FFXIV wins best community and best still playing at golden joystick awards

[Aggressive]

"FF14 has amazing friendly community"
someone points out that saying the FF14 community is friendly is equal to saying the chinese population acts happy. Being friendly and being friendly due to the fear of repercussions is not the same.

proceeds to chimp out and call everyone a bigoted racist.

Yeah, they're superfriendly. How the turntables have turned.

No, you're not clever. No, they didnt "play themselves"

If anything, this thread is just proof that the FF14 comm is jsut as bad.

Jesus. That is a lot of anger flowing from you. You should come over to FFXIV. It is pretty therapeutic in helping quite a few people out with their anger and can really help you calm down.

[Sharby]

I've been mixed on the game's ToS. Yes, it's designed to mitigate toxicity which honestly resulted in what I've seen as a great community. No, I don't think people are being nice for fear of repercussions. I've witnessed and critiqued others plenty of times myself when doing pug content. Such critiques just can't come across some instant hostility. Starting off with "Hey use some AoE for packs dumbass", can and should lead to warnings.

Casual content is already clearable with sub 70 IQ tbh, anything more challenging does involve communication between players after a wipe. The highest tier of challenging content is likely to involve voice regardless of where anything can be said. I have yet to see any post of someone getting punished by Square for their moderate behavior.

My issue with the ToS is their stance on addons. They design their PvE fights where everyone is effectively dps yet don't allow nor provide any way to measure it. So far next to nobody has been banned for simply using 3rd party tools but the threat is always their thanks to the ToS. Me personally, I decided to go all-in on addons (delvUI, dalamud and tex tools). If I get banned for some odd reason, so be it but their finicky stance on it annoys me more than a hard yes or no.

I mean it doesn't matter how you phrase your feedback, since the game won't back you up, its your word vs player experience. Most players are not going to be receptive to any critique at all because the game is designed as such where you will never know if you're playing wrong or not. I can clear anything in the game(sans savage/ultimate) just fine only using ice spells as a Black Mage, so why would I ever listen to someone telling me otherwise? Sure you can tell people to get over it and take the extra time to clear with the player in question, but if everyone played like these players nothing would get done. This entire thing is built upon relying on better players to carry the worse ones, the mentor system is a great example of this (even if there are plenty of bad mentors.) Its super annoying to deal with.

Its mostly the game's fault for being designed this way, but making it so you cannot link concrete evidence that shows people are wrong (meters) certainly doesn't help at all. There are plenty of examples of players suffering from this design, but they are purely anecdotal and fall to the wayside. And that's why most people just express their frustration via passive aggressive and snarky remarks. Good luck trying to convince 2 or 6 other players why John Smith the Ice Mage is playing wrong without having any objective evidence.


In WoW, if a DPS is doing less damage than a tank, I can ask them what's going on and if they don't know what they're doing, if they're not receptive I can link the meters proving my point to not only them but the rest of the group. After that point they are either cooperative and try to be better or are stubborn and I have a way better chance of removing them from the group.


As for addons, yeah I think it is stupid as hell to be so restrictive with them but then have the base game be so terrible in its UI design. If we're counting betterXIV plugins + ACT I have almost 35 modifications to the game myself.

[tomten]

Tomten and Troontown coming of as really bitter and trying way too hard to convince themselves more than us after FFXIV deservedly won these awards. What even are those posts? Tomten's method of arguement is to just keep repeating the same statement over and over in different ways every page of this thread as if its going to mean something.

What? I've made one post in this entire thread? Or could you be so kind to quote a few of my "every page of this thread" post, why are you lying and making up stuff?
Is that your way to cope with the truth? Lying and making up stories?

[Yarathir]

Thank god Square stands against botting and dps meter wanking, unlike Blizzard who either participates in it or builds their game around it.

[Aucald]

This thread needs to calm down. Keep to the topic at hand, which is the awards won, and drop the game vs. game infighting and unrelated tangent discussions.

[chiddie]

I have had one I would call bad run, even that was leagues better than an average wow m+ run lol
Bad pulls, tank dieing, random mobs on dps, still no one left and all was done.. is wows community too far gone?

No, it’s probably the fact that FF dungeons have no timers.

Unfortunately in mmorpgs everything PvE that implies partying with unknown people may lead to bad behavior and in WoW this is exacerbated by the timers.

If you want an RPG where people are not more worried about what others do than what they do themselves, MMO versions of them are not the right place to go, UNLESS you can play with friends and family only.

There is unfortunately no solution for this but making partying completely optional to achieve highest gear, that will never happen because it goes against what mmorpgs do exist for.

[Tenjen]

I think the point is that the FF community is not as virtous than it thinks it is. Nothing more. Obvisouly, I would say that there is more "toxicity" in the wow or lol community but I also prefer that than the "faux semblant" offered by the FF community.

But the FFXIV community does not claim to be. its very often stated, continuously "we're more friendly, but some bad people exist, we just dont stand for that behaviour.". They own up and actual actively deal with people being shit. Just like the people being toxic when asmon started, some of those items they carried were one time rewards from ARR, meaning old time veterans, but they got banned all the same. The same has happened with people harassing smaller streamers or regular players. its actively enforced because both devs and the community own up to it happening.

They're not claiming to paragons. (they themselves have brought up The Balance, often being elitist and toxic, before i even knew it existed). They are very justifiably stating their community is more warm and friendly than most others. Which it very much is by comparison, and without being fake about it either.

Thus the awards.

[Specialka]

But the FFXIV community does not claim to be. its very often stated, continuously "we're more friendly, but some bad people exist, we just dont stand for that behaviour.". They own up and actual actively deal with people being shit. Just like the people being toxic when asmon started, some of those items they carried were one time rewards from ARR, meaning old time veterans, but they got banned all the same. The same has happened with people harassing smaller streamers or regular players. its actively enforced because both devs and the community own up to it happening.

They're not claiming to paragons. (they themselves have brought up The Balance, often being elitist and toxic, before i even knew it existed). They are very justifiably stating their community is more warm and friendly than most others. Which it very much is by comparison, and without being fake about it either.

Thus the awards.

That is where I disagree. A part of that 'welcoming' is enforced by the ToS in my opinion and a little bit of circlejerking, nothing more.

[Selah]

I can see how they won these awards. Community is really great and welcoming, been really cool to see.

Plus, Yoshi-P keeps that content pipeline coming. Really can't ask for a better team to run the game.

[Cosmic Janitor]

While I can see where they are coming from, at the end of the day .. it's the same show that awarded Dark Souls UGOAT.. So their credibility is better taken with a freight train of sodiumchloride, I'm sure there are smaller communities that are way better. But for the size of the game the community is fairly decent, certainly better than the ones of other games that focus alot of competition and WoW.

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No, it’s probably the fact that FF dungeons have no timers.

Technically every dungeon, in fact every form of instanced content, has a timer.

[Cthulhu 2020]

It's because it is. The claim is so fucking nebulous that it fits any meaning any detractor wants it to mean without ever providing an explicit example. And when somebody does try to make one, they just lie, like this idea that you can just afk an entire dungeon and if you try to kick someone, YOU will be infracted instead. Which just does not happen.

So they never provide an example or the thing they do claim is just factually, objectively, false.

You get out of the community what you bring to it. If you show up and are being a passive aggressive toxic asshole, people will not put up with your shit and you will be dealt with accordingly.

That's not "fake sympathy" it's "Not tolerating assholes."

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No, you don't lol

There's also the "I've seen someone being harassed for skipping the story" and there's two options for this:

1. It was Quinn. Everyone knows what Quinn did. He tried the game, boosted, didn't like the game, but instead of just quietly going to play other things, he dumped on FFXIV for having bad gameplay and confusing plot BASED OFF OF SKIPPING THE STORY AND JUMPING RIGHT INTO THE DEEP END OF HIGH END RAIDING. Even most ardent WoW players said this was a stupid move.

2. It was someone else who basically did the same thing as Quinn.


I'm going to strongly encourage anyone who is interested in playing FFXIV to do the story, but I'll never harass them if they decide not to. It's just that everyone I know who skips their first playthrough rarely sticks with the game. There are some outliers, like Xeno, who has never once paid attention to the story, but every single one of these exceptions are people who have come into the game with an open mind rather than "Man this isn't WoW, this is gonna suck" mentality.

[Tenjen]

That is where I disagree. A part of that 'welcoming' is enforced by the ToS in my opinion and a little bit of circlejerking, nothing more.

Thats a very weak arguement given how laughably ineffective ToS's generally are. The reason its effective in FFXIV is because its enforced by the community making sure such behaviour is reported in detail. The ToS empowers the community to keep things as clean as possible, which shoots your arguement out of the water entirely.

[Aliven]

Every time i read something good about FFXIV, i can't think about this:
FFXIV was a really bad game before a realm reborn or as i call it "dev fail the game, fix it by take comunity idea and suggestion seriously and admit the dev suck hard"
What if wow make the same thing....

Universe would implode

[Cthulhu 2020]

This post really is a mess. You literally go from asking for examples to telling people to shove off with their examples? What data exactly is accepted for "passive aggressiveness?"

Not only that, but in a post talking about how the FF community (which you are part of) is so pleasant and nice ... you go from calling people liars and assholes, to you guessed it, passive aggressiveness, and then telling people their experiences in the game don't matter. Which is all fairly toxic. You just ironically ranted at us while being toxic. Whats worse is you use your own anecdotes while telling anyone else theirs don't count.

"Passive aggressiveness" naw, just my personal experience.

Interpersonal drama happens literally everywhere, every game, every place IRL, all the time. There is no exception. Interpersonal drama is a constant in life, and is what happens when two or more people get too close and ultimately end up inadvertently hurting each other with an irreconcilable difference.

That's 10000% different from the nebulous, unsubstantiated claims of passive aggressiveness (which btw, you guys have yet to give any actual examples of). The one example I've seen is the "People getting toxic for someone skipping the story" which wasn't even a thing (like literally, nobody got toxic with anybody for skipping the story) until Quinn69 decided to give the game a try, boosted past all of the story and dove right into the deep end of raiding content without looking at any guides, without doing any research, and when he FAILED HORRIBLY and died 20 times to a relatively easy boss, rage quit the game and immediately started dumping on it as a terrible game with a terrible story.

[Specialka]

Thats a very weak arguement given how laughably ineffective ToS's generally are. The reason its effective in FFXIV is because its enforced by the community making sure such behaviour is reported in detail. The ToS empowers the community to keep things as clean as possible, which shoots your arguement out of the water entirely.

No, that is what I mean. It allows the community to bully anyone that does act like they want it to. Authoritarian utopia.

[Gimlix]

Yeah no sorry, the game was already rising very quickly even before the mass WoW exodus.

Mass Exodus never happened. It shown in quarterly calls. Just wait till 10.0. These are just refugees most will most likely return to WoW.

Already hear stories about ff14 is becoming boring.

[Calfredd]

Mass Exodus never happened. It shown in quarterly calls. Just wait till 10.0. These are just refugees most will most likely return to WoW.

Already hear stories about ff14 is becoming boring.

Should probably stick to the WoW section where you can at least pretend to know what you are talking about.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Also anyone who claims you can't kick someone from dungeons for being AFK or you'll get punished: You're just wrong.

When you go to kick someone from the party, you have to select one of a few given reasons. One of which is "harassment", one is "AFK", one is "offline", and one is "other".

In the Praetorium dungeon, people often think they can AFK through the entire instance and get the huge EXP bonus at the end of the marathon 40 minutes of dungeon cut scenes. Why? Because to kick someone, everyone has to be out of combat. For most of the Praetorium instance, people are chain pulling huge segments of mobs right into cut scenes into bosses. The first pack of enemies you also skip by bugging them out, but they remain in combat with you since they can't reach you. So for the first 25 minutes or so there is no way to kick someone who's AFK at the beginning. It's also an 8 man dungeon so their absence is less noticeable than in a 4 man dungeon.

Now, Praetorium is part of the MSQ roulette, which is some of the highest exp/time you can get per day, making it a popular roulette. Every time I go to level a combat class, I do this roulette. And in about 1/3 of Praetorium runs, there was someone AFK at that start. It was frustrating at first, but I identified a short period right before and after the nero boss fight where the group isn't trapped in cut scenes or combat that is a perfect time to kick AFK people. AFKers lose all that time they spent AFK and some lucky player gets some really big glob of exp for little time investment.

I have easily kicked over 100 AFK players this way, selecting "AFK" as the kick reason every time.

So politely fuck off with claims that kicking someone for being AFK will get your account actioned, lol.

[Specialka]

Also anyone who claims you can't kick someone from dungeons for being AFK or you'll get punished: You're just wrong.

When you go to kick someone from the party, you have to select one of a few given reasons. One of which is "harassment", one is "AFK", one is "offline", and one is "other".

In the Praetorium dungeon, people often think they can AFK through the entire instance and get the huge EXP bonus at the end of the marathon 40 minutes of dungeon cut scenes. Why? Because to kick someone, everyone has to be out of combat. For most of the Praetorium instance, people are chain pulling huge segments of mobs right into cut scenes into bosses. The first pack of enemies you also skip by bugging them out, but they remain in combat with you since they can't reach you. So for the first 25 minutes or so there is no way to kick someone who's AFK at the beginning. It's also an 8 man dungeon so their absence is less noticeable than in a 4 man dungeon.

Now, Praetorium is part of the MSQ roulette, which is some of the highest exp/time you can get per day, making it a popular roulette. Every time I go to level a combat class, I do this roulette. And in about 1/3 of Praetorium runs, there was someone AFK at that start. It was frustrating at first, but I identified a short period right before and after the nero boss fight where the group isn't trapped in cut scenes or combat that is a perfect time to kick AFK people. AFKers lose all that time they spent AFK and some lucky player gets some really big glob of exp for little time investment.

I have easily kicked over 100 AFK players this way, selecting "AFK" as the kick reason every time.

So politely fuck off with claims that kicking someone for being AFK will get your account actioned, lol.

The claim was not that you could not kick someone but rather that you could not call him out. Sit down.

[Cthulhu 2020]

That is where I disagree. A part of that 'welcoming' is enforced by the ToS in my opinion and a little bit of circlejerking, nothing more.

Here's the thing about the ToS: In the ToS, you don't have to be "Welcoming". You just have to not be an asshole or a jerk. If you come over from WoW and expect to be able to sarcastically say "Hey good job dumbass" when your group wipes, that ain't gonna fly.

If you feel you can't be nice, you can simply say nothing at all, and that's what most people do. Nothing about the ToS forces you to speak with people in the game at all. You can play the entire game and even raid high end content simply by looking up guides on your own.

People call the XIV community welcoming because there are a large number of people who go out of their way to make new players feel welcome. The FFXIV reddit is filled with stories from WoW refugees who just gush about how someone gave them a bunch of free gear, some money, answered their questions, ran them around to get aetherytes in various zones, etc. It's a very very common and heartwarming story to read.

This kind of proactive kindness is not something that is "forced" by the ToS. This is something the players themselves do voluntarily. And is one of the major reasons why people often say it's one of the most welcoming communities.

So yeah, again, shove off with this whole "The positivity is forced by the ToS". Nobody is forced to be positive. You're just forced to not be a jerk. Any kindness beyond "not being a jerk" is 100% on the player to do, and the community does that kindness in spades. Stop spreading misinformation and lies.

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The claim was not that you could not kick someone but rather that you could not call him out. Sit down.

Before I kick someone, I ask in party chat "Hey X, are you ok? Do you need time?" and if they don't respond and continue to sit at the entrance, I vote kick AFK them. That's one form of "calling out" without being ultra toxic about it. No, I can't go "Hey asshole, stop afking you fucking scrub", but I ALWAYS bring attention to them being AFK and am just fine.

Sit down.