What has gotten into the community these days?

[IdowhatIwant]

IThe OP isn't talking about criticism the OP is talking about '' spewing vitriol ''.
Do you not understand the difference?

Sure I do, it is the term of the week that forum users are repeating constantly to describe criticism.

[MellowMink]

It does feel like some (again, some, not most) newer thread comments have gotten more toxic than usual lately, whether that includes comments that involve passive-aggressive remarks, or even some cases of outright bigotry within certain large threads. Regardless, there’s a report feature, and I really hope that the forum moderators more actively address comments that clearly violate the terms of use with regards to its pretty straightforward notes about harassment. People shouldn’t feel uncomfortable on the official forums.

[Ronduwil]

Interesting to see people taking criticism of the game as a personal attack.

It goes both ways, though. If we dare to say that we're fine with the status quo, or if we even suggest that maybe we should be considerate of others in our random groups, we're somehow guilty of toxic positivity, whatever that means. I've even been called smug and stupid on these forums for saying that I'm bad at the game and appreciate that the current difficulty level doesn't shut me out of content.

[StriderShinryu]

It goes both ways, though. If we dare to say that we're fine with the status quo, or if we even suggest that maybe we should be considerate of others in our random groups, we're somehow guilty of toxic positivity, whatever that means. I've even been called smug and stupid on these forums for saying that I'm bad at the game and appreciate that the current difficulty level doesn't shut me out of content.

Very much this.

Almost no one is saying the game is perfect, and intelligent criticism is always warranted. But the way it is here, if you just say that you don't mind a decision that was made, that you're *gasp* okay with the developers, and/or are actually happy with the way the game is, you're instantly slammed for being a white knight or some blind fanboy of the game. I don't have much experience with other places where FF14 is discussed but there's no question that the general tenor on these forums is overly negative, and I can't help but feel it's because any topic that actually shows positivity is either scrolled off the front page by repetitive "The Game Sucks" topics or is bombarded by the usual crowd of naysayers who just can't seem to stand anyone having positive feelings about the game.

[BrokentoothMarch]

It's called fatigue.

I love this game and I'm tired of any attempt to criticize or bring to light issues being dismissed as me being a hater or troll.

Now suddenly everyone's inflamed because SE has made the mistake of rapid-firing their mistakes instead of spacing them out as they usually do.

[AziraSyuren]

The forums are pretty much a circleshirk of negativity at this point.

Not that it's unwarranted- quite the opposite, a string of awful decisions tends to do that to a game- but at this point it's like pissing into an ocean of piss.

[BrokentoothMarch]

The forums are pretty much a circleshirk of negativity at this point.

Not that it's unwarranted- quite the opposite, a string of awful decisions tends to do that to a game- but at this point it's like pissing into an ocean of piss.

If I may, I think it's mostly run rampant because there's very little faith we'll be tended to. The whole "They only listen to JP" is a common meme, true or not. So the forums here are more of a venting ground now. Doom and gloom and just getting frustrations out.

[AziraSyuren]

If I may, I think it's mostly run rampant because there's very little faith we'll be tended to. The whole "They only listen to JP" is a common meme, true or not. So the forums here are more of a venting ground now. Doom and gloom and just getting frustrations out.

The forums have been a venting ground for a very long time now. Trust me, I know. It's a wonderful contrast to the echo-chamber of positivity that Reddit and Twitter are but when I see people shit up threads with multiple-paragraph-long conspiracy theories (that sometimes get just as many upvotes as similarly unhinged positive reddit posts lmao), I'm inclined to believe that they're every bit as deluded.

And, like, I'm no stranger to posting paragraph upon paragraph of malding over this game's shit design. Just look at some of my posts in the tank forum circa-2017. I literally dealt with awful gearing and even worse balance twice as long as healers have dealt with their own design problems. Literally, it lasted both of my first two expansions (HW and StB, although you can count StB as a bad sign for healers in retrospect so it's a bit subjective). But it just boggles my mind sometimes that people haven't adjusted their expectations yet when the devs have made the same mistakes (3.0 six month content drought and awful content in 3.1. I'm surprised the game didn't fucking die right then) or worse (the diadem in HW, all of it, and both Anemos and Pagos) in the past.

Or maybe it's just players experiencing this game's failings for the first, second, third, and fourth time consecutively, idk. But my own expectations for this game's non-raid content have been rock bottom for a while now so I'm just happy with what I get.

[BrokentoothMarch]

Snip

I do think the rapid fire nature of it isn't helping. It's harder and harder to defend mistakes if they happen consecutively with relatively little time inbetween, people often conveniently memory-holing problems after enough time has passed. With SAM/NIN/Hroth/Viera/Housing/etc. happening in tandem, however, the usual suspects who would defend are finding it hard to hold the line and many more of those who would have helped them are becoming disillusioned.

Not to mention that there's no real way out of this. When it all comes down to it, the pretense that "It's going to be hard to find out what went wrong" when we basically all but know it was a failure to exclude an integer Unless they picked an absolutely esoteric and alien way to perform these lotteries that no other company does, which is about just as bad. screams three potential things:

-Dishonesty (In the possibility that they're acting like changing a number is truly that difficult).
-Incompetency (In the possibility that they've failed to notice a 4-line piece of code that gets QA tested even in highschool computer labs)
-Lack of Care ( In the possibility that they've grown comfortable with how complacent the community has gotten, effectively abusing it)

I agree things have been on the downtrend since StB as someone who was once such an AST main that it was my only leveled job, though I have to assume that people were more accepting of a slow decay rather than this sudden and vicious rot.

In the event my message got lost in the insane ramblings I can go on, I'll condense people's surprise into two sentences:
SE was boiling the frog. They accidentally turned up the heat too high this time and the frog noticed.

[AziraSyuren]

snip

I don't know, every time I think of how bad times seem now, I just think about how a six month content drought with the worst, most unhealthy raid tier in this game's history was followed up by two pieces of content that were universally reviled (the Diadem and 3.1 relic grind) and one that was reviled by everyone who didn't like mindlessly grinding (PoTD) and I wonder if it's even nearly as bad. People who think it's even comparable are either misremembering or weren't around. And while I don't want to sound like some boomer who's all "your problems don't matter because mine were worse LOL" (let's be real, I probably have already), I take a little issue with people thinking that which is par for the course is the sign of some downward trend.

It's really not. A string of awful decisions followed by a massive damage control patch or two is just this game's MO.