FFXIV Criticisms

[The Casualty]

As someone who has played both games since they were released and has a lot of experience in all levels of content (so my sample size is not small), the FFXIV playerbase is in the top 3 of all games I've ever played for the most unwelcoming community and treatment of players. So much passive aggressiveness, berating, death threats, and drama. Any time I see someone complain about this in WoW, I think "man... you've seen nothing yet". These are exacerbated on the official forums and reddit. The only places I've ever seen question this were here and on 1 of the Discords I participate in.

I think both games have their microcosms of communities like guilds or FCs that can be full of drama. Maybe I'm lucky, but in both games I was able to find a decent population of people to hang out with and spend years playing games with, and in general I view both communities positively.

I will say though that in general interaction with random people in each game world however, my experience is the exact opposite of yours. Only one game had boomer levels of racist ranting in general chat channels (or whatever is equivalent per game), and it was not FFXIV.

[Sevyvia]

I too enjoy lying with literally no evidence to support my claims.

"I, too, desperately try to defend my toxic favorite game online for no reason."

[Necromantic]

I too enjoy lying with literally no evidence to support my claims.

You keep saying something about lying. What do you feel is lying? I've not said anything that wasn't true. There are also other questions at the top of the thread in post 161 that I asked you. I'm curious...

I think both games have their microcosms of communities like guilds or FCs that can be full of drama. Maybe I'm lucky, but in both games I was able to find a decent population of people to hang out with and spend years playing games with, and in general I view both communities positively.

I will say though that in general interaction with random people in each game world however, my experience is the exact opposite of yours. Only one game had boomer levels of racist ranting in general chat channels (or whatever is equivalent per game), and it was not FFXIV.

I'm fine with the "mileage will vary". I just raise a brow when I see someone talk about how welcoming the latter is. I don't comment on the general chat because it's rather hit or miss. I can't say I've seen actual racist comments to people outside of the official forum and duty/dungeon finder. One would think that doing so in front of a large crowd who have a "report" button at their disposal would be a red flag.

[The Casualty]

I can't say I've seen actual racist comments to people outside of the official forum and duty/dungeon finder. One would think that doing so in front of a large crowd who have a "report" button at their disposal would be a red flag.

Maybe it was my server, I don't know. All I know is I turned general chat off when I went to cities. It could be fine for days, but then you would get an hour long argument from people on why black people/minorities don't belong in fantasy movies/games or other similarly shitty takes depending on what was happening in the world at the moment, and then you either leave the area, leave the chat, or become a captive audience.

[eschatological]

So they aren't making changes for these players. Who, then, are these changes for? The more advanced novice players that are actually learning and trying to perform rotations? Maybe - but the fact that these players are actually seeking out information to learn how to properly play *at all* (which must be obtained outside of the game, through third-party websites and sources, because Square-Enix are a bunch of utter fucking morons) means that they will continue to learn and improve and eventually master the fundamentals of play regardless of relative complexity. The state in between "ignorant casual player" and "advanced sweaty boi" is inherently transitory. Few to no players hit this stage and then just stop, unless they stop playing in general. So while I can understand *some* amount of streamlining things, Shadowbringers had generally already done that quite a lot, and I don't see much need for Endwalker to have continued doing so.

I disagree. I main MNK, and our optimal rotation requires alternating between a combo of:

DragonKick-TwinSnakes-Demolish/Bootshine-TrueStrike-Snap Punch/DK-TwS-SP/B-TrS-D/DK-TwS-SP/B-TrS-SP. Because I've set these first 6 GCDs as 1-6, the combo is 1-2-3/4-5-6/1-2-6/4-5-3/1-2-6/4-5-6.

Because of how we come out of our opener, every other minute, to be optimal, you should be doing 1-5-3/4-2-6/1-5-6/etc.

This, to me, is a minor gain at most, for what seems like much more work, and I always stick with the first combo, even if it means potentially performing one singular Bootshine without a Dragon Kick buff. This is where the transition stops between "advanced novice" and "sweaty boi." I'm not sweating max potency - I'm doing what I think is most convenient, taking into account fights, how my keybinds are setup, etc. I don't want to break up the Bootshine-TrueStrike combo, or the DragonKick-TwinSnakes combo, because alternating is a pain in the ass, mentally, and yes, in terms of muscle memory.

There exists this section of the playerbase.

[Aucald]

As someone who has played both games since they were released and has a lot of experience in all levels of content (so my sample size is not small), the FFXIV playerbase is in the top 3 of all games I've ever played for the most unwelcoming community and treatment of players. So much passive aggressiveness, berating, death threats, and drama. Any time I see someone complain about this in WoW, I think "man... you've seen nothing yet". These are exacerbated on the official forums and reddit. The only places I've ever seen question this were here and on 1 of the Discords I participate in.

Strange how experiences can be so different. I've never encountered any real aggressiveness in FF14 groups, or in my FC for that matter - certainly no death threats, which I would certainly remember. Perhaps it's a matter of server culture? I know in WoW my original server was definitely more high-strung and prone to individuals that were very competitive and very outspoken about it (to put it politely). My current WoW server is a lower-pop server that is definitely more laid-back in that department, though still has its compliment of colorful personalities. I was actually taken aback in FF14 when I decided to level up the Dark Knight job on my Reaper, and on doing some of the earlier dungeons I had people ask me if I was new to the job, and then very respectfully and kindly give their take on the job and how to excel at it - something I haven't seen in WoW since the balmy days of Vanilla.

I don't really bother over much with Discords beyond my guild one, though; and I wouldn't really count the various Discord communities/server as representing either WoW or FF14 all that much - they're microcosms of their own, really.

[Soikona]

I think both games have their microcosms of communities like guilds or FCs that can be full of drama. Maybe I'm lucky, but in both games I was able to find a decent population of people to hang out with and spend years playing games with, and in general I view both communities positively.

I will say though that in general interaction with random people in each game world however, my experience is the exact opposite of yours. Only one game had boomer levels of racist ranting in general chat channels (or whatever is equivalent per game), and it was not FFXIV.

“Boomer level of racist ranting”? What does that even mean.

[eschatological]

In terms of culture - WoW has a very weird and toxic trade chat if you filter it out between boost sale spam. In FFXIV, this form of chat doesn't really exist. I can count on maybe two hands the number of times I've used Shout chat (which is only zone wide) for any sort of casual conversation. Most of it is advertising, whether it's for an erotic RP casino in some FC house, or for a hunt train.

A lot of the interaction in FFXIV seems to be in FC-chat (which you choose), linkshells (which are invite-based), or in Say chat (highly personal and right in front of you). These self-selecting forms of chat, imo, lead to less upfront toxicity that we associate with online, anonymous internet usage. It's easier to throw toxicity out in trade chat from Orgrimmar while you're running circles around the bank.

But in raiding, WoW has been much more in line with my expectations of the content itself. In LFR, no one cares, in Normal raids, most people are blindly mashing buttons without thought. In Mythic, things can be competitive but they know 20 people working together requires collaboration more than toxicity, as the Riggnaros-Blood Legion style of raid leading is a good decade out of date at this point. In FFXIV, people take the content either far too seriously or weirdly not seriously at all. Savage has this weird amalgams of tryhards who know the fights backwards and forwards, and people who wouldn't even pass muster in heroic in WoW. It leads to a lot of passive aggressiveness and elitism. That exists in WoW, but there's not this weird pressure to keep the group together and fight through it, which FFXIV has, and which, imo, breeds resentment among the better players. In WoW, if someone isn't good enough in your pug m+ or mythic raid, you kick them without much second thought. Even raiding guilds have extensive trials where if you don't meet the standard, there's a fairly perfunctory demotion/kick without too many hard feelings.

[Necromantic]

Maybe it was my server, I don't know. All I know is I turned general chat off when I went to cities. It could be fine for days, but then you would get an hour long argument from people on why black people/minorities don't belong in fantasy movies/games or other similarly shitty takes depending on what was happening in the world at the moment, and then you either leave the area, leave the chat, or become a captive audience.

I've seen some whoppers but I can't say I've seen that. You'd think discussions like that in general chat... people would more than know better. I mean, of all the things you can possibly talk about.

Strange how experiences can be so different. I've never encountered any real aggressiveness in FF14 groups, or in my FC for that matter - certainly no death threats, which I would certainly remember. Perhaps it's a matter of server culture? I know in WoW my original server was definitely more high-strung and prone to individuals that were very competitive and very outspoken about it (to put it politely). My current WoW server is a lower-pop server that is definitely more laid-back in that department, though still has its compliment of colorful personalities. I was actually taken aback in FF14 when I decided to level up the Dark Knight job on my Reaper, and on doing some of the earlier dungeons I had people ask me if I was new to the job, and then very respectfully and kindly give their take on the job and how to excel at it - something I haven't seen in WoW since the balmy days of Vanilla.

I don't really bother over much with Discords beyond my guild one, though; and I wouldn't really count the various Discord communities/server as representing either WoW or FF14 all that much - they're microcosms of their own, really.

The death threats I only saw on the official forums. I've seen 3 and strangely enough, they all were about the same thing... healer DPS. A person stating that they were not comfortable doing it, etc and I couldn't believe my eyes at the responses.

When you were playing DRK, was this in non-mythic dungeons? In non-mythic, I rarely see people talk at all. In mythic, it's usually to insult someone but not always.

I didn't want to bother with Discords at first but they're becoming so hard to avoid now. A few of the high population reddits I moderate require you to use Discord. Most of them, the caveat is that you "use" it, meaning just "be there" but nothing says you have to talk there. If I had to talk in every Discord I'm in, I'd never get any work done.

[Auxis]

I've only encountered real toxicity maybe 3 times in FFXIV so far, and I came over from WoW during the exodus period - I'm sure you know what that is.
One was in Heaven-on-High. One player insisted that we, the party as a whole, scrape through every floor with a fine toothed comb b/c he wanted the Aether buff things for armor/weapons. He did not say anything about this at all until the 3rd level when he started getting nasty about us "afking on the teleporter" and was threatening to report us. Encountered him again a few hours later.
The other 2 times were people being impatient in dungeons, wanting the tank to wall-to-wall pull half the damn dungeon.

--

On the topic of criticisms, currently finding it really hard to level alt jobs. IDK if it's just a really dry period in the expansions (but a patch just released so it shouldn't be, right?), but queue times for dungeons and 51-60 PotD have been REALLY rough - and I've tried at different times of the day throughout the past 2 weeks. Leveling a PUG/MNK from 1-50 was ok because I had the Hunting Log and Job quests, but 50+ has been a real slog.

[Necromantic]

I've only encountered real toxicity maybe 3 times in FFXIV so far, and I came over from WoW during the exodus period - I'm sure you know what that is.
One was in Heaven-on-High. One player insisted that we, the party as a whole, scrape through every floor with a fine toothed comb b/c he wanted the Aether buff things for armor/weapons. He did not say anything about this at all until the 3rd level when he started getting nasty about us "afking on the teleporter" and was threatening to report us. Encountered him again a few hours later.
The other 2 times were people being impatient in dungeons, wanting the tank to wall-to-wall pull half the damn dungeon.

--

On the topic of criticisms, currently finding it really hard to level alt jobs. IDK if it's just a really dry period in the expansions (but a patch just released so it shouldn't be, right?), but queue times for dungeons and 51-60 PotD have been REALLY rough - and I've tried at different times of the day throughout the past 2 weeks. Leveling a PUG/MNK from 1-50 was ok because I had the Hunting Log and Job quests, but 50+ has been a real slog.

Hopefully the HoH wasn't recently. Most people now seem to just zip through it and say nothing.

My queue times for PotD are variant upon when I join. If I do it during normal times when people are out of work, etc, it's usually under a minute. Granted, it's usually instant towards the start of an expansion but not when the new jobs start at 70... unless the rumor someone said is true that HoH can go past level 70 now.

[Grinning Serpent]

In terms of culture - WoW has a very weird and toxic trade chat if you filter it out between boost sale spam. In FFXIV, this form of chat doesn't really exist. I can count on maybe two hands the number of times I've used Shout chat (which is only zone wide) for any sort of casual conversation. Most of it is advertising, whether it's for an erotic RP casino in some FC house, or for a hunt train.

A lot of the interaction in FFXIV seems to be in FC-chat (which you choose), linkshells (which are invite-based), or in Say chat (highly personal and right in front of you). These self-selecting forms of chat, imo, lead to less upfront toxicity that we associate with online, anonymous internet usage. It's easier to throw toxicity out in trade chat from Orgrimmar while you're running circles around the bank.

But in raiding, WoW has been much more in line with my expectations of the content itself. In LFR, no one cares, in Normal raids, most people are blindly mashing buttons without thought. In Mythic, things can be competitive but they know 20 people working together requires collaboration more than toxicity, as the Riggnaros-Blood Legion style of raid leading is a good decade out of date at this point. In FFXIV, people take the content either far too seriously or weirdly not seriously at all. Savage has this weird amalgams of tryhards who know the fights backwards and forwards, and people who wouldn't even pass muster in heroic in WoW. It leads to a lot of passive aggressiveness and elitism. That exists in WoW, but there's not this weird pressure to keep the group together and fight through it, which FFXIV has, and which, imo, breeds resentment among the better players. In WoW, if someone isn't good enough in your pug m+ or mythic raid, you kick them without much second thought. Even raiding guilds have extensive trials where if you don't meet the standard, there's a fairly perfunctory demotion/kick without too many hard feelings.

Players in XIV are passive-aggressive as *fuck* because it allows you to be an asshole without explicitly violating ToS. Literally, last night I was watching some friends doing P8S in PF and someone screwed up and the DRK in the group told em "nice job!" Right there, being an asshole without violating ToS.

When people bang on about XIV having the best, nicest community, I point out that if you need the Stasi lurking around in the background to abduct people off to gaol, then you aren't actually a nice community - you're just more aggressively policed than others.

It's no better or worse than any other gaming community. Even "basically single player" games like No Man's Sky or Stardew Valley have the same collection of normal people, weirdos, obsessive assholes, and shilling-for-my-50 followers-stream types.

I will say I'll take racist, bigoted trade chat any day of the week over the weird public sex/ecchi uwu daddy/mommy shit that's literally everywhere near the aetherytes in Gridania and Limsa, though. At least I can just easily leave Trade Chat. It's a lot of work and requires a third-party addon to Void List all those fucking weirdos in XIV, and they often start adding their crap to shoutchat too.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I'd rather take the brute honesty of WoW's over FFXIV where nobody points out how to improve for fear of being banned, so no improves and you wipe over and over again until the group disbands.

I never saw much toxicity in WoW. People cussing? Sure. But no one bending over backwards with an axe to grind for another person.

[Shinchi Migi]

As someone who has played both games since they were released and has a lot of experience in all levels of content (so my sample size is not small), the FFXIV playerbase is in the top 3 of all games I've ever played for the most unwelcoming community and treatment of players. So much passive aggressiveness, berating, death threats, and drama. Any time I see someone complain about this in WoW, I think "man... you've seen nothing yet". These are exacerbated on the official forums and reddit. The only places I've ever seen question this were here and on 1 of the Discords I participate in.

So either you are lying, or you have the worst shitty luck in FFXIV. Cause everything you said about FFXIV is what I have seen and heard in WoW over the 17 years of playing it. Now that I have been playing FFXIV for a year and 4 months, me and my roommate have both only ran into 2 toxic people. Just weird how you have had such negative experiences in the game.

- - - Updated - - -

Strange how experiences can be so different. I've never encountered any real aggressiveness in FF14 groups, or in my FC for that matter - certainly no death threats, which I would certainly remember. Perhaps it's a matter of server culture? I know in WoW my original server was definitely more high-strung and prone to individuals that were very competitive and very outspoken about it (to put it politely). My current WoW server is a lower-pop server that is definitely more laid-back in that department, though still has its compliment of colorful personalities. I was actually taken aback in FF14 when I decided to level up the Dark Knight job on my Reaper, and on doing some of the earlier dungeons I had people ask me if I was new to the job, and then very respectfully and kindly give their take on the job and how to excel at it - something I haven't seen in WoW since the balmy days of Vanilla.

I don't really bother over much with Discords beyond my guild one, though; and I wouldn't really count the various Discord communities/server as representing either WoW or FF14 all that much - they're microcosms of their own, really.

This has also been my experiences in FFXIV. The community has been nothing but kind and helpful to me. Giving me tips and trying to help me with my classes. And my FC has been so awesome and helpful as well.

[Myradin]

I'd rather take the brute honesty of WoW's over FFXIV where nobody points out how to improve for fear of being banned, so no improves and you wipe over and over again until the group disbands.

I never saw much toxicity in WoW. People cussing? Sure. But no one bending over backwards with an axe to grind for another person.

Odd cause I'd say I've had quite the opposite experience. Usually people in FF are pointing out the causes of wipes politely.

Meanwhile you do something wrong in wow and you're the scum of the earth. Its was especially bad during Cata's launch. I never tank in WoW due to the way you get treated, while in FF I main tank, and the only complaint i've had was to pull a bit faster.

[Swnem]

If a small button makes you think about the store then you were already thinking about the store, it's not a constantly blinking button so it can easily be ignored forever. Only time I ever touched it was to preorder Legion.

The sub for WOW might be higher but you get 50 character slots.

As for items being cheaper, most are. But some only seem cheaper because the full package is broken into pieces, then there are the retainers and the things they let you do.

You don't need character slots in FF. You can have all jobs and crafting jobs in one single character.
You get 2 free retainers as well. Don't need to engage with the shop at all, so it's a silly thing to criticize outside it's existence.

Also, yes, out of sight, out of mind.

[KrayZ33]

I'd rather take the brute honesty of WoW's over FFXIV where nobody points out how to improve for fear of being banned, so no improves and you wipe over and over again until the group disbands.

I never saw much toxicity in WoW. People cussing? Sure. But no one bending over backwards with an axe to grind for another person.

Who actually fears getting banned because they point out a mistake politely when the other person clearly doesn't know how to advance? How unjustifyable paranoid can someone get....

[Grinning Serpent]

You don't need character slots in FF. You can have all jobs and crafting jobs in one single character.
You get 2 free retainers as well. Don't need to engage with the shop at all, so it's a silly thing to criticize outside it's existence.

Also, yes, out of sight, out of mind.

If you're a "crafter main," you probably fill up both of those retainers quite rapidly. Same if you're a "glamour main" or if you just like keeping items for sentimental purposes or whatever. You're also limited to 20 auctions per retainer, so if you're doing a lot of AH operations, that fills up fast too. It was nice of them to increase dresser space and free up armory space by eliminating belts, but there's still a lot more to go.

I would be irritated by okay with just paying, say, $5 to get four extra bags on my character. But, what, $2 a month times however many additional retainers you need? It's ridiculous. Especially compared to WoW, which has a higher initial monthly cost, but it's pretty much effortless to make as many bank alts as needed and bounce items and money around between them and your primary characters.

Hell, step one should be making a lot more items and sets armoire-compatible. Like, every single class set (including weapons) should be something you can store in the armoire.

[Yarathir]

It’s stuff like that why I can’t play it lol I just can’t get pass the weeb art and story. Everything else is fantastic. Love the gameplay, dungeons, mechanics, currencies etc

Hint hint, I wasn't actually describing FFXIV.

- - - Updated - - -

As someone who has played both games since they were released and has a lot of experience in all levels of content (so my sample size is not small), the FFXIV playerbase is in the top 3 of all games I've ever played for the most unwelcoming community and treatment of players. So much passive aggressiveness, berating, death threats, and drama. Any time I see someone complain about this in WoW, I think "man... you've seen nothing yet". These are exacerbated on the official forums and reddit. The only places I've ever seen question this were here and on 1 of the Discords I participate in.

Had 0 death threats, 0 berating, 0 real drama. Worst I've had is late night parties that made me feel like these people really just wanted to get it over with quickly and eschew social interaction. Whenever someone mentions "FFXIV's passive-aggressiveness", more often than not it happens to be the paranoid, feverish dreams of the person making the proclamation. "They aren't calling me a piece of shit scrub casual and kicking me from the party for not knowing the way in a starter dungeon as a new player? That's uncomfortably unfamiliar to me! They must be mocking me behind my back! Just look at that '' they threw at me! THEY'RE SO PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE."

[Grinning Serpent]

In my case, it's purely from PF prog/clear parties for savage. Most people are chill but there are absolutely people that get passive-aggressive and snippy.

You also get it from trying to ask people to DPS as healers, etc.