Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
I don't think that's the reason. Even when the forum was less chaotic than it is at present this place was still largely ignored with community representatives posting to introduce themselves and then never showing up again.

I made a thread requesting more engagement, as can be found here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...epresentatives

This place, despite its flaws, really isn't anywhere near as bad as the likes of reddit or twitter when it comes to voicing feedback. Especially the latter, where it's all too easy to scroll down the comments to official posts and see some highly inappropriate commentary and images or get viciously attacked over simple personal tastes.

Any issues related to chaos due to a lack of moderation is absolutely not the fault of regular forum goers.
As much as I'd like to NOT blame the regular forum goers... They're responsible for a large part of the forums being the way they are.

Anyone who comes here as a fresh forum member will quickly learn that they can expect to be insulted, and ridiculed for giving open honest feedback on what they like, or dislike about the game. You hardly see anyone stepping in to defend them. So the forum goers we want will just go to twitter, and reddit instead, leaving us with a lot of pitiful people who can do little more than throw bitter insults around, engage with people in bad faith, and are generally incapable of providing any intelligent, or coherent arguements for what they believe. That's not a good first impression, and to outsiders this forum would not be worth investing resources into. So, we sit here, shouting into a useless void that we ourselves are partially responsible for.

If you ask me, it's 50/50 blame on both the community who fostered this toxic attitude for years on the forums, and Square Enix for their complete lack of interest in keeping the forums a productive place to discuss the game, and leave them useful feedback.

The solution? Moderation needs to come in here, reinforce the rules, and sweep frequent offenders straight into the rubbish bin. Then I'd love for there to be more engagement between developers/representitives, in an atmosphere where people won't have to deal with the bitterness that has taken root in these forums. But for now that's a fever dream.