The Increasing Toxicity in the Community

[lain.3148]

I think many of us have noticed the large increase in toxicity in game after the EoD expansion launch. A big example is many discussions around the dragon's end meta, but it's not limited to that at all. I've seen commanders of open world metas (not just DE) making fun of people for dying, telling people they shouldn't play the game or shouldn't get rewards if they down a lot, boasting about how much dps they are doing, etc. All of this in open world metas that are probably quite unlikely to fail no matter how 'badly' the squad performs and where many of the players are likely new to the map and maybe even new to the game.

Since the EoD launch I've also seen people saying things and having discussions in map chat that are frankly very offensive and would probably make many people feel unwelcome in the game.

That I've seen this kind of toxicity from commanders and veteran players and not just random newish players is inexcusable and I feel points to a major growing problem in the community.

People talk about how great and welcoming the gw2 community is, and in many parts i agree with them. There are so many amazing commanders and guilds in game that help new and veteran players so much, and these kind of people and guilds definitely are in the vast majority. The toxic commanders and players I've seen don't seem like they're affiliated with a guild that participates much in the community, aren't doing guild meta runs, and don't really seem to participate in the larger gw2 community at all. But the fact remains that many new and returning players will end up joining their squads in lfg and seeing them talking in map chat, leading to a worse experience with the game and a bad impression of the community.

This might sound a bit silly but I've noticed a lot of these players using certain terms, ie, asking for "big pumpers" in lfg and using 4chan slang in chat. This isn't something I saw at all in the game before EoD launched.

One of the biggest reasons many people, including me, play this game is because of the wonderful community. Because of that I think its really important to try to address or at least pay attention to things happening within the game that could make the experience with the community worse for people. Personally I don't know where this kind of behavior is coming from or why it's happening more now or what can be done about it, but I think its important as a community to take note of it and to talk about it.

Edited March 11, 2022 by lain.3148

[The Greyhawk.9107]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I disagree that this is the case, generally speaking.  I have seen some tempers flaring in Dragon's End but I've also seen a decent amount of teamwork on that same map.  In other map chats I've seen no more drama, bickering, and "adult language" than I've witnessed over the near decade of playing this game.  Its always been there, I think sometimes one gets exposed to more of it due to circumstances or just bad luck.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

That one is on Anet.

Who would have thought that locking one of the big reason people bought the Ex pack behind an Openworld raidboss is a good idea. 

Truely genius. 💡

 

[Suranis.8279]

Eh I noticed people being a lot more relaxed yesterday, even at Dragons end.

[nutri.1385]

I think it's always been there, it's just more visible if people are being toxic in open world. I also think that you must have been extremely unlucky (or I extremely lucky) but I never experienced 4chan level in GW2.

I sometimes "can't even", when reading wvw map chats, those are more explicit than most of my fractal or raid groups ever were, but still I wasn't inclined to report anyone ever. I haven't done much strikes, so I don't know about them, but I don't suspect it's much different.

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Suranis.8279 said:

Eh I noticed people being a lot more relaxed yesterday, even at Dragons end.

That's because a lot of players already gave up on that event.

[Rasimir.6239]

That kind of encounters isn't entirely new with EoD. In fact, the experience of meeting more of "those" kinds of players in game has made me not pursue new content straight away for a long time. There seems to be a certain kind of player that is drawn to new games or game releases, rushing through them, and feeling the need to show their self-perceived superiority to others by ridiculing them publicly for not being as experienced, not having bee-lined for max stats/level/rewards/whatever, or simply having different priorities (e.g. enjoying the journey vs. "beating" the game).

 

Don't get me wrong, I am certain there aren't all that many players that (conciously or unconciously) play games to talk down others, but with new releases you are bound to get an unproportionate number of them. Give the new content a couple of weeks until the "new shiny" has worn off, and things will go back to normal.

[Danikat.8537]

Meta events failing always brings out the worst in some people. I saw much the same with Silverwastes. I was late starting it so I missed the initial phase where most attempts failed, my first attempt was apparently the first flawless (no carriers lost) attempt everyone else in the map had seen and throughout it was very positive with people congratulating the other lanes each time they succeeded and shouting encouragement in between.

My second attempt failed and chat was very different. I ended up reporting a few people, including one guy who basically went afk in the middle lane in order to spend more time having a go at everyone else for not being up to his standards. At one point I revived 4 or 5 people then went down trying to reach another and got a whisper from someone I'd previously revived telling me anyone who makes a ranger (the profession I was playing) should be banned from the game for reasons I can't repeat here. (Literally, it will all turn into kitten.) I reported the whispers and sadly was too busy to revive him when he went down again.

It's the same with any other meta, even if people just think it's going badly. I did Dragon's Stand with 2 commanders and a mentor tag in the 3rd lane and even though that one was consistently the first to clear events (including the Blighting Tree) people in the other two would not stop going on and on about how we were going to fail because one lane was simultaneously empty and full of 'stupid noobs' who were incapable of understanding anything except pressing 1 while waiting for someone else to hand them loot. Even after we'd won some of them kept going on about how amazing it was that they were so good they'd won with an empty lane. 🙄

[MechanicalMind.9126]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's because a lot of players already gave up on that event.

 

Or playing all together lol. I havent seen too many builds for the newer classes come out because of nerfs probably inbound. 

[Labjax.2465]

There are far too many people in video game fandom who essentially believe that "games used to be hard" and then "they were made easy" "for casuals" and so they hate anyone, everyone, and anything that remotely resembles what they believe to be an association with or supportive of "casual" play.

They are wrong in so many ways, but I believe that's where a lot of elitist toxicity comes from. Some ways they are wrong:

- A lot of games did use to be harder, but they weren't necessarily any more fun, they were just hard.

- There are still games dedicated to being difficult with vibrant communities for them (ex: Souls series).

- Being casual or not isn't necessarily to do with skill level, nor is it a static status. People vary drastically in skill from game to game and can change in skill level or how they invest in a game over time. For example, some people are really good at FPS. Others are really good at theorycrafting in RPGs. These are two completely different skillsets. Some people get really hardcore during one period of their life and then get super busy and just want to chill in another part of their life.

- The so-called simplification of games hasn't always been to do with lowering difficulty. Sometimes it's just QOL and making more intuitive things that in the past were needlessly complex. Like systems where you have to develop a certain patience for it and esoteric knowledge of it to make use of it at all. In other words, some of what people perceive as past difficulty in games was just poor design.

[Firefox.2348]

Uh In my personal experience the toxicity has always been there. Even in OW maps people call others retards and other names for not doing the meta or doing it properly (they might be new, and would benefit much more with a quick explanation not an insult). I see this the most in Dragonfall... New or returning players just going there for the skyscale collection and getting indirectly berated by a salty commander etc.

 

But that doesn't mean there aren't kind players to be found. You can confuse face react me all you want, just saying what I've seen while I play. 🤷‍♀️

Edited March 11, 2022 by Jools.6293

[Gehenna.3625]

43 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

There are far too many people in video game fandom who essentially believe that "games used to be hard" and then "they were made easy" "for casuals" and so they hate anyone, everyone, and anything that remotely resembles what they believe to be an association with or supportive of "casual" play.

 

43 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

- A lot of games did use to be harder, but they weren't necessarily any more fun, they were just hard.

 

These two statements are completely opposite to each other. Either you say that they used to be hard or not. You can't have it both ways.

I played SWTOR for many years. I would be considered a hardcore player then. I was a healer in raids at the hardest modes. Then the game overall got dumbed down more and more. Now it wasn't necessarily fun how the game was at start, but they've gone too far in making the story/OW content way too easy. BioWare has difficulty with middle ground it seems.

I'm a casual player now and I enjoy GW2 that way. I am able to learn mechanics though due to my previous status as a raider. But here's the thing...I hated the fights that had too much randomness in it. Last night I was in a PUG with a good leader. We were on our way to getting it done. It was tight, but we could see us beating this boss that time. And then the fight had just one minute left and the tail attacked again and we got bubbles and those things that you choke in. Both of these mechanics took a lot of people by surprise because we were focusing on the last 5%. However, as I said many people were taken by surprise by this RNG mechanic. So we got it down to 2-3% when the clock hit 0. Without that RNG mechanic hitting at the end we would've made it. The group was really trying their best but that sort of thing is just really devastating to happen just at the end. And yeah, I know that feeling from raiding very well, so I could just shrug it off.

But the biggest problem is that there are many casual players there that have no idea about how to do mechanics because they're not interested but they do want the turtle mount because duh. And these casual players keep coming back and back because they keep failing and failing, till finally they get lucky and when they have the egg, they never come back there.

So all in all, these discussions and outrages could've been entirely avoided if you got the egg after completion of the story. It seems like Anet are on a mission to raise the skill level of their entire community and I'd say the majority of the community isn't actually interested in that.

Don't get me wrong, I do feel that there needs to be hard(er) content in the game, but it shouldn't be a gatekeeper for this mount. That was their biggest mistake. Besides it's a one-time reward. So not a recurring meta reward. /shrug

 

[Labjax.2465]

3 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

 

 

These two statements are completely opposite to each other. Either you say that they used to be hard or not. You can't have it both ways.

No they aren't. You just misunderstood the post.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

This is around the same difficulty as teq and tripple trouble were prior to the condi limit change. The problem was for the past half decade, anet has been coddling the playerbase with inclusiveness instead of pushing them to get better.  And now they have a super entitled playerbase who do not what to put in the minimum work for the reward.  And the work is so bare minimal, join a guild dedicated to the event, and get better at learning the event. Spamming 1 on the head during tail phase does not help.

[Nash.2681]

8 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

That one is on Anet.

Who would have thought that locking one of the big reason people bought the Ex pack behind an Openworld raidboss is a good idea. 

Truely genius. 💡

 

This. Same mistake they made during LS1 with original marionette, just worse since the time investment is much bigger. It's just too frustrating when you carry your own weight, execute all mechanics correct but still waste almost 2 hours for basicly nothing due to a bunch of people underperfoming hard or just intentionally trolling. And to make it worse, you have almost no control over who you're playing with. Even on organized maps you only have control over who's participating to a certain extend, since after all it's open world and thus free for all. That mix of feeling helpless and frustrated at the same time just ain't healthy for the game (who would have guessed...).

That's why I prefer instanced content over open world play a million times. If you fail there, you can start right over and try again and (ideally) improve right away and also have quite some control over who you're playing with.

[vandrefalk.6823]

11 hours ago, lain.3148 said:

I think many of us have noticed the large increase in toxicity in game after the EoD expansion launch. A big example is many discussions around the dragon's end meta, but it's not limited to that at all. I've seen commanders of open world metas (not just DE) making fun of people for dying, telling people they shouldn't play the game or shouldn't get rewards if they down a lot, boasting about how much dps they are doing, etc. All of this in open world metas that are probably quite unlikely to fail no matter how 'badly' the squad performs and where many of the players are likely new to the map and maybe even new to the game.

This must be generalisation from having seen a handful of occassions.

Granted, I see the chat being annoyed slightly after a failed Dragon's End meta, but I've yet to see any commanders being rude or toxic in map chat outside of metas... not sure whether it's an NA thing, but never seen that in EU.

[Omega.6801]

6 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's because a lot of players already gave up on that event.

Or because ANet has reacted to the playerbase and keeps making changes to it and the way ppl can get their turtle egg. But yeah, let's doom and gloom this even harder than necessary, it will certainly help the players, the game and the community. 😉

Edited March 11, 2022 by lokh.2695

[Shogen.5071]

ive played alot of mmo's gw2 being one of my all time favorites but the community is the absolute worst, it was so bad at one point every time i joined fractals i was abused for not being a heal brand so much so i got sick of it mystic forged all my gear to be heal brand stats just to stop the abuse (i would have preferred to enjoy the game an play the way i like to play but the abuse forced me into playing a way I find kinda boring)

Edited March 11, 2022 by Shogen.5071
drunk and cant spell for shizzles

[Zok.4956]

11 hours ago, lain.3148 said:

Since the EoD launch I've also seen people saying things and having discussions in map chat that are frankly very offensive and would probably make many people feel unwelcome in the game.

That I've seen this kind of toxicity from commanders and veteran players and not just random newish players is inexcusable and I feel points to a major growing problem in the community.

 

I noticed it, too and wrote about it a few days ago in 

 

 

"Also not fun is the toxic behaviour during the fight (and after a failure) in the chat blaming other players for the failure and insulting them. Its the most toxic behaviour of a lot of players in open world PvE I saw for a long time."

I do not know, if it has changed since then, because I don't do the meta anymore atm.

Just to clarify: I do not think it is toxic if groups for challenging content like high end fractals or raids ask for some kill proof or requirements in LFG. Thats OK.

But blaming and shaming, bullying, calling names and insulting is definitely not OK for me. That I have witnessed. Not once but a several times after/at a fail.

 

[Voltekka.2375]

Been in at least 2 unsuccessful metas daily (till yesterday, it was my first success!).

Not ONCE did people spew toxic nonsense. Some bitterness, yes, some trolling too. But toxicity? No. Unless i have been lucky with the groups i joined...

 

[Embered.5089]

I have noticed an increase in toxicity in both forums and map chat, but I think this happens every time after an expansion, i.e. every time we get an influx of new players. I suppose that some veterans are coming out of hardcore game modes to complete some content, too. Give it a few weeks/months--the toxic vets will have finished their grind and then we'll only have to deal with the newbies. The newbies flooding in from less friendly games come with habitual toxicity. If we continue to shower them with kindness, they will eventually learn to be friendly >:)

Also, the friendly people are still friendly. While map chat is toxic, guild chats, say chats, and small group chats continue to have their fair share of wholesome conversations. Why, just last night, a pair of players stopped by me just to compliment a recycled mount skin that I had just finishing re-dye-ing. They expressed their approval and went on their merry way. It was a nice end to my night. And a few days ago, I met someone while exploring Old Kaineng and we became fast friends. These encounters still exist! You just gotta ignore the bad behavior for now. Continue to be your toxic-free self and eventually the community will mellow out to join you. Guild Wars 2 has done many things to encourage a good community, and I believe that we will return to our ways soon.

[ens.9854]

13 hours ago, lain.3148 said:

...using 4chan slang in chat. This isn't something I saw at all in the game before EoD launched.
 

Never linked with Maguuma in WvW? Actually I've noticed a fair bit in Lions Arch over time as well, mainly trolls looking for reactions.

Edited March 11, 2022 by ens.9854

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

This is around the same difficulty as teq and tripple trouble were prior to the condi limit change.

Nah. Even before condi change and all the nerfs Teq went through it was never an event where completion was based on any RNG elements. After few days of getting used to mechanics, if you had big enough well-organized group on map (and no, that did not mean a full squad of raiders), the success was practically guaranteed. And you knew if it was going to succeed or not within first 2-3 minutes of the event.

This event is very much not like that.

[ugrakarma.9416]

15 hours ago, lain.3148 said:

 I've seen commanders of open world metas (not just DE) making fun of people for dying, telling people they shouldn't play the game or shouldn't get rewards if they down a lot, boasting about how much dps they are doing, etc. All of this in open world metas that are probably quite unlikely to fail no matter how 'badly' the squad performs and where many of the players are likely new to the map and maybe even new to the game.

 

This is worring but predictable.

Even on IBS strike, the first one, the Shiverpeaks Pass, sometimes i have seem ppl requiring meta stuff,  LOL, LOL.

i wonder whos get the idea the bring speedrunners to openworld would be great.

 

 

[Thornwolf.9721]

All I got from reading this was flash backs to Tarrir, dragons stand, dragons fall, serpents Ire and so on.... every big map like this that had any level of difficulty has always had this. The community is not better or worse than others; It just gets toted on for being so because a lot of it dies of quickly due to the nature of this game. But I tell you what; Get into the wrong instance of lions arch or tick off the wrong person in WvW's team chat or heck join a high end fractal and let one thing go wrong and you'll see first hand that this is the norm.