Guild Wars 2

To All of Us,

It’s time once again to be reminded to be civil to your fellow players. Specifically in-game where it’s easy to be anonymous, simple to disappear in a sea of overflow servers and transfers. The people you’re playing with want to do the same content as you, want to succeed like you. They might be as tired of farming certain content than you, maybe even more than you. Or maybe they’re doing it for the first time. They might be a hardcore player, or they might be a father of three who works two jobs and has only the next hour to get a dungeon in, or some dynamic events.

So bearing this all in mind, it’s important to teach those who don’t know so they can teach others. Speaking for myself, if I’m taught something, I learn it and I share it with others. If I have somebody insult me because I don’t eat, sleep and defecate this game and I didn’t happen to know a fun fact about a certain bit of content, I give them a piece of my mind, rather doing what they want. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one like this. Nobody likes being berated when trying to learn content…old or new.

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of people both in /map and in groups I’ve been in, who just can’t communicate effectively. They either don’t explain what they’re trying to do, or they insult the rest of the participants in the event/group. You can’t complain about the quality of players, if you’re unwilling to teach. You can’t berate people because guess what? There was a time not long ago you didn’t know something and likely? You screwed up too.

So, be a little more patient with each other, community. This was supposed to be the ‘better community’ with the self-absorbed pricks from WoW, EQ and every other MMO left to stare at their DPS parsers and suffer strokes because somebody stood in the fire for a nanosecond. And for those who just don’t ever seem to learn, pay attention or want to be carried? Just smile and remember their names and know to avoid them in the future.

Signed,

One of you who thought this needed to be said.

tl;dr – Stop being jerks to each other in groups/events and teach people who don’t know. Things go smoother that way.

First I thought this would just another one of those “I don’t like all that whining about ascended gear, I like to grind” threads, fortunately I read it anyway and was proven wrong. I’ve always done as you propose, and it almost always paid out. There’s a minority of players that are just too immature, but those can still be reported and/or ignored. You have to deal with idiocy in real life too. Our guild is accepting people of all ages because we don’t like the “18+ only” policy of many guilds, I’ve met as many people in my age (30+) that are just plain stupid as those that have yet to grow pubic hair but are very pleasant to communicate with nevertheless. To be honest, I probably learned a lot more from those who still have the time to actually play the game a lot than I could teach them with my limited playtime.

Kudos, this needed to be said and I m glad you took the time to do it. My family plays and my mother is 65yrs old she may take a little longer to grasp the consept of some things but she does want to learn and she has taught me things along the way. She wont touch a dungeon group simply due to apprehension of how she might be taken. I can tell you my bf is very skilled, skilled enought to carry me who hasnt looked at gear since I left wow, my nephew and my mother thru a dungeon but he wont touch a group simply from seeing how others treat people in them. So not only are you getting rid of who you would call noobs but some really great players that would benefit your groups when you display bad attitudes.

/signed

One thing I’d add: if you’re a newbie (or otherwise, not knowing what to do), say so. Especially if you’re in a party. At least on my server most players are willing to help, but sadly there seems to be a rather major lack of telepathy among us so speaking out will really help. Those few elitists who would kick you for not being pro yet… let em be. Not worth doing a dungeon with imo.

And maybe worth noting: try out WvW if you have a committed server. I don’t do it often, but it tends to be quite fun.

Thats life, we love to hate each other and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

Good luck getting folks to do this and it would be nice if many others did. Unfortunately the internet gives many folks the ability to act and do as they please with zero repercussions. It’s also why many of us simply play with friends and only those we do know. Very few times have encounters with players I’ve never gamed with been pleasant but those that have been a good experience I do remember as I can still count them on one hand.

Eugenics.6953:

Thats life, we love to hate each other and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

It depends on the acceptance bad attitude gets in the community if everyone accepts and turns a blind eye then yes it will never change and continue but if lets say a gaming community decides this behavior is unacceptable and wont be tolerated then it would change after all everyone even the bully wants to be part of the whole group and not playing in the sandbox alone

/signed

Everything that happens ingame has a ripple-effect onto the community, from whether you decide to sell that rare drop on TP or salvage it for yourself to how you treat your fellow gamers.

It is easy to get frustrated when you know you only got half an hour left before you have to log off when you are doing path 3 in CoF…but the way you treat new/other players is the way they will treat the newbies of tomorrow when they have learnt the rope themselves. I’m not saying spats aren’t going to happen, they will. But to take everything with a pinch of salt doesn’t hurt anyone!

I come from SWTOR and I can tell you this game had a nasty community, the forums and general chat were more akin to a cesspool than anything you could call sociable. The reason why it got like that doesn’t matter in this example, the point I’m trying to make is the atmosphere was truly nasty and therefore new players picked up on that and those that didn’t leave started to treat others the same.
It’s a vicious infernal circle.

Best way to avoid it is to never get started with it.
Remain civil, appreciate the fact that regardless of level, skill, gear or even personality the reason why we are all playing an MMO is because we want to play with real people and not just AI.

Value your community and your community will value you

EDIT : Thank you for making that post, I hope we haven’t actually reached the point where it needs to be said… but it’s good to be reminded of it regardless!

Kudos kind sir.

Eugenics.6953:

Thats life, we love to hate each other and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

Except, this isn’t life. This is a game. This is a game that I have to depend on you to get somewhere and you have to depend on me to go to the same place. In life, you can pretty much make it on you’re own. You can do your own taxes, cook your own meals and even start your own business if you want to be your own boss. But in this game, we need each other.

It might not get any better, I’ll give you that but I feel better with my conscious for having written this and put it out there.

deborah.2068:

Kudos, this needed to be said and I m glad you took the time to do it. My family plays and my mother is 65yrs old she may take a little longer to grasp the consept of some things but she does want to learn and she has taught me things along the way. She wont touch a dungeon group simply due to apprehension of how she might be taken. I can tell you my bf is very skilled, skilled enought to carry me who hasnt looked at gear since I left wow, my nephew and my mother thru a dungeon but he wont touch a group simply from seeing how others treat people in them. So not only are you getting rid of who you would call noobs but some really great players that would benefit your groups when you display bad attitudes.

That’s so cool that your mother plays. Showed my father this game a few weekends ago when he came over to my house to visit. We talk technology a lot and I wanted to show him ‘where games have gone.’ He’s not really a gamer, but he was impressed by the looks of this one.

It’s very true we don’t know who we’re talking to on the other end of a game. Having just a little more patience to explain things, when it’s not clear and keeping everybody at ease is a good thing. No world will end if you don’t get all your Fractals of the Mists in a timely manner, or if you don’t happen to kill all the Shades on time.

deborah.2068:

Eugenics.6953:

Thats life, we love to hate each other and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

It depends on the acceptance bad attitude gets in the community if everyone accepts and turns a blind eye then yes it will never change and continue but if lets say a gaming community decides this behavior is unacceptable and wont be tolerated then it would change after all everyone even the bully wants to be part of the whole group and not playing in the sandbox alone

Unfortunately the bully or I’ll just refer to them as jack wagons in this case need to be seriously taken down a notch. The type of person / people that’s being described is pretty easy to recognize and just to clear up what we see on these forums would take several moderators to handle on a daily basis and quite honestly be a full time job. I’m not sure any gaming company pays anyone to do just this as the time and effort alone would be just way too much. It’s kept pretty sane here on the forums for the most part but like I said the people that’s being discussed are pretty easy to spot and single out. There are several if I was in charge though that would have no accounts and be IP banned not account banned.

Far as a community tolerating stuff I applaud the effort Deborah and would like to see more people on these forums call out said jack wagons and posts made simply for trolling and have the moderators nuke those accounts with only said contributing factors of making others lives miserable or simply being a plain ( insert any four letter words here ). The community is diverse and there are ages from 14 to 70 I would imagine and the younger folks probably need a little more tolerance but when I was younger I knew right from wrong well before that and unfortunately it’s those with many more years to their credit which seem to be the worse offenders. Too many variables in what the community is actually made of to take into account every single thing which makes these things the way they are but the simple point of it all.

No we don’t have to tolerate it and in my own circle I’ve booted people from my guild and black listed many simply because of how they act and what they consider to be acceptable behavior. I’ll just continue to hold myself and others I game with to a slightly higher standard of behavior then the " Typical MMO player " we’re describing.

“Except, this isn’t life. This is a game.” It’s still human nature, you can’t change that.

Eugenics.6953:

“Except, this isn’t life. This is a game.” It’s still human nature, you can’t change that.

But its the internet. No consequences for bad public behavior makes Jack (or Jill) think they can say anything with impunity.

I’ll be happy if players just stop training mobs onto other players. Or ANet makes that practice impossible to do. Whichever comes first.

unsure exactly how this applies to someone like me,

i dont group, dungeon, pvp or wvw.

threads like this just seem patronising.

please understand that sweeping generalisms are exactly that.

but perhaps if more people were like me, we wouldnt need threads like this to exist.

so in principle i agree, although the premise is faulty.

Eugenics.6953:

“Except, this isn’t life. This is a game.” It’s still human nature, you can’t change that.

Kind of a funny statement given your screen name.

Sound statement. “Don’t be a jerk” should just be a general rule. Funnily enough, I remember during the final Beta Weekend, someone asking a question in map chat and someone else responding calling them a noob. In a beta weekend, when I think everyone could be counted as a pre noob! Fortunately the rest of map chat weighed in at that point and helped the guy asking the question.

/signed
I remember a couple of days ago I had finally rallied some people to take Grenth’s temple and started to explain the mechanics of the priest battle. I was shot down after my first paragraph by some kittenaying “No kitten, sherlock.” Not everyone knew the information I was trying to give, and I was just trying to be helpful. When you’re doing dynamic events, group events, dungeons, whatever, leave your ego at the door. Everyone is pushing towards a common goal and it helps if everyone is on the same page. Even if everyone knows what to do, it’s still good to state it so that if the off chance that one person doesn’t know, they will be properly informed. That’s what communication is, learn it, love it, it’s what humanity is all about.

Edit: I’m going to leave the Kittenaying filter there. It’s too good to take out.

Completely agree. Everyone’s new at some point, and it’s actually a lot of fun to help new people out. I took a new player on a guided tour of some game mechanics the other week. I got to show off all the cool things to do, and we both finished the daily achievement.

People who complain about the lack of progression should spend some time helping others instead of grinding. It really makes it clear how far a character has come and how neat the game is.

There are several guilds dedicated to casual / help-others play to join. I don’t know if any of them have a presence on your server, though.

If you’re new, or playing on limited time then it’s expected that you shouldn’t be godlike in your playing skill.

If however if that’s an excuse to be lazy, bad and generally not dedicate more than 2 brain cells to content that’s designed to be overcome by several players working together, then you’re not a newbie, you’re not a hard done by father of 3. You’re just lazy and unwilling to unbind your A and D keys from turn right and left respectively and learn to do the equivalent ingame of crawling as a baby before jumping in for shiny “lewt” in dungeons.

Walk before you crawl and at least show some initiative and enthusiasm. No one wants to carry strangers to the counter from the door in macdonalds when it’s easy to get there, so why should they do it in a dungeon in an online game?

Also if that doesn’t apply to you, and you’re just not super duper hardcore then please ignore the real hardcore “bumhats” who give out to you for not meeting their stringent requirements to offset their terribad self serving builds that they can’t even use right..

signed – A regular GW2 player

Eugenics.6953:

“Except, this isn’t life. This is a game.” It’s still human nature, you can’t change that.

It didnt become human nature until the community started turning a blind eye to it and accepting it …. I went to a catholic school in my classroom two little boys harrassed the teacher steadily made her life a living hell they did it for the laughs they got from the class on one such day the sister from next door saw this she came in tore in to the two little boys, verbally only, had the whole class laughing at them for about an hour or so those two little boys were the best behaved in the class after… that peer acceptance is a great tool.

Mimizu.7340:

unsure exactly how this applies to someone like me,

i dont group, dungeon, pvp or wvw.

threads like this just seem patronising.

please understand that sweeping generalisms are exactly that.

but perhaps if more people were like me, we wouldnt need threads like this to exist.

so in principle i agree, although the premise is faulty.

This isn’t a sweeping generalization. It’s a statement and a request. If it doesn’t apply to you then you shouldn’t care about it. Enjoy the game the way you enjoy it. This is for people who do group and who do dynamic events and do WvW.

Norelation.3067:

/signed
I remember a couple of days ago I had finally rallied some people to take Grenth’s temple and started to explain the mechanics of the priest battle. I was shot down after my first paragraph by some kittenaying “No kitten, sherlock.” Not everyone knew the information I was trying to give, and I was just trying to be helpful. When you’re doing dynamic events, group events, dungeons, whatever, leave your ego at the door. Everyone is pushing towards a common goal and it helps if everyone is on the same page. Even if everyone knows what to do, it’s still good to state it so that if the off chance that one person doesn’t know, they will be properly informed. That’s what communication is, learn it, love it, it’s what humanity is all about.

Edit: I going to leave the Kittenaying filter there. It’s too good to take out.

Had this exact same thing happen to me. I just ignored them and kept right on it. I had more than a few people thank me about explaining the thing about the Shades. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know to go into the dark spots to get Shadow-Form to fight them. Won the temple that afternoon too.

Especially with the new FotM dungeons, people need to really learn to communicate and if they know something the rest of the group doesn’t, explain it without being a jerk about it. They’re just too new for anybody to be acting like a know-it-all.