Mount Mazama.2917

I had to respond to this. CoD is not even a remotely competitive game. Skill expression is very low compered to other FPS games in general. The people that play CoD while acting poorly have no reason to as realistically even my worst and least experienced gaming friends play CoD because they can actually secure free kills in silly circumstances against "better" players. That game is a joke. I maintained a 1.8 K/D (not the best but above average) in Black Ops one using the worst sniper in the game as a meme. Players with way worse stats and favorite weapon of the OP guns flamed me. No CoD game is competition. A big issue with that game is it is built around making everyone feel like a god and when that does not always come to pass for them people flame. Funny enough it's very uncommon to AFK after getting frustrated in that game yet it happens often here. That game also has such a large community it is like okay just go next. However in a smaller community like GW2 those same people show up all too regularly and trying to let them understand how destructive that behavior actually is especially in a smaller community I believe is important.

This thread has blown up and I do not have the time right now due to holidays to read everything. I just want to say to everyone thank you for having the conversation. I hear your frustrations!!! I am someone who actually fits both sides of the coin. I started PvP early in my game like sub 200 hours. now I have over 1500 and most of it is pvp. I was what you guys loath and was treated terribly regularly from this community for over year. Now it's more often my under performing teammates that take the majority of the flack but I will say it. I test builds in ranked. I grow my skill and understanding of the game in ranked and I am not a perfect player or someone who has known this game existed for 10 years. I play to win, to get better and in search of a challenge. I do not flame my team. I do not afk in a match. I do not lose my PMA in order to fluff my own ego in a game with worse performing teammates. in mid gold (I know I am not a great player) I have gone 24 and 1 (with all top stats except damage) winning by ONE POINT. I could have easily lost and accepted that no matter my teams performance. I am about my own game play. You are never too good to improve. That core of my thought and opinion is that you will lose some games no matter what you do. It's how life works. You are not a god and will never succeed in ever endeavor no matter how well executed it. I am kinda drunk when writing this but I appreciate all of the community feedback because the backbone of this post is to try and bring the community together and improve our current situation regardless of what the devs decide to do. Sometimes melding different types of people allows both sides to learn something valuable from each other beyond PvP rating in a game. I just want us to treat each other better and sooth the pain some players are encountering. I do not have the answer which is why we must talk and bring people together. I understand both sides and even get frustrated myself but never take that out on others. I don't think frustration and anger mean you NEED to throw it on those around you even if they are contributing some of your woes. If you are a true competitor would you not want to take an opportunity to test yourself even further? If you lose it doesn't matter, if you can learn to hold your own and do well in a losing game isn't that proof of your own abilities? It is not a waste of time. Is it now the ultimate challenge that a true competitor seeks? You know if the game is over and you are losing rating. Just do the best you can and try to push your limits. Merry Christmas everyone I will read this whole thread after some nice family time and holiday festivity.

This is my first MMO that I played PvP in and a big part of it is actually how well done the PvP is and how engaging the combat system is. I guess it could just be par for the course in MMOs rather than this particular community but that is rather sad if true. I still hope that some people can see this and understand why behaving that way is so detrimental although maybe it is just a waste of time if this is the culture of these style of games. I just feel like I get a lot more people willing to be a teammate in the other games I play but a large part of that could be voice coms make it easier and I have friends who play FPS style games but not MMOs so I am always going in solo. I didn't consider that this is just par for the course I guess. Doesn't mean it can't improve though.

This is a good point. They definitely could make something like that I think cs implemented a similar thing but it was after I played it regularly.

I understand and accept this to be true, I have played Halo 3, CS:GO, Overwatch, Apex Legends all at a top 10% or better ranking. I know people act poorly when they get upset my bigger concern is how frequent it seems to be in this game versus others I have played. The only other thing that comes close is CS but it is different because no one stops playing the game to type out their frustrations and then afks the whole match, at least not with a frequency I remember. I am not new to competitive online gaming or people getting angry and my goal is not to end anger in GW2 PvP. It's the fact that the anger seems to be causing more poor behavior more frequently than other games I have played. When really there is no incentive to type slurs at your team while you stop playing the game. it seems especially strange considering most people in PvP are playing with the same people usually a smaller community is more conscientious of one another because they're kinda all stuck together for better or worse. I could be wrong though maybe GW2 is the same as any other but it sure feels worse to me. It is the only competitive game I have played where people routinely stop playing to be rude mid match.

You are pointing at things and giving very few words. I don't know if you are trying to convince me I am wrong or trying to make yourself feel better. My title is not great sure, and I was annoyed yes. I don't see how that makes this whole thing projection. I have made several arguments as to why I believe the title and you have not done much to convince me otherwise. You have quoted no specific points I made and countered them. It is not projection, I am not in these games losing my marbles and attempting to ruin other people's days by making them feel as bad I do because I don't feel bad. I am playing for fun to improve and get better at something, I find it rewarding regardless of the match out come I want to try and improve. You aren't really arguing here you are just saying one liners, I assume because you a person who is indeed participating in poor sportsmanship and making your own problem worse. The whole idea behind this post is to try and make the community better and understand the repercussions of these destructive behaviors. I have made some pretty clear arguments why I believe that and I am willing to change my mind. Start with the premise of my argument.

What am I projecting? From Psychology Today "Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person. The concept emerged from Sigmund Freud’s work on defense mechanisms and was further refined by his daughter, Anna Freud, and other prominent figures in psychology. " I don't really see what you are talking about here man. I am asking people to have sportsmanship, if anything the behavior I am condemning IS projection. Many of the players who have these mental breakdowns are not really that good but they claim it's all the match makers fault or all their teams fault for making mistakes in a game they are making mistakes in too.

Okay I understand where you are coming from, it is frustrating that there isn't action being taken I guess I am just of the mind that regardless of what anet does or does not do the real biggest issue in PvP is poor sportsmanship and community destructive behaviors from many of the players. I would like to see some constant afks gets a perm pvp ban after so many offenses but if it doesn't happen then there is nothing any of us playing can do about it. However the poor sports who are so upset about the state of the game trying to ruin it for everyone else are the core of the issue and they are actively making the community worse when doing so. I don't agree that it's anets fault that people who are upset at the state of the game then actively try to make game worse for everyone else. It is these players fault for shitting where they eat. They are exacerbating their own problem that they clearly don't have the ability to handle emotionally, they could easily just not play but they choose to play and make it worse. Anet isn't my daddy and I don't need them to step in I would just like people to understand this behavior makes their games worse too. It's self-destructive, self-loathing, anti-social behavior that makes no one want to play with them and thus reduces the pool of potential players furthering the problem.

If that is the state of the game and you keep playing the game then why would that give anyone the right to then get tilted? You get angry when your expectations are not met, if you know that it's possible to have that happen then expect it don't have a breakdown when it inevitably happens. By the way the more people pushed away from bad behavior the less players there are and the more often you get large gaps in mmr in your games. There are many players in this game most of them don't want to be called slurs for making a mistake because timmy can't handle his reality.

Yeah man I understand being annoyed. That isn't an excuse to be an awful person to a stranger. Go next, don't have a cry over it. I have nothing against being frustrated by something, what doesn't make sense is having a mental breakdown mid match. You didn't make much of an argument but it sounds like you are saying "Okay I am annoyed so I can whine with caps lock on and treat stranger poorly but it's okay because this teammate is not playing as well as I would like him to in an ideal world that I deserve because I am special."

It seems impossible to play a handful of games without someone letting out their mental health issues onto a stranger for no reason. It is after all just a game, I understand getting frustrated what I don't understand is deciding that you are going to type out all of your misplaced rage to a random group of strangers. I get a lot of people do it because it is done to them and they think it's okay or even what you should do if you feel like you are playing well and others are not. All you are doing is showing everyone that you don't care about other people or yourself by acting that way. Happy, self respecting individuals do not go crazy and have a melt down to random strangers on the internet when things don't go their way. It's sad the community seems to have more of these people than other competitive games I have played. When I was new this stuff bothered me but wasn't going to stop me from playing a game I am interested in getting better at for fun, now that I have played many games I can usually tell if someone is upset for a good reasons or not and it's way too common people blow up over things that don't even make sense. I honestly think this behavior is a big reason why many players don't ever play PvP again after encountering it. Most people can emotionally handle losing in a game. What is harder to handle is having teammates that treat you like you are in an abusive relationship with them over and over. This doesn't make anyone want to keep participating and the whole idea of an MMO is that it is a social game. A lot of players here blame A net for PvP dying and they have neglected it some sure but for me by far the worst part of PvP and of anything I have done in this game is people having mental breakdowns and PMing me rude things while also simultaneously blocking me so I can't even respond which is incredibly childish but happens way too often. I understand you can block these people and I do but it doesn't change the fact that there is always another person who wants to throw their self loathing onto others when they don't win every game. TL;DR: Having a mental break down on a stranger over the internet is childish and anti-social in a game all about playing with others. This drives people away from this game mode. Good sportsmanship is important to having a positive community and PvP is the worst behaved community in this game by far. It's not Anets fault it is everyone that contributes to poor conduct. Edit: changed some wording to improve the quality of the quality of the post.

When you play any game especially with random teammates you literally have no reason or right to expect anything from them. It's a complete waste of your time and out of your control. What you can do is improve yourself. Improve you decision making, mechanics, communication, conscientiousness of your team's current situation, your ability to perform your role as well as you can. That is what you can and should do. Eventually your teammates will get better once you do. All these "bad" teammates everyone complains about stop being in your games regularly as you climb. This is true for any online match made team based game. People that complain about their teams all the time are losers that never improve their own game or mental health. That's just the unfortunate reality in life. You never just get a free pass because you are so amazing at something but everyone around you is just holding you back tragically. Even if that were true you could do a few things to improve you situations and that is all you can do. Complaining just puts you and everyone around you in a worse mental state and generally that means worse performance all around. In this game specifically you will get farmed many times. If you actually have awful teammates every game that means the enemy teams have similar leveled players on them just as often as your team does. Get better than the average in your games and you will have enough of a positive impact overtime to win more and gain rank. If you can't handle self improvement then you are just as bad as all the people you are complaining about. Unfortunately, winning only 22 out of 60 matches means you are likely an active detriment in your games. Not guaranteed but very likely. Everyone is playing with the same match maker you are and some of them manage much better results and it isn't all just luck.

If you got dunked on by weaver they are probably just a better player than you.

Punish bad actors. There is an auto time out for failing to hit accept in 30 seconds but you can afk the whole game and queue all day. It's really simple they need to clean up the community because it is full of bad actors that are incentivized to continue their behavior as they are benefiting from it and everyone else at a detriment. It's a city without any law enforcement but the citizens aren't allowed to enforce any rules themselves or they go to jail. This is the biggest problem and the thing that keeps new players away more than anything else.

My wife recently started playing this game with me, she is in love with the ranger pet because "it is her little buddy". She is dead set on playing DPS ranger and doesn't want to play healer at all. Well, I play primarily solo OW and PvP so I also have all of my hours playing DPS self reliant classes and builds. She has no interest in PvP so we will primarily be doing OW events and dabble in Instances when she hits 80. Because I want to actually get into groups or build reasonable groups I have decided the best thing we can do is provide alacrity and quickness between the two of us. As a damage ranger main I feel like her only real option here is quickness Untamed. This leaves me with the responsibility of an Alac provider. I main Elementalist but honestly I find Tempest to be cumbersome. I would prefer to play DPS so I can play something similar to what I would do in PvP and solo OW, however I am flexible and if someone thinks there is a heal alacrity build that is just way better to play in general I would consider it. So what's everyone's favorite? TL:DR: Best/easiest/most fun Alac provider build that everyone is playing?