How's the community these days?

[wmtyrance]

I used to play this with a few real-life friends, but they all left because they felt the community was becoming toxic to new players.

[tidge]

I few of us show occasional sharp edges during play, but I haven't seen much toxic behavior. Mostly it is jovial joking and just running content.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

12 minutes ago, wmtyrance said:

I used to play this with a few real-life friends, but they all left because they felt the community was becoming toxic to new players.

Dumb reason to leave, TBH.  "Be the change you want to see in the world" and all that.

[Ukase]

So, this is interesting to me. A lot depends on how you define toxic. 

Here's an example of a brief, yet meaningless exchange that happened during a labyrinth. (level 45-50 raid, introduced maybe 4-5 months ago) 

A player joins the league. 

Assumed new player (or at least new to the labyrinth): "Can I get a tp?" (they just joined the league)

Me: To where? Click on a player you want to be teleported to, use [Follow through the Fog] (first black icon in your temp power tray) and poof, you're there. 
Assumed new player quits league. As if reading were too difficult. (I wasn't the league leader, but the leader appeared to be at half health fighting something. ) 

Was that toxic? I sure hope not. I explained as best I could how to get where they might want to go. It's not like I had incan or tp target on my character. I could have said nothing, but then they may not find out how to use Follow through Fog. 


As for your friends - were they new players? Or they just felt like other people were rude to other presumably new players? 
There's no shortage of jerks on any server, but for every jerk, there's probably a good 2 dozen folks that will stop what they're doing and help you if they can. 

As for toxicity to new players, I've seen some players mock certain ATs or powersets, but the words I see when someone says they're new are usually "welcome!". 

If people find themselves at the receiving end of toxic chat, then outside of some random jerk, I have to wonder what they might have done to deserve such treatment. In this community, someone being a deliberate jerk is more rare than one would think. 

 

[BurtHutt]

It's pretty good. There will be squabbles but still one of the better communities out there. If you can't take a little ribbing then life is not going to be kind to you...let alone any game.

[lemming]

People tend to be helpful in chat.   I think there are some people that tend to act like the community is hellish and just assume the worst, and they find it.

[Nerio72]

Well I don't know about anyone else, but I'm a DELIGHT! 🥳

[Glacier Peak]

No toxicity that I'm aware of. If it exists, I guess the ignore function is working and I don't notice it. In fact, ignore and blocking even here on the forums does wonders to remove any opportunities for toxicity to arise.

 

Be excellent to each other!

[OEM61]

As stated,.  People often find what they look for.

Most of the people that I have encountered have been fine.  Teamed up with some people for a couple of "Summer Blockbuster" runs.  My first time playing that.  No problems.
Teamed up with some people to fight some giant monsters.  No problems.

Chat?  An occasional troll might wander through.  You can ignore them (and by "ignore" I mean either block them or just disregard what they say) and carry on, or you can let yourself get unnecessarily worked up over some likely silly bit of nothing.

There are no doubt some jerks out there.  As long as ignoring them is an option then so what?

[Clave Dark 5]

4 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Dumb reason to leave, TBH.  "Be the change you want to see in the world" and all that.

This was surely intended to be ironic...

 

That said, in the game, I've hardly seen anything toxic, except for maybe AEON runs.  Every time I did one, I kept seeing team leaders berating people for not knowing as much as he did, which ha ha sure wasn't as helpful as he thought it would be.  Perhaps I was unlucky and just got the worst people each time.  Avoid that, or only run it with friends, and you should be golden.

[Lines]

"Toxic" might need some defining here.

[huang3721]

Probably because the game is very old, naive questions or behaviors by your friends may be perceived negatively by other veteran players.

 

I am sorry to hear that, though. 

Edited November 11 by huang3721
Words

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

In game, I find people are very friendly and helpful, especially to new players. 

 

Occasionally arguments pop up but that will happen anywhere people are. 

 

On the forums and Discord arguments can get a little more heated.  Everyone here is really passionate about the game and can sometimes get carried away.  But that's part of the job of GMs. 

 

If you see toxic behavior in game, forums, or Discord file a petition or otherwise notify the GM team.

[Scarlet Shocker]

9 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Dumb reason to leave, TBH.  "Be the change you want to see in the world" and all that.

 

I find this to be disingenuous at best.

 

Poster knows nothing about what other people are experiencing or dealing with. Personally, my gaming time is for when I want to escape real worldisms and take time out for enjoyment. "Being the change" is not why I play games - I simply don't have that much energy to spend on it.

 

I've seen some toxicity on both forums and occasionally in game, but I also think there's an element  of terseness, rather than actual venom which can be mistaken in a text only environment.

 

That said I found some very toxic people on live and the block button is a blessing in all online environments.

 

I'd suggest the community is less connected as a whole, but mostly kind enough.

[Octogoat]

I have only seen toxic behavior once and had to use ignore but the person seemed to be mentally ill so it was more for both our sakes because I didn't want to make their problems worse. 99.9% of players have been helpful, kind, and inclusive. Most people here are older than the average gamer in other games or play with their parents so are on better behavior. Needless to say a few bad actors are bound to get through though. I'm sorry if they found your friends.

[tidge]

8 hours ago, Ukase said:

As for toxicity to new players, I've seen some players mock certain ATs or powersets, but the words I see when someone says they're new are usually "welcome!".

 

Thankfully it has been a long time (several years) since I've seen any in-game chat mocking ATs. *That* was a behavior I couldn't understand, given the game and how easy it is to team up.

 

The only recent conversation in General chat I can think of was when during a weekday a player self-identified as having changed shards explicitly to farm (during the middle of a North American work day) , and got weirdly aggressive in chat that nobody was taking him/her up on an offer to join their farm.  After those comments, there were a number of shard regulars who understandably wanted to know why *that* player was acting that way.

[Skyhawke]

It's like driving to and from work. Everyone is cruising along and here comes that one asshat that thinks they own the world. Do you remember how peaceful the drive was before and after that jerk came along? Nope. That dillhole is now on your mind for the rest of the day.  Even just one instance a week of this will leave you with a "my commute sucks" attitude. I know this because that's been me before.

 

This community is like that. Overall, it's buttery smooth, but a few jerks will crop up. I've found that the perceived plethora of bad people is usually just a few with lots of alts. One starring certain accounts ingame helped me see that. 

 

Tl;dr: 95% good, 5 % bad Don't let the 5% muck up your day. 

[Seed22]

In game is fine. 
 

On the forums is…less fine. Discord is pretty chill. 
 

But overall it’s ok. 
 

One thing that IS weird that’s starting to crop up is this phenomenon where it’s toxicity in the opposite direction. I have seen people be called toxic and elitist for simply posting tested and accurate power numbers and being efficient in the game(speedrunning or otherwise fast clearing content). Never saw that in a gaming community before.

[Go0gleplex]

Agreed. Things have been fairly mellow and the appearances of any pinheads is pretty rare anymore. I know I can be annoying myself...but that's more because I have the IRL social skills of a brick more than any actual animosity or what towards anyone. 

[Mopery]

I've found that most trolls in this game who do happen to get a bite on their lure quickly have their line cut off by the community.

[arcane]

4 hours ago, Seed22 said:

 One thing that IS weird that’s starting to crop up is this phenomenon where it’s toxicity in the opposite direction. I have seen people be called toxic and elitist for simply posting tested and accurate power numbers and being efficient in the game(speedrunning or otherwise fast clearing content). Never saw that in a gaming community before.

Would be willing to bet money that that’s an incomplete summary and that anyone being called toxic/elitest is doing a little bit more than just being good at the game.

[Sanguinesun]

16 hours ago, wmtyrance said:

I used to play this with a few real-life friends, but they all left because they felt the community was becoming toxic to new players.

 

Unless you elaborate and give specific examples and define this, it becomes a challenge to speak to any veracity of that.  From my anecdotal experiences, the only cases I've seen --specifically-- new players find themselves receiving the ire of others has been in the cases of ignoring or not speaking up on understanding DFB badge runs or the last 2 mission challenges in Positron 1's task force.  But again that's because of either not following instructions or not saying they werent familiar with how to do em.

 

So again, unless you speak specifically to exactly what that all entailed, its not much to go on.

[Gobbledigook]

I had a friend once.....😢

[JasperStone]

6 minutes ago, Gobbledigook said:

I had a friend once.....😢

at least you had one 

...

once

[Luminara]

I'm fine.  How are you?