Not feeling comfortable on my current data centre Chaos(EU). Thinking of transfering.

[BothFawn]

Hello fellow FFXIV players.

I have a rather unorthodox issue and I would like to ask you for your thoughts regarding data centres. I will try to stay as polite as I can, because I do not want you to misunderstand my words here.

Currently I am a resident of Louisoix on Chaos and since I had started playing FFXIV at the beginning of March, I have faced a few rude or unpleasant individuals who I needed to report for harassment unfortunately. Almost all of these people I mentioned were either from Moogle server and also 1 French player from Ragnarok server. To give you an example of the problem I am facing- I am an English speaker with only "E" set in the languages options. Yesterday I queued for trial roulette and after my greeting I was met with some chatter in foreign tongues and after I asked if they could use English(because it seems natural for me to use English in order to communicate properly and give ourselves tips during a duty), I was scolded by a French player from Ragnarok server, who I previously mentioned, for my request. What is more, he was acting arrogant for the rest of the trial and it was all due to my attempt to be able to speak with and understand my teammates. The other examples were very snarky comments left just mere second while exitting the duty or just pure rudeness, which I happened to be a subject of once.

I am a very sensitive person and I get almost depressive when things like this happen to me. I am just looking for a relatively quiet and kind environment and I have a feeling that, because of it, Chaos does not really suit me.

My question is- Do you happen to have similar experiences on Light data centre? Is it a place where English is used most often? How does the French community look like there? Is it all the same as in Chaos and in the end it does not really matter where I play? I would also be very appreciative of a opinion of someone who used to play on both Chaos and Light.

I was also interested in Japanese servers, since I stared studying Japanese recently and how kind people from Japan tend to be or North American ones, due to, I presume, very high amount of English speakers there, but I do not think it would be a good idea, since not only it would be(at least for me) hypocritical to play on foreign servers, but also because of very high ping.

My biggest thanks for reading my post and I hope someone would be able to clarify these problems of mine.

[Driavna]

Is going to happen in light and is going to happen in any datacenter you pick at some point or another.

[JowyAtreides]

On the light side, you typically find there are similar levels of English speakers, alongside more German and Spanish speakers (as opposed to French or Russian)

Do you at least have a good closer community (FC/linkshells) that meet your requirements? People who make your experience better every day should outweigh the rare instances that you speak of in your post.

I spent 3 years on Cactuar (an NA world) and was part of a good and helpful community, however I personally feel it wouldn't be right for you with your self-proclaimed sensitivity. Not saying they are bad, but there are things they can say there without batting an eyelid which would be considered voodoo in the EU community.

I have no experience of Japanese servers.

[Vidu]

The rule of thumb is that Chaos is the fench DC now, with Light being the german one - that being said, for both DCs the majority of people (around 75-80%, if memory servers right) has english at least picked as language option. So generally speaking you should be fine on both DCs.

On the Light-DC you have a chance of running into german speaking groups - it hasnt happend to me often, but it does happen. Depending on the server you pick the german population might be as high as around 30%, so need to be aware of that. As a general rule though: Germans are more likely to be at least willing to try to communicate in english, while the french have this special relationship to not wanting to speak anything but their own tongue. You can run into germans who are simply not able to communicate in english, though.

While I personally share your sentiment that we should all try to communicate in english - since thats the "universal" language the world more or less agreed on - I would like to point out that you WILL run in situations where people might not speak it, for example when the overwhelming majority of a group is way better at speaking german/french/any other language than english. While there is no need to be rude or snarky about it, I would urge you to get a thicker skin in that regard. Almost all duties can be completed without communication at all and while its ofc sad and in bad taste to leave one person out of conversations its often unconvenient aswell to type in a foreign language. People who dont have english as their first language might also be very anxious about getting stuff wrong and being laughed at - I know that I was. So they might just be as sensitive and nervous as you are!

Dont let occassions like those get to you - its usually not meant to exclude you personally but to make communication easier for the rest of the group. Sucks, true, but shrugging it off and doing your own thing might be the best course of action here.

Bottomline: Light-DC has more germans and less french people. Germans might be more willing to speak english, but you can still run into groups that cant or wont. Dont take that personal.

Edit: Am I understanding correctly that you're from America? If so... why did you pick an EU-server to begin with, instead of an american one? Your chance of getting parties with everyone having english as their first language are much better on Primal, Aether and Crystal - and you'd be closer to the server to, meaning a better connection.

[Hazmick]

Encountering non-English speaking people is going to happen regardless of your server. I'd say that about 90% of people you meet will have a reasonably decent grasp of English that will allow you to communicate the basics, but I'd also suggest using the auto-translate feature too.

Just as I would say not to tar all French-speaking people with the same bad brush, I'd also urge you not to presume that all JP or NA players are going to be super nice and friendly.

Outside of language barriers, some people you meet are just not going to be nice people. That's how it is sometimes, and such people are not worth your time or energy. Don't let them discourage you from playing and enjoying the game.

[Fenefab]

I would just blacklist and move on. There are rotten eggs on every datacenter, every server and every different language speaking group of players.

[BothFawn]

Edit: Am I understanding correctly that you're from America? If so... why did you pick an EU-server to begin with, instead of an american one? Your chance of getting parties with everyone having english as their first language are much better on Primal, Aether and Crystal - and you'd be closer to the server to, meaning a better connection.

Thank you for your reply. I live in Europe, I should have been more precise on that, sorry.

Do you at least have a good closer community (FC/linkshells) that meet your requirements? People who make your experience better every day should outweigh the rare instances that you speak of in your post.

I do not use linkshells, nor do I belong to any Free company. I am a lone player in this regard.

[CookiesNCreams]

There’s morons wherever you go. Report them and blacklist if you have to. FFXIV is too good of a game to be worried about such trivial things.

[Schan]

I am going to double down on what Vidu said to be honest.

First of all I'm sorry you've had bad experiences in Chaos, but you also need to be aware that this is the internet and people will be nasty if they can get away with it. No matter where you run to, you will bump into these kind of people. FFXIV might have a better community than other games but it still has its share of rotten apples. You will bump into them. It's just a matter of when.

Also yes, french have this special thing about hating English in general. I don't know if it has historical roots or what but things get extra spicy if you ask them to speak English. They usually get highly offended over it. Funnily enough I've met more french people from Cerberus and Ragnarok than Moogle (probably because just like the spanish they tend to stick with people who speak the same language instead of mingling with others) - disclaimer: there are exceptions and you are less likely to notice they are french if they are speaking English with you anyway / have the game set to E

A lot of people are very very self aware. This is why you have so many topics discussing anxiety regarding healing, tanking and/or social activities (meeting strangers, speaking a foreign language) and gaming tends to be an escape for people who suffer with depression / anxiety. That's why such issues tend to be prevalent topics of discussion at times. Basically my point is: you're not alone. Considering what i've read and how you are concerned about you getting depressed because people have been rude to you, you have several choices here (that I can think of):

Avoid the internet. - basically your brain wins at making you feel miserable and you don't get to enjoy your things. (please don't let your brain win. your brain is not your friend)
Avoid online games. - depends how much you like FFXIV (see first point)
Find friends online and do stuff only with friends - Literally my FC leader falls in this category. He is a very anxious person and other people have completely destroyed his confidence regarding being a decent DPS ingame. i'm trying trying to encourage him to get out of his shell but ultimately it's his choice.
Say Whiff it and throw yourself at matchmaking and deal with people as they are - That's basically me even though I'm anti-social, because most people don't really speak in dungeons and such so whatever.

I would say... find a group of friends you can trust but dip your toes into matchmaking sometimes. you need to slowly tackle the fact that you get seriously depressed if anyone is remotely mean to you but that kind of stuff is completely up to you and it takes a lot of time and commitment not to mention it won't be a video game that will fix it.

edit: i forgot to say... don't go into the JP servers. They can be nasty towards English speaking people. In a very passive aggressive way of course.

[Kelani]

I'm on Louisoix and the majority of duties I've been in (I'd say around 90%) have been English speaking. If I've been in a dungeon where people are speaking in their own language I've always checked to see if they have E selected. Most don't and assume that they can't or won't speak English. If they seem to be talking directly to me then I'll use auto-translate to tell them that I can only speak English and I've never had a problem. Though I did have a nasty experience on the Louisoix server a long time ago. I'd created an alt and was in the Novice Network. I shared a bad dungeon experience with the NN and I got a lot of hate from it. Probably because I was upset at the time and made a flippant comment "Nice community, huh?" A lot of mentors got on my back about it and said if I continued to talk about it I would be kicked out of the NN. At that time I said "Okay, I know now not to share anything negative, I'll stop" but they continued to heckle me about it. In the end I said "Okay I get your point, could you please leave me alone now" and then because I was so upset (I was actually crying at the time) I left the NN. I've now restarted a character after a long break from the game and I was reluctant to join the NN because of my past experience, but the people that heckled me that day don't seem to play or are no longer part of the NN anymore. As I said before I was probably partly to blame for the hate that I got, however, I don't think I deserved to be treated the way I did. It felt like the whole of the NN had ganged up on me, not a pleasant feeling at all.

I'm sorry you had this experiences, but they are very far and few between. I'm only in an FC with my partner and I'm now very happily playing again after a long break, and since I've been back I've had no further instances.