Other The Vent Thread!

[Astrologer]

Hey there!

I noticed a lack of a dedicated Vent Thread here on RPNation. I can think a number of reasons as to why this is, but I also observed that quite a few of topics in Personal Discussion seem to be, in their own way, individual vent threads. So, I'm going to try to make a dedicated safe space for people to let off some steam! Feel free to use this thread to express your grievances, in any matter you'd like (rant, poem, art, etc), from real life to online. First, though, we'll need to establish a few ground rules:

• Follow all standard RPNation rules.
• Any form of bigotry is unacceptable.
• Tag and spoiler triggering content appropriately.
• Do not name names, if you're venting about a person.
• Please respect one another and the color coding system.
• Absolutely no discussion or depiction of violence is permitted.

Color System.
Attach one of these at the end of your rant to let other users know how they can interact with it!

: Please do not interact with my vent at all.
: Please do not respond to my vent, but reactions are allowed.
: You're welcome to respond to my vent with reactions and/or words of comfort!
: You're welcome to respond to my vent with reactions and/or advice!
: You're welcome to respond to my vent with advice and/or words of comfort!
: You're welcome to respond to my vent with reactions, advice, and/or words of comfort!

The S-Word.
Mentions of suicide is incredibly triggering for many. For that reason, I'm going to have to ask that it's kept out of this thread. Discussions related to this matter are better left to professionals and trusted friends or family members. If you're immediately struggling with this, then you can visit this website for Suicide Hotlines within your country. Thank you.

​

 

[Edythir]

Sometimes I feel like I'm fulfilling a showcase in the definition of Insanity. A part of it is the sunk cost fallacy and a part of it is just... emotional investment, I guess? One thing after another gets taken away, and you think to yourself "Well I can just focus on X" instead. But but which straw should be the one that breaks the camels back? At what point do you stop enjoying something and instead cling on to the idea of what something was, or what something can be?

It feels sort of silly but, there's been a single videogame which I have stuck with for ten years now, well, 8.2 years if you count my sub history. I am talking about Final Fantasy 14.

At first I played it just to play it, and that was fun but after about three thousand hours, the gameplay started to get stale, which you might expect after such a long time. So I became a crafter and that was great fun. Then there became a bot infestation and the markets crashed. Prices fell between 70-80% and items that usually sold within 24 hours would take two weeks to move which killed my enjoyment. Since you have limited space to sell, I felt like I couldn't craft until my inventory had sold, so it became weeks of doing nothing but waiting. So, I started roleplaying in the game, and that was fun for five years now but... At which point do you just stop bothering?

You do the same thing time and time again, expecting things to change but everything stays the same. While it is great for just pop-up RP, meeting random people and striking up a conversation with them but it feels like that is the only form that is possible now. So many times I have tried to start a storyline with someone who showed interest only for them to either drop it or fall off the face of the earth. I tried to make a character before which was nothing but a bag of plothooks to get others invested in. I got one person interested, they showed an interest and then disappeared for 2 weeks, when I saw them again they said they had quit RPing. Then I found another, and another, and another. In the period of 3 months, five separate people had picked up and dropped the same plot hook I tried to get people invested in so I retired the character concept and made something else.

So I tried to join a guild, in this game called a Free Company, or a FC for short. Many of them failed within 2 weeks of me joining, most commonly with officer and moderator infighting, so I tried to start my own with a good friend. I both overestimated my social battery and the worst stroke of luck hit us. There were 4 officers. I got burnt out, one cut all contact with every one of us out of nowhere. One had a mental break and spent 5 months at an mental health facility and one had their wife get into a car crash around the same time he was bumped up to 11 hour shifts. So with only one car and an injured spouse he needed to both drive their kid everywhere, do all of the grocery shopping, cook and work 11 hour shifts of manual labour so very understandably he dropped videogames from his day. With all 4 officers gone the guild fell apart. And all of this happened within the same 2 weeks, somehow.

Then after that things started moving up again, I found a good FC, I met a person which we became quit good friends and our characters even married in game. And all of that lasted for 2 years. This FC had the philosophy of "Everyone is welcome and anyone can join no matter what" which ended up being their downfall. Many people RP for many different reasons. There are people who are interested in stories, there are people who are interested in interpersonal connections, there are people who want a stress free wish fulfillment and then... well. The playerbase is notoriously horny as all hell. Like 90% of mods for the game are lingerie or other explicit outfits and an entire server is un-officially regarded as "The ERP server". So that's the last part. So, what happens when you don't have a cohesive identity and don't try to make it a home for people who share your playing style? By catering to everyone you cater to no one. People who are there only to get their rocks off and people who have a blatant disregard for lore or realism (Also the characters which are god-moding or playing very overpowered characters) started to become the most active, which drove away the people who wanted grounded stories or impactful interactions which could lead to lasting consequences. Then things delved into circlejerks and cliques. I left soon after that. And the icing on the cake was person whom my character married turned out to be a lunatic. To put it simply, they are very enthusiastic about the current administration and government, so I blocked them and moved on.

I quickly found a new FC thankfully and they seemed the perfect fit. Paranormal investigation stuff with heavy emphasis on story and the leader had an OOC interview before you were even allowed into the discord server and by the questions posed I felt optimistic about their future and had great fun with their first event. But then things started to... dim. Flanderized characters which have one gimmic and the depth of a puddle over a "joke" that was kind of interesting the first time, but trying to talk to them and have them just show that they are only their gimmick started to take the winds out of my sails. Then another character joined which... To preface, one of the main villains of the story are the Garleans. They are a race of people unable to use magic and because of that, they were victims of brutal colonialism, unable to defend themselves they had their lands taken away and were drive to the far inhospitable reaches. They then discovered a fuel source which could power war machines which were stronger than any mage, this they used to take back lands stolen from them and from there tried to take over the entire world. Villain characters are often driven to play as one of these, (though one of my friends who only plays villains quit the game because the community is a lot of 'The garleans did nothing wrong' when they are explicitly stated to abuse people for fun, with several characters in the game being Half Garlean born just after the occupation. I'll let your mind fill in the villainry aspect of that. That and a lot of cheering for fascism being good, actually).

This character claimed to be a doctor and that they were trained by them. Which, fair. They are shown as having a masterful understanding of biology and medicine. Unable to use healing magic, they exclusively have focused on mundane methods of mending which logically would produce excellent doctors. Only one problem however. You see, they are not Garlean, and Garleans are very xenophobic, racist and supremecists, so much so that they call every other race "Savage" and they are the only culture in which you cannot hold any sort of office or leadership position higher than "Squad leader" if you are not of pure garlean birth. Which honestly isn't the biggest knock against them, but what is is that they claim to have mastered several forms of illegal magics, such as necromancy and other related disciplines and have been training since the age of 4, while being raised by the only race in the game unable to use magic. They also speak "Nearly all languages" and showcase feats which alone could make you eligable for an archmage or give you entitlements of a Ph.D thesis, which are mentioned as an afterthought. To top it all off, they have the same abilities, name and references to a fandom character from a different series. Just as they finish info dumping all of that in a single breath, someone teleports in behind us like it's nothing despite teleportation being one of the most difficult and dangerous magics to wield outside of very specific circumstances, with their character bio alluding to them being either a near-godlike entity or an immortal. So my hopes of the FC having a consistent theme which everyone agrees to limit themselves to a single type of characters and RP for cohesion just goes out the window since even with stright application process and vetting beforehand, these sort of people still sneak in. So now I am questioning if I can even RP at all anymore. Or if the only thing I can do is just idle conversation in character and that is all there is to it. Endless first meetings and vapid conversations with people i'll never meet again.

So, that's gameplay, crafting, and RP out the window. What about the story. That has to be good, right? FFXIV has some of the best stories in videogame history I would vehemetly defend. Except the change between expansions has seen a similar shift as the story between Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3. Or the difference between Doctor Who when they moved from Peter Capaldi to Jodi Whittaker. The latter being more of an apt descriptor. Shadowbringers is hands down the best expansion, and leading from that was Endwalkers which was... devicive. I will defend it but it still had a lot of detractors, especially as the post-launch story dragged on which only got worse and worse. Dawntrail, the current expansion is without a doubt the worst. Both Shadowbringers and Endwalker have a 9 user critic score on Metacritic, with the former pulling slightly a 9.1 Dawntrail has a 5.2.

The story is the most shallow "Friendship is magic" storyline with a character that is a wet blanket of having firm ideals with justifications so flimsy that My Little Pony actually did it better. She believes in "Peace" but can't explain why, only "My dad loved peace and I love my dad so I love peace". And she forces herself into every situation. If another character is having a moment, she needs to insert herself, if character development is happening, it's not without her. She, in one expansion, has more lines of dialogue than all but two or three characters which have been in the story since you were level 5. She supposedly loves her country, but despite multi-culturalism being it's driving characterstic, she knows jack about squat about nearly any of the myriad cultures there. To make matters worse, and there is where the analogy to Doctor Who comes in, she is voice by a trans actress so you cannot have a discussion about criticising her character without transphobe coming in with their disingenious bullshit as if a voice actress has any bearing in how her character was written in a game when she only voice her in one of the five separate voiced languages. Not even the primary language at that, her being the English voice and the game being made in Japan by Japanese native speakers.

The story is chuck full of "Wait what?" moments which just have you in disbelief. Like how there was a culture which practiced slavery, but a guy came and said "Have you thought about... not having slavery?" and that was enough for them to pivot from being slavemasters to being hosts which care about nothing else other than making sure their workers are as fulfilled and happy as possible, so much so that their only jobs is waiting on their workers hand and foot. Yes, really. "Have you thought about, maybe not?" was all it took for slavers to do a complete and total 180. Or the culture which had a magic ritual which would instantly grow food right before their very eyes, but somehow they forgot about the ritual, what is was and why they did it. And this isn't some old, long lost ritual, the main character, implied to be in her 20's, remembers seeing the ritual when she was a child. So it's still in the living memory of most people. To make matters worse, a cultural researcher and expert on said culture is nearby, remembers what it was for and why they did it. But seemingly just sat by and did nothing while the people starved to death over not having any crops. Then to top it all off, the final area of the game is a copy paste of the final area in the last two expansions. The third time they do the same thing for a final area, except this time they have nothing to say about it, nothing to add or another viewpoint to consider.

During all of this, the game's classes have become more and more homoginized, each plays the same as the last and none of them have a challenge. Tanks have self sustain so good that multiple different raids of the highest difficulty have been cleared without healers. Dungeon design has been the same for 5 years. Every single dungeon has a predictable layout, but for their credit, Dawntrail is probably the most engaging and difficult normal and story content we have had for a long while and I commend them for that. They say they want to address classes in the next expansion... in 3 years. But then continously rework existing classes to be easier, less complex and more homoginized still. But maybe it might get better in three years. Maybe. Same with having anything to do, it took them 11 months to deliver on any content you can grind at, or play more than just attempting the same raid fight over and over again. The most basic of progress systems took them the better part of a year after an expansion.

So basic gameplay is gone, crafting is gone, roleplay is pretty much gone, the story is gone, combat is gone, grinding is maybe gone but, with gameplay, combat and story being so incredibly weak, why bother? To add insult to injury, the game's Producer and lead has repeatedly stated and asked people to not play his game. Like literally telling people to quit, play something else and come back in a few months when they have meager morsels to offer you. When the game's highest employee, the decision maker who the ball ends at (other than C-suits which pester him for more money) tells you to fuck off. Why shouldn't we?

So I am just stuck here, watching the game that I love, that I have poured sixteen thousand hours into, the game I have made long lasting friendships through. The game which has carried me through some of the toughest times of my life just. Just watching it... wither away. The gameplaying boring me, the social interactions frustrating me, the combat annoying me, the story infuriating me. One more pillar being taken out after the next but still I feel compelled, like I owe the game to continue. Like I owe it to the connections which I haven't heard from in a month, like I owe it to the characters people still know. But I am just straight up not having fun.

And all while I am in a period of my life when I need a distraction the most. A period in my life which isn't easy, but a period which I will make it through, I hope. I have made it this far and I feel myself clinging to distractions and connections and things to sink my teeth into, something to carry me through. And the one stability I have had through all of life's past bullshit is becoming just another source of stress and frustrations. And i'm tired.

Anyways, this turned out way longer than I intended it to. I just needed to get the thoughts out of my head and into somewhere, it's cathartic. If you've read through all of this, I apologize.

 

[Astrologer]

having a rough day w/ food. this happens from time to time. rn, i'm really hungry, but nothing sounds good to eat, hnghh.