Please add incentives to reduce toxicity

Community General Discussion
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TL;DR I’m a fairly skilled player that has been predominantly unable to participate in Mythic+ content due to chat toxicity and leavers. Recommendations for how Blizzard could solve this problem at the bottom of the post

Background***

I’m an off-and-on WoW player. I play for short stints at a time for a few months, then return later for expansion launches or big patches.

I returned earlier this month excited about the Ny’alotha raid and Mythic+ Dungeons, but I’m having trouble continuing to play and enjoy the game simply due to the rampant toxicity I experienced in my brief stay so far.

I wanted to gear up a freshly ~415 ilvl character using Mythic 0s for those sweet 430 drops. I managed to do so, but in each run (I did 3 or 4), I had someone rage at me and/or leave the group. We didn’t even wipe every time, one boss I didn’t position them correctly, nobody died, the boss was downed, and I still don’t know what mechanic I was missing since nothing negative seemed to happen, but a player in the group berated in me group chat for my performance.

When doing Mythic 0 Freehold, someone accidentally was bumped off the edge and pulled extra mobs and we wiped. Mythic 0. No timer, no pressure, not a big deal. 3 people immediately left the group.

When doing Mythic +6 Freehold with 3 of my friends, we picked up a pug. Similar thing happened, and they left, meaning we burned the key since we didn’t want to run the rest of the dungeon as a 4-man (we were not overgeared, +6 was pushing for us since we all recently returned)

I can’t learn the Mythic+ routes and mechanics because I can’t run the dungeons because I don’t yet know the routes and mechanics.

I have not yet had a single endgame experience without raging or leaving. I feel substantially unable to participate in Mythic+ dungeons, which are my favorite content in WoW because players expect you to be overgeared. If they’re running a +6, it’s to get a +10 key with which to push, so they expect everyone in the group to be ~460+ ilvl despite the gear dropping from a +6 being like 445-455.

For context, I have a group of friends I’ve been able to play with, and together we cleared 12/12 Normal Ny’alotha fairly easily, for which I was one of the tanks. I say this to inform readers that while I’m not getting scouted for Method, I’m not someone who’s substantially new to the genre or the game, and that I’m able to play well. The bar for acceptable performance that the community has set is simply unreasonably high.

I get it, if you wipe 10 times on what should be, for you, an easy dungeon, sometimes you just can’t spend the time.

Closing Thoughts***

I think the current state of the community is completely unacceptable.

People comment and joke about Overwatch, Dota, and other competitive games as being highly toxic, and while that’s true, it doesn’t even come close to the WoW community in my experience.

In Dota if you’re not actively flaming or put into low priority queue, you’ll likely only see some hard flaming or a leaver every one in 5 or so games. I literally have not yet completed a Mythic or Mythic+ dungeon without someone flaming or leaving.

“Find friends to play with”/“don’t group with randoms” is not a reasonable solution for what is supposed to be a social game. Especially when actual new players who ARE having difficulty learning mechanics or experiencing endgame for the first time won’t know to avoid public groups, and I think it’s awful to expose them to abuse like that without consequences for the toxic players.

I don’t think it would be unreasonable for extreme and/or repeatedly toxic players to be banned from the game entirely, not so much as a punishment, but just to protect the rest of the community.

Aside from the social and health effects, it actually affects gear progression, balance, and reward systems. If you can’t get 445 gear from Mythic+ dungeons until you’re 460, because people will just leave if you’re not doing 50k+ DPS, Mythic+ entirely ceases to be a source of 445 gear.

Brainstorming Solutions***

I come here not to shame the community, but to state that this behavior can be curbed by Blizzard. I propose Blizzard implement one or more of the following:

  • Introduce harsh penalties for leaving a group too early (before ~10 wipes)
  • Introduce harsher penalties for leaving a Mythic+ group too early due to burning someone else’s key (lock them out from their weekly chest, say)
  • Introduce incentives for players to be kind similar to Overwatch commendations or other games (mentor points or whatever, which might be a currency you can use to buy recruit-a-friend-style bonuses, mounts, transmogs, maybe even reputation bonuses)
  • Introduce rewards for sticking with a failing group (might be difficult to prevent intentional abuse by deliberately wiping until your group is considered “failing”, then complete the dungeon)
  • Introduce a new “report player” category (“Toxicity” or “Unfriendliness”). Currently you can report a player for “Language”, but is it really okay to abuse a player in chat and tell them they’re useless as long as the abusive player doesn’t say curse words while doing so?

Mod Edit: Removed inappropriate language from post.

43 Likes
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I’m going to automatically question your story because I’ve been told that this never happens on Horde side.

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introducing rewards isn’t going to help. it will make it worse. then, they will only be sticking around for the shiny mount at the end of the grind and will continue to harass and spread misery because

“SLOW TANK. I NEED MY MENTOR MOUNT”

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I mean, you’re being actively told right now that it does happen :stuck_out_tongue:

Maybe I should use ShadowPlay and upload GIFs next time or something

but even if it hasn’t been a problem for you or your friend group, do any of the solutions seem unreasonable? WoW to my knowledge doesn’t currently have any systems to prevent this sort of behavior, and I think it’s worth implementing some safeguards

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My only suggestion would be to find a static group of buddies to run dungeons with.

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The idea is that if you receive reports/don’t receive commends due to your behavior, you won’t have the points necessary for the reward.

FFXIV has a mentor system that deals with this fairly well, from what I understand.

It’s common in games to not allow commending between players on your friendslist, or who were part of your queuing group, so you can’t just farm the points by grouping with friends and commending each other.

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Only 1 thing in common in those group, you as the tank. Maybe you are not as good as you think you are.

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Some toxic gamers need Real Parents to *^%& they D&^% off!

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That’s a fair point, but then is your stance “don’t do Mythic+ until you’re better”?
Normal Ny’alotha gives the same gear rewards as Mythic +6 dungeons, so I’d assume they’re roughly similar in difficulty, and I did Ny’alotha fine. What is the bar before I’m allowed to play without receiving abuse?

For the record, I did finish those Mythic dungeons after players left. If I’m bad, I’m clearly not bad enough to be unable to complete the content. I don’t think I ever had more than 3 wipes on any of them either.

But more fundamentally I take issue with “you’re bad, so you should expect people to leave”

Wouldn’t that mean you could only ever do content that is not challenging for you? The only reason to ever group would be to farm something? Shouldn’t endgame content be difficult for the people in the dungeon?

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Ehhhhhh, no.

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Elaborate?

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I think that generally speaking you’ll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar, i wouldn’t be opposed to small adjustments to reward positive/friendly behaviors rather than punishing bad ones. Like for example completing a random group finder instance be it a dungeon or LFR without kicking anyone. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to come up with some creative ways to gently nudge people towards being a little less unforgiving.

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This kind of system would actually only breed more toxicity. Look at League of Legends if you need a good example of that. Players would start to feel constrained and just get fed up. Also it would actually make the experience worse, because now instead of simply flaming and leaving, they’re just going to AFK and refuse to continue the run. Also punishing players for leaving early simply wouldn’t be healthy. It’s incredibly annoying when some dingus ruins your key because they decided halfway through the dungeon they don’t want to finish it, but forcing them to stay or punishing them for leaving just feels wrong.

Silencing players for toxicity will just make it so everyone stays silent forever, and I feel like it would be way too easy to abuse. What people consider “Toxic” or “Unfriendly” differs greatly. Mentor points sounds like a horrible idea for an MMO. OW endorsements are different as it’s a shooter, not an MMO.

That’s a dangerous route to go, people will start to feel like they can’t say anything at all or they’ll be banned, and all that frustration will just build up inside them. There’s also an ignore feature for a reason.

Punishing players for not playing how certain people deem acceptable is never healthy for a game’s longevity and creates either a more toxic environment or an echo chamber.

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Seriously?

Not familiar enough with this but I see the issue posted all over the place. Everybody has their own solution.

Just make friends if you want. There should be no reason to purchase them.

Seriously? Not endorsing the fact that this happens, but who is judge and jury in this? Every person in the group can have a different opinion.

Define “Toxicity” or “Unfriendliness.” I’ll bet everybody has different definitions.

Rules like this will ensure that a group will never ever have pugs in it. It might be more fun to to transfer to a dead server to minimize encounters with “toxicity”

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Yes? Would ~3 wipes make you happier? Or 2? People make mistakes, and people making mistakes treated more harshly by the game than people actively abusing other players.

I mean, whatever the rewards may be, they don’t have to be tied to Recruit-a-Friend. I’m saying “incentivize positive behavior”, not purchase friends?

Blizzard would be. Blizzard should set the expectations for what commitment you’re making when you join a group, and what level of dedication is considered above and beyond.

Are you saying it’s impossible to determine if someone is being toxic from Blizzard’s side? Even in a purely automated way, associating a report with a timestamp, pulling chat logs, and using an off-the-shelf sentiment analysis ML model gets you very, very far.

You can report people in Dota for being toxic or unfriendly, and they can be put into low priority queue or chat banned for it, but it’s absurd to claim that nobody is queuing into pug games in Dota as a result of there being consequences to being reported for toxicity.

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They also actually punish players that are toxic and harass others. Something that for whatever reason, Blizzard refuses to do.

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I will admit, much of this could be solved with thought police, pre-crime and Blizzard hiring all of the people currently unemployed to be GMs. Until then, the majority of people will only play with those that they already know and/or find trustworthy.,

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I think this is a substantially disingenuous response. Adding a report button for toxicity and taking action on those reports comes nowhere close to being “thought police” or “pre-crime” and equating those concepts is silly.

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“incentives” = forced/false positivity.

no, thank you.

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I mean, I guess. I’m not saying the game should force you to like people, but that it should encourage you to be nice to them even when you don’t like them.

Maybe that’s false positivity, but that’s also how society works. You can’t be a raging flamer in your daily life and walk out of your job the first time someone else makes a mistake because there are consequences to those actions, but I don’t think it’s a huge problem that people are “forced” to be positive in public as a result.

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