FFXIV TAKEN OVER BY ERP

[Stormpeaks]

It’s less that and more “traditional high fantasy RP is a minority compared to erp and club culture”

A lot of trad RP often ends with someone wanted it to become erp

The fan base is just really horny

I agree, having played WoW for such a long time before, ERP was such a minor thing there, while in FFXIV it's a pretty big thing, and just the overall horniness of the FFXIV community compared to the WoW is the same thing, FFXIV is just very "horny welcome" in general

[Atelier-Bagur]

I agree, having played WoW for such a long time before, ERP was such a minor thing there, while in FFXIV it's a pretty big thing, and just the overall horniness of the FFXIV community compared to the WoW is the same thing, FFXIV is just very "horny welcome" in general

Its honestly because this is a Japanese game which automatically puts it into the heavily enthusiastic anime crowd; where the men and women all look pretty and appealing.

It's kinda hard for people to fall head over heels over a cartoony Western game where you have none of that. As the game gets more popular you'd start to see these kind of people moving into that space.

[Remish]

I read through the discussion on Reddit and I'm going to copy and paste this massive paragraph written by Combustionary as I very much agree with it and it sums up my own thoughts exactly.

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In all honesty I think you've got it backwards. I don't think that the 'Dominance of ERP' has led to the lack of diversity of other RP, but that rather the lack of good avenues for other RP has led to the dominance of ERP.

FFXIV as game, and Eorzea/Eitherys as a setting is a lot less conducive to roleplay as a whole than it may first appear. There's houses and glamours, yes, but a lot of the central mechanics of FFXIV (even many of them that are generally good for the game) make what you might call "serious" role-play rather difficult. A few of these:



- A huge portion of new content is entirely locked away from a typical, lore-compliant 'everyman' character. Basically nothing in Shadowbringers, for example, could be reasonably interacted with by any RP group that even played lip service to the lore. Endwalker was at least a little bit better, but still a solid half of the zones are no-gos. I personally saw a lot of RP guilds die out during ShB largely due to this - there was nothing 'new' to interact with as an RPer. Compare this to things like WoW or ESO where expansion launches open up lots of new ideas for RP.

- Piggybacking off of this - FFXIV's storytelling makes interesting plot points really obtuse to interact with, especially in more recent expansions. Conflicts are very often wrapped up in the same content drop in which they become known, and often in ways that more or less boil down to "WoL did a special WoL thing and solo'ed it". When conflicts do arise that a the 'usual' RP character could interact with, they are rarely allowed to last long enough to be meaningfully interacted with by Roleplayers. The Final Days are a good example of this in Endwalker - when the trailer first launched, my own FC and many others were excited to be able to interact with this with our characters, but the entire ordeal was solved by end of the same content drop it was released on. Roleplayers basically had to homebrew their own timeline for this, and it caused a lot of issues in my experience. Some people would RP that the final days were ongoing, hadn't happened yet, or were already done.

- FFXIV's setting isn't really that conducive to creating conflict between player characters. Unless you're deliberately playing an antagonistic character like a loyalist Garlean, there's not a whole lot of things likely to stir drama between two Eorzean characters. Compare this to ESO where any Argonian/Khajiit character may well enough come built in with a plot hook for an issue with a Dunmer character, as an example. A typical character from Gridania isn't likely to be fundamentally different than a typical character from Limsa.

- Alts. As lovely as the one-character-does-all system is for the game itself, it makes it a lot harder to branch out and try new things in Roleplay. Most people I know, myself included, have made a couple over the years but it's nothing like other games where a few times I've made new chars on a whim and gone on to breathe new life into the game for me from it.

- Spoilers. The culture around FFXIV's story makes it particularly obtuse to incorporate the 'current' world state into RP. Plenty of new players to the game partake in RP, and on more than a few occasions I've been in an awkward situation where my retired veteran from the war against Garlemald has to skirt around any details of said war because I noticed a level 40 player across the room.




The way the game works makes it exceptionally difficult to build the illusion that the character is an actual member of the world. So much of the lore is built to facilitate the Warrior of Light as the hero that there's no room for a regular character to really do anything. To compare this to WoW - probably the most similar game for the sort of RP that ffxiv could host - during Wrath of The Lich King, there was plenty of action to go around for any sort of character. Obviously 'John Stormwind, Human Warrior' wasn't going to be the one to kill the Lich King, but there were tons of other things going on that you could write your character into without being too 'special'. When Legion came out, the entire world was embroiled in that fight for pretty much the entire length of the expansion - that's a lot easier to work with for roleplay than "oh the world was ending but then WoL saved the day 6 hours later".

To the main topic - every game I've ever RPed in has been rife with ERP. A huge portion of people do it from my experience and to be entirely honest I do too. The thing is that other games at least have other stuff to do for RP. If you turn on the TRP addon and walk into the infamous Moonguard Goldshire you'll see things far worse than the dregs of Balmung's Quicksands - and that's been the case for basically all of recorded human history.

The ERP scene on FF definitely has a few things helping it - the numerous 'pretty' races and the ease of visual mods to name a couple - but I don't think it has been the cause for a decline in other forms of RP. I don't think the two really compete to be honest. The game just doesn't work super well for conventional roleplay.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

I have characters on Balmung (rp central) and never once encountered erp.

You have to intentionally go out of your way to encounter erp.

What aren't you telling us, topic creator?

[Jojoya]

I've run into ERP in game maybe a half dozen times since I started playing just before Heavensward's launch. As far as I can tell, the game hasn't been taken over by ERP.

I suppose it would be different for those who actively go looking for it, though.

[Jeeqbit]

ERP has been in every MMO that I've played. But some had it more than others. It seemed like it was everywhere in SWTOR. They probably just all came over from other MMOs to find a new place to do it.

You know back in Stormblood you could actually find legit RP pretty easily even on Aether.

Now it's next to impossible if you don't know the right people. ERP doesn't just affect RP though, it's such a big thing now that so much third-party content is catered towards that, like mods, a lot of which are for ERP.

I agree. I think what made RP easy to find for me was knowing you just needed to get onto Balmung and there was a pathway there to do genuine RP. Every FC on Balmung was <two letters>-RP. But then the DC split and world visit happened, allowing everyone to flood Balmung and turn the ERP memes into reality, while people from Balmung spread across other worlds since they could visit now. An increased population has also seemed to mean more ERPers.

One of the things that put me off the RP as well was that 99% of it was about a bar or restaurant. I was more interested by the idea of adventure and travel.

Now 99% of it is 18+ clubs.

[JamieRose]

https://reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion...e_state_of_rp/

One thing that has become increasingly prevalent in the FFXIV RP community is Erotic Roleplay (ERP).

You must be new around here.

[Coatl]

Always has been.

[Tetsujin]

How does this matter to anyone? Just don't go to a frequent ERP location to find "normal" RP partners? Internet nannies ought to stay on their lane.

[Krojack]

Wow.. more complaining.

You really have to go looking for ERP to find it. I play everyday and an very good friends with some people that do normal RP and I never run into ERP.

I'm starting to wonder if OP is trying to paint some black image on FF14 for some other reason. They are making post after post with nothing but negative comments about the game that literally don't exists. Search engines will pick this up.