and during all this time and hundreds of people I played with, there was only one (!) girl that clearly stated she was harassed because of her gender, one that talked about herself as "he" and one transgender that actually wanted to be a "she". In my last raid group we had 8 girls and still zero drama, last month our main tank went to hospital to give a birth an hour after the raid was over :P

Sometimes I think that the players' age has to do something with it - I play with age 25+ so all this hormonal never ending drama of young adults is already over^^.
I think that another issue that builds the f/m problem here, is the English language gender independent "you" - another non-existent problem for other languages, where "you" and "I" with verbs are divided into male and female by default so you always know from the very start of conversation with whom you are talking - less pressure, guessing, hiding or these weird statements "Everyone is a male for me!". Why not "Everyone is a woman for me", bro? :P

Anyways, back on topic - keep looking, Lunaxia, girls players do exist!

[Reinha]

I think that another issue that builds the f/m problem here, is the English language gender independent "you" - another non-existent problem for other languages, where "you" and "I" with verbs are divided into male and female by default so you always know from the very start of conversation with whom you are talking - less pressure, guessing, hiding or these weird statements "Everyone is a male for me!". Why not "Everyone is a woman for me", bro? :P

Languages with only gender-neutral pronouns make things easy as well. When using such a language there is no need to ask a person's gender in order to address them correctly.

I think there are more guys playing this game but it's hard to guess the gender ratio because we never hear the voices of most people we play with. Around 1 in 5 out of those whose voices I have heard have been women, but it's a pretty small sample size.

[VanilleFang]

I personally don't care what gender the person behind the character ia. As long as they play decently enough they could he an alien for all I care.

That aside there is like... 1 player who I know is female. Mizz Teq.

[Zumi]

In my 7 years of playing FFXIV I have met 2 irl girls that played this game. I think it has to do with gaming being more liked by guys.

[Rockette]

In my 7 years of playing FFXIV I have met 2 irl girls that played this game. I think it has to do with gaming being more liked by guys.

^ This is the exact type of thinking for the reason we hide.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

^ This is the exact type of thinking for the reason we hide.

You hide because of... factual statements? o.O

What Zumi said is accurate. AAA games tend to have a male majority audience. They didn't say anything negative towards it. So I don't get this response.

[Sunako]

In my 7 years of playing FFXIV I have met 2 irl girls that played this game. I think it has to do with gaming being more liked by guys.

How that is even possible? I feel like every raid group have 1 or more girls and bless God if you end up raiding with couple that drama is real sometimes.

[Odstarva]

In my 7 years of playing FFXIV I have met 2 irl girls that played this game. I think it has to do with gaming being more liked by guys.

I've had the opposite experience.
Every raid group (except for the one) I've taken a part of has had at least a female in them. I remember in my very first raid group, the majority were women in fact.

And then, I only even know they were because of discord. I don't go around asking people's genders when I play with them, but I can only expect the number's pretty reasonable - especially compared to other MMOs.