Aviator Box Trolling

[solar.2083]

Is Aviator box trolling in AB meta is bannable?

[Lysico.4906]

Nope. Just don’t click it

[Lottie.5370]

You can just interact again to disable the effect. Why would it be bannable?

[Mike.7983]

Honestly wish they would add a cant place portal, merchants, usable items aka aviators/bobble near a lootable source. Even if you actively click around the troll placement its a real annoyance that should be able to be blocked with proper coding.  Least add the persons name to the box/portals so we can all add them to block in game.

[Freya.9075]

You can keybind next ally and use it to easily avoid the things they place on chests. It also works if you accidentally place several banners on top of each others. 

Edited August 9, 2022 by Freya.9075

[TheQuickFox.3826]

No, it isn't.

[disco.9302]

6 hours ago, solar.2083 said:

Is Aviator box trolling in AB meta is bannable?

why would it be?🤔

[Sunchaser.9854]

I always find it humorous, if you're fragile enough that for fun group joke items like a chest or vroom deathly offend you to the point you wish for bans, no offence but that's quite a thin mmorpg skin. I did some wow mmorpg tanking and quite often if i had trash dps who did 4k dps, stood in fire and died to my 20-40k tank dps and 40k-70k BFA dps spec dps, i'd often just solo the entire dungeon without em. Heck i started off playing some 'underpowered' specs so i optimized the crap out of them to the point people thought my off meta spec doing 2x their damage of a poorly played meta spec was 'broken' despite requiring 4x more apm, gear optimizations and key presses for their rotations.

 

Ironically i remember when they went about "havoc DH is braindead", they took on the spec and DASHED off a cliff lmao.. So yeah. At least gw2. no matter how bad someone is at their spec or their preference to advocate for auto attack ones to be skill. 🤣, just remember that people in gw2 are yet to have their auto targeting abilties yeet them off cliffs and die with gliders around lmao. (Though, i did see a couple mechs walk off the edge of a cliff in dragon fall when the raid leader flew over lmao. ) 

[Labjax.2465]

1 hour ago, Sunchaser.9854 said:

I always find it humorous, if you're fragile enough that for fun group joke items like a chest or vroom deathly offend you to the point you wish for bans, no offence but that's quite a thin mmorpg skin. I did some wow mmorpg tanking and quite often if i had trash dps who did 4k dps, stood in fire and died to my 20-40k tank dps and 40k-70k BFA dps spec dps, i'd often just solo the entire dungeon without em. Heck i started off playing some 'underpowered' specs so i optimized the crap out of them to the point people thought my off meta spec doing 2x their damage of a poorly played meta spec was 'broken' despite requiring 4x more apm, gear optimizations and key presses for their rotations.

 

Ironically i remember when they went about "havoc DH is braindead", they took on the spec and DASHED off a cliff lmao.. So yeah. At least gw2. no matter how bad someone is at their spec or their preference to advocate for auto attack ones to be skill. 🤣, just remember that people in gw2 are yet to have their auto targeting abilties yeet them off cliffs and die with gliders around lmao. (Though, i did see a couple mechs walk off the edge of a cliff in dragon fall when the raid leader flew over lmao. ) 

Imagine you are a new player, doing AB for the first time. You go to loot one chest and get a strange effect applied to your character. You have no idea how to turn it off and you aren't the type of person to find it funny, so you are just confused and annoyed. You go to another chest and this time you can't click it because there's a BL merchant inside it. You aren't the type to give up quite so easily yet, so you keep moving and loot a couple chests, thankfully these seem to be behaving normally. Then you get to another and this time there's a TP merchant inside it. 3rd strikes puts you over the edge. You log out in a mixture of confusion (not understanding what's going on), embarrassment (that you don't know how to overcome it), and annoyance (that the game experience is frustrating instead of fun). You go play another game where the mechanics of things make more sense.

Meanwhile in chat, someone is complaining about it and another player is telling them it's just a joke and is not a big deal. None of which prevented you from logging out and abandoning the game. You couldn't care less about the chat argument going on, the terms being thrown around like chest troll or portal troll are unfamiliar to you anyway, you just know that you wanted to be a competent player and have a good time, and neither one is working out.

The troll defenders log out feeling satisfied that no real harm was done, since they never heard from the person who left the game and felt assured that the person who vocally complained was just a complainer and wasn't really going to go anywhere.

Over time, even the vocal complainer gets worn down and they leave too. That meta at least, if not the game as a whole too. The end result, there are less people around to argue with the troll defenders, so they now feel increasingly validated each time, since their numbers seem greater. Still, they are unaware of the damage being done and just think they've won an argument.

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if we see, post-steam-release, a steam review popping up where someone says that GW2 end-game is infested with trolls and cites portal and chest trolls as the reason in a way that isn't nuanced and paints the entire community with an overly broad brush. It won't matter to people reading the review that it's unfair. People reading it won't have any context to know better and won't care to hear excuses from veteran players. It will matter that they perceive the game as being overrun with trolls and people who defend those trolls. I know stuff referencing steam gets thrown around a lot to add more weight to it, but I don't know how else to put emphasis on why it matters. It is a persistent behavior with some metas like AB and TD, and it's really important to understand that players unfamiliar with the game's systems *can't even experience it as a prank if they don't even understand enough about the game to know what's happening in the first place.* They are more likely to experience it as personal embarrassment, confusion, and frustration, and the normalizing of it in chat will only confound their feeling that they are missing something they should be capable of understanding.

It's one of the reasons I try to make it a habit of explaining mechanics every time I command a meta, even if I have no specific reason to think people new to it are present. They may find it embarrassing or uncomfortable to ask for an explanation, or even be confused as to how to ask. So how would we think people are going to have any idea how to ask what in the blue kitten is going on with the chests and portals, when other people seem to be dealing with them fine, ignoring or working around it in a way they can't readily see the how of.

It honestly kittens me off that myself and others put in effort to help onboard people in this way (and honestly, others who do way more than I do to help onboard people too), and then you've got people who do the exact opposite and make the game harder for them to understand. When I stop and think about it, it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time, especially when I see people defending and dismissing it like it doesn't matter. And it makes me feel like I'm almost misleading people, helping onboard people into a community they won't really want to be a part of in the long-term, when they start to run into the vocal people I do who are dismissive of those who have a problem with something like this. Maybe I'm not really doing them any favors and I should be warning them away instead.

TL;DR: this isn't about toughness and fragility. It's about people knowing what in the world is going on and feeling welcome. If things work in those areas, people are more apt to stick around, which means the game does better, which means with any luck it gets more development resources to it, etc. There's definitely some self-interest to be found in there for even the people who want to view if selfishly. If things don't work in those areas, you can feel tough and think of them as fragile to your heart's content, but it won't help the player numbers grow.

[Sunchaser.9854]

I got the aviator box on me when i was trying to loot a chest after a blackout event. After vrooming around with a T pose charr for a couple minutes and laughing, i just logged out and was surprised to see it disappear. It's not the kind of fun that hurts anyone, if someone really is so eggshell fragile that that making vroom sounds is the reason they'd quit a game. it's probably more than a camel's back or they probably would have been just as apt to leave if someone said their dps sucks or sent them a dye they didn't want or said hello. 

[Ashantara.8731]

9 hours ago, solar.2083 said:

Is Aviator box trolling in AB meta is bannable?

No, but it's not as bad as the birthday cake trolling. At least, you can deactivate the aviator effect again by interacting with the box a second time -- expensive ascended food effects, however, will be overwritten.

[Sunchaser.9854]

The birthday cake might eat expensive foods, but usually you don't need to use like 40 S food for like open world stuff. Most of it are feasts anyways for the people who might not, but i think if you manually click on the stuff you want to target first, that helps.

 

I mean, if you're just doing open world content, i think it might depend on spec but like looking at the gear optimizers, sometimes you're trading like 2% more dps for like +10% more experience/karma stuff and magic find if it's open world. If you're doing cutting edge content or raiding, the feasts should usually be up, But one way to think of is. If you're 2% less efficient for 1 hour, that's only about a minute a hour wasted. So worrying for longer than 2 minutes might be a xploss. Unless raiding. . 😛 

 

I mean it's more a filler items but when i don't want to bother with a food buff but probably wouldn't spend on one, it's not a bad filler. You can spend more on Omnomberry bars for farming but when it takes like a hour to loot 2s, really makes you wonder if the 1 silver pays off the 4 with it. 

+40 to All Attributes
+10% Karma
+15% Magic Find
+15% Experience from Kills

[kharmin.7683]

This, again?   (sigh)

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/92924-aviator-box-and-other-items-placed-under-chests-purposely-to-annoyprevent-players-from-looting/?do=findComment&comment=92923

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/25620-aviator-memory-boxes-in-treasure-chests/?do=findComment&comment=25619

 

[DexterousGecko.6328]

2 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

This, again?   (sigh)

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/92924-aviator-box-and-other-items-placed-under-chests-purposely-to-annoyprevent-players-from-looting/?do=findComment&comment=92923

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/25620-aviator-memory-boxes-in-treasure-chests/?do=findComment&comment=25619

 

thanks for those links that no one is going to read.

 

On topic: I don't think they should be bannable, but being able to clearly activate what you're trying to activate would be great. Someone shouldn't be able to negatively affect someone else's gameplay, especially in-town/at a quest giver with a item. Either having a confirmation box option ("do you want to activate this toy box?") or the option to just auto-deny other players toys, similar to auto-deny guild/party invites would be appropriate.

[Farohna.6247]

Just like crossing the street, look both ways before you click lol.  While I loathe aviator boxes, they do no harm, are not being used in a bannable fashion, just annoying.  I automatically assume there will be a mesmer troll, an aviator box, or box o' fun at every meta...after I made the mistake at the end of TT a couple of times.  Fool me once, shame on them, fool me twice, shame on me.  Now I just enjoy the screams from those who clicked.

[disco.9302]

5 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Imagine you are a new player

and what? you hate harmless fun? I'm waiting to be showered in confused emojis but this topic keeps repeating because some individuals want to exaggerate how a gizmo gives them Vietnam flashbacks. If you find your day ruined because of a minor harmless joke then maybe you should look inwards for the issue.

[god fragment.5716]

Ignore the minor inconveniences and move on. Don't feed the trolls. They are fishing for your reaction and as long as posts such as these pop up or people complain in the map chat, they will keep doing it.

[Ashen.2907]

14 minutes ago, disco.9302 said:

exaggerate how a gizmo gives them Vietnam flashbacks

Sure,it is other people who are exaggerating.

If your idea of fun comes at others' expense perhaps you are the one who needs to look inward.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Ashen.2907

[Sobx.1758]

6 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

You have no idea how to turn it off and you aren't the type of person to find it funny, so you are just confused and annoyed.

...and then you remember you're playing mmorpg so you ask about it in chat and solve your ""huge problem"" by instantly learning something new about the game you've started playing. 

2 hours ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

(...) but being able to clearly activate what you're trying to activate would be great.

When you're about to interact with an item or npc, there's a yellow/green graphic containing a word. Read that word to know what you're about to do when you press the F key.

[Cuks.8241]

I would take advantage of this thread and thank all the players that put aviator boxes down for some extra looting fun.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

6 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Imagine you are a new player, doing AB for the first time. You go to loot one chest and get a strange effect applied to your character. You have no idea how to turn it off and you aren't the type of person to find it funny, so you are just confused and annoyed. You go to another chest and this time you can't click it because there's a BL merchant inside it. You aren't the type to give up quite so easily yet, so you keep moving and loot a couple chests, thankfully these seem to be behaving normally. Then you get to another and this time there's a TP merchant inside it. 3rd strikes puts you over the edge. You log out in a mixture of confusion (not understanding what's going on), embarrassment (that you don't know how to overcome it), and annoyance (that the game experience is frustrating instead of fun). You go play another game where the mechanics of things make more sense.

The first time someone did that with the Aviator I made like 20 different screenshots while laughing my kitten off. I then asked in chat how to get rid of it, they told me to just interact with the box again, but by then it disappeared, so I finished looting the chest then just restarted my game, done.
If there is a merchant in the chest I'm trying to loot I just move my mouse to click on the loot chest and not the merchant.

Not that hard.

[Lottie.5370]

I think the biggest issue here is that when players are placing them by chests etc, they are intending to grief and troll.

 

It doesn't matter if some people think it's fun, there's lots of people that find it annoying - it doesn't mean they have thin skin. The constant NEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWWWW sounds can be grating if you can't find the box to turn it off again.

 

That said, I still don't think it should be bannable, I just think you shouldn't be able to place them (or any novelty/spawn etc) near to a chest/NPC.

[SuavePuppy.2809]

7 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Imagine you are a new player, doing AB for the first time.

As much as I roll my eyes at the people who do this, the idea that the occasional goof is going to tank player numbers is wild. Are we really going to defend banning people for this? Do you really think all your helpfulness is undone with an aviator animation? 

[Hashberry.4510]

These trolls want to show their boredom and contempt for others players. Defending this behavior is truly something to be proud of.

[Labjax.2465]

2 hours ago, SuavePuppy.2809 said:

As much as I roll my eyes at the people who do this, the idea that the occasional goof is going to tank player numbers is wild. Are we really going to defend banning people for this? Do you really think all your helpfulness is undone with an aviator animation? 

It's interesting how people are accusing me of exaggerating while also blowing out of proportion what my complaint is so they can knock down the strawman "world is ending" version of it. I've seen the exact same thing happen in map chat when people complain about portal/chest trolls there. Somebody says it's a problem, another person treats them like they are saying it's the end of the world. Apparently there are only two modes of something being an issue, either it's the end of the world or it's just a joke and doesn't matter???

I did what I did to try to paint a picture as to how it could result in the loss of a player. I never claimed anything like that it was "tanking player numbers" (which would imply a precipitous and consistent loss so large Anet would have to have taken notice by now).

Nor did I say that I think all the helpfulness being done by some players is undone by portal/chest trolls. I did indicate that I think it detracts from the help some are doing by accomplishing the opposite. And that normalizing and defending it done by people such as the ones going after me in this thread (apparently the same type who go after people in map chat when they complain) make me second-guess myself about what kind of community myself and others are helping onboard people into.

If you are concerned about the idea of someone being banned over it, you can just say that instead of repeating the "it's just a prank bro" style mantra. There are probably more proactive ways it could be handled, like coding the boxes so someone can't drop an item (or portal) right on it, as IIRC someone else mentioned in this thread. There is some code already kind of like that, with United Legions Waystations not allowing multiple right next to each other. So it's probably possible to do, question is if they want to put in the time and look for a technical solution that will put a stop to it, without messing anything up that's well-intentioned player behavior. For example, if coding for portals, keeping in mind to make an exception for chests at the end of JPs. It would need some thoughtfulness going into its design to handle it that way, but then I don't know if you'd support that either even if it didn't mess up anything well-intentioned. That's an important question here, do you actually believe in treating it as a problem or is the "banning is too far" rhetoric just an excuse to dismiss it as a problem.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Labjax.2465