Instanced content is far more destructive to the community because a fixed number of participants necessitates filling that spot with the best available. Instead of bringing people you’d rather bring for social reasons.
The rest can be worked out. Not knowing what to do among friends is easier solved than in a group of random people. We know how that goes. So the toxicity is completely from having these instanced versions of the game where the game forces you to bring the best available, on top of having competent people because there’s no other social glue holding them together so they leave after a wipe or two.
1.) First, its competitive. It forces more dps output. Otherwise people would slack and content would become 100X harder than it should be
2.) lastly, it points out the problems you are doing in dps. If someone’s dps is not good the guild can help them enchant certain gear, learn rotations , etc. to maximize dps. In essence, you fix what’s wrong with your dps to help your guild. The more damage you do, the easier clearing heroics and mythics become.
Therefore, I’m going to say “No”, it doesn’t ruin the game.
There are people who are unaware of certain services. You’re lumping individuals in to a group.
Considering that outside of Scots Law, precognition literally is defined as using extrasensory perception, I would say that it is literally mystic as well.
Let’s leave politics out of this conversation, please. You’re still assigning people you know so little of in to a general grouping based on one concept without even trying to educate.
That is gatekeeping.
Until you try, you never know. If you assume, well…
If you’re not gatekeeping while not educating, then it isn’t your concern.
But hey, some of the best places I’ve learned is in the PUGs. Experience is a great teacher, and often I’m not sure of a concept until I have a chance to experience it. To quote an educational tv show: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”
Non-instanced events led to things being just as toxic once upon a time, too. Toxic people will be toxic, there is no way around it, and instanced or non-instanced will change nothing about that.
The bottom-line is that you have to find a guild that is willing to help you learn rotations, gear, content etc. They can help you get started for sure always help out new people. However, from there it’s up to the person to want to change. You can’t force someone to change. They must want to learn on their own.
At the same time, if you can’t clear content for weeks because they are holding the whole raid back you will have to eventually be tough on them. That will force them to read stuff, practice dps, enchant gear, use potions etc. You make them stronger. You can’t carry people through harder content of the game.
Same. As a healer in raids I like to make sure I’m doing what I can to not be sniped, and keep my HoT overhealing to a minimum while simultaneously making sure all dispellers and purgers are doing what needs to be done.
Anecdotal, I used to use meters to ensure I was top healing AND overhealing. I remember the Naxx spider boss was the first time I broke 1 million overhealing. I was so pleased with myself. Why? Because reasons, that’s why.
I wouldn’t say ruined… but definitely changed for the worse depending on your perspective. Trying to make sure every class performs mathematically similar is why we have homogenization, bare bones character building and no support classes.
If what we got for the last 3 expansions is Blizzard “trying to make sure every class performs mathematically similar”, I would hate to see them not trying.
I wouldn’t say classes play all that similar, just take the tanking role as an example, there is plenty of variety in the way they play, mitigate damage, sustain themselves and the utility they bring.
By how much? Everquest had toxic interactions in game and no more instances than beyond individual zones. That was 5-6 years before World of Warcraft was created.
Dark Age of Camelot was pretty open in its zones, but toxic interactions still occurred on a regular basis. It’s older than WoW as well.
Guild Wars 2 has a lot of instances of toxicity here and there, but it is far younger than WoW.
The point is, crap people are crap people, there being instances will do nothing to change that. It will expose certain types better, but that’s about it.
To that I’m not in disagreement, nor do I understand why you would think I believe otherwise.
There is a difference between a group gatekeeping, and person holding themselves back or refusing to progress.
Damage meters are how individuals improve their performance. People being toxic about them is just an unfortunate side effect. Just like Master looter.
It wasn’t inherently a bad system, the minority of players were just abusing it and blizzard overreacted and removed it. Blizzard has a habit of banning cars because some people get into accidents.
Square Enix has said they don’t mind people using it just don’t abuse the system and harass players with it. I agree they shouldn’t be using it to be elitist towards people though and ruin their experience but you know how that goes.
If they are used in controlled content like your own raids or pre-mades, knock yourself out. But when people use them in PUGs with random people, it’s pretty much done exclusively to show off.
When I started and was leveling my first or second toon through a low level dungeon some idiot had the nerve to post DPS meter in to chat.
It was the first time I saw it, and also the first time I realized there was an aspect of the game that was performance related.
It inspired me to pay better and learn my class rather than just smashing the same 2 buttons I used to kill questing mobs.
I’m far from a “high end” player, but meters helped me both want to play better and give me a better understanding of how the game works and the community thinks.
My guild tags the world boss, but because he popped at 2am, we could only get 50% of our guild online. Our competitors guild got 75% online and they out damaged us and got the kill and the loot.
We’ve gone back and forth on the KS issue a number of times whenever I bring this discussion up. So the answer is typically to not have rares with 1 month or 2 week cooldowns. And to address KS specifically stop limiting the aggro list and loot table to a fixed number of participants. Instead scale the world boss encounters to the number of people present.
There is more to talk about with regards to tuning of mechanics and damage to accommodate a more free wheeling open world population but that’s now a small issue to figure out.
