One of my favorite things to tell people is to keep being small
^ this is exactly why anger and toxicity occurs
That won’t work if they’re into vore.
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Who would have thought a game which how has such toxic play patterns is introducing a toxic crowd. Nobody saw this coming EleGiggle
Nothing special in HS introduces toxicity in gaming. Toxicity in gaming is inevitable online on multiplayer games.
If you want to lower toxicity online only play together with friends (even if they’re only online friends).
I do believe some amount of that is inevitable, for sure. Interactions that are generally anonymous and that generally suffer little to no “real life” consequences to the person interacting negatively, is going to make people become cavalier - callously so - in what they say or do. That’s basic common sense, though I wish it weren’t.
However, it absolutely cannot be denied that it has gotten WAY worse over here, in the last 5 to 10 years. UNBELIEVABLY worse. Yes, there were always complaints and trolls and whatnot. But places like the “official” blizzard forums used to also be, overwhelmingly so, places of actual discourse. Actual advice. Actual conversations that didn’t always devolve into time-out worthy mudslinging. And when it DID go that far? Active and prompt moderation clamped down on it so as to not overrun the forums themselves.
Contrast all that, to where we are now. It’s gotten VERY worse and I think it has everything to do with a lack of stricter moderation. People are always going to be pushing the envelope, but now we have fewer sanity checks. There are plenty of other content platforms, and they all follow a similar pattern.
Everywhere that I’ve noticed a robust increase in vitriol, is also correlating to the exact places where I’ve noticed an extremely lackadaisical moderation effort. I’m ready to call it causation, if only I could convince one of these places to TRY moderating as if it were 2005 all over again. Just for ONE WEEK. That would be enough to prove the pudding.
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It’s nothing special even in that case. Toxicity is lowered under certain conditions; e.g. if you play at the lower difficulty levels of the game because losing in those is not important or it is rare (rare to the eye of the beholder at least); or on a new game everyone is more excited and is willing to forgive more.
But pick any game you want and you’ll find veterans at the highest difficulty levels need to make teams with friends to avoid toxicity; e.g. people were claiming the Final Fantasy MMO was less toxic than WoW; then someone pointed out there is no shortage of toxicity once you enter the hard modes.
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Toxicity is everywhere.
I mean it hasn’t existed since the internet was created (and anonymity with it) and there have been video games.
In “real” everyday life, there are toxic people, there always have been and always will be (psychopaths, trolls, narcissists, predators and serial killers included).
The difference is just that before social networks and forums didn’t exist, so we didn’t know there were so many.
So there is the same percentage of toxic people in a game (any game) as in life.
Then we should not confuse people who don’t agree with us and toxic people (even if sometimes they are the same…).
On the forum, there is less moderation than before, I think that’s what makes the difference.
Parenthesis : on WoW, before a toxic player was quickly known in his server.
Now with the mixed servers and of all nationalities with the possibility of changing nickname, toxic players are “anonymous” and therefore “unpunished”.
Otherwise on a game, in general, old players who know well mix badly with new inexperienced players who make a lot of mistakes.
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Emote is harassy. I report all.
Well with 13 forum posts you did the right thing not coming here, for starters.
I think in the end it’s just a few factors:
- Most Pros have quit HS and thus no longer are a face of sportsman-like behavior on social media anymore. Likely burn out of the game, and Hearthstone, despite it wanting to be, is not new player friendly.
- Major burnout for a card game that keeps “Discover” as a mechanic, letting people pull just what wins the game for them when they need it, where this is only present in Hearthstone; not Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon (To name the mainlines).
- People don’t like to lose. Period.
- (Another mild assumption is people aren’t taught courtesy anymore for peer-to-peer interactions.)
Sadly I too have been guilty of rage-adding, then !@#$-talking, then blocking more and more as time has gone on from the frustrations some decks or ‘oddly suspicious tempo’ seems.
However, in the end, being mad or childish at who beat someone (in ranked) won’t get the star back. Good way to just “Meh, next match.”
what do emotes have to do with being toxic?
This is a message from 2020, are you really hoping for an answer ???
Already with the sentence :
So :
- he left because his opponent didn’t want to win…
- his opponent was spamming emotes to make him concede
Honestly, it’s contradictory ! Either the opponent wants to lose, or he wants to win by conceding.
I don’t care about emotes and I certainly don’t concede if the other doesn’t play anything because it’s his problem.
And if someone want to loose, it is not “toxic” (they have a reason)…
He can spam emotes, I don’t care.
Everything, unfortunately. Blizzard literally removed the “Sorry” emote from the game and replaced it with the “Surprised” one because people were BM’ing “Sorry” so extensively.
I think the larger issue is everyone is just kind of either going along with it, or else just waiting for “someone else” to step up to the plate on their behalf. Like even me, whining about a lack of moderation. Okay, that’s fine as far as it goes, moderation WOULD help. But… it’s not gonna happen. It hasn’t happened in years, and something something insanity definition, etc…
So perhaps I should look rather less at everywhere else, and rather more at the bathroom mirror. If nobody else is going to tone THEIR toxicity down, maybe I can at least tone down mine own.
It’s a complicated process and I don’t promise to never fail. But I’m committed now to trying to be more positive. For example, I’m POSITIVE that emotes are BM 
/sarcasm on that last sentence, obviously. But you get my point.
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You can detect rage even when they don’t emote. E.g. today I had someone who roped before their lethal. You could tell they were doing some kind of victory lap (probably had the class I had as opponent a lot when they were losing).
I think it’s a problem of interpretation specific to each person.
For me, a “sorry” is emphatic.
For another, it’s sarcastic.
I don’t see why a “hello” would be sarcasm.
The problem is that depending on the hero, emotes don’t say the same thing ; even a simple “hello” is transformed into “I authorize you to speak” by the DK (in French anyway)…
Or maybe you just imagine that.
How does he do it without using an emote ?
I said they did roping.
Maybe they’re reading their cards because they’re new, maybe they’re eating while they play, maybe they’re chatting with a friend…
But it’s also true that maybe he’s late on purpose.
The game allows it.
So let him be late !
You can do the same or “ignore” him and act as if everything is “normal”.
No it was a very easy move, and they weren’t slow on the other rounds, it was an obvious ‘victory lap’ roping.
PS Well theoretically they might had disconnected, but I’m talking about seeing a pattern of those things.