How it used to be...

[Maneesha]

i think its a combination of things thb. on the one hand efficiency and speed running,then lack of communication, then min-maxing mentality which is very wide spread then it was maybe 10years ago, general impatience,assumptions that everyone knows the job they are playing as or the encounter they are in and ofc not to forget the expectations. this is all in the context of duty roulette's but does to a degree also apply to party finder groups, thou in party finder you can set your rules and everybody knows what they sign up for.

i don't think "WoW" or any other game from a similar genre or online game in general has a fault at any of that, the gaming community and mentality is pretty much the same everywhere,slightly worse or better in some cases.

one could make a case for as to more solo friendly a game becomes,the more the social/socializing aspect becomes a "nuisance" and its easier to be impatient with others or point fingers at them. the more you play with people you don't know and probably never will meet again, the less you care about them and being an ass to them or what they think about you(your reputation).
i think in this regard the upcoming "wow classic" servers and the gaming community and industry reaction to them are very interesting to me, since its a game from a different era of games, no queues for dungeons, you play with the people from your server only and your reputation matters something, tanks are meant to take the dmg and not deliver as much pain as a dps job would, dps get 1-2 shot if they pull or get aggro, crowd control matters and healers are there to heal, not to dps. resources have a significance and so on.

also i agree that people are very thin-skinned nowadays,not only the gaming community but overall.

ps: i could write and talk more about this topic, but no one likes reading a wall of text or an essay.

[Tint]

I think this game has made my social anxiety worse.

A few days ago I left my raidgroup because out of fear of learning harder fights with other people and how they react towards me. Well I know I am technically good enough to clear those fights, but I would prefer to do that together with NPCs to be honest xD. People are rude. Learning the 4th turn of Eden normal was already hard on the edge for me.
I recently also quit tanking after 4 years because of rude people. I know tanking was never the best choice to play in my condition, but it was fun.

I got depressions out of the whole situation, so I quit my raidgroup, changed to DD and plan to focus more on my fisher as my endgame. Maybe I try to clear PotD floor 200 solo to proof myself and all the world that I am not a bad player, I just can't stand the pressure in hardcore content with other people.

[Shurrikhan]

I empathize with you. Someone suggested to me that one reason for the increase in rude people could be because of all the WoW refugees that are coming over to XIV. They told me that WoW's community isn't exactly known for being the nicest.

Can we stop blaming foreigners for things as obvious and inevitable as casual-veteran schisms deepening with each expansion, as in virtually every MMO?

[DevilsDontFly]

Bound to happen. I've been playing this game since ARR and my very first experience in a raid, that at the time was either Lab. of the ancients or WoD (can't remember which one came first, sue me), wasn't exactly nice. It didn't even came from random duty finder people, but from one of my own guild mates that frankly was just toxic and got kicked from the FC right after it happened. The "wow refugee" stigma wasn't a thing back then. I will say, however, that recently I noticed people being a little too on edge during alliance raids and party finders, but it's nothing too extreme.

I think one of the problems might be expectation vs lack of communication. Not only that but also lack of some common sense.
Per example: You see a party finder saying that they got to enrage on Titania and want a clear from second tethers and onwards. If you, someone that never did Titania once decides to join that party and fails miserably at the very first couple of mechanics, I am sorry but it's not a matter of people being too impatient or toxic. You just decided to do something you can't and wasted 7 other people's time. For some reason a lot of people in this game just simply don't say a word when they should.
I've seen plenty of actual toxic behavior in this game aimed at others, but very, very rarely had it happen to me because I'm very vocal about what I can or can't do. 99% of the time people are very chill and all it takes is someone to say something among the lines of "Hey I'm doing this for the first time is there anything I should know?", or "Hey I got to this point of the fight is it okay to stay?", or "I'm not really understanding this mechanic can someone explain?". But people simply don't talk, don't ask for help and end up complaining about toxicity.

Obviously this is not the absolute truth of every single case, but it's what happens the most from my perspective of someone that only had a real bad toxic experience in this game three times in 6 years.

[Doozer]

Lots of really toxic ppl on the duty finder recently xD. Lots of ppl are trying to rush thru content and progression that they tend to play longer than usual and are more prone to frustration early xD.

I've also noticed this. There's always annoying people, but it seems every time I use DF since ShB came out I just get impatient, rude, and selfish players that think dungeons are all about racing the tank to the enemies and getting irritated at people watching cutscenes.

I've really never understood the rush in MMOs, and I feel like it really breeds negativity. I've been playing ShB since early access and I'm only roughly halfway through the story. I think everyone just needs to chill out a bit and remember it's a game, not a job.

[DevilsDontFly]

I've also noticed this. There's always annoying people, but it seems every time I use DF since ShB came out I just get impatient, rude, and selfish players that think dungeons are all about racing the tank to the enemies and getting irritated at people watching cutscenes.

I've really never understood the rush in MMOs, and I feel like it really breeds negativity. I've been playing ShB since early access and I'm only roughly halfway through the story. I think everyone just needs to chill out a bit and remember it's a game, not a job.

To be fair today's mentality of "it only gets good at the late/end game" doesn't help. For some reason videogaming culture, especialy on MMOs, shifted to a "must reach cap ASAP to enjoy".

[axetotheface]

This is still the internet, if you are expecting a perfect community with welcome and smile .. you are going to have a bad time.

i was a GW2 player THE NICEST community i have ever seen.. yet profanity still happened in dungeon from time to time
I was a WoW Player, the pug experience WAS SOOO BADDDDD, yet after i find a guild i begin adding people to my friend list

if you want to completely shield yourself just run with a guild.. PUG means random experience

[Nedkel]

People are more frustrated in RL, and they bring it to the game.

Everything in this world changes.

[Maneesha]

To be fair today's mentality of "it only gets good at the late/end game" doesn't help. For some reason videogaming culture, especialy on MMOs, shifted to a "must reach cap ASAP to enjoy".

Yeah, but also game developers and the design of games kinda breeds this kind of mentality. Especially "theme-park" mmos with the constant level cap increases which makes previous content irrelevant, which also has its benefit. There are exceptions, like guild wars 2, elder scrolls online which use a different kind of progression or scaling/down scaling, but they are very few here and there and the market is/was flooded with games all following the same scheme. Even for those you can argue that they use the leveling phase a tutorial and that also once you hit max lvl the game opens up fully.

[Hawklaser]

The funny thing is, across all MMOs I have played over the years, the trend of an increasingly deteriorating community always tended to really kick off after the introduction of cross server dungeon finders.

I suspect the reason for that is slowly over time it becomes more about cranking the loot treeadmill to 11 instead of maintaining the kind of connections that are really needed for the long term survival of the community. As the cross server dungeon finders reduced the reliance on your fellow server mates for getting things done, and thereby also making it so one didn't have to worry about their own reputation.