Are We Really At The Point We Consider The Classic Relic Steps Engaging And "Fun"?

[Renathras]

I think one of the strangest aspects of FFXIV's community is the frequent inability for many players to simply accept that personal tastes differ. There's an awful lot of policing in regards to what characters and content players are 'supposed to' like and dislike. A problem that has unfortunately only increased over the years.

Agreed. It seems to come from everywhere, though. If more people were willing to say "I get some people don't like what I do, so some things for people like them to enjoy and some for people like me to enjoy is probably fine." But whether we talk Healers or SMN or whathaveyou, it's all too often "What you want is harming/killing the game!" when it's not or "What you want is braindead/lazy/bad" when it's just that different people like and enjoy different thinks.

Whenever I talk about the official forums to friends or random people I meet within the game, they always seemed surprised or shocked that I interact on here. It's always, "Who actually uses the forums?", "That place is so toxic", "It's just a bunch of unhappy crybabies in an echo chamber who doesn't represent what I really think." "They think they know what they are talking about but they really do not." It's just always forum hate and they really don't care what I have to say that I have seen posted on these forums.

Pretty much my friends' reaction too. They've never visit forum, but it's always a sign of disgust whenever I bring it up.

It's like official forum has quite the notoriety.

Yeah, same. It's a continuous joke on FFXIV mainsub AND FFXIVDiscussion (which does have a more hardcore element) that the official forums are a toxic pit best to be avoided and that the people here are largely an echo chamber who will whine about everything and make constant demands and doomposts.

People in the game who come here tend not to come back. It's one of the chief reasons I think that these forums do not represent the majority of the playerbase in any way.

The thing is that it's not just the official forums. There's a massive difference of behavior between reddit, the forums, discords, twitter and in-game. The behavior outside of the game is incredibly awful, even if the opinions and beliefs of people within each platform or community differs. People on the official reddit actually doxed a couple of users over disagreements(as in they shifted through reddit profiles and pieced together information, not that the profile had that information together publicly).

It can be, but isn't in most places. Most of the chill communities (Discords) are fine, the Reddit is generally way less toxic than here even with the upvote/downvote brigading stuff. The behavior about the game here is ridiculously bad. The issue with Reddit and the Mainsub and Balance Discords are that the mods there have effectively absolute power, meaning if they turn on someone, there's literally no recourse and there's no governing body to step in. At least here if the mods were actively targeting people, they probably have some regulations against that that might lead to firings, but with entirely voluntary communities with tin pot dictator mods, it can be pretty bad. But that's not an FFXIV problem, Reddit IN GENERAL has that going on. There are a LOT of subreddits with mods that go full tyrant and play sides, enforcing the rules with an iron fist on people they don't like while giving their side a pass. I once was in a political one (yeah, I know, first mistake), but I literally copied a post from one of the other users on the other political lean and inverted the statement (who was calling who names), and suddenly, banned. I was told my post was racism, and when I pointed out the other post was as well, just with the races swapped AND I was very clearly being sarcastic to show why the other person's argument was bad (because it was literally racist), I was told "just because someone else does something doesn't mean I get to do it"; so when I asked if that person was also going to be banned, I was told it was none of my business, muted so I couldn't EVEN REPLY to them anymore, and banned. The other user, btw, was not. Because the mods agreed with their side.

That's not a FFXIV problem, it's an unregulated moderator problem. Turns out, while many Humans are honorable and just in their exercise of power, many are not, and if you give them a thimble of power, will abuse it.

That isn't an FFXIV problem, it's a general Human/internet/unaccountable moderator problem.