When did players stop caring?

[VinceVega]

Not true, FF14 has probably the most pleasant playerbase of any MMORPG. Chat is always clean, no name calling or anger or anything.

Yeah... no. Absolutly no. FF14 is exactly as toxic as every other MMORPG. And every MMORPG is not as toxic as MOBAs or shooter.

People are so entitled and feel so superior, just because they play FF14 and are the enlightend crowd. I like playing FF14 as a single player now but people are so incredibly... thin skinned in FF14. Don't EVER say you also play wow while you are in FF14.

OT: That just sounded very passive aggressive. I tend to help people in th world if i don't have to be somewhere quick. But still. I would have ignored you probably.

[Kokolums]

A big chunk of Hamilton is basically Alexander bragging about how he can trash his opponents in the presses lol

Its kinda cringy to think the only way people know about how flame wars always existed is via Hamilton lol.

[Echocho]

I think it's funny that hands-down every single person that claims FFXIV is "toxic" then goes on to expose themselves as just being salty that they can't be rampant jackasses in the game I don't even play FFXIV anymore and I know that it's such a better environment than in WoW. But then, pretty much every other MMO has a better social environment than WoW.

Yes apparently it's toxic to report people who are being toxic. It's better to leave it unchecked apparently and let people say whatever the hell they want to other players

[Accendor]

Feeling a bit down, so sorry for this blogpost.

I wernt down to the Maw early today, was in the mood to do the hunt. I called out in general that I was going there, got no response. Saw no one there. Cleared the first round, called out in general. Cleared second round. Third round. Finally the boss is up. And finally two other people show up. An unholy death knight and a retribution paladin. We go in and my dps is the highest so I get aggro. I was immediately wishing I'd gone restoration affinity or even guardian spec, that thing hit pretty hard. Right near the end one of the adds edges behind me, dazes me, and I get killed by a tower blast.

So I run back to my body, and see the paladin running by. I whisper him thusly "Some heals or a taunt when I was low would've been appreciated." Nothing offensive, right? And he unloads at me quite a bit of vitriol.

"I wasn't aware I was signing up for LFR when I came down to the Maw"
"If you can't handle your own business you have no business playing, go die"
And some third line I can't remember.

So I reply "What's the big deal? I was tanking that thing for you the least you could do is throw me some offheals, I know ret has some good ones." But he'd already had me on ignore. I mean, really. If he'd gotten aggro I would've thrown my instant regrowths on him if he needed them, it's only common decency. To not only not get that, but to get attacked in such a way. I kinda miss the 90s. Players seemed nicer to each other in online games, since the idea of playing with another person possibly on the other side of the world was a novel idea then. You seemed to want to walk up to that guy, ask what he was doing, and make friends. Now it's "that guy died helping me? He deserved it."

Retail was changed from a MMO to basically Singleplayer in many aspects. You can not have LFD,LFR,Cross Realm,Sharding,Layering,cheap Server transfers and name changes, levelboosts, insane catchup mechanics and P2W mechanics in the game and expect that people focus on the social aspects of the game.

[Ehrenpanzer]

Feeling a bit down, so sorry for this blogpost.

I wernt down to the Maw early today, was in the mood to do the hunt. I called out in general that I was going there, got no response. Saw no one there. Cleared the first round, called out in general. Cleared second round. Third round. Finally the boss is up. And finally two other people show up. An unholy death knight and a retribution paladin. We go in and my dps is the highest so I get aggro. I was immediately wishing I'd gone restoration affinity or even guardian spec, that thing hit pretty hard. Right near the end one of the adds edges behind me, dazes me, and I get killed by a tower blast.

So I run back to my body, and see the paladin running by. I whisper him thusly "Some heals or a taunt when I was low would've been appreciated." Nothing offensive, right? And he unloads at me quite a bit of vitriol.

"I wasn't aware I was signing up for LFR when I came down to the Maw"
"If you can't handle your own business you have no business playing, go die"
And some third line I can't remember.

So I reply "What's the big deal? I was tanking that thing for you the least you could do is throw me some offheals, I know ret has some good ones." But he'd already had me on ignore. I mean, really. If he'd gotten aggro I would've thrown my instant regrowths on him if he needed them, it's only common decency. To not only not get that, but to get attacked in such a way. I kinda miss the 90s. Players seemed nicer to each other in online games, since the idea of playing with another person possibly on the other side of the world was a novel idea then. You seemed to want to walk up to that guy, ask what he was doing, and make friends. Now it's "that guy died helping me? He deserved it."

For WoW specifically it was when sharding/merging and solo que LFG came into the game. Single server community meant you were held accountable for being an ass because you had to interact with the same community all the time, what are the odds you are ever going to run into that specific person ever again? Thusly they dont give a fuck about being a dick, because there is no consequences for it.

[Zantera]

For all the talk about the community getting worse in WoW, who doesn't remember someone of the same faction trying to get you to pull extra mobs on Timeless Isle because they wanted the rare you were killing? Or people flying past you trying to kill the elite dragon for the argent tournament daily in Wotlk.

To me this kind of mentality has always been in the game, though thankfully due to the changes to tagging at least now people might help out because they will get loot too.

[Majalahti]

Haven't read the whole thread so only commenting on OP.

Ask for a taunt when you're fighting the mob not whisper after it kills you. Not everyone know what kind of crazy instant 50k heals your class has or doesn't.
Just a simple "/s taunt" will suffice.

[Logwyn]

Now that's a massive load of garbage if I ever heard it, and quite the strawman.

Let's start with Everquest and go from there, into WoW and this supposed 'CRZ ruined muh community' nonsense.

Each individual server community did. I run around everywhere on my server from level 1 to 60 all I see are people from Proudmore. Rare to see anyone from my own server doing anything world quests to whatever.

Before CRZ you run around and see people from only your server. Someone is questing in this instance and you help. They will remember you. Now with CRZ I see someone questing they might as well be an NPC. I will never see them again. Why bother helping them or even talking to them? Why try to create a community?

[Aphrel]

Take some responsibility for your own actions. Saying you, or others, behaving badly because of not liking what partake in is just... Baffling.

I suggest trying to be nice to others regardless if you like what you are in. It makes the situation more enjoyable as opposed to the opposite.

You might be talking in general and not you personally, if so apply my statement to how people should act rather than take it personally. You can interpret your message both ways.

well yes, i meant in general.

But the maw is just the backdrop that reduces patience.
Blaming another person for ones death as an opener would be the trigger!

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Wow, this is still going. So much negativity. People stop caring because when they care they get slapped in the face! Let’s just all think about it before inflicting hurt to one another.

[Raisei]

To each his own. For me FF14 is a perfect totalitarian state simulator where entitled players are encouraged by the developers to bully and harass players that want to put in an effort by reporting them for "being mean". It creates a toxic atmosphere of fear and mandatory mediocrity.

Yep, that is exactly what I thought when I heard this rule about no "damage meters allowed". I get that some folks rather not deal with that stuff but damn... that is some opressive rule. How do you even improve yourself without knowing what you do wrong?

I once talked with a FF player about how you even know if people are up to the challenge of a raid. Both yourself and others.

"There are dummys for the raid bosses to practice on."
"Okay, do they do the mechanics of the raid boss?"
"No."
"Then how do they tell you anything about performance in the actual encounter, where you have to do both DPS and mechanics? That's like doing a dummy parse and expecting that number to be your raid damage."
"uhm..."

So this allows pretty much only two conclusions: Either boss mechanics are trivial and failing them will not impact the encounter and/or people are constantly unknowingly carrying others without giving consent.
Feels like a very unattractive system to me. If we don't all try to do our best in our hobby and constantly improve, what is the point of even playing.

Sorry for the excourse but this leads me to my point to the thread:

It's not like people aren't caring about each other anymore, but most people just expect each other to pull their own weight. Is it really too much to ask that others put the same effort into the game as I do, when they want to be in my group? How is it possible that I know the class abilities of another player better then they do after they played the class for years?

Sure I will help my friends and guild mates gear their characters when I have time, but I simply do not have enough free time to hold the hand of a pug that joins a group and will never be seen again afterwards and they know this.

Just yesterday I leveled my Priest in some Normal dungeons. I ended up messing an easy mechanic (the Frost root on the last boss in NW) because my keybind was somehow not working (I must have deleted the Macro some time ago and did not realize, since I hadn't played the char for a while).
The guy that died gave me an earfull I can tell you. And that after I had flawlessly healed the entire dungeon, despite numerous terrible pulls and failed interrupts. Obviously I am not wasting time explaining, it wouldn't have meant anything, I'll never see that guy again and the boss died anyway, so I shot something back and left to fix my button.

In the pug world you can't be constantly offended. If you make a mistake you will get blasted for it. That's just how it goes. My boss at work will also chew me out if I make a big mistake, so what? I suck it up and go back to work.

[Tradu]

I adventure as disc, so I tend to heal people around me, but while I do care, I also don’t go out of my way to try to spam heals on people I see. I rightfully assume they can handle themselves in the content they’re in, and, if they can’t, they’ll politely ask chats or people around them if they can assist.

If someone whispers me what you whispered, I’d take it as passive-aggressive snark, and probably wouldn’t react well to it. My gaming time is limited, and it’s not spent purposely healing strangers everywhere I go. To be fair, unless you’re focused or targeted by me, I won’t even know you’re in trouble. I don’t show health bars (can you even show those?) or nameplates for friendly units.

This isn’t a matter of not caring, it’s just it’s not my responsibility to sustain the population of Azeroth.

You can show friendly nameplates in the open world, yeah. But as you said, it isn't your job to keep random people alive.

[Aresk]

Not sure why you wouldn't go guardian for a boss, given guardian can solo everything in the Maw safely while being bombarded by towers and half AFK, but next time, if someone's not helping, leash the mob. They'll either taunt off you to stop the reset (in which case mission accomplished), or you can swap specs and try again without dying. Never assume someone else will help.

That being said, I don't think it's really that bad of a community. When a hunter and I were doing the soul eater hunt and they died, I stopped DPS at 3% to give them a chance to run back and tag (they were opposite faction, so I couldn't res). While I was sitting in Perdition Hold and chatting with someone, I tanked a bunch of elites for a boomkin in the area doing the weekly, even though my quest was done days ago. A vengeance DH and I taunt swapped one of the bosses even though I'm pretty sure either of us could have soloed it, just so we were even less at risk of something going wrong. Compare that to getting bombarded by "a/s/l?" spam in the nineties, I'll take today's community.

[thunderdragon2]

This so called "community" has been on free fall since end of TBC. It completely deteriorated with LFG and then server connections put the final nail in the coffin. Complete lack of identity on the internet brings up the worst. That was also why vanilla was successful because pulling shit there would make someone obsolete in their server.

All that being said calling any criticism "vitriol" or being agitated because someone told you what they would have liked you to do is part of the "im so offended" culture that has been habitually cultivated in wow and now the farmers of said culture reap its fruit. No surprises there. Ultra touchy players acting as ever-so-offended. Honestly who wants to play with people like that.

nah the final nail in the coffin of the community imo was faction tagging once that came in every1 just leached on to everything once people killed their mobs they just "tagged" other peoples mobs and waited for them to kill the mob for them

[Chrno]

Haven't read the whole thread so only commenting on OP.

Ask for a taunt when you're fighting the mob not whisper after it kills you. Not everyone know what kind of crazy instant 50k heals your class has or doesn't.
Just a simple "/s taunt" will suffice.

This is the simple truth.

The game being so utterly solo orientated is what is to blame here. But some friendlynes get's a long way.

[Rinaul]

About the time internet anonymity became a thing. By now I pretty much expect I have to be self sufficient in open world content and to an extent group dungeon/raid content. This is why I prefer warlock atm with its own tank pet. Also Maw has been pretty dead for a while besides the occasional alt of cov switcher still leveling stuff in their base or renown and pretty much the stuff required for that is 1 or 2 quick in and out quests.

[Kumorii]

nah the final nail in the coffin of the community imo was faction tagging once that came in every1 just leached on to everything once people killed their mobs they just "tagged" other peoples mobs and waited for them to kill the mob for them

really? I find multi-tagging more community friendly than the opposite. Without it it led to people trying to get each other killed so they can get the tag on whatever quest mob / rare or whatever.

Multi-tagging promotes helping each other, even if that helping is just 1 spell/ability.
If I get swarmed by mobs in a dense area, I'm almost guaranteed to have people come help because it's a quick quest completion for all of us. Vanilla, no one would care at all and just let me or the player die and then they can kill the mobs for quest credits.

I really fail to see how this is "anti-community" when it's a benefit to everyone if everyone tags the mobs.

- - - Updated - - -

About the time internet anonymity became a thing. By now I pretty much expect I have to be self sufficient in open world content and to an extent group dungeon/raid content. This is why I prefer warlock atm with its own tank pet. Also Maw has been pretty dead for a while besides the occasional alt of cov switcher still leveling stuff in their base or renown and pretty much the stuff required for that is 1 or 2 quick in and out quests.

Internet anonymity was a thing as soon as internet came to be for the masses... in, fact over time, it has become less anonymous due to people being more tech savvy and doxxing. In fact a lot of people who were douchebags saw this opportunity in the internet, which is why I think early days were so much more vitriol across all games I played. Over time when internet became more normalized the normal standard for behaviour started to seep into internet culture and online communities and games started to implement more and more restrictions for bad behaviour. But maybe that was your point.

[thunderdragon2]

really? I find multi-tagging more community friendly than the opposite. Without it it led to people trying to get each other killed so they can get the tag on whatever quest mob / rare or whatever.

Multi-tagging promotes helping each other, even if that helping is just 1 spell/ability.
If I get swarmed by mobs in a dense area, I'm almost guaranteed to have people come help because it's a quick quest completion for all of us. Vanilla, no one would care at all and just let me or the player die and then they can kill the mobs for quest credits.

I really fail to see how this is "anti-community" when it's a benefit to everyone if everyone tags the mobs.

its like that now but it stated off as ppl just " tagging" some1 else's mobs then just running off and doing some other part of the world quest objective

[Kumorii]

its like that now but it stated off as ppl just " tagging" some1 else's mobs then just running off and doing some other part of the world quest objective

which I adressed... even if it's just 1 spell or ability, it's still help. The best outcome in both versions of the game is that the player would help to kill it. It's the worst situations that differ though. The worse situation was that they pulled more mobs to you to get you killed so they can get credit for whatever quest mob / rare. The worst situation doesn't really happen anymore at the same scale, because there is no reason to. It was done earlier due to tagging restrictions, it's not necessary anymore.

Ergo, it's more community friendly mechanic to have tag sharing.

[thunderdragon2]

which I adressed... even if it's just 1 spell or ability, it's still more help than previous, where the best outcome would be that they helped you, just like now. The worse situation was that they pulled more mobs to you to get you killed so they can get credit for whatever quest mob / rare. The worst situation doesn't really happen anymore at the same scale, because there is no reason to. It was done earlier due to tagging restrictions, it's not necessary anymore.

Ergo, it's more community friendly mechanic to have tag sharing.

i might be wrong in this but back when it was first implemented every tag up to 5 on non rares/elites added to their hp and damage done.