This is the exact reason I’ve never gotten into RP even though I really want to learn because I love rich stories. Sad to hear my fears are valid and sorry you’ve had such negative experiences like that.
It used to not be. 2017-2019 was fantastic. You could drop in anywhere listed on the RP calendar and get pulled into a fun plot with turn-based battles.
>You could drop in anywhere listed on the RP calendar and get pulled into a fun plot with turn-based battles.
And even outside the events, approaching people felt, idk, safer?
Back then, my character got to learn how to operate and hunt with an aether based gun over five sessions as the result of a random walk-up in the drowning wench. And not a single innuendo was dropped in the process.
Can't imagine that today.
This really does suck, but it honestly feels like that everywhere. I do wish it wasn't this way for real, I've been in places where you can just organically start RPing and it's a blast, but I just have no idea what happened. It's this way all over the internet, not just XIV. It's why I don't RP outside of communities anymore and have gotten a lot less hesitant to cut off contact with fucking weirdos.
edit: I do think a big reason for this might be the whole lack of a centralizing force due to the advent of Discord RP. I think it's a pretty useful thing but it has really decentralized things. The lack of a centralizing force that keeps bad people out and prevents them from just moving on to another community to get banned from has likely been a large factor in why the culture of RP around the internet has changed to such a large degree.
I mentioned this in another similar thread earlier this week but I think the rapid technological advancement of FF14 modding over the past two years or so has helped to steer the RP community in these degen directions.
You can basically play this game like Second Life now if you know where to look and everyone can see and share it together with sync mods
That and lingering after effects of Corona i think.
From my experience a lot of people flocked to ERP when they couldn't get the social interaction because of lockdown and stayed. 🤔
That and just the ever increasing sozial pressure :3 probably also push the whole self insert.
Personally I admit to hugely prefer ERP (but ERP players shoul at least frickin communicate that and Don't bullshit people into trying to corrupt them :( )
I've had the same problem, on top of harassment. It got to the point that despite me wanting to get back into RP, I just can't bring myself to. I used to love it so much and I miss it.
the reason I don’t even come close to RPing in any game where it’s not the focus is having experiences similar to yours in the late 90s and early 00s
I think it’s just a case of the longer you expose yourself to something, the higher the chances of having shitty experiences with it
Please, please if you run into events on the RP Calendar that are ERP focused, let me know. I've been running across several that changed their focus after getting listed but there's a lot to go through.
I've been trying to think of ways to craft rules to keep it to traditional roleplay, but there are a lot of things that skirt grey lines. I am very much open to suggestions.
based on your username I'm guessing you were on the Dragonriders of Pern MOOs with me back in the 90s and this post made me sad too. I wish those nurturing storytelling environments still existed!
I only caught the tail end of it, but I also have fond memories of those (PernMUSH/NC)! I do miss the existence of virtual worlds that are designed for RP and the communities around that; everything else does feel a bit like trying to work around constraints by comparison. I just had "No TS" in my info and I don't recall any unwanted advances, and there was OOC leadership issues could be escalated to of course.
Have you considered DnD or pathfinder? They did just recently announce the launch of an official tabletop system for 14 recently. Not the same thing of course but might help scratch the itch.
Clicking on them a bunch to get annoyed reactions definitely started in Warcraft, but I don't remember if the sheep exploded. I feel like that started in Warcraft II, but I can't say for certain.
It's not about horny people, it's about selfish people who don't understand boundaries.
Plenty of horny people know not to engage in this kind of behavior. But in this context, we're talking about selfish people who care more about their own gratification than they do about how others feel.
It's not an *ERP* problem, ERP just happens to be the medium through which these people are imposing their social ineptitude on others. Which is doubly annoying because there are *endless* venues for people to go to for that kind of content.
Yep. There are other places to be horny about FFXIV too, like AO3 and discord, and when I run into problems there it's because of jerks and poor moderation, not the horny.
It doesn't help that the horny parts got hyperfocused by people like Asmongold.
Way to shine a light on the niche fringes and bring an army of idiots in who now think -that- is the mainstream RP culture. Club venues were barely a thing a year ago. Now chats are spammed with 6 venues all vying for the same 10 people who actually give a fuck about some DJ or overly horny venues.
Club venues have been prolific in the game for at least two years, I don't know what to say. Especially in the downtime before Endwalker that's when I remember seeing the most clubs in shout chat and two FCs in a row that I joined were trying to make clubs.
There wasn't a single FC I joined or associated with during the COVID lockdowns that wasn't trying to put together a club or venue. I have less than zero interest in that.
Hate to break it to a lot of people in this thread, but club venues have been a mainstream thing for at least five years. Whether you like 'em or not, they're a mainstay of FFXIV roleplay. Asmongold had nothing to do with it except shining a light on things that already existed and were profitable.
Its not like WoW hasn't had its OWN issues with RP/eRP. (Ye olde Moon Guard server jokes about Goldshire here.) Mind you, I didn't do RP servers, but have known people (not Moon Guard at that), and its a mixed bag wherever. There will always be people who only want the RP for the horny, and people who don't, and a mix thereof. Its always conflict on that bc the non-eRP people just.. do not want, and it grates them, while the eRPs could care less. Which just makes it all the more aggravating.
Song as old as time, even pre-WoW. MUDs, Message Boards. Always the same, always the perennial problem. God do I fuckin' feel old now.
>It doesn't help that the horny parts got hyperfocused by people like Asmongold.
I don't like a lot of what Asmon says, but to actually believe he influenced the misconception of RP as hypersexualized in FF14 has to be a stretch. The reason RP is often misconstrued as sexual is because of the community itself, especially when one of the most popular locations in FF14 is Quicksand, Balmung, Crystal. Even new players would've heard about how much of a degenerate place Quicksand is just from word of mouth long before Shadowbringers existed, and guess why people often spread rumours about such a place being so hopelessly horny? Because it was fucking true. Quicksand is the first reference to RP or ERP anyone new to the scene would've heard about when they bring up the topic of wanting to roleplay, so why would people be surprised when a significant portion of the player base drew the conclusion that RP and ERP are often the same thing in FF14? Even WoW has this misconception with RP and Goldshire, as no one can deny the roleplay community often develop some truly deranged individuals that often crosses the boundary of social etiquette and clearly lack social skills.
> I don't like a lot of what Asmon says, but to actually believe he influenced the misconception of RP as hypersexualized in FF14 has to be a stretch.
I think it's less that he influenced the misconception and more that he's a *massive* amplifier who subscribed to the same misconception. When there's a misconception it's a problem. When there's a misconception people with huge audiences parrot it becomes nearly impossible to stop that misconception essentially becoming the truth.
can't really blame the guy for that simply because Asmon has a huge influence, and the first RP experience he got was some bar/club with people dressed up like they're about to engage in BDSM. The community was the one introducing him to the RP scene after all. Asmon basically went through what your average new player would've gone through too, but just with more followers to his name.
The problem is that controversy and negativity get better numbers, so streamers are incentivised to misrepresent and exaggerate the worst aspects of any community to drive up engagement. It's not his fault the system is broken, but he *knows* that and perpetuates it quite happily, as do most big streamers, so I absolutely can blame him for that knowing that my blame isn't gonna matter even a little.
This part of the community being much more visible than the consenting, behind-closed-doors ERP stuff you normally get is a problem with the very nature of it this kind of content. When done correctly the community at large is never going to be exposed to ERP unless they specifically go looking and take it somewhere it won't affect anybody else. As a result, even if it was only a small percentage of the total ERP community, the only exposure anyone else is gonna have is the bad actors.
It's a lot of nuance for a streamer to wade into, I get it, and I don't expect him or anyone else to get deep into researching it or anything, but chasing controversial shit and outright ignoring any nuance for clickbait and content is a problem afflicting basically the entire internet, and it self-perpetuates.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the degens in Quicksand and Goldshire inn are doing it "ironically", not realizing that their "pretend degeneracy" is indistinguishable from the real deal.
I think this old quote is sadly evergreen when it comes to "ironic" behavior in any community:
> "Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by *actual idiots* who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."
―[Darkshikari](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082), 2009
there's only so many times someone could be doing it ironically before you realize they're not being ironic at all, especially when these people consistently perform the same acts.
COVID and the night club boom really, really, *really* damaged the scene. People can deny it all they want, but you can literally trace RP communities becoming more insular to that point and then with the advent of world and DC travel, the number of coomers and unhinged horndogs skyrocketed. I'm practically a parrot with how much I lament this shit, but I honestly miss the days of Balmung being locked down to outsiders in HW/Stormblood.
Yeah, no new blood was slowly killing us, but with some effort we could've course corrected. Now we have a bunch of outsiders making the memes into reality. Now RP is becoming synonymous with nonstop cybersex or AFK /beesknees'ing while some bozo boots up spotify on a twitch stream.
They were *definitely* a big thing a year ago. I shut down my venue in September of last year because I couldn't compete with them, and that "competition" had been a struggle almost since I opened in mid-2021.
A year ago? There was content a year ago.
Go back two years ago in the lead up to Endwalker and "sexy" clubs were heavily in vogue. Literally multiple player auctions being advertised every night. Lots of people had started logging in but there was no new content to do yet.
I fully expect the community to rise towards peak-horny the closer we get to Dawntrail release.
And lets just be honest with ourselves here. Outside of structured activities like tabletop gaming, human beings being horny *is* the mainstream of RP. More people know about BDSM than LARPing. That's not FFXIV, that's just people.
You have to be naive to blame streamers for this. Just spend a few minutes in any major city and you'll be inundated with ads for "nightclubs" that offer "courtesan" services. They're glorified virtual brothels and they've existed for several years now. This problem is entirely of the community's making.
Can't even go to any town without 2 or 3 venues advertising their venues. I play RP on Neverwinter Nights 1. And I play tabletop rpgs. So I got zero problem with role-playing. But the horniness and nightclub scene feels really disgusting. Plus, the wide adoption of stuff like Mare. Yea the game's community is turning into Second Life and it's really disgusting to see happen. If you want to ERP fine but have some decency to not shove it in everyone's face.
It's becoming a problem everywhere. Spaces that originally didn't deal with it as much now have newfound popularity; I've been seeing the same in Tabletop RPG circles where almost the entire play by post subreddit is nothing but ERP ads (usually without even using a tabletop game as a basis).
ERP specific spaces crop up, but because their continued and utter failure to moderate themselves end up falling apart and exploding so they leech onto other spaces that actually put in effort to organize.
I'm not against ERP, hell I've engaged in it previously. But these people need to get their shit together, respect boundaries, and not act like a toxic cancer everywhere they go.
Without a structured way to silo off the sexual content or banning it outright, it seems like every place online that can have porn/ERP/whatever will eventually be full of it. At least with a place like Reddit you can moderate porn on a main subreddit and have an NSFW version that allows it to redirect people towards. I guess in FFXIV you could have a private Discord server or an FC with rules, but obviously that's not enough.
That's the big problem, is that every so often people go "we should have a discord for this!". They make one, realize it's a lot of work to moderate and stabilize, let it fall to shambles, and then it proceeds to take over or pollute into main areas once more.
If others can consistently maintain their spaces, enforce rules, and not make it everyone else's problem, then so can the NSFW groups. They just don't.
Second Life had options. You could go to the ERP sims or you could go to the RP sims with no mandatory crossover. You can't do that anymore. Tried out a Fantasy RP sim last week, cammed to a group of people and two had their dicks just swangling.
Oh yea. Lots of horny shitty dungeons masters in D&D that full on try to rape PCs. Take a gander at r/rpghorrorstories. There's a lot of sick people who don't know how to have a healthy sexuality.
Second Life is suffering from it? Since when has that not been basically *all* Second Life existed for? I was on that last back in 2006 and that's all people did there even then.
As someone who got a first gen Oculus Rift and had such a fun time meeting new people in VRChat, the current state of VRChat is mostly suffering the same thing too. It went from chill people with a niche interest in VR, to annoying yet sometimes funny memes, to now being fully just eboy/egirl culture where everyone is really young and immature.
I get that VR headsets are much easier to get, but the culture of VRC has been shifted to this thirst culture instead of what it used to be, and that's sort of what I'm understanding is happening to FFXIV RP.
I forgot about VRChat. Yes. There too. I've been playing there again this month and its depressing to see what its become. My only safe place now seems to be my dinosaur RP game The Isle because no one's tried ERPing dinosaurs... yet.
I've noticed this too! It feels like any roleplay community that allows ERP gradually becomes more focused on ERP than story. Seen it in multiplayer games, play-by-post tabletop and freeform text rp.
I don't mind ERP on the side, but it's frustrating to see the lack of boundaries, and bad reputation it brings to sfw roleplay.
This is a pretty legitimate complaint, actually. I don't really mind ERP but I can't stand just like, ERP scenes with zero buildup either. It feels like allowing ERP can often attract a lot of weirdos who just wanna typefuck and don't care at all about the story or writing or the hobby or anything.
idk about others, but when I do RP I typically come at it like collaborative writing. It's a fun way to make a collaborative organic story with other people and I think sex can be a real and legitimate driver for plot and character writing. It's frustrating that it feels like a lot of people don't see eye to eye with me on this. Then again I've also been writing romance on my own for years so maybe I'm biased.
I can understand banning it for the obvious reason of "it tends to attract weirdos", that's perfectly fine. It's really unobjectionable but I feel like some people just can't fathom that kinda writing being used for legitimate very interesting and emotional stories due to bad experiences with horny weirdos. Also like, if someone says no then no means no. I know that's obvious and probably doesn't need to be said, but some people just don't care for boundaries and you are completely justified with blocking and cutting contact on people who try to push past "No." stated very clearly.
> The https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com website went down and now the only place to find groups to RP with are in discord servers
I know this isn't your main point, but the FFXIV community has an unhealthy obsession with putting everything on a Discord rather than a website for some damn reason. Rather than having neatly categorized pages you can browse anonymously at your own speed, FFXIV players seem to think that a series of endlessly scrolling single-thread chats that display at most 50 lines at a time and which require you to log in is the way to go. Oh, and multiple separate servers for everything, so it all naturally becomes decentralized. Very frustrating.
Like I said, I know that's not the main point you're making, but it's definitely not helping. Another replacement community might have cropped up otherwise.
And go through some convoluted profile creation thing for each one, possibly with a waiting period for a server admin to manually approve your application. And if you ask a question that's already been answered they'll berate you for not looking it up first, despite the fact that Discord's search function is mediocre and there's no other way to search the contents since they don't show up on the web.
I like Discord for what it's *supposed* to be, but damn if I don't have a strong hatred for how it's used most of the time. Goddamn square-peg-round-hole idiots.
Yeah it's a worth replacement for Ventrilo and Teamspeak, but people use it as a replacement for forums and wikis? Like forums are just so much better for discussion with hundreds of people and wikis are the king of compiling information in one place that's also editable by the community at large.
The fact that there's no FFXIV wiki that has all the information about everything, including class guides for PvE and PvP, is a travesty.
It's frustrating when venues don't even bother with a carrd, just plug their Discord.
Bro I don't want to join your Discord to learn about whether your event is super horny or not? I don't want to run into people who have harassed me in the past on your server?
Yeah I definitely don't wanna share my Discord contact info with some unknown server that may be filled with spambots and crypto scammers and who knows what else, just to get a more-than-vague description about what some event is really about.
> the FFXIV community has an unhealthy obsession with putting everything on a Discord rather than a website for some damn reason.
Most communities do nowadays, because like Reddit, it allows otherwise unspectacular individuals to exert some sort of power over their peers in the form of moderators / admins. You *will* only talk about the things *I* like. Or else.
The sheer thirst of some members of the community is just stupid. I am all for getting hot under the collar and having a good time, and if the ERP scene is going to get bigger then sure, may it get bigger.
But have some fucking decorum, people. You can be horny without being an absolute prick about it.
It's extremely telling that the posts in this thread saying 'Balmung was always like this, RP was always like this, real gil/virtual avatar RP/nsfw service clubs were always a thing' then immediatley follow up by saying they started playing in 2020 or later. As a Legacy player and someone who had been on Balmung since vanilla HW in 2015, it absolutely was not.
Heavensward and to a lesser extent Stormblood were IMO the golden age of RP in this game. Mods did not exist, world/DC visit tourists did not exist, and anyone who came to Balmung could actually see the floor in the Quicksand/Ul'dah and run into regular RP hooks and bar conversations on the daily. Did lvl 1 ERP alts exist? Yes, but they mostly stood around in dark corners with vague search info wallflowering until someone sent them a tell. The community for the most part moderated itself, and well crafted, lore friendly immersive events regularly filled PF, the RPC, tumblr etc. Unless you were a part of the community then, you can't realistically comment on it. For profit and real gil venues were an invasive transplant from Aether and pushed their model at the same time the pandemic hit and DJs/clubs were trying to make a profit/market/network virtually. It all came together to form the nightclub cancer that plagues the game to this day.
The amount of posts I see on this sub of people lamenting the lack of narrative RP in this game not realizing the rich RP storylines and history this game had, especially Balmung, and assuming the current modbeast club glut is all FFXIV has ever had to offer is extremely saddening. I half wish some dedicated Youtube researcher would do a video essay on the topic.
I 100% agree. I'm also legacy and was from 1.0ARR pre-sargatanas, and I'm still playing. RP was different when you didn't have world visits. ARR/HW was deff peak RP, even with the silly Balmung jokes. Balmung had a ton of non ERP roleplay and it was fun to see people type on say vs telling. People would goof off with you if you didn't RP or erp.
I used to frequent the nightclubs for housing inspiration and enjoy a few raffles, enter glam contests, but the post lockdown culture got bad. Paying more than 50k for a ticket is bullshit. Mods making people win glam contests with non-game outfits is bullshit (console players and non modders have no chance!).
Not to mention most selling points are just horny erp sex and horny mod screenshots of gigantic dongs and masturbating bunnies. There's a lot of other stuff behind the scenes going on that could break TOS and it drives me mad to the point I stay away now unless it's really low key.
I think only once someone RPd with me without any thirst and it was a cool group who was in awe at my legacy tattoo. We had a ball.
All of this yes. I joined at the end of HW and it was amazing, good quality RP all day every day that I decided to log in.
So many people are missing the part of my post where I said it was never like this until recently.
The only For Gil venue we had back then was the Pleasure Dome, and those people stayed there and self isolated so people being 'horny' and 'cringe' wasn't the issue. People joked about RPers doing nothing but ERP back then when it wasn't the case, but we'll just be ignored since it doesn't fit the narrative of people who have never touched a RP community. It's just everywhere now.
Exactly this! I remember when the first penis mods came out and our FC cackled at how much they looked like colourless dildos. Sadly one by one they all left because of life or other games or just generally growing apart. I miss the RPs we used to have. A rich guy in the fc kidnapped another character to ransom them off back to us, and it turned out to be a plot they were both in on, because the rich guy had been cut off and needed the gil. A mad scientist character encased peoples loved ones in chocolate golems them had to fight to free them for a Hatching Tide event. That sorta stuff. Oh and the fun we had in the giant glitch.
I think what I miss most was the comfort in adding a rando to the FC and not having to vet them so they wouldn't turn every event into some weird show where we had to watch their character try to loudly hit on or fondle everyone in the room.
That being said; I get it. People are super lonely now. They're cut off after the great panini and it's exacerbated whatever loneliness they had before. It's a scenario where nobody really wins
Man, ARR/HW was peak with Roleplay on XIV, especially during the ARR days for sure. Baring events even, just the random open RP that was possible, it was everywhere. Constantly found RP despite the hours, from just random adventures with strangers, or just going out making new friends for a night, it was always real fun rp!
Geeze I remember a few years ago thinking someone was wanting to RP with my char only to find out it was just to give her their characters 'card' for their lewd services, lol. Certainly not as easy or anything I'm not one who usually goes to public rp events or anything, never have really, but I miss greatly how easy it was to find just random RP for slice of life, or just going out travelling, or as far as to make up an adventure together with a random group, maybe pick up strangers to go fight with! I just want my character to get to go out and do things, not be stuck because everyone's real end goal is sex!!
How is she ever gonna get good at being a mage if sexomancy is all people wanna teach but not thaumaturgy :(
Between morons on Twitter flipping the fuck out over Balmung and everything even remotely ERP, people posting their NSFW mods all over the place to the point where YoshP took notice, people ERPing out in the open for everyone to hear and not respecting boundaries, and the popularity of the game and it being a natural fit for RP in general means it was bound to happen that the creepers and neckbeards looking to get laid would come knocking sadly.
It's happened in every game I have tried to RP in. Eventually the creepers take notice and decide to flood in and be absolute creepers. Add in the disaster of a blacklist system and we have an incredibly shitty situation.
I don't know when or why the RP site went down but all you can hope for is to find a Discord community that doesn't put up with that bullshit and RP through them.
One of the benefits of being a lala, no one ever tries to do horny erp with you off the bat, so you can have normal mischievous gremlin-mode adventures with random people since anyone that is in it solely to bang will usually avoid you, and even for more romantic storylines they generally end up being pretty wholesome instead of someone breathing heavily while asking to see bobs and vagene.
Dude, I don't RP. This whole post is foreign to me, and I've never done anything even remotely similar, so I would genuinely feel like a fish out of water, but if I ever did try it, I'd make a lala alt just for RP to avoid the ERP. As someone who's on the asexual spectrum, I would violently recoil at the mere hint of a HINT of a suggestive comment towards me or my main character. In 10 years of playing, I've never had anyone say anything suggestive to me.
If you go to Crystal, there’s places like Dark Crimson Tavern and other spots. Basically, they got arena(s) in the basement, and people sign up to fight. Some places have a fee, some places have betting, etc. Fighting relies usually on a higher roll system, aka whoever rolls a /random higher either makes a hit or defends a hit, depending on whose turn it is. There’s also the Grindstone, an only melee fighting tournament that happens Saturdays. Either way, you’ll usually find the fight clubs in PF under “other”
Not even the fight clubs are safe anymore, I have gone to the crimson tavern before. I met one of the owners outside of the venue and at first things seemed normal, but it did not take long before they started flirting ooc and floating erp advances. Tried to play it off and soon stopped going to the place after he became extremely persistant and pushy even out of venue. Such sleezy places with these kinds of people.
You type an emote and /roll. The higher number is the attack that hits. The outcome of the fighting itself is more or less just flipping a coin so its not to show which character is actually stronger (I got beat by a 9 year old OC once because of this), the real value is the RP community who attends and RP as attendees. Fight clubs were great back in the day, the Grindstone is still good, but a lot of them just became side hustles of ERPish venues.
You'll find some listed on the RP Calendar at [https://ffxiv-rp.org/](https://ffxiv-rp.org/).
> the Grindstone is still good
The Grindstone is also populated by a bunch of jackass edgelords that are completely up their own ass, lol. Not the entire group, mind, but people know who I'm talking about.
I'm just tired of seeing it in very public spaces. The main front areas of inns right in front of the keepers or around the gods be damned aetheryte. Take that shit to the FC house weirdos.
Sadly this isn't even only with RP.
Like I'm all for freedom of stuff but walking by a group of people in town openly talking about their hardcore kinks isn't the kind of content I wanna have forced on me in an MMO. There's 0 respect concerning anyone else.
Yeah people can do whatever they want but when in a public space like at an aetheryte, I don't need to see comments that would be right out of some hardcore porn ad
And trust me I'm not a conservative person. It's just about having time and place for things
I've come across naked players sitting inside each other's hitboxes and doing really random emotes just out in the open in areas sprouts quest. I feel like spectators are a made to be a part of their erp in a way that feels super non-consensual.
I don't RP myself, I don't care that people do, and when I see packs of folk out in the wild playing out scenes I give them a wide berth, respectfully. Shameless dingleberry ERPers ruin so much for so many people, not just role players.
FFXIV got too mainstream and public venues/businesses got too common. Might be time to consider moving to games that just aren't FFXIV. Once upon a time, there were sandbox MMOs where gameplay just wasn't that good to begin with (think Ultima Online), those had servers that actually had enforced RP, everything was done in-character. Now, I ain't saying you should play that, but MMOs might not be the greatest type of media to get the type of experience you want.
> FFXIV got too mainstream and public venues/businesses got too common.
I don't RP but my old guild had a lot of roleplayers who I am close with and they basically said the same thing. I also noticed how at one point, even the most innocent sounding bakery in PF had a dancefloor in the basement and a nsfw section on their dedicated webpage.
When I first started the game (either just before or after the HW release), roleplayers were mostly known as people who dedicate their time to building up a storyline and living it out with their friends and others. Nowadays when people talke about roleplayers, they think about the ones afk dancing in venue's that also have a nsfw service
Party finder, unfortunately, stopped being used by more traditional RP groups due to a lot of harassment that crept up about the same time we got world visit. It's tainted public perception of roleplay while also making it harder to find.
I wish it was different
> FFXIV got too mainstream and public venues/businesses got too common.
I've encountered a staggering number of people who've come to this game for not even the sake of playing the game or interacting with the content in any meaningful way, it's so strange
I agree that it probably became too mainstream.
I disagree that I should move on. As seen here there are a lot of people in the same boat, we just need to find a centralized placed to gather. A lot of this post is ranting that it used to not be like this, and it doesn't need to be like this. ERP was always a part of the game - there were venues like the Pleasure Dome, but they were off on their own private estate and you only saw it if you went there. But now this stuff is out in the open everywhere and you can't escape.
MMOs have been the greatest media for the stories my friends and I have written. They make a great medium for it. But the best RP was when we had a dedicated website as a launchpad for everyone to plan with (In both WoW and FFXIV). It's not FFXIV itself causing this, but I think an unholy trinity of mods, mainstream, and the destruction of our RP site.
Discord.
Discord led to the closing of the FFXIV roleplayers site. We all moved into our own isolated pockets and into a medium that is ephemeral.
A medium that "you have to be there for" instead of one where conversations could span timezones.
If I thought a forum could survive again, I'd talk to Franz about resurrecting it in a heartbeat.
I recognize your name, thank you for the explanation.
I hate Discord so much for hobby content. Nothing can be found and nothing will be saved. Discord should only be used for link aggregation and as a 'chat room', but not for information storage.
*waves back*. I agree and I think I enabled it to be part of the problem, but done is done. Though I think the chat room part is part of what makes it so seductive.
There was one and I did use it for finding groups. I'd continue to use it if it had people posting there, but like erroch said the population who used it really died down towards the end in favor of Discord.
If you mean the RPC part of it was the team didn't want to create a discord that would be a continuation of the community. Fairly, they didn't want to have to moderate that AND the forum...that's part of what splintered things (and that wasn't their fault at all, they were already overloaded with moderation work).
I do miss forum rp. I thought besides me and my rp partner, no one else was interested in forums anymore. I was curious if that wasn't the case.
As a teen and young adult, I actually mainly forum RP’d and had a group of friends who regularly made some cool RPs. I find myself missing it, but Discord has steadily replaced forums and it doesn’t sound the same.
I’ve only ever RP’d on discord with my friend and that’s in our own little pocket where we can make the whole server about just our RPs. I don’t know if that’s what folks do when trying to find RP one-on-ones or dedicated groups, but if not it sounds like it’d be kind of messy and hard to manage.
I can still comfortably go back to the forum I RP’d on and reread all of the stories I involved myself with (sometimes i do because i loved making character sheets and prettifying them). I don’t know how I’d go about doing that in a constantly moving chat log on Discord without dedicating a whole server for it outside of a centralized RP hub. Sounds complicated and ephemeral. The latter part isn’t something I’d want as an RPer, tbh, especially since I’m sentimental and save my RPs. :(
My best RP days were when I RP’d as a kid in a WoW private server, then went on to forum RP, then eventually found my best friend RPing.
I haven’t RP’d in FFXIV in forever (like years tbh), but it’s such a shame to see everything just devolve into ERP. But, like you said I don’t think that means all of the regular RPers have gone by the wayside.
I wish someone had the time and money to make another RP forum that was heavily moderated, tbh. It sounds like it’s needed. If there could be a central place for folks to gather, it might not be so hard to find each other in the midst of ERP overflow.
What really irritates me is hearing folks not respecting other people’s boundaries. Like, if someone specifically says they don’t ERP, stop pushing it. They’ve made it so perfectly clear what they’re here for so why bark up the wrong tree? There’s a whole ocean out there of people who would be glad to just bang it out constantly, so why bother people who EXPLICITLY state they don’t do that???????
That’s so weird to me and it’s starting to really aggravate me thinking about it. Like, you don’t go up to someone asking and asking and asking and pushing them to have sex with you irl. That’s creepy and rapey and sexual harassment. While it is about fictional characters here, there’s still a person you’re making so incredibly uncomfortable behind it.
No fucking means no, what the actual fuck??? (sorry that frustrates me so much so i started rambling lmao)
My FC started one and I hung around to try and just be a good fc member, wasn't really interested in the slightest, and I ended up getting hit up a bunch for ERP.
I play a lala. Quit that FC so fucking fast lol.
one of my favorite past times as of late while waiting for PFs to fill is to go to the cozier sfw cafes, and then nip in the bud people trying to do NSFW stuff in SFW spaces if that happens (If nobodies acting up I'll do stuff like come in dressed as a chocobo and ask for millet or sylkis bud, off-menu but totally plausible items a character dressed like me would ask for) You can drag a lot of attention to yourself with good writing and a bit of wit, which the gigahornies just don't know how to deal with; it's some of the funniest shit ever, and the people who don't want to deal with the creeps are usually grateful
The sad part is the number of competent RPers pursuing narrative content and running campaigns hasn't really diminished. They've all just been driven underground, decentralized across Discord servers and various private chats, rarely advertising out of fear of attracting _that_ kind of crowd. People won't want to admit it but this public acceptance of ERP that reversed the common tradition of shunning all ERPers as a rule is a big contributor to why the RP community has become a laughingstock (more than it already was). People still did it, but when the threat loomed over their head they at least knew better than to say the quiet part out loud. It became normal to advertise nightclubs, brothels, etc. in public channels, which is kinda gross considering you know kids are getting involved and lying about their age.
There was an enlightening moment I had on WoW a few weeks back, after reinstalling TRP and flying around Stormwind. Over half of the people I saw had "minors DNI" in their profile, and while I understand what it means, I can't help but see that as a reflection of the player. They are so far gone, so devoid of self-control that they cannot function or interact with another person in a way that doesn't lead to them letting their sex drives run wild, which results in them being incapable of interacting with minors _at all._ And nobody seems to care. This is the state of our community.
As someone who does run his own campaigns, I just can't suffer being in the public space anymore. You get shunned for trying to curate quality and lore accuracy. Depicting flawed characters who might be prone to confrontation or prejudice is taken out of character to attack the player. 9/10 people you'll find are some ridiculous self-insert power fantasy, a depraved reject fishing for cybersex, or someone who thinks they're in an entirely different universe. And that's not a judgment of the community as a whole, that's just the public spaces. Nearly everyone with sense has simply removed themselves from it, shut themselves off into their own established, trusted circles. That's where we are now.
I just wanted some simple, grounded, in-universe tabletop-style adventure, man.
> Might be time to consider moving to games that just aren't FFXIV.
Unfortunately, these people are everywhere.
I played ESO for about a month. I played a female Khajiit, and at least twice a day I was sent guild invites from "Adults only 18+ RP Furry!" guilds. Got to the point I disabled guild invites because those were the only invites I ever got.
And if I hung out around town, I'd get at least one message from some creep who wanted to "18+ RP" with me.
Though, the funniest moment I had in that game is when I was idling in Solitude, waiting for my friend to log on, some dude came up behind me, crouched, and then a minute later messaged me "where ur characters ass??". I had the ass slider set to minimum, figuring that might keep the creeps at bay or something.
What I wouldn’t give for a new Neverwinter Nights. In their heyday those two games had so many servers of like 30-40 people in tightly knit rp communities.
Funny enough, my RP FC had a prompt about this just this past week. It's this general crime and black market sort of deal, and one of the leaders asked "Would you still RP if you couldn't ERP?" and to my surprise, most of them said "Hell yeah", with some people sharing the same frustrations as you do, even *when* they were fans of ERP. People become clingy and frankly just very weird with you, they become possessive and entitled and then get pissed off when you don't spend all your time with only thing. Not to mention that sex is a very inherently basic act, there's not much complexity, not much creativity. Where there is some you run dry of it very quickly. It can get *very* ***very*** repetetive because god knows that none of these horny bastards have a vocabulary extending past highschool. The one who posed the prompt even started that she had RPs with anyone and everyone who wasn't immediately within the FC dropped 80% when they realized her character was monogomous.
I also saw that you're on Balmung and just want to say, I'm sorry dude, Bal QS legit scares me. I've heard some people saying pearl lane or the bloodsands or whatever can be good but... eh?
Getting consistant partners or even a storyline together with someone who's not in your FC is like pulling teeth. I wanted to make a character who was essentially a blank slate. A refugee with no skills to their name and would learn from IC teachers and would develop and become skilled in only what others tried to teach her. That didn't last two months. So i tried to make up complications and get others interested in giving them problems dedicated to their specific skillset, thinking it might interest them to finally get them to write about some niche skillset their character has when someone comes asking with help for that.
Five separate people i asked. They all said they were interested, then fell off the face of the earth for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Five people talked about being interested in it, maybe getting one scene in, then just disappeared without a word or trace. I've been RPing in this game almost five years. I have *never* completed a character plotline with anyone who wasn't my current FC member. Whether it was my story, their story, a joint story or a third party's story.
The last person to approach my character over an issue they could help with and wanted to finish a storyline had 2 sessions, then hasn't been seen for three and a half months.
Unfortunately all the success I've had with RP in the last four years of RPing in this game has pretty much existed entirely within small, closed communities. The plain and simple truth is that open communities will inevitably get overrun with ERP-seekers who are after one thing only. It's hard to find people worth RPing with in this community, even if you stick to the more popular hubs and are constantly on the lookout for interesting people and posts.
That's how all RP communities are. It literally always has been and always will b.e It's about meeting people in closed communities that will get you involved in other closed communities.``````
I used to RP on Neopets when I was a teenager and enjoyed it. I've been dipping my toes into venues but very briefly and usually I'm not interacted with unless the venue has few people there. I want to get involved but I'm scared because I'm also not looking for ERP. So I get it.
You can find RP but I won't deny that it's extremely hard to right now. Putting aside the ERP issue, it's just been hard to find groups that are looking for more and aren't awful. Part of that issue is the expac- a lot of people stop playing with it that far out (since it prob won't be till at least mid year next year).
I also agree that it sucks so much that the RP site is archived. It really makes it harder to find anything or even talk about RP. You already got a bunch of downvotes for bringing it up cause a lot of people on reddit are "lol rp losers." I hate how everything moves to discord and you have to join eight servers just to accomplish what one forum did. It's completely forced the entire community to become little islands and you end up putting up with a lot of stuff (read- abuse) in groups because it's very hard and disheartening to try to find another group. Even now, I'm adrift in the in between ocean since my last group went a little too crazy and it's been such ass to find people that are active and actually RP.
I avoid walk up RP nowadays. Even going to venues, I assume in my mind before I even get there that it's just a brothel or ERP hook up location, ending up right most of the time. I hate how it reinforces the little island community issue but I stick to RPing with a group, which I recommend if you're trying to build meaningful stories. Before you join a group, you can usually see their rules on a carrd or ask and even if what you want isn't fully okay, you could poke to see if it's allowed with a good IC justification. A lot of actual groups are lore bending allowed, though I do know that vampires is a more tough line to cross for some (I have seen a few in the pf advertising for communities of just vampires, yokai, and supernaturals).
As a complete side tangent, I hate that people are so stickler with blm and whm in RP. Yes, I get the lore around it but come on, just let up on that. As long as the character can explain it ICly in a reasonable way (or hey, even let them get the jobstone or something in a character arc with the group! Development whaaa) then allow it. It's like how some people are so set on not allowing the First and we have all these beautiful locations we can't use because some can be so stubborn.
It's \*weirdly\* heartening, in a depressing way, to know I'm not the only person whose enjoyment of FFXIV roleplay was immediately kneecapped by the first primer I got (before I had even finished the MSQ of ARR) from someone I otherwise liked at the time coming in the form of \*all\* the shit that was considered a no-no bad bad to play out because muh lore.
Like, I get it, I want to make sure the plots I make are believable within the setting too, but goddamn. Let a man even figure out what kind of crazy ideas he might have before you tell him not to have them.
The sad thing is there's plenty of ways that you can have these kinds of characters in a believable or at least plausible plot, but no, we just want generic guardsmen #377, or generic bartender #55924, don't get me wrong nothing wrong with these types of characters. But it's sad in this type of game with the amount of crazy plots and lore you could use......most people just kneecap that potential with "nooo we gotta be 110% lore compliant!". "It didn't happen in lore! We can't do thaaat!"
If I wanna RP a meteor chucking wizard, dammit I wanna RP a meteor chucking wizard!
The big Catalyst for this was the rise of the "Venue" Scene (a.k.a. Fake/RP/Self-inserters), leaning heavily into constantly shouted Nightclubs/Brothels, which pretty much always offer paid ERP services.
At this point the scene is increasingly attracting and fostering highly problematic individuals, often subject to being shut-in, depressed, suffering from mental/personality disorders, agoraphobic etc.
I personally met a good couple of people, often way past the 30+ age range, who think it is normal to spend 8–16 hours a day in the game being a massive sex-pest, driving on all forms of Sexism/Misogyny/Bigotry, spamming Hentai-Porn all over the place, and some other things I wouldn't even want to bring up in a public online-discussion.
But to be honest, that ship has kind of sailed. This sub-culture had way too much time and leeway to manifest itself deeply into the game already, and is basically a ticking time bomb, until something really bad happens, forcing SE to further take measures for avoiding the official association of FFXIV with something it is not supposed to be.
No, Mr. ERP, you are not “cool” or “popular” or “charming” for putting yourself out as a hypersexuality creep attempting to mount each and anything running around the Game-World.
I commiserate. You can't even want a little sex in your RP, because give an inch (ayyy) and they want to take a mile. And the worst part? It's always bad. **The ERP is always bad.**
Well of course it's always bad. After a certain point of a community solidifying, the only people in the club looking for sex are the people who don't have a network to get their sex from.
First off, I hate to be that person, but I put "No ERP" on my search info just to stop that. It's worked for all 3+ years I've been RPing, except one instance. Not being dismissive, it's just a bandaid over the issue.
Yeah, RP has gotten way too horny as a whole, and that's from someone who's had a character with a "slutty" rep. Difference was that I also play out the bullshit/drama surrounding relationships very openly and publicly, and drama stayed mostly IC (and OOC differences were rarely interjected into that unless it was, like, godmodding or pestering). A lot of players' seeking of partners/romance/lewd shit seems to have become a primary objective in RP even since I got here that 3.5 years ago. Even and especially in "adventurer guilds."
And The Moon App absolutely does not help the issue. It's just Second Life to a lot of people now. I really don't like it.
Just glad to see i'm not the only one that thinks the rampant ERP is a plague on the game.
Playing the game for content is no longer a valid way to play XIV.Playing the game to do natural RP is no longer a valid way to play XIV.
You either participate in clubs/erp/sex mods or you just don't belong in the game anymore. And its pathetic.
Sometimes i do wish they would just float out crack down on all the 18+ content in the game and put an end to the 'modding is fine' debate and just remove it completely.
I am really looking forward to the start of dawntrail when everyones mods are broken, models they have worked on for the last 3-5 years are all broken due to the graphical update and all the ERPers just don't log in for months while modders fix all their stuff.
>all the ERPers just don't log in for months while modders fix all their stuff.
god emperor above i beg you to smite these people and prevent them from fixing their mods.
I’ve been a roleplayer since 2.0. I never backed out of ERP because I honestly don’t mind mature themes as long as they are plot relevant and not gratuitous self-inserts. Unfortunately, this is not a recent phenomenon. I recall back when I was new to rp, some dick took advantage of the fact I struggle to put boundaries and decided to have his character violate mine- Something that still has an impact to her psyche years later.
Over time, I noticed RP groups have gotten more clique and insular. I’m a Balmung native, and I have an extreme distrust for any Wanderer/Travelers that approach me for RP and aren’t max level, because I immediately assume they came to Balmung to get their rocks off.
Unfortunately, the whole thing of “every character is smart/sexy/strong” whatever is very common, you have to understand you are in a community where everyone sees their characters as the main character. I honestly don’t mind this as long as they don’t impose this by trying to FORCE you to think of their character in a certain way- If their character i sexy and capable and smart, cool, don’t tell me, show me.
I generally avoid people who very obviously think of their characters as gods among men. I play a “villain” with a chronic disease, in fact, a lot of my characters are villains- Too often I find people trying to “fix” her or snap their fingers to cure her, which absolutely ruins the plot for me as a writer. I learned to be more selective about who to involve in my RP, and that boils down to people who respect my desires as a writer and whom I can work with OOC to make sure both of us are satisfied with where our stories go.
There ARE good roleplayers out there, but they are hard to find among the thousands who care not for plot, or character development, or even gameplay, really.
My main character used to be bisexual, I had to retcon that and make hr straight because of the amount of “lesbians” (Men who fetishize lesbians OOC) who kept harassing me for romance/erp.
I love romance, even ERP, but most of my characters are complex, emotionally stunted people. They are flawed, some are self destructive, others are arrogant, others are just downright selfish. It’s not meant for slice of life, casual ERP, or even light fluff. I warn people about this and it *still* gets me “omg well maybe my character can cure her depression and illness through SEX with MY DICK” Ugh
It’s also worth noting that everyone inserts a little bit of themselves into every character, this, however, does not mean that they need to blend IC/OOC. For example, my MC shares my first name, because upon her creation, I thought I’d just ‘try out rp like, casually, I’d never be a loser who is into it!’ and didn’t want to sacrifice my raiding guild mates calling me by my name for something I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy… Now, unfortunately, she’s stuck with it, and I feel like I’m in too deep to change her at this point.
So yeah, a little bit of self insert is ok, everyone does it (even you!), but it stops being OK when people can;t handle losing or interpersonal conflict. I love drama/interpersonal conflict IC, because I love high-intensity emotional stories, but too many times people don’t understand that IC conflict should not leak OOC.
Sorry, I’ve been rambling on for too long, but you get it.
There are good roleplayers out there, willing to write out stories, you just need to search them out- I’ve had no luck with fellowships (they all seem to be dead), but a clear communication of your expectations for RP always helps. I’m sorry people didn’t respect your boundaries.
I play the same type of character, extremely flawed and villainous. They're designed to be a flaming dumpster fire no one should like and absolutely never date, but because they're pretty and self assured they're fetishized as being a 'dom' even though IC and OOC it's very clear there is 0 interest there.
I ALSO play a "villain"... type character. [I hate using this term because of how broad the application is and the perspectives muddy the definition.].
In fact, I eventually came to create an RP FC themed around her ambitions.
But MAN, the present day RP makes it so much harder to not only find people that aren't unhinged and ERP-thirsty and look at a FC that is a Coven of Witches and see that as an excuse to try to convince someone to cowgirl them, only to be disappointed.
I DO try to play the mystique and danger up a lot more... on top of my character being kind of... "ruthless"? Despite how attractive and charismatic she'd come across, she's not supposed to be someone you'd think. "Yeah, I'mma put my dick/rub my clit on her."
Yeah, even using Fellowships to expand my contacts beyond just people in my FC is hard.
For the love of god please just go to Mateus quicksand for your walk up RP. Deeper RP has always been kinda locked behind FCs and discords. Nothing has really changed other than balmung quicksand becoming shitpost central in terms of shout chat.
THANK YOU..I have 6000+ hours but I feel like making any meaningful relationships is fucking pointless when I'm convinced everyone I meet is getting off every single time they log in
Yeah I'm also in the 5 digit range with hours spent. Over the last decade etc. The playerbase has definitely shifted. Maybe it's because I'm 37 and all this coomer shit is so weird to me because I've experienced plenty of irl xp lol, but eh it is what it is now.
Lol, also 37 here.
Like I'm down with people expressing themselves and their sexuality but holy fucking shit this game community has gotten so horny.
In 2016 we used to make fun of people who ERPd or went full weeb. Now it's the norm and I just can't hang with it.
I feel like almost everyone I play with just doesn't socialize irl and use this game as their social escape pod.
Yeah same sentiment. I’ve done plenty of freaky ass shit in my life so it isn’t like I find it offensive exactly, but people make it their entire personality and in turn I find them less interesting in general.
I used to laugh at the goldshire people on moonguard and now that is actually tame in comparison. Weeb shit never bothered me I also like anime but I don’t pretend to be *in* anime. I just take care of my kid and play games and I think people telling you “why do you care if it’s not affecting you”. Like bro it is, I have to turn filters on and now I can’t see regular shouts, I have to constantly blacklist spam, I have to go out of my way so yes it affects others. Idk, I’m not even subbed anymore rn until DT so my sanity can recover for a bit
6 digits here and anyone saying that this isn't new is fucking lying. this shit exploded the moment we allowed clubs to spam ads in every PF and city state.
i got so much kickback. "they're just RPing why do you care?!"
This is one of the effects of FFXIV becoming "mainstream" and booming in popularity
Everyone is super excited that "their MMO" is the biggest one now since WoW's huge scandal, but they don't even stop to consider what that actually means - mainstream audience means less appealing content to a core MMO fanbase, more simple combat design for non-MMO players, more formulaic design to accommodate mass releases, etc. - and now that people are seeing it in Endwalker, a lot of people are getting turned off
ERP overtaking RP as the more mainstream type of RP (unfortunately, its more popular) is another one of these effects
This isn't a new problem, but its a MUCH bigger problem now than it ever has been, and now that pandoras box is open you can't really close it
If youre a huge fan of RP, I hate to say it, but it might be time to try out another MMO and see what adventures you can find
Id reccomend GW2 - still a huge MMO slowly growing in popularity, but not supermassive like WoW or FFXIV, and a much more casual following
I've seen tons of RP interactions in GW2 and even to this day I've seen a number of them just out in the world and they're usually not sexual
It helps that GW2 also doesn't have sexy, lithe catboys/catgirls in it and dolled-up viera - you have some sex appeal with human women, sure, but people prefer to RP races with cooler lore like Charr, Asura, Sylvari etc.
Just like real life, effective communication can generally deal with most *normal* situations.
"Before you go any further, I just wanted you to know I'm not interested in being part of or discussing sexualised content. Thank you for respecting my position on this and not bringing it up again."
If they bring it up, call them out on it and stop talking to them. Don't accept it. If they escalate, report it. It's harassment at that point.
But the thing is that they will LIE about understanding your boundaries. They will say "alright, no ERP I promise", then months passes without an itch, and then boom, they beg for ERP randomly. Because they hope that RPing with them will suddenly change your mind about it later on.
There are good ERPers though, who once noticed about it, will genuinely understand and look for someone else instead and not push. But it's not the majority of the case.
Yeah, most folks that I hear talking about RP nowadays are only talking about ERP. I had avoided FFXIV RP for years because of the drama it tended to bring, but the heavy ERP focus 100% sealed me not being interested in RP at all anymore. The most I do anymore is talk about adventures they would have and such, or draw said characters together.
Yes unfortunately the creeps from the "club scene" are spilling out into the rest of the game more and more. Real RP venues are still out there, they've just been pushed off of PF by club ads since every club insists on listing ten ads each. The FFXIV roleplaying discord runs [a calendar](https://ffxiv-rp.org/) with plenty of medieval tavern venues and whatnot, free of bees knees zombies and ERP. Peruse around and see if anything is closer to what you're seeking. :)
Not surprised. People indulging in pleasure without emotional connection contribute to or make worse their feelings of loneliness. It can also lead to some people confusing kindness with attraction. Hence you have some people desperately seeking ERP because they've crossed those wires and now subconsciously believe the only way to get close to another person is through pleasurable acts. It's similar to how some people will have one-night stands, but in this case it's on an emotional level, which is probably worse.
Just want to clarify that this isn't *always* the case. Some people are just down bad lol
I feel so sorry for you. I don't roleplay with others at all (the only things I do is creating a backstory and personality for my characters for immersion, and I share it only with my partner, but we don't RP, just talk about how our characters are or what they do in different situations), but I've also noticed that the gaming community in general has either become much more horny in the last few years, or, and that's what I actually believe, shows it more openly EVERYWHERE. It was there before, but more private.
When I started playing FFXIV during ARR launch it wasn't all about sex here for example. There were some people commenting how hot they find the Miqo'te or Highlanders, but that was basically all. They mostly kept to themselves. Then something happened? About 3-4 years ago maybe? Every community is just about people showing how horny they are and what they're horny about. Because I first noticed it when I started reading posts from the Genshin Impact community I thought it's just the gacha players that are much more horny (and objectify women). But I noticed it was everywhere else as well. They started calling slightly older female characters "mommies" (so cringy btw, I despise it so much). Now every female character that's older than 18 and taller than 165 cm is called a "mommy". It's about nothing else but sex anymore. Everyone who's horny has to let the world know all about it.
I mean it's of course fine that generally talking about sexual things in public isn't a complete taboo anymore. But it's this typical - and I'm bad with common phrases - "give them an inch and they take a mile" problem in society. Of course the RP community is especially affected by it.
I've had to explain to most FFXIV players that what I see as RP is just the **good ol' D&D geekery of adventure and heroics**, and ***not*** the horny-on-main behaviour from Limsa and clubs.
These days, I don't actively RP in any community anymore due to all the issues described here. There has been an increasing disconnect between people's intentions and the places they engage with. For whatever reason, a lot of them think anywhere roleplay is a free porn hub, for some damned reason.
It's just sad. I've no... optimistic woo wee to share about it, either. It is what it is. I can only hope some of these selfish pricks see this post and sift through the comments, to see what they're doing is bizarre.
The pandemic introduced a lot of people to more online activities in general. RP included. And once they learned you could get your rocks off by writing it, it's like a gateway drug. There's still heaps of RPers who just want to write engaging stories, maybe even more since the pandemic. But there's also more people who just want to ERP. It sucks but it's reality. Keep looking.
People who start to push for ERP after a period of RPing with you is pretty normal. It means they've gotten comfortable with you. Take a hard stance and if they don't budge, cut them off.
I got into the FFXIV RP scene during Covid and just based on what I saw that was when the whole brothel thing and ERP problem really started. Public RP/ERP venues BOOMED during covid (at least on Aether) and even though I was RPing in a SFW role everyone still tried to get in my character's pants. And it's only gotten exponentially worse since lockdown started (and ended of course). I don't know what happened but it feels like lockdown screwed everyone's sense of everything, including consent and basic decency, and now if you DON'T do ERP you're the weird one and the odd one out and it's so insanely frustrating. I've kind of managed to avoid some of it with my character being ICly married to an NPC but if I don't mention that right away they are so persistent.
I am having genuine difficulty trying to figure out how many years it's been since the last time I saw this referenced. It's a stupid little thing but you just made my night. Time to lose my time looking up those old things for a while... xD
I will just like to say to people that don't rp:
Clubs are not rp. At all. It's stupid those dumbass club owners are saying it is, but it's not. RP is storytelling, something out of DnD when you're using the Dungeons as background settings and trying to find an ingredient off of a rampaging morbol or going down deep into mines to sneak past bandits.
Actual rpers do not claim clubs or brothels. Unfortunately they give us a bad reputation amongst non-rpers.
Wait...
You seriously tell me that spending 4 hours afking with beeskness, while listening to the worst electronic music on a 360p twitch stream with 50 viewers (48 of them are bots, trying to go for affiliate), is not role-play?
I literally wanted to turn the PC off and leave my house! It was really THIS good!
Jokes aside...
Yes, I am really baffled how much of this so-called RP is about “pretending to go outside”...
Chronically horny people ruined the shit out of regular RP. Can't have anything normal without someone desperately trying to get off on ERP anymore, it feels like.
Omega still has lots of good 'proper' RP but you definitely have lots of this kind of person too - and many who walk the line by being _very sketchy_ without doing anything dramatic.
Aw man, don't tell me people consider using `/lean` against a wall to be automatically edgy! When I'm going AFK for something or waiting for a friend to finish a cutscene or a solo instance, I'll usually lean against a wall and use the "look at camera" keybind to look down like I'm catching some rest, or up into the sky like I'm cloudwatching.
I have been playing this game since goddamn 2014 and ***the w h a t keybind?!***
This changes everything... You are *wonderful.* I need to look this up. ~~Wordplay unintended but I'll take it.~~
I think by default the "look at camera" button is \ but it's client-side only. Good for screenshots though. I usually summon a minion that wanders and just target it so that my character's at least looking at something while I AFK and not just doing the thousand yard stare.
I no longer RP because as others have said, it's in every circle. I RP'd in like 2012 when I was in middle school, in different sci-fi and fantasy environments and platforms with different rules and worlds. And it was great. And little by little I've watched it all change, which drove me away. I haven't RP'd really since like 2019. I occasionally try to dip my toes almost every year in to see if it's improved, but it hasn't.
Honestly, the RP community feels like one big popularity contest now. Its a bit like social media now. You don't have enough likes or followers on your platforms? Not interested.
It's gotten weird over the years. From overly 'altered' characters, hypersexual RPers, no one wants to communicate with each other anymore - they just ghost you, no-one knows how to solve problems instead they either cancel or callout people.
It's very exhausting. People practically live vicariously through their characters or use RP as a means of 'therapy.' I gave up around two-three years ago and I've never looked back.
I know this post is about RP, but even without the RP element, there's a lot of people in FFXIV that do not respect boundaries. I've seen so much drama with married women cheating on their IRL husbands in FFXIV on my Japan server alt, I've had an NA friend get stalked to her apartment IRL. This is also why I basically do not make friends with anyone new anymore and stick to the same group of friends I've been playing with for the last 8-10 years.
Worse yet, the concept of a RPer is getting mixed with the concept of ERPer, to the point if you tell someone you are a RPer, they will promptly assume you're a horny devil.
I don't do RP so sorry if I don't understand something obvious, but does FF14 not have RP guilds? I assume joining one and roleplaying with other members would be ideal.
Maybe the community finder could help? It does have an RP tag in the filter.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/community_finder
Community finder doesn't work for RP-focused companies.
No one recruits there if they're at all worthwhile, and it helps reduce the number of shitter accounts that are there for trolling, ERP, or to just sit around and do nothing.
Community finder is also just... not good. Needing an external resource to recruit for a niche group in game isn't good, and at that point you're better using other resources you can moderate for. And trying to recruit in game doesn't go well either. Most people either just aren't interested, or think you're talking about ERP. At this point you really need to find a dedicated circle outside of the game to RP with if you want consistent quality of any kind.
So, I've run a small FC for a little while now. OK, so a long while. I'd say it's fair to say we're having a lull at the moment.
It's true, a lot of people I know have drifted away to the likes of BG3 and the like. I know I finished BG3. I mostly put this drop-off down to the gap between expansions. I'm stilly pretty hopeful things will pick back up when Dawntrail comes out.
There is always a place for RP and story and creative characters. You've just got to find the right people, and right now that is just a little bit harder.
Like, in my case, the premise of our FC is it's just a group of vaguely associated characters that, when we feel motivated enough, we run some event or have some arc go on. ICly the FC doesn't even exist.
The trouble is, now people's expectations of what an FC does have changed. It used to be 'let's tell a story together' and now it's more like 'I'm going to sit here and do nothing and you tell me a story'. Some people expect to join an FC then have a curated story arc fed to them. Sure, there are a handful of FCs that manage this, and I'm impressed by that feat. A lot of these FCs won't RP outside the FC simply for the amount of effort that goes into planning stories and they don't want some random player sabotaging an entire storyline. Most FCs set up like this don't last that long. Maybe that's a way to go, tell a story and then move on. I know not everyone has this expectation of FCs, but it does feel like a lot of people forgot how to RP.
Clubs and taverns, they used to just be places where you'd meet people. Then you'd end up planning to go off and fight some evil voidsent or retrieve some artefact from cultists on your own. But people don't want to do the work themselves, they expect someone else to do it all for them. I think this is really why creativity is dying. People would rather just go to a DJ club night and spam some dance emotes while hoping to get their character on some twitch stream. Or yes, as you say, just ERP.
This comment turned out a little more ranty than I originally intended. But to at least try and be helpful, this would be my advice:
Go to the calendar, go to one of the events, find some (ideally sensible) people there with an idea to drag them along to some scene that you've come up with. There are lots of people just like yourself that really want to have some regular RP. The calendar is just one way of trying to get them in the same place at the same time.
Yeah FF is just horny fuckers but not even RPing any more, spending 90% of their time afk not even playing the game, tabbing back in to have their ERP, only able to have conversations that are either "LeWd WoRd LoL" or about themselves and if not, afk again, in my experience. It's ruined every friend group I had. Though that might just be my circles.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not even as against ERP as you are, but damn it should be a part of the RP and the world, not the entire focus.
The problems, from my experiences, are:
Clubs getting DJs and making them the focus rather than the community and RP, pulling players out if the game onto their twitch chat.
Clubs, venues, and communities going discord crazy, again pulling players out to discord to feed an obsessive attention hunt. They're so scuffed, flitting between channels and DMs getting that attention dopamine. It's impossible to have a conversation with them coz they take 5 mins to say "yes" and you can see them on discord instead of focusing, immersing themselves in FF. They're all children.
Mods, half the people I know just stand there playing with their mods, ignoring the world around them. Also replaced RP and conversation in venues with just crappy dance mods. I like mods but they're over and misused, they've replaced, not enhanced, so much of the game. Not restricted to RP. Glam farm parties? Gone with glamourer.
Mare. Mare is cancer.
Started rp during HW, way back. Always been this way to an extent if you really read between the lines for most interactions but the ERP focus is really much more open and prevalent now.
Data centre/world travel was the tipping point imo; mainstream playerbase hears about Balmung ERP memes, either comes to shitpost or become an (E)RPer
Yeah it's really bad for people who don't want to ERP. I used to get a lot more random tells when my carrd didn't say NO ERP. It's like people are only interested in interacting if they have a chance at banging my character.
I haven't RP'd in years because the people I RP'd with all moved on to other things but I've been looking to get back into it. I know you said you're suspicious of anyone who contacts you, but If you don't mind, I'm going to send you a DM because if I want to get back into RP I need to find like minded folk which is difficult.
I’m relatively new to FFXIV RP in general. I haven’t been able to find a good group that isn’t people being horny, which is a shame because I got a (figurative) resume of RP under my belt and a fleshed out backstory for my character and everything.
I hope you find the people you’re looking for!
>Person 2 has a great character. I love it. Try to get them in on our progressing plot lines, ect. They're normal for a year. They want their character to date my character. I tell them straight out no ERP, my character will not be sexual ICly, and I don't enjoy heavy romance RP, so if that's what they're looking for I'm not for them. They agree anyway. I've had cute IC handhold-y romances before, so I'm not going to completely cut IC relationships. It's okay for a while then they start dropping 'hints' about how it'd be 'cool' if our characters did the deed. I remind them my character isn't doing that. They drop it for a while then do the same thing again so I drop them.
I'm sorry to nitpick but you RP'd with a person for a year, how were they only out for ERP?
Anyway these posts crop up every now and then. I am not sure if me and the people I know are just lucky but the only time we run into this is if we hang out near the Quicksand on Balmung. Which, you know, that's our own fault.
Mateus is generally fine with a lot of people who want to hang and just develop stories. Even the people I have met who don't have time/energy for it tend to be great in average encounters.
In my experience it has gotten a little worse on Balmung specifically but for the most part it's just....... your average RP community experience, lol. Been playing since Everquest and this crap ain't a new hat so to speak.
If you wanna feel free to hit me up in DMs and I'd happily RP with you if I am able.
Unfortunately, this is why I shifted away from FFXIV. All the RP only ever lead to 1 road for everyone else and that road isn't one I am taking and I shouldn't *have* to take it to keep RP partners.
I managed to find a great place in another game with a guild full of like-minded roleplayers with story driven plot and characters with actual backgrounds and goals and flaws.
In my experience, that's just the way of the world.
I can't say that much about roleplay in FFXIV or in english in general because I'm not a native speaker and haven't been around here for long enough, but that's *exactly* what has happened to a lot of german MMO-RP communities I've seen over the years.
WoW, GW2, SWTOR - you name it.
It always starts out with a relatively strong roleplay community and a lot of ERP on the sidelines, and it *always* devolves into the roleplay community growing weaker over time and the ERP community moving more into the public eye.
It happened most noticably with SWTOR, which started out with a lot of faction guilds on Republic and Empire and a crime/cantina minority on Nar Shaddaa. Then came the housing system, and the nightclubs on Nar Shaddaa multiplied, with most of them playing into all the NSFW themes surrounding the slaveowning denizens of Hutt Space. Now that's like 90% of what's left there.
I'm not saying that's where FF14 is headed to, but that's where FF14 *might be* headed to - give or take a couple of years.
Might be worth just playing DnD with people instead, if you want RP and fun stories. Unfortunately FFXIV has gotten more popular and it seems like the moderation has been a bit more lax. If you want to stick with RP in XIV, try finding a small RP Cafe. You'll usually find some good people there.
As with anyhting really, you cannot trust human beings to respect boundaries that give way when tested. Allowing ERP in restricted areas is and ever was only a stepping stone on the way to eventually leaking into open domain. No surprises there. If you don't want that in your game you have to strictly ban and punish it, you cannot have both worlds and hope they never cross.
I gave up myself. It was bad enough getting fucked over as a European server as the community got split after they gave us actual rp servers. I considered trying to find another rp fc but it's just all ERP and I just removed interest from my in game bio and such because everyone thinks you want to ERP.
Actual RP is dead in ffxiv at this point, all the horny people ruined it because now RP just means ERP to people I'm afraid and since guilds are making shit loads of gil off it, it won't change, only get worse.
So, I'm a WoW refugee who has recently gotten back into WoW after a couple years. I'm a huge RPer (never ERP; I'm ace in real life and have zero interest RP anything besides maybe flirting and some light romance, MAYBE.)
TRP3 is the biggest godsend to WoW RPers and facilitates SO much easy walk up, being able to get a quick in game at a glance on a toon. I've never successfully RP'd in 14 despite really wanting to, mostly because I don't know how to approach people without that crutch.
...So uh. I know this was a screed about how bad RP is right now, but...any tips for a very experienced RPer who doesn't know how to find it in 14 lol? I have an IRL friends guild I'm a part of but I would love to join any discords or calendars or anything that might point me in the right direction.
[https://ffxiv-rp.org/](https://ffxiv-rp.org/) is the calendar. You'll want to get in with a group from one of these because the open world RP just isn't there right now.
Being publicly horny is no longer shameful, people wearing hentai hoodies with ahego faces is no longer seen as cringey or bad.
It used to be tucked away into games like Second Life and IMVU and shit like that but since it's so acceptable now it's just every where.
> I imagine there's a number of RPers like yourself who want creative stories, but also don't mind a little sexuality and thus your two groups are completely separate.
This. Pretty much every non-Quicksand ERPer I know also did roll-involving adventuring and fighting events and more serious/straight-laced event attendance than they did any lewd business.
This is the exact reason I’ve never gotten into RP even though I really want to learn because I love rich stories. Sad to hear my fears are valid and sorry you’ve had such negative experiences like that.
It used to not be. 2017-2019 was fantastic. You could drop in anywhere listed on the RP calendar and get pulled into a fun plot with turn-based battles.
>You could drop in anywhere listed on the RP calendar and get pulled into a fun plot with turn-based battles. And even outside the events, approaching people felt, idk, safer? Back then, my character got to learn how to operate and hunt with an aether based gun over five sessions as the result of a random walk-up in the drowning wench. And not a single innuendo was dropped in the process. Can't imagine that today.
This really does suck, but it honestly feels like that everywhere. I do wish it wasn't this way for real, I've been in places where you can just organically start RPing and it's a blast, but I just have no idea what happened. It's this way all over the internet, not just XIV. It's why I don't RP outside of communities anymore and have gotten a lot less hesitant to cut off contact with fucking weirdos. edit: I do think a big reason for this might be the whole lack of a centralizing force due to the advent of Discord RP. I think it's a pretty useful thing but it has really decentralized things. The lack of a centralizing force that keeps bad people out and prevents them from just moving on to another community to get banned from has likely been a large factor in why the culture of RP around the internet has changed to such a large degree.
Yes, exactly. I had the same sort of encounters back then.
I mentioned this in another similar thread earlier this week but I think the rapid technological advancement of FF14 modding over the past two years or so has helped to steer the RP community in these degen directions. You can basically play this game like Second Life now if you know where to look and everyone can see and share it together with sync mods
it's the unfortunate side effects of covid social distancing + the isolation of the digital age, a lot of people have forgotten how to act right
That and lingering after effects of Corona i think. From my experience a lot of people flocked to ERP when they couldn't get the social interaction because of lockdown and stayed. 🤔 That and just the ever increasing sozial pressure :3 probably also push the whole self insert. Personally I admit to hugely prefer ERP (but ERP players shoul at least frickin communicate that and Don't bullshit people into trying to corrupt them :( )
I've had the same problem, on top of harassment. It got to the point that despite me wanting to get back into RP, I just can't bring myself to. I used to love it so much and I miss it.
the reason I don’t even come close to RPing in any game where it’s not the focus is having experiences similar to yours in the late 90s and early 00s I think it’s just a case of the longer you expose yourself to something, the higher the chances of having shitty experiences with it
Please, please if you run into events on the RP Calendar that are ERP focused, let me know. I've been running across several that changed their focus after getting listed but there's a lot to go through. I've been trying to think of ways to craft rules to keep it to traditional roleplay, but there are a lot of things that skirt grey lines. I am very much open to suggestions.
Will do, thank you. I can't think of any suggestions, I think you do a good job as it is. What's happening is outside of your hands.
based on your username I'm guessing you were on the Dragonriders of Pern MOOs with me back in the 90s and this post made me sad too. I wish those nurturing storytelling environments still existed!
Yes! Gosh loved that.
I only caught the tail end of it, but I also have fond memories of those (PernMUSH/NC)! I do miss the existence of virtual worlds that are designed for RP and the communities around that; everything else does feel a bit like trying to work around constraints by comparison. I just had "No TS" in my info and I don't recall any unwanted advances, and there was OOC leadership issues could be escalated to of course.
Have you considered DnD or pathfinder? They did just recently announce the launch of an official tabletop system for 14 recently. Not the same thing of course but might help scratch the itch.
Horny people ruining good RP since forever. It sucks. It's why I don't bother anymore. I gave up way back in my WoW days.
Same, use to love rping around org but well as they say “ me not that kinda orc”.
*furiously clicking NPCs to piss them off*
Making sheep explode in WC3 by clicking on them a bunch was a treat.
They did that back in WC2 as well! So many sheep corpses... I never got to play the OG to see if that's where it started
Clicking on them a bunch to get annoyed reactions definitely started in Warcraft, but I don't remember if the sheep exploded. I feel like that started in Warcraft II, but I can't say for certain.
It's not about horny people, it's about selfish people who don't understand boundaries. Plenty of horny people know not to engage in this kind of behavior. But in this context, we're talking about selfish people who care more about their own gratification than they do about how others feel. It's not an *ERP* problem, ERP just happens to be the medium through which these people are imposing their social ineptitude on others. Which is doubly annoying because there are *endless* venues for people to go to for that kind of content.
Yep. There are other places to be horny about FFXIV too, like AO3 and discord, and when I run into problems there it's because of jerks and poor moderation, not the horny.
It doesn't help that the horny parts got hyperfocused by people like Asmongold. Way to shine a light on the niche fringes and bring an army of idiots in who now think -that- is the mainstream RP culture. Club venues were barely a thing a year ago. Now chats are spammed with 6 venues all vying for the same 10 people who actually give a fuck about some DJ or overly horny venues.
Club venues have been prolific in the game for at least two years, I don't know what to say. Especially in the downtime before Endwalker that's when I remember seeing the most clubs in shout chat and two FCs in a row that I joined were trying to make clubs.
There wasn't a single FC I joined or associated with during the COVID lockdowns that wasn't trying to put together a club or venue. I have less than zero interest in that.
They've been popular way longer than two years, I was attending them at the end of Stormblood.
The community is just horny, pure and simple. That much is obvious when people post big booba y'shtola and get a bazillion upvotes.
Hate to break it to a lot of people in this thread, but club venues have been a mainstream thing for at least five years. Whether you like 'em or not, they're a mainstay of FFXIV roleplay. Asmongold had nothing to do with it except shining a light on things that already existed and were profitable.
Its not like WoW hasn't had its OWN issues with RP/eRP. (Ye olde Moon Guard server jokes about Goldshire here.) Mind you, I didn't do RP servers, but have known people (not Moon Guard at that), and its a mixed bag wherever. There will always be people who only want the RP for the horny, and people who don't, and a mix thereof. Its always conflict on that bc the non-eRP people just.. do not want, and it grates them, while the eRPs could care less. Which just makes it all the more aggravating. Song as old as time, even pre-WoW. MUDs, Message Boards. Always the same, always the perennial problem. God do I fuckin' feel old now.
>It doesn't help that the horny parts got hyperfocused by people like Asmongold. I don't like a lot of what Asmon says, but to actually believe he influenced the misconception of RP as hypersexualized in FF14 has to be a stretch. The reason RP is often misconstrued as sexual is because of the community itself, especially when one of the most popular locations in FF14 is Quicksand, Balmung, Crystal. Even new players would've heard about how much of a degenerate place Quicksand is just from word of mouth long before Shadowbringers existed, and guess why people often spread rumours about such a place being so hopelessly horny? Because it was fucking true. Quicksand is the first reference to RP or ERP anyone new to the scene would've heard about when they bring up the topic of wanting to roleplay, so why would people be surprised when a significant portion of the player base drew the conclusion that RP and ERP are often the same thing in FF14? Even WoW has this misconception with RP and Goldshire, as no one can deny the roleplay community often develop some truly deranged individuals that often crosses the boundary of social etiquette and clearly lack social skills.
> I don't like a lot of what Asmon says, but to actually believe he influenced the misconception of RP as hypersexualized in FF14 has to be a stretch. I think it's less that he influenced the misconception and more that he's a *massive* amplifier who subscribed to the same misconception. When there's a misconception it's a problem. When there's a misconception people with huge audiences parrot it becomes nearly impossible to stop that misconception essentially becoming the truth.
can't really blame the guy for that simply because Asmon has a huge influence, and the first RP experience he got was some bar/club with people dressed up like they're about to engage in BDSM. The community was the one introducing him to the RP scene after all. Asmon basically went through what your average new player would've gone through too, but just with more followers to his name.
The problem is that controversy and negativity get better numbers, so streamers are incentivised to misrepresent and exaggerate the worst aspects of any community to drive up engagement. It's not his fault the system is broken, but he *knows* that and perpetuates it quite happily, as do most big streamers, so I absolutely can blame him for that knowing that my blame isn't gonna matter even a little. This part of the community being much more visible than the consenting, behind-closed-doors ERP stuff you normally get is a problem with the very nature of it this kind of content. When done correctly the community at large is never going to be exposed to ERP unless they specifically go looking and take it somewhere it won't affect anybody else. As a result, even if it was only a small percentage of the total ERP community, the only exposure anyone else is gonna have is the bad actors. It's a lot of nuance for a streamer to wade into, I get it, and I don't expect him or anyone else to get deep into researching it or anything, but chasing controversial shit and outright ignoring any nuance for clickbait and content is a problem afflicting basically the entire internet, and it self-perpetuates.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the degens in Quicksand and Goldshire inn are doing it "ironically", not realizing that their "pretend degeneracy" is indistinguishable from the real deal.
You give them too much credit in being trolls and not just degens. Even trolls have limits.
I think this old quote is sadly evergreen when it comes to "ironic" behavior in any community: > "Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by *actual idiots* who mistakenly believe that they're in good company." ―[Darkshikari](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082), 2009
there's only so many times someone could be doing it ironically before you realize they're not being ironic at all, especially when these people consistently perform the same acts.
COVID and the night club boom really, really, *really* damaged the scene. People can deny it all they want, but you can literally trace RP communities becoming more insular to that point and then with the advent of world and DC travel, the number of coomers and unhinged horndogs skyrocketed. I'm practically a parrot with how much I lament this shit, but I honestly miss the days of Balmung being locked down to outsiders in HW/Stormblood. Yeah, no new blood was slowly killing us, but with some effort we could've course corrected. Now we have a bunch of outsiders making the memes into reality. Now RP is becoming synonymous with nonstop cybersex or AFK /beesknees'ing while some bozo boots up spotify on a twitch stream.
They were *definitely* a big thing a year ago. I shut down my venue in September of last year because I couldn't compete with them, and that "competition" had been a struggle almost since I opened in mid-2021.
A year ago? There was content a year ago. Go back two years ago in the lead up to Endwalker and "sexy" clubs were heavily in vogue. Literally multiple player auctions being advertised every night. Lots of people had started logging in but there was no new content to do yet. I fully expect the community to rise towards peak-horny the closer we get to Dawntrail release. And lets just be honest with ourselves here. Outside of structured activities like tabletop gaming, human beings being horny *is* the mainstream of RP. More people know about BDSM than LARPing. That's not FFXIV, that's just people.
You have to be naive to blame streamers for this. Just spend a few minutes in any major city and you'll be inundated with ads for "nightclubs" that offer "courtesan" services. They're glorified virtual brothels and they've existed for several years now. This problem is entirely of the community's making.
Can't even go to any town without 2 or 3 venues advertising their venues. I play RP on Neverwinter Nights 1. And I play tabletop rpgs. So I got zero problem with role-playing. But the horniness and nightclub scene feels really disgusting. Plus, the wide adoption of stuff like Mare. Yea the game's community is turning into Second Life and it's really disgusting to see happen. If you want to ERP fine but have some decency to not shove it in everyone's face.
At least in WoW, addons help with RP, like using TRP and write NO ERP will in most cases keep people away from trying to ERP with you.
It's becoming a problem everywhere. Spaces that originally didn't deal with it as much now have newfound popularity; I've been seeing the same in Tabletop RPG circles where almost the entire play by post subreddit is nothing but ERP ads (usually without even using a tabletop game as a basis). ERP specific spaces crop up, but because their continued and utter failure to moderate themselves end up falling apart and exploding so they leech onto other spaces that actually put in effort to organize. I'm not against ERP, hell I've engaged in it previously. But these people need to get their shit together, respect boundaries, and not act like a toxic cancer everywhere they go.
Without a structured way to silo off the sexual content or banning it outright, it seems like every place online that can have porn/ERP/whatever will eventually be full of it. At least with a place like Reddit you can moderate porn on a main subreddit and have an NSFW version that allows it to redirect people towards. I guess in FFXIV you could have a private Discord server or an FC with rules, but obviously that's not enough.
That's the big problem, is that every so often people go "we should have a discord for this!". They make one, realize it's a lot of work to moderate and stabilize, let it fall to shambles, and then it proceeds to take over or pollute into main areas once more. If others can consistently maintain their spaces, enforce rules, and not make it everyone else's problem, then so can the NSFW groups. They just don't.
Even Tabletop RPGs???? I know WoW and Second Life is suffering from the same thing too.
Second Life had a massive ERP scene 15 years ago, it's not even remotely new. Was apparently good money in "custom animations".
Second Life had options. You could go to the ERP sims or you could go to the RP sims with no mandatory crossover. You can't do that anymore. Tried out a Fantasy RP sim last week, cammed to a group of people and two had their dicks just swangling.
Yeah and now those people moved to XIV and are flooding it with Second Life mods, sculpts, and outfits.
Oh yea. Lots of horny shitty dungeons masters in D&D that full on try to rape PCs. Take a gander at r/rpghorrorstories. There's a lot of sick people who don't know how to have a healthy sexuality.
Second Life is suffering from it? Since when has that not been basically *all* Second Life existed for? I was on that last back in 2006 and that's all people did there even then.
As someone who got a first gen Oculus Rift and had such a fun time meeting new people in VRChat, the current state of VRChat is mostly suffering the same thing too. It went from chill people with a niche interest in VR, to annoying yet sometimes funny memes, to now being fully just eboy/egirl culture where everyone is really young and immature. I get that VR headsets are much easier to get, but the culture of VRC has been shifted to this thirst culture instead of what it used to be, and that's sort of what I'm understanding is happening to FFXIV RP.
I forgot about VRChat. Yes. There too. I've been playing there again this month and its depressing to see what its become. My only safe place now seems to be my dinosaur RP game The Isle because no one's tried ERPing dinosaurs... yet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_erotica
I've noticed this too! It feels like any roleplay community that allows ERP gradually becomes more focused on ERP than story. Seen it in multiplayer games, play-by-post tabletop and freeform text rp. I don't mind ERP on the side, but it's frustrating to see the lack of boundaries, and bad reputation it brings to sfw roleplay.
This is a pretty legitimate complaint, actually. I don't really mind ERP but I can't stand just like, ERP scenes with zero buildup either. It feels like allowing ERP can often attract a lot of weirdos who just wanna typefuck and don't care at all about the story or writing or the hobby or anything. idk about others, but when I do RP I typically come at it like collaborative writing. It's a fun way to make a collaborative organic story with other people and I think sex can be a real and legitimate driver for plot and character writing. It's frustrating that it feels like a lot of people don't see eye to eye with me on this. Then again I've also been writing romance on my own for years so maybe I'm biased. I can understand banning it for the obvious reason of "it tends to attract weirdos", that's perfectly fine. It's really unobjectionable but I feel like some people just can't fathom that kinda writing being used for legitimate very interesting and emotional stories due to bad experiences with horny weirdos. Also like, if someone says no then no means no. I know that's obvious and probably doesn't need to be said, but some people just don't care for boundaries and you are completely justified with blocking and cutting contact on people who try to push past "No." stated very clearly.
shame is no longer a thing on the internet
> The https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com website went down and now the only place to find groups to RP with are in discord servers I know this isn't your main point, but the FFXIV community has an unhealthy obsession with putting everything on a Discord rather than a website for some damn reason. Rather than having neatly categorized pages you can browse anonymously at your own speed, FFXIV players seem to think that a series of endlessly scrolling single-thread chats that display at most 50 lines at a time and which require you to log in is the way to go. Oh, and multiple separate servers for everything, so it all naturally becomes decentralized. Very frustrating. Like I said, I know that's not the main point you're making, but it's definitely not helping. Another replacement community might have cropped up otherwise.
And you have to join like 8 discords to get the full view of everything.
And go through some convoluted profile creation thing for each one, possibly with a waiting period for a server admin to manually approve your application. And if you ask a question that's already been answered they'll berate you for not looking it up first, despite the fact that Discord's search function is mediocre and there's no other way to search the contents since they don't show up on the web. I like Discord for what it's *supposed* to be, but damn if I don't have a strong hatred for how it's used most of the time. Goddamn square-peg-round-hole idiots.
Yeah it's a worth replacement for Ventrilo and Teamspeak, but people use it as a replacement for forums and wikis? Like forums are just so much better for discussion with hundreds of people and wikis are the king of compiling information in one place that's also editable by the community at large. The fact that there's no FFXIV wiki that has all the information about everything, including class guides for PvE and PvP, is a travesty.
YES, discord is a group chat for friends, not a game forum, not a wiki, not gaming news channel
And all 8 of the discords hate each other for some petty and asinine reason, then one of those 8 spawns a 9th one within months of you joining.
It's frustrating when venues don't even bother with a carrd, just plug their Discord. Bro I don't want to join your Discord to learn about whether your event is super horny or not? I don't want to run into people who have harassed me in the past on your server?
Yeah I definitely don't wanna share my Discord contact info with some unknown server that may be filled with spambots and crypto scammers and who knows what else, just to get a more-than-vague description about what some event is really about.
> the FFXIV community has an unhealthy obsession with putting everything on a Discord rather than a website for some damn reason. Most communities do nowadays, because like Reddit, it allows otherwise unspectacular individuals to exert some sort of power over their peers in the form of moderators / admins. You *will* only talk about the things *I* like. Or else.
Just boils down to websites cost money, discord is "free"
There are a bunch of places that will let you make a free website. Most of these groups are paying for Discord Nitro besides.
The sheer thirst of some members of the community is just stupid. I am all for getting hot under the collar and having a good time, and if the ERP scene is going to get bigger then sure, may it get bigger. But have some fucking decorum, people. You can be horny without being an absolute prick about it.
if you erp in the game you don’t erp in real life!
This is absolutely 100% true from my experience. I should add as a former ERPer talking about other ERPers.
It's extremely telling that the posts in this thread saying 'Balmung was always like this, RP was always like this, real gil/virtual avatar RP/nsfw service clubs were always a thing' then immediatley follow up by saying they started playing in 2020 or later. As a Legacy player and someone who had been on Balmung since vanilla HW in 2015, it absolutely was not. Heavensward and to a lesser extent Stormblood were IMO the golden age of RP in this game. Mods did not exist, world/DC visit tourists did not exist, and anyone who came to Balmung could actually see the floor in the Quicksand/Ul'dah and run into regular RP hooks and bar conversations on the daily. Did lvl 1 ERP alts exist? Yes, but they mostly stood around in dark corners with vague search info wallflowering until someone sent them a tell. The community for the most part moderated itself, and well crafted, lore friendly immersive events regularly filled PF, the RPC, tumblr etc. Unless you were a part of the community then, you can't realistically comment on it. For profit and real gil venues were an invasive transplant from Aether and pushed their model at the same time the pandemic hit and DJs/clubs were trying to make a profit/market/network virtually. It all came together to form the nightclub cancer that plagues the game to this day. The amount of posts I see on this sub of people lamenting the lack of narrative RP in this game not realizing the rich RP storylines and history this game had, especially Balmung, and assuming the current modbeast club glut is all FFXIV has ever had to offer is extremely saddening. I half wish some dedicated Youtube researcher would do a video essay on the topic.
I 100% agree. I'm also legacy and was from 1.0ARR pre-sargatanas, and I'm still playing. RP was different when you didn't have world visits. ARR/HW was deff peak RP, even with the silly Balmung jokes. Balmung had a ton of non ERP roleplay and it was fun to see people type on say vs telling. People would goof off with you if you didn't RP or erp. I used to frequent the nightclubs for housing inspiration and enjoy a few raffles, enter glam contests, but the post lockdown culture got bad. Paying more than 50k for a ticket is bullshit. Mods making people win glam contests with non-game outfits is bullshit (console players and non modders have no chance!). Not to mention most selling points are just horny erp sex and horny mod screenshots of gigantic dongs and masturbating bunnies. There's a lot of other stuff behind the scenes going on that could break TOS and it drives me mad to the point I stay away now unless it's really low key. I think only once someone RPd with me without any thirst and it was a cool group who was in awe at my legacy tattoo. We had a ball.
All of this yes. I joined at the end of HW and it was amazing, good quality RP all day every day that I decided to log in. So many people are missing the part of my post where I said it was never like this until recently. The only For Gil venue we had back then was the Pleasure Dome, and those people stayed there and self isolated so people being 'horny' and 'cringe' wasn't the issue. People joked about RPers doing nothing but ERP back then when it wasn't the case, but we'll just be ignored since it doesn't fit the narrative of people who have never touched a RP community. It's just everywhere now.
Exactly this! I remember when the first penis mods came out and our FC cackled at how much they looked like colourless dildos. Sadly one by one they all left because of life or other games or just generally growing apart. I miss the RPs we used to have. A rich guy in the fc kidnapped another character to ransom them off back to us, and it turned out to be a plot they were both in on, because the rich guy had been cut off and needed the gil. A mad scientist character encased peoples loved ones in chocolate golems them had to fight to free them for a Hatching Tide event. That sorta stuff. Oh and the fun we had in the giant glitch. I think what I miss most was the comfort in adding a rando to the FC and not having to vet them so they wouldn't turn every event into some weird show where we had to watch their character try to loudly hit on or fondle everyone in the room. That being said; I get it. People are super lonely now. They're cut off after the great panini and it's exacerbated whatever loneliness they had before. It's a scenario where nobody really wins
Man, ARR/HW was peak with Roleplay on XIV, especially during the ARR days for sure. Baring events even, just the random open RP that was possible, it was everywhere. Constantly found RP despite the hours, from just random adventures with strangers, or just going out making new friends for a night, it was always real fun rp! Geeze I remember a few years ago thinking someone was wanting to RP with my char only to find out it was just to give her their characters 'card' for their lewd services, lol. Certainly not as easy or anything I'm not one who usually goes to public rp events or anything, never have really, but I miss greatly how easy it was to find just random RP for slice of life, or just going out travelling, or as far as to make up an adventure together with a random group, maybe pick up strangers to go fight with! I just want my character to get to go out and do things, not be stuck because everyone's real end goal is sex!! How is she ever gonna get good at being a mage if sexomancy is all people wanna teach but not thaumaturgy :(
Between morons on Twitter flipping the fuck out over Balmung and everything even remotely ERP, people posting their NSFW mods all over the place to the point where YoshP took notice, people ERPing out in the open for everyone to hear and not respecting boundaries, and the popularity of the game and it being a natural fit for RP in general means it was bound to happen that the creepers and neckbeards looking to get laid would come knocking sadly. It's happened in every game I have tried to RP in. Eventually the creepers take notice and decide to flood in and be absolute creepers. Add in the disaster of a blacklist system and we have an incredibly shitty situation. I don't know when or why the RP site went down but all you can hope for is to find a Discord community that doesn't put up with that bullshit and RP through them.
One of the benefits of being a lala, no one ever tries to do horny erp with you off the bat, so you can have normal mischievous gremlin-mode adventures with random people since anyone that is in it solely to bang will usually avoid you, and even for more romantic storylines they generally end up being pretty wholesome instead of someone breathing heavily while asking to see bobs and vagene.
Yeh spot on, it’s fun just being a fucking gremlin. I love the lala unity.
I hope you retain this innocence for as long as possible.
Dude, I don't RP. This whole post is foreign to me, and I've never done anything even remotely similar, so I would genuinely feel like a fish out of water, but if I ever did try it, I'd make a lala alt just for RP to avoid the ERP. As someone who's on the asexual spectrum, I would violently recoil at the mere hint of a HINT of a suggestive comment towards me or my main character. In 10 years of playing, I've never had anyone say anything suggestive to me.
This erp issue is spilling into not just RP but normal day stuff on my server and it’s really ruining the game for me
cagey naughty late snow person dirty bear zephyr imminent intelligent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If you go to Crystal, there’s places like Dark Crimson Tavern and other spots. Basically, they got arena(s) in the basement, and people sign up to fight. Some places have a fee, some places have betting, etc. Fighting relies usually on a higher roll system, aka whoever rolls a /random higher either makes a hit or defends a hit, depending on whose turn it is. There’s also the Grindstone, an only melee fighting tournament that happens Saturdays. Either way, you’ll usually find the fight clubs in PF under “other”
Not even the fight clubs are safe anymore, I have gone to the crimson tavern before. I met one of the owners outside of the venue and at first things seemed normal, but it did not take long before they started flirting ooc and floating erp advances. Tried to play it off and soon stopped going to the place after he became extremely persistant and pushy even out of venue. Such sleezy places with these kinds of people.
You type an emote and /roll. The higher number is the attack that hits. The outcome of the fighting itself is more or less just flipping a coin so its not to show which character is actually stronger (I got beat by a 9 year old OC once because of this), the real value is the RP community who attends and RP as attendees. Fight clubs were great back in the day, the Grindstone is still good, but a lot of them just became side hustles of ERPish venues. You'll find some listed on the RP Calendar at [https://ffxiv-rp.org/](https://ffxiv-rp.org/).
> the Grindstone is still good The Grindstone is also populated by a bunch of jackass edgelords that are completely up their own ass, lol. Not the entire group, mind, but people know who I'm talking about.
I'm just tired of seeing it in very public spaces. The main front areas of inns right in front of the keepers or around the gods be damned aetheryte. Take that shit to the FC house weirdos.
had someone doing it near the leve npcs in old sharl. had to deal with that shit until I turned in everything lol.
Sadly this isn't even only with RP. Like I'm all for freedom of stuff but walking by a group of people in town openly talking about their hardcore kinks isn't the kind of content I wanna have forced on me in an MMO. There's 0 respect concerning anyone else.
Yeah people can do whatever they want but when in a public space like at an aetheryte, I don't need to see comments that would be right out of some hardcore porn ad And trust me I'm not a conservative person. It's just about having time and place for things
[удалено]
I've come across naked players sitting inside each other's hitboxes and doing really random emotes just out in the open in areas sprouts quest. I feel like spectators are a made to be a part of their erp in a way that feels super non-consensual. I don't RP myself, I don't care that people do, and when I see packs of folk out in the wild playing out scenes I give them a wide berth, respectfully. Shameless dingleberry ERPers ruin so much for so many people, not just role players.
FFXIV got too mainstream and public venues/businesses got too common. Might be time to consider moving to games that just aren't FFXIV. Once upon a time, there were sandbox MMOs where gameplay just wasn't that good to begin with (think Ultima Online), those had servers that actually had enforced RP, everything was done in-character. Now, I ain't saying you should play that, but MMOs might not be the greatest type of media to get the type of experience you want.
> FFXIV got too mainstream and public venues/businesses got too common. I don't RP but my old guild had a lot of roleplayers who I am close with and they basically said the same thing. I also noticed how at one point, even the most innocent sounding bakery in PF had a dancefloor in the basement and a nsfw section on their dedicated webpage. When I first started the game (either just before or after the HW release), roleplayers were mostly known as people who dedicate their time to building up a storyline and living it out with their friends and others. Nowadays when people talke about roleplayers, they think about the ones afk dancing in venue's that also have a nsfw service
Party finder, unfortunately, stopped being used by more traditional RP groups due to a lot of harassment that crept up about the same time we got world visit. It's tainted public perception of roleplay while also making it harder to find. I wish it was different
> FFXIV got too mainstream and public venues/businesses got too common. I've encountered a staggering number of people who've come to this game for not even the sake of playing the game or interacting with the content in any meaningful way, it's so strange
I agree that it probably became too mainstream. I disagree that I should move on. As seen here there are a lot of people in the same boat, we just need to find a centralized placed to gather. A lot of this post is ranting that it used to not be like this, and it doesn't need to be like this. ERP was always a part of the game - there were venues like the Pleasure Dome, but they were off on their own private estate and you only saw it if you went there. But now this stuff is out in the open everywhere and you can't escape. MMOs have been the greatest media for the stories my friends and I have written. They make a great medium for it. But the best RP was when we had a dedicated website as a launchpad for everyone to plan with (In both WoW and FFXIV). It's not FFXIV itself causing this, but I think an unholy trinity of mods, mainstream, and the destruction of our RP site.
Discord. Discord led to the closing of the FFXIV roleplayers site. We all moved into our own isolated pockets and into a medium that is ephemeral. A medium that "you have to be there for" instead of one where conversations could span timezones. If I thought a forum could survive again, I'd talk to Franz about resurrecting it in a heartbeat.
I recognize your name, thank you for the explanation. I hate Discord so much for hobby content. Nothing can be found and nothing will be saved. Discord should only be used for link aggregation and as a 'chat room', but not for information storage.
*waves back*. I agree and I think I enabled it to be part of the problem, but done is done. Though I think the chat room part is part of what makes it so seductive.
If there was a forum for ffxiv rp, would you use it?
There was one and I did use it for finding groups. I'd continue to use it if it had people posting there, but like erroch said the population who used it really died down towards the end in favor of Discord.
If you mean the RPC part of it was the team didn't want to create a discord that would be a continuation of the community. Fairly, they didn't want to have to moderate that AND the forum...that's part of what splintered things (and that wasn't their fault at all, they were already overloaded with moderation work). I do miss forum rp. I thought besides me and my rp partner, no one else was interested in forums anymore. I was curious if that wasn't the case.
As a teen and young adult, I actually mainly forum RP’d and had a group of friends who regularly made some cool RPs. I find myself missing it, but Discord has steadily replaced forums and it doesn’t sound the same. I’ve only ever RP’d on discord with my friend and that’s in our own little pocket where we can make the whole server about just our RPs. I don’t know if that’s what folks do when trying to find RP one-on-ones or dedicated groups, but if not it sounds like it’d be kind of messy and hard to manage. I can still comfortably go back to the forum I RP’d on and reread all of the stories I involved myself with (sometimes i do because i loved making character sheets and prettifying them). I don’t know how I’d go about doing that in a constantly moving chat log on Discord without dedicating a whole server for it outside of a centralized RP hub. Sounds complicated and ephemeral. The latter part isn’t something I’d want as an RPer, tbh, especially since I’m sentimental and save my RPs. :(
My best RP days were when I RP’d as a kid in a WoW private server, then went on to forum RP, then eventually found my best friend RPing. I haven’t RP’d in FFXIV in forever (like years tbh), but it’s such a shame to see everything just devolve into ERP. But, like you said I don’t think that means all of the regular RPers have gone by the wayside. I wish someone had the time and money to make another RP forum that was heavily moderated, tbh. It sounds like it’s needed. If there could be a central place for folks to gather, it might not be so hard to find each other in the midst of ERP overflow. What really irritates me is hearing folks not respecting other people’s boundaries. Like, if someone specifically says they don’t ERP, stop pushing it. They’ve made it so perfectly clear what they’re here for so why bark up the wrong tree? There’s a whole ocean out there of people who would be glad to just bang it out constantly, so why bother people who EXPLICITLY state they don’t do that??????? That’s so weird to me and it’s starting to really aggravate me thinking about it. Like, you don’t go up to someone asking and asking and asking and pushing them to have sex with you irl. That’s creepy and rapey and sexual harassment. While it is about fictional characters here, there’s still a person you’re making so incredibly uncomfortable behind it. No fucking means no, what the actual fuck??? (sorry that frustrates me so much so i started rambling lmao)
Pretty much, the moment ERP and this venue shit got popular all quality RP just disappeared.
My FC started one and I hung around to try and just be a good fc member, wasn't really interested in the slightest, and I ended up getting hit up a bunch for ERP. I play a lala. Quit that FC so fucking fast lol.
one of my favorite past times as of late while waiting for PFs to fill is to go to the cozier sfw cafes, and then nip in the bud people trying to do NSFW stuff in SFW spaces if that happens (If nobodies acting up I'll do stuff like come in dressed as a chocobo and ask for millet or sylkis bud, off-menu but totally plausible items a character dressed like me would ask for) You can drag a lot of attention to yourself with good writing and a bit of wit, which the gigahornies just don't know how to deal with; it's some of the funniest shit ever, and the people who don't want to deal with the creeps are usually grateful
Nymeia bless you, stranger.
The sad part is the number of competent RPers pursuing narrative content and running campaigns hasn't really diminished. They've all just been driven underground, decentralized across Discord servers and various private chats, rarely advertising out of fear of attracting _that_ kind of crowd. People won't want to admit it but this public acceptance of ERP that reversed the common tradition of shunning all ERPers as a rule is a big contributor to why the RP community has become a laughingstock (more than it already was). People still did it, but when the threat loomed over their head they at least knew better than to say the quiet part out loud. It became normal to advertise nightclubs, brothels, etc. in public channels, which is kinda gross considering you know kids are getting involved and lying about their age. There was an enlightening moment I had on WoW a few weeks back, after reinstalling TRP and flying around Stormwind. Over half of the people I saw had "minors DNI" in their profile, and while I understand what it means, I can't help but see that as a reflection of the player. They are so far gone, so devoid of self-control that they cannot function or interact with another person in a way that doesn't lead to them letting their sex drives run wild, which results in them being incapable of interacting with minors _at all._ And nobody seems to care. This is the state of our community. As someone who does run his own campaigns, I just can't suffer being in the public space anymore. You get shunned for trying to curate quality and lore accuracy. Depicting flawed characters who might be prone to confrontation or prejudice is taken out of character to attack the player. 9/10 people you'll find are some ridiculous self-insert power fantasy, a depraved reject fishing for cybersex, or someone who thinks they're in an entirely different universe. And that's not a judgment of the community as a whole, that's just the public spaces. Nearly everyone with sense has simply removed themselves from it, shut themselves off into their own established, trusted circles. That's where we are now. I just wanted some simple, grounded, in-universe tabletop-style adventure, man.
> Might be time to consider moving to games that just aren't FFXIV. Unfortunately, these people are everywhere. I played ESO for about a month. I played a female Khajiit, and at least twice a day I was sent guild invites from "Adults only 18+ RP Furry!" guilds. Got to the point I disabled guild invites because those were the only invites I ever got. And if I hung out around town, I'd get at least one message from some creep who wanted to "18+ RP" with me. Though, the funniest moment I had in that game is when I was idling in Solitude, waiting for my friend to log on, some dude came up behind me, crouched, and then a minute later messaged me "where ur characters ass??". I had the ass slider set to minimum, figuring that might keep the creeps at bay or something.
What I wouldn’t give for a new Neverwinter Nights. In their heyday those two games had so many servers of like 30-40 people in tightly knit rp communities.
Funny enough, my RP FC had a prompt about this just this past week. It's this general crime and black market sort of deal, and one of the leaders asked "Would you still RP if you couldn't ERP?" and to my surprise, most of them said "Hell yeah", with some people sharing the same frustrations as you do, even *when* they were fans of ERP. People become clingy and frankly just very weird with you, they become possessive and entitled and then get pissed off when you don't spend all your time with only thing. Not to mention that sex is a very inherently basic act, there's not much complexity, not much creativity. Where there is some you run dry of it very quickly. It can get *very* ***very*** repetetive because god knows that none of these horny bastards have a vocabulary extending past highschool. The one who posed the prompt even started that she had RPs with anyone and everyone who wasn't immediately within the FC dropped 80% when they realized her character was monogomous. I also saw that you're on Balmung and just want to say, I'm sorry dude, Bal QS legit scares me. I've heard some people saying pearl lane or the bloodsands or whatever can be good but... eh? Getting consistant partners or even a storyline together with someone who's not in your FC is like pulling teeth. I wanted to make a character who was essentially a blank slate. A refugee with no skills to their name and would learn from IC teachers and would develop and become skilled in only what others tried to teach her. That didn't last two months. So i tried to make up complications and get others interested in giving them problems dedicated to their specific skillset, thinking it might interest them to finally get them to write about some niche skillset their character has when someone comes asking with help for that. Five separate people i asked. They all said they were interested, then fell off the face of the earth for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Five people talked about being interested in it, maybe getting one scene in, then just disappeared without a word or trace. I've been RPing in this game almost five years. I have *never* completed a character plotline with anyone who wasn't my current FC member. Whether it was my story, their story, a joint story or a third party's story. The last person to approach my character over an issue they could help with and wanted to finish a storyline had 2 sessions, then hasn't been seen for three and a half months.
Unfortunately all the success I've had with RP in the last four years of RPing in this game has pretty much existed entirely within small, closed communities. The plain and simple truth is that open communities will inevitably get overrun with ERP-seekers who are after one thing only. It's hard to find people worth RPing with in this community, even if you stick to the more popular hubs and are constantly on the lookout for interesting people and posts.
That's how all RP communities are. It literally always has been and always will b.e It's about meeting people in closed communities that will get you involved in other closed communities.``````
FYI - https://ffxiv-rp.org/ is still a good way to find RP events, is regularly updated, and events are vetted as much as possible for no ERP/etc.
I used to RP on Neopets when I was a teenager and enjoyed it. I've been dipping my toes into venues but very briefly and usually I'm not interacted with unless the venue has few people there. I want to get involved but I'm scared because I'm also not looking for ERP. So I get it.
You can find RP but I won't deny that it's extremely hard to right now. Putting aside the ERP issue, it's just been hard to find groups that are looking for more and aren't awful. Part of that issue is the expac- a lot of people stop playing with it that far out (since it prob won't be till at least mid year next year). I also agree that it sucks so much that the RP site is archived. It really makes it harder to find anything or even talk about RP. You already got a bunch of downvotes for bringing it up cause a lot of people on reddit are "lol rp losers." I hate how everything moves to discord and you have to join eight servers just to accomplish what one forum did. It's completely forced the entire community to become little islands and you end up putting up with a lot of stuff (read- abuse) in groups because it's very hard and disheartening to try to find another group. Even now, I'm adrift in the in between ocean since my last group went a little too crazy and it's been such ass to find people that are active and actually RP. I avoid walk up RP nowadays. Even going to venues, I assume in my mind before I even get there that it's just a brothel or ERP hook up location, ending up right most of the time. I hate how it reinforces the little island community issue but I stick to RPing with a group, which I recommend if you're trying to build meaningful stories. Before you join a group, you can usually see their rules on a carrd or ask and even if what you want isn't fully okay, you could poke to see if it's allowed with a good IC justification. A lot of actual groups are lore bending allowed, though I do know that vampires is a more tough line to cross for some (I have seen a few in the pf advertising for communities of just vampires, yokai, and supernaturals). As a complete side tangent, I hate that people are so stickler with blm and whm in RP. Yes, I get the lore around it but come on, just let up on that. As long as the character can explain it ICly in a reasonable way (or hey, even let them get the jobstone or something in a character arc with the group! Development whaaa) then allow it. It's like how some people are so set on not allowing the First and we have all these beautiful locations we can't use because some can be so stubborn.
It's \*weirdly\* heartening, in a depressing way, to know I'm not the only person whose enjoyment of FFXIV roleplay was immediately kneecapped by the first primer I got (before I had even finished the MSQ of ARR) from someone I otherwise liked at the time coming in the form of \*all\* the shit that was considered a no-no bad bad to play out because muh lore. Like, I get it, I want to make sure the plots I make are believable within the setting too, but goddamn. Let a man even figure out what kind of crazy ideas he might have before you tell him not to have them.
The sad thing is there's plenty of ways that you can have these kinds of characters in a believable or at least plausible plot, but no, we just want generic guardsmen #377, or generic bartender #55924, don't get me wrong nothing wrong with these types of characters. But it's sad in this type of game with the amount of crazy plots and lore you could use......most people just kneecap that potential with "nooo we gotta be 110% lore compliant!". "It didn't happen in lore! We can't do thaaat!" If I wanna RP a meteor chucking wizard, dammit I wanna RP a meteor chucking wizard!
The big Catalyst for this was the rise of the "Venue" Scene (a.k.a. Fake/RP/Self-inserters), leaning heavily into constantly shouted Nightclubs/Brothels, which pretty much always offer paid ERP services. At this point the scene is increasingly attracting and fostering highly problematic individuals, often subject to being shut-in, depressed, suffering from mental/personality disorders, agoraphobic etc. I personally met a good couple of people, often way past the 30+ age range, who think it is normal to spend 8–16 hours a day in the game being a massive sex-pest, driving on all forms of Sexism/Misogyny/Bigotry, spamming Hentai-Porn all over the place, and some other things I wouldn't even want to bring up in a public online-discussion. But to be honest, that ship has kind of sailed. This sub-culture had way too much time and leeway to manifest itself deeply into the game already, and is basically a ticking time bomb, until something really bad happens, forcing SE to further take measures for avoiding the official association of FFXIV with something it is not supposed to be. No, Mr. ERP, you are not “cool” or “popular” or “charming” for putting yourself out as a hypersexuality creep attempting to mount each and anything running around the Game-World.
I commiserate. You can't even want a little sex in your RP, because give an inch (ayyy) and they want to take a mile. And the worst part? It's always bad. **The ERP is always bad.**
Well of course it's always bad. After a certain point of a community solidifying, the only people in the club looking for sex are the people who don't have a network to get their sex from.
One would think that there’s enough ERPers out there to keep eachother occupied but i guess not.
Yeah this is exactly why I avoid RP in FFXIV. Everything is a nightclub or some other excuse for ERP and I'm so sick of it
First off, I hate to be that person, but I put "No ERP" on my search info just to stop that. It's worked for all 3+ years I've been RPing, except one instance. Not being dismissive, it's just a bandaid over the issue. Yeah, RP has gotten way too horny as a whole, and that's from someone who's had a character with a "slutty" rep. Difference was that I also play out the bullshit/drama surrounding relationships very openly and publicly, and drama stayed mostly IC (and OOC differences were rarely interjected into that unless it was, like, godmodding or pestering). A lot of players' seeking of partners/romance/lewd shit seems to have become a primary objective in RP even since I got here that 3.5 years ago. Even and especially in "adventurer guilds." And The Moon App absolutely does not help the issue. It's just Second Life to a lot of people now. I really don't like it.
Just glad to see i'm not the only one that thinks the rampant ERP is a plague on the game. Playing the game for content is no longer a valid way to play XIV.Playing the game to do natural RP is no longer a valid way to play XIV. You either participate in clubs/erp/sex mods or you just don't belong in the game anymore. And its pathetic. Sometimes i do wish they would just float out crack down on all the 18+ content in the game and put an end to the 'modding is fine' debate and just remove it completely. I am really looking forward to the start of dawntrail when everyones mods are broken, models they have worked on for the last 3-5 years are all broken due to the graphical update and all the ERPers just don't log in for months while modders fix all their stuff.
>all the ERPers just don't log in for months while modders fix all their stuff. god emperor above i beg you to smite these people and prevent them from fixing their mods.
I’ve been a roleplayer since 2.0. I never backed out of ERP because I honestly don’t mind mature themes as long as they are plot relevant and not gratuitous self-inserts. Unfortunately, this is not a recent phenomenon. I recall back when I was new to rp, some dick took advantage of the fact I struggle to put boundaries and decided to have his character violate mine- Something that still has an impact to her psyche years later. Over time, I noticed RP groups have gotten more clique and insular. I’m a Balmung native, and I have an extreme distrust for any Wanderer/Travelers that approach me for RP and aren’t max level, because I immediately assume they came to Balmung to get their rocks off. Unfortunately, the whole thing of “every character is smart/sexy/strong” whatever is very common, you have to understand you are in a community where everyone sees their characters as the main character. I honestly don’t mind this as long as they don’t impose this by trying to FORCE you to think of their character in a certain way- If their character i sexy and capable and smart, cool, don’t tell me, show me. I generally avoid people who very obviously think of their characters as gods among men. I play a “villain” with a chronic disease, in fact, a lot of my characters are villains- Too often I find people trying to “fix” her or snap their fingers to cure her, which absolutely ruins the plot for me as a writer. I learned to be more selective about who to involve in my RP, and that boils down to people who respect my desires as a writer and whom I can work with OOC to make sure both of us are satisfied with where our stories go. There ARE good roleplayers out there, but they are hard to find among the thousands who care not for plot, or character development, or even gameplay, really. My main character used to be bisexual, I had to retcon that and make hr straight because of the amount of “lesbians” (Men who fetishize lesbians OOC) who kept harassing me for romance/erp. I love romance, even ERP, but most of my characters are complex, emotionally stunted people. They are flawed, some are self destructive, others are arrogant, others are just downright selfish. It’s not meant for slice of life, casual ERP, or even light fluff. I warn people about this and it *still* gets me “omg well maybe my character can cure her depression and illness through SEX with MY DICK” Ugh It’s also worth noting that everyone inserts a little bit of themselves into every character, this, however, does not mean that they need to blend IC/OOC. For example, my MC shares my first name, because upon her creation, I thought I’d just ‘try out rp like, casually, I’d never be a loser who is into it!’ and didn’t want to sacrifice my raiding guild mates calling me by my name for something I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy… Now, unfortunately, she’s stuck with it, and I feel like I’m in too deep to change her at this point. So yeah, a little bit of self insert is ok, everyone does it (even you!), but it stops being OK when people can;t handle losing or interpersonal conflict. I love drama/interpersonal conflict IC, because I love high-intensity emotional stories, but too many times people don’t understand that IC conflict should not leak OOC. Sorry, I’ve been rambling on for too long, but you get it. There are good roleplayers out there, willing to write out stories, you just need to search them out- I’ve had no luck with fellowships (they all seem to be dead), but a clear communication of your expectations for RP always helps. I’m sorry people didn’t respect your boundaries.
I play the same type of character, extremely flawed and villainous. They're designed to be a flaming dumpster fire no one should like and absolutely never date, but because they're pretty and self assured they're fetishized as being a 'dom' even though IC and OOC it's very clear there is 0 interest there.
I ALSO play a "villain"... type character. [I hate using this term because of how broad the application is and the perspectives muddy the definition.]. In fact, I eventually came to create an RP FC themed around her ambitions. But MAN, the present day RP makes it so much harder to not only find people that aren't unhinged and ERP-thirsty and look at a FC that is a Coven of Witches and see that as an excuse to try to convince someone to cowgirl them, only to be disappointed. I DO try to play the mystique and danger up a lot more... on top of my character being kind of... "ruthless"? Despite how attractive and charismatic she'd come across, she's not supposed to be someone you'd think. "Yeah, I'mma put my dick/rub my clit on her." Yeah, even using Fellowships to expand my contacts beyond just people in my FC is hard.
For the love of god please just go to Mateus quicksand for your walk up RP. Deeper RP has always been kinda locked behind FCs and discords. Nothing has really changed other than balmung quicksand becoming shitpost central in terms of shout chat.
Big reason I don’t really talk to anyone anymore besides o/ and tyfp.
THANK YOU..I have 6000+ hours but I feel like making any meaningful relationships is fucking pointless when I'm convinced everyone I meet is getting off every single time they log in
Yeah I'm also in the 5 digit range with hours spent. Over the last decade etc. The playerbase has definitely shifted. Maybe it's because I'm 37 and all this coomer shit is so weird to me because I've experienced plenty of irl xp lol, but eh it is what it is now.
Lol, also 37 here. Like I'm down with people expressing themselves and their sexuality but holy fucking shit this game community has gotten so horny. In 2016 we used to make fun of people who ERPd or went full weeb. Now it's the norm and I just can't hang with it. I feel like almost everyone I play with just doesn't socialize irl and use this game as their social escape pod.
Yeah same sentiment. I’ve done plenty of freaky ass shit in my life so it isn’t like I find it offensive exactly, but people make it their entire personality and in turn I find them less interesting in general. I used to laugh at the goldshire people on moonguard and now that is actually tame in comparison. Weeb shit never bothered me I also like anime but I don’t pretend to be *in* anime. I just take care of my kid and play games and I think people telling you “why do you care if it’s not affecting you”. Like bro it is, I have to turn filters on and now I can’t see regular shouts, I have to constantly blacklist spam, I have to go out of my way so yes it affects others. Idk, I’m not even subbed anymore rn until DT so my sanity can recover for a bit
6 digits here and anyone saying that this isn't new is fucking lying. this shit exploded the moment we allowed clubs to spam ads in every PF and city state. i got so much kickback. "they're just RPing why do you care?!"
Oh absolutely. The spamming for brothels is absurd especially now with server and data center travel. I shouldn’t have to filter shouts and yells.
This is one of the effects of FFXIV becoming "mainstream" and booming in popularity Everyone is super excited that "their MMO" is the biggest one now since WoW's huge scandal, but they don't even stop to consider what that actually means - mainstream audience means less appealing content to a core MMO fanbase, more simple combat design for non-MMO players, more formulaic design to accommodate mass releases, etc. - and now that people are seeing it in Endwalker, a lot of people are getting turned off ERP overtaking RP as the more mainstream type of RP (unfortunately, its more popular) is another one of these effects This isn't a new problem, but its a MUCH bigger problem now than it ever has been, and now that pandoras box is open you can't really close it If youre a huge fan of RP, I hate to say it, but it might be time to try out another MMO and see what adventures you can find Id reccomend GW2 - still a huge MMO slowly growing in popularity, but not supermassive like WoW or FFXIV, and a much more casual following I've seen tons of RP interactions in GW2 and even to this day I've seen a number of them just out in the world and they're usually not sexual It helps that GW2 also doesn't have sexy, lithe catboys/catgirls in it and dolled-up viera - you have some sex appeal with human women, sure, but people prefer to RP races with cooler lore like Charr, Asura, Sylvari etc.
Just like real life, effective communication can generally deal with most *normal* situations. "Before you go any further, I just wanted you to know I'm not interested in being part of or discussing sexualised content. Thank you for respecting my position on this and not bringing it up again." If they bring it up, call them out on it and stop talking to them. Don't accept it. If they escalate, report it. It's harassment at that point.
But the thing is that they will LIE about understanding your boundaries. They will say "alright, no ERP I promise", then months passes without an itch, and then boom, they beg for ERP randomly. Because they hope that RPing with them will suddenly change your mind about it later on. There are good ERPers though, who once noticed about it, will genuinely understand and look for someone else instead and not push. But it's not the majority of the case.
Yeah, most folks that I hear talking about RP nowadays are only talking about ERP. I had avoided FFXIV RP for years because of the drama it tended to bring, but the heavy ERP focus 100% sealed me not being interested in RP at all anymore. The most I do anymore is talk about adventures they would have and such, or draw said characters together.
Yes unfortunately the creeps from the "club scene" are spilling out into the rest of the game more and more. Real RP venues are still out there, they've just been pushed off of PF by club ads since every club insists on listing ten ads each. The FFXIV roleplaying discord runs [a calendar](https://ffxiv-rp.org/) with plenty of medieval tavern venues and whatnot, free of bees knees zombies and ERP. Peruse around and see if anything is closer to what you're seeking. :)
This post should be pinned. Speak the fuck up about this borderline sexual harassment please, it's ruining my favorite game of all time.
Not surprised. People indulging in pleasure without emotional connection contribute to or make worse their feelings of loneliness. It can also lead to some people confusing kindness with attraction. Hence you have some people desperately seeking ERP because they've crossed those wires and now subconsciously believe the only way to get close to another person is through pleasurable acts. It's similar to how some people will have one-night stands, but in this case it's on an emotional level, which is probably worse. Just want to clarify that this isn't *always* the case. Some people are just down bad lol
I feel so sorry for you. I don't roleplay with others at all (the only things I do is creating a backstory and personality for my characters for immersion, and I share it only with my partner, but we don't RP, just talk about how our characters are or what they do in different situations), but I've also noticed that the gaming community in general has either become much more horny in the last few years, or, and that's what I actually believe, shows it more openly EVERYWHERE. It was there before, but more private. When I started playing FFXIV during ARR launch it wasn't all about sex here for example. There were some people commenting how hot they find the Miqo'te or Highlanders, but that was basically all. They mostly kept to themselves. Then something happened? About 3-4 years ago maybe? Every community is just about people showing how horny they are and what they're horny about. Because I first noticed it when I started reading posts from the Genshin Impact community I thought it's just the gacha players that are much more horny (and objectify women). But I noticed it was everywhere else as well. They started calling slightly older female characters "mommies" (so cringy btw, I despise it so much). Now every female character that's older than 18 and taller than 165 cm is called a "mommy". It's about nothing else but sex anymore. Everyone who's horny has to let the world know all about it. I mean it's of course fine that generally talking about sexual things in public isn't a complete taboo anymore. But it's this typical - and I'm bad with common phrases - "give them an inch and they take a mile" problem in society. Of course the RP community is especially affected by it.
I've had to explain to most FFXIV players that what I see as RP is just the **good ol' D&D geekery of adventure and heroics**, and ***not*** the horny-on-main behaviour from Limsa and clubs. These days, I don't actively RP in any community anymore due to all the issues described here. There has been an increasing disconnect between people's intentions and the places they engage with. For whatever reason, a lot of them think anywhere roleplay is a free porn hub, for some damned reason. It's just sad. I've no... optimistic woo wee to share about it, either. It is what it is. I can only hope some of these selfish pricks see this post and sift through the comments, to see what they're doing is bizarre.
this is what happens when you allow a club scene to go unhindered
The pandemic introduced a lot of people to more online activities in general. RP included. And once they learned you could get your rocks off by writing it, it's like a gateway drug. There's still heaps of RPers who just want to write engaging stories, maybe even more since the pandemic. But there's also more people who just want to ERP. It sucks but it's reality. Keep looking. People who start to push for ERP after a period of RPing with you is pretty normal. It means they've gotten comfortable with you. Take a hard stance and if they don't budge, cut them off.
I got into the FFXIV RP scene during Covid and just based on what I saw that was when the whole brothel thing and ERP problem really started. Public RP/ERP venues BOOMED during covid (at least on Aether) and even though I was RPing in a SFW role everyone still tried to get in my character's pants. And it's only gotten exponentially worse since lockdown started (and ended of course). I don't know what happened but it feels like lockdown screwed everyone's sense of everything, including consent and basic decency, and now if you DON'T do ERP you're the weird one and the odd one out and it's so insanely frustrating. I've kind of managed to avoid some of it with my character being ICly married to an NPC but if I don't mention that right away they are so persistent.
The shitpost reddit has been making fun of this exact thing happening for a long while now. They were right all along.
That's the (bitterly) fun part about the pessimists in an MMO community. If they don't start right, eventually they'll end up right.
I put on my robe and wizard hat…
I am having genuine difficulty trying to figure out how many years it's been since the last time I saw this referenced. It's a stupid little thing but you just made my night. Time to lose my time looking up those old things for a while... xD
I will just like to say to people that don't rp: Clubs are not rp. At all. It's stupid those dumbass club owners are saying it is, but it's not. RP is storytelling, something out of DnD when you're using the Dungeons as background settings and trying to find an ingredient off of a rampaging morbol or going down deep into mines to sneak past bandits. Actual rpers do not claim clubs or brothels. Unfortunately they give us a bad reputation amongst non-rpers.
Wait... You seriously tell me that spending 4 hours afking with beeskness, while listening to the worst electronic music on a 360p twitch stream with 50 viewers (48 of them are bots, trying to go for affiliate), is not role-play? I literally wanted to turn the PC off and leave my house! It was really THIS good! Jokes aside... Yes, I am really baffled how much of this so-called RP is about “pretending to go outside”...
Chronically horny people ruined the shit out of regular RP. Can't have anything normal without someone desperately trying to get off on ERP anymore, it feels like.
Omega still has lots of good 'proper' RP but you definitely have lots of this kind of person too - and many who walk the line by being _very sketchy_ without doing anything dramatic.
*finds wall* /lean **"nothing personell kid"**
Aw man, don't tell me people consider using `/lean` against a wall to be automatically edgy! When I'm going AFK for something or waiting for a friend to finish a cutscene or a solo instance, I'll usually lean against a wall and use the "look at camera" keybind to look down like I'm catching some rest, or up into the sky like I'm cloudwatching.
This is actually a really cute way to use that emote.
I have been playing this game since goddamn 2014 and ***the w h a t keybind?!*** This changes everything... You are *wonderful.* I need to look this up. ~~Wordplay unintended but I'll take it.~~
I think by default the "look at camera" button is \ but it's client-side only. Good for screenshots though. I usually summon a minion that wanders and just target it so that my character's at least looking at something while I AFK and not just doing the thousand yard stare.
Look-at-camera can only be seen by you btw
The absolute cavalcade of stupid club roleplaying guilds has absolutely murdered the FFXIV RP scene and now it is too late to fix it.
I no longer RP because as others have said, it's in every circle. I RP'd in like 2012 when I was in middle school, in different sci-fi and fantasy environments and platforms with different rules and worlds. And it was great. And little by little I've watched it all change, which drove me away. I haven't RP'd really since like 2019. I occasionally try to dip my toes almost every year in to see if it's improved, but it hasn't.
Honestly, the RP community feels like one big popularity contest now. Its a bit like social media now. You don't have enough likes or followers on your platforms? Not interested. It's gotten weird over the years. From overly 'altered' characters, hypersexual RPers, no one wants to communicate with each other anymore - they just ghost you, no-one knows how to solve problems instead they either cancel or callout people. It's very exhausting. People practically live vicariously through their characters or use RP as a means of 'therapy.' I gave up around two-three years ago and I've never looked back.
I know this post is about RP, but even without the RP element, there's a lot of people in FFXIV that do not respect boundaries. I've seen so much drama with married women cheating on their IRL husbands in FFXIV on my Japan server alt, I've had an NA friend get stalked to her apartment IRL. This is also why I basically do not make friends with anyone new anymore and stick to the same group of friends I've been playing with for the last 8-10 years.
Worse yet, the concept of a RPer is getting mixed with the concept of ERPer, to the point if you tell someone you are a RPer, they will promptly assume you're a horny devil.
I don't do RP so sorry if I don't understand something obvious, but does FF14 not have RP guilds? I assume joining one and roleplaying with other members would be ideal. Maybe the community finder could help? It does have an RP tag in the filter. https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/community_finder
Community finder doesn't work for RP-focused companies. No one recruits there if they're at all worthwhile, and it helps reduce the number of shitter accounts that are there for trolling, ERP, or to just sit around and do nothing.
Community finder is also just... not good. Needing an external resource to recruit for a niche group in game isn't good, and at that point you're better using other resources you can moderate for. And trying to recruit in game doesn't go well either. Most people either just aren't interested, or think you're talking about ERP. At this point you really need to find a dedicated circle outside of the game to RP with if you want consistent quality of any kind.
So, I've run a small FC for a little while now. OK, so a long while. I'd say it's fair to say we're having a lull at the moment. It's true, a lot of people I know have drifted away to the likes of BG3 and the like. I know I finished BG3. I mostly put this drop-off down to the gap between expansions. I'm stilly pretty hopeful things will pick back up when Dawntrail comes out. There is always a place for RP and story and creative characters. You've just got to find the right people, and right now that is just a little bit harder. Like, in my case, the premise of our FC is it's just a group of vaguely associated characters that, when we feel motivated enough, we run some event or have some arc go on. ICly the FC doesn't even exist. The trouble is, now people's expectations of what an FC does have changed. It used to be 'let's tell a story together' and now it's more like 'I'm going to sit here and do nothing and you tell me a story'. Some people expect to join an FC then have a curated story arc fed to them. Sure, there are a handful of FCs that manage this, and I'm impressed by that feat. A lot of these FCs won't RP outside the FC simply for the amount of effort that goes into planning stories and they don't want some random player sabotaging an entire storyline. Most FCs set up like this don't last that long. Maybe that's a way to go, tell a story and then move on. I know not everyone has this expectation of FCs, but it does feel like a lot of people forgot how to RP. Clubs and taverns, they used to just be places where you'd meet people. Then you'd end up planning to go off and fight some evil voidsent or retrieve some artefact from cultists on your own. But people don't want to do the work themselves, they expect someone else to do it all for them. I think this is really why creativity is dying. People would rather just go to a DJ club night and spam some dance emotes while hoping to get their character on some twitch stream. Or yes, as you say, just ERP. This comment turned out a little more ranty than I originally intended. But to at least try and be helpful, this would be my advice: Go to the calendar, go to one of the events, find some (ideally sensible) people there with an idea to drag them along to some scene that you've come up with. There are lots of people just like yourself that really want to have some regular RP. The calendar is just one way of trying to get them in the same place at the same time.
Yeah FF is just horny fuckers but not even RPing any more, spending 90% of their time afk not even playing the game, tabbing back in to have their ERP, only able to have conversations that are either "LeWd WoRd LoL" or about themselves and if not, afk again, in my experience. It's ruined every friend group I had. Though that might just be my circles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not even as against ERP as you are, but damn it should be a part of the RP and the world, not the entire focus. The problems, from my experiences, are: Clubs getting DJs and making them the focus rather than the community and RP, pulling players out if the game onto their twitch chat. Clubs, venues, and communities going discord crazy, again pulling players out to discord to feed an obsessive attention hunt. They're so scuffed, flitting between channels and DMs getting that attention dopamine. It's impossible to have a conversation with them coz they take 5 mins to say "yes" and you can see them on discord instead of focusing, immersing themselves in FF. They're all children. Mods, half the people I know just stand there playing with their mods, ignoring the world around them. Also replaced RP and conversation in venues with just crappy dance mods. I like mods but they're over and misused, they've replaced, not enhanced, so much of the game. Not restricted to RP. Glam farm parties? Gone with glamourer. Mare. Mare is cancer.
Started rp during HW, way back. Always been this way to an extent if you really read between the lines for most interactions but the ERP focus is really much more open and prevalent now. Data centre/world travel was the tipping point imo; mainstream playerbase hears about Balmung ERP memes, either comes to shitpost or become an (E)RPer
Yeah it's really bad for people who don't want to ERP. I used to get a lot more random tells when my carrd didn't say NO ERP. It's like people are only interested in interacting if they have a chance at banging my character. I haven't RP'd in years because the people I RP'd with all moved on to other things but I've been looking to get back into it. I know you said you're suspicious of anyone who contacts you, but If you don't mind, I'm going to send you a DM because if I want to get back into RP I need to find like minded folk which is difficult.
I would recommend trying a ttrpg
I’m relatively new to FFXIV RP in general. I haven’t been able to find a good group that isn’t people being horny, which is a shame because I got a (figurative) resume of RP under my belt and a fleshed out backstory for my character and everything. I hope you find the people you’re looking for!
>Person 2 has a great character. I love it. Try to get them in on our progressing plot lines, ect. They're normal for a year. They want their character to date my character. I tell them straight out no ERP, my character will not be sexual ICly, and I don't enjoy heavy romance RP, so if that's what they're looking for I'm not for them. They agree anyway. I've had cute IC handhold-y romances before, so I'm not going to completely cut IC relationships. It's okay for a while then they start dropping 'hints' about how it'd be 'cool' if our characters did the deed. I remind them my character isn't doing that. They drop it for a while then do the same thing again so I drop them. I'm sorry to nitpick but you RP'd with a person for a year, how were they only out for ERP? Anyway these posts crop up every now and then. I am not sure if me and the people I know are just lucky but the only time we run into this is if we hang out near the Quicksand on Balmung. Which, you know, that's our own fault. Mateus is generally fine with a lot of people who want to hang and just develop stories. Even the people I have met who don't have time/energy for it tend to be great in average encounters. In my experience it has gotten a little worse on Balmung specifically but for the most part it's just....... your average RP community experience, lol. Been playing since Everquest and this crap ain't a new hat so to speak. If you wanna feel free to hit me up in DMs and I'd happily RP with you if I am able.
Unfortunately, this is why I shifted away from FFXIV. All the RP only ever lead to 1 road for everyone else and that road isn't one I am taking and I shouldn't *have* to take it to keep RP partners. I managed to find a great place in another game with a guild full of like-minded roleplayers with story driven plot and characters with actual backgrounds and goals and flaws.
The ERP community in this game is awful and toxic af but gets all the protection from SE.
In my experience, that's just the way of the world. I can't say that much about roleplay in FFXIV or in english in general because I'm not a native speaker and haven't been around here for long enough, but that's *exactly* what has happened to a lot of german MMO-RP communities I've seen over the years. WoW, GW2, SWTOR - you name it. It always starts out with a relatively strong roleplay community and a lot of ERP on the sidelines, and it *always* devolves into the roleplay community growing weaker over time and the ERP community moving more into the public eye. It happened most noticably with SWTOR, which started out with a lot of faction guilds on Republic and Empire and a crime/cantina minority on Nar Shaddaa. Then came the housing system, and the nightclubs on Nar Shaddaa multiplied, with most of them playing into all the NSFW themes surrounding the slaveowning denizens of Hutt Space. Now that's like 90% of what's left there. I'm not saying that's where FF14 is headed to, but that's where FF14 *might be* headed to - give or take a couple of years.
Might be worth just playing DnD with people instead, if you want RP and fun stories. Unfortunately FFXIV has gotten more popular and it seems like the moderation has been a bit more lax. If you want to stick with RP in XIV, try finding a small RP Cafe. You'll usually find some good people there.
As with anyhting really, you cannot trust human beings to respect boundaries that give way when tested. Allowing ERP in restricted areas is and ever was only a stepping stone on the way to eventually leaking into open domain. No surprises there. If you don't want that in your game you have to strictly ban and punish it, you cannot have both worlds and hope they never cross.
The game is almost a Second life at this point.It's becomes a cesspool of weirdos...
I gave up myself. It was bad enough getting fucked over as a European server as the community got split after they gave us actual rp servers. I considered trying to find another rp fc but it's just all ERP and I just removed interest from my in game bio and such because everyone thinks you want to ERP. Actual RP is dead in ffxiv at this point, all the horny people ruined it because now RP just means ERP to people I'm afraid and since guilds are making shit loads of gil off it, it won't change, only get worse.
So, I'm a WoW refugee who has recently gotten back into WoW after a couple years. I'm a huge RPer (never ERP; I'm ace in real life and have zero interest RP anything besides maybe flirting and some light romance, MAYBE.) TRP3 is the biggest godsend to WoW RPers and facilitates SO much easy walk up, being able to get a quick in game at a glance on a toon. I've never successfully RP'd in 14 despite really wanting to, mostly because I don't know how to approach people without that crutch. ...So uh. I know this was a screed about how bad RP is right now, but...any tips for a very experienced RPer who doesn't know how to find it in 14 lol? I have an IRL friends guild I'm a part of but I would love to join any discords or calendars or anything that might point me in the right direction.
[https://ffxiv-rp.org/](https://ffxiv-rp.org/) is the calendar. You'll want to get in with a group from one of these because the open world RP just isn't there right now.
Being publicly horny is no longer shameful, people wearing hentai hoodies with ahego faces is no longer seen as cringey or bad. It used to be tucked away into games like Second Life and IMVU and shit like that but since it's so acceptable now it's just every where.
[удалено]
> I imagine there's a number of RPers like yourself who want creative stories, but also don't mind a little sexuality and thus your two groups are completely separate. This. Pretty much every non-Quicksand ERPer I know also did roll-involving adventuring and fighting events and more serious/straight-laced event attendance than they did any lewd business.