What happened to the community

[sindriiisgaming]

This isn't an easy subject to discuss, especially since it's targeting the community itself directly, i am worried what backlash i will suffer following this tread. What might happen to my account, if i might get targeted in game. If It might reveal something I don't want to see all over again
But over the last 3 years throughout endwalker I've found myself asking too many times. What happened to ffxivs community and when did we change so much.

Search YouTube and you'll find a plethora of videos discussing this, the ffxiv community, scandals, toxic streamers who use there power to bully others or just raiding elietism basically becoming the norm in pf.

I want to know, and thus; understand.. where did it all start. When I joined this game some 6 years ago this month, I found myself taken aback how amazingly positive the community was and was how welcoming they were. Yes I did have a bad fc where I would often be told not to ask for help on msq because the quests were spoilers, and I did get bullied in df while learning tank and healer. But it was nothing that extreme. I could handle it.. I could escape it.. but now that isn't the case. I can now no longer escape the toxicity.

It's in every nuke and cranny. The novice network, Party finder. Duty Finder and free company's. The playerbase has changed.. and I don't know anymore what my place in it is. I don't feel like I belong here. I feel like I'm playing league of legends. I witness daily arguments in pf over small things like positions turning into fights, or flame wars over 1 or 2 mistakes. Demands to kick people, blacklisting over said small mistakes and intolerance to error being masqueraded as "wasting my time" not doing certain dps got considered "sandbagging" and being slow in a dungeon was considered "griefing"

Cloud was my biggest wakeup call that things had gotten completly out of hand, and if youve seen it.. you know what im talking about... The problem has gotten so severe I'm terrified to run my weekly savages or unreal incase I get an experience like it or have to watch it.
When did we become this? Why did we become this? We allways said we were the exceptions but. We've become the example. Many are going to think the examples I extrapolate are just my own. That I'm "mad" because I got kicked or I got bl.. but honestly. I wish this was just about me. I wish I was the only 1 who got treated that way but I am not.. I have seen too many ppl get so severely bullied.. my fc members, partners and friends.. one bullied out her ultimate static after years of friendship} I've seen my friends reduced to tears after being told they didn't deserve to live for failing mecanics in p10s ... but as a fellow player this games community has become alien to me. Reports following the behavior never leasing to any change is utterly demoralising

None of thos ever getting into how the community has treated the devs over dawntrails failures... while I understand some. Some are beyond forgiveness
I'm not sure if a post like this Is allowed.. because it can only lead to more of that same toxicity. But I also can't hold my tongue anymore. I want to show it for what it is.. I can't pretend anymore that it isn't a thing.. or that it's as bad as is really is. Perhaps I'm the issue, perhaps I am out of touch with the mmo playerbase.. perhaps I should leave the game and guilded memories behind because I am an outcast in this new place... perhaps xiv is no longer for me

I simply don't know anymore

[Shougun]

Well I have no idea how some of you have maxed out your blacklist, outside of RMT blocking maybe, but like ignoring some of that cause I can't explain that..


A. I think the rose colored glasses are fading for many (huge variety of reasons, whether its the story, the duration you've been with the game, the feeling that they're slowing down when they should be speeding up, burnout from homogenization, etc) <- I am probably in this group, especially as I've dipped my toes into other MMOs recently and feel SE is falling asleep at the wheel given their position in the MMO space

B. Increase in popularity compared to ARR days (more people, more chances to meet a chocobo butt), back then you probably disliked one person and if you blacklist them you were a jolly snowman

C. Continual encouragement and funnel into damage is king content, which given our dissimilarity, leads to a lot of finger pointing and wasted time*

Hidden bonus, imo-

D. The addons in this game are insanely powerful and probably is making a massive skill and knowledge difference. (I want to say I said this about 10 years ago- that if they didn't control it that it would be worse, I was surprised it took this long but about 2-4 years ago the scene really took off and I would argue it is offering MORE power than WoW now because SE didn't control it instead). I would note that many addon authors are trying not to damage other's experience, which is nice, but when you have players who are performing at a higher baseline more easily-- and damage is king in a competitive environment. You can see some negatives come of that.

*No data on any of these! The best kind of statistics! But, specifically on C.. I've always held a theory that the harder (I'm talking wipe after wipe after wipe) the content is, in a group reliant setting, the more likely it will turn a community toxic over time. Those guild breaker contents, IMO, I don't think are good on player health. As I think people start to become jaded, and imo for good reason. Imagine losing over and over for things out of your perceived control (sometimes people are full of themselves), and imagine the things you could be doing instead, should I be wiping on this content that the treadmill will wipe out in a few months or should I just go play that legendary game (my thousands of hours of steam games I buy on sale and have no idea if I'll play) or if I really want that 'fire' something more easy to hop in / out multiplayer pvp game instead? Probably will move on after enough pain.

That said I do think there needs to be content hard enough you can't 1 take it / ignore mechanics, so this isn't a "don't make hard stuff".. especially there is a small subsection that want to be tested in the fires, but like when you design those content where its a boat load of people and one dude day after day after dude after dude is ruining all your progress. I think that's ultimately soul draining type of thing. Good luck finding the magic spot where you're hurting the player enough they get that high, but not so much that you're not destroying communities over time though. I note dissimilarity because given what I've heard about how the Japanese operate, I imagine they're more resistant to this. Also to note, just in case someone is going to assume my preference / perspective (I do think the base game should be more challenging, but the rewards adjusted for that).


Or you know, its just "it was better in my time, the world is just getting worse!" meanwhile most statistics say things are getting better lol.

[CidHeiral]

This thread:

[Zelda206]

'Where did it go so wrong' is a question as old as time, and you should ask Square primarily what happened with the community, or better yet, what can you individually do to improve your corner of the community if nothing truly can be done. Communities heavily depend on the vibe and income of the game's team and the company residing over that team. If the team and company do poorly, the community will take a nosedive in morale. It's like watching your commanding officer declare 'sod off' and expect the troops they're overseeing to be happy with it. Square has bungled quite a bit recently and has shown an alarming waste in wealth and a sharp interest in western culture (the input from the voice-actors doesn't help one bit to diffuse the situation), so the hornet's nest is chaotic with flame wars. Nothing particularly confusing about that. It is what it is.

[Jeeqbit]

As far as sentiments towards the developers go. Most of that was natural if you started in 1.0 or ARR, because you saw the quality of dungeons and MSQ increasing every patch and the refreshing differences compared to other MMORPGs (kill 3 enemies, teleporting everywhere). Players that started in Shadowbringers often watched the NoClip documentary, keynotes or live letters to develop similar sentiments. It's really only recently such a significant amount of people abandoned these positive sentiments.

My guess is it's because most of them didn't actually play before Shadowbringers so don't understand the developers as well as I do, and some of the ones that did play back then maybe just got tired of it after 10 years.

videos discussing this, the ffxiv community, scandals

That is due to the growth of the community and its various cultures. It's also partly that YouTube serves videos better (they made it recommend videos super well after initially breaking their website with the Shorts bug) so now you see exactly the videos you want to watch.

toxic streamers who use there power to bully others

The amount of content creators increased significantly since Shadowbringers released. The old ones (let's be blunt, Xeno) got better at uploading to YouTube (he didn't used to bother with it much).

The chances are, if anyone thinks a streamer is "toxic" and "bullying someone", they don't understand the streamer very well. All the ones I know of are great people in real life, and just putting on a puppet show / playing a character like actors do, literally for your entertainment. Do they do/say stuff a certain way for views? Sure - TV stations did this for decades to get ratings. It would not make sense to say things in a way that doesn't get views because then nobody wants to watch it.

or just raiding elietism basically becoming the norm in pf.

Used to be hard to raid without a raid FC and that was a pretty rough way to get into raiding as a new player. Then you'd see PFs with "2 chests, no bonus" which looked really toxic until we got the [Duty Complete] setting. In Stormblood, raid reclears were 1-3 pulls or disband. In Endwalker, I was finding people would do as many pulls as it took and not leave, which was a massive improvement over what I used to see.

It's in every nuke and cranny. The novice network, Party finder. Duty Finder and free company's.

Novice networks haven't changed (I hop worlds and participate in them), so your experience is obviously anecdotal. Not experienced a difference in Duty Finder (except it being less toxic than in ARR and HW, well it was toxic last time I used it in the EU region so it's a cultural difference there).

[CaedemSanguis]

Nothing happened with the community

Playing since 3.0, still the same thing

I even think that the high end raiding scene was more toxic during HW (difficulty/dps checks/meta)

[Rehayem]

I specifically travel to Aether DC for Chaotic and haven't really encountered any toxicity. I think the issue may stem from the fact you started calling people out, as @Clockworks mentioned earlier.

[AvoSturmfaust]

People are just feed up on both sides

You got the Toxic Casuals which complain that there is no Content for them in a MMORPG (Where every MMO focus is the Endgame) and blaming the Raiders for getting everything

Then you got the Raiders which are feed up because "why would i carry someone if they are just blaming us all the time?" (I mean lets be real remove all the Raiders and you will see how hard the game is with people which cant even press 1 button every 2s)

Now both Fractions clashing all the time, i mean look at the forum in every thread doesnt matter what the topic is, are casuals bashing raider and raider bashing casuals, it doesnt matter anymore which topic it was to beginn in the thread even now a thread about graphics ends up in a bashing thread

[Archeron]

To me, this game has always been toxic since the day I started playing. I do not understand where this idea comes from that the community on this MMORPG is any different from the rest. Maybe it is because people hide their true feelings and thoughts because the ToS is so wide and far reaching to limit speech. But when punishment seems poorly enforced, people seem more willing to let the mask of Inclusivity tolerance acceptance" slip off their face and reveal the ugliness beneath. My vision of this game is not clouded by nostalgia. Nor do I think that any other MMORPG I've played is any better. This is my personal experience with the community on this game when I was a new player in SHB

My new player experience was immiediately negative. I joined my friends FC who was unwelcoming and called me a "Random from Limsa", and told people to stop inviting people like me. Fantastic welcoming party. This FC was absolutely mental. They did not allow people to AFK on the lawn, or inside the estate hall because it would "Ruin someones Gpose shoot". The FC leader would get drunk sometiems and rant about peoples sexualities and other incredibly inappropriate topics. Spoilers were often posted in FC chat which annoyed me and prompted me into leaving the FC. I joined Novice network, and the spoilers were even WORSE there. Major deaths and key events in ARR and HW were completely spoiled, and the mentors didn't seem too bothered by discussions like this going on in the Network. Perhaps it was because it was the only time they were actually talking about the game, and not hosting discussions of Anime, or kicking each other out of the Network over stupid drama. I joined an FC full of absolute degenerates who partied all the time in venues, and met some fantastic people. But they didn't exactly give me a great view of the community. Instead I learned about how common stalking and harassment was, and I even witnessed it firsthand. These people I met would change their names, transfer DC's, or even play on alts, and they'd still get stalked and harassed.

My introduction to raiding wasn't brilliant either. I was in a NORMAL mode trial/raid (I forget which.) It was my first time seeing the double stack marker. I didn't know how to handle it so I stacked both markers on each other which got everyone killed. Fortunately there were mentors in this party to help me learn from my mistakes, and provide the advice and wisdom they so desire to share with the newer play- Nope. They just called me a troll and booted me from the duty. Very helpful community. When I started getting into Extreme/Savage, it was not simple to learn the "Raid ettiquette" for this game. Clock positionals, Cardinals, ect. I had a patient savage static my friend was in carry me through content to teach me these basic principles. This game was absolutely awful at building a bridge for casual players to gradually cross into doing high end content, and the community in general was NOT helpful whatsoever

Since I do not think this community is any different from any other MMO I have played, the reason we are seeing more toxic players is all down to the loss of the casual players. The more they unsub, the more you get exposed to the segment of the community that behaves extremely poorly, and has zero patience. This happened to WoW, during the exodus, and the many content droughts i played through.

[MoofiaBossVal]

We are in the same "the straw that breaks the camel's back phase" that WoW entered a decade ago. The gane has been in a continuing decline since ShB as people get less and less bang for their buck. 4 endgame grind zones down to 2 and then none. Down from 3 dungeons per patch to two and now only one. No relic journeies. Etc. Down from a full new race to getting unfinished races that can't wear helmets to unfinished half single-gender races per expac. Etc. You are paying more money for less as the gap between patches widens, meanwhile you are still held hostage by the housing system. The game has become less and less fun to play as jobs are dumbed down and homogenized and content becomes restructured to be easy and unimaginative. You also get less and less new original music after Stormblood, with lots of copypasting from other ganes and lazy grand piano covers for night themes. The game has little to no longevity once you go through the mindless 400+ hour long visual novel, with the visual novel having declined in quality during the ShB. There are some neat scenes, but the moment to moment experience is that you come home from work and read for 2 hours of mediocre filler in which nothing happened and go to bed. The story stopped having stakes and squandered plotlines fans were interested in, and now feels like weightless fluff about stuff the new writers can't get the audience to care about. The fandom cultists tried to slander and bully those who pointed all of these problems out during ShB and EW, but now after DT the dam has broken and enough people have woken up. Also, the game has been running for over a decade. People who might have started way back when and had unlimited free time now have much less and value their time and money more, and current FF14 does not respect the player.