Why Are the FFXIV Forums So Bad?

[Orinori]

:^) Look how nice the 14 community is:

[Darkobra]

In-game is moderated.

[Carin-Eri]

Waits for inevitable reply/accusations pertaining to toxic positivity

[Orinori]

Waits for inevitable reply/accusations pertaining to toxic positivity

Thats definitely a comment of all time

[Tint]

Just curious, in-game its pretty pleasant, most people are reasonable and easy to talk to, the game has a pretty bustling social scene, I've made plenty of friends that I've linked with irl, but on here you're all like 12 year olds screaming at each other over who loves FFXIV more like you're some weird attention starved children begging for your parent's attention. Literally every discussion post is littered with lonely 40 year old women and neckbeards spurting Mean Girls comments over any and everything.

So what made you all this way? Was it years of neglect and moderation from Square-Enix? Lack of healthy social lives? Mental illness? I'm curious

Just ask yourself why you post such a mean spirited topic and maybe you will find your answers.

[Kaurhz]

In-game is moderated a little more stricter, and for the most part the severity of loss is much higher.

If you're banned on forum, I don't think the ban extends to in-game. If you're banned on forums, then you're banned on forums alone. Whereas with in-game you have the potential to lose hundreds or thousands of cumulative effort.

If bans on forums extended to in-game bans, then a lot of what happens here would quieten down.

Plus, the purpose of a forum is to debate and discuss more than anything else, so you get a lot of conflicting personalities, and generally speaking people can take disagreements as an attack, regardless of what side. Compared to in-game where you're more just using it as a social outlet, so the interactions are more of a social manner.

[Orinori]

Just ask yourself why you post such a mean spirited topic and maybe you will find your answers.

Not mean-spirited at all, I'm just being honest and I've seen many forum goers proudly proclaim how toxic and immature they are and wear it as a badge of honor unironically. If you don't fit into that description then I'm sure you're a great person and you don't really apply to this, no?

[Orinori]

In-game is moderated a little more stricter, and for the most part the severity of loss is much higher.

If you're banned on forum, I don't think the ban extends to in-game. If you're banned on forums, then you're banned on forums alone. Whereas with in-game you have the potential to lose hundreds or thousands of cumulative effort.

If bans on forums extended to in-game bans, then a lot of what happens here would quieten down.

Plus, the purpose of a forum is to debate and discuss more than anything else, so you get a lot of conflicting personalities, and generally speaking people can take disagreements as an attack, regardless of what side. Compared to in-game where you're more just using it as a social outlet, so the interactions are more of a social manner.

Thats a good point, though I wasn't aware just how poorly the forums were moderated, I was kinda just making a joke over how ratchet it gets in here. I also assumed your square account was just your square account and if you got banned that was it for that account, so that actually makes a lot more sense, theres not really any consequences so people just treat it like twitter lol

[Theodric]

Waits for inevitable reply/accusations pertaining to toxic positivity

I'd attribute it to precisely that. As someone who has been posting around these parts for roughly a decade now, I have met and befriended many individuals here on the forum who I otherwise never would have met in-game due to playing on a completely different server/datacentre.

It's not particularly difficult to curate one's forum experience either. If you can't agree to disagree with someone and find some middle ground then the ignore function exists to settle any major differences. In my experience, there's a vocal group of posters who treat any criticism of the game as a deeply personal attack.

Then, of course, there's the unfortunate fact that a lot of the 'toxic positivity' types have been caught engaging in stalking, harassment and either sending or cheering on credible death and sexual assault threats sent to players they dislike over the perceived 'crime' of being critical of the game's current trajectory and priorities.

It also ignores that a lot of posters critical of the game have repeatedly asked for more moderation themselves only to receive repeated radio silence. For example I made this thread a few years back asking for our community representatives to serve as a more visible and active presence:

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

We had one introduce themselves not too long ago and they have not made a single post ever since. Ultimately this forum is under the complete control of Square Enix so blaming players for the current state of the place strikes me as a misguided endeavor - it could quite easily be 'cleaned up' and I disagree with the idea that this place is any more toxic than either Twitter or Reddit. Furthermore, the development team have admitted to gathering feedback from those two places in addition to a certain notorious Japanese site that is prone to being far, far more hostile.

[Supersnow845]

I mean if the forums were moderated as heavily as in game you basically wouldn’t be able to actually have a discussion because you can barely present a dissenting view in game without risking someone reporting you (and no this isn’t a case of “you are just rude but don’t want to admit it”)

You notice the moderation though, people rarely insult each other, at most you get some heated arguments but nothing ban worthy, if anything the forums are a more accurate representation of the actual community opinion on things without the ever present threat of the ban hammer in the main game