The amount of toxicity (and leavers) you see is largely dependent on your skill level and how high you push. This is because most of the time you only see it when things go wrong. That same mistake or death that is ignored and inconsequential in a lower key might cause tempers to flare if it affects success in a higher key.
If you’re very competent and are doing vault level keys (10-12)…you can have a very high success rate and might not see a lot of toxicity. The higher you push the higher the failure rate and more opportunity for toxicity to emerge. You are less able to compensate for weaker players and the more everyone needs to pull their weight…this is why I think there is a big difference in observed toxicity.
People’s definition of toxicity can differ as well, but I think most people have similar views. It’s like justice stewart’s old line regarding the difficulty of defining obscenity…“I know it when I see it”.
I think a lot of the issue with keys could be solved if you stopped making the classes like Rogue where you need a spreadsheet, a wrist brace, special gloves to play, arthritis medication and must have the class Discord on speed dial on your phone otherwise you will be lost in the raid and wondering why you’re doing 40% less damage than the FDK: surprise, Rogues are bad.
But yeah just go back to a bit more simple gameplay. Everything doesn’t need to be a builder/spender and everything doesn’t need an epic combo in order to do anything at all.
Healers that use combos now:
Rsham: Unleash+Anything
Disc: Radiance+Anything
Pres: Everything is a combo.
Holy Pally: Has to activate Light of Dawn then spread it around via combo with Dawnlight.
RDruid: Swiftmend into Wild Growth.
If you are helpful, willing to forgive mistakes, and not one of the people that instantly leaves or demands an abandonment after a single wipe in an M+, then you should have no reason to consider yourself one. OP’s post isn’t meant for you.
I do a lot of low and entry level m+, not so much this season, but usually I do lots of keys in the 2-9 range and I just don’t see it in these low keys. Honestly I don’t see much of it at all, but I see it more in the higher keys only because there is a higher chance of failure. I do a lot of 2-9 keys but I’m often overgeared like crazy so I see like 90%+ success rate…and like I said I just don’t see more toxicity at these lower levels…that’s why I think it’s all about failure…it’s only when keys fail do I see a chance of toxicity.
Every key I have had thats failed is just “gg, nt”
The people complaining on the forums almost are always referring to non timed dungeons and low m+.
That key range you have the people that think they are good, etc. Its why 9s are worse to run than 10s. because of the people there.
I honestly couldnt tell you the last time I had a “toxic” encounter in a key 12+ (or what 12+ would have been previously). Yet we see people all the time complaining about keys/difficulty lower with its toxicity. So even removing our two experiences, and we say they cancel each other out…
The people complaining arent doing high keys. We know this because either based on what they are complaining about, or a simple check.
Yeah I don’t know. I can’t claim to know if it’s better or worse…I just see it so infrequently at ANY level that I wouldn’t be able to say one way or another. I have heard a lot of people echo what you’re saying about low key levels though…it’s just not something I’ve been able to confirm.
I never discounted your experience. It’s entirely possible that most of you here proclaiming that toxicity is rare in M+ have actually witnessed very little toxicity. I don’t deny that as a possibility.
It’s also entirely possible that you aren’t the problem here. I will concede that it’s awfully presumptuous of me to make that declaration.
But here’s how I see these exchanges:
People come to the forums and assert that the toxicity they experience is a real issue in M+.
The following response is a slew of individuals (and always the same individuals, mind you) who feel compelled to insert their anecdotal experiences on the matter as if it’s a counter to the experiences other people have. Not just countering people with their anecdotal experiences, but going so far as to gaslight them and suggest that the toxicity they experience isn’t real.
“Oh, you’re just thin-skinned.”
“You don’t actually experience toxic behavior.”
“You’re actually the problem if you have this issue.”
This is straight up gaslighting 101. You don’t know what was said to them. You don’t know what they witnessed. You don’t know the circumstances that prompted the toxic behavior. You are assuming through your own anecdotal experience that they are the problem.
So you can hopefully understand why - when this subject is posted in GD - I might feel inclined to believe that the people proclaiming toxicity as this infinitesimally small issue, might actually be part of the problem.
I will submit that sometimes, people can blow criticisms out of proportion. It’s not unheard of.
But if you can at least agree that toxicity does happen, then at a baseline, we should be having a conversation about it rather than trying to downplay it. Because any sort of conversation otherwise is a deflection.
Except this isn’t whats happening, in this thread or others like it?
Instead its OP and others like him proclaiming erroneous nonsense like “M+ is DYING and its poopy community is to blame!” And other such incendiary comments.
And often in these threads, you find OP and others(not all mind you) aren’t speaking from experience at all, because often they dont even do the content, they just have an irrational hatred for players that do.
Even if they do, they never frame things esrnestly from a “this is what i experienced in m+” like you state, its always some goading crap
And look i understand if you had a bad experience, im sorry bout that, but can you blame the raised eyebrows at your claims when were already starting with a poisoned well?
Probably anecdotal but the overwhelmingly common complaint I see about M+ isn’t about toxicity at all. It’s the timeless classic of dps whining that nobody takes them because only meta classes get into M+. And they are wrong. But they post it anyway.
This is what I found from just skimming and from my personal experience in the thread.
I can probably find more, if it’s not enough for you to get the point yet.
Listen man, I understand that we all want to believe that WoW isn’t this toxic community and is instead a bastion of productive online interaction.
But I will remind you that Blizzard, not even four years ago, had to institute new measures and reinforce their Code of Conduct because behavior was so poor.
Whether or not that was an effective move on their part is still up in the air, but I don’t think it’s nothing that even Blizzard felt compelled to do something about it.
EDIT: And let me just say this.
For the average decent player at this game, yes, they are not as likely to witness poorer behavior.
But even if I were to assume the position that bad players are what incites bad behavior, poorer performance is not an excuse to be mean, and we shouldn’t be scapegoating poor performing players as the problem. It is almost a given in any online game that people who aren’t nearly as good as other players will be verbally chastised. That has been true since online gaming was conceived, so let’s please not act like this is a foreign concept.
Declining Pres Evokers because you think they’re ugly is the most toxic thing I’ve seen in keys, which basically translates to everyone focusing on what’s meta or what’s the easiest thing to play as.
If something is harder to play they don’t want you in the key even if they aren’t playing it. Stigma affects M+ more than statistics do. I can point to HPS and DPS and IO and my own experiences and people still only care about the stigma because that’s how the human brain works, it’s easily manipulated by superficial things.
If you can perfectly package something, even a dog turd, people will accept it. That’s how religion works too.
I mean look, i get it man, i edited my previous post too slow but, you’re right, toxicity is unacceptable, And im sorry if you or others experienced it
However
With regards to OP and how these threads start, he clearly wasn’t giving sone earnest take on his experience, and i didnt go all the way through the thread but it doesnt seem he alluded to his experience, he was just making a generalization about the community and using it to justify this weird take about m+ dying, people are responding in kind.
A majority of the threads i see on this topic follow this pattern. There might be some valid takes in the replies, but the convo is already poisoned
I will concede that OP was looking for a fight. There’s no doubt about it.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of well-meaning and well-intentioned threads about the toxicity in M+ that are almost always dragged down by the same group of people who feel compelled to defend the reputation of WoW’s community, even though we all know well enough that, by virtue of being an online game, toxicity is going to be there regardless of how frequent or infrequent someone experiences it.
I can’t speak for OP. I can speak on my behalf, though, and my experience with this game and the experience my friends have had.
To downplay it outright, in my view, is a very dishonest way of approaching the conversation and leads to nowhere, and above all, is absolutely part of the problem. Almost always.
This makes zero sense. A large majority of m+ are not toxic. The ones that are toxic are groups that cant make it past a +6 and those aren’t the majority of keys run if you actually look ar raider io stats on what keys are run the most lol.
You just contradicted yourself in the same sentence lol.
And it actually is that easy to ban the toxic people but they refuse to so… yes it is on blizzard, same thing with bots, gold sellers and buyers etc.