So why have things changed?

[Serynna.3786]

I used to think that GW2 had the best and friendliest community of any MMORG I've played - and I've played quite a few. However, of late, there seems to me to have been noticeable increase in the number of arrogant, aggressive, rude and plain nasty players in this game. So why has this happened? What has changed?  Steam????    

[kharmin.7683]

Yep.

[Fueki.4753]

$team may be one of the reasons.

Also, friendlier players living the game might make the amount of unfriendly players simply look worse.

And then there's also the possibility that a portion of the friendlier players turned sour and decided to share that sourness publicly.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Danikat.8537]

Well there's been a lot of new people joining over the last year or so, not just because of Steam. Anet said EoD out-sold PoF and the total number of players increased, and as you get more people you'll get more of a range of people too. Especially if some of them are coming in large groups from other MMOs, if they feel like their whole community is moving together they'll take their community culture with them, and act the same way in this game as they did in their last one.

I think if you're concerned about the community changing the best thing you can do is try to continue acting the same way. Continue to be friendly and helpful whenever you can and speak up if someone is saying something inappropriate. (Or report them if it's really inappropriate.)

[Damocles.4908]

depends also on where, when, who, how and why, been playing for a long time and yes I have come across some mostly in pvp but pve not too much, I think the worse is when i greet someone and I dont get a reply back 😞

[Randulf.7614]

Society is degrading

[Serynna.3786]

Yes, I agree that PVP players tend to act in this way more than PVE players. Not all of, of course, but it does seem to attract that sort. Personally, I never play PVP and tend to only play WvW when necessary for the daily achievements.

[Migraine.5810]

I just started playing again after being gone for 8 years and also noticed some unfriendly and arrogant people now, especially in dungeons. 

Since I've been gone so long it's obvious that I want to watch the cutscenes since I don't remember everything (and the story in my opinion is a decent part of this game), and people sometimes write "skip cutscenes or get kicked". It's also ironic that the same people are also the ones that won't even greet others when the party is forming.

 

I suspect Fueki and Danikat are right, with Steam having access to the game more players of "another type" started to appear.

[kenmei.7349]

when you make content 'buy to play' and no way to earn the content through skill. then it creates an entitled community.

also opens the doors to 'buy to win', doors that can never be shut.

i.e. once you buy the ability to fly, all content and exploration in the world is trivial. 

 

just a heads up for folks like myself, who werent aware of how the buy to win is actually there but hidden.

thus you will never have a decent non toxic community as long as you have the existence of whales.

[Linken.6345]

3 hours ago, kenmei.7349 said:

when you make content 'buy to play' and no way to earn the content through skill. then it creates an entitled community.

also opens the doors to 'buy to win', doors that can never be shut.

i.e. once you buy the ability to fly, all content and exploration in the world is trivial. 

 

just a heads up for folks like myself, who werent aware of how the buy to win is actually there but hidden.

thus you will never have a decent non toxic community as long as you have the existence of whales.

What do you win by paying for the game mate?

[DeanBB.4268]

And how do you "buy to fly" 'cuz I want in on that!

[spartan.9421]

53 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

What do you win by paying for the game mate?

You win the ability to play such a great game to its fullest.

[Danikat.8537]

For what it's worth I had a really helpful strike group earlier today. Someone put a message in LFG asking for help on Kaineng Overlook for the turtle collection and got a mix of people who needed it for the achievement (including me), people who wanted to learn the strike and at least 1 person who already knew it and we got it on the second try. There was a lot of talk before we started about builds but only to ask what people could do, make sure we had boons and no unnecessary duplicates etc. and then everyone was very patient with each other while we were doing it and the people who knew what to do made sure to explain the mechanics.

It took us longer to get through each phase than when I'd done it previously with an experienced group, but was actually quicker to finish because it only took 2 attempts and no one rage quit the second someone died which kept happening in the other group. Overall it was a really positive experience.

[TOAD.4718]

On 11/29/2022 at 8:33 AM, Serynna.3786 said:

I used to think that GW2 had the best and friendliest community of any MMORG I've played - and I've played quite a few. However, of late, there seems to me to have been noticeable increase in the number of arrogant, aggressive, rude and plain nasty players in this game. So why has this happened? What has changed?  Steam????    

I haven’t run into this issue. A few trolls making odd jokes (which I’m ok with) but no one being downright jerks. I’ve received more toxicity on the forums than in game actually and even the forums are full of mostly decent people.

 

To be fair though I don’t mind typical joke/troll behavior. It’s funny at times if it isn’t way over the top. It honestly helps keep things alive and funny.

 

But I haven’t run into a lot of arrogant, rude or nasty people really.

[Luthan.5236]

Steam ... well the amount of people using Steam that are NOT toxic ... sure is more rare than precursor drops in GW2. 😄

But I have not seen many annoying players though. And I play every game mode.

Maybe only in the elite PvE stuff (raids, harder strikes and the fractal challenge motes)? Or at high level (platin+) PvP? But that could be common to the game modes. More likely for "elitists" to play there. They want to optimize everything and naturally they even complain about the slightest "too low dps" a player might have. For such stuff it is recommended to not join a group randomly. Look for newbie groups (or post it in the description yourself when using lfg) ... or a guild for training maybe.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[TOAD.4718]

39 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Steam ... well the amount of people using Steam that are NOT toxic ... sure is more rare than precursor drops in GW2. 😄

But I have not seen many annoying players though. And I play every game mode.

Maybe only in the elite PvE stuff (raids, harder strikes and the fractal challenge motes)? Or at high level (platin+) PvP? But that could be common to the game modes. More likely for "elitists" to play there. They want to optimize everything and naturally they even complain about the slightest "too low dps" a player might have. For such stuff it is recommended to not join a group randomly. Look for newbie groups (or post it in the description yourself when using lfg) ... or a guild for training maybe.

How do you know they are using steam? Or do you mean the steam forums? I don’t think the steam forums are a good representation of the community because most of the people on there are NOT GW 2 players. They are steam players that just happened to have tried the free core game for a short time.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

Doesn't seem radically different to me, and I've been playing fairly regularly since Launch.

[Yasai.3549]

Gw2 still has a fairly friendly and positive playerbase, and the toxic few can be easily recognizable because they are really small in number compared to the majority. 

The only place in Gw2 where toxicity permeates the air is PvP and WvW, especially WvW Team chat. In PvE, I've encountered nothing but friendly, helpful or passive players. There are the occasional bad eggs but they are as I said, far and few between and almost always the same person, which warrants a block and a report if they continue harassing their fellow players. 

Heck, did a pug Strike the other day too, no toxicity, everyone was helpful and willing to put in the effort, no one flamed deaths or misplays either. We all got our Turtle and parted ways happy. 

[Biziut.3594]

On 12/2/2022 at 1:06 PM, Migraine.5810 said:

I just started playing again after being gone for 8 years and also noticed some unfriendly and arrogant people now, especially in dungeons. 

Since I've been gone so long it's obvious that I want to watch the cutscenes since I don't remember everything (and the story in my opinion is a decent part of this game), and people sometimes write "skip cutscenes or get kicked". It's also ironic that the same people are also the ones that won't even greet others when the party is forming.

 

I suspect Fueki and Danikat are right, with Steam having access to the game more players of "another type" started to appear.

I am afraid that it is not that simple. It may be obvious to you but not for others. Most ppls run dungeons for gold/currency, not for story and thay want to finish them as fast as they can. So unless someone wrote in LFG that he is ok with watching cutscenes or gave you premission (If you asked) than you are expected to skip them.

Best way to aviod such misunderstandings is to (as I mentioned), ask if you can watch cutscenes or create your own LFG with the information that you will be watching them.

[Exo.2143]

The steam release is now almost 3 months ago, which gave those people more than enough time to build their characters and get familiar with endgame content. The problem in my opinion is probably deeper: over the past few weeks, I have seen people joining randomly LFG's and not saying anything. Often the group was looking for a heal or alac role, and those people just don't know yet that what means. These same people will also struggle with mechanics, simple as that.

 

The thing is: it's really frustrating when this happens more than once. Very often you cannot keep these players, since for t4 fractals you simply just need a healer for PUG groups (I am not considering highly skilled organised groups currently) because you never know what you get as a PUG player. Also on more than one occasion, I've seen DPS players joining and doing lower damage than a Heal Firebrand, resulting is slower times and frustrated people.

 

People in general will become less tolerant, and it will reflect on the community as a whole. It is often better to just whisper these people and talk to them. On all occasions I have seen that people are willing to talk to you and reflect on themselves, as long as you don't put them on the stand. Being a scapegoat is never fun, not in any way. We need to remind ourselves that once we were first-timers too.

Of course, this is all my opinion and not fact, but I see something happening that happened aswell when GW2 core first became F2P and GW2 had big numbers of people coming in the game: this discussion has been done before.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I think this is true of society as a whole, as there's been a major decline in civility in the last decade. I won't get into it as it involves alot of nasty politics and the return of many mentalities that were largely left behind in the 70s and 80s, which amoung other things includes the rising projection that altruism is bad.

 

Games like this, where people cooperate and where even players who are unwilling have to be altruistic (and as a result the bad ones naturally got weeded out for "not liking the carebear game") were once seen as the holy grail of the video game world amoung many very difficult, harsh and toxic games that permeated the genre. However, now instead of getting weeded out the game has given them places to hide and to remain a part of the community while doing little more than spewing vitrol at it, the game itself and the developers.

 

We've reached the point where enjoying the game or defending any decisions made is called white knighting, which is a well-known form of gaslighting intended to make people with good intentions appear like the bad ones so someone with bad intentions can avoid any responsibility for their behavior.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Cyninja.2954]

On 12/2/2022 at 5:46 PM, kenmei.7349 said:

when you make content 'buy to play' and no way to earn the content through skill. then it creates an entitled community.

also opens the doors to 'buy to win', doors that can never be shut.

i.e. once you buy the ability to fly, all content and exploration in the world is trivial. 

 

just a heads up for folks like myself, who werent aware of how the buy to win is actually there but hidden.

thus you will never have a decent non toxic community as long as you have the existence of whales.

 

I'd be far more concerned with someone bringing your "logic" to some argument than someone who spent money on actually buying the game they want to play.

 

Imagine calling others entitled because your expectation is that game content should first and foremost be provided at no cost.

[Val.7826]

There are probably plenty of reasons why the community downgrades.

Shurely lots of new people (mostly thanks to Steam and EoD) entering the game can change the community "echosystem", something like when you pour hot water in a bucket full of cold water, the temperature changes and it takes a while for all the water to become cold again.

One of major facts probably is the efficiency: once player starts to enter the efficiency "farming" loop they start to deal with the game more like a worker does end not like a gamer, with the consequences of being more and more cold with people and situations. Greeting become a waste of time, waiting cutscenes becomes a waste of time, failing a strike mission or a raid becomes a waste of time, losing a pvp match becomes a waste of time, and all this time wasted is considered just a reason to kitten off and being careless; it's not a matter of enjoying the game anymore, just the efficiency of obtaining more and more nothing in less time, because it's virtual content, the purpose of virtual content is making you enjoy the game more, but if you just can't enjoy the game and the people in it, this virtual content is just nothing, and you are not only poisoning yourself, but other people too with your bad and intolerant behavior.

 

Anyway these are just a couple of reasons I thought, just my opinion.

[Migraine.5810]

On 12/5/2022 at 9:41 AM, Biziut.3594 said:

I am afraid that it is not that simple. It may be obvious to you but not for others. Most ppls run dungeons for gold/currency, not for story and thay want to finish them as fast as they can. So unless someone wrote in LFG that he is ok with watching cutscenes or gave you premission (If you asked) than you are expected to skip them.

Best way to aviod such misunderstandings is to (as I mentioned), ask if you can watch cutscenes or create your own LFG with the information that you will be watching them.

 

Isn't exploration mode better for that? I've only been playing story mode so far, and I thought it'd be obvious that you're there for the story, not to rush through and min-max.

But thank you, point taken. I guess I will be more clear with it in the future when I do the few remaning dungeons in the base game.

[Danikat.8537]

46 minutes ago, Migraine.5810 said:

 

Isn't exploration mode better for that? I've only been playing story mode so far, and I thought it'd be obvious that you're there for the story, not to rush through and min-max.

But thank you, point taken. I guess I will be more clear with it in the future when I do the few remaning dungeons in the base game.

You have to play story mode to unlock access to explorable mode. (You can access it before doing the story mode, if someone else opens the dungeon, but a lot of people like to have the option to unlock it themselves.)

Also explorable mode has stories too (a different one for each path) with cutscenes and NPC dialogue. They don't tie into the main story as directly, they're about other NPCs coming into the dungeon after the events of story mode to investigate the area, but it's still a story and some people still want to watch the cut scenes while others will skip them (and anything else they can to get out of the dungeon as fast as possible).

It's best to specify how you want to play, regardless of which mode you're doing and if a group doesn't bother to specify it's best to assume they're looking to rush through it because that's the most likely reason they didn't take the time to put any more detail in.