I don't like FFXIV's community

[Lauront]

I also dislike XIVs community but not for the same reasons. I think the overly heavyhanded ToS goes a long way to essentially scare everybody into being nice (note: passive aggressive) to each other, but I hate the forced "positivity".

Exactly, same here. That, and the extreme defensiveness over criticism on some sites. This one isn't as bad for it, generally speaking.

I find it creates a false positivity on the surface, but a sort of stifling passive aggressive toxicity behind it. We seem to have a strong casual/veteran divide in ff14 where both sides strongly dislike each other but have to pretend everything is fine.

-Some of the very casual players have taken the devs trying to cater to them as a sign that the game is casual only, playing badly is correct and that they're the most important audience. This has bred an entitled gloating self-importance where veteran players are looked down on, accomplishments are a bad thing, having everything handed over is an expectation and the bare minimum effort is put into content. They look down on players who want a challenge. This is their game. Quit and get lost if you don't like it.

-On the flip side the veteran players who are stifled, banned from even mentioning performance and constantly have content ripped away from them have a deep bottled away resentment. They hate that they're meant to carry the players who not only put in no effort, but also ridicule them as tryhards and elitists for even trying. This ends up with people being jumped on and bombarded for saying things like "I don't like dps on healers" or "I don't like wall pulls" and players having much less patience for inexperienced players.

Then you have things like Hunts, where griefing is unaddressed because "it isn't intended to share hunts, so we'll just ignore this festering community conflict and do nothing", extreme cases of stalking that goes unaddressed because they aren't saying your dps sucks so doesn't break ToS, bots everywhere, the Housing community being a cesspit and hounding people who haven't decorated their house enough because players are so frustrated trying to get one, Raiding PF's just disbanding after 2 wipes because the group can see the problem player who isn't ready for that content at all but can't say or do a thing about it and so on.

WoW was indeed toxic, but one difference I found in WoW was it was just immature straightforward rudeness. The main issue there was the GM's didn't give the children a much needed slap on the wrist from time to time, but it was easy to ignore or disprove. FF14's toxicity is much more complicated and ingrained and almost impossible to counter because on the surface it's always calculated to stay just within ToS. In some ways I dislike that even more.

Well articulated, and agreed. The TOS are deliberately vague and fuzzy in some areas, which doesn't help matters, either.

[Striker44]

I guarantee give it a week without the tos currently in place and there would be chaos. People cursing at each other left and right. Being brutally honest more focus on the brutal part when it comes to gameplay. I agree that the tos can be quite strict but in general it keeps the reigns on people to behave and act like decent people.

I'd say longer than a week. Maybe a few months before it devolves. Only my opinion, but I think FFXIV having a known reputation for a strictly enforced code of conduct means the people most likely to be toxic won't play the game, period. They'll go play WoW or LoL or something that lets them act however they want. If FFXIV got rid of the ToS, I feel it wouldn't necessarily be the current players themselves suddenly acting like ******s, but a gradual influx of toxic people now willing to sign up and play knowing they'll have free reign in a good game that would start making it go downhill.

[Drakengarde]

Exactly, same here. That, and the extreme defensiveness over criticism on some sites. This one isn't as bad for it, generally speaking.



Well articulated, and agreed. The TOS are deliberately vague and fuzzy in some areas, which doesn't help matters, either.

The TOS being vague like that is a good and bad thing depending on how you look at it. Since they intentionally leave it vague it is to make you think "will I get in trouble if I do this?" thus in a sense making you choose the course of action that is less likely to get you in trouble. Bad aspect is the TOS can be weaponized against other players if they know how to do so. For me it would be very easy to do so and I would only do so if the person was acting like an ass.

[Cerbolt]

Every gaming community has bad apples and acting like the FFXIV community should be the exception is very strange.

[Deveryn]

Clearly, you haven't played Mahjong.

Nevermind mahjong, just pick from many cultures.

(Just look in one of the more recent threads about men and masculinity. )

[HanWenqing]

Same the community is kinda disgusting but yeah it's rare but sometimes you find great peoples and usually they are crafters i always got help from crafters.

[Doc_Seraph]

May the kupo be with you! (maybe kupo nut? xD ).

Oh kupo likes those kupo nuts <3 rofl

[AwesomeJr44]

1. From the very start of 2.0 I've had people tell me to kill myself or that I should quit. One instance i remember is doing Amdapor Keep for the first time and we all wiped on the last boss cause the Tank rushed in and no one knew the mechanics. Told me directly I should quit and how horrible I was when I asked if we could try again. This was very common behavior in this time period.

I can't say I've ever encountered that level of toxicity, but I'd certainly hope that player at least got some kind of warning, if not a suspension.

2. Poor GMing. You'll have some people catching bans but them you take a look at Balmung shout chat and see people talking about animal genitalia, their mods that give their characters animal genetalia, you can see people in the shout chat talking about other fetishes nonstop all day and people who have done it for years which I won't name but just spend a few seconds there and you'll see some disgusting dialogue being spammed. Even in say chat.

This I have seen. Out of the 6 reports I've submitted against people who clearly broke TOS (And it takes a LOT for me to report someone so these weren't minor infractions either), I think 1 of them actually resulted in literally anything happening. And even then, I can only say that I 'think' it did as the GM I had a discussion with couldn't actually tell me if anything came of it.

3. People promoting their Discords 24/7 in party finders, shout chats. These same discords dictating content like Eureka nonstop. Making it hard to even get anything done since a Discord decides it wants to control BA and you're not allowed. You have people insta pulling everything so people miss out cause no one cares.

Every time I see one of those stupid copy pasted 'JoIn mY Fc' messages in chat, I just wanna tell them to shut it. They're so obnoxious and usually long enough to push any messages I'm actually interested in up in the chat, making them harder to read. Even if I was looking for an FC, I wouldn't join one that does that crap as it's probably desperate for members for a reason.

And honestly, I hate how organized everything is in this game these days. Wanna do BA? Well, I hope you're willing to join this discord and do it exactly in the 'right way' or you're a 'toxic' player! And don't get me started on Hunts and Eureka. If you dare pull the mob YOU spawned before literally everyone on the DC gets there, you're Hitler now.

4. Hunts all the years of them getting instapulled and people missing out.

I agree with this unless I spawned it. If I spawned it all by myself, I choose the pull time, and if I wanna pull it instantly, I'm gonna. If anyone has an issue with that, they can spawn it next time and pick the pull time themselves. Now as for the people AFKing in Limsa who show up and insta pull, those guys need to stop.

5. From Coils, to Alexander, to Omega, there and so on. Extremes as well and Savages. You'll find more and more unsavory people cursing at each other and they don't get banned. Telling people to quit the game.

This is just normal for anything high-skill. (I know, FFXIV being high skill? hur durr lol) You're going to have people who want to put their all into it, and you're going to have people who just want to get carried. When you put them together, their ideals clash and cause conflict. FFXIV in particular has more of the latter group, but this occurs in games where there are more hardcore raiders too.

But there are good groups out there, you just gotta find one that aligns with what you want. If you're a softcore raider looking for a casual experience, don't join a hardcore static. If you do, you're actually trolling them and of course they're going to be mad at you. If you're a hardcore raider, find other hardcore raiders to play with and you won't have to worry about Jimmy McGee the Black Mage who only casts ice spells.

6. You got people screaming at novices cause they don't know every mechanic before a fight in a basic 4 man leveling dungeon cause they are so tired of farming tomes they take it out on others.

I have never seen this happen in low level content. (Maybe I'm just always the mentor and I don't do this, but idk lol) Now if we are going to talk about higher level content, I am going to be mad at a sprout who doesn't know what a stack marker is in Holminster Switch. On the one hand, we need to be fair to the sprouts and not expect people in Sastasha for the first time to be gamer gods.

BUT we also need to expect more from sprouts. Why do we have people in expert dungeons who are brain dead fools who can't dodge basic AOEs? Because nobody expected them to do anything right at level 50, or level 60, or level 70, or level 80, and all of a sudden they're at level 90 and know NOTHING because they've never been made to. If I see Jimmy McGee the Black Mage casting ice spells and standing in every mechanic in Dead Ends because no one ever told him not to, I'm gonna be mad, and I honestly believe I have the right to be mad.

I'm sorry but this community is not good in any sense of the word nor has it ever been no matter what anyone says.

Honestly, while it does have a few good parts, the good doesn't outweigh the bad. I'm gonna have to agree with you. Ironically, despite what everyone says about how great of a community we have, the absolute worst part of this game is its community.

And with that, I am done with this game. Been here since 1.0 but I'm ready to move on to something else like offline games.

I genuinely hope you find something you like in the near future. Sadly, I think the people who need to hear your post the most are the ones who are gonna respond with "haha, just leave loser, we don't need you here anyways."

[Lauront]

The TOS being vague like that is a good and bad thing depending on how you look at it. Since they intentionally leave it vague it is to make you think "will I get in trouble if I do this?" thus in a sense making you choose the course of action that is less likely to get you in trouble. Bad aspect is the TOS can be weaponized against other players if they know how to do so. For me it would be very easy to do so and I would only do so if the person was acting like an ass.

I don't think you can really separate the two of those. If the devs have a clear idea of what kind of behaviours they wish to discourage, there is no reason to pussyfoot about it. This may come down to a difference in perspective, but I don't like this kind of behavioural "modification", through vague, sloppily worded terms.

[Deveryn]

I don't think you can really separate the two of those. If the devs have a clear idea of what kind of behaviours they wish to discourage, there is no reason to pussyfoot about it. This may come down to a difference in perspective, but I don't like this kind of behavioural "modification", through vague, sloppily worded terms.

That's just how legal stuff works. It's too easy to find loopholes in this and that. The more vague the statement, the more that's properly covered. For more insight, just look at this video about the billboard and maybe some others.

It's not any kind of behavioural modification, but establishment of rules for partaking of a service. Museums have their rules, as do libraries and parks and government offices, etc. This is no different. This is all their property. Respect the rules or leave. It's that simple.