RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Asgarn · **01-07-2014, 01:27 PM**

Now then, one thing I've noticed in FFXIV of late, much like other MMOs but on somewhat of a larger scale, there are a heck of a lot of people trash talking roleplayers. The people I speak of are the typical "Shouters" (you know the type. They spam your chat log with nonsensical shouts in places such as Quarrymill, Coerthas, the like) and this really just got me thinking.
"Am I missing something?"

I was just wondering if there has been some cause for this transgression towards a sect of MMO society which, to be quite frank, keep to themselves. Have roleplayers committed some unforgivable deed of which I have not heard?

Also! How would you go about rectifying this? I have often considered responding over the Shout channels to defend roleplay, which I have a deep love for. However, one cannot help but think that it might negatively impact your reputation on the server, affecting your likeliness to get groups for content, etc.

So, I bring this to the "RP Discussion" forum, as this is very much a discussion. If anything, I would like to hear from you, my fellow roleplayers. Of any past experiences you have had with these kinds of people (that you're comfortable sharing), what you would do if faced with them and just generally your views. All viewpoints are welcome, let's find out what everyone thinks!

Lutra · **01-07-2014, 02:02 PM**

From my experience, people who "trash talk" roleplayers usually fall under three categories:

1) They think it's stupid/not a reason to play a game.
2) Have had poor experiences with roleplayers in the past. (Ex: Seeing graphic ERP in public, or the like.)
3) Just plain trolls.

I personally never speak up to any of them, because it's simply a waste of time. Internet fights and debates usually never have positive outcomes, so I avoid them altogether, even when it's something I'm passionate about.Â

If a people dislike RP and make it known, that's perfectly fine with me. It's their opinion, and their actions will only hurt their image, not mine. Also, Square-Enix devs seem to take harassment very seriously, from what I've seen. So if a person is going too far in terms of spam or getting outrageously mean, I just blacklist the person, and send a report.Â

I know a few of my fellow AWers have had to do that, unfortunately. :/

Other than that, I just choose to ignore them and concentrate on my own fun. :) That kind of silliness is just TOO silly to affect the way I enjoy a game.

Talathar Khalynn · **01-07-2014, 02:10 PM**

Among gamers, Roleplayers are sometimes considered the geekiest of the geeks. It's not that we've actually done anything extraordinarily horrendous to earn ourselves the ridicule and mockery of our fellow gamers or anything. We just don't play the game the same way they do, so it's easy for them to point fingers and say, "Hey, they're weird!" and try to act like big bad bullies on the virtual playground.

Who knows why they do it, really.

Maybe they don't understand the whole idea of roleplaying. Maybe they think roleplayers are using the game as a venue for cyber. Maybe they had a bad previous encounter with a roleplayer (or pretend roleplayer) in the past. Maybe they were picked on by jocks in school, and have decided that they'd punish roleplayers in revenge. Maybe they're just jerks.

Again, who know? And more to the point, who cares?

I don't pay the trolls any mind, really. I used to roleplay a tarutaru in Final Fantasy XI, back before there was any real organization for roleplay, and people pretty much put up with it (back then, a good WHM was worth putting up with eccentric behavior). I don't mind explaining the idea of roleplaying to others who are curious, but for those trying to be arses, I will usually just add them to my blacklist and go on with my day. If they still persist in being a pain, I will send them a /tell asking them to please stop their harassment, a complaint will be sent if they continue, and I will follow through with the complaint.

And then I go back to ignoring them.

I roleplay openly in /say, with emotes and gestures and everything else. If it makes sense to move to a quieter location, I can do that - but usually only if it makes sense to the roleplay moment, or if the chatter is too much. I tend to concentrate on the text while roleplaying anyway, so people jumping around like poo-flinging monkeys on tables or trying to cast area of affect magics (I have the graphics for non-party turned off) don't even get more than a blink, really. I refuse to be bothered by petty, small-minded jerks who have nothing better to do than to try to make others as miserable as they are on the inside.

Xenedra · **01-07-2014, 02:12 PM**

There have always been people in MMOs who feel the need to harass RPers for no good reason other than they think it's fun. There are people who just harass other people, regardless of RP-tendencies, you know? So why not pick a group that seems harmless to pick on? "Surely they won't fight back? And if they do, good! More fun for me!" Maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but it certainly feels that way at times to me.

Personally I just ignore most people who grief when I RP. Most of them are just looking to get a rise out of us anyway, so why give it to them? This isn't to say this is always the case. There are also times when someone just doesn't plain understand what I'm doing and will go away when I NICELY ask them to. There are ALSO the smattering of griefers who will go away with a smile if you just throw a couple of cute emotes at them to show them you're not bothered and can take a joke. It's quite a varied crowd, now that I think about it and the hard part is figuring out which breed of griefer you're dealing with. Always best to start with the friendly route, though. Why get into a shouting match and let it interrupt your fun if a few emotes will send them packing?

In REALLY bad harassment situations, and I've had a few, it's totally within reason to call a GM or report the person to their guild leader. SE's made it very convenient to right click on a name and view their company profile; the free company leader's name is right there for easy communication! I, personally have used the latter method a few times and all of the FC leaders I've spoken with seem very willing to listen to serious harassment cases. Most leaders don't want people giving their FC a bad name.

P.S. -- Sometimes I look at their gear, notice mine is better and say to myself, "Hm. Maybe you should spend more time gearing yourself rather than harassing people since that's all you're playing this game FOR." ... But that's a private, inside thought I don't share : P

Bryn · **01-07-2014, 02:16 PM**

With the RP community being as large and prominent as it is on Balmung, we were always going to get a degree of backlash. But we RPers will always be a minority within the wider gaming community. And if there's one unfortunate constant of human nature, it's that wherever there is a minority, that minority will inevitably end up being victimized.

Generally, I just ignore the trolls. I filter /shout from my logs at all times to avoid the recruitment spam and such, anyway.

That being said, I've been pleasantly surprised by how little harassment I've experienced or witnessed on Balmung. The worst I've seen is some asshat dragoon jumping into the middle of a scene and spamming his abilities in an attempt to disrupt us. Generally it's best to not even acknowledge such people. Their goal is to disrupt your RP, and as soon as you complain to them, they've already won.

I did have an incident recently where I was RPing in the Quicksand and some guy sat down and started making very obviously passive-aggressive emotes to mock us ((Drinking all of our booze, throwing up, passing out on the table, etc)). I ran with it and emoted Bryn shaving off one of his eyebrows with a dagger and using her kohl stick to draw a penis on his forehead, at which point he promptly got up and left.

Hiro · **01-07-2014, 02:20 PM**

Coming from Ultima Online and even MUD's beyond that, trolling RPers has always been a thing. The more popular the game, the more prevalent it becomes, worse, very few games take a hardline approach even on designated RP servers that would otherwise improve the situation. In that regard I think it's actually gotten worse over the last few years as less games seem to take a side with the roleplay community even when things go beyond their TOS, and when they are rarely dealt with the only authorized action is a warning which is barely even a slap on the wrist.

As a community the only thing you can do is to report where you can, maintain your own highroad, and hope the game you're playing actually cares enough. I don't find it hard to ignore the trolls I come across, but not everyone can. As it was mentioned in here, as soon as you give in and acknowledge their disruption in a negative manner they've already felt like they've won.

Asgarn · **01-07-2014, 02:48 PM**

It's really great to get some opinions on the matter, guys. Thank you! It speaks volumes for the RP community of each game by looking at how they deal with these kinds of situations and it's good to see FFXIV roleplayers seem to be a mature and friendly bunch. Also, the insights that we have in to what leads the "trolls" to troll in the first place is very interesting. Smile

Your approach to seeing off the dragoon made me laugh, Bryn! Well, more than a laugh. More like maniacal cackling, but still... Laughed.Â Blush

Personally, whilst I know it is not at Square Enix's top-of-the-list priorities, I think that Square could really do more to help. Of course, by the lack of official RP servers it can be seen that FFXIV was not designed with roleplay at the heart, though as it is with any developer, Square have a duty to protect their players from any form of harassment. The process of reporting in FFXIV is a long-winded process in comparison to other games, where a simple "right-click, fill in a form, submit" method is used. While the reporting process does exist, this requires you to go through the main menu, support desk and locating the relevant report criteria. THEN you go on to write potentially an essay on what happened, the name of the other player, the server you are on, etc. Therefore, this report is not directly linked to the offending account, rather admins would have to look up the characer you reference, attaining the linked account and going from there.

That on it's own seems rather... Over the top, am I right? Then there's Square Enix's terrible reputation for doing nothing about reports, which goes all the way back to FFXI. So you went through all that for nothing!Â Tongue

Don't get me wrong, I love Square Enix. If I could adopt a Square Enix, I would be the Crazy Square Enix Man. But, y'know, the whole reporting process is rather lack luster and ineffective in my eyes.

Tiergan · **01-07-2014, 04:13 PM**

I am in the "Don't argue with them, it makes them stay longer." and the "Ignore them or kill them with kindness/jokes/cute emotes." camp.

Usually when the griefers realise that you're not as bothered by them as they want you to be, they leave you alone.Â The others will actually start feeling bad about harassing you if you're nice enough.Â

The fastest way to make a griefer stick is by arguing with them or trying to shame them for trolling you.Â As Bryn said, the second you complain, they won.Â They want the negative backlash from you.

ansemaru · **01-07-2014, 04:24 PM**

I've thankfully only witnessed a handful of whining and heckling about RPers on Balmung or Gilgamesh. For all that these servers are the community-designated RP servers, there are always going to be players who aren't RPers, and among those, there are going to be those who for whatever reason don't tolerate RP. They might find it embarrassing or simply don't understand it. And to be honest? That's their problem. If they're going to go on a public channel to tell other people to keep their RP private, as if it were ERP, they're being the embarrassing ones. (I'm speaking to a particular individual I encountered in Ul'dah yesterday, though I'm sure they're not the only one who has gone on the /shout channel to whine about RP.)

They've got no obligation to hang around RP hubs or even listen to RP. No obligation to keep the /say channel turned on, since outside of RP it hardly even has all that many applications. And on our part, we've got no obligation to respond, acknowledge them, or even have the /shout or /yell channels on. Responding in turn feels good- indulging in your anger always does- but giving hecklers and whiners the cold shoulder and letting their topics die works better. Especially if you ignore them in order to RP more.

Kismet · **01-07-2014, 04:38 PM**

Just ignore them. You can do this either mentally, or physically by utilizing your blacklist feature.

Not much else to it than that, honestly.

Oli! · **01-07-2014, 04:46 PM**

In my experience, the most often-purported reason why Roleplayers are viewed unfavorably in other people's eyes hasn't been something that was touched upon yet, so I just thought I'd state it briefly for the sake of additional understanding.

In addition to some of the other things that people have said (we're "weird," some do embarrassing public things, etc.), some people see Roleplayers as simply "dead weight" in a server. We and our friends and groups take up large portions of the (limited) space for characters on servers, we populate cities en-masse and make things chug for some people on lower-end computers, and all for what, standing around and talking?

To a lot of people, that isn't really playing the game. We're just there to talk at each other, and take up precious gamespace in an annoying manner like the silver chunks from Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. I've seen "oh man, these annoying Roleplayers are standing around next to this hardface event and aren't even helping a single bit" in games more times than I can count.

So even if the other reasons might seem a bit confusing or otherwise inadequate, this one might help to shed a bit of light on the attitudes that some people may have. The less of us there are around, the more people there are who will actually want to "play" the game.

Edgar · **01-07-2014, 05:15 PM**

What defies me is not the fact that there are people who troll roleplayers. That is to be expected.

What defies me is that they are normal people who complain about the presence of roleplay on dedicated roleplay servers.

That's like swimming in notoriously shark infested waters and being pissed off by the over-abundance of sharks. What the fuck did you expect? A shitload of krill?

Why are you here, in a roleplay server, if you have no intent to roleplay and/or dislike roleplaying in general? Are you some sort of masochist? You can't be, because you're bitching about it!

And if you're here because you couldn't access any other servers, which doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, that's still no excuse to be completely and utterly ignorant of the fact that roleplaying servers, surprise surprise, have roleplayers on them!

Asgarn · **01-07-2014, 05:21 PM**

(01-07-2014, 05:15 PM)undefined Wrote: That's like swimming in notoriously shark infested waters and being pissed off by the over-abundance of sharks. What the fuck did you expect? A shitload of krill?

Darn... What is with all these sharks? I know the brochure said this island had a shark population but, GOD. Would it kill them to pretend to be dolphins!?

Jana · **01-07-2014, 05:50 PM**

Balmung and Gilgamesh aren't official RP servers though, they're unofficial ones chosen by the RP community. Square Enix hasn't said anywhere that there are RP servers at all, so people joining the servers to play with friends, because they were open, because they liked the names, etc. have no way of knowing that there's going to be a roleplaying population at all.

Doesn't excuse anyone's bad behavior, but you shouldn't talk about what it isn't about.

Asgarn · **01-07-2014, 06:17 PM**

(01-07-2014, 05:50 PM)Jana Wrote: Balmung and Gilgamesh aren't official RP servers though, they're unofficial ones chosen by the RP community. Square Enix hasn't said anywhere that there are RP servers at all, so people joining the servers to play with friends, because they were open, because they liked the names, etc. have no way of knowing that there's going to be a roleplaying population at all.

Doesn't excuse anyone's bad behavior, but you shouldn't talk about what it isn't about.

I am pretty sure that I did not refer to them as official servers, in case the first comment is aimed at my post:

"Personally, whilst I know it is not at Square Enix's top-of-the-list priorities, I think that Square could really do more to help. Of course, by the lack of official RP servers it can be seen that FFXIV was not designed with roleplay at the heart, though as it is with any developer, Square have a duty to protect their players from any form of harassment."

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RP Trash Talking (Opinion & Discussion)

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes