Guild wars 2 community and how it changed

Dear fellow Tyrians

I have been playing GW2 ever since launch and over the years something has come to my attention. This used to be a very pure, friendly and nice community but over the years it gotten from bad to worse. The level of toxicity in the community is SO high that this game lost most of its fun factor. In general players have become extremly selfish, toxic, elitist and just plain mean. There is hardly any repsect anymore. For example i decided to PUG a fractals /cm's group. It was a group that asked for 75 killproof and i have over 200.They asked me for killproof wich i linked to them. Aparantly this was not enough. I linked it in 3 differeant ways. Still not enough. I got accused for using a chat code (had no idea what that even was and had to research that later) and got kicked instantly. I whispered the group leader asking an explanation and he was mean, accused me again of faking it and said i linked my killproof TOO slow (i have to run to the bank and link it how can i do it any faster?). WTF is this bullshit. This is ridiculous toxic behaviour. What do you want me to do? Screenshot it and mail it to you? This is going way TOO far.

Being very rude to people you don't know (and for no valid reason even) has somehow become acceptable in todays gaming world. But the fact is, this is NOT acceptable. If you would behave like this in real life there is a big chance you'd get punched in the face (wich would in this case kinda be deserved eventhough i don't like violence).

Killproof is a allready a system i despise and should be removed from gaming. Its a discriminating and unlogical system that gives players that don't have it no chance of even proving themselves.

Before any of you start accusing me of being just a noob with fake killproof (had to research and ask around to even know this is being done somehow). I really do have alot of exp in this type of content (always have in every game i ever played like this) and i really do have over 200Kp. And i really am an exception. Even when i had no KP i constantly had to prove people wrong with my skill level (not bragging or anything) that i can handle the content. Even if someone has no KP, that doesn't automaticly mean they suck. There are people like me that can generally just handle high pve content and "do their homework" before they start this type of content.

Having said this. Behaviour like this HAS TO STOP! Its this kind of behaviour that takes out the fun factor and makes people quit the game or even online gaming in general in some cases (have seen that before).

Treat others like you yourself would like to be treated...!

Respect.

You're not addressing a community as a whole here in this post, but a peculiar sub-set of the community that keeps moving the goal-posts for content to make themselves appear elite and anyone not adhering to their little gate-keeping scheme is a noob or just sucks.

In other words, welcome to pugging in an MMO

By and large my experience with the community over my years of playtime has been positive, EXCEPT when dealing with certain pug groups

Dont worry the rest of the community is not like this at all, I do T4 frac and sometime CM. I just start my own lfg, and accept everyone even non meta build, if you know what you do and are somewhat competent with your build I mever say anything, maybe a tips here and there but that about it. Let the small toxic elitist community die in a corner, they are the whole reason anet stop doing raid XD

@WolfOwl.3968 said:You're not addressing a community as a whole here in this post, but a peculiar sub-set of the community that keeps moving the goal-posts for content to make themselves appear elite and anyone not adhering to their little gate-keeping scheme is a noob or just sucks.

In other words, welcome to pugging in an MMO

By and large my experience with the community over my years of playtime has been positive, EXCEPT when dealing with certain pug groups

You are absolutely right but thats no reason to behave like that. Developpers should see to it alot more that people that behave like this get banned or taught a lesson. Nothing is being done about this in the gaming world.

@Makuragee.3058 said:Dont worry the rest of the community is not like this at all, I do T4 frac and sometime CM. I just start my own lfg, and accept everyone even non meta build, if you know what you do and are somewhat competent with your build I mever say anything, maybe a tips here and there but that about it. Let the small toxic elitist community die in a corner, they are the whole reason anet stop doing raid XD

You are right and that is how things should be. But in all my time my experience with pugs has been mostly like this. Very few respectfull groups. But thank you for the kind words.

@"Blackwolfmetal.3640" said:

You are absolutely right but thats no reason to behave like that. Developpers should see to it alot more that people that behave like this get banned or taught a lesson. Nothing is being done about this in the gaming world.

Not sure what you're going for here, teaching "a lesson" narrowly interprets behavior from one viewpoint. The world isn't a Utopia, expecting to find it in a video game is reaching a bit.

@Blackwolfmetal.3640 said:

@"WolfOwl.3968" said:You're not addressing a community as a whole here in this post, but a peculiar sub-set of the community that keeps moving the goal-posts for content to make themselves appear elite and anyone not adhering to their little gate-keeping scheme is a noob or just sucks.

In other words, welcome to pugging in an MMO

By and large my experience with the community over my years of playtime has been positive, EXCEPT when dealing with certain pug groups

Well, if these players are breaking the Code of Conduct, then they should be reported. Anet will never publicly detail if any actions are taken or if so, what those actions were. Still, the mantra around here for those types of players is: Report, Block, Move on.

Actually, I find the gw2 community to be ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC! I have never come across a more positive and helpful gaming community, and that is part of the reason I keep coming back. Buut to be fair, I don't really play that "high-level" stuff. My closest brush with toxicity in this game was when 2 or 3 people left the party in fractal 42 because another player died really fast. We wound up beating the fractal anyways, no thanks to them! =p

i blame the ones who asked to remove wvw maps from gift of exploraion

It's a bit mean and rude to label the whole community as toxic, when it's only a small percentage.That would be like labeling the entire forum population as criers or ranters, just because one read such a post.

The community generally is good. There are a few bad apples here and there. The sum > The few. I've found people of like kind generally run together.

I generally avoid CM's and Raiding altogether, and I think the community is fairly nice. Even during failed pug strikes or raids, people were still fun to be around and willing to exchange tips or playful quips.

I had an off day yesterday, and kept dying in a dungeon. My team mates just picked me up and exclaimed "KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!". A little dramatic, but a nice gesture all the same.

This post is confusing.

First, You're accusing a whole community to be toxic while using toxic language yourself (like "noob" isn't a word I'm used to see in friendly communities)So I suspect your behavior may not be fitting what you're trying to promote.

Second, there are "experimented" toxic players AND there are "newcomer" toxic players as well. Asking for KP has nothing to do with toxicity.People who ask for KP in Raids or CM usually went through the whole training themselves, sometimes spending hours or even days on it (at least that's what I remember from VG) just so that they can get the experience of the fight. It's their right as a player to want to play with players with similar experience. Anet doesn't really provide any way to prove that experience other than KP. You know what happens when groups don't ask for KP? Inexperienced players try to sneak it and ultimately end up wasting time for everyone else. How is that fair?If players want to learn, they are welcome to lead groups themselves and go through the same training we all did. Some guilds are also dedicated to help. They are ways.

There will always be people that don't play nice, and it seems that you had to deal with some people. But most groups will not doubt you like they did. They will give you a chance. I've done tons of end content and literally never had to deal with what you're describing. People are generally nice.

@Blackwolfmetal.3640 said:Dear fellow Tyrians

I have been playing GW2 ever since launch and over the years something has come to my attention. This used to be a very pure, friendly and nice community but over the years it gotten from bad to worse. The level of toxicity in the community is SO high that this game lost most of its fun factor. In general players have become extremly selfish, toxic, elitist and just plain mean. There is hardly any repsect anymore. For example i decided to PUG a fractals /cm's group. It was a group that asked for 75 killproof and i have over 200.They asked me for killproof wich i linked to them. Aparantly this was not enough. I linked it in 3 differeant ways. Still not enough. I got accused for using a chat code (had no idea what that even was and had to research that later) and got kicked instantly. I whispered the group leader asking an explanation and he was mean, accused me again of faking it and said i linked my killproof TOO slow (i have to run to the bank and link it how can i do it any faster?). kitten is this kitten. This is ridiculous toxic behaviour. What do you want me to do? Screenshot it and mail it to you? This is going way TOO far.

First off, the "correct" way of pinging anything which is considered for entry is to use CTRL+Left Mouse button multiple times in fast succession. That's basically faster than copying a link thus "faking KP".

So while I might not agree with how the group handled it, you were likely either pinging in a very weird way, or not fast enough for what the group deemed okay. They should have simply said: sorry, can't trust that ping. GL HF.

You on the other hand could have just left it at that and stepped away. You deliberately engaged a group that did not want you. You could have walked away right then and there.

@Blackwolfmetal.3640 said:Being very rude to people you don't know (and for no valid reason even) has somehow become acceptable in todays gaming world. But the fact is, this is NOT acceptable. If you would behave like this in real life there is a big chance you'd get punched in the face (wich would in this case kinda be deserved eventhough i don't like violence).

I explained what was meant by to slow. You obviously have either never linked KP for anything, which would automatically call into question that you actually have 200 KP, or you had a static for all of them. Simply put, you did not pass the groups demand for proof of experience. It happens.

@Blackwolfmetal.3640 said:Killproof is a allready a system i despise and should be removed from gaming. Its a discriminating and unlogical system that gives players that don't have it no chance of even proving themselves.

Kill Proof, while annoying, functions as a sort of pre selection for challenging content. Players will always try to pre-select who they play with. Remove kill proof, and something else will take its place.

You are essentially trying to disallow other players of creating groups to their liking, or maximizing for success pre encounter. You should realize that is impossible.

@Blackwolfmetal.3640 said:Before any of you start accusing me of being just a noob with fake killproof (had to research and ask around to even know this is being done somehow). I really do have alot of exp in this type of content (always have in every game i ever played like this) and i really do have over 200Kp. And i really am an exception. Even when i had no KP i constantly had to prove people wrong with my skill level (not bragging or anything) that i can handle the content. Even if someone has no KP, that doesn't automaticly mean they suck. There are people like me that can generally just handle high pve content and "do their homework" before they start this type of content.

No one is assuming anything. No one here knows you to do so.

why do you keep engaging people who have already revealed themselves as being most unfriendly? Common sense would dictate there can be no good outcome in this.

Such special snowflakes can be found in every game. Block them and move on with your life.

I'm no fan of killproof either, I don't play with groups who ask for it. I'd rather make my own and take anyone who wants to come.Only requirement for high level Fractals is AR, that's it.

This has always been so. I remember that years ago, there used to be groups for dungeons, and only people with 5000+ AP were allowed to participate

just don't participate in groups that make demands

As a returning player, here is what I have personally noticed. I started playing during the first closed beta and played from launch for about 6-8 months. I quit because I burned myself out only returning here and there over the years, but not putting much time into the game until I returned about a month ago. I have been playing a lot since I returned and have been having a blast.

With that said, I agree with both sides in this thread. The majority of the community is friendly and helpful and we have many friendly, helpful people on the forums as well. It isn't fair to paint a whole community as toxic because of the bad behaviors of some.

But I do have to agree that the community does seem worse than it was when I originally played years ago. When I returned I made a revenant to try something different and reacquaint myself with the game before playing my old main. Map chat in Queensdale was horrible and I truly felt like I had logged into a toxic WoW trade chat session. I don't remember coming across that when I played at launch. Someone was asking about crafting disciplines. I have always liked to help people when I can in any game I play. The person was wanting to know how many you could do. I told them two, but you could buy a third from the shop. Of course then we had a number of trolls jump in acting as if anyone who bought the third was an idiot. It was just a group being jerks to be honest who were making it their sole purpose to be demeaning to others who played differently than them. And it seems when one starts, it opens the flood gates for more and more. It definitely wasn't the type of community I remembered from years ago.

Then last week I was playing my main in the Silverwastes working on my LS2 chapters. I was standing at a waypoint getting organized before going to a step in my story when I noticed in map chat a person in all caps literally demanding people to stop doing events and move to another instance. I didn't understand what the issue was, but it seems apparently Silverwastes is a farm map and they were running a farm. Now, here's the thing. If that person had of nicely asked in map chat for people to not do events, etc., they may have gotten a better response. But this person kept going off in map chat acting as if his group owned the instance and demanding in caps for people to not do events and to switch instances. I'm sorry, but that person and their farm group don't own the zone and didn't buy my game to give them the right to dictate how I, or anyone else, should play. If the person had been kind I would have gladly changed instances once I realized what they were trying to do. But as far as demanding? Nope, I stayed where I was. So it seems some of these older zones are now taken over by people farming? People want to farm? Go for it! But you need to remember that there are some people in the zone playing relevant content that has nothing to do with your farm. And if you want people to go to another instance, remember that kindness goes a long way.

Those are just two examples of a type of behavior I have encountered since returning to the game that I don't remember encountering when I last played. There definitely do seem to be more toxic people for sure. But, as a whole. there are more friendly and helpful people than toxic ones from my experience. But is it worse from my viewpoint? Definitely.

I never join groups asking for KP, even though I almost always have them. I just think it's dumb and doesn't reflect the skill of a player anyway.

Join a nice guild or add nice people as friend to play with them later. I've met very nice people that way, and you remember them much more than the other toxic players that also play this game.

Blame the KP fakers for joining and ruining groups so much that noone trusts random pugs anymore. Not the people who ask to spam it to prove its real.

This isn't anything new so what exactly changed?

The exact situation has been around for years.

Alternate variants with stacking spots goes back at least as far as back when CoF p1 was the only valid dungeon path.Then there are the AP requirements, titles, etc.

As much as i agree that this behavior is not ok these people have always been around. Ever since people were kicking players in dungeons runs just for playing a ranger.

This is the exact opposite of my experiences. In fact, I recently commented to a friend that I've yet to meet a jerk in GW2. Everyone has been very friendly and helpful.

Why not give them a link to killproof.me - this way they can verify it’s not fake ?