An option for complete communication blackout

Dear sPvP Community & Anet,

As many of you on here who frequent pvp of any kind, more often than not you endup in matches that literally make you want to pull your own hair out.Be it via yet another afker, be it due to the many bugs and or latency issues (thieves will probably know what I'm talking about), be it by the eternally broken mmr system, be it forced to carry a lost game when your team just isn't quite up to snuff only to lose out at the very last second due to poor play choices from your inadequate teammembers.Despite valiant efforts of containing the frustrations, sometimes you get such a rotten mmr luck spree that you see yourself sliding down a slope from plat 2 all the way back to gold 2.It takes immense composure and an admirable human being to not be affected by such nonsense.

Recently came back from a long necessary break, I found myself once more unable to resist the allure of sPvP.For there is literally nothing else in the game that remotely interests me anymore after playing from day 1 and having reached all the goals that I would've wanted.The title "Been there, done that" is such an accurate description that the only interesting thing left to do is testing my mettle vs non AI foes.Beating the same bosses over and over becomes boring, to say the least. Thank Anet for Living World.

But the same problem as before steadily but surely started coming back.At first, a few unnecessary back to back losses were something that I found quite acceptable.After all, if you've been away for a while, you're bound to get rusty.But once my satisfaction of class control was restored, the losses still wouldn't cease.

It took me a while to figure out why I kept getting losses up to 15 times in a row, but I think that I've finally figured it out.The player quality control that is supposed to match equivalent players together, isn't working. Or atleast, not good enough.I'd never be so brash to call myself skilled, or even remotely good. But decent enough to be able to tell the difference and reach plat 2 every single season.Someone who does know pvp basics (i.e don't offpoint zerg, don't cap an empty point with half the team) shouldn't be matched with players who aimlessly run in zergs after a mesmer or a warrior that by design is there to stall you and still somehow manage to die.Sure, they could've earnt their rating by luck or by carry of other quality players cruising through their placement matches, but anyone who's ever been stuck in gold for a while after your rating has been tanked from high divisions will know that despite their obvious gold rating, they don't play like it, and thus hold you back.This is why I hope that 2v2 ranked arena's one day will become reality.

Since it's unfair to expect a perfect matchmaking system (nothing in this world is perfect) I'd like to address the other elephant in the room: toxicity.I'll be the last to ever say that I'm never toxic. Everyone has their moments. PvP by nature is designed to draw out the worst in people. Myself included.Lately I've found myself turning into someone that I don't recognise. And you guessed it right, I've identified sPvP as the main cause.A valid question would be: "Then why on earth do you still play?".The answer to that is simple: "GW2 is to me like a drug. I enjoy playing it because in my opinion, no game out there can hold a candle to it. But at the same time, the thing that gives me joy also generates an infinite amount of frustration".The GW franchise has, as with dozens of others, pulled me through many dire times in life and I'd resent the thought of closing the curtains purely due to sPvP and it's affect that it sometimes has on me.It's like having a child, you enjoy it the first 15 years, then it starts to go through puberty and things start to take a turn for the worst.Your once pure and beloved child does something morally stupid to disappoint you over and over again, which leaves you to question yourself: "Where did it go wrong? Where did the happy times go to?".I have no desire to move to another game. I'd much rather help improve the one I have a love/hate relationship with to tip the scale towards love.Not the type to throw a broken item out before trying to fix it.

I am happy that the profanity filter exists. If only to shield others from the uncontrollable vile comments that sometimes emit from my fingertips after having to deal with yet another unfortunate matchup.But what would make me even more happy is an option to completely blackout communication from other players as well as yourself.Not just going into invisible modus, unchecking all chat boxes and unbinding your chat keys to prevent you from chatting, but also completely block any and all attempts to contact you or others ingame (except Black Lion, Anet and quest/story mail ofcourse).This should also include obnoxious player targeting, auto hiding the chat window upon login, player mail, chat of any kind and a filter over your screen when you're fully dead in pvp so teabagging (jumping on corpses) is made obsolete. It's like a red flag to a bull and I think there's plenty more that can be added to the game to not only kill such behavior, but also give the players the option to play completely solo, void of all social unpleasantries.More importantly, this is an option (lets for conversation purposes call it "Blackout") that shouldn't be easy to turn on and off. For the simple reason that we all know what it's like to be whispered or mailed obscenities only to find out the player has blocked you when you try to reply. When you choose to turn Blackout on or off, you should be unable to revert it back to it's previous setting untill a significant amount of time has passed.I'd even go as far as to suggest putting a password on the setting so you need to put in some actual effort to unblocking yourself.As Jim Jefferies says in his show "Freedumb", the good thing about a musket is that it gives you plenty of time to calm down before you can actually shoot with it.

Some may find this silly, others may not. Either way I wanted to have this put out there and maybe, just maybe sPvP could become somewhat more pleasant for all of us.

Thanks for reading.

uh you can already do this by playing with your eyes closed.

are you asking for something that stops you as well from sending messages?hmm..interesting concept.

At the very least, there should be an option to stop anyone from sending you anything via mail BEFORE you block them.

@EnderzShadow.2506 said:are you asking for something that stops you as well from sending messages?hmm..interesting concept.

At the very least, there should be an option to stop anyone from sending you anything via mail BEFORE you block them.

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. People who know they have a certain aptitude for toxic tendencies and would really like to restrain themselves from such behavior should have an option to not only restrict themselves but also others from getting the chance to do so. It'll definitely reduce the amount of faux and spiteful reports that Anet get on a daily basis.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:uh you can already do this by playing with your eyes closed.

I'd really like to see how you pvp with your eyes closed. Maybe you could teach us?

@zell.3051 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:uh you can already do this by playing with your eyes closed.

well, you know, some classes you just roll your forehead across the keyboard :P

@EnderzShadow.2506 said:well, you know, some classes you just roll your forehead across the keyboard :P

Haha, you are definitely not wrong there.

I like the idea, I really do.And as politically correct and non confrontational type of game/anet is,And as easy as I think this would be to implement,I just can't seem them doing this.

You must have had me in my match...

Im a Tempest that will happily chase down a thief or mesmer off point trying to escape or refresh... I have no interest in nodes other than the fact that they attract a fight...

You can already set up a chat channel that has everything unchecked: /guild, /whisper, /party, /team, whatever. You can swap back & forth.If you don't want to see the chat when you swap back, exit the game first.

@zell.3051 said:It takes immense composure and an admirable human being to not be affected by such nonsense.

That would be me. But i find the only moments i'm kinda yelling/raging - but sounds more like a sigh of exasperation, is to myself when my fingers slip or when my toon doesn't do what i expected it to do. Otherwise, winning or losing, i'm as expressive as a stone on the sidewalk.

@MyPuppy.8970 said:That would be me. But i find the only moments i'm kinda yelling/raging - but sounds more like a sigh of exasperation, is to myself when my fingers slip or when my toon doesn't do what i expected it to do. Otherwise, winning or losing, i'm as expressive as a stone on the sidewalk.

Totally with you on that. The all too familiar expression of self-disappointment when you know it's you who messed up a fight.

@zell.3051 said:Not just going into invisible modus, unchecking all chat boxes and unbinding your chat keys to prevent you from chatting, but also completely block any and all attempts to contact you or others ingame (except Black Lion, Anet and quest/story mail ofcourse).

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:You can already set up a chat channel that has everything unchecked: /guild, /whisper, /party, /team, whatever. You can swap back & forth.If you don't want to see the chat when you swap back, exit the game first.

Thanks!

@sephiroth.4217 said:You must have had me in my match...

Im a Tempest that will happily chase down a thief or mesmer off point trying to escape or refresh... I have no interest in nodes other than the fact that they attract a fight...

There are situations when such choices are justifiable. However, never as a zerg. Fighting alone doesn't win matches unfortunately. Your team could have 5x as many kills and still easily lose the game purely due to ignoring nodes.

@EnderzShadow.2506 said:I like the idea, I really do.And as politically correct and non confrontational type of game/anet is,And as easy as I think this would be to implement,I just can't seem them doing this.

You're probably right. But you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

@zell.3051 said:

@sephiroth.4217 said:You must have had me in my match...

Im a Tempest that will happily chase down a thief or mesmer off point trying to escape or refresh... I have no interest in nodes other than the fact that they attract a fight...

There are situations when such choices are justifiable. However, never as a zerg. Fighting alone doesn't win matches unfortunately. Your team could have 5x as many kills and still easily lose the game purely due to ignoring nodes.

Correct, but killing players is much more fun than standing on nodes...

@zell.3051 said:

@EnderzShadow.2506 said:are you asking for something that stops you as well from sending messages?hmm..interesting concept.

At the very least, there should be an option to stop anyone from sending you anything via mail BEFORE you block them.

Long time ago Dota 2 introduced 'mute' penalties, to anyone reported several times for being annoying, toxic etc 1sr strike was 1 week of mute(no chat, no voice), 2nd was 3 weeks, 3rd was sending person to low -priority games for 5 -10 wins or time-gated low priority.Didn't help much tho, what really helped is 'commendation' system, If a player deserved compliment, was helpful etc in your opinion, you could commend them(commendation were limited per week) and in the end of that week commended players would receive something nice like a skin. (most of the skins were cheap in Dota2)

Both systems work till now in game. You get punishment and prize, one of those didn't work well, 2 of those did the trick, well excluding extreme players ofc.

@sephiroth.4217 said:Correct, but killing players is much more fun than standing on nodes...

Can't disagree with that. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for long term goals.

@phs.6089 said:Long time ago Dota 2 introduced 'mute' penalties, to anyone reported several times for being annoying, toxic etc 1sr strike was 1 week of mute(no chat, no voice), 2nd was 3 weeks, 3rd was sending person to low -priority games for 5 -10 wins or timegated low priority.Didn't help much tho, what really helped is 'commendation' system, If a player deserved compliment, was helpful etc in your opinion, you could commend them(commendation were limited per week) and in the end of that week comended players would receive something nice like a skin. (most of the skins were cheap in Dota2)

I've heard of that working wonders. However, I strongly believe on a fundamental level that preventing is better than curing. A trinket as incentive to do good is the same as giving a child a sweetie for doing what you want it to do. Good behavior should be inherent for if no reward comes from doing whats expected of you, the incentive to continue said desired behavior will rapidly diminish. Though the desired effect may be attained, the motivation to do so isn't.

First of all, ty for the constructive post, i like it if a player confront with his problems and try to get a solution.

Imo the ranking works fine. As more randomness is added as bigger the bounce. Means if you use a skill, random it could be good at some points so you win, but you also loose cause you use it wrong. This gets higher as more random you act. But if you know what you do, it's allways a win, so it runs only one way. Maybe you got lucky some matches before you got the loosestreak. Oh and ofc some actions get punished stronger than others but a random punish stays random.

What happens if you won a game without knowing what your actions means for the game?

• Normally you feel good, cause you think you did at least something useful. So you start to think you are more skilled then you really are, at worst case.-> But if you loose you don't understand why and get frustrated by yourself failing to find a solution you can accept.

Again on worstcase, what happens if you don't find the right answer to the question why you loosed?

• most players start to seach a better reason (its the fault of something else: a other player, they were good, something is broken, the system fail...)

If the person now repeat that, he gets frustrated and let it out.

I hope you can agree at some points. Now on your idea:

• it will change to less, at least cause you can go offline and others will still be toxic
• but ad some different pings for the minimap can help (something like :+1: , for gj)
• ranked is spvp (+good option to find mates), tournaments is the competitive pvp, spvp is a good place to duell, skim, train with others, unranked can be used to practice the teamplay

At least more understanding of a game will help to grew as a community

@xp eke xp.6724 said:First of all, ty for the constructive post, i like it if a player confront with his problems and try to get a solution.

Imo the ranking works fine. As more randomness is added as bigger the bounce. Means if you use a skill, random it could be good at some points so you win, but you also loose cause you use it wrong. This gets higher as more random you act. But if you know what you do, it's allways a win, so it runs only one way. Maybe you got lucky some matches before you got the loosestreak. Oh and ofc some actions get punished stronger than others but a random punish stays random.

What happens if you won a game without knowing what your actions means for the game?

• Normally you feel good, cause you think you did at least something useful. So you start to think you are more skilled then you really are, at worst case.-> But if you loose you don't understand why and get frustrated by yourself failing to find a solution you can accept.

Again on worstcase, what happens if you don't find the right answer to the question why you loosed?

• most players start to seach a better reason (its the fault of something else: a other player, they were good, something is broken, the system fail...)

If the person now repeat that, he gets frustrated and let it out.

I hope you can agree at some points. Now on your idea:

• it will change to less, at least cause you can go offline and others will still be toxic
• but ad some different pings for the minimap can help (something like :+1: , for gj)
• ranked is spvp (+good option to find mates), tournaments is the competitive pvp, spvp is a good place to duell, skim, train with others, unranked can be used to practice the teamplay

At least more understanding of a game will help to grew as a community

Always like psychoanalytics. Self-reflecting is a fantastic tool to determine where problems originate.Accepting that there's a problem is the first step to recovery.The main reason for the Blackout option is so you can protect yourself from other's and others from your toxicity.Online competitive play will always be an area of inpending certainty for toxicity. Where people come together, there will be elevated chances of conflict or disagreement.Nothing will change that, but we can atleast pool ideas together in order to tweak current options so those more easily affected and guilty of it have a means to play without having made others and themselves feel worse when they logout.

Last night, me and a few of my guildies did unranked for shids and gigglesAlthough I play Ranked seriously, this was just for fun.The opposing team had not one but 2 Holosmiths, a class I absolutely loathe.

I wish I had this black out option last night hahaha

@EnderzShadow.2506 said:Last night, me and a few of my guildies did unranked for shids and gigglesAlthough I play Ranked seriously, this was just for fun.The opposing team had not one but 2 Holosmiths, a class I absolutely loathe.

I wish I had this black out option last night hahaha

I feel your pain. It's hard to have fun when there's so many variables that can let you down.

Players shouldn't be able to whisper you if they have blocked you. I'm tired of players preemptively hiding from my razor sharp, deadly wit.

@mortrialus.3062 said:Players shouldn't be able to whisper you if they have blocked you. I'm tired of players preemptively hiding from my razor sharp, deadly wit.

They can't. But what they do is send you the message first and block you afterwards. Be it via whisper or mail. Usually mail so they're dead sure you'll receive it.