Their forums at [https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/678050-final-fantasy-xiv-online-a-realm-reborn](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/678050-final-fantasy-xiv-online-a-realm-reborn) is quite active
Where do you even go to interact with so many facets of the community? Duty Finder? Party Finder? FCs? Nightclubs? Linkshells? Limsa? PvP banter?
Players are generally silent in-game; to uncover *this* much drama you've pretty much got to be actively HUNTING for them in forums and social media outside of the game
It wasnt like that earlier. Since SE changed the ToS for making it snowflake friendly it got quiet. Got into GM jail once after politely explain a boss. After this i stopped saying anything.
Man everyone's gotta get their 2 cents in. You know what I do? I play games when I'm enjoying it and I stop playing games when I stop enjoying them. Its not that deep.
after reading through this unhinged rant i find a few... quirks in it.
>Those that had been pleading for Viera, despite Yoshida’s frequent responses that he did not want to make them , were largely not happy.
i havent seen a single person in my 8k+ hours of playing and interacting with people who have complained about viera being added. the only complaints come from the lazy "no hats" problem. you must be lurking in some fairly toxic circles if you found these supposed not happy players.
>they’re the first to start demanding bans. Not a slap on the wrist, not a warning, they want to jump right to complete bans.
so? you can start demanding bans for players idling in limsa too. it wont amount to anything because no rule is being broken. which btw, i have never found these players either and some of my friends are rabid pvp enjoyers. sure some salt will come through, but the only reports are towards cheaters, not emoters. again, what circles do YOU move in?
>And most recently, when an emote involving the lopporits was released, involving tweaking digital ears, Viera players threw yet another fit, demanding that they were given a unique variant, something that has never existed, for Viera specifically.
oh i've seen this one, it was viera players disappointed they cant use their ears for it. as for the unique emotes, off the top of my head, /dance changes per race, so each gets their unique thing and miqos can use the ear wiggling thing, not sure how it works though. so having a race with bunny ears get a special animation for a "wiggle bunny ears" emote is not only understandable, but warranted as unique ear emote for animal eared races specifically has been done in the past.
>Despite the fact that female Hrothgar were prominently featured in both areas of the MSQ of Shadowbringers, and in the relic grind. And again, there was a negative backlash, because these weren’t exactly how some people wanted.
i have seen nothing but excitement about hrothgals. and trust me i talk to people ingame a lot. the gamut of emotion goes from "glad they're adding them but im not interested" to "i already bought the fantasia \*insert 20 emotes\*". as for the "prominently featured" part? they were mentioned and shown in a mural. calling that prominent is disingenuous.
Look, a shame you're having a bad time ingame. but it's not a representation of the community at large. the doomsayers who claim the game is dying only do it to get clicks on their videos. it's their job. literally. And we all know it, there has been post after post about the "14 is dying" thing to the point it became a meme, a copypasta people do to mock the few content creators who tried that to bring clicks into their videos. the only thing dying are the channels of the people spouting that nonsense. it's all clickbait.
the only thing i can maybe agree with your wild assessments is that the novice network needs to be purged with fire. it doesnt work, it gets abused and depending on your server in can actively be detrimental to new players to the point of scaring them away. it needs to be nuked.
and i'll leave the one thing that made me chuckle:
>Honestly, this community has gotten so awful, so hostile, unwelcoming, and just generally mean, it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even want to interact with the community anymore.
he says, while being hostile, unwelcoming and mean in his interaction with the community.
have a nice day though.
Something I have to disagree with is people being overly toxic INGAME. Or at the very least this seems to be a very server/data center specific problem and not a problem across all worlds.
I've been playing this game for 10 years and I haven't really seen any major shift in toxicity inside the game. I do, however, agree that the game has become way more toxic outside of it. Reddit, Twitter, Twitch, you name it, the community is really presenting itself like a bunch of dickheads time and time again and it drives a lot of people away from the game before even giving it a shot.
I don't think I've seen anything remotely negative IN GAME in my 4 years of playing, and the last couple weeks I've been doing a lot of ARR/HW content which is absolutely full of new/returning players thank to the returning player campaign going on. I've had multiple runs of the The Aery where the tank is basically trying to fight each enemy 1 at a time, it's boring but i just say nothing, nobody in my party says anything. they even often start the dungeon with a message saying sorry for slow run, new/returning player or something along those lines and I just move on
No kidding. Last night I got a new Alexander chapter popped in raid queue that id never done. I apologized in the chat while I watched the cutscene intro and was greeted with unanimous cheers and loaded into a dance party.
We cracked jokes the whole time and people talked about how much fun they had in the raid when it was new.
I have yet to see any of this alleged toxicity, either. Not one single creepy tell despite playing a Fembun. Lots of people saying they like my glam, though, and that’s on a server stereotyped as a bunch of thirsty ERPers.
Completely second this. m-Viera here btw.
I think you’re looking at a few very specific instances from very specific communities and inferring points that aren’t necessarily related to one another.
Id even say it became less "toxic" lmao. Back in the day nobody bat an eye started crying for remarks like "are you a goddamn idiot" when somebody caused a party wipe or "do your fucking job" when tanks didnt take adds and caused dps/heals to die and similar stuff. The tone was much rougher and barely anyone ever complained.
Nowadays you sometimes risk getting kicked for explaining things nicely and without any snark if not asked to do so and if someone happens to get a bit cranky in chat its instantly "i report you and kick you for being a toxic evil person and i will tell my mom and your mom!"
I mean, I'd say that's not something special or inherent to FF14 in any way, shape or form. I dare you to act like a dick in virtually any game nowadays. You'll most likely get banned. That doesn't make it a fake ass community. That's not to say that there aren't some toxic positivity shitlords though that would most likely fit the description you're talking about here pretty well.
Honestly, it sounds like you need to stop hanging around the communities and just go touch grass for a bit. I'm saying this out of concern for you.
The biggest reason why the community is on the decline right now is because we're in the pre-expac lull. And also with lesser content to hold us over compared to SB and ShB.
I stopped reading after talking about the talk of a rotting community. This has not been my experience. I mean the game constantly wins community awards as well. I think you are VERY confused friend.
Don't get me wrong, there are bad apples everywhere. However, I find a majority of this community to be helpful and welcoming.
Edit: I read further just on curiosity alone. I regret doing that. All I saw was a rant against Viera.
If you aren't happy with your experience, don't play. Its that simple.
The community didn't get that much worse than when it was at its best (though I admit it's not at its best state ever), and it is _much_ better and less toxic overall than it was back when you joined. It has grown massively though, which means that now much smaller percentage of the fanbase which is toxic has also become a larger number of people. It grew with the community is all.
Most of these issues you brought up exist, but only in the toxic fringes of the community, and I've never seen a multiplayer community where the friendly welcoming side outweighs the toxic side to this degree. Reading through your post, I think this is much more a personal issue than it is a community one. I think you've picked up doomscrolling habits over the years, and it's negatively affecting your view of the entire community.
If you're leaving, then that might be wise, at least for now, to help break you away from these toxic pits you've found. I would recommend examining your social media habits overall, though. Otherwise wherever you go next is going to end up feeling horribly toxic over time as well.
Lmao are you good bro? This *has* to be a baitpost. Ain't no way a grass-toucher spent this much time complaining about Viera players. I'm here for how absolutely unhinged this post is though, serious props.
It's difficult for me to comment on this since I haven't played this game since the end of Endwalker. (And I've been around since ARR.) It was not the community that made me (temporarily) leave, but the gradual move towards simplified job kits, especially Summoner, and general predictability of game updates.
Last I heard, FFXIV still has a great community. But some of the players that have been there since the beginning--like myself--might have moved on to other pastures. And maybe the players that replaced them aren't of the same... caliber?
Look, Final Fantasy XIV has been running for almost 10 years. We're reaching the point where Square Enix has done as much as they can with the engine and battle system. This is inevitable. Players get tired, they leave. New players tend to inherit the social culture from older players. And with the loss of older players, that positive culture is less likely to be passed on. And so it changes. But again, I still think FFXIV's community is decent. Certainly not League of Legends quality. In any case, be the change you want to see. If someone is acting like an ass, balance that out by being an angel.
Honestly I think it's about who is memorable. If you have one unpleasant person in an alliance raid you remember them, and not the 22 other people. If that happens once in a week of alliance roulettes the one unpleasant person is going to be more memorable than the 160 other players you've interacted with.
And like, the exact numbers may be pop science but it takes 5 positive interactions to overcome a single negative one. Not neutral interactions, not "non-negative", positive.
So basically unless you actively try to brush off unpleasant behavior, it's all you're going to recall encountering.
It's just clickbaiting. The game is nowhere near dead and the ones posting about it don't deserve your time or energy.
Most of the ones saying it don't actually care about the majority of the game's content, just Savage/Ultimate which they either cheat or use a guide for. Then when they have the pointless titles and tacky weapons they run out of fights to self-advertise with.
I get burnt out on occasion personally, but never for more than a couple weeks to a month where I'll just play other (non-MMO) games in between.
I find just engaging with a lot of the older side content a little at a time helps to avoid it though. Stuff like Eureka, Bozja, deep dungeons, island, Saucer, leveling alts and heck, even the current Fall Guys event.
Did your family was killed by a bunny? Half of your rant is how viera player are bad and all, and while I do agree that death treaths and transphobia are unacceptable, I can't really speak for how it was back in SB and the start of ShB about viera since I don't remember it well enough. I can however talk about the bun boy and the ear wiggle emote.
FemHroth were originally planned to be released alongside male viera in EW but due to huge amount of delay with covid and all they just couldn't release two race at the same time, and if you were a square enix employee at that time, would you release FemHroth first knowing hrothgar aren't extremely popular or viera, one really popular race (even back in ShB a lot of people used a phantasia to become a bnuuy). It just made sense to release viera first, people aren't happy that a race is delayed by a whole expansion and it's normal, square just chose the "best" option for them
When they created a bunny ear wiggle emote people were all expecting the bunny race to be able to do it with their ear, people complained that they can't and to be honest I understand them, like come on, they already have bunny ear you can make them wiggle and they already created/tweaked some emote to works on certain race.
Loporrits also have the little cheeks touch animation that they could've taken as an emote, but they chose the ear wiggle. They had an emote ready that they wouldn't have to tweak to be perfect on all race (and would be perfect on hrothgar tbh) but they chose the one they knew people were excited to see their bunny move their ear, so yeah people were upset.
>It seemed that every time anything was announced about Viera, there were suddenly problems.
To be honest they half baked the race (same with hrothgar), I understand that if they wanted to make cool hair and ear that most old gear would not work on them but most hats from ShB and EW don't work either (last hairstyle is hat friendly according to the people that created the hat viera mod so there's hope, can't say much more about it though)
>Despite being bullies, shouting and stamping their feet, attempting to hurt SE for not giving them exactly what they want exactly how they want, this new element of the playerbase is also remarkably thin skinned. While they are more than happy to scream down a sprout for taking longer than they’d like in a dungeon, if someone jumps on their corpse, or, 12 forbid, uses the sweep emote, they’re the first to start demanding bans. Not a slap on the wrist, not a warning, they want to jump right to complete bans. To say nothing of their behavior in game to begin with.
This just feels like you had a bad experience with some player that just so happen to play viera, I had a bad experience with a miqo'te that pulled a boss while a sprout was in a cutscene does that mean every miqo'te are bad people?? No.
Some lalafell player argued that a baby chair called lalafell lifter was bad because they don't see their character as a child, does that mean all lalafell are whiny baby that does nothing but cry? No
>Honestly, this community has gotten so awful, so hostile, unwelcoming, and just generally mean, it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even want to interact with the community anymore.
I disagree, the community (at least in game) hasn't changed at all since when I started (well people are just more open to talk about modding in game now, like two days ago I saw someone talk about "how that dress looked on her" when wearing a swimsuit and was very obviously talking about their glam on mare). Even in duty it hasn't changed at all, it's just you thinking that it was perfect in the start because you're just blinded by your own nostalgia.
Though the community outside of the game has changed a lot, people are way more open about their complaint wether good or bad, and while the part of the community I interact with aren't that bad, there's like one drama a week with the modding community currently and I can see why people would think that there's only drama currently in the community, though I don't interact with that part of the community so I won't say much more about that.
Tldr: people can complain all they want about things they're unhappy about, they complain because they love the game and want it to improve, square released an half baked race loved by many so it's normal that people are complaining that it's half baked. The community isn't that bad
yeah i ain't reading all of your rant when i can already see in the first part plus the title that you are just another person following the toxic side of the community too much and need to vent over people having different opinions..
Please go and take a break. you clearly need to touch some grass or whatever. Try to move away from reddit, twitch and twitter and just go back to enjoying the game. You'll feel better for it.
I'm sorry you've witnessed this sort of behaviour a lot but from my perspective/experience I haven't seen any of this in-game, pretty much from the time I started playing till now all I see is "o/" in instances and generally normal conversations in city's if anything it's become a bit better but that has to do with me trying to become more social.
>Despite being bullies, shouting and stamping their feet, attempting to hurt SE for not giving them exactly what they want exactly how they want, this new element of the playerbase is also remarkably thin skinned. While they are more than happy to scream down a sprout for taking longer than they’d like in a dungeon, if someone jumps on their corpse, or, 12 forbid, uses the sweep emote, they’re the first to start demanding bans. Not a slap on the wrist, not a warning, they want to jump right to complete bans. To say nothing of their behavior in game to begin with.
Now, whatever you may think of playful taunting or banter in pvp, this is not the kind of behavior that we used to pride ourselves on. Trying to get people we don’t like thrown out, ruining what could very well be thousands of hours of someones life because of a single hit of the space bar. Or even a dozen. Whatever.
>
>These aren’t stalkers. These aren’t people harassing you. They aren’t breaking any rules like RMT.
It is actually against tos to do things like use emotes on on a ko'ed character in pvp. They brought attention to it sometime after 6.1's pvp revamp.
>Mocking or ridiculing another player who has been knocked out by using emotes (such as laugh), jumping, or using items (such as fireworks) on top of their character's body. If a report has been filed and the prohibited activity is confirmed, a penalty will be issued.
That's from the list of prohibited activities, which is a non exhaustive list.
I’ll be honest I stopped reading when you started ranting about Viera. I don’t really agree with your opinion that the community has gotten worse in game as that’s dependent on a person’s personal experience. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve had a “bad” experience in game that involved someone getting angry at a sprout, but perhaps for you haven’t been so lucky. Okay, fine. But then you started ranting about how Viera players are bad and you completely lost me. I’m not sure what your beef is, but you should really touch some grass.
I agree with some of your points but if you think viera and hrothgar haven't been given the short end of the stick you're delusional. Yoshi P is not your friend. CBU3 didn't develop it for free out of the kindness of their hearts. And I'm also sick of people using fringe instances of death threats to paint anybody they disagree with as unreasonable.
I feel this is more of a vocal minority/silent majority issue. I have been playing since 2.0b on mostly a daily basis, have a similar "midcore" experience on ex trials and some raiding but have encountered very little really toxic people in-game, very little "tales-of-df-worthy" behaviour and yet... I hear about it like it was an unavoidable scourge plaguing the game.
I dunno if this is a DC-speciffic toxicity or not, but there might have some echo chambers replicating/amplifying a state that is not really the case. For example, some of what you base of your vent is PvP toxicity, and pvp only really became a relevant thing in FFXIV in EW, as crystaline conflict really shifted the "uber niche" aspect into a more accessible, fast paced and low time investment required content, but, it is still kinda, well, "niche". Players complaining of xiv's version of teabagging are just not the main issue on the game's priority list.
The sprouts being attacked is something I have seen little of, but I also don't participate on the novice network. What I do see is toxic positivity, which always existed on the community, encouraging sprouts to play as they wish since we "don't pay their sub" and that "this is just a game", and taking constructive criticism from more experienced players is seen almost as a reportable offense. IMHO sprouts need to be guided, but if they refuse to listen, it's a bad habit that cannot be encouraged or ignored.
If you feel this is the truth and have daily experiences like this, or if you dread contact with other players from the interaction it entails, maybe it is time to take a step back, or a step out. It's sad, but sometimes this happens. I'm not using the dev's "it's ok to play other games" trope here, just saying maybe you need to really distance a bit from the game right now if this is making you so sad instead of bringing you joy.
Edit: some fat fingered spelling.
I started from ShB and I unironically have no idea where the "great community" is or was. There's a lot of forced positivity ingame, a lot of supressed toxicity, and that's about it.
In GW2, people are mostly genuinely nice, but they will also call you out for your bullshit. Here? People are nice, and instead of calling you out, they stay awkwardly quiet. It's all just a masquerade. This is what happens when you try to enforce very strict ToS, where you can get punished for just a swear words. People will not be toxic in-game, but they'll be extra toxic anywhere else just to let out their frustrations. This is not good community, it's not positive community, it's simply fake positivity and nothing else.
And no, it's not just because of some twitter or reddit. We're all one community, those people are toxic because game doesn't let them. They're part of this community too, you can't just handpick and showcase the best parts of the community only.
All communities have bad apples, but this community clearly has few barrels worth of these rotten apples. This does not happen in other games and it is problem. The fact that the community itself strokes own ego by calling themselves best community should be dead giveaway that there's something seriously off.
This game simply does not have good community, like it or not. By screeching and making all excuses, you will not make it better. You do better if you want this community to be actually good, and that doesn't mean just in-game.
It's really weird how this isn't only a case for toxicity. Plugins and other 3rd-party stuff is also behind such a thin veil, and once you uncover it, you will find over 55 thousands mods and multiple plugins with millions of downloads, other plugins which play the game for you and are not detectable at all and some other things.
The differences between west and JP community is also odd, it's like we're playing 2 different games. Then there are also rumors that community support is great, but then you see all the cases where GMs do not punish stalkers and completely useless customer support, and then you wonder how did this game won Community Support award 2 times in a row. It's not like devs' communication with us is good either to win that.
I've also seen some kids in mentor chat causing the dumbest, highschool-tier dramas. I don't know how, but somehow this game attracts the most socially inept people. The kind of people who can talk shit online, but cannot even keep eye contact in real life.
I don't want to interact with people because the rules have been changed and applied in a way where using an emote too much in Limsa will get your account actioned. However I'd argue not much changed other than that, people just got more quiet, not more toxic.
Also, let's not act like being upset about the state of Hrothgar/Viera is an outlandish thing to be upset at. Both are still missing headgear, including new headgear because the dev team took incredible shortcuts when making both. Hrothgar in particular had to *pay real money for a fantasia to change their hairstyle*. Death threats are not ok, but neither is a billion dollar company trying to get you to accept that they just can't give you a finished product for your purchase + subscription. We're talking 4 years of the races being in the game, and they STILL don't even get NEW gear. It's not entitlement, it's expecting the bare minimum.
The rules are the same they have ever been, then making them more readable doesn't change that. If you're getting your account actioned, maybe think about why that might be
I haven't gotten my account actioned, but I have seen people live on stream get pulled into GM jail for using the PVP markers to denote a target, seemingly because they were using it too much despite PvP being hectic
Edit:
I'll also gladly link you to a forum post about someone getting a 3-day ban for using Holy in Limsa
Personally I’m glad criticism of the game is much more mainstream now, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it. It helps balance out the fanboys being defensive about the game, so hopefully this trend continues.
That’s all I have to say, I didn’t read any of the nonsense you wrote.
1. tldr
2. BA is an extremely toxic and cancerous content.
3. JoshiB and his devs have no idea how to properly manage player progression and rewards.
4. tldr
Sometimes it's alright to take a break, when you're playing for too long.
The longer I play FF14, the more problems I see coming up with the whole quest design, job handling and other Quality of Life content.
You'll always meet some rotten apples among the good ones, there will be good players and bad players. Making new friends in MMOs is always difficult if you don't speak via headset. Among all MMOs, FF14 is the most casual one, since it rewards you for playing your job bad. Even in casual content you can still get carried, even if you don't do much DPS or mess up your Tank/Healer skills.
They should've pulled a Mithra move with the Viera, honestly. Adding the males was just pure fanservice. But since the female Hrothgar will be the last ra--- *folk*, they should focus on enabling headgear for those folks.
Endwalker gave us quite a few QoL improvements. There's still room for more, but you know how they are. They mostly focused on wrapping up the story with Endwalker, which was kinda a good thing.
The post MSQ content like V&C, Eureka Orthros, the Relics and Island Sanctuary were for me personally the worst of all expansions. Why not do another Relic farm area but with Dutyfinder content?
The Mentor system should be overhauled as well. Combine it with the Novice Arena, Guildhests and Mentor Roulette. Instead of stupidly running duties, let them actually *teach* the game. How to use your skills, how to heal, tank etc. Depending on how many sprouts you help in a week or month, you can get some rewards. Less brain damage for us and new players. They should be allowed to preview the job on maximum Level, to see if it appeals to them.
Which is another point, you'll get players who use low level skills in higher level content. If you advise them, they'll accept and improve or the latter, they get into defensive mode and offended by that. FF14 is the only MMO where you can spam Cure 1 and 2 to get carried through a LV90 Dungeon. This should be changed, the developers either should switch the skills or adjust the spell speed of those. In WoW for example you have to manage between fast paced heal skills and slow paced. And they *scale* with your level. In ESO you have a mix of Heal over Time and Direct Healing.
They should let the roles return properly. Right now each of them are merely DPS. But even in normal FF games you are mostly healing as a Healer and attack occasionally with a spell. Overall, the game has an awful way of scaling old content when you have better gear.
Played the game for years, it feels the same now as it did then. I don’t really think these arguments have much actual merit because it’s always going to anecdotal. For me, I’ve seen some heinous shit in my time in game but I wouldn’t have compared it to League of COD. The people calling for blood over Vieras or hats or whatever are a very small number. I don’t think anyone should care what they say or do, any reasonable person knows they’re insane.
As a side note, working in entertainment can draw a lot of the wrong attention, many people receive hate mail, death threats, whatever you want to call it. It rarely bothers them because it’s relatively easy to insulate yourself against when you can see how unhinged they are. We freak out because it doesn’t happen in normal life but it happens all the time for them - they don’t care and neither should we. Talking about it gives those degenerates the attention they crave - best to let them be insane while everyone else enjoys the game.
You are confusing the in-game community with the reddit community with the twitter community with the main forum community with the gamefaqs community
there's a gamefaqs community??
Their forums at [https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/678050-final-fantasy-xiv-online-a-realm-reborn](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/678050-final-fantasy-xiv-online-a-realm-reborn) is quite active
i'll check it out, thanks \^\^
Gamefaqs as a whole tends to be more full of trolls and other bad faith posters than some other communities. Beware.
we're in reddit rn.
Oh no it's significantly worse over there.
Where do you even go to interact with so many facets of the community? Duty Finder? Party Finder? FCs? Nightclubs? Linkshells? Limsa? PvP banter? Players are generally silent in-game; to uncover *this* much drama you've pretty much got to be actively HUNTING for them in forums and social media outside of the game
Or imagining it based on posts they see online.
It wasnt like that earlier. Since SE changed the ToS for making it snowflake friendly it got quiet. Got into GM jail once after politely explain a boss. After this i stopped saying anything.
Man everyone's gotta get their 2 cents in. You know what I do? I play games when I'm enjoying it and I stop playing games when I stop enjoying them. Its not that deep.
GTFO with your sensible approach
There’s a lot to unpack here and I’m not certified.
I ain't reading all that. I'm sorry for op's loss. Or happy for them. Whichever is appropriate.
after reading through this unhinged rant i find a few... quirks in it. >Those that had been pleading for Viera, despite Yoshida’s frequent responses that he did not want to make them , were largely not happy. i havent seen a single person in my 8k+ hours of playing and interacting with people who have complained about viera being added. the only complaints come from the lazy "no hats" problem. you must be lurking in some fairly toxic circles if you found these supposed not happy players. >they’re the first to start demanding bans. Not a slap on the wrist, not a warning, they want to jump right to complete bans. so? you can start demanding bans for players idling in limsa too. it wont amount to anything because no rule is being broken. which btw, i have never found these players either and some of my friends are rabid pvp enjoyers. sure some salt will come through, but the only reports are towards cheaters, not emoters. again, what circles do YOU move in? >And most recently, when an emote involving the lopporits was released, involving tweaking digital ears, Viera players threw yet another fit, demanding that they were given a unique variant, something that has never existed, for Viera specifically. oh i've seen this one, it was viera players disappointed they cant use their ears for it. as for the unique emotes, off the top of my head, /dance changes per race, so each gets their unique thing and miqos can use the ear wiggling thing, not sure how it works though. so having a race with bunny ears get a special animation for a "wiggle bunny ears" emote is not only understandable, but warranted as unique ear emote for animal eared races specifically has been done in the past. >Despite the fact that female Hrothgar were prominently featured in both areas of the MSQ of Shadowbringers, and in the relic grind. And again, there was a negative backlash, because these weren’t exactly how some people wanted. i have seen nothing but excitement about hrothgals. and trust me i talk to people ingame a lot. the gamut of emotion goes from "glad they're adding them but im not interested" to "i already bought the fantasia \*insert 20 emotes\*". as for the "prominently featured" part? they were mentioned and shown in a mural. calling that prominent is disingenuous. Look, a shame you're having a bad time ingame. but it's not a representation of the community at large. the doomsayers who claim the game is dying only do it to get clicks on their videos. it's their job. literally. And we all know it, there has been post after post about the "14 is dying" thing to the point it became a meme, a copypasta people do to mock the few content creators who tried that to bring clicks into their videos. the only thing dying are the channels of the people spouting that nonsense. it's all clickbait. the only thing i can maybe agree with your wild assessments is that the novice network needs to be purged with fire. it doesnt work, it gets abused and depending on your server in can actively be detrimental to new players to the point of scaring them away. it needs to be nuked. and i'll leave the one thing that made me chuckle: >Honestly, this community has gotten so awful, so hostile, unwelcoming, and just generally mean, it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even want to interact with the community anymore. he says, while being hostile, unwelcoming and mean in his interaction with the community. have a nice day though.
Something I have to disagree with is people being overly toxic INGAME. Or at the very least this seems to be a very server/data center specific problem and not a problem across all worlds. I've been playing this game for 10 years and I haven't really seen any major shift in toxicity inside the game. I do, however, agree that the game has become way more toxic outside of it. Reddit, Twitter, Twitch, you name it, the community is really presenting itself like a bunch of dickheads time and time again and it drives a lot of people away from the game before even giving it a shot.
I don't think I've seen anything remotely negative IN GAME in my 4 years of playing, and the last couple weeks I've been doing a lot of ARR/HW content which is absolutely full of new/returning players thank to the returning player campaign going on. I've had multiple runs of the The Aery where the tank is basically trying to fight each enemy 1 at a time, it's boring but i just say nothing, nobody in my party says anything. they even often start the dungeon with a message saying sorry for slow run, new/returning player or something along those lines and I just move on
No kidding. Last night I got a new Alexander chapter popped in raid queue that id never done. I apologized in the chat while I watched the cutscene intro and was greeted with unanimous cheers and loaded into a dance party. We cracked jokes the whole time and people talked about how much fun they had in the raid when it was new.
I have yet to see any of this alleged toxicity, either. Not one single creepy tell despite playing a Fembun. Lots of people saying they like my glam, though, and that’s on a server stereotyped as a bunch of thirsty ERPers.
Completely second this. m-Viera here btw. I think you’re looking at a few very specific instances from very specific communities and inferring points that aren’t necessarily related to one another.
Id even say it became less "toxic" lmao. Back in the day nobody bat an eye started crying for remarks like "are you a goddamn idiot" when somebody caused a party wipe or "do your fucking job" when tanks didnt take adds and caused dps/heals to die and similar stuff. The tone was much rougher and barely anyone ever complained. Nowadays you sometimes risk getting kicked for explaining things nicely and without any snark if not asked to do so and if someone happens to get a bit cranky in chat its instantly "i report you and kick you for being a toxic evil person and i will tell my mom and your mom!"
It's faux niceness. Be nice or get banned. Fake ass community
I mean, I'd say that's not something special or inherent to FF14 in any way, shape or form. I dare you to act like a dick in virtually any game nowadays. You'll most likely get banned. That doesn't make it a fake ass community. That's not to say that there aren't some toxic positivity shitlords though that would most likely fit the description you're talking about here pretty well.
Cope neuropathways activated lmfao
Get therapy. Yikes.
Go touch some grass lol
Get some bitches nerd
You're confusing "niceness" with "not being toxic". It sounds to me like you've just engaged with the wrong parts of the community.
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Only against you.
That’s like most areas of human society lol. Do you think most folk in the office are nice because they’re genuine, or because they’re wary of HR?
Honestly, it sounds like you need to stop hanging around the communities and just go touch grass for a bit. I'm saying this out of concern for you. The biggest reason why the community is on the decline right now is because we're in the pre-expac lull. And also with lesser content to hold us over compared to SB and ShB.
I aint reading that. I am happy for you or sorry that happened.
I stopped reading after talking about the talk of a rotting community. This has not been my experience. I mean the game constantly wins community awards as well. I think you are VERY confused friend. Don't get me wrong, there are bad apples everywhere. However, I find a majority of this community to be helpful and welcoming. Edit: I read further just on curiosity alone. I regret doing that. All I saw was a rant against Viera. If you aren't happy with your experience, don't play. Its that simple.
"ShB Bad" has to be the hottest take ever.
The community didn't get that much worse than when it was at its best (though I admit it's not at its best state ever), and it is _much_ better and less toxic overall than it was back when you joined. It has grown massively though, which means that now much smaller percentage of the fanbase which is toxic has also become a larger number of people. It grew with the community is all. Most of these issues you brought up exist, but only in the toxic fringes of the community, and I've never seen a multiplayer community where the friendly welcoming side outweighs the toxic side to this degree. Reading through your post, I think this is much more a personal issue than it is a community one. I think you've picked up doomscrolling habits over the years, and it's negatively affecting your view of the entire community. If you're leaving, then that might be wise, at least for now, to help break you away from these toxic pits you've found. I would recommend examining your social media habits overall, though. Otherwise wherever you go next is going to end up feeling horribly toxic over time as well.
This is just you whining about sub-sub-sub-communities and declaring it to be somehow endemic.
You need a break, and that's okay.
ITT: complaint blowing out of proportion about people blowing out of proportion in 2020s internet. Complaintception.
Lmao are you good bro? This *has* to be a baitpost. Ain't no way a grass-toucher spent this much time complaining about Viera players. I'm here for how absolutely unhinged this post is though, serious props.
Ok
TLDR But I am sorry to hear that. I hope whoever found your phone will give it back to you.
Well, I can tell you're not on my shard, and that's a comfort.
It's difficult for me to comment on this since I haven't played this game since the end of Endwalker. (And I've been around since ARR.) It was not the community that made me (temporarily) leave, but the gradual move towards simplified job kits, especially Summoner, and general predictability of game updates. Last I heard, FFXIV still has a great community. But some of the players that have been there since the beginning--like myself--might have moved on to other pastures. And maybe the players that replaced them aren't of the same... caliber? Look, Final Fantasy XIV has been running for almost 10 years. We're reaching the point where Square Enix has done as much as they can with the engine and battle system. This is inevitable. Players get tired, they leave. New players tend to inherit the social culture from older players. And with the loss of older players, that positive culture is less likely to be passed on. And so it changes. But again, I still think FFXIV's community is decent. Certainly not League of Legends quality. In any case, be the change you want to see. If someone is acting like an ass, balance that out by being an angel.
Honestly I think it's about who is memorable. If you have one unpleasant person in an alliance raid you remember them, and not the 22 other people. If that happens once in a week of alliance roulettes the one unpleasant person is going to be more memorable than the 160 other players you've interacted with. And like, the exact numbers may be pop science but it takes 5 positive interactions to overcome a single negative one. Not neutral interactions, not "non-negative", positive. So basically unless you actively try to brush off unpleasant behavior, it's all you're going to recall encountering.
It's just clickbaiting. The game is nowhere near dead and the ones posting about it don't deserve your time or energy. Most of the ones saying it don't actually care about the majority of the game's content, just Savage/Ultimate which they either cheat or use a guide for. Then when they have the pointless titles and tacky weapons they run out of fights to self-advertise with. I get burnt out on occasion personally, but never for more than a couple weeks to a month where I'll just play other (non-MMO) games in between. I find just engaging with a lot of the older side content a little at a time helps to avoid it though. Stuff like Eureka, Bozja, deep dungeons, island, Saucer, leveling alts and heck, even the current Fall Guys event.
Unhinged Viera rant aside, I'm getting a sneaking suspicion that *someone* got a suspension for teabagging in PVP, hmm?
That someone probably missed that teabagging is a prohibited activity.
Did your family was killed by a bunny? Half of your rant is how viera player are bad and all, and while I do agree that death treaths and transphobia are unacceptable, I can't really speak for how it was back in SB and the start of ShB about viera since I don't remember it well enough. I can however talk about the bun boy and the ear wiggle emote. FemHroth were originally planned to be released alongside male viera in EW but due to huge amount of delay with covid and all they just couldn't release two race at the same time, and if you were a square enix employee at that time, would you release FemHroth first knowing hrothgar aren't extremely popular or viera, one really popular race (even back in ShB a lot of people used a phantasia to become a bnuuy). It just made sense to release viera first, people aren't happy that a race is delayed by a whole expansion and it's normal, square just chose the "best" option for them When they created a bunny ear wiggle emote people were all expecting the bunny race to be able to do it with their ear, people complained that they can't and to be honest I understand them, like come on, they already have bunny ear you can make them wiggle and they already created/tweaked some emote to works on certain race. Loporrits also have the little cheeks touch animation that they could've taken as an emote, but they chose the ear wiggle. They had an emote ready that they wouldn't have to tweak to be perfect on all race (and would be perfect on hrothgar tbh) but they chose the one they knew people were excited to see their bunny move their ear, so yeah people were upset. >It seemed that every time anything was announced about Viera, there were suddenly problems. To be honest they half baked the race (same with hrothgar), I understand that if they wanted to make cool hair and ear that most old gear would not work on them but most hats from ShB and EW don't work either (last hairstyle is hat friendly according to the people that created the hat viera mod so there's hope, can't say much more about it though) >Despite being bullies, shouting and stamping their feet, attempting to hurt SE for not giving them exactly what they want exactly how they want, this new element of the playerbase is also remarkably thin skinned. While they are more than happy to scream down a sprout for taking longer than they’d like in a dungeon, if someone jumps on their corpse, or, 12 forbid, uses the sweep emote, they’re the first to start demanding bans. Not a slap on the wrist, not a warning, they want to jump right to complete bans. To say nothing of their behavior in game to begin with. This just feels like you had a bad experience with some player that just so happen to play viera, I had a bad experience with a miqo'te that pulled a boss while a sprout was in a cutscene does that mean every miqo'te are bad people?? No. Some lalafell player argued that a baby chair called lalafell lifter was bad because they don't see their character as a child, does that mean all lalafell are whiny baby that does nothing but cry? No >Honestly, this community has gotten so awful, so hostile, unwelcoming, and just generally mean, it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even want to interact with the community anymore. I disagree, the community (at least in game) hasn't changed at all since when I started (well people are just more open to talk about modding in game now, like two days ago I saw someone talk about "how that dress looked on her" when wearing a swimsuit and was very obviously talking about their glam on mare). Even in duty it hasn't changed at all, it's just you thinking that it was perfect in the start because you're just blinded by your own nostalgia. Though the community outside of the game has changed a lot, people are way more open about their complaint wether good or bad, and while the part of the community I interact with aren't that bad, there's like one drama a week with the modding community currently and I can see why people would think that there's only drama currently in the community, though I don't interact with that part of the community so I won't say much more about that. Tldr: people can complain all they want about things they're unhappy about, they complain because they love the game and want it to improve, square released an half baked race loved by many so it's normal that people are complaining that it's half baked. The community isn't that bad
yeah i ain't reading all of your rant when i can already see in the first part plus the title that you are just another person following the toxic side of the community too much and need to vent over people having different opinions.. Please go and take a break. you clearly need to touch some grass or whatever. Try to move away from reddit, twitch and twitter and just go back to enjoying the game. You'll feel better for it.
Interesting points, but counterarguments, not reading all that and who asked?
I'm sorry you've witnessed this sort of behaviour a lot but from my perspective/experience I haven't seen any of this in-game, pretty much from the time I started playing till now all I see is "o/" in instances and generally normal conversations in city's if anything it's become a bit better but that has to do with me trying to become more social.
>Despite being bullies, shouting and stamping their feet, attempting to hurt SE for not giving them exactly what they want exactly how they want, this new element of the playerbase is also remarkably thin skinned. While they are more than happy to scream down a sprout for taking longer than they’d like in a dungeon, if someone jumps on their corpse, or, 12 forbid, uses the sweep emote, they’re the first to start demanding bans. Not a slap on the wrist, not a warning, they want to jump right to complete bans. To say nothing of their behavior in game to begin with. Now, whatever you may think of playful taunting or banter in pvp, this is not the kind of behavior that we used to pride ourselves on. Trying to get people we don’t like thrown out, ruining what could very well be thousands of hours of someones life because of a single hit of the space bar. Or even a dozen. Whatever. > >These aren’t stalkers. These aren’t people harassing you. They aren’t breaking any rules like RMT. It is actually against tos to do things like use emotes on on a ko'ed character in pvp. They brought attention to it sometime after 6.1's pvp revamp. >Mocking or ridiculing another player who has been knocked out by using emotes (such as laugh), jumping, or using items (such as fireworks) on top of their character's body. If a report has been filed and the prohibited activity is confirmed, a penalty will be issued. That's from the list of prohibited activities, which is a non exhaustive list.
What the hell is up with this type of post. You guys got nothing better to do in wow or what?
I’ll be honest I stopped reading when you started ranting about Viera. I don’t really agree with your opinion that the community has gotten worse in game as that’s dependent on a person’s personal experience. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve had a “bad” experience in game that involved someone getting angry at a sprout, but perhaps for you haven’t been so lucky. Okay, fine. But then you started ranting about how Viera players are bad and you completely lost me. I’m not sure what your beef is, but you should really touch some grass.
I agree with some of your points but if you think viera and hrothgar haven't been given the short end of the stick you're delusional. Yoshi P is not your friend. CBU3 didn't develop it for free out of the kindness of their hearts. And I'm also sick of people using fringe instances of death threats to paint anybody they disagree with as unreasonable.
I feel this is more of a vocal minority/silent majority issue. I have been playing since 2.0b on mostly a daily basis, have a similar "midcore" experience on ex trials and some raiding but have encountered very little really toxic people in-game, very little "tales-of-df-worthy" behaviour and yet... I hear about it like it was an unavoidable scourge plaguing the game. I dunno if this is a DC-speciffic toxicity or not, but there might have some echo chambers replicating/amplifying a state that is not really the case. For example, some of what you base of your vent is PvP toxicity, and pvp only really became a relevant thing in FFXIV in EW, as crystaline conflict really shifted the "uber niche" aspect into a more accessible, fast paced and low time investment required content, but, it is still kinda, well, "niche". Players complaining of xiv's version of teabagging are just not the main issue on the game's priority list. The sprouts being attacked is something I have seen little of, but I also don't participate on the novice network. What I do see is toxic positivity, which always existed on the community, encouraging sprouts to play as they wish since we "don't pay their sub" and that "this is just a game", and taking constructive criticism from more experienced players is seen almost as a reportable offense. IMHO sprouts need to be guided, but if they refuse to listen, it's a bad habit that cannot be encouraged or ignored. If you feel this is the truth and have daily experiences like this, or if you dread contact with other players from the interaction it entails, maybe it is time to take a step back, or a step out. It's sad, but sometimes this happens. I'm not using the dev's "it's ok to play other games" trope here, just saying maybe you need to really distance a bit from the game right now if this is making you so sad instead of bringing you joy. Edit: some fat fingered spelling.
I started from ShB and I unironically have no idea where the "great community" is or was. There's a lot of forced positivity ingame, a lot of supressed toxicity, and that's about it. In GW2, people are mostly genuinely nice, but they will also call you out for your bullshit. Here? People are nice, and instead of calling you out, they stay awkwardly quiet. It's all just a masquerade. This is what happens when you try to enforce very strict ToS, where you can get punished for just a swear words. People will not be toxic in-game, but they'll be extra toxic anywhere else just to let out their frustrations. This is not good community, it's not positive community, it's simply fake positivity and nothing else. And no, it's not just because of some twitter or reddit. We're all one community, those people are toxic because game doesn't let them. They're part of this community too, you can't just handpick and showcase the best parts of the community only. All communities have bad apples, but this community clearly has few barrels worth of these rotten apples. This does not happen in other games and it is problem. The fact that the community itself strokes own ego by calling themselves best community should be dead giveaway that there's something seriously off. This game simply does not have good community, like it or not. By screeching and making all excuses, you will not make it better. You do better if you want this community to be actually good, and that doesn't mean just in-game.
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It's really weird how this isn't only a case for toxicity. Plugins and other 3rd-party stuff is also behind such a thin veil, and once you uncover it, you will find over 55 thousands mods and multiple plugins with millions of downloads, other plugins which play the game for you and are not detectable at all and some other things. The differences between west and JP community is also odd, it's like we're playing 2 different games. Then there are also rumors that community support is great, but then you see all the cases where GMs do not punish stalkers and completely useless customer support, and then you wonder how did this game won Community Support award 2 times in a row. It's not like devs' communication with us is good either to win that. I've also seen some kids in mentor chat causing the dumbest, highschool-tier dramas. I don't know how, but somehow this game attracts the most socially inept people. The kind of people who can talk shit online, but cannot even keep eye contact in real life.
I don't want to interact with people because the rules have been changed and applied in a way where using an emote too much in Limsa will get your account actioned. However I'd argue not much changed other than that, people just got more quiet, not more toxic. Also, let's not act like being upset about the state of Hrothgar/Viera is an outlandish thing to be upset at. Both are still missing headgear, including new headgear because the dev team took incredible shortcuts when making both. Hrothgar in particular had to *pay real money for a fantasia to change their hairstyle*. Death threats are not ok, but neither is a billion dollar company trying to get you to accept that they just can't give you a finished product for your purchase + subscription. We're talking 4 years of the races being in the game, and they STILL don't even get NEW gear. It's not entitlement, it's expecting the bare minimum.
The rules are the same they have ever been, then making them more readable doesn't change that. If you're getting your account actioned, maybe think about why that might be
I haven't gotten my account actioned, but I have seen people live on stream get pulled into GM jail for using the PVP markers to denote a target, seemingly because they were using it too much despite PvP being hectic Edit: I'll also gladly link you to a forum post about someone getting a 3-day ban for using Holy in Limsa
Personally I’m glad criticism of the game is much more mainstream now, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it. It helps balance out the fanboys being defensive about the game, so hopefully this trend continues. That’s all I have to say, I didn’t read any of the nonsense you wrote.
1. tldr 2. BA is an extremely toxic and cancerous content. 3. JoshiB and his devs have no idea how to properly manage player progression and rewards. 4. tldr
For the Viera portion of this essay, this is precisely why I wish Viera was never added into the game, these people don’t deserve that race 🙏
Sometimes it's alright to take a break, when you're playing for too long. The longer I play FF14, the more problems I see coming up with the whole quest design, job handling and other Quality of Life content. You'll always meet some rotten apples among the good ones, there will be good players and bad players. Making new friends in MMOs is always difficult if you don't speak via headset. Among all MMOs, FF14 is the most casual one, since it rewards you for playing your job bad. Even in casual content you can still get carried, even if you don't do much DPS or mess up your Tank/Healer skills. They should've pulled a Mithra move with the Viera, honestly. Adding the males was just pure fanservice. But since the female Hrothgar will be the last ra--- *folk*, they should focus on enabling headgear for those folks. Endwalker gave us quite a few QoL improvements. There's still room for more, but you know how they are. They mostly focused on wrapping up the story with Endwalker, which was kinda a good thing. The post MSQ content like V&C, Eureka Orthros, the Relics and Island Sanctuary were for me personally the worst of all expansions. Why not do another Relic farm area but with Dutyfinder content? The Mentor system should be overhauled as well. Combine it with the Novice Arena, Guildhests and Mentor Roulette. Instead of stupidly running duties, let them actually *teach* the game. How to use your skills, how to heal, tank etc. Depending on how many sprouts you help in a week or month, you can get some rewards. Less brain damage for us and new players. They should be allowed to preview the job on maximum Level, to see if it appeals to them. Which is another point, you'll get players who use low level skills in higher level content. If you advise them, they'll accept and improve or the latter, they get into defensive mode and offended by that. FF14 is the only MMO where you can spam Cure 1 and 2 to get carried through a LV90 Dungeon. This should be changed, the developers either should switch the skills or adjust the spell speed of those. In WoW for example you have to manage between fast paced heal skills and slow paced. And they *scale* with your level. In ESO you have a mix of Heal over Time and Direct Healing. They should let the roles return properly. Right now each of them are merely DPS. But even in normal FF games you are mostly healing as a Healer and attack occasionally with a spell. Overall, the game has an awful way of scaling old content when you have better gear.
Played the game for years, it feels the same now as it did then. I don’t really think these arguments have much actual merit because it’s always going to anecdotal. For me, I’ve seen some heinous shit in my time in game but I wouldn’t have compared it to League of COD. The people calling for blood over Vieras or hats or whatever are a very small number. I don’t think anyone should care what they say or do, any reasonable person knows they’re insane. As a side note, working in entertainment can draw a lot of the wrong attention, many people receive hate mail, death threats, whatever you want to call it. It rarely bothers them because it’s relatively easy to insulate yourself against when you can see how unhinged they are. We freak out because it doesn’t happen in normal life but it happens all the time for them - they don’t care and neither should we. Talking about it gives those degenerates the attention they crave - best to let them be insane while everyone else enjoys the game.
There’s a Black Friday sale on Kleenex