There’s a running joke in one of my Final Fantasy 14 Discords with friends. Whenever I’m watching a cutscene, a few from the group will start giggling and demanding to see proof that I have any sort of knowledge about the game. It’s a joke that started shortly after Shadowbringers launched, and I wound up in a dungeon with two new players and a Dragoon that needed to dial it back a bit. After our two newbies – or sprouts, as they’re referred to in FF14 – asked that we take things slow and have a little patience, our angry DPS took that as a sign to absolutely lose his damn mind. While I don’t think that’s emblematic of FF14’s community, it is an annoying risk when teaming up with strangers. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, all of you veterans out there have got to suck it up and let FF14’s sprouts enjoy their cutscenes.
To explain my encounter a little more, after this rather polite tank made his plea for taking things slow, our unruly Dragoon demanded he run through the dungeon as fast as possible to round up all the monsters. While I was comfortable doing that, our new players weren’t, and I wasn’t going to push the matter. Instead, I just let our hotheaded Dragoon die a few times when he ran ahead. If he was going to ruin the experience of a new duo trying to enjoy the game, I certainly wasn’t eager to save him.
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As we reached the end of the dungeon, he immediately began sending a flurry of angry messages about how folks should watch cutscenes on their own time, and that you should enter a dungeon prepared. Those are all points I’ll circle back to later, but anyway, he pulled the boss on his own, so I let him die. We waited for him to return, but he argued his entire run back to the arena. When I told him to calm the hell down and let newer folks enjoy the game for the first time, he lost it, and demanded I prove I was good at the game, going on an unhinged rant about FFLogs – the site FF14 players use to upload and compare parses in the hardest fights – and recounting his raiding experiences. It was a bizarre exchange, and our newbies didn’t even know how to kick someone out of the party, so I did. He lost his spot in a DPS queue right at the last boss.
Like I said before, I don’t think this is an encounter emblematic of the FF14 community. As someone who does spend a lot of time raiding, I don’t think I’d paint it as the cheery picture of positivity and warmth some of its most ardent defenders would, but casually queueing up for a dungeon usually doesn’t mean you need to brace yourself for someone’s wild rantings. There is an annoying issue though with some of my fellow veterans whining endlessly about waiting for two extra minutes at the beginning of every dungeon so new players can watch a cutscene, and it’s honestly infuriating.
So here’s my hot take: if you’re going to queue up in the game’s Duty Finder and go in with strangers, then you should be prepared to accommodate those strangers. Duty Finder means you’re getting the luck of the draw – you could be going in with a bunch of people who have cleared every Ultimate trial, or you could be going into someone’s first run of Aurum Vale. Regardless of whichever one it is, you should be accommodating. Let them watch their cutscenes and figure out new fights.
Duty Finder is a community space. I reckon if you aren’t prepared to play with sprouts and people of varying skill levels, you should find three friends that can put up with someone who has an awful attitude and go in with them. When I’m looking to speed run something, I rope in members from my group for Savage content. Of course, I’ve been irritated by a new person failing to grasp something, but that’s a personal problem. That’s on me. The people new to the game shouldn’t have to deal with any tantrums from other grown-ass adults, and I’m ill over the expectation that everyone should show up to some Duty Finder dungeon run prepared to clear it like a world first race.
Anyway, sprouts, enjoy your dungeons. I hope you have a blast in those silly, short cutscenes at the beginning and end of new encounters. You shouldn’t have to break up the story beats by returning to an inn to watch old cutscenes or go to YouTube, you should get to enjoy them the first time the way they were meant to be enjoyed. And no, you shouldn’t have to study boss fights ahead of time, if it’s your first encounter, it should be a surprise – that’s part of the thrill. If you encounter another weird, elitist Dragoon, you should give them the boot, too. FF14 is brilliant, and you’re in for a treat, not everyone is that way, and I hope your travels through Eorzea are as painless as they can be.
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