There are no obvious story spoilers past ARR. I was gonna call this ‘how one problem is ruining FFXIV’s reputation’ but that seemed a little too spicy.
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Vocal minority always can be problematic.
FFXIV has a million and one issue, starting with convoluted menus and not ending with unclear snapshots where you can swear you're on the spot in time but your buddy dies anyway because you've been 1 tick too slow or the housing system that's designed to drive you insane or glamour system that was designed by a sadist.
Hell, even MSQ could use some improvements with pacing – and I will clearly say – I saw people who didn't like Heavensward and loved Stormblood.
Playing other games, especially WoW or something else… gasp, how could you! Who does play these shitty games???!!!??!?!?! Well, me ofc, not WoW, but I did enjoy latest league in Path of Exile. XD
But srs talk now – progging Ultima for 3 hours without even asking something like "guys, maybe we should check strat?" or "ok, what killed us this time?" is kinda weird, and I'm serious about it, because it's an incredibly easy fight we killed it in one lockout. Compare that to Ifrit EX that me and some buddies were fighting against for 3 weeks straight. Or P3S that my static sit on for 3 months.
My point is that if you don't have any prog on fight like Ultima Weapon for hours, you should start asking how party can improve on tactic, look at the guide etc. etc.
Not doing any prog and making it look like all is good is literally wasting not just your own, but also other people's time. Constructive criticism and suggestions on improvement (like, maybe healer should cast damage spells more? or checking if healer upkeeps their DoTs or checking that DPS like Dragoon keeps using True North, or keeps positioning themself correctly stuff like that) is not a toxic behaviour. Toxic is outright telling people to shut up, giving advices that don't lead anywhere but to wipe and not improving situation at all. If you're on Prog and you believe that you have a good idea how to improve situation – communicate it.
I had a lot of cases when we were progging some fights on Stream and first thing that we were doing – trying to adjust tactic and our play and listening to people's feedback. That's what helped me and my group to get through some of the harder encounters.
Personally for me, as endgame player, game's biggest issue is that there is a ton little issues but people try to act as they don't exist or even worse, trying to explain why SE's unwillingless to give us chatbubbles or better visual representation of player needing cleanse is a technical limitation and not a conscious design choice and shut up, they know better than you. For how toxic and funny Xeno is often looking, he is right on many occasions and in many cases his critique of the game is legit.
I don't trust that SE "doesn't play their game" argument but they definitely need to have less experienced teams for playtesting along with their main testers because those taint the difficulty significantly. I know this issue from first hand of designing combat encounters for games myself and trying to keep them challenging and fun.
I think that answer should be good.
as someone who played the game for a decade, it has it's share of problems, but if you pug, and don't want to be banned, you do not mention strat in Prog content. you just don't. "You don't pay my sub" and accusations of gatekeeping/being a toxic player/etc. Even when I asked "Ok, what did I miss?" when the team wiped to the same strat for the third time, I was called a toxic player.
that's not even getting into the unequal application of TOS punishments. A streamer or world first team uses 3rd party apps to enhance their game play? they loose the weapon and the title they earned. they get a 3 or 7 day ban. If you're some no name joe, your account is permabanned and you can't even reach out to contest the ban.
there's a LOT of problems with the game. A LOT of ways it could be better and those unwilling to look at it critically and expect it to improve, are the biggest issue.
I gotta say, XIV is my main game and I do know about all it's flaws, but when someone else that isn't actively playing talk about them, it triggers my cultist side 😩
Minority? This has been an issue since 2013 when the community grew exponentially. Back then not only would they grill you on social media for saying anything other than the game is perfect, but if you did so on the forums or the game, or they knew who you were in the game, they'd mass report you until they eventually got people banned. Do any vets remember the name Rokien?
These days there's lots of people who are even afraid to say anything that could in any way be taken negatively in game, I'm talking even giving advice in a dungeon or asking people to put on a job stone. It's a large reason why you'd be lucky if you ever see anything other than "o/" and "gg".
There's this weird toxic positivity surrounding the game that's been around since ARR came out, and anyone who knows about the game except the large sub sector of the community in constant denial knows it.
I can attest from experience that this is kinda true. Most people love a good FFXIV lore video! But if I ever dare to say that the writer's did anything less than a perfect job, then some players will make it sound like I've joined the Dark Side and just set a church on fire. lol
I've only started playing the game since ending of SB, beginning of ShB and i've been avidly playing the game since then. I had my fair share of "these people are way too nice, i wonder why" moments as well. Its a nice change of scenery since i have done nothing but play League, Overwatch and WoW these past years and had my fair share of seeing people be toxic to other people and treating them like crap. I can differentiate what is toxic and what is just constructive critisism. Im half a casual player and half a competitive player when it comes to progging and pvp, i love those two things the most in this game apart from like the story and the cute holiday events they come out with.
But i'd be damned if im playing frontlines and make callouts to where i see a slither of hope in turning things around "Instead of sitting here and doing nothing lets go flank yellow" or "Why are you guys trying to grab that node when we can just take these nodes based on where both teams are" and be met with "this isn't WoW, you should watch what you say in chat before you get mass reported" and "im just here for the XP, i don't really care for this mode to bother" Or there are times where im trying to prog with a team of players/static and i communicate that the current strat isn't working and we'll have to think of a better one/come up with a better solution to come about progging this im still here being called toxic. The whole thing just rubs me wrong. And at times im telling my friends "i mean if they wanna call me toxic i can show them actual toxicity" but playing League and Overwatch and dealing with that toxicity in general just makes me tired and gives me this headache that i just don't want to deal with you know? I just want to enjoy pvping in the game or enjoy progging new content without mines or others time being wasted. We can't get the time we spent in something back, we might as well try and improve the situation to where at the end we can be proud of ourselves or be like YESSSSSS WE DID IT HELL YEAH BROTHER moments.
I for one didn't even want to start pvping because the first time i ever did Onsal im here grabbing the OoVoo and someone spammed chat with emotes just slapping me and im here like ??? "why are you slapping me?" my party was asking me who was it and i gave them the name and when the person in question got @ in chat they were like "i wanted to grab the oovoo but they grabbed it instead" and people were like "who cares who grabs it, as long as we grab it theirs no need to be slapping people what are you 9?" and the person's comeback basically was the prior of "this isn't WoW, you should watch what you say in chat before you get mass reported" and i type in party like "bruh, someone has issues holy crap" and they were like "people take small things way too seriously when we got bigger issues than that"
But how do people get to that moment if no one bothers to take advice or constructive critisism to heart when anything they don't like being said or anything is considered "toxic" Those people need to really think about the difference between the two. Those people need to understand that not everyone will agree and disagree with the same things you do. Those people need to understand that some people aren't that great at the game (no offense) and they just need to offer a helping hand to better understand whats going on whether its dungeons/trials/extremes/savages/pvp. Sorry for the rambling and sorry for things not making sense /laugh The only time i actually can talk to people without it being an issue if its for PF stuff like farming something together or doing hunts. Other than that everything else i just restrict myself to o/ or thank you because no thoughts, head empty XD
I think the minority that engages in toxic positivity to the point it overshadows the majority of FF14 players if you look deep enough does exist. I've seen small amounts of it over the 1 year I've played the game personally and if I cared about the social media aspect I feel like I'd see even more (twitter, forums etc.). And it's a bit sad because Yoshi-P and the other lead devs in the project have stated that their teams based the changes to 1.0 on other games like WoW and even titles that aren't MMOs. They've said it's alright to take a break and play something else other than FF14. Yet some people, if I had to hazard to guess, are wrapping too much of their identity in a video game and that can have catastrophic consequences even when everything is going well. They cant even get that the director they love so much would consider the purity tests and obsession to be unhealthy – possibly even depressing because the warped view of him as a creator is spurring it unintentionally. I'm not idealistic this can every be fully tackled, any social situation that gets this big is going to have outliers at times who take things too far. But maybe it would be worth it if Yoshi-P could make a more hard stance, PSA on taking things way too seriously in a video game. I don't know if it's the culture of his home country and/or his disposition to not be direct about positive toxicity, but even someone detached from all this who doesn't play the game can see the business implications of the game getting a "cult" status in the negative meaning of the term. And I'd hope he could still say some constructive things when addressing the issue like: Instead of saying something that seems nice, could you pause to think "can I do something rather than say something that will accurately convey the feelings I want to give to x, y, z player" etc. Instead of saying things off the cuff because your clearly invested… would being quiet be more effective if you were in the shoes of a fresh player to become invested like the people who know… and for the love of god would spamming that smiling face over and over with so many other people diminish the impact of reveals or outright signpost when things happen (I'm still guilty of that last one). And when it comes to high-end raid content, can players just reasonably set boundaries for what you expect from your team… and not act upset if, circumstances being what they are to progress, your asked to find a new party because your not able to show up or aren't taking in any of the criticism when continuing to die holds the game in place. There is a non-toxic way of saying you put the interests of the majority over any single player and it should never be shunned when it's said in a non-toxic, non-passive aggressive manner. Overall it's okay to both have boundaries and let people do what they please, those can co-exist. It's how people are going about it that is silently eating away at this game, especially in the off-season content.
be a GIGACHAD and build a strong self confidence to not care about it
Just the notion that anger cant be a healthy emotion to have towards a situation, when properly controlled and processed, seems like the most dangerous assumption I sometimes get from playing FF14. I'm not saying it's cool to be the kid that spams in all CAPS when things go fubar. If you didn't have displeasure via pain in the real world you wouldn't be alive to read this or play an MMO, and if you didn't have anger that was processed successfully you'd be stunted in many things but at the heart of it all your mind would never be in the right place. And I know what it's like because I've been there. The long periods of silence when the same situations happen, the same anger emerges because it's become maddingly pre-ordained to reoccur… because no one wants to break the cycle. No one dares to potentially change the mood to what everyone probably subconsciously knows is inevitable; something is wrong. So we pretend were happy and that the anger isn't there, yet everything is boiling over. And you ironically enough get meaner things slipping through as passive aggressive behaviors and the scary part is most of it is now unintentionally hateful which unlike anger can never be healthy. Something is wrong, and we don't even know what we are doing now. If you are there like I have been, please just set some boundaries and kindly walk away from involving yourself with people who step all over them. And there is a kind way to express that your angry about something and need to change things up. It's not selfish. And it's not weakness. It's the situation around us and our place in it.
At the very least, we can say that we have yet to deal with problems like Blizzard. But beyond that, they should give me housing and make it a bit easier to customize it. Takes so fucking long to glitch everything.
It's funny that FF14 has this reputation of a game where everyone has to be nice because ooh, the GMs are gonna get you, but in truth, the GM moderation in this game is inconsistent, and the TOS is interpreted wildly differently by each individual GM.
There was a huge debacle a year or so ago, where a GM basically put permanent infractions on dozens of accounts for the crime of… advertising RP venues (regular cafes even, not NSFW venues) in Party Finder, and all those accounts still have those infractions despite venue ads in PF not being remotely against TOS at all. Meanwhile, neither of the accounts that I reported at different times for calling people the f-slur in party chat had any action taken against them, as according to the rules, reports are only admitted when the offensive action is taken against you, not from any bystanders.
People like to claim that no, politely telling people to turn their tank stance on is not a TOS offense of "compulsion of play", but if the tank reports you, then, depending on how the GM is feeling that day, it may be counted as one. At the same time, you could tell someone the most hateful shit, and it's extremely unlikely your account ever gets a GM visit regardless. Situation number one is just as likely/unlikely to be moderated as situation number two, so the safe option is to just never talk in party chat.