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

[Xaruko_Nexume]

This. Final Fantasy XIV has helped me understand more than anything that humans are naturally competitive, self-interested, and crave dominance and power at the expense of others. It’s a tough lesson to learn, and it’s even more jarring that people pretend that the FFXIV player base is a paradise. It’s not, it’s just as savage as WoW or other games. What Square Enix does is give you the ability to opt out of that interaction while also being able to play the game with other people. If you want to unleash the social Darwinism simulator that is the greater FFXIV community, people are welcome to do so at their own will outside of the game. If only we had more robust in-game chat features like a persistent chat log, offline tells, and voice chat so we can kick Discord to the curb (a pipe dream, but alas). Those features would really allow FFXIV to fulfill the vision that Square Enix has of being a friendly community.

omg an FFXIV with in game voice chat and community tools that are actually good? Be still my heart! You are describing online utopia.

[LittleImp]

People simply don't like to be told they're wrong, regardless of how nice you are. Effectively receiving criticism is a learned behavior. This is basic human nature, and you will encounter it in any space, be it work, school or a video game like FFXIV.

The FFXIV community is weird in comparison to other games though, in that here we blame the person reaching out and giving the advice rather than the person who becomes aggressive after receiving it. This is extremely disheartening to many people who are genuinely trying to reach out and help other players; I've seen many, many chatlogs and cases where someone is being as nice as humanly possible while giving advice, and the other person still launches into a tirade and bitterly attacks them. I've even seen it happen in settings where people willingly submitted themselves for criticism. I know a lot of FFXIV educators that have quit teaching entirely because they encountered one too many cases of this kind of thing.

Personally, I switched from teaching pug learning parties to taking on individual, dedicated learners. I still get the occasional crazy, but the environment is much more controlled and all of the communication takes place on a third-party platform. Improved my teaching experience ten-fold.