"Everyone's so open and friendly" is a lie

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Community reviews are like steam reviews, no?

The more positive reviews you have, the more "positively rated" you are.

People have, on average, more positive interactions with the community than negative, so it is seen positively.

That's doesn't mean there aren't "bad reviews" where people had bad interactions. It just means there are fewer instances.


In 10 years of playing, I can probably count on one hand the times where I had truly terrible experiences, and then some meh experiences are more numerous. Rest tend to be positive.

Some of my longest lived friendships come from people I've met in XIV.

[Juzjuzz]

Well that's a silly sentiment. How should we describe the community then? "Awful"? That's inaccurate, to say the least. "Just okay"? Also inaccurate. Its not "meh"; its good. This community is a good one, usually. And "great" and "good" are used interchangeably by many people depending on one's mood and outlook on life at the time of typing. There's absolutely nothing inaccurate with saying its great if your experience with it is such. Saying its great doesn't mean its without flaw, it means its intrinsically good and lives up to that most of the time. Something can be great without being perfect, you know.

No you can only talk from your perspective, your perspective doesn't show the whole community. So saying it's okay is a better move imo.
With greater expectations you just create more room for dissapointment.
The community is okay imo, there's a lot of nice players sure but not every single one if them will see you or react in a good manner when there's a problem coming from them or you.

EDIT: Reread your post. You do say you don't think the community is bad, just you're seen worse. So perhaps the issue I have with what you're saying is you and I view the connotation of "great" vs "just okay" differently?

Yeah and everyone else actually so you can't control what other ppl will think when you say "it's good", so it's better to say not too mutch imo.

[Alleluia]

No you can only talk from your perspective, your perspective doesn't show the whole community. So saying it's okay is a better move imo.
With greater expectations you just create more room for dissapointment.
The community is okay imo, there's a lot of nice players sure but not every single one if them will see you or react in a good manner when there's a problem coming from them or you.

Okay, I can respect that pov.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

After having been here since June or July I can say this is the biggest lie that this game's player base tells and I am sick of it. This entire problem is promoted by the heavy handedness of this games harassment policies, making it impossible to have fights and arguments in a attempt to resolve problems that instead encourages passive aggressive behavior that is just as detrimental if not worse. At least when there is fights and arguments people know where another stands, what the problem is instead of attempting to ghost and being child like. If someone has done something wrong, no matter how petty one may perceive it no one is allowed to be critical.

I am absolutely disgusted, and I hate this concept of people wanting to talk, be social and make friends one minute but without warning having done nothing people suddenly refuse to speak. It's flat out hypocritical and disingenuous.

Arguments most often just lead nowhere, simply with two people pissed off. If you cannot be constructive in your criticism in game then that's nobody's fault but your own. You can call out someone messing up a mechanic without being rude about it, I helped sprouts plenty and they most often were happy for the advice or reminders if they forgot something. I had one guy be rude and prissy about it and that's it. Is every person in the community nice? No, but on the whole I think ffxiv is a lot nicer of a community than WoW, LoL, hell even my time trying to discuss a suggestion of a PvP toggle with Souls players resulted in trolling and vitriol.. you'd think I asked to kill their baby.

I don't think the policies are heavy handed at all, I am playing 3 years now and on the whole the experience is positive. It sounds like you deal with so much passive aggression in your family life that when it rears its head in game it is more triggering for you. You can have a discussion in party chat over mechanics, but what exactly do you really need to be fighting over? It's not that deep, if I found myself stuck in a party with hard headed people that can't take advice and I know they will NEVER clear without taking that advice.. I will just leave the instance. Save myself the headache. You don't get to just be toxic with people because you don't like the passive aggression, if someone says something snarky and mean you don't then punch them in response. You can either respond in kind, block them, try and be more level headed in your argument or straight up just leave and let them be someone else's problem.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Why yes, I am openly hostile and aggressive to people I dislike, why do you ask?



Passive aggressive people are weaklings :Y

Idk man, if the outright aggressive dude irl reacts that way, say with violence to a snarky comment. Your ass goes to jail and he laughs as you do. Weakling or not becomes kind of irrelevant irl or in game, you are the loser stuck with the punishment. So in that sense they are the powerful one and you are not.
Passive aggression also infuriates me, but acting like outright aggression is better is not right either. Learn to express yourself in healthy ways. Succumbing to rage and letting it overtake you hardly seems "strong" to me. At least there is some tact in passive aggression. Ik you memeing but yeah.. The argument is silly.

[Nethereal]

I try to have meaningful civil conversation with people in-game but if they're not receptive I just disengage, they're clearly not here to converse with anyone that doesn't have a likeminded opinion.

[Kyuuen]

This just in, we're all thieving, murdering, rapists who obey the rules because the punishment is harsh. More at eleven!

If your take on things is that this community is only nice due to the "heavy handed rules" well.. then you're just wrong. Like any large community, this one won't be without it's toxic parts, but to say that it exists only due to the rule set is a bit BS.. unless you're going to also try to say that my above hyperbole is also true of everyone.

[Novae]

Some people here haven't been teabagged enough in their e-life to claim that ff14 community is toxic.

[TheMightyMollusk]

No no, we can't use the T-word anymore. We have to call it a "victory crouch" now.

[DBriggs304]

Imagine having laws to prevent crime and no one to enforce them. You have basically an Azeroth situation.

The argument here is that when people are critical a lot of these passionate and "passionate" players say garbage and utter verbal diarrhea that isn't otherwise constructive to the situation. Especially in a time where there's a massive new player base and they're learning and trying to get a grip on the roles they play. You've played for not even half a year - I've been in this for 10+ and I've run WoW side by side. At least XIV has a decent amount of players who are patient - but instead you want to be an edgelord because you have an issue with "being nice" to other people and want your ability to tear into someone.

Half a year. And you're pissed off because of a "play nice and don't be a dick" rule when you're clearly complaining the team is taking your "ability" away from being a dick.

You didn't get along with other kids in school I take it?

That's how I'm reading your point. I've had 80 dozen arguments with people in game and it's not gotten me kicked out or warned at all. Because I'm not calling people "Idiots" or "losers" when they are clearly struggling with their role or there's a mechanic they don't understand. Simply saying "watch a video" is the dickhead passive aggressive way of putting someone down too. That just discourages potentially up and coming roles to just give up when they could possibly be good at the role, but that guy in Alliance C is going "Yo here's a link to this YouTuber, go watch the video and requeue after you understand" before getting vote/kicked by their group.

There will be times when I link the Discord to my FC and be like "Yo! Get in here! I'mma walk you thru this!" and believe it or not, 98% of the time they do, they listen, they learn and I just made a friend for me and my FC mates.

This is the farthest thing from a perfect community but a majority of us aren't going to sit there and "take it" by someone who hasn't had the tenure to know how actually screwed the community is. It's a far cry from perfect but a good majority are on the same page.

So yeah. Maybe consider another community or something. This doesn't seem to be your game.



Don't kid yourself. It really isn't. There's a huge amount of room for improvement.

It's not as bad or as dramatic as the OP makes it. It definitely needs a lot of work. I like this community but I really dislike the amount of toxicity and entitlement in the years that have flared up. People who are willfully ignorant to the bigger topics at hand aren't band-aiding any issues or do any favors by sugarcoating it.

You summed it up perfectly.
Thank You!