My friend supposed that Final Fantasy 14 was less toxic than World of Warcraft because people are “forced” to be nice due to the terms of service of FFXIV. I think there’s more to it than that.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 forced positivity through TOS?
1:34 fiction increases empathy
6:12 egg timer game design
8:08 sprout system
8:40 dps meters
source
pretty common feeling when coming from that game to FF, enjoy Eorzea.
I did not know about the empathy study. Very interesting.
Very interested to see your thoughts on later ff14 mechanics (some of which barrows from wow) and the later story cause it gets more introspective/better
Thanks nice vid
Hello there! I just found your channel and your videos, and I want to say first of all that I'm sorry for your break-up – for lack of a better word – with World of WarCraft. I never played WoW, but I used to be a huge Blizzard fan, and I've watched the quality of their games slowly go downhill. I remember when their policy was "We don't release a game until we know it's ready." It's sad to see how far they've fallen.
On the other hand, Welcome to Eorzea and to Final Fantasy XIV! I very much hope that you enjoy your time with this game. On the topic of fostering a healthy community, another feature worth mentioning, I think, is the commendation system. In a group you form, you can leave a commendation for one other party member who you didn't already team-up with before joining the duty. You could award it to someone for being very good at their role, or you could give it to someone who was courteous and helpful. And the game gives you rewards if you receive a certain number of commendations, so the game's own systems are subtly encouraging you to be positive when dealing with other players, as they will reward you for a good time had, and you will be rewarded by the game for such things.
For many people, the disparaging remarks towards A Realm Reborn are in comparison to the huge leap in quality that comes afterwards. I've seen many former WoW players absolutely love ARR, and I sincerely hope that you do so as well. Regardless, I hope that you come to enjoy your adventures in Eorzea, whatever form they may take. May you ever walk in the light of the crystal~! ^_^
Very interesting bit about litterature developping empathy! I do think that there are a lot of factors that make FF14 more friendly. At the very least, it proves that developpers have a real responsability in regard to how their community behave, and no, it's not 100% under their control (thankfully), but it's important that they do not give up on managing it…this is one aspect where Wow devs clearly dropped the ball. Blizzard has been stingy with community management, and I'm not talking about communication (it could be a whole seperate discussion), but just making sure to enforce their own ToS. Because it requires to invest money, and it is not necessarily refunded in concrete cash. Sometimes, improving user experience does not benefit the company. Unfair, but it is what it is…
About social sciences, the thing is, they are kinda misnamed, they're not science (and not everything should be science, stop having inferiority complex about science, please, science is awesome and very effecive at what it aims to do, but science is not perfect, and not fit for everything, dammit). They are very interesting, though. They really should be named social studies, social disciplines, or whatever, and they should be taught about.
Welcome to eorzea enjoy your stay remember to take your time with the game and it's ok to come back when there is new content I have been cycling my subscription with each 4 month patch cycle
would be interesting to see you try and get your take on gw2s community, the game being built around teamwork really has shaped it to be known as the friendliest community in mmos, tho dont wanna be one of those people who just shills a game on someone, but if interested in trying something new, they did just release a new expansion, could be worth a play
Honestly dealt with more Toxicity on FF14 and in the FF14 community than the WoW i like to point out things that can be improved in games , WoW community see's what is wrong with the game and all agree on what needs fixing but oh boy if you say anything is wrong with FF14 they flip the hell out and turn into like a freaking angry pack of dogs " no our game is perfect our community is the nicest you suck! you're an idiot!" type shit, like hell sorry for seeing room for improvement . Same thing happens in Gw2 if you state anything wrong with the game they all jump your shit. I can play a outdated game that needs improving but the community killed it for me in both FF14 ( cant pay me to go back) and Gw2 ( rarely play) . On WoW Last time someone was an Was telling someone to get good in a dungeon the rest of us actually voted to kick the toxic guy and told the new guy its all good you have to learn to play some where i started giving them all my armor drops because i had way better stuff.
In my opinion, the MMO grind is what breeds toxicity, and WoW has it in spades. WoW forces you into the grind by making it mandatory (like Torghast), and they use FOMO to keep players hooked. FFXIV, meanwhile, decided a long time ago that they don't want you hooked like a drug addict. They did their own version of Torghast way before WoW did (Palace of the Dead), however, they made it completely optional. It's just something you can do for a challenge in FFXIV, versus being a gateway to progression in WoW.
FFXIV's community is so nice because they WANT to be in Eorzea, and because they love it so much they want to share it with others. WoW's community can be very toxic because WoW players very often feel like they are FORCED to be in Azeroth. If they leave, they'll fall behind, or miss out on something, and the account they invested so much time in will all be for nothing. That's the mindset WoW fosters in its community by relying so heavily in FOMO and tedious grinds.
Sincerely,
A former 14-year WoW player and recent lover of FFXIV
Welcome to Eorzea! I’m also a WoW transplant on the Crystal Data Center hehe. Enjoy the party it’s fun here
When WoW players say FFXIV “forces” players to play nice because TOS. That’s an idiotic. FFXIV parties aren’t as toxic because the community is, in general, more understanding. Wipes happen. New players has to learn mechanics. Learning mechanics can only be done by playing the game. I’m as competitive as anyone. I don’t like to wipe. I try to maximize my time in the game. But I’m not about to rage like a child because the party wipes. I’m not going to throw a tantrum because someone isn’t as experienced as I am in a dungeon, trial, etc.
WoW is unplayable without addons if you want to do any end game content. I couldn't pug because I never used raider.io and people would never bring me into a group over it
This is me, coming from ff14, playing for a few months and I can tell you a few things about the community, both good and bad.
The positives: people are forgiving for sprout mistakes. Some are willing to take the time to explain to you how stuff works in these dungeon/raids/trials. sometimes a little too much (I will get back to this point later. All of FF's ethos are stem from thematic storytelling, and so the scope of 14's ethos comes with the msq's theme-driven narratives. Each expansion, you will find them explore different themes. And with these msqs easily teaches the community an indirect lesson on both empathy and forgiveness. And in these msq moments, you will find yourself sharing the same vivid emotions with other players who follow you along your journey. People in the community will sometimes come up and do things that will surprise you.
However.
This is the few problems that I've come across in this game that do bother me A LOT.
Negatives: Tribalism. this is common among mmo players, not limited to ff14 as I was told by others who engage in other mmo games. Another grating issue is when you reach the higher level dungeons, you will see more… 'problematic' players, to put it lightly. The types of players who expect you to know everything when you lose the sprout icon and such. Though I've had my run-ins with a few, now and then, I am bothered by the state of a few who have been more impatient with lvl 80-90 dungeons as of late. When I mentioned about helping out a sprout and such, there's also the issue that came with people who attempt to help you, but by miscommunication and terrible attitude… come off badly as a scolding people for not knowing certain things. Entitlement exists among certain players in the game, and no, I'm not aiming at mentors, they are not always as bad as others make it out to be.
I've got nothing else to bounce this off, because since losing my sprout icon did I start seeing the community in both its negative and positive lights.
IMO WoW's toxicity is a system problem. If you make playing the game really tedious to get to with massive penalties you discourage failure. Failure is a natural part of getting good in anything. In FF you can res easily and any wipe just means you get sent back to a check point. It expects you to fail and set up a system to make it not a big deal. Nobody likes to have their time wasted and in FF they made sure that dying doesn't waste your time.
Good analysis. It goes beyond the games. It's human nature really.
BTW FF has a damage meter that raiders use. The difference with WoW is that most people dont use it to gatekeep on other players since it is technically illegal unlike in WoW that it is pretty much the norm.
Even your buddy's answer answers the question. He's only going to be nice if he's 'forced' to be nice. 😆 Plus everything in WoW is competitive. Even the cooperative mode. If you waste someone's time or ruin their Mythic plus key. Hell, since everyone has a DPS meter even having low DPS is going to get you kicked even if you do nothing wrong. If you don't meet their standards, you are 'ruining' the game for them. ::: Add to that if they're not truly having fun, it makes it so much easier for the rage to surface. And WoW hasn't been prioritizing fun for a long time. In WoW, other players are only tools to be used to achieve your ends. And if a tool is not performing you discard it.
Imagine announcing to everyone in WoW that you are new… You would instantly be kicked from every group. 😆 If you show up in a group with the 'wrong class' people will kick you out. You could be the best player of that class in the world and people would boot you before you could say hello! 😆
Many people in FFXIV like stepping into raids and dungeons with no foreknowledge. In WoW if you haven't watched the guides on YouTube at least half a dozen times before you even attempt to enter you will get kicked out! People don't have time to help you learn, and how dare you waste their time! 😱
Plus in WoW you only get a limited number of rezzes. So even being brought back to life is competitive. If you are on the bottom half of the DPS meter you ain't getting a rez unless the fight is in the bag and they have one to waste.
Did mythic raid and Mythic+ in WoW, and yes, the in-game players can be toxic. But as most said, it is a system and time problem with the game. Also, some ego problems because of how the game is designed. So far, the FF community in the game has been good, with only experiencing a few hiccups. But not to the experiences I dealt with doing WOW content.
Interesting video! .
I used to play WoW a lot, I was raiding in top 100 mythic guilds in the world (full sweat). Last year I quit WoW and started playing FF14 and I had a blast.
When it comes to the toxicity of the WoW community, there are many aspects to it that have to be taken into consideration. You have spoken about some, and those are legit and fair points. Another big point to this discussion is that WoW is a very goal oriented game. You join a group to do a daily or weekly content that the devs expect from you to do so that you can earn gear so that you can do content that you actually would like to do. Because of this, many WoW players look at dungeons, torgast or pretty much anything outside of their raid progress with a guild as an annoyance that they just want to get through as fast as possible, which is why there is little to no compassion towards people who aren't performing and carrying their own weight regardless of if they're new or not. In the mind of a WoW player, they're there because they have to be and they just want to get it over with and if there's someone who's not doing what they're supposed to, then they're in the way and just making your job harder. This is a huge game design problem that the whole of WoWs' community has been talking about for the past 6 years and asking the devs to address and change, but the current state of WoWs' game design team is terrible, to the point where they don't even understand their own game. This problem is, in my opinion, the biggest reason for the toxicity amongst WoWs' community and the reality that ff14 doesn't have this kind of a problem only supports this.
One other culprit is also the competitiveness. WoW is a very competitive game. It's rankings have been formed by the community and are being tracked closely. Both guild and player rankings and an important part of it. Whenever something is competitive, passions run high and emotions spill all over the place. This is the case with WoW as well, where players get very emotional over failing in the game. Failing is tied to time investment and to do anything in WoW, you need to spend a lot of time and if you fail, you get nothing, which is extremely frustrating. On the other hand, if you succeed, you might not even get what you were looking for in the first place. Rng plays a large part in WoWs' rewards system which leads to a lot of frustration when you don't get lucky with your loot drops. There have been many cases where one person gets lucky, the other one doesn't and the person who got lucky gets to do progress, while the other person gets benched for being unlucky and gets to waste their time doing nothing. I've had this happen in a guild I was in about 6 years ago, where an officer was sat out because he didn't get a legendary which increased our classes damage by a huge amount and without that huge damage increase, we just couldn't push through the dps check. He quit the game because he realized that he was slowing guilds progress down because of his lack of luck.
When it comes to addons, they're a bit of a polarizing topic. A WoW player swears by his addons. While in ff14 they're regarded as a bit of a taboo. Personally, I'm impressed by how advanced addons have gotten and what we're able to do within the game thanks to them. Addons to cause a lot of issues when it comes to raid boss design tho, because the devs expect players to have all the mandatory addons such as WeakAuras, which is the most powerful addon in the game. When it comes to the dps meters, it's a tool which is used by good players for their personal improvements and by bad players to berate anyone who's not doing as good as they are so that they can get their little egos up. Just like anything in life, it can be used for good or misused, but the existence of it is priceless for anyone who's interested in improving and playing without dps meters while trying to get better at the game is nearly impossible since the games mechanics and class systems are so complex that you simply need addons, like dps meters, that track everything that you do and can show it in a neat and simple to understand way. For example, a class in WoW has several borrowed power systems that have at least several abilities that do something like:"Your spells and abilities have a chance to increase your primary stat by % for % seconds." or "your spells and abilities sometimes send a bolt of bla bla energy that does x amount of dmg to the target" and many other similar effects that are pretty impossible to track for a player and their value can only be seen through external apps and addons. Simply put, players have had to make more powerful addons because the game got more complex and hard to figure out. Another big example is "simming". There is a website to which we go and input a string, which has informations about our character, which then does a very complex calculation depending on a situation that we select, for example a patchwork fight, which is just 1 boss standing still and we're dpsing it, or any other type of a fight can be chosen, and after that calculations conclude we get results for how much our class can do dps over a selected period of time, we also get values for our stats and by reading those we can understand which stats we should go for next to increase our dps for that situation. There are addons that allow us to track potential upgrades in the game as well, but we pretty much sim our characters after switching each piece of gear, since the stats can sometimes swing heavily one way or another depending on if a class has a certain break point. This is a bit of a complex explanation for a none WoW player, but to anyone playing WoW, this is the most basic thing in the world. Not to say that high end players like this, nearly no one does, but that's what games complexity caused and everyone would rather return to the times where if an item with a higher ilvl drops, then that means it's an upgrade.
There are probably many other things effecting communities emotional status, but these are just some of the things that were at the top of my head. 🙂
One big reason is that F14 is more cooperative in gameplay and WOW is more competitive in gameplay and that is why player are generally more friendly in FF14 than in WOW
a DPS meter is allowed in FF14. Using it to insult other players or say you have a dps meter in chat then they can ban you or just something related to it that is a ban
I've had two really bad experiences in FFXIV dungeons after literally hundreds over the last 3 years. FFXIV rewards players for success, WoW punishes players for failure.
XIV fosters a helpful and courteous community through gameplay, where you view your fellow player as a boon and a positive.
WoW fosters a combative and competitive community through gameplay, where you view your fellow player as a hindrance and and an obstacle.
Its as simply laid out as that. There may be deeper meanings behind the positive nature but you can easily see why through just the application of gameplay design.
Also, if you have to be forced to be positive or view that basic human decency is being forced upon you, you might just be naturally a huge asshole. We are who we are, some people find it harder to be civil, especially when they have been in an atmosphere that encourages this side of their personality. Ive never felt forced to treat people with care, and I enjoy helping other people. This is why I never really meshed well with wows community, and really hated doing random group content. They act like sharks after a scoop of bloody chum is thrown into the water. Especially if you tell them you are new or dont have knowledge of something.