Why is the FFXIV Community NOT TOXIC?

hey buttons so today I wanted to talk about something that's often just accepted as a matter of fact and that is how policy 14 has a reputation for a great community now I don't want the vibe of this video to be like smug and self congratulatory like why are we so great because we're not all great there's definitely plenty of toxic buttholes I mean just play long enough and you will meet with some so even if they are not the majority I think that by constantly getting pushed out of every other well moderated space they retreat into this nasty fringe that is hyper toxic so before we get into the meat of this video which is really why are people nice I don't want to gloss over the bad apart from those who are naturally unpleasant there are also people that are not toxic people but they might have said a toxic thing here and there and that's just because they lack self-control maybe they were short on time and it was Monday night and they kept wiping to enrage and today we're doing fun but everybody else kept making mistakes and they just snapped or maybe they're the one that's screwing up and they don't want to take responsibility for it for whatever reason you know like we have all been tilted before but some people just lack this self-discipline or the maturity to step away instead of explode on others and they might even regret it later and hopefully that regret would lead them to improving their behavior but I mean that's a thing that is gonna happen like in any game I'm sure I think that because outright aggression is so discouraged and frowned upon by the community at large that a lot of times people take their nastiness and they become really passive-aggressive instead so they'll never say what's really bothering them they will mask their resentment with a smile they will complain to everybody else except the person that they are complaining about they'll say what are you mad about why are you upset you know I'm not mad I was just kidding it's always hints and hints never dirt never directly because they lack for whatever reason the courage or the will to say to resolve disputes in a in a normal way I don't know I don't know why people are like this I mean we've all been there and that's I think that's something that flies under the radar a lot of times I think that the past when you meet somebody that's passive-aggressive you might not know right away because a lot of it is not translating real well into text because if you someone's like it's fine and you hear their tone of their voice in public you're like oh okay well it's clearly not fine but if you just read you just read it's fine you're like okay cool I guess I guess it's fine it's fine then honestly I would rather somebody just yell at me then do this passive-aggressive BS anyway all that exists and it would be wrong of me to make a video where I'm talking about the goodness of the community and like digging into the reasons for that without acknowledging the bat because the bat is real it's there and I don't want to minimize the experience of anybody who's encountered somebody like that and I just hope that you will give it another try because by and large people are actually super chill and friendly and that's one of the reasons why I love this game and I love you guys but everywhere I look people go out of their way to help to teach to be patient like incredibly patient and it's just like like I don't want to sound cynical about like why why are people doing that is there something in the game that drives this like wild altruism that I see or is it just that nice people are drawn to 14 in general I came from the WoW community I played well from 2004 up until rollers adrenaline and by comparison retail Wow is a game with a reputation for having not the best community to put it lightly like a lot of people like to blame the dungeon finder for ruining the social aspect that's the matchmaking tool that makes hard-to-find party members and replaceable and it gives you way less reason to add pee to your friends list the game will just find people for you to play with people that you will not see again so obviously not great for the social aspect but did it ruin it because you're probably already thinking yourself but wait we have that in Final Fantasy 14 we have finally see 14 always had the duty finder and yet our community went the other way it went a better way so something else is going on obviously I think that one big factor is the devs most of us feel like the devs do take care of us and they're listening I will never forget this live letter from December of last year where Yoshida said let me just read this you're sheeter was like so about the to be equipment you get from your dark apocalypse the to be thighs the ass that is this time we made the knee portion to be transparent although players are happy that it's now transparent the ass volume has been reduced or having adjustment and I see comments and reddit about how the ass has been nerfed and Foxconn was sitting there saying yeah like the ass is nerfed or something like that and your [ __ ] was like yeah it's gradually becoming a Power word here so I just want to explain that we did we don't actually intend to nerf it and look he waited to extreme detail about like the polygons and the shape of the ass and how they're gonna pump it up again and it was not intended to nerf the ass look that's that's my love language and by god they unnerved those asses the point is like I had never felt more listened to mo if they listened to even though a silly complaints and they tell us exactly what's going on in detail like we feel cared for and I think that that passion trickles down and it makes us more invested in the game and by extension each other there were times oh no and I got the feeling like it was kind of like every man for itself like I felt like devs don't seem to give a crap about my problems and so you screw everybody like it's not hard to fall into that trap secondly the equitable game design ensures that most people are not walking around with ton of bitterness about stuff that you just beyond your control we have player agency and we're all playing by the same rules there's no slot machine automation your job doesn't feel like it's Opie or underpowered and you know every job is viable this is an attainable goal that you can work towards and achieve it's not rng dependent you know you're like okay I just earned these boots and from killing this boss I feel like I was rewarded for my effort the time I spent learning how to kill this boss and this other player I'm not bitter about them because they'll have to get our chicken pasta just a rock to poxes g6 they'll have to learn that fight and clear it to get these same boots to get boots that are this good it feels like we're all on a level playing field and I think that fairness of the game design contributes to way less interpersonal bickering nobody wants to play a game that feels unfair I mean how do you feel now that you've lost the game I'm so sorry okay it was a low-hanging fruit I know next I think the story itself shapes the way we relate to others and perceive ourselves to a degree it's something that helps us feel rooted in the world through our shared experiences and part of that is due to the lack of a PTR because there's no PTR nobody has any idea what this story is gonna be about or what with the new turn and the plot will be until on patch day we all go through it together where everyone who's the next level of course but I think that's such a powerful bonding experience that we often share every time there is new story coming out we can all look at each other anything can you believe what just happened and like it's it's very exciting for us so I think that's something that brings us together as a community on a pretty regular basis but more than that the story is centered on us we're not sideline observers so when we do experience these plot plot twists together on Pat Jay it feels much more personal it's not like watching through all in Jana's save the day and saying Oh wasn't that cool withdrawal in Dragon I didn't know instead you're saying hey wasn't that cool what we did that was pretty awesome what we did it's not alike the difference between sitting next to someone at a football game you know it's just some Rando you're not gonna talk to them you're just both watching the game or finding out that this person is good friends with your friends you know it's like you this is our story it says hurt on us not way off in the distance and I think in an odd way it makes us feel more connected to each other and on top of that we are the heroes of this story we are the good guys we are constantly being praised for doing the right thing and reminded that you know we are helpful we are heroes and I think by constantly being praised for that for doing good I think in some way it does actually motivate people to start doing good in other ways and I want to add especially in the case of shadow bringers this is a phenomena that I have seen her firsthand research shows that pain brings people together and man shadow bringers really did bring a lot of us together kind of in the same way that I think that cost let me remind you that you're the hero doing what's right is good and cool and desirable I think that does maybe influence people's behavior a little bit in the same way I actually think that the narrative itself is a self-fulfilling prophecy I think that the narrative that this is a good community we are a great community it's repeated so often and conversely the opposite is repeated in the while community you know in the while community you often hear this community of sucks and we're very toxic this was you know it's like a it's like these are mantras that are repeated over and over and over and I think if you people just hear this is a good community so often I kind of feel like it actually makes people better it's like some weird trick it's kind of like I had a therapist tell me that's a good idea do you have some like daily affirmations after every day like you should wake up and be like hey I'm good enough I was smart enough and gosh darn it people like me like that SNL's and it will over time actually improve your self-esteem or you know if you wake up every day and you tell yourself I'm crappy I'm a scum I I hate myself you know I don't deserve you think like these are matrons that will become self-fulfilling prophecies as well you'll start to feel really horrible about yourself and I kind of feel like on a macro level this management of we have a great community this is a great community it reinforces itself and people are like we are excellent I will continue to be excellent to each other I think there's a few game specific elements that might help with alleviating a bit of toxicity - like the new player bonus that I think that's really cool because players will get a bonus of Poetics usually for helping a low level player clear content for the first time and so this actually motivates people to be helpful and new players will have a positive experience from that in most cases I think that's really cool I think that the commendation system may be to a degree maybe a small degree does encourage people to be more pleasant in dungeons knowing they're trying to get a commendation though I don't know I was about to say I don't know anyone that's really trying to accommodations and then I remember at the time once I notice is a little off topic but I gotta tell you one time I was doing a dungeon and that's right at the very end of the dungeon the person put up a macro message that was like did you enjoy this dungeon run with me today if he did please consider giving me a commendation and I would really appreciate that thank you it was like this whole message and I was just like wow wow wow really anyway so some people really want those combinations personally I think that combination system would be even more effective if they could give specific types of compliments kind of like an overwatch we can be like oh what a great shot caller yes or like you were a great team player or like you were good talkative or something like that would be great I would love to have some more specific like little badges you could earn but anyways there's of course the very prickly issue of the DPS meter there's no well obviously there's the parsers that people use and it's very gray area in terms of the rules but the way that Square Enix handles it is if you use your information you got from a parser to harass another player they will ban you or they will like they will take severe action against you for that and there is of course no official add-on support so there's no DPS meter that's officially endorsed by the game honestly I personally wish that we had add-on support and they would just keep on punishing people that were mean about parsers but I guess I do understand why they wouldn't want to even cross that bridge I think that we also have a really healthy culture of learning parties in the party finder groups that are just like just watch a guide first timers welcome it's okay and that you go in and it's expected that there's gonna be a lot of mistakes and you're gonna be learning and that's okay I also I have often seen a lot of more experienced players helping out in there but again that's kind of pushing us more into the territory of look at people doing all these nice things and not quite understanding why they're doing that because you don't have any real motivation to help people clear I mean to help people in a learning party where you have no chance of clearing at all they're just angels I don't know where they're coming from that's what I'm trying to ask you that so I'm trying to figure out here today because here's the thing about accountability you know they just they do say in general that smaller groups will lead to a greater accountability I've noticed that if I tend to be doing some of the same content at the same time on specific days I might often run into some of the same people that are also doing that same content it's not completely like you're never gonna see the people in party finder again duty finder is a different story but party Finder is where a lot of stuff happens and I think there's more accountability there I think it's because the data centers in policy 14 chopped up the total population into smaller pools of people I know that in North America in Rio for example in North America party finder is like all North America all Latin America in all Oceania Oceania oh my god Oceania Oceania okay I think we do have more of data center communities you know you can even now date hop two different worlds within your data center and I think because of that because a world visit our data center communities have started to feel a little bit more have their own identity I guess and there's accountability within those two and to an extent still even after considering all of these different factors I can't help but wonder if there's just something about Final Fantasy 14 that draws a different kind of audience maybe a more thoughtful and more considerate audience that tends to be more kind more helpful I really would love your thoughts on this because I've been puzzling this over and I would love to hear other perspectives on why you think it is or maybe you completely disagree and you think that it's just super toxic and you can tell me about that too if you want but on that note I really hope to hear your thoughts and opinions in the comment section down below and I want to thank you so much for watching if you like this video I want to encourage you to think about maybe supporting the channel on patreon or on Twitch you can also support the channel for free just by clicking the subscribe button or by sharing this video with your fellow warriors of darkness thanks again so much for watching and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Zepla HQ

Views: 257,158

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Id: -Fx7aFUfnkQ

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020