Aviator Box Trolling

[Sunchaser.9854]

Escape button, character select, relog also clears it in like 2 seconds from anywhere if you activate the box. I had this happen and I just laughed it off. But its a bigger nuisance for me when someone in sc2 doesn't build detection on the trains mission and gets their entire base nuked 4x and when you say "Maybe you should... Build detection to see the units that need detection to see. It'll help with the ghosts.", they usually flip out or get insulted for putting a detector on them. But that's just me. 

 

Most video games usually have some kind of interaction with other players over a single player game. Some might be trolling like a Wow tauren with + size potion making their kodo block out a mailbox or a feral druid dancing on top. But without player interaction in a mmorpg its pretty much a zerg fest, and a very unorthodox but clearable by char select or box. Maybe they could just adopt the good ideas and abandon the bad ones of wow and just let you right click off novelty buffs. But its still just funny to see the gw2 community acts this heated over a gw2 vroom while the sc2 players are complaining their raynor ally WALKED into a nukes and then shot the wrong 'boss' when they killed their neighbors godzilla monster haha. 

[Sobx.1758]

16 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

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 never claimed anything like that it was "tanking player numbers"

Um, what? That's exactly what you did in your last post, including the -latest fan-favorite- "but what about the steam reviews!?".

Nobody is exaggerating what you said. You clearly exaggerated the whole situaiton in your post though and it's being rightfully pointed out.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Mungrul.9358]

Nice to see Aviator Box still working as designed 🤣

[Sunchaser.9854]

Fs in chat for op when they find out about Rickroll being considered it's own YouTube music genre. 😂

 

[Blude.6812]

The box and ALL the other items that can be used for trolling have been discussed and requests for a solution for years. It should be obvious by now that Anet doesn't give a darn and won't do anything to address it. So like most of us, you have deal with it and learn how to avoid.

[DarcShriek.5829]

On 8/9/2022 at 5:10 AM, 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.

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.

 

A new player at the AB Meta?  That would mean they skipped a lot to be there and would be confused by just about everything.  I have a hard time feeling bad for a player in that situation.  AB meta is end game.  New players are doing themselves a disserving by being there.

[Lottie.5370]

20 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

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.

 

Probably because you're entirely overdramatic.

[Zera.9435]

They need to disable stacking of interactive objects within the interactive range of other interactive objects. Like, you know how the game won't let you put down a waystation if there is one already nearby? They need to do that , but for ALL interactive items/objects put down by players. Make it so you can't put down food, banners, toys, portals near other interactive objects. I've been blocked from looting TD meta chests by some kittening troll who put 4 different guild buff banners in such a way that it completely boxed in the chest, making it impossible to interact with. No amount of camera adjustment/reclicking allowed anyone on the map to loot the chest.