New Player Flag... off?

[Breakbeat]

Not the stated reason, no. The group last night claimed it was because I wasn't contributing DPS due to not using an aoe (which I didn't have access to). And the previous time, the reasoning was "wasting our time by watching a cut-scene".

You do realize that in this game, that kind of stuff is actionable, right? Both of these, if they are as you described, fall under misuse of the vote-to-kick system. So, next time people kick you out of a group for "watching a cutscene," or not using AoE that your character doesn't have access to, file a report.

I mean, IMVHO it's not worth filing a complaint. But it's certainly more productive than coming here to complain.

On topic: I've rarely seen a nicer, more reasonable group than the FFXIV community. For better or worse, I've spent the majority of my life behind a computer screen, communicating with people out there on the internet (since the days you had to dial in with a state-of-the-art 1200 baud modem), so I have many thousands of hours of experience with different online communities. The FFXIV community is like a glowing angel with a halo compared to the forums and community of "the other leading MMO".

- Discussion here is more civil, constructive, and on-topic than what is commonly seen. I'm comparing this to the last two MMOs I played; my post counts on their forums are some 8,000 total, so I have a fair idea of how folks tend to behave, how they react and what topics they like to discuss.

- Random groups in this game are far more friendly, considerate, helpful, and positive than elsewhere. My sample size on this, so far, is admittedly quite small. ~175 hours of gameplay, ~50 random groups including light and full party stuff, trials and raids, normal and hard modes. Out of those fifty groups, I've been greeted maybe 48 times, thanked about the same number, made a lot of mistakes, did a couple dumb things, and learned as I went instead of looking things up. I've not had a single complaint from another player yet. To the contrary - I've had other players try to help out when I'm having trouble nearly every time I'm doing something noobish and dumb. This leads me to believe my gaming experience won't change drastically as I spend more time here.

/shrug. YMMV I guess.