Yes, I agree, you can’t incentivize everyone to be kind and polite. Some people will fall through the cracks. But most people just need an incentive, a reward for not crashing out.
There’s exceptions to every rule. But I think a fundamental aspect of human psychology is when someone enters a new environment, adapting to that environment. If the environment is combative, people will inherently feel combative. If the environment is supportive, people will want to reciprocate that support.
I don’t think it damaged player’s psychology. People were motivated with dungeon speed running since vanilla. Sure now it’s forcing everyone to fall under this play style, but even in M0 and heroic, we see people talking about their experience with slow tanks annoying them cuz they’re forcing everyone to waste their time in a 20 minute heroic that could be done in 10. So I don’t really think there is a way to make everybody happy unless blizz makes a very clear different queue for 2 types of dungeon, one is slow completion the other is speed run, and police behavior to make sure the right players join the right queue or something. At the end of the day we’re all playing the same game, in different ways, and blizzard is not trying to tailor the experience for a target audience they just want everyone in the same melting pot. So there will be clash.
All time has value, assuming that the only valuable time on earth is real life productivity makes no sense, hobbies and entertainment are also valuable and good for mental health.
The best way for this to happen is for Blizzard to start enforcing the rules they set down. They don’t do a good job at it and those who have been banned, only get new accounts and start again.
Since 2005 on and off, usually play a few months every new patch then take a break for a few months until the next, and mostly skipped SL cuz I didn’t like it.
Yeah I don’t think their intention is to be bad or grief groups they join. But I also think there are people who don’t really want to do the best they can. I’ve seen some UIs alone that show that, people cluttering their screen with the most useless info they never track anyway, hiding important gameplay stuff happening, or ommiting to actually show important information that would make them better instantly. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of HC death clips of people playing without nameplate for example and extra zoomed in. Those are just objectively bad, maybe it’s just me being crazy but in my mind anyone who wants to do the best they can will change that the very first time they play this game, like I did on day 1 and so did everyone I know, I don’t think that type of stuff is elitist or high level in any way, it should be extremely basic. And we’re talking about M+ here, meaning people have had time to level and do various other stuff before joining M+ groups so we’re far beyond “first time playing” kinda thing.
I’m not sure this analogy accurately represents a group content scenario, because all these individuals are racing by themselves and their result doesn’t really affect the others, except if they crash into them. I think a more accurate comparison would be rowing race, not even sure that’s what it’s called pardon my English, I’m talking about these long boats with a team all sitting in line and rowing together with perfect snychronization. That’s closer to what a M+ group is like, and you’re right that the dynamic changes if the skill lvls of the rowers is vastly different, and I would assume that in a competitive scenario with high level guys, they all expect to perform well and if someone doesn’t, he will hear about it. But if a pro is trying this with his family, he’s not gonna berate everyone who doesn’t perform to his level.
Now the question is, where is the line that defines when it’s okay to be mad about mistakes, and where people should be extra tolerent?
Some people in WoW would argue everybody should be always nice no matter what. I don’t agree with this. But I’m also not saying people should blow up if someone messes up in a +2. There’s a line somewhere, but I doubt we can have a consensus on where this line should be.
We can’t always be nice, but we can always be kind. Kind doesn’t mean agreeing or being a doormat. I don’t do that anymore.
I just means we don’t descend into something we wouldn’t say to a friend face-to-face. I can tell a person “no” or disagree with their position on something or even tell them they’re not holding up their end in this game without being unkind.
We raid. There have been times we had to ask someone to dip because they were not doing enough DPS and scaling being what it is…they had to go. That’s never a good time for the person who has to hear it, and it shouldn’t be a good time for the person who has to say it.
We’re a guild, and we know each other, so the person who didn’t have enough gear or damage gets more from us than, “Sorry, but we need to remove you for the next pull.” They also get assistance in getting better gear or looking at their UI or whatever the issue is that’s keeping them from playing well. We can’t do that for every person in every pug, obviously, but we can say thing without being mean.
Keeping humanity in mind is all I ask for from the people I play with, and it’s not difficult to do.
That is, of course, of equal importance, depending on the content you’re trying to do. If it’s a TW dungeon–I’m sorry, but we can 2-man most of those, so I never see the point in having issues there. I don’t care if they afk. I don’t care if they butt pull. I don’t care if their DPS is in the gutter (I mean, scaling will have them on top of the meter for rolling their face across the keyboard in five levels before it dips again).
But if it’s raiding or keys, people need to grow up and recognize when the mistake was theirs. Saying, “my bad. I’m so sorry” or “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know about that” goes a very, very long way.
Karma is not a fallacy.
It’s very alive and well.
Trust me, those who are toxic may not get their just desserts where you can see it, but it does happen.
I think it comes down to this… focus on yourself and how good of person you can be. Eventually it will rub off on others, whether you witness it or not.
But if you keep saying that the WoW community is toxic…it will continue to grow more toxic.
It will eventually become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Be Deadpool:
Deadpool being Deadpool.
I once saw this thing where everyone was judged on likes/kind/helpful. I think it was Black Mirror: Nosedive season 3 episode 1
Don’t know if somebody has already mentioned it, but FFXIV has a commendation system just like OP described. You can award someone a commendation after a PuG run if they did a great job and it’s not a rating system.
That’s true but I also feel like most of these reported cases of rudeness offer little to no context. People complain that someone was very rude to them. I’m like, ok sure, everyone will have a different perspective of what that means based on their own standard. I personally don’t care what words people use against me if I mess up, I already said worse things about myself before anyone had the time to type anything. So to really rile me up enough to make me want to make a forum post about it, they would have to proceed to pull trash from all over the dungeon and drag it on everyone to kill the group and crank a nasty repair bill, which is almost impossible to do realistically. But I’m also aware that there are people out there who feel personally offended if someone suggest they should move talents around to be more efficient, no insult or anything. The spectrum of what “rude behavior” means is so wide that these posts don’t really mean anything if they don’t go into details, hell I would even want to see a video of these runs. Because from my experience, before someone really blows up the run had to go really bad.
I saw that episode. The ending was probably the best part of that episode because she wasn’t afraid of being herself.
The lady trucker giving her advice. That felt the most real
I’ll do you one better, can I borrow a feeling?
It wasn’t based on being kind or helpful. It was based on an mmr score. The mmr being primarily based on conforming to very rigid standards. Such as having the right dress, attending the right party.
The Cheshire Cat smiles as my mother would say
First of all, no - it isn’t common. Something being common means that you see it on a regular basis. Not “one person out of five every ten groups” - hell, reduce that number to five groups and you still have one person out of 25.
Yes, these people exist and they suck - which is why people should report them and get 'em removed from the game, either by them being repeat offenders who eventually get permanently banned or by learning from it and stop being awful people. But their existence alone doesn’t make them the common denominator or in other words, the average.
Secondly, I refer to the lowest common denominator. People who, for a lack of more polite phrasing, don’t function as people in social activities with other people. The mere existence of extreme outliers doesn’t mean everyone is the same - it just means reporting said outliers is important to make sure they don’t stick around. See above for what I mean.
Thirdly, I never ever said that what you described is the “normal” people. What I said is that there are spaces where people who are like this gather in larger amounts than not. LFR and LFD being two prime examples of this due to the extremely low bar of entry. The deeper you get into an activity, the less you see of that.
And finally, I already addressed that even in situations where you find toxic players deep into this “activity sphere” or whatever one should call it - they typically aren’t toxic within their own sphere but go elsewhere to be that. Doesn’t mean they aren’t toxic, and it doesn’t mean that they get a free pass - but it is rare for an activity to be internally gathering toxicity the further you get into it.
So, no. I don’t reject it because “people don’t care to admit it” but I reject it because it doesn’t hold true when tested in practice. What you are describing is only relatively (as in more common but still not ‘common’) common in the lowest possible entry level to an activity simply because the barrier of entry is as low as it is.
Precisely no one is telling you that you have to do anything. But it is bizarre beyond belief that you try to paint other players as toxic simply because you had a bad initial experience and you then try to paint that as if that’s the entire activity altogether.
Your personal disinterest in something doesn’t magically turn something toxic. No matter what kind of “peaked in high-school”-type of a person you want to ascribe to an entire activity. That’s not how sound and reasoned logic works, and it is just an attempt to strawman.
I didn’t say you should be more like me.
I said what I think and why I think it, not that you should think the same way, there is a difference.
I can automatically expect that at some point you ran a mythic key to get the io to be invited to a 10 key. Otherwise you wouldn’t get invited. Once you interject yourself into my group, the only reason I invited you is because I thought, from all the info I have, you were a good candidate to the success of my group.
It you are struggling you likely already know it.
No one does a 2 key then a 10 key without knowing they sucked in that 2 key.
So no I don’t have to be nice, you interject yourself into my world.
Look it’s no different if I walk down the street to the house being built pick up a hammer and start putting nails into the stud just because I once picked up a block of wood.
Gifts you my undying rage
15 years of playing the game is not “An initial experience”
Edit: That said, most of the toxicity I encountered was in M+ once it was added, and a majority of that was during my time in BFA and in SL pushing M+ Keys in Pugs, as a Tank.
It wouldn’t work because the tank or the healer would just get every commendation like how it is in FFXIV. DPS basically only get commendations if the tank and healer insta leave and so the only people left are dps.