The state of the community

[Goddangit]

Those who were always ready to share, "you're doing it wrong", "that costume sucks" and of course the venerable kill-stealer have always been present, but in the days of live they were berated.  It has been my recent experience this is no longer the case.  I am not an admin and I am only one person.  If you choose to have such a community that's none of my business.  I just want to know where I stand.  And if this is simply bad luck on my part.  Conversations with others suggest this is throughout the gaming community.  I've spent recent years recovering from a stroke and playing Skyrim by myself, so I have no reliable basis for knowing how much things have really changed in six years.  What is your experience?  Is what was once considered rude at best no longer so?

[Apparition]

1. There are more people online today than there were in 2010, nonetheless 2004.  So, more people, more jerks.

 

2. People can easily download the game and start playing without paying a dime.  Therefore, there's less incentive to place value on the game and its community.

 

3. Newer online games place much less emphasis on community (if any at all), and many people have grown up with those games who were children when CoH was first around.

 

Now, that all being said, there are still plenty of decent, community minded people.  There are weeds, but time will filter most of them out as they either adapt, or move along to the next new hotness.

[Myrmidon]

If I may ask, which server are you playing on?

[Goddangit]

If I may ask, which server are you playing on?

 

Excelsior.  And I'm honestly just trying to check if my perceptions are valid.

[justicebeliever]

Those who were always ready to share, "you're doing it wrong", "that costume sucks" and of course the venerable kill-stealer have always been present, but in the days of live they were berated.  It has been my recent experience this is no longer the case.”

 

I don’t know if it’s any different.  We seem to have same debates now as before, both in-gam and on the forums.  Min/Max’ers vs Concept/Theme, slow grind vs power levels, pvp vs everybody, all levels of role-play etc.  There were always jerks in the game, and I think the moderation of the game is about the same.  There really isn’t kill-stealing in the game (not since a long time).

 

What I do think is worse now then before is the Help Channel.  There is a definitely a lot of helping happening but there are way too many people who treat it as an opportunity to vent their grudges against each other or argue about the stupidest stuff.

[Abraxus]

I have been quite fortunate on Torchbearer.  I have encountered nothing but friendly, though not always overly talkative, folks when teaming.  I haven't been subject to any bad behavior, and folks seem more than ready to help if someone asks.  As this is the only server I have played on since it went live, I don't have perspective on the others, but the state of the community from my observations of my little piece of it, are that everything is ok, and that if you are encountering issues, I don't think represents the exception, as opposed to the rule.  At least, that is my sincere hope.

[Zolgar]

Over on Everlasting at least:

I have literally never seen someone say another person's costume sucked. There is very little "you're doing it wrong" to go around either, that mostly tends to happen when someone joins a TF expecting one type of run and getting another ("You didn't say this was/n't a speed ITF!!"), and the occasional mostly good natured bickering about the quality of power sets.

 

As for "Kill stealing"... Ugh I hate seeing that term used in City of Heroes. What happens in City is not kill stealing. True kill stealing is something that can only happen in MMOs where the credit for a kill goes to the person who got the killing blow, kill stealing is waiting until a player has a creature almost dead and swooping in to hit it with a powerful attack to claim the killing blow, and thus credit for the kill. It also sometimes is used to refer to disregarding the queue that has formed for an open-world boss, and just attacking it as soon as it spawns. Neither of these are issues in City of Heroes, as anyone who was involved in the fight gets credit for the kill. Yes, if someone steps in to a fight to assist, it costs you a portion of the xp/inf and that's a little annoying, it is not a seriously detrimental thing.

 

Berating someone for stepping in to a fight is worse for the community than people stepping in to the fight do. The most you should ever do is say "Thanks for the assist, but in the future you should really check to see if people need help before you jump in." - Bloody hell, I don't even berate people when they come "help" when I am soloing a GM.

[Myrmidon]

If I may ask, which server are you playing on?

 

Excelsior.  And I'm honestly just trying to check if my perceptions are valid.

 

The only thing that I have seen like that on Excelsior is when someone in the Excelsior channel kicked the nicest guy to ever play this game for not answering a tell fast enough for team invites. The person in question earned an immediate spot on my ignore list (which currently has only two names).

 

There are always going to be people like that in an online setting, which is why Ignore exists.

 

 

[Goddangit]

Berating someone for stepping in to a fight is worse for the community than people stepping in to the fight do.

 

*sighs*  As I suspected, I am out of step.

 

I'll my old fashioned notions and go away now.

[justicebeliever]

Berating someone for stepping in to a fight is worse for the community than people stepping in to the fight do.

 

*sighs*  As I suspected, I am out of step.

 

I'll my old fashioned notions and go away now.

 

I don't think your notions are old fashioned at all...And I wanted to say that I'm glad your recovering and enjoying City of Heroes.

 

CoH did a great job fixing Kill Stealing in the game...They ensure that all parties who did at least some damage to a mob, all get credit for the defeat of that mob.  5 guys each do 1/5 the damage, all 5 guys get the defeat.  But people don't know this, and they sometimes get really bent out shape instead of just politely saying "Thanks for the Help, I got it from here".

 

Hope you stick around!

[Primantis]

I am going to say, in general, the online gaming community is getting more and more toxic. This is especially true of "Free to play" games. Games with no monetary commitment.

 

Back in the early 2000's Diablo II was considered a very toxic player base. But that's child's play compared to the shit that goes on in games like League of Legends or Fortnite..

 

 

That being said, the CoH community still comes off as quite mature. You will always have your jerkasses but they do seem more timid and fewer in number in this game. As mentioned above, the only time I've ever even seen players argue was during an ITF. The leader wanted to to do it the 'long way' but the "muscle" (IE some Incarnated out Brutes) wanted to do a Speed ITF..

 

Much to the leaders dismay it ended up being a Speed ITF. And probably one of the most uncomfortable TF's I've ever been on xD. The groups at odds were inches away from down right MPKing each other at times LOL.

 

But that was a very isolated experience!

[GM Capocollo]

As a reminder, if you think someone is behaving contrary to the published Code of Conduct, please file a report with any screenshots and chatlogs of their behavior you've collected.

[DoctorHugh]

Personally I have only played on Indomitable and Reunion (so far).

 

I've seen nothing but polite requests, thank yous, 'that was great!', "Can someone please summon an Ouro port at Ms. Liberty for me?" and various polite responses when I toss a buff on people.

 

Even when a couple people are crowding out the University worktables with hordes of clanking bots and howling demons, I haven't seen any impolite responses.

 

That said, I'm also only looking at the standard default channels so maybe there are global chat channels where I'm missing all the stuff. There was one guy being provocative in the help channel one day, basically saying that certain questions were silly to ask... that's the most rudeness I've seen.

[Razia]

I agree, over the years the community of MMOs has grown quiet toxic. If you ask me, it started with WoW and Barrens Chat. CoH has still a very friendly community. And if someone is being a jerk (e. g. in help chat) there are several people to bring such indiviudals in line.

 

I never experienced jerks myself, just the ocasional bossy emp that thinks the teams can't work without them (sorry good emps). I use player notes a lot. I rate them and make notes. But most of them got a good rating from me.

 

I noticed some extreme lazyness from new players and the "want it nao" attitude. Some even don't read the menues or basic stuff and want everything handed to them on a silver plate. I usually reply to those "questions" explaining how to get/look up the information they want.

 

We have to work together to keep this a good and friendy community. It doesn't happen on its own (not anymore).

[jack_nomind]

I noticed some extreme lazyness from new players and the "want it nao" attitude. Some even don't read the menues or basic stuff and want everything handed to them on a silver plate. I usually reply to those "questions" explaining how to get/look up the information they want.

 

Yeah, I've started responding to questions that are answered explicitly on Paragonwiki with just direct links to the Paragonwiki page they're answered on, in order to promote people going there as a first resort.

 

I might at some point make a thread here that breaks down why "What is the best X" (AT, set, power, enhancement, etc) without enough context is unanswerable and by the time the questioner has the context they should be able to answer it for themselves or rephrase it into a much more specific question.

[Abraxus]

Yup!  Educate, as opposed to berate.  8)

[DocRadio]

I have yet to run into a single discourteous person since the game came back.

I tend to solo a lot, but still when I ask a question or am actually on a team everyone has been really cool.

[jubakumbi]

No different than 'retail live' IME, I saw all the same things, with _more_ 'baby birds' wanting to be fed and _more_ toxic trash-talk.

The HC servers have been nothing but a joy to play on for me.

 

I also stay out of Atlas Park and I always keep my chat tabs quiet in all MMOs, I get to control that.

 

Gaming has become more mainstream in that last few years.

More mainstream equals more people, more different points of view, more playstyles.

 

That means more people trying to tell other people that is 'right and wrong' _in a video game_ ... just like CoH Retail Live ... where even the publishers of the game made moral judgements on players ... not a good look ...

 

CoH has always had a vocal minority that think the game should (only) be played a certain way, right down to the chat box.

 

The general lack of emotional maturity in the gaming community, the fact that the 'old timers' that think the game is (only) to be played 'as it was', and Nostalgia Goggles has made many of the posts I see about this game literally sound like they are coming from my southern grandmother that thought dancing was a sin.

 

We have this awesome game again, yet gamers still want to put other gamers in little boxes and make them follow 'the right rules' and look for the 'enemy' and berate others for how they choose to play.

 

There are always people in the world that that can rub you the wrong way, so /gignore and move on, please don't try to paint with broad strokes just because some humans just like to be asshats.

 

Play your way, let others do the same, and ignore them if they are just rude people, don't blame that on 'modern gamers' or 'the new community.'

[Pyatra]

I have been quite fortunate on Torchbearer.  I have encountered nothing but friendly, though not always overly talkative, folks when teaming.  I haven't been subject to any bad behavior, and folks seem more than ready to help if someone asks.  As this is the only server I have played on since it went live, I don't have perspective on the others, but the state of the community from my observations of my little piece of it, are that everything is ok, and that if you are encountering issues, I don't think represents the exception, as opposed to the rule.  At least, that is my sincere hope.

 

I'm a Torchbearer resident too... can't say I've really seen any of this, everyone has been super helpful.  When I was low level someone randomly threw 2 Lvl 25 IO enchantments in my inventory.  Just a couple.  Someone helped me with some technical questions and learned I was new, had no level 50s and was solo mission leveling (the hard grueling way) and sent me 10 million Inf randomly.  I have been trying to pay it forward, I have handed out at least 2 million in level 25 IOs to help people out on lowbies.  The help chat is super helpful and people are really decent even when discussing what AT xx/xx is better.  I have yet to see the dreaded L2P phrase in this game, of course the grain of salt is that I have only gotten to Level 36.... shoves 9 different Level 12 toons under carpet.

 

 

Torchbearer-Moxie Crimefighter- WM/Bio Scrapper-Mostly Solo

[dasefex]

We good! We Gucci!

[mousestalker]

All of the above merely demonstrates what I previously suspected. Namely that the community on Everlasting is one of the kindest, giving and caring gaming communities there is. I am very proud of the people of our server.

[eiynp]

Kill-stealing? What year is this  :rotate:

[Apparition]

The only issue I've noted is extreme impatience among some.  People complaining about how long it's taking to get Hamidon raids underway, even though they only last about three minutes once underway.  To the point that they'll go in on their own before the word is given, and die, then ask for rez.  I've also started some PUG Task Forces and noted several times both in LFG and global channels, and in team chat before beginning that it would be a steamroll run (kill through), no stealth.  Yet one or two people always insist on breaking away from the team and stealthing every mission possible and completing the mission objectives while the rest of us steamroll.

 

The issue was there before sunset certainly, but it seems to have become exponentially worse.  I mostly blame modern "give everyone everything now" online games.

[Clave Dark 5]

I've had all of two bad interactions on Indom, out of hundreds, so that's pretty good odds.

[WumpusRat]

Bloody hell, I don't even berate people when they come "help" when I am soloing a GM.

 

Usually if I see someone fighting a GM alone, I'll sit and watch for a little bit to see how they're doing. If they seem to be able to solo it, I'll ask if they mind if I help out (because merits are good). Usually I get either a "sure, go for it" or occasionally "not yet, I want to see if I can actually solo it". I know back on live when I first finished my GM-soloing troller (ill/rad with perma hasten/AM/PA), I was running around soloing GMs and seeing how I fared. Once or twice I asked someone to wait to see if I could solo it, and if I got it down to less than 30% or so I knew the remaining health wouldn't have been a problem, so I'd let them know it was fine to jump in too.