Toxicity and Community

[ReynTime]

I've been playing WoW since Vanilla, when I was a child, the game as a whole was like XIV around the time I started playing which was 3.1 in HW, it was a close knit community on each server and over all everyone was nice and helpful, the game a bit more difficult but overall a worth while experience. There were some bad actors but ultimately none that were extreme, just mean spirited people who may ninja your loot or just say something hurtful, but thats life, you can always re-run the dungeon and always blacklist mean people. Now you may be wondering what this has to do with XIV. Well WoW grew, almost seemingly became popular overnight,With that growth we gained peoples from all walks of life and our close knit communities began to shatter and fade away, the game was bigger, our enviornments changed.

The same is happening to XIV as we speak, with this popularity and growth, a lot of the people who think things shouldn;t change start to act, start being tribal even to newer players. They were mean, and even chased away people flocking into WoW from Guild Wars 1, ina similar way to how a lot of the people here in XIV were with Asmongold, It got so bad the GMs had to step in and ban players. To say history repeats itself would almost be appropriate, but no this sint history, this is th enatural growth of an MMO, no matter how nice or good your community is, this is how these things naturally pan out, My advice to those who would listen is to look to older MMOs and how they handled it if the peoples here in XIV are stuggling with how on their own. The Popularity of XIV will attract many, and many from within will show just how much they care, in the worst ways possible.

This is a really good point.

[ReynTime]

want a reward go do the content the same way as everyone else... (such a toxc opinion because i want the reward handed to me)
want to do content set up a practice party in party finder same way everyone else does. (such a toxic opinion because i want to be carried)
hey you'd play your job much better if you did xyz rotation (stop telling me how to play you toxic elitist you dont pay my sub)
content is too difficult make it easier... "well you could you know stop watching netflix and actually try". (thats so toxic i dont play the game to be a second job)
i want a legacy chocobo mount because you have one (so toxic to keep it exclusive)
housing is toxic (cos i cant get a house....)

Literally never seen that confusion at all. The carry complaints are about people who don't pull their own weight, don't use essences, etc, and still want the rewards or clears.

[LittleImp]

You can find toxicity anywhere, in all areas of life.

However, the FFXIV community is special in that there is a widely held belief that it is 'better'. All this serves to do is cause the community to readily sweep incidents under the rug, or engage in victim blaming. If you do end up being the victim of Toxicity in FFXIV, it can feel really amplified because of this.

People that go out of their way to project how much of a good person they are usually turn out to be some of the worst people (There're some great examples of that on this very board). Virtue signaling is extremely rampant in the FFXIV community and often goes unquestioned, allowing noxious individuals to flip the script and frame themselves as moral paragons in the community. Amusingly enough, some of the most outspoken of these people are actually known bad actors from the tumblr days, who've moved to FFXIV twitter and continue to ply their craft and instigate the same drama.

[strawberrycake]

It may be helpful to state the definition.

Toxic - very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way.

Its why I used the streamer and youtuber examples, its a lot more closer to the original meaning when compared to how its been used a lot lately as a buzzword. Those people were being fairly toxic. But the people harassing Asmongold? Within that original definition no they were just being annoying.

So at this point we have to look at intent, and with what we've seen if we're to beleieve its true, they had a toxic intent, tho the means by which they did what they did isn't toxic. To look at the base term within the MMO space Toxic is used more so as short hand for someone being rude or mean. Some behaviours may fall into the actual dictionary term of Toxic, but in my experience with the older FF community and WoWs community I would say those behaviours are usually from people who arent putting others within healthy situations, being manupulative, gas lighting etc. But I would also say within my own experiences such situations were rare™ as many were embarassed to speak about it openly back then, or simply wanted to move on from said situations.

So The shorthand term used in the MMO space has changed a lot over the years, and the text book term where in someone is being: "Toxic - very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way" is something thats a lot more nuanced then what most people realized. And I hope more people can realize that, and stop using the term for something as simple as "Hey you shouldn't be only spamming medica 1" , when something more like what People have done within MMOs for a long time which is manipulate people for their own ends is more so Toxic.

[strawberrycake]

You can find toxicity anywhere, in all areas of life.

However, the FFXIV community is special in that there is a widely held belief that it is 'better'. All this serves to do is cause the community to readily sweep incidents under the rug, or engage in victim blaming. If you do end up being the victim of Toxicity in FFXIV, it can feel really amplified because of this.

People that go out of their way to project how much of a good person they are usually turn out to be some of the worst people (There're some great examples of that on this very board). Virtue signaling is extremely rampant in the FFXIV community and often goes unquestioned, and allowing noxious individuals to flip the script and frame themselves as moral paragons in the community. Amusingly enough, some of the most outspoken of these people are actually known bad actors from the tumblr days, who've moved to FFXIV twitter and continue to ply their craft and instigate the same drama.

Also this yes, a lot of this. And when you speak out they actively go out their way to harm you and even make you quit the game.

[linayar]

You can find toxicity anywhere, in all areas of life.

However, the FFXIV community is special in that there is a widely held belief that it is 'better'. All this serves to do is cause the community to readily sweep incidents under the rug, or engage in victim blaming. If you do end up being the victim of Toxicity in FFXIV, it can feel really amplified because of this.

Victim blaming and sweeping under the rug are serious accusations to make when there are people within the community, both content creators and posters on the official forum and elsewhere, who are speaking out against the people disturbing Asmongold's play.

And one of the support for the community being better is that, when people are behaving badly, there is the ToS in place. So it presumes that there would be people behaving badly. So pointing out that bad people exist doesn't negate people's claims that FFXIV's community is better. It's also subjective as to what constitutes "better."

[Dzian]

Literally never seen that confusion at all. The carry complaints are about people who don't pull their own weight, don't use essences, etc, and still want the rewards or clears.

are your eyes closed?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Savage-content.

less than 15 seconds skimming general discussion and you'll find this.. and thats just 1 example.if you spent a few minutes looking youd find dozens..

maybe not specific but as i said i did try and generakize the examples abit rahter than having 10 or 20 examples that were basically the same just generalized it into 1 or 2.

but even in that thread about DR and essences you see it.. anyone who expects players to use essences is basically toxic...

[LittleImp]

Victim blaming and sweeping under the rug are serious accusations to make when there are people within the community, both content creators and posters on the official forum and elsewhere, who are speaking out against the people disturbing Asmongold's play.

And one of the support for the community being better is that, when people are behaving badly, there is the ToS in place. So it presumes that there would be people behaving badly. So pointing out that bad people exist doesn't negate people's claims that FFXIV's community is better. It's also subjective as to what constitutes "better."

The Asmongold issue has been a bit of a turning point, and there are many more people speaking out than usual. It shouldn't take being a streamer with 200k viewers for people to take your harassment seriously.

But people have also been blaming Asmongolds own fans and tripping over themselves to justify why he deserves to be harassed in almost every single thread on this topic, be it here or on the subreddit. Twitter is even more insane, and private discords more insane still.

I watched my SO get stalked and harassed by some of the same twitter accounts now organizing against Asmongold. Every time I brought her story up, here or elsewhere, I was told it was probably her fault and that I was withholding details that would incriminate her. One user, who is still active on these boards and not a troll, even baselessly implied she must be racist without knowing literally any details of the situation outside of her being an artist lol.

People in the community go out of their way to try to maintain the illusion that the community is perfect, even at the direct expense of people with legitimate grievances. Hopefully this will become less of an issue as it's brought to light by the Asmon situation.

[linayar]

I was withholding details that would incriminate her.

Ok, I think you can understand that the difference is people can see Asmongold on stream.

Nonetheless, yes, I would say people who treat Asmongold differently than a non-streamer can be hypocritical. If there is a lack of detail, then it is better to be neutral rather than be accusing of anyone.

That said, I still wouldn't say that's the case for everyone, nor is it necessarily a case of maintaining an illusion. As said, SE's infamous(?) ToS is proof that they expect bad behaviors within the game. There is no illusion to maintain.

[MiaShino]

I originally wrote a big'ol wall of the words and letters like I usually do because I enjoy writing stuffs. Buuuuut the forums here have strict character limit so I shall employ the twitter method.

The people do not change, only the scenery does. FF14 has the same troglodytes every single other online community from Everquest to Overwatch does. There is only one difference, the strict terms of service make calling them out impossible.

I have managed to convince over fifteen family members and friends to try FF14 and all have experienced similar things. Tank griefing toto-rak with all level 80 crafters because "this is the only gear I have". They ran into every single poison pod even the ones in side rooms... Who griefs sprouts during their fourth dungeon?

My uncle who barely plays anymore only made it to Haukke Manor where he was berated by a mentor for the crime of opening chests. This mentor queued with their healer friend who caused three wipes by using only Medica during pulls.

Other instance the tank was asked by friends to stop fricken chain pulling because they could not melee easily while moving in.. Tam Tara. You know, the second dungeon in the game! No no they were not big pulling they were chain pulling. Grab group stop then move then stop then move before pack is dead. Their response, "no time". Would not even open the chests right in front of bosses.

New players do not care how many times you tell them the community is good or better, they will stop playing because they are not seeing it.