It feels punishing to care about this game

[Minarisweet]

I come to express how frustrating for me it has been to play this game and engaging with the community.

Opinions are opinions you can agree or disagree it doesn't matter, but this game's community has a weird thing about opinions, atleast when it comes to the NA playerbase. Looking at the forums and engaging in some discord discussions people tend to be either very passive agressive or just very sarcastic, and neither are very pleasant. I've seen a few people here in the forums being polite about their answers but the most prominent tend to be meme responses or just straight up twitter dunking. At one point I started to feel like there was no other way of answering to opinions until I looked through the japanese forums and they are all usually very polite, maybe this forums and other community sides spend too much time on twitter? Im not sure.

Secondly of why its been so frustrating is that I have a lot of complaints about this game and not only does it feel bad having to deal with the passive agressive crowd but there's little to no dev interaction, its as if the devs don't read the forums anymore but then that's not really true either, they are just very picky about what they decide to do. Last crowned post we had was about one msq quest being too hard for the casual crowd, devs seem to not care about a lot of the other complaint posts that get a lot of traction.

It kinda doesn't matter if you have feedback about this game unless it also bothers the casual public it seems, and even tho the healer forums keeps asking to have healers be more than glare mages and general discussion that dungeons feel like a joke especially in old content there's gonna be no answer from the devs about that and anyone who wants to raise its voice is gonna have to put up with a lot of meme or sarcastic responses.

It's hard to care about this game.

[Shibi]

When you reach that point, it's likely time to take a break from the sewer of the forums, reddit, twitter, and faecesbook, and start looking for joy in your friends, your FC and the game. Feeling left out plus getting hung up on the 'direct' nature of Western people will just push you into sadness.

I hope you can find that spark of happiness that rekindles your joy in the game.

[Minarisweet]

This is very heart warming... I'll follow your advice. Thank you.

[van_arn]

I don’t think the Japanese forums are quite the bastion of civility some of us think they are. Weren’t they a dumpster fire recently over samurai and zenos?

[Jandor]

The forums seem to be the de facto hang out for people that don't particularly like the game. Which is a bit odd really, given you have to pay to be here.

[Minarisweet]

I don’t think the Japanese forums are quite the bastion of civility some of us think they are. Weren’t they a dumpster fire recently over samurai and zenos?

I don't know about this but I remember that a complaint yoship had was some japanese people saying bad stuff but it was mostly on the japanese twitter posts, I'll try to research about that.

[ryouma17]

dont be a snowflake, if your gonna use the internet your gonna have to learn to not be offended by every tiny thing

[Arillyn]

There are a number of known trolls on these forums and they can be quite unpleasant. But, sometimes people just get tired of the same complaints over and over in different threads - but about the same thing - from usually the same people. And some of the complaints are frankly - silly and things the devs have already addressed in live letters or interviews that they won't be changing. Could people be more polite? Yep. Will everyone be? Nope.

Not to say all complaints are silly though. There certainly are valid concerns and complaints. But the forums do seem to have an over-abundance of people who just really seem to hate the game yet they keep paying for it as they are here on the forums. It's kind of weird to me. There are lots more people who never come to the forums at all. People I play with really aren't on here and they are enjoying the game and just living their best Eorzean lives.

But online interactions in general can be pretty meh. People hide behind the screens and say things they wouldn't say to someone's face. If it's getting to you, take a break is my unsolicited advice.

Also, the devs as far as I know don't come here. They rely on the community reps to pull info from the non-Japanese forums and send to them as English/German/French, etc aren't the devs first language. Our community reps do seem to be absent mostly now though. They USED to interact more in the early days. But not anymore.

[sharknado]

There will be as many "bad" players as in any other game. The only difference is the game is actually moderated so the bad behavior is still there just expressed outside of the game. And sadly the game is to large for the devs to respond or see everyone. They will have an even in Feb and the questions gathered in a dedicated forum thread are quite good, especially when some of them get high upvote count and so on. So things are still rolling and there will always be some positivity around development of the game.

[Equitable_Remedy]

It kinda doesn't matter if you have feedback about this game unless it also bothers the casual public it seems

This forum/Reddit/Discord/etc. are all small, self-selecting groups and do not, in any way, represent the player base as a whole—the vast majority of players don't post on any of those. I cannot stress this enough.

I'm sure that you have a lot of feelings about a lot of things, and maybe you even think that everyone must feel the same way that you do. I can promise you that everyone does not feel the same way you do, even if "everyone" on this forum/Reddit/Discord/etc. post the same thing as you. (Of course, everyone doesn't post the same thing as you; you just dismiss anyone who disagrees as "the passive aggressive crowd" or "the casual public.")