Player Toxicity

did you read the insert about toxic players?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chocolate_Bacon Yes and yes. Thanks for beating me to it.

ditto, didnt ant to bring that into the thread, but it can be noted that polite people usually get treated politely, hostile people...well. something about reaping and sowing.

honestly things have been a bit rougher lately, but that can be somewhat understood. you have a major change in the game, change always will get some degree of response, and frankly some people seem to want to complain about anything, so long as they can complain. things will die down again and flare up again, its the circle of life. just try(and it can be hard) to not get drawn in. people rarely change their mind based on a internet fight, and you can waste hours on it.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

With Help, an open, cross-zone channel, becoming some players' medium of choice, and with players who haven't invested (in a literal sense) in the community coming in as free players (and importing the behavioral norms of other communities with them), I've seen a bit more ugliness in-game than I had for years, but not much more.

The forums, on the other hand, are more savage and cynical than they have been since ED. And unlike the days of ED, we don't have a group of steady, experienced posters trying to calm things down. Instead, the established community members, with only a few exceptions continue to rant and rave about how terrible the game is, whether that means gameplay design or background writing or art direction or what-have-you. For instance, recently, I saw a player come right out and claim in no uncertain terms that a developer was lying. The last time I saw that sort of thing was back in the days of Statesman-hate, and I never saw anyone post anything so blatantly hostile as a direct response to one of his posts in the same thread. The way players treat each other on the forums is even worse.

It continues to astonish me that people claim this is such a "wonderful" community when it's impossible to suggest the slightest positivity without being called stupid or a dev apologist or dishonest, and where every single announcement or positive reaction is accompanied by a jaded, "This is a terrible idea!" from the rest of the players. The only place I see any positivity at all any more is the Art forum and occasional discussions of certain artists on the Comic Culture board. Things have gotten really, really ugly around here.

I've noticed that people are getting more abusive on the forums as well, usually around hot topics like farming, PLing, and changes to existing parts of the game. By and large, however, this is probably the friendliest and most helpful gaming community I've been a part of.

I like how the OP has pegged Inventions as the downfall of humanity. Perhaps it merely gave those people who were already predisposed to that sort of behavior an avenue to spew their venom, rather than creating a problem where there was none before. It's not like they weren't also going crazy over the state of PvP, or ED, or any number of previous additions to the game.

I've noticed one or two specific people throwing out insults but nothing too wide spread.

I like many people had very big issues with the Exalted server. Not because of what it was but because tearing myself from Virtue which has been my home for 4 years (I did have another account at one point, which I lost in the divorce) was almost impossible.

I have noticed some trends, and a sort of wow mentality! People are frustrated with the actions of people now more than before. Team wipes etc. Before a Team wiped and most of us LOLed...some would ragequit, but I look at a team wipe as learning thing, or just a OH DAMMIT I got an ouchie" type deal.

The problem with player toxicity is communication barriers. Before If I was doing something dumb or someone else was doing something dumb, I could take it into tells, or communicate some way with someone. Now the issue is that the only way to communicate any form of critisism for Free players is either Local or Team because they cannot communicate back. Which actually brings everything to the attention of all the players as opposed to keeping it under low wraps.

I see this all the time when people are speaking in Local. And if you are out of earshot you see people reply in Broadcast and only get one part of the story, which sometimes sounds downright toxic. Usually if the Broadcaster was being a jerk other Virtue members would at least voice something that would then again boost the positive experience, however now that is not the option.

We also have no way of telling in help channel who is and who is not a Prem, Free etc, which means stupid questions sometimes get met with stupid answers or mean answers. Many times people would send tells to the person stearing them on the right path, however that is not an option again, and now has to be taken public.

As for the forums being more toxic. It think the word might be a little more frustrated because we have always been very oppinionated people about what we like and don't like, and we have become a little snippy. I admit I am a little snippy here and there, but for the most part I try to treat people with respect.

But, it's been a while since I have been playing now, and I have not a single person on Ignore, Global ignore or a Forum Ignore. It's because toxicity, while apparent is not worth the time hitting the ignore button. I could easily erase you, remove you or never see you again, but to be honest, negative people just don't phase me.

What does phase me is in game! And that In game issue right now for me is the lack of being able to communicate, directions, orders, giving help and assisting people, and since I see that as a barrier, sometimes frustration turns to toxicity.

I feel thats why things are more toxic "Sounding". It's because now it has to be public.

I just wanted to give an example.

What would you rather...

A) You do something wrong in the office, or workplace. Your boss comes out and yells at you publicly in front of other staff.

Or

B) You do something wrong and your boss calls you into their office and speaks to you about the issue to gain resolution.

One brings toxicity to the office environment, while one might breed some resentment to the boss/employee, but remains between those two parties.

It's the only example of toxicity that I could dream up at this very moment, but I wanted to apply toxicity in general in a real life environment.

I blame the forum's auto-logout bug.

If you're calm and rational in your first post, and the *&^(*&@#$# board eats your hard work when you submit it, you're less calm and rational during the %%^$^(*$% rewrite.



* Somewhat appropriately,this was not my first response to the thread.