Again, that behavior is already ban worthy in ff14. You’re so worried about a handful of players that you’d deny yourself a tool to improve. You just have to guess if everything is going ok in ff14.
Taking issue with a cash shop is legitimate.
But try actually playing the game and see if they’re trying to wring those additional dollars out of you, or even pad your playtime with unnecessary gating.
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An example of this happening in reality? No, I don’t save such posts and I don’t exactly have recordings of every FC interaction and dungeon i’ve done. Go ahead and look on the FFXIV forums or subreddit sometime though, it very much is the mentality. People are afraid to speak up against bad players because when they do they are the ones that are going to be punished if that player reports it. It is no secret that the banhammer flies swift and free in FFXIV when it comes to that sort of thing, and i’m not talking about the genuinely toxic people.
I use ACT. It’s clunky, but it serves it purpose.
All I’m saying is that if this is the price I’m paying to have a generally positive experience and a community that I can actually feel comfortable recommending my friends to join, I’m fine with that.
Mkay, but there are free emotes already in the game. About 50x more in game than in wow, and they are all free.
The clunky part is what I take issue with. Presumably other players can use that thing and if your experience is still generally positive, what’s the difference? No one is going to start calling you out when they can be suspended for it.
Admittedly, I’ve seen it over on the FFXIV forums, too. But then the receipts come out. And again, it’s people that didn’t believe they deserved to be there but most certainly did.
Maybe I’ll get banned in the future and I’ll eat my words. But honestly… I’ll believe it when I see it. People that feel like they’re walking on eggshells in group content… I’m gladly they’re taking the time to moderate themselves and not drag down the community.
And that’s fair. But again… I see it as a slippery slope. Where is the line drawn? When do the developers start designing the game with the expectation you’ll be using addons?
I’m also annoyed by this, but I still appreciate what this policy has established for the game and its community.
It’s already drawn. If you’re nasty with people in chat, you’re getting suspended. You’re using it and presumably you’re not being toxic about it. I don’t see the issue.
Part of the problem I believe as well is that they simply don’t tell you what you did wrong, I have at least one guildie that is a former FF14 player that got banned/put in GM jail like this and he’d just get the standard response and they couldn’t tell who (understandable) or what (less understandable) was the reason for his ban, and he genuinely had no idea what he even did that could be bannable. I know the guy as being exceptionally nice and friendly so I will take him on his word there.
You really can’t say anything about how someone is playing. It doesn’t have to be negative. Asking a healer to help out with dps, which is a big thing in FF14, is not a good idea lol.
Ah yes the ol’ healers not understanding the class is designed to do damage when they arent needing to heal. Aye I remember a fair few of those myself, but yeah you can’t ask them without risking them being too sensitive about it.
It probably was something like that, if I were to guess.
Tallon Zek! We even had a PvP server based on the factions.
I loved EQ’s brutality with their factions. Oh the Dark Elfs, Ogres, and Trolls are allies. Halflings, Humans, Erudites. Then basically all of Faydwer was an alliance, and the Iksar was lumped in with the evil faction–but Iksars were hated by everyone because at one point their former empire enslaved all of Norrath.
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I mean… everyone has an off day.
But yeah, they definitely owe an explanation.
That’s one line. But now, suddenly most content has been trivialized. Do they increase encounter complexity in order to keep up with the rate that addons are feeding players information?
If I see that Sprout above someone’s head when they’re a new healer in a dungeon, I’ll always take the time to encourage them to deal some damage and explain why it’s important, especially when they get into more demanding stuff. I think I’ve only had one negative encounter doing this, and even then indirectly (someone being overly protective of their girlfriend), so I clammed up and wasn’t met by a ban. But again, that’s just my own experience.
I’ve just never encountered this silent 1984 nightmare that people are always talking about.
Is that your threshold for when they are being corporate or not? 
I mean that’s fine, it’s just a weird place to draw that line there for when it becomes inspired by corporation and when it’s not. I personally think if your a Premium product with a cash shop, you’re being corporate like. 
(Of coarse f2p can go way too far with it as well…)
That doesn’t justify anything. If anything, i don’t think you know that using WoW in a comparison like that here shows that despite the small amount of emotes compared to FF14’s, all the emotes in WoW are free in comparison to FF14’s where about half or so are locked behind a paywall. Showing that they should be all free since WoW isn’t selling them in any capacity what so ever. Speaking of…
I’l refer to you to this page here. 
Yes, it is.
As long as the content of the game isn’t actively designed to artificially extend your playtime, and by extension your subscription, I’m cool with it. How is that a strange place to draw the line?
I never said that there was no corporate influence at all - they do charge for the game, your sub, and the largely cosmetic cash shop. I just pointed out that the influence ends there - the actual meat and potatoes of the game itself are prepared without inference.
Well to be honest, you’re kind of being vague about Blizzard’s corporatism. (Aside from the 6 month subs, that i can agree it’s not something we all need in our lives).
I personally don’t consider grinding to be a problem (let alone corporate), especially when it comes to this sub genre, or genre in particular (or games in general even) as along it’s rewarding to complete or fun to do. But i would assume you’re talking about Shadowlands in this particular instance and say for example Torghast with it’s soul ash, the anima grind, the loot vault, the aoe cap, and/or the covenant swapping. I can understand the arguments for not being good or not being fun while being required (provided if you wanted to Raid, PvP or just get higher ilvl in general), then i would see the argument of being designed to waste time. Corporate might be stretching it a bit here, but this is very context dependent here on viewing these systems on individual basis and viewing it as a whole. Or for one factor, time.
Just to make it clear here, i’m not saying it’s corporate to charge for the game, and/or put a sub behind it. I’m saying it’s corporate to do both of those things while having a cash shop.
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It’s taking all those things you listed in concert with corporate commentary on “player engagement.” For example, when the players are questioning why they need to wait another week to progress a storyline that, in context, should be urgent, then you read about the developers tracking the metrics related to how long players are engaged with this content… that system exists solely to pad the metric. Where is the value of that mechanic as a game design choice?
Undoubtedly. But it’s an understandable practice, when we’re still paying subscription fees virtually identical to where they were two decades ago. And again, entirely optional. I can choose to engage in that corporate greed or not. When you bake the actual game mechanics to manipulate corporate metrics, that’s the line I draw.
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Oh i’m not excusing Blizzard for this, i do think they should focus more or less on making a good game and being passionate instead of greedy. But don’t you think were sort of ignoring that Squnenix could be doing the same thing to an extent right now as we speak? I wouldn’t even consider that as a possibility for Squnenix if i didn’t see the ridiculously large cash shop and wondered how much of the game isn’t monetized or if the game isn’t facing the same sort of timegating issues that WoW might be facing.
…Not really. Especially since these are put in there by publishers and devs that are not in need of money any time soon. Especially since cash shops are in single-player games for quite a while now in addition to prem MMO’s and such. It should honestly be regulated to F2P and just that imo.
Making it optional doesn’t make it better or justifiable.
Again, for people who enjoy fashion, RP or whatever they may fancy, getting/wearing cosmetics is gameplay to them.
And also, what about the story skip boost on FF14, or WoW’s story? What does that say about the story/leveling experience when you can just skip it with real money even if it’s ‘optional’? I don’t know much about FF14’s story, but do you think the writers of the story who made a captivating cinematic experience from start to finish be happy to know the story they wrote is undermined because you can skip it with real money and people are pretty much saying it’s optional?.. 
I guess I don’t see how a simple damage meter trivializes the content. FF14 doesn’t really need much else imo. The boss mechanics are fairly obvious. That’s the difference between this and FF. Boss mechanics are almost certainly made with DBM in mind. FF14 has a better base ui imo, but it’s missing at least one critical piece of information.
I’m sure that’s exaggerated to a certain degree, but it does happen. They have the right idea, but it’s a bit of an overcorrection imo. Better to be able to nicely explain something to a player without having to just kick them.
Again, I’m not saying that there’s zero corporate influence. It’s there. And it’s particularly egregious with the boosts and story skip. But again… it doesn’t affect me in the slightest. And most content you’ll find in the shop, aside from that, is made available in-game before it hits the shop. Personally, I don’t mind limited rewards, but it is difficult to say that it’s exclusive to the shop. And yeah, you’re going to see a few things in there that “glamour is the endgame” players will covet. That’s kind of the point. But does that actively harm my experience, or compromise systems internally? Not at all.
There’s a huge difference between players being upset that a cool cosmetic is on the shop for $15 and actively designing the rest of your game to wring an additional $15 monthly fee out of everyone.