Final Fantasy XIV and a Culture of Enabling

[Puremallace]

I think what you're seeing is a symptom of a few things, both a bit SE's fault and nothing to do with SE.

1. Lack of actual long term, goal driven content. We've had the same rinse and repeat tome farm and DDR battles since 2.0. Now everyone just sits in town and glamours up. There's a lot of validity in the common joke about glamour being FFXIV's endgame. And its not healthy for an MMO. A lot of what you're seeing with the RP nonsense is just very bored people with nothing to do but look pretty.

2. There is little to no actual social ramifications on a community level for being well... an idiot. Instances, server chats and multi world is great for a lot of reasons, but the big downside is no one knows who you are in the giant sea of constantly different people. In other MMO's, if you acted the fool, people would quickly remember your name and soon you'll find yourself missing content because no one would team up with you. That truth helped regulate player behavior far more then GM's or devs ever could.

It's not that different then real life in some ways. When you give everyone everything and little drive to do anything else... added with the fun mix of not having to face repercussions for much... humanity tends to get pretty weird.

Why in gods name do you people think everyone play this game the same way as you. You want to know the nice thing about FF14 compared to WoW? I can get a nice set of gear, see the content and not have to deal with hardcore raiders or pvp'rs.

Not everyone is playing FF14 to savage raid or do Ultimates. Why does it matter to you that people are doing Glamour in FF14 as their end game? Are they happy? I would take FF14's end game gearing system over ANY other MMO's end game gearing any day of the week.

If you want to know why these people are "idiots" then look in the mirror. FF14 actively discourages joining FC's and forming really guilds because of this horrible static system this MMO has from a period of time when it was dying. You would NEVER talk to a guildmate the way I see people talk in FF14 in Savage. You would be kicked for toxicity and held accountable by a guild leader.

[Keramory]

Why in gods name do you people think everyone play this game the same way as you. You want to know the nice thing about FF14 compared to WoW? I can get a nice set of gear, see the content and not have to deal with hardcore raiders or pvp'rs.

Not everyone is playing FF14 to savage raid or do Ultimates. Why does it matter to you that people are doing Glamour in FF14 as their end game? Are they happy? I would take FF14's end game gearing system over ANY other MMO's end game gearing any day of the week.

If you want to know why these people are "idiots" then look in the mirror. FF14 actively discourages joining FC's and forming really guilds because of this horrible static system this MMO has from a period of time when it was dying. You would NEVER talk to a guildmate the way I see people talk in FF14 in Savage. You would be kicked for toxicity and held accountable by a guild leader.

I think you may have misunderstood that my 1 was connected to 2. If I wrote it that way I do meaningfully apologize. That was not the intention.

I don't think you're an "idiot" for enjoying glamming up and sitting in town. 2 was meant to be an isolated problem we have as a community because of everything I mentioned in 2, not 1. It was simply meant to be put... there isn't true social repercussions in the community for being an idiot due to its size, instances and cross servers. That's all. An idiot in my mind is someone who acts poorly to others. Thats it. Has nothing to do with how you spend your time in game.

Now the part I have a feeling you may not like is I do stand behind my number 1. People are clearly so bored in an MMO with such a massive world that they're now just hunkering down and creating RP/ERP taverns. I blame that completely on there being little else to find interest in content wise after a few years on this game. I do think though that you're confusing me with some elite player who thinks savage is the only content worthy of dev attention. If you look at my game achievements you'll quickly find out I'm not that person lol. I just think there isn't much in terms of long goal progression of almost any kind in the game (traveling, leveling, gearing up, goals) and thats continuing to lead to crazier and crazier things were seeing in the forums now.

[Arillyn]

Now the part I have a feeling you may not like is I do stand behind my number 1. People are clearly so bored in an MMO with such a massive world that they're now just hunkering down and creating RP/ERP taverns. I blame that completely on there being little else to find interest in content wise after a few years on this game.

I blame the ERP taverns on some people who saw some Kotaku articles about someone who has a brothel and makes lots of gil with that and then were like "oh snap! I can do that too" even though it has nothing really to do with RP nor any content drought. It's about people thinking they can make a lot of gil by selling cyber sex.

Edit: On topic - if anyone is enabled it's because as someone said before - the game isn't always great about teaching some things in the game itself. Also, some people just have really bad days where nothing goes right. I know I have days like that. While I always do the best I can (I really try not to be a burden on my teammates in an encounter) there are days my coordination is just completely off.

[Puremallace]

Now the part I have a feeling you may not like is I do stand behind my number 1. People are clearly so bored in an MMO with such a massive world that they're now just hunkering down and creating RP/ERP taverns.

I think you are forgetting what is going on outside. If you live in America everything was effectively locked down for over a year. If you live in India or other places death is all around you. People are doing these activities to escape what has categorically been the worst year most of us have ever been through.

If that is what they enjoy then more power to them. From what I have learned with FF14 is that when you do not gate the gear behind some RNG garbage then people will create other forms of end game that involve interacting with other people. This is how MMO's used to be before developers realized they could milk you for game time if they put gear and skill power behind time gated RNG garbage.

Next patch lands with a new raid tier and that 500 gear you got is already trashed and replaced by 510 crafted.... its one reason many players don't bother raiding because "whats the point?"

This statement makes no sense when 530 gear exist and is better that that 510 gear. People do not raid nearly as heavily in FF14 for the original reason I listed that FC's do not serve the same purpose of organizing people into coordinated groups like guilds do in multiple other MMO's.

You can get up to 520 at your sweet slow pace and avoid dealing with the Savages/Ultimates that takes the idea of community in this MMO and throws it in the nearest dumpster. In that place it becomes about parses and literal god like perfect rotations for 15+ min fights with heavy reliance of measuring a players worth by their ACT parse vs what they contribute to a group.

Even one of the streamers who makes a lot of the guides talks down to a lot of people in this community and suggest ideas about making it so you cannot even do boss damage unless you are doing perfect rotations. She then gets confused why her stream is not growing passed a small niche of people.

If I wanted that toxic community I would install WeakAuras, RaiderIO and multiple other Adds on and go back to WoW but I stay here because a majority of this community rejects the ideology of elitism that is literally killing other MMO's.

[Catwho]

Lack of actual long term, goal driven content.

I'm going to push back against this one a little, because there is a whole lot of long term, goal driving content - it's just not necessarily battle content. Fishing alone is a mini game that could suffice as a whole stand alone game in itself. Gathering and crafting have a whole chunk of achievements that take hundreds of hours to reach. There are people who make it a point to collect all the sight seeing logs. There are people who found their happy place doing Gold Saucer mini games nonstop. (There are even people that enjoy chocobo racing, apparently, and I consider that the weakest mini game of the whole meta game.)

Sure, battle content is a slightly fancier treadmill with each expansion, but even that can be converted into long term goals if you're determined enough. I'm almost done with all of the original relic weapons, almost done with all of the anima weapons, and I'm about to plunge back into the hell of Eureka for those to boot.

[LisSquid]

You could play a single player game.

[Katie_Kitty]

You could play a single player game.

I would argue that the people who refuse to learn how to play the game should play a single-player game instead.

But then who am I kidding? There isn't a single-player game on earth that caters to people who don't wanna learn how to play the game the way XIV does. Imagine if Mario presented you with a "very easy" option every time you die. Yeah right!

FFXIV is a uniquely casually atmosphere where the very worst among us are coddled and people with standards are ostracized actively by game management.

[Jeeqbit]

There isn't a single-player game on earth that caters to people who don't wanna learn how to play the game the way XIV does. Imagine if Mario presented you with a "very easy" option every time you die. Yeah right!

Actually, a lot of games have an "easy" mode so that you can decide you don't want to have to play well to beat the game. It's pretty standard.

[Krotoan]

I would argue that the people who refuse to learn how to play the game should play a single-player game instead.

But then who am I kidding? There isn't a single-player game on earth that caters to people who don't wanna learn how to play the game the way XIV does. Imagine if Mario presented you with a "very easy" option every time you die. Yeah right!

FFXIV is a uniquely casually atmosphere where the very worst among us are coddled and people with standards are ostracized actively by game management.

Are you being sarcastic? I think you're being sarcastic but I can't tell in text. Don't all the new mario games give you like the super duper shiny suit that makes the level WAY easier if you die too much?

[MagiusNecros]

Are you being sarcastic? I think you're being sarcastic but I can't tell in text. Don't all the new mario games give you like the super duper shiny suit that makes the level WAY easier if you die too much?

Yes they do. Along with the recent Donkey Kong games.