Role players please DO NOT do this!

[Seera1024]

Report them. They can be apprehended for this. While they were trying to be playful it shouldn't be done with random people you don't know especially when you queue randomly. As for the ToS, 3.2 ~

I don't think it's reportable unless one or the more occur:

1. The RP is hindering or slowing progress in the duty and they've not gotten permission beforehand for it, especially if it will affect their ability to actually kill things.

2. They've been asked to stop and they continue to do so.

3. The RP they are doing violates some other aspect of the TOS.

The OP's emoting back could have been seen by the RP'ers as a consent via RP'ing back.

Edit to add:

If I were the RP'ers and reported by someone and brought in front of a GM, I would have brought up the OP's emoting back and assuming that that meant they were open to RP'ing and that their character was mute. That I would have stopped had someone said they were uncomfortable and that myself and my RP partner were just trying to make some additional fun for the group by RP'ing.

[Agrios]

For all of you who claim to have anxiety and are telling OP to "Grow up" or get over it, you should be aware that there are very different levels of anxiety. What is a very simple thing to do for you can be very difficult for someone else.

[Puc]

For all of you who claim to have anxiety and are telling OP to "Grow up" or get over it, you should be aware that there are very different levels of anxiety. What is a very simple thing to do for you can be very difficult for someone else.

Im pretty sure saying "nah" or emoting "no" can't be that hard since they said they were emoting. On top of the listed blacklist/turn chat off/ignore it. Just excuses for something so harmless that shouldn't really be worth this forum post. On top of having anxiety to not say no but no anxiety to make this thread.

[Fyrebrand]

OP, I'm with you on this one. That DF experience sounds super weird, and I would not feel comfortable in there either. If those players are willing to inflict their RP nonsense on random strangers in Duty Finder, they seem pretty selfish and careless, and I would not reasonably expect them to respect my wishes if I asked them to stop. On the contrary, I would fear becoming a target of harassment. Maybe that's pessimistic of me, but this is the internet after all. No anxiety diagnosis needed for that take!

[Aniise]

I don't really get why the topic of this thread seems to have shifted from talking about the experience of the OP to shaming them for their anxiety.
Anxiety varies in severity, in it's cause and in it's symptoms from person to person. If the anxiety of the OP is this severe, they'll probably know they need help and/or already are getting it, without random strangers on the internet telling them to.

Now about what happened,...of course under normal circumstances, you would expect people to speak up and tell the RP'ers to stop if it would bother you.

However, I think _normally_ RP'ers know that stuff like this is not okay and wouldn't rope strangers into their roleplay, no matter of what nature it may be. If you really want to roleplay in a dungeon go in unsynced, with a party of 4 roleplayers or use the dungeon viewer mode. Otherwise, it's just plain rude.
But then again, I'm from the 'prudish' EU where we don't socialize at all. So it might be just my own opinion.

[AtlasS]

Welcome to 2021. Where people get anxiety over by simply being spoken to lmao

[DeaconMoore]

Look anytime you get role-players in your dungeon runs you just got to remind them that they aren't really playing the game right now and need to come back to reality. Their family loves them and wants them to come home from the hospital but that can't happen until they give up their delusions of playing FFXIV. They just need to accept the reality that SE flopped the game and the relaunch of ARR was a failure. No amount of pretending that the game wasn't shut down by SE will change the reality that FFXIV is dead and has been for years now.

[IdowhatIwant]

I was tanking a roulette with randoms and got Aetherochemical Research Facility. There was a couple of players in that run that were role playing as if they were doing their own storyline type of thing and kept trying to rope me and the other player into their role playing. Neither of us was interested as they should've been able to tell when we weren't talking.

To make matters worse these people kept poking hints at us like 'These warriors are mighty quiet.' or 'I wonder why they're not talking...' This drove my anxiety up really bad. And I just kept doing emotes at them to try to keep the mood light between the entire party. Their persistence felt like borderline harassment to my oversensitive ass. But I cant get that upset since I didn't ask them to stop in the first place. The other party member was not having any of it. You should've seen how fast he left after the dungeon was over. Left via the duty menu so quickly he did.

The run was not pleasant for me at all. I do role play but mainly with friends, and definitely not in duty finder dungeons with randoms I literally met 5 seconds ago. So please... don't try to force/rope other people into your role play. Or at least just me.

Follow up:
This is not the entire post as I quoted and mentioned some people who aren't relevant to the conclusion I came to. If you want to see it it's linked. I'm done here.

I prayer for you. I think you will be fine in the long run. I do not believe this will cause you any PTSD. You may need to discuss this with a therapist though cause this is one of the dumbest most petty things I have read in a while.

[Eriane_Elis]

The only weird RP that occasionally happens is people asking you for feet pics. To that end, you should politely but sternly tell them no. lol But seriously, people with super crazy anxiety need to just disable chat if they can't handle telling others "no". It's perfectly acceptable for people to joke around or talk in party or even roleplay. It's ENCOURAGED as part of the MMO experience. It's like going to a D&D session and crying that people are roleplaying with you. Seriously, there are some really weird people in 2021...

[iNSiPiD1]

...The point of me even making this thread was to hopefully get anyone who had thoughts of doing this to not do so in the first place...

No. Just no. Allowing people to shape the behavior of others because of their "feelings" is not a good idea. If two people want to join a dungeon and try and have a dialogue, so long as it's not vulgar or threatening in nature, they should be free to do that.

In the same exact way you're free to hide the chat, ask them to stop, or mute them, they are free to play the game in a way that they enjoy.

I sincerely hope you see the danger in trying to shape the world into something that doesn't cause you discomfort. That will literally never happen, and trying to do so (and inevitably failing) will only bring you more suffering.