It's me, or toxicity increases every year?

[mindcircus.1506]

@Sileeent.5861 said:

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@Sileeent.5861 said:I think it was a good idea to discuss it here. I mean, I could have gotten upset about these monkeys (just to be a little rude to describe them), or I'll share my experience, get feedback and try to be self-reflective of the situation and learn from it.You could always start by not calling people you think don't play as well as you do "monkeys" on a public forum.

I didn't really call them monkeys, just tried to explain a mindset that I tried to avoid with this topic here...

I've edited this part to avoid further misunderstandings. Perhaps that was a bit too out of the box, which is more likely to be misunderstood in text form than in verbal communication. ^^You did, in fact, call them monkeys and earlier in your OP called them trash.You did this in as many wordsIf you are serious about using this as a point for self reflection you need to own it instead of attempting to discuss it away with dismissive terms like "too out of the box" or editing your post to reflect better on yourself.

[Mesmerising.8702]

Toxic behaviour is common in all MMOs equally, despite what some delusional say about XIV having almost none... its a lie and they believed it.

In my opinion, and as cliché as this may sound, its natural for people who feel like they've failed to achieve what they want in life - (and endgame in MMOs is the only way they feel like they're succeeding in something) - to act very toxic and hostile (quick on the insults) to others who do not meet their "standards".

I get the frustration and not wanting to waste time with people contributing nothing to the fight and are deliberately not willing to put a little more effort into learning what they're supposed to do to make it work, hell, you're allowed to vent and complain about it, but... pugging, throwing tantrums and a barrage of insults at others after YOU made the choice to pick up random players, is very childish and is the type of toxic behaviour that ruins the fun in such games. It also works the other way around though. Do not expect every random player you group up with to be... normal. Just tell them off (if you had to) and brush them off. Because on the other hand, there's tons of others who you will group up with, who are treating the game like... well, a game.

But anyway, in short, I do not think toxicity increases each year, but veteran mmo players do (ones that tend to be toxic)... especially with this pandemic.Do not let it ruin your experience with GW2, or indeed any other game.... because as someone here said, it has to do with the people and not the games.And people are the same... mostly.

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

@"Sileeent.5861" said:It's me, or toxicity increases every year?

!

This discussion is solved:

! >! I'm a patient person. You don't see me toxic whatever happens. It doesn't matter how bad you play, that you have no clue what a breakbar is, or if you are always too stupid to dodge an attack whose animation is displayed for 3 seconds before it occurs... even if this all happens even though you have already reached over 35k achievement points and someone would assume that all along the way you learned some basics. Not even then am I rude to you, I'll try to help instead!! >!

! >! What I wrote applies to 3 guys at a party and 2 had over 35k achievement points. As they keep failing and dying, you can imagine how many times we had to restart all boss fights. At some point I had clearly enough, but I just told them that

„I swap to Heal Scourge to carry, before we will hang out here even longer“

. The boss was now pretty easy, as expected having a Heal Scourge. Nevertheless, I had to rez them all several times. They were totally overwhelmed with dodging few simple attacks, and although they could even use the Special Action Key every few seconds to dodge a third time. But I didn't say anything about it. Not a single word!! >!

! >! After the boss I wrote nothing else than „Well, it was a good idea to swap!“ ..and who would disagree in such a situation? Then a hurricane of toxicity hit me with a kick from the party at the end. They seriously thought it was their own performance! In 8 years I've honestly never seen something like that, not in this form. You should have seen their performance. If someone is just arrogant, I don't care. But you should also be able to afford arrogance. I mean you can't be arrogant when you're trash.! >!

! >! I didn't even said anything to them. I'm a kind person, maybe I just think my part for myself, but I'll try to help instead of being toxic. So what did I do to get treated like this and ended up getting kicked out of a party like this? It doesn't hurt me, but I'd like to understand! But that will probably remain a mystery. ^^!! ---!!

Jump to my answer:

!

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1450717/#Comment_1450717

!! ---!!

So, it would be nice if we could keep talking about what the title says in general.

:sweat_smile:

My short answer is yes.Core problem is that Arena.NET tries to orient themselves with their decision on the top 1% of the players while the player base get more fragmented each year. You can see that in the beginning we had nothing then Metabattle then Snow Crow(there was a site before) , then discretize for fractals , then gw2mist and now even sPvP have its own new site I heard.

On its own this not a problem but it cause a problem because people running different metas or ideas of a meta parallel which let people clash. I said it I think around 2018 I already noticed this basically the goal is to let the players play together that you need to push over performance which is not related to actually personal skill down and people who under perform you need to motivate to go up.

Balance is a large part of it but not everything excessive use of shortcuts, abuse of mechanics are also a part of it. This is the reason why I post here and say when a system is broken like cFB in 100cm , or the scoring system in sPvP, perma super-speed and a lot of stealth in WvW.

I can tell you people don't like my posts even some of my guild say why do you tell Arena.NET this ? (They want the advantage)

[Condutas.3580]

Let me tell you this sentences about me here...

1st: I have been farming fractals lately and I have the "fractal champion" boon active in my account atm, needing only a little less than 85 days now to unlock "Fractal God"

2nd: In the last 3 to 4 weeks, unfortunatelly due to real life, I have been unable to do fractals with my static. In that static, I used to play hfb and/or dps and sometimes we would do all old cm's in a 4 men party, without much of a hassle and just for fun.

3º In those 3 to 4 last weeks, I usually just lfg the old cm's + T4 fractals, but always making sure I either have one or even two friends already on my party.

4º I understand that this may very anedotal and you may even ignore me or whatever I am writing here and that's ok, we dont always have to agree with each other.

Point 1: What you have in lfg is the players where "playing with a static" and "having some friends to do this content" options already failed for them, soo what's in the lfg is pretty much ONLY the part of the community without those tools. It's a fact.

Point 2: The game is old and we have population declining for some years now. Its more common to see a old player dropping the game completely then a new player picking it up, starting playing a game and getting interesting in high fractal runs, like T4 and even cm's. Just another fact that I hope its pretty clear to everyone here.

The combination of point 1 and 2 makes the final comment, unfortunatelly, the absolute logic conclusion: what you have in lfg is the worst options, for the one part of the community that dont have another way and have to resort to that.

What's in lfg is now worst than the kind of players we had in 2018, which were worst than the players we had there in 2016.

Just make sure you join lfg's parties with a opened mind, dont rage for no reason, instead block/kick/leave when things aren't going as you plan. Grown a thick skin.

And as a last note, that actually is a positive one, I know 2 players that went from "nothing" to fractal god ONLY playing in lfg's parties since 2019. Its possible, soo may that knowledge help you in someway, somehow...

[Westenev.5289]

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Westenev.5289 said:I don't know if people have become more toxic. I still remember back in 2015, where people called you names and kicked you from parties for playing the Ranger class (wvw, dungeons, fractals - nobody wanted us anywhere xD). If anything, I think the community has become a lot more accepting of the communities tendencies to take their favorite underperforming builds (BEARBOW SOLDIERS DPS DRUID) and lack of mechanical skill or game knowledge.

I think there's also been some power creep in terms of the level of easy support and DPS, but I'm not an expert on the subject, so that could just be my impression. My thinking is that most people aren't going to split hairs if they have to carry 1 or 2 players, as long as it isn't preventing the group from succeeding. Those who wish to speed clear know by now that they need to make that intention clear or they will not get the group they're looking for. It's pretty rare that I experience toxicity directly in fractals. I do hear about it on the forums a lot, though!

T3's tend to get a little toxic, especially when the group lacks dps. Makes t4's seem super chill by comparison, especially since people try in t4's and personal contribution can make or break a good team.

But I think everyone understands by now that speedrunning, or at the very least, incorporating easy skips, tricks and builds pioneered by speedrunners is just the norm. If you want to slow down, watch cutscenes, refuse to /gg, do achievements that delay mission completion, you should be honest with your group and add that to the lfg.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Shadowmoon.7986" said:This is an example of what I have been saying all along, the toxicity was never with the good players who wanted to play with other good players. It was always with the entitled play as I want but carry me through the hard part crowd trying to self insert themselves in groups.Nah. "good players" can be as toxic as bad ones. There's no relation here.The toxicity can be enhanced/triggered by players not sharing the same goals/outlook on the game, and yet having to interact with each other for some reason.

It can be a result of a poor player trying to insert into a better skilled group and not accepting a "no" for an answer.

It can be a result of an inexperienced/less skilled player entering a group with veteran players and them being very unkind about it.

It can be a result of a veteran/skilled player inserting into a group of casuals, and being very vocal in informing them that they do not fulfill his/her expectations (and/or said group being very vocal about how they do not like to be bossed around).

It can also be a result of two or more "good players" being in disagreement about strat/goals, or just trolling around ("not going to do cannons, because i want to greed dps" is an actual explanation from few members of a very known top raiding guild at Sab about why they don't want to bother doing the mechanics. IIRC this ended with some not nice comments flying around, and a support chrono having to do cannons. No new/unskilled players were involved at all in this one)

Edit: changed "chrono offtank" to "support chrono", to better illustrate the issue, because apparently that was the most important part of the whole situation.

[maddoctor.2738]

Is toxicity increasing? That's not a question that has an answer because it's going to depend on your personal experience. Toxicity can come in many forms. This is especially true in more challenging content, but also in less challenging content when instead of performance you "compete" for time.

Some examples I've experienced personally:In a Raid squad going to kill Matthias, post an LFG listing for experienced players only, LI and so on. Some Thief joins. Then he stands on the boss, mindlessly attacking, while having poison on themselves and not moving at all. Of course we called him out, as that would lead to a wipe, he didn't listen/respond, got kicked. I half expected them to come posting on these forums about raider toxicity to be honest and all the usual forum goers would side with them. Because of course they love taking sides without knowing the full story first. I find it interesting that in THIS case, when it wasn't a poor casual that was kicked by the evil elitists, a lot of people were more causious with their replies.

On the flip side, doing Gorseval with a rather new squad. Post and LFG listing for more people, nothing fancy though. 2 people join, a Warrior and a Holosmith. They were friends or something. We told them we were practising/new at the "no updraft strat" at the time. They went on a rant when we failed to phase the boss, even though it was explained to them numerous times that it was our first try. Fortunately they left on their own, although they did make some rude remarks before leaving.

That said, sometimes players with different ideas, different mentalities, can be in the same group and instead of clashing, cooperate fine. Was doing a Slothasor run, missing last person, invited someone that looked very new (low AP, uninteresting armor/outfit choice, no guild tag). Instead of hiding he was new, he straight up told us "I'm new to this boss, is it ok if I come along?". Finding someone that was communicating like a real person instead of feeling like a bot/AI leeching was a refreshing experience. Although he was obviously new, he did know how to read chat and by the end he got a guild invite and stayed with the team for a very long time.

[Astyrah.4015]

in my opinion the best away to avoid toxic players (of any kind) is to play with friends / guild mates. mmorpgs are all about building communities and finding your place in them. hunting/looking for a guild you can call home and be comfortable playing with is very much worth it and being part of one such makes playing mmorpgs much more easier in general.

guilds, especially the small tightly knit ones, who take care of their members and maintain a certain quality (from casual guilds to hardcore guilds) are a good filter to play with like-minded players. and even though you'll still have that one person who won't agree with everyone or have different views, they'll be much easier to talk to and work an understanding with compared to randoms/pickup-groups

if you avoid pugging, you avoid 90% of the toxicity out there.

[Linken.6345]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Shadowmoon.7986" said:This is an example of what I have been saying all along, the toxicity was never with the good players who wanted to play with other good players. It was always with the entitled play as I want but carry me through the hard part crowd trying to self insert themselves in groups.Nah. "good players" can be as toxic as bad ones. There's no relation here.The toxicity can be enhanced/triggered by players not sharing the same goals/outlook on the game, and yet having to interact with each other for some reason.

It can be a result of a poor player trying to insert into a better skilled group and not accepting a "no" for an answer.

It can be a result of an inexperienced/less skilled player entering a group with veteran players and them being very unkind about it.

It can be a result of a veteran/skilled player inserting into a group of casuals, and being very vocal in informing them that they do not fulfill his/her expectations (and/or said group being very vocal about how they do not like to be bossed around).

It can

also

be a result of two or more "good players" being in disagreement about strat/goals, or just trolling around ("not going to do cannons, because i want to greed dps" is an actual explanation from few members of a very known top raiding guild at Sab about why they don't want to bother doing the mechanics. IIRC this ended with some not nice comments flying around, and a

chrono offtank

having to do cannons. No new/unskilled players were involved at all in this one)

Why do the squad even have a off tank when even a tank aint needed on that boss?Two wasted spaces right there.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Linken.6345" said:Why do the squad even have a off tank when even a tank aint needed on that boss?Two wasted spaces right there.I said "offtank", but that was mainly to point out it wasn't the dps chrono build, but a support one. At that time you did need two support chronos for boons.Still, that does seem quite tangential to the issue at hand, don't you think?

[Eraden.8740]

I have known nothing but kindness while playing this game. I have had people volunteer to help me finish off storylines. I have had people volunteer to help me complete my skyscale missions. I always see people rushing to my aid when I am downed during an event. I have tried ever so hard to pay all this kindness forward but honestly I could spend the next YEAR working at that and not fully pay it forward. People here are just so nice! I don't think, given my age and my condition, that I could have ever achieved all of the things that I have achieved since returning to this game, without the help of all these kind souls. Given my current health though, I would probably not venture into Fractals or Raids, as I don't think I would ever be able to keep up with the rest of the people. I don't want to be a lodestone to these kind folks. That being said, since my primary interest in this game is exploration, there is still TONS of things for me to do. I love this game so much!

[Dreamy Lu.3865]

I play since beta. I didn't notice that toxicity increased over the years. To my eyes, it's just the same usual toxicity levels:

• High in PvP.
• Mild in WvW (depends a lot on server and commanders): better run with guildies.
• Very varied, from none to high in PvE raids: even more than WvW, it's better done with guildies.
• PvE is nice on working days. Toxicity can slightly increase over the weekend, especially in towns, but it remains sporadic.

All in all, I find the GW2 community is really a nice one. Beside, don't forget the rule: don't feed the trolls! ;)

[Fuchslein.8639]

@Eraden.8740 said:I have known nothing but kindness while playing this game. I have had people volunteer to help me finish off storylines. I have had people volunteer to help me complete my skyscale missions. I always see people rushing to my aid when I am downed during an event. I have tried ever so hard to pay all this kindness forward but honestly I could spend the next YEAR working at that and not fully pay it forward. People here are just so nice! I don't think, given my age and my condition, that I could have ever achieved all of the things that I have achieved since returning to this game, without the help of all these kind souls. Given my current health though, I would probably not venture into Fractals or Raids, as I don't think I would ever be able to keep up with the rest of the people. I don't want to be a lodestone to these kind folks. That being said, since my primary interest in this game is exploration, there is still TONS of things for me to do. I love this game so much!

That's the problem I always see with threads like this. It is talked about something completely objective and on the one hand you see only one side of a group and on the other hand you see only the negative(and the titles are mostly totally exaggerated). But I bet if you would count it, there would be more positive than negative experiences. Even if certain people here of course like to exaggerate and thus but often show that they themselves are probably not exactly on the positive side.And in such discussions, you always have to take into account how the person who is complaining is behaving. If you yourself constantly only find toxity while other players not, it does not always mean that the alleged toxic group is the problem.In a game where you interact with real people, you have to think about how you appear to others. Just like in real life.

[ugrakarma.9416]

dont noticed nothing different than normal, open world pve ppl very chill and friendly(and prone to some light jokes), and wvw/pvp reign of toxicity, with less in wvw in later years than previous years.

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

I think it is a difference if we talk about toxic players or toxicity which comes from what players expect from others. Sometimes players are just toxic because their adrenalin goes to their brain or loves to troll others or just having a bad day. We don't have that much of this so open world is mostly chill but in the endcontent whatsoever it you have different meta/setups for different kind of people.

Problem is different metas/setups need different skill level.

@"Condutas.3580" said:Let me tell you this sentences about me here...

1st: I have been farming fractals lately and I have the "fractal champion" boon active in my account atm, needing only a little less than 85 days now to unlock "Fractal God"

2nd: In the last 3 to 4 weeks, unfortunatelly due to real life, I have been unable to do fractals with my static. In that static, I used to play hfb and/or dps and sometimes we would do all old cm's in a 4 men party, without much of a hassle and just for fun.

3º In those 3 to 4 last weeks, I usually just lfg the old cm's + T4 fractals, but always making sure I either have one or even two friends already on my party.

4º I understand that this may very anedotal and you may even ignore me or whatever I am writing here and that's ok, we dont always have to agree with each other.

Point 1: What you have in lfg is the players where "playing with a static" and "having some friends to do this content" options already failed for them, soo what's in the lfg is pretty much ONLY the part of the community without those tools. It's a fact.

Point 2: The game is old and we have population declining for some years now. Its more common to see a old player dropping the game completely then a new player picking it up, starting playing a game and getting interesting in high fractal runs, like T4 and even cm's. Just another fact that I hope its pretty clear to everyone here.

The combination of point 1 and 2 makes the final comment, unfortunatelly, the absolute logic conclusion: what you have in lfg is the worst options, for the one part of the community that dont have another way and have to resort to that.

What's in lfg is now worst than the kind of players we had in 2018, which were worst than the players we had there in 2016.

Just make sure you join lfg's parties with a opened mind, dont rage for no reason, instead block/kick/leave when things aren't going as you plan. Grown a thick skin.

And as a last note, that actually is a positive one, I know 2 players that went from "nothing" to fractal god ONLY playing in lfg's parties since 2019. Its possible, soo may that knowledge help you in someway, somehow...

The problem is what do you expect at least in fractal cm groups the 'problems' are often:1.Rev went to full dps and doesn't do his cc2.BS the same3.HFB doesn't know his job4.There are also the problem using condi classes besides 100 cm can make problemsThe real problem about this people will argue this is meta which is not complete wrong but right neither. People forget that neither Snow Crow nor Discretize decide what is meta. It was people agree what is meta because otherwise it won't work in random groups. What people use group/guild intern is something different.

My static also it seems flow apart after they seeked new tricks and shortcuts and using new quirky features every week until I couldn't follow any more and get yelled at in the voice chat .. so I muted him during the rest of the run.

[keenedge.9675]

Regarding article title:In my experience, the people who engage in hyperbole of the use of 'toxic' are part of the problem.

[Dami.5046]

yes.

1234 chars

[MrForz.1953]

Keep calling others toxic and toxicity will remain around.