Octodonorian: making friends takes so much energy, work, time, and luck.

i've done it 3 times- make friends, an fc, eventually a static.

the problem is the friends don't stay in ffxiv, they all leave after they have their fill. fair, but i want to make friends w people who will stick around. my friends list is so grey.

Marcomax742: I can't help but get a little defensive when the topic of social interation comes up in MMO's. I'm the type of player you mention who plays alone but likes being part of a larger world where I know other people are doing their own thing. I've played like this since Ragnarok Online and late BC / Early WOTLK on WoW. But that doesn't I avoid group content or interactions with other people. It feels as though the presence of players like me get the blame for the lack of social cohesion in MMOs now a days.

seraphimaether9264: Apparently, it's going around that people have been making frivolous reports over things like looking at and examining them. It's wild and people really don't understand how much people want the village but refuse to be a villager.

Cageorge89: I've played MMOs for about 20 years now, from Runescape to WoW, to SWTOR, and FFXIV. I'm on the more social side, going to RP functions and being social when there's downtime, like Praetorium cut scenes. I grew familiar with how to find my people, and I understand that someone new might not have the level of understanding I would on the topic.

My recommendation for those who which to seek social interaction is to start it. Walk up to someone and /wave at them. I had someone walk up to one of my characters because we had the same name, and we talked for a minute or so before parting ways. A lot of the players will talk to you, but they might be shy to start. Break the ice, say hello, and odds are, you'll have a pleasant interaction. Be kind and the world is far more open than you'd believe. Trust me.

JohnDCrafton: There is something else. When I started playing with a controller, I became much less willing to talk in party chat, other than a greeting at the start and a tyfp at the end. I would have to set down my controller and move my chair just to get myself into typing position.

Outside of combat situations, I generally just don't know how I'm expected to interact with people. For example, I was playing a costumed Lalafell and was running through Hawkers' Alley when I encountered another costumed Lalafell running the other way. They stopped and emoted at me, I stopped and emoted back. Then we just stood there awkwardly facing each other. The few times I felt compelled to join an FC, I almost always felt like an outsider, and the one FC where I felt comfortable fell apart because some people stopped playing the game, and then other people left to join other FCs.

joycevandersteen8751: I feel that the more servers FF got, the less social things got as well. I have friends from the first fc's and raid teams, but i also struggle to find any social interaction nowadays. Things also feel worse after a relationship that had formed through the game.

Veienn: When was the last time square added a social feature? Maybe when bard was released.

There is a reason why everyone looking for a social experience goes to one of the starting ARR cities.

ravenonpsn8050: There's absolutely nothing wrong with playing solo or not having to be a social butterfly. Especially if one tends to consistently encounter toxic snobs and cliques in the game. Any game accommodating group and solo play is a plus for everyone.

sirhc1528: I feel like Eureka was the last time social interaction was a big part of the content.

You had so much time to talk while spawning some fates, or in these 2-4 minutes everyone waited so the fate can be done together.

To an extend you had that with Bozja but a bit less because you just went from fate to fate. but at least the instance dungeons had social interaction.

This is comepletely gone in OC, because you just stand at the Teleport and wait for a fate to spawn. And you cant waste a minute talking because then the fates are already dead due to terrible scaling.

alexhaupt2134: Speaking of optimization, a lot of people spend a majority of their day in parties never saying a word beyond a "o/" and "gg" if they happen to be playing in roulettes and whatnot. It can sound harsh to say that people aren't talking because it would increase the length of the duty (and you know...coincidentally the length of time they're stuck there with the other players). But it's not necessarily avoiding interaction to get out ASAP; a lot of people simply enjoy playing faster after all. And it can be difficult to hold a conversation while you're mashing your keyboard trying to survive, especially if you happen to be using a controller--a feature not every MMO has, but a highly advertised feature in FFXIV at least, especially on a console where it would be the player's first or only

Zimvadur: 16 views bro fell off

Boyzby: As someone who is incredibly introverted, I cannot initiate a conversation because I feel like I'm bothering people. However, if someone started talking with me, or in the party, I'd be perfectly fine. It's why I was so happy when I found someone to play with—a friend to play with—grinding mounts, talking until the sun was rising, even going into Savage—which I'd not done since Turn 5 was newish. Since they stopped playing with me, for reasons I don't know, I've really just felt worse than ever before, because I got to experience the joy of playing with a friend for once.

HakureiIllusion: Maybe I'm cynical but I don't feel that MMOs forcing downtime like waiting for MP/cooldowns between fights is to give time for social interaction. I think it's because when you have a monthly subscription as your monetization structure, time is literally money and making things take just a bit longer can stretch some "I'll let my sub lapse when I'm done with this goal" instances to another payment period or two.

alve-r5t: Something else too is that if you play on console without a keyboard, communicating with players using chat is really cumbersome. Especially if you're in a conversation with multiple people typing on keyboards, it's impossible to keep up in conversation with the console virtual keyboards. The game doesn't have many convenient chat options that can be easily used without a keyboard

eidoll965: when it comes to social interaction it really can be hit or miss, but when it hits its really fun. a couple weeks ago we were scrolling through the "other" in PF to see if there was any of the rare unique posts and found "gary needs a mat to craft, this is gary btw" and we instantly grabbed that material, jumped worlds and gave gary that material. there wasn't a reward or anything, but the story itself is its own reward.

on the more... unique end, i was in tower at paradigm' breach as an off tank and one of the triple tank busters came up and warrior ran up and stacked on me and i died since i didn't expect it. instead of getting mad i just laughed it off and when the next one came, i paid him back and then we both stacked and invulned for a 3rd later on. it might not be the most conventional interaction, but when things like that happen, they really can make your day due to just goofing around with people you never knew.

faithgrins: There's also players who enjoy participating in the in-game market. I couldn't tell you why that's an aspect of MMOs that I enjoy, but it is the main thing that keeps me in one when I find myself in an empty guild after an expansion my friends didn't like. (Or guild drama happened, although I find that being the reason a guild falls apart less and less as I get older.)

DariusSnjor: Eureka and Bozja have been the only places where I've seen any kind of regular social interactions, it's why they are my favourite pieces of content, it's why also I've been especially disappointed at the fact that Occult Crescent absolutely demolished this aspect of this kind of content.

AlexanderVasquez-r9h: 1 minute ago 0.0

Nazuiko: I hate the "Go go go" mindset in video games and the "What if I have 2 hours to game per day?"

If youre in a hurry just dont play an MMO. The hurry hurry focus in video games in general has made gaming so much worse. And Discord exacerbates the problems brought on by it, eightfold. When people say 'I miss the old way of game design' this is generally the source of the complaint

DroChaku: MMO's are mainly played by unsocial lonely isolated people, and those types of people prefer not to interact with others.

zhongjie: That's what happens when your overworld is bland and useless and you add instance queues that you can do from anywhere. Friction is needed in order to preserve some community aspect.

I'm not sure how they can reconcile the main story with a slow levelling experience, I don't think it's possible really and levelling will never become meaningful in ff. Even more so that there's level skips in the shop.

inopoopy: I can't talk to people here in this game without them confessing in a span of a month. I just wanna make friends with the same energy I give out, I don't wanna date you

travis_biscuit: FFXIV is like going to the arcade for me. Walk in, do my own thing, and if I start seeing another regular or two I might toss them a howdy and a gg. For some other folks, the game is like a regular job and/or their main source of social interaction. What interactions you experience will depend on your own initiative and luck, just like in real life. Aside from that, 14 does feel like it has a Dark Souls approach to things, where social interaction is an almost optional feature rather than the meat and potatoes of the game. That lack of forced dead time you mentioned was a great example of design optimization meeting player optimization. There usually isn't even enough time to look at seven other adventure plates before a pull.

kevingriffith6011: I do think that another problem is that convenience removed a lot of need for interaction. Gone are the days of spamming in zone chat trying to start a run for the local dungeon, we've got queues for that. You don't have to go to trade chat to find a buyer or seller of something, we've got a market board for that. (Also games without a market board tend to wind up having that role filled by third parties with... questionable safety). I don't necessarily think it's bad that we have these features, but they do mean that players don't have to interact with eachother or find like-minded players who do this stuff.

In specifically Final Fantasy 14's case, you've also got things like Duty Finder pulling from other servers, meaning that chances are even higher than normal that you'll never see the players you partied with again. It's a totally necessary feature to keep queue times low, but it also damages the social aspect of the game quite a bit.

KitsuneOverThere: small addition to this: a kinda big issue in XIV specifically is the console / lack of keyboard part. A not enormous, but not small part. I am a yapper, I don't mind losing a GCD here or there just because I am randomly yapping in casual content, and sometimes people start yapping too for some short term fun/nonsense and sometimes this leads to add to friendlist (and probably never talk again lol). More often than not however, I yap alone. Monopolize party chat, and that's it. However it has happened multiple times to see a party member just going still, and seeing a "sorry can't really talk I am on controller" pop in chat after 30 seconds. I don't really know how common this actually is, but it has happened to me enough times to always keep it in the back of my mind now!

Dec 14 2025

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