FF14 and toxic positivity

[HyoMinPark]

Civil conversation is possible if only it's participants resist interjecting their opinions based on feelings. Facts are what's important; feelings are not.

Yes and no. Facts are important, but feelings can also be applicable and wielded in a way to promote civil and healthy conversation. A lot of valid criticisms of this game are based in both facts and feelings. It ultimately depends on the subject matter how much weight you would give the latter in terms of consideration. I don’t think dismissing them outright is the way to go.

[Kaurhz]

I think the ability to have decent discourse about this subject would fail more so because of a lack of maturity, and perhaps even a lack of willingness to admit to poor behaviors from those who actually engage in them. But this isn’t something exclusive to this game or this forum, but just people in general. If I had to give a reason for why discourse on this topic would fail, it would be that.

Even if it is not a majorly prevalent or a pervasive phenomenon in FFXIV, I don’t believe that should immediately discredit the idea of discussing it. Same with other forms of toxicity that exist in this game (from toxic casualism to toxic elitism—they both exist in the game, and are quite prevalent in their own right). Meaningful discourse can still be had even if the rate of toxic positivity is low. As I said above, it relies more heavily on the maturity of those discussing it—not on things like rate of occurrence or prevalence.

But these are just my opinions that I’m stating while waiting for my files to load at work. They more than likely amount to nothing at the end of the day—just things I was thinking about what I saw the thread.

Sure, and this is a woeful issue from a lot of people. Not just those that are vocal, but equally amongst those whom are less vocal. That being said, discussing the idea and prospective of it is 1 thing entirely, but creating a thread or blanketing the bulk of the community with such a tag is an entirely different matter. Heck, by all means create a thread discussing the importance of critiquing a game, both what you enjoy and what you do not. No use trying to create woefully inaccurate generalisations.

As per above poster, many people are reacting on the basis of emotion and not on the basis of fact, and some folk just don't have the emotional fortitude to handle a disagreement with their criticism without feeling as if their criticism is being oppressed, or that they're being called out for being a troll, as highlighted in the OPs key point, which acting on emotion is fine, but don't be surprised when people reciprocate with their own emotions. That being said, if you're called a troll and in particular of a certain set of individuals then it is more than likely because you have done so in the past. If you want people to take your opinions seriously then you ought not to gain a rep for being a troll in the first place. Just some of my closing thoughts on the basis of this particular thread.

[BaconBits]

Civil conversation is possible if only it's participants resist interjecting their opinions based on feelings. Facts are what's important; feelings are not.

You fool, you activated my trap card!

[ZephyrMenodora]

Sometimes I think "toxic positivity" is inappropriately applied to some players who are just simply content with the state of the game. There is always a time and a place for critique, and room for improvement. But there are also the realities and limitations of game development in regards to time and/or volume.

I've played some MMOs that I truly ended up feeling betrayed by. Like Aion, for example. Aion also had an update where they removed our ability to apply pre-order bonuses that we paid for to new characters. I never thought I'd see the day when a game actually took back pre-order bonuses they were offering for people to invest in the game early.

They had an update removing 1/3rd of the game world. They removed Run Speed and Cast/Attack Speed on basic armors that we've had for years and instead moved those bonuses over to "transforms" that you needed to apply for those same effects. The best ones people would spend $1000s of dollars to try to get as getting a transform was very RNG. These transforms also overrode your character's appearance (which a lot of us spent a lot of time and money on) unless you spend more money (in game or RL) to block the transform. They nerfed in-game money generation and item sharing to get people to pay for this with RL money. They often had P2W events where swiping your credit card gave you huge advantages with either RNG enchanting gear, or even XP (during an expansion where they added tons of XP grind that was higher than normal).

Due to some of some of these awful and unscrupulous behavior I've witnessed in other games, a lot of the criticism here to me isn't "that bad." Sure improvements are always great, but nothing here rises to the level of me being completely unhappy with how the game is run.

When it gets to that point, I'll say my piece and then probably leave the game like I did for Aion - as an Aion player who pre-ordered before launch and literally spent $5K+ on cosmetics and in-game events of RL money.

[Kolsykol]

People having opinions is fine.
The problem is that most people ( who are loud online at least ) seem to be completely incapable of having a negative opinion without being an asshat about it.

You don't like sexualized content?
That's fine, you don't have to like it.
However in most cases people who don't like it have a tendency to take their views on it and project it unto other people and judge them negatively while at the same time talk about it in an extremely derogatory way.
Almost every time it devolves into assumptions and insults about age and motives etc based on absolutely nothing other than their own pov and with a complete unwillingness to even attempt to view things from another pov.
It's completely in bad faith and it revolves entirely around being a complete turd about it, it's no longer just an opinion it becomes more personal and trying to push it in peoples face and shame them.
And I think it's often the same with quite a lot of negative takes on FFXIV that gets a lot of push-back.
Usually the reason why it gets push-back is because of how it was delivered.
I have negative opinions on FFXIV too and I've talked about them, but I've never had people lose their mind and go after me for it.

I think people are just way too hostile with their negative opinions and it often comes across as the person having some deep problems with narcissism where they think everyone is stupid or a bad person for liking something they don't.
And then there's also a lot of stuff being thrown at the devs talking about how lazy or horrible they supposedly are, accusing a dev of being lazy is actually a pretty big deal imo especially with how hard most of them work for not all that great pay often times.
It might not seem like a big deal to you to call a dev lazy, but I think most people who have some understanding of what goes into game development knows how insulting that is.
Not to mention that most of the time it's just completely out of their hands to begin with and they might even agree but just aren't given the time and resources to do anything about it.

If you're not antagonistic and judgy or whatever with your negative opinions I really don't think you'll upset people, there's some very extreme people who will get upset regardless.
But I don't think they really matter all that much.
I do agree to some extent that toxic positivity is a thing and I see it a lot on sites like Reddit especially where people either like or hate a game and there's no inbetween with any comment going against the grain getting downvoted.
But I rly feel like people complain quite a lot about FFXIV and are quite critical.
And usually the former has to do with recency bias and hype too, Elden Ring is a good example of this good luck criticizing that game right now and it's worth criticizing it's not a perfect game and it does have problems.
But wait a couple of months and it's going to become more acceptable to do.

[Illmaeran]

Sometimes I think "toxic positivity" is inappropriately applied to some players who are just simply content with the state of the game. There is always a time and a place for critique, and room for improvement. But there are also the realities and limitations of game development in regards to time and/or volume.

I'm one of those people that's generally satisfied with the state of the game. Given the sort of content I like to do and my general level of play, there's really nothing that strikes me as super important to fix. This doesn't mean I don't acknowledge certain things need to be improved, but my overall satisfaction and understanding/empathy with constraints outside of the development team's control makes me rather willing to give CBU3 the benefit of the doubt and/or defend the general state of things. I've had aggressive cancer and have undergone equally aggressive treatment, so the idea of Soken continuing to work through his treatment hits home. I know just how difficult that really is and give the guy a lot of credit for his persistence and overall fortitude. Call me a white knight for that if you will; to me it's being able to sympathize and empathize with the man in a way the vast majority of the player base (thankfully) can't. I'll defend the guy for that until the day this game gets shut down.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I'm one of those people that's generally satisfied with the state of the game. Given the sort of content I like to do and my general level of play, there's really nothing that strikes me as super important to fix. This doesn't mean I don't acknowledge certain things need to be improved, but my overall satisfaction and understanding/empathy with constraints outside of the development team's control makes me rather willing to give CBU3 the benefit of the doubt and/or defend the general state of things. I've had aggressive cancer and have undergone equally aggressive treatment, so the idea of Soken continuing to work through his treatment hits home. I know just how difficult that really is and give the guy a lot of credit for his persistence and overall fortitude. Call me a white knight for that if you will; to me it's being able to sympathize and empathize with the man in a way the vast majority of the player base (thankfully) can't. I'll defend the guy for that until the day this game gets shut down.

I am so sorry to hear that you had experienced cancer. My dear friend got sudden aggressive breast cancer and passed away just a few weeks ago, leaving behind 3 young children. I really hope you are all okay now as I know how debilitating that can be.

I agree that life experiences like this can really put things into perspective. Picking and choosing battles and treating others with respect and kindness where you can.

I think recent experiences for myself is also why Endwalkers themes of finding meaning and value in life, and appreciating the time we have and our friends and loved ones really resonated with me on a very deep level.

[Illmaeran]

I am so sorry to hear that you had experienced cancer. I really hope you are all okay now as I know how debilitating that can be.

Thank you for that, I'm sorry to hear about your friend. I got incredibly lucky and got the best of a very bad situation; a number of people on my floor who got the same regimen I did died after treatment. It worked out that surgical removal did the trick so I'm still around today to play the game! If surgery hadn't been possible I'd be in the Lifestream right now.

You're exactly right; picking ones battles, choosing empathy, and being kind are more important than many realize. I won't lie, there were some points in EW that hit me particularly hard given my health history. Knowing that Soken was writing some of the music while going through what he went through made me break down more than I would care to admit a few times during particularly poignant musical moments.

[Carin-Eri]

another low quality troll bait thread. please stop feeding

Yeah, even as someone new to the forum I'm seeing a pattern here

[Annihilism]

I'm cool with the toxic casuals being rabidly defensive about the game, FF14 is an actual good MMO after all, but all I ask is if someone asks you to do mechanics properly that you don't immediately feel like you've been violated. If the casual player base put as much energy in defending the game as they do in actually playing it we would be happier. It's crazy that I hesitate to tell tanks to interject enemies, plz just play the game decently and I'll leave your FF14 perfection fantasy intact.