Thread Closed
(06-08-2017, 01:56 AM)Lydia Lightfoot Wrote: But what you're doing right now, this isn't helping the grass to look greener. Please see that. Please stop the negative feelings, and be positive. If the public face you show is negative, then instead of newcomers going to your server when the hit the Balmung wall, they'll bounce off it and right back to WoW or wherever else they came from. Nobody wants drama, and if they feel like what they see even before making a character looks dramatic, they won't even give you a try.
I've been avoiding these threads like the plague for a while now, but this is a point I think needs to be emphasized. For every person like foxfirestorm who is taking time out of their own day for a hobby to push and promote and try to inspire more RP on other servers, for each of those hardworking folk... their efforts can be so heavily undermined by the vocal minority that gets snippy and entitled and downright vicious towards people who aren't immediately jumping on the bandwagon to leap to the other servers.
People who do that? You are undoing their work with your attitude. A few careless comparisons and posts and comments are undoing a lot of actual effort that is being put into this. If your ranting and negativity is driving people away from going to that server, you are doing far more damage than the "inactivity" and "lip service" of someone on Balmung. Far more, you are actually hindering growth - since people seem more inclined to speak up about bad experiences than good ones.
As an example? I'm not really going through all these different threads on the matter but... the people from Balmung who do transfer or make an alt? The ones that are trying to help? I've been hearing that some of them are getting backlash anyway for doing so. From people on Mateus who don't want them there or don't want them buying up the housing plots. It sounds very much like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation that is not going to be healthy for anyone involved. And even if it's in the minority of encounters, the fact that such things are getting to folks like me who aren't paying that much attention? That's not going to help things.
And, making folks less willing to help by berating them and making them dig in their heels because you feel they're "obligated" to lend a hand? Again, even it's a small number of people doing it, it's going to cause negativity and less willingness to help out. As Askier said, no one really "needs" to do anything in this situation. There is no "obligation."
For example, SE doesn't "need" to mark servers as RP servers - Besaid/Balmung and to a lesser extent Gilgamesh built up without any effort or extra work on their side at all. And we have alternatives popping up now like Mateus that also have required no input from SE's side. The free transfers might help with that, but that's specifically to try to trim numbers on overfilled servers than help the RP effort. You cannot and should not expect help from them - anything they do is purely out of goodwill for a small subset of its player-base.
More close to home, no one "needs" to transfer from Balmung to Mateus, or Faerie, or Siren, or wherever else the other RP communities are. The people that are doing this are doing it out of their own good-will and a personal desire to help in what is essentially a hobby that honestly shouldn't impose the kind of obligations that these few vocal people are apparently demanding of them. They are selflessly uprooting themselves from a place of establishment and comfort to help foster and help those that can't get there. Rather than bashing the people who aren't doing it, we should be praising and commending those that are. Making what they're doing more of a positive might even make more people willing to do it, which is a far sight better than getting on the ones that don't and subsequently making them dig in their heels all the more and spreading all this negativity.
Heck, we don't even "need" to try and promote other servers if we really want to get down to it. Balmung is locked and so people are going to have to find other places - that's a given - and people from those places are hopefully doing things to point the newcomers their way. There's no obligation for anyone else to do it for you, yet we have people doing that anyway. It's like opening your own store - you have to advertise and get word of mouth going on your own - you can't expect people to stop going to, say, Wal-Mart and come to your little place because you're new and just starting out. In fact, that sort of self-entitlement actually has hurt a lot of mom and pop stores - and that's people doing that with a job instead of just a hobby. With real money and livelihoods involved.
And yet here we are. Not only are folks from Balmung and the RPC letting new folks know "Hey, we know Balmung's locked... but Mateus is open and building up!", we have people who are moving from Balmung to Mateus to help them along. And, yet, we apparently want to instead focus on the ones who aren't doing it. Or, worse, get on the folks that are and villainize them for somehow harming this burgeoning community or harming the RP community at large by "fracturing" the RP player base.
It's mind-boggling. It's frustrating. And, to be honest? I think it's pretty stupid and self-defeating. We're polarizing ourselves. Making it into an "Us Vs. Them" situation.
Movers vs. Stayers
Those for keeping RPers together vs. Spreading them out
Balmung vs. Mateus
RPers vs. Non-RPers
And I think doing that is going to cause way more damage to the RP scene than anything else. It's these self-made lines in the sand that will continue to cause the problems. From what I heard? Gilgamesh floundered from this "Versus" mindset - both non-RPers actively harassing the RPers and the Gilgamesh RPers themselves thinking they were in some sort of "competition" with Balmung. How much of that is true and how much of it is just hearsay, I don't know, but if any modicum of it is true then that goes to show just how much this sort of behavior can ruin thing.
So, all in all?
1.) Folks like foxfirestorm? You keep being awesome. You're getting these other RP locales noticed. You're helping the overall FFXIV RP community by allowing choice and diversity, especially in the situation we got blindsided with. You are to be commended and lauded for the efforts you are doing of your own volition to help better the RP environment in this game.
2.) The people who are actively moving over to these servers from Balmung - either with their mains or alts? You also keep being awesome. Uprooting yourself and/or trying to balance giving attentions to alts in this very-not-alt-friendly game is a big move to make for something that is ultimately a hobby. Kudos on you guys, and double-kudos if you're also helping start up and run events on these servers.
3.) For those who are just pointing all the new folks to these other servers? Guess what? You're also awesome. Even giving direction and help to someone trying to get into this hobby (perhaps for the first time!) is something that should be commended. Not only that, you're helping out those servers with additional advertising that helps take just that little bit more workload off them. That's awesome.
I, personally, want to continue praising those who are stepping up for their hobby when they didn't have to. Rather than bash those who are simply enjoying the hobby or are unable to put as much effort into it as they would like due to whatever constraints there are. And I'll keep using the word "awesome" to describe them because they are, in fact, being awesome.
And that more or less ends my rambling, potentially pointless tirade about this whole situation in general. I think. I don't even know anymore, I think I ranted myself into confusion. Not to mention edited it a couple times to try and clarify some points and I'm just throwing up my hands at this point and saying "I'm done."
I've said my piece on the matter and now I'll likely just go back to avoiding these threads again.
~