early observations on the behavior of GW2 players

we're a very casual duo haven't played much, we've been talking amongst ourselves about how it seems like most GW2 folks are friendly and decent, or at least tolerant of newbies - people we meet in the open world aren't toxic - we've jumped into a couple of events where we really did not have a clue about mechanics, got rezzed but never yelled at - we've seen some commanders who seemed stressed out but even they were pretty chill and even helpful - and it was only yesterday for the first time we saw some weirdo in chat spewing some vileness

no doubt there's some turds in swimming pool, but the GW2 community as a group seems pretty cool, which is nice

Welcome to Tyria!

Oh yeah theres randoness in chats, but the ones whos lead to some toxic arguing is very/extremy rare.but dont expect same behavior on wvw/pvp chat, u will be disappointed.

Welcome to Tyria!

Any group of people will have its share of jerks, but GW2 does help by mitigating some of the contributing factors to such behavior.

@Tseison.4659 said:Yeah in-game, especially the group of folks for the Drakkar/Storms event at 9pm(EST) are super friendly and I always enjoy fighting alongside them. The only problem is you don't get those types of people while here on the forums. Can't even ask a question or have a civilized conversation without someone attacking you just for having an opinion...

Depends on the question.The can I have some gold? usually rile people up =)

the PvE community is a pretty decent bunch(i have no experience with the WvW/PvP communities), the only time i ever get annoyed with people not know what to do is OG Claw of Jormag... seriously people, stop standing on that cliffside and help protect the Golems :P

@Parasite.5389 said:the PvE community is a pretty decent bunch(i have no experience with the WvW/PvP communities), the only time i ever get annoyed with people not know what to do is OG Claw of Jormag... seriously people, stop standing on that cliffside and help protect the Golems :P

You know, I think I've done that like four times now, and always just wind up thinking, OK, if I don't end up dead, I did alright. I tend to just follow the crowd, so I must be following the right one...

Overall, the community isn't too bad.

Welcome to the game! Yeah, the community behavior in PvE is generally quite good. WvW may be a different story though. Best to play it with a thick skin if you want to try it, as you may get a lot of rage tells from upset gankers and people who wanted easy kills from you.

In general I think this community is pretty friendly to each other, although of course there are always exceptions.

One small thing which I always like seeing is the tradition (do NA servers have this?) where when someone is making a legendary weapon in the Mystic Forge they'll share the 4 items they're using in chat before they do it, and the finished thing after, and whoever is around - total strangers - will congratulate them on finishing it. It's a really minor thing but in a lot of situations, both in real life and in other games, I think people would see something like that as showing off and make a point of ignoring it, or tell them to shut up. Whereas here it seems like people are happy to know someone's achieved their personal goal.

Of course there's bigger things too. I often see mentors (with or without the tag) hanging out in starter maps offering to answer questions from anyone. There's always mesmers at the end of the daily jumping puzzle offering to teleport anyone who needs it, and I've generally found people will at least try to answer any questions you have.

Sometimes it can be difficult to find someone to help with something specific (especially if you don't know all the 'tricks' like using the Looking For Group tool for open-world content) but I don't think it's ever due to a lack of willing people, which is nice.

@Atomos.7593 said:Welcome to the game! Yeah, the community behavior in PvE is generally quite good. WvW may be a different story though. Best to play it with a thick skin if you want to try it, as you may get a lot of rage tells from upset gankers and people who wanted easy kills from you.

I was about to say I've never had that, then I realised I am the easy kill they wanted! =)

Although sometimes they don't seem to find it very easy. I've got no interest in 1v1 and generally find it quicker to let them kill me and respawn, but sometimes I wonder if they're actually trying because given my near-total lack of resistance it shouldn't take much. I'm never sure if they're looking for more of a fight and trying to give me a chance to fight back, or if I really am doing them a favour because I'm the only person they'd ever be capable of killing.

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:Welcome to the game! Yeah, the community behavior in PvE is generally quite good. WvW may be a different story though. Best to play it with a thick skin if you want to try it, as you may get a lot of rage tells from upset gankers and people who wanted easy kills from you.

Hehe. It doesn't happen very frequently, but has happened a couple of times for me. They can make for some interesting stories to share. Out of all of the PvP game modes I've tried in MMORPGs it has seemed to happen in GW2 most frequently for some reason oddly enough. I guess since f2p makes it possible to use another free account on the same server as the player you want to message to, and there are guild tags visible to everyone in the mode it makes this slightly more of a possibility.

1v1 can get boring fast sometimes even when you want to engage in them, because it's rare to find another player who plays the same way at the same time. The healing possible in a 1v1 can be quite ridiculous and result in stalemate situations where neither player is ever in danger of dying. Best to not waste your time on these if possible haha, by slowly healing and getting away, or waiting until someone gets bored of the fight and wants to die.

@Atomos.7593 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:Welcome to the game! Yeah, the community behavior in PvE is generally quite good. WvW may be a different story though. Best to play it with a thick skin if you want to try it, as you may get a lot of rage tells from upset gankers and people who wanted easy kills from you.

Dont have to be on their server to msg them block them to get their user id and then unblock and whisper.

@Linken.6345 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:Welcome to the game! Yeah, the community behavior in PvE is generally quite good. WvW may be a different story though. Best to play it with a thick skin if you want to try it, as you may get a lot of rage tells from upset gankers and people who wanted easy kills from you.

Interesting, thanks for the information. I didn't even know that's possible lol.

@ichi.1586 said:we're a very casual duo haven't played much, we've been talking amongst ourselves about how it seems like most GW2 folks are friendly and decent, or at least tolerant of newbies - people we meet in the open world aren't toxic - we've jumped into a couple of events where we really did not have a clue about mechanics, got rezzed but never yelled at - we've seen some commanders who seemed stressed out but even they were pretty chill and even helpful - and it was only yesterday for the first time we saw some weirdo in chat spewing some vileness

no doubt there's some turds in swimming pool, but the GW2 community as a group seems pretty cool, which is nice

Open world is like the least toxic place you'll find in gw2, you can solo, it's casual, organization mostly not required, so there's no real reason to rage.The more competitive/elite areas you will find more of the toxic/elitist players, raids, fractals, wvw, spvp, as it is in any other mmo.

Yep, this was actually one of the things that surprised me most about GW2. Actually one of the big reasons why I decided to stick around. Somehow all players in the open world kind of seem like a "guild" or a "family" in some sense. I gotta hand it to Anet for making open world cooperative rather than competitive, but most of the time there is a player or two that goes above and beyond just to help someone struggling with content.

In other words, basically the same as all MMO communities? Most people take care of their own business and say nothing to nobody, except maybe their guild mates. They are the good ones, but of course, you also have the really loud and obnoxious people who infect general chat and all the competitive and rewarding things in games.

@Yggranya.5201 said:In other words, basically the same as all MMO communities? Most people take care of their own business and say nothing to nobody, except maybe their guild mates. They are the good ones, but of course, you also have the really loud and obnoxious people who infect general chat and all the competitive and rewarding things in games.

While true, you have to give some credit to some basic design decision of GW2 which both facilitate as well as actively encourage cooperative behavior.

Some but not all are:

• no mob denial (less an issue today, but a standard in older MMOs. Who ever tags the enemy gets the loot)
• everybody can resurrect or rally other players (most other MMOs still have dedicated healers with resurrect abilities)
• no competition to resource nodes (again an older MMO favorite: who ever gets to the node first gets to mine it)
• automatic shared event participation aka automatic cooperative questing (not invented by GW2, but certainly most present here)
• etc.

While I would agree that other MMO communities are probably not more or less friendly, the way GW2 is designed from the ground allows for both: better cooperation between players, even if not actively pursued by each individual, and making this cooperation noticeable to players. Which in turn leads to a more positive perception.

@XenesisII.1540 said:

@ichi.1586 said:we're a very casual duo haven't played much, we've been talking amongst ourselves about how it seems like most GW2 folks are friendly and decent, or at least tolerant of newbies - people we meet in the open world aren't toxic - we've jumped into a couple of events where we really did not have a clue about mechanics, got rezzed but never yelled at - we've seen some commanders who seemed stressed out but even they were pretty chill and even helpful - and it was only yesterday for the first time we saw some weirdo in chat spewing some vileness

no doubt there's some turds in swimming pool, but the GW2 community as a group seems pretty cool, which is nice

And Divinity's Reach map chat, for some reason that escapes me. DR is apparently the place to insult other players over USA politics.

I am pleased that your experience is going well so far.

I hope that you continue to enjoy your time with us!

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Yggranya.5201" said:In other words, basically the same as all MMO communities? Most people take care of their own business and say nothing to nobody, except maybe their guild mates. They are the good ones, but of course, you also have the really loud and obnoxious people who infect general chat and all the competitive and rewarding things in games.

• no mob denial (less an issue today, but a standard in older MMOs. Who ever tags the enemy gets the loot)
• everybody can resurrect or rally other players (most other MMOs still have dedicated healers with resurrect abilities)
• no competition to resource nodes (again an older MMO favorite: who ever gets to the node first gets to mine it)
• automatic shared event participation aka automatic cooperative questing (not invented by GW2, but certainly most present here)
• etc.

I agree. My, admittedly limited, experience with other MMOs makes me think GW2 is an exception.

When I played a free trial of a well known MMO it took me about an hour to find anyone else in the starter maps and then all they'd say to me was "pls leave". I later found out that's because they'd found a grind spot, but if any of the enemies attacked me first I'd get the XP instead of them, so being polite in that game meant staying well away from anyone else, too far for the equivalent of say chat. When I got into a town I tried again to talk to people and was told I shouldn't talk unless I had something useful to sell and low level players have nothing useful, so I shouldn't talk at all. Overall it was a pretty miserable experience. I was later assured that after about 30-40 hours I'd be ready to join a guild and then I'd be permitted to talk to them, depending on the guild's rules, but it didn't seem worth the hassle. By comparison most people in GW2 may keep quiet but at least they don't demand silence from everyone else around them. If someone wants to talk they can, and it will often get a conversation going.

I think the game's design definitely helps with that. It's very hard for another player to be a problem in PvE, and highly likely they'll be able to help even if all they're doing is scaling up events so there's more to do and I think that helps make players feel more positive about each other.

@XenesisII.1540 said:

@ichi.1586 said:we're a very casual duo haven't played much, we've been talking amongst ourselves about how it seems like most GW2 folks are friendly and decent, or at least tolerant of newbies - people we meet in the open world aren't toxic - we've jumped into a couple of events where we really did not have a clue about mechanics, got rezzed but never yelled at - we've seen some commanders who seemed stressed out but even they were pretty chill and even helpful - and it was only yesterday for the first time we saw some weirdo in chat spewing some vileness

no doubt there's some turds in swimming pool, but the GW2 community as a group seems pretty cool, which is nice

In general I think you're right, but meta-events in GW2 need more coordination than anything I've seen in other games open worlds. Maybe it's just the games I've played but at most there will be a boss or group of enemies which needs 4 or 5 players to do it (or in ones without kill stealing things which everyone can attack if they want, which attract large groups) but it doesn't take any actual coordination, like making sure all the steps are completed or everyone uses CC at the same time.

Admittedly meta-events going badly is the time when people can get nasty, but it's usually just a couple of people ranting. It still takes more organisation that open-world in other games I've seen and generally has people more willing to help each other.

Welcome to the community!

The level of toxicity is very low in open world. It's only in high-level content where there are problems, like dungeons, raids, etc. Stick around! I think you'll like the community.

@Parasite.5389 said:the PvE community is a pretty decent bunch(i have no experience with the WvW/PvP communities), the only time i ever get annoyed with people not know what to do is OG Claw of Jormag... seriously people, stop standing on that cliffside and help protect the Golems :P

In WvW each server has their share of.... let’s just say special people.

They will troll team chat hard and act like fools. Why and what aren’t worth worrying about.

There are tryhards there as well, who will spaz about some things, plus you’ll get troll whispers from the other servers.

But... generally those are minimal. If you block and move on, little is problematic.

Of course, I like to listen to the rantings as it’s quite humorous. For me, it’s entertainment. Plus, when I see others getting worked up by it, I figure they are new to the mode or on a link. In those cases I try to interject about our special family members.

I like the community. Personal experience in a fractal. I know i messed up but the rest of the group was reassuring me "I did well for a beginner and go on" This shows how friendly most are. Or in WvW. You have to slay Veteran beasts. I came close to one but other (enemy) players was already around. I asked for a armistice because i just had to finish my dailies. Nobody attacked me, even let me run away afterwards. :) I personaly try to help whenever i can. I feel especialy bad when i wait in queue for pvp, somebody asks for help and the next seconds i go on the pvp map. I always hope sombody else will help out. So yes, in general this game have the most nice community in my experience.

@Talan Ondar.4150 said:Or in WvW. You have to slay Veteran beasts. I came close to one but other (enemy) players was already around. I asked for a armistice because i just had to finish my dailies. Nobody attacked me, even let me run away afterwards. :)Lucky for you. I tried this once and the enemies waited until the veteran spawned. Then ganked me then killed the veteran. /smh