Guild Wars 2

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just want to play Guild Wars 2. And I don’t mean get my dailies and do some dungeons, I mean put on my Turtle Beaches, stop and smell the flowers kind of playing. A big part of that experience is interacting with other players, in fact that’s one of the foundations of the game. So one thing that has bummed me out on multiple occasions, is being right in the middle of enjoying myself, usually during some kind of event or what have you, and then being suddenly attacked by some random player for pretty much no reason. Sometimes you’ll be talking to someone, maybe asking a question or giving someone advice, and then a third person feels the need to personally demean you for asking a question, or saying your way of playing is stupid or somehow less valid.
So to get off the soapbox and on to my point, I would just really like for there to be a way to maybe buffer this. I don’t expect this to just be magically solved, because people are people and they’re gonna be how they’re gonna be. However, Guild Wars already has a really great community to start with. On a highly populated server, it’s easy for all the whiners and complainers to annoy and distract, but there are still plenty of people just playing and having a good time. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about the occasional complainer, or people getting into arguments; that’s just human behavior. I’m talking about the people who consistently bash other players and initiate conflict by being overly critical.
I was thinking a reputation attribute, negligible to the actual game, it would be more of a social component. Players could like or dislike other players, and it could just be a straight-forward number to signify how well a given player gets along with the people he or she plays with. It doesn’t have to be that, I would just like a way for those of us who feel positively about the game to say, “we don’t like this guy, all he does spew negativity in the map chat and criticize everyone.”. Or maybe if people are reported just for spewing hate, they are limited on how frequently they can enter map chat text.
Like I said, doesn’t have to be those ideas, it doesn’t have to be anything at all. I just wanted to see if anyone else feels the same or if I just miss the good ol’ days of my MMOing. Thanks for giving me a place to rant :P

This feature would be abused very easily.

Durzo.1265:

I would just like a way for those of us who feel positively about the game to say, “we don’t like this guy, all he does spew negativity in the map chat and criticize everyone.”

There is already an option for this. Use the block feature and that will accomplish what you are looking for. If the person in question is that obnoxious others will block them as well.

Lazaar.9123:

This feature would be abused very easily.

^ Pretty much instantly, sadly.

I was in a PvP match earlier, while a toxic nature occurs naturally in pvpers this one in particular annoyed me.
This guy was hating on a Guild from the enemy team. Saying how the leader was trash and how the guild was bad.
Then he went on to say some of the members were probably alright, but how their Guild leader was a tool and all this stuff.

So I responeded along the lines of ;

Why do you even care? What does it matter how other people play and what they are doing?
The person from the guild was to his credit completely ignoring the troll. But I have always wondered this. Who cares how other people play? I play with great players and sometimes less so experienced players and I’ve never particularly had a go at them for being “bad” I might in a pvp map tell my team to not 3 cap home at the start. But I just don’t understand the hate people have for other people playing.

When they announced at the HoT unveiling that GW2 had the nicest community I was just like. Urrr what?
MMO communities tend to not be so great. People whine and QQ about everything they can get their hands on. Oh that player is using this weapon instead of that one?

HE MUST BE BAD AND I MUST TELL HIM HE IS BAD IN CAPS IN MAP CHAT FOR EVERYONE TO SEE AND THEY KNOW HOW RIGHT I AM AND HOW BAD HE IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

^And yet we have your forum signature.

@OP, /ignore <theirname> and move on.

Lazaar.9123:

This feature would be abused very easily.

Not necessarily if they limit the number of times someone can downvote someone per account, AND made it so that people who downvote too often have a label of their own or an icon indicating what’s being done there. They could also simply label this feature as a reputation system. It wouldn’t actually do anything (much like their ignore feature does now when people try to harass others in game) but it would give people an idea of who they are dealing with. I think they should make it a bit more advanced in that it’s not allowable but once a day and it’s not allowable but every three months for the same person and it shows things like the number of times this person votekicked people or the number of times they reported other players which would give players an idea of what type of person the reporter is as well. It’s already being done on consoles actually and it works as a means to make public knowledge those people who like to abuse the system in this manner or act ugly towards others. Equally people could upvote people in a one time fashion without a time delay which would mean they could upvote their whole guild if they wished individually. The reason I’m saying if they used these types of rules and tracking systems is because people who act like that rarely have alot of friends and they aren’t very popular.

I think another rule would be an inability to upvote or downvote while in PVP or WvW.

I don’t see a problem with that at all so long as it does nothing to actual gameplay.

Lazaar.9123:

This feature would be abused very easily.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3278596/

No thanks. ‘Community’ made quite a joke out of such rating systems anyway, and I found it amusingly apt to its point.

Aidan Savage.2078:

^And yet we have your forum signature.

@OP, /ignore <theirname> and move on.

You do know thats a quote from asura voice overs in the game right?

And yea block is your friend in those situations you would see greifers use it to mute anyone they dont like get their whole guild to help….

When I heard about the friendliest community in the game I thought sure in all they ways you made it impossible to grief they are great…. kicking people out of groups for fun or to get their friend in to get rewards those spent 25min-1½ hours in dungeon/fractal for not so much.

tigirius.9014:

~snip~

I’m thinking more along the lines of a group abusing it together, and yes, that will happen. Though the feature may have good intentions, the intentions of others aren’t always good.

Aidan Savage.2078:

^And yet we have your forum signature.

@OP, /ignore <theirname> and move on.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Manifold/Player_character_quotes
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Glastium/Sandbox/PC_voice

Mostly I just wanted to know how many people felt the same about the trolls.

I think overall, GW has more of a friendly community than it does a hostile one, and I think that is a victory all it’s own. The best thing we can do is just keep being cooperative, and keep being friendly and helpful to the new players so they feel welcomed when they join us in Tyria. And hopefully, the end result will be the cultivation of a community so friendly and awesome, that it turns trolls into friends

I don’t honestly have much of a problem with trolls. Not nearly so much as I’ve encountered in myriad other games at least.

Sure, there are always some twerps and attention-seeking drips, but not as many that I stumble across as I might elsewise expect.

The community’s pretty cool here. I got no gripes to lodge against it, and I think the only thing Anet might do to improve on it might be to take active initiatives in various community-building endeavors.

They’ve made a lovely environment for a good community to flourish in ‘growing wild’ though. I won’t gripe.

The second someone says something hostile in PvP, they generally get a spot on my block list. That’s what it’s for, and it’s the one and only possible system that works.

Personally, I’m here to play the game, not to deal with people’s issues. While having a nice community is great and all, there’s no way you can possibly control it. Let’s be realistic, here — Tons of people are brainwashed into becoming rascals from the day they were born, and some text on a screen isn’t going to turn their life around.

Aidan Savage.2078:

^And yet we have your forum signature.

Oh the irony. Anyway, yes, OP, block is there for a reason. Or, just turn off map chat.

Arietta The Broken.1875:

I was in a PvP match earlier, while a toxic nature occurs naturally in pvpers this one in particular annoyed me.
This guy was hating on a Guild from the enemy team. Saying how the leader was trash and how the guild was bad.
Then he went on to say some of the members were probably alright, but how their Guild leader was a tool and all this stuff.

So I responeded along the lines of ;

Why do you even care? What does it matter how other people play and what they are doing?
The person from the guild was to his credit completely ignoring the troll. But I have always wondered this. Who cares how other people play? I play with great players and sometimes less so experienced players and I’ve never particularly had a go at them for being “bad” I might in a pvp map tell my team to not 3 cap home at the start. But I just don’t understand the hate people have for other people playing.

When they announced at the HoT unveiling that GW2 had the nicest community I was just like. Urrr what?
MMO communities tend to not be so great. People whine and QQ about everything they can get their hands on. Oh that player is using this weapon instead of that one?

HE MUST BE BAD AND I MUST TELL HIM HE IS BAD IN CAPS IN MAP CHAT FOR EVERYONE TO SEE AND THEY KNOW HOW RIGHT I AM AND HOW BAD HE IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your PvP comment….well.

and ya, “MMO communities tend to not be so great. People whine and QQ about everything they can get their hands on.”

Yes the trolls and abusive players are no fun, but this is not a rpg it’s a mmorpg, and sensitive players treating this game as their own personal little sanctuary are not that much better.

Thankfully for everyone we have the ignore/block feature.

Just /ignore them. If other people don’t like their behavior then they’ll /ignore them too. Not everything needs to be social media and you don’t want to put any sort of power in to the hands of the player base, because it has and will be abused.

Not in favor of this proposed feature. Players should not get the ability to influence some score on another players account. Some players would abuse this feature. People whose only sin is that someone disagreed with them will be unfairly marked. Meanwhile, the real griefers would revel in their trophy bad-boy rating.

I’d have no problem with some sort of reputation system, even if it was actually game-effecting. Yes it would be abused, and that doesn’t concern me. As long as you are friendly and helpful and don’t pick fights, you’re almost guaranteed to have net-positive rep. A whole guild could try to tarnish you (though honestly if it was worth their time, you probably did something to deserve it).

But on the other hand, YOUR guild, and anyone else who likes you, could counteract it. Ultimately it would still balance out in accordance with the intended purpose. If you have a talent for making more enemies than friends, maybe it’s not the feature that’s the issue. And like Indigo mentioned, there would surely be some “bad-boys” who actively seek infamy, and for that I say go for it.

And all this is to say nothing of any restrictions in the system that might limit people from even being able to vote (like x-number/day, or you have to be local and able to target them, etc).

I would consider this a form of player-driven content, and as usual with non-scripted-player driven things, call me a supporter.

Kartel.2561:

I’d have no problem with some sort of reputation system, even if it was actually game-effecting. Yes it would be abused, and that doesn’t concern me.

So you’re saying it’s fine to implement a system that can potentially be abused to impede someone’s gameplay because you think you won’t fall victim to it? Honestly, with an attitude like that there’s no way you wouldn’t eventually get targeted.

If there’s a system that allows players to impose game-effecting changes on others, it will be abused. All you need is a script that references an online text file, distribute it to everyone in your guild/alliance, and have it automatically fire off downvotes/dislikes/neg-rep against whoever is on the list whenever they log on – that’s virtually zero effort for everyone except the one person who set it up with the ability to potentially cripple enemy zergs in WvW (just have one spy on their server feed the list names), opponents in PvP, and anyone who happens to annoy the list owner(s).

(It’s the same script setup that allows gold sellers to quickly log into new/stolen accounts and spam people, in case you were wondering if that’s possible)

As far as I can tell ArenaNet seems to be against naming and shaming and the reputation system would be the easiest feature to abuse in this game. Even if you put an individual downvote limit still I can call my over a hundred ppl guild to down vote you and make you a victim of your own idea OP. I didn’t pay for this game to be judged by some random guys on the internet.

Every verbal abuse can be reported with 4 clicks. It’s really convenient for you if you feel offended by someone. Every case should be reviewed individualy because this is not a place for bullying. And yes, the whole reputation system is a bullying in some way.

And at the end some words of advice – if you choose to play an online game you have to accept that ppl can be exactly this – people. It’s like walking on the street. Oversensitive people really should think twice before choosing an online game because overreaction causes more harm than good.

sensitive players treating this game as their own personal little sanctuary are not that much better

Quoted for thruth.

Any form of reputation system would have to involve positive reinforcement only. Could be something as simple as a nice little ‘+1 to whatever’ when you right click their name or character portrait.

Reputation points could then give access to appropriate rewards. It wouldn’t stop negative behaviour but it would probably encourage people to be a bit more community minded. One thing that unites GW2 players is our love of da shinies.

Even worse. Just imagine whole guild members up voting each other only for the shinies. The whole +1 button will have no value at all if you give ppl rewards for it.

Aidan Savage.2078:

^And yet we have your forum signature.

To be fair, that sig is just quoting what female asura say all the time.

Kartel.2561:

But on the other hand, YOUR guild, and anyone else who likes you, could counteract it. Ultimately it would still balance out in accordance with the intended purpose.

Its intended purpose is as i understand, to filter out trolls and rude people. Not to filter out solitary trolls and rude people, but at the same time make groups of those able to shut up any opposition.

Generally, when similar systems are implemented on different forums, in all the situations i saw this led to actual decline of behaviour, to creation of cliques in war with each other, (usually for totally petty reasons), and to overall toxic atmosphere. Don’t want to see that happening here.
Blocks and reports are good enough – or would be if people actually used them.

I don’t think I can support this. I play another MMO that has something kinda like this. You can “downvote” other players and after a certain amount that player becomes temporarily banned from the chat. It is so abused that you could be afk and then come back unable to chat. There are even troll guilds on that game that do nothing but target innocent players and try to get them muted for no reason. I really don’t want something like that to happen here.

… really? Let me explain this to you OP: what other people do in the game fall into exactly 2 categories: things the TOS allows them to do, and things the TOS doesn’t allow them to do.
If what they do is reportable, go ahead and report them.
If what they do is not reportable then who are you to tell them how to play?

ps: Lineage 2 had a “recommend” system where you could vote up x amount of people every day (or the same person x amount of times), and no one took it seriously because people would just upvote their friends or upvote themselves with alts. Systems like this are a waste of development time.

While I can see where you’re coming from, I feel that there are too many gray areas for this to be implemented effectively. In-game, I normally act a little cheeky in map-chat, telling other players “I’ll bash yer ’ead in m8” or “I’ll fite ye”. To the majority of players this is obviously harmless banter, and I’m yet to have anyone react negatively to it (also roleplaying a Glasgow street fight in mapchat is freaking hilarious) but with a feature like this, players who act a little cheeky or sarcastic could be punished for doing so, which would restrict the amount of communication going on in the game.

OP, think about something as basic as Reddit voting get’s used? A lot of post get down voted based on not agreeing with them.

If you want to avoid haters, easiest way is to stay off the forums. Just sayin…

I got a better solution, either use ignore or man up.

And this is my queue to do what I do best.

(Clears throat)

Most players have already pointed out the obvious solution that was already in place long before GW2 even existed: the block feature.

Since this is obviously not a good enough solution for you and instead want ArenaNet to waste time/money/resources on a completely unnecessary feature, I propose another easy (and cheap) solution to you, OP. Get your notebook out, this is very complex but feasible stuff.

See the pixels on your screen that make up these words that you are reading? Harmless. You can look at them all you want, read them over and over (out loud if you are so inclined), and no matter what they cannot hurt you unless you allow them to.

Now, take exhibit A: typical hater troll player says something along the lines of “Your mother was a hampster!” or “You are ugly and should disappear” or even “NOOB! Learn to play!” At this point you can block the player and you will never see anything they type ever again. But you already read it, you are scarred! Woe is you! The world is a cruel place, and maybe you really are worthless… NOT!

Not so fast! Enter exhibit B: me. Any player in this game can say anything they want about me, and I mean anything. No matter what they say, their words have no power over me. They have no power over me. They will never find me in real life, and even if they did I would just end them if they gave me reason to. Do you know why they are all powerless against me? Because I CHOOSE to not take offense to ANYTHING that ANY of them say. It’s that easy. It is a choice to be offended. Be like me, choose thick skin and self-esteem. I am kittening awesome, and you can be too if only you stop giving mere words more power than they deserve. Take back the power you gave them over you!

There’s this little thing called “block user”..also a “report user” function. be aware that all communications can and will be monitored by ANet and they act accordingly should the need arise to foul mouths

Durzo.1265:

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just want to play Guild Wars 2. And I don’t mean get my dailies and do some dungeons, I mean put on my Turtle Beaches, stop and smell the flowers kind of playing. A big part of that experience is interacting with other players, in fact that’s one of the foundations of the game. So one thing that has bummed me out on multiple occasions, is being right in the middle of enjoying myself, usually during some kind of event or what have you, and then being suddenly attacked by some random player for pretty much no reason. Sometimes you’ll be talking to someone, maybe asking a question or giving someone advice, and then a third person feels the need to personally demean you for asking a question, or saying your way of playing is stupid or somehow less valid.
So to get off the soapbox and on to my point, I would just really like for there to be a way to maybe buffer this. I don’t expect this to just be magically solved, because people are people and they’re gonna be how they’re gonna be. However, Guild Wars already has a really great community to start with. On a highly populated server, it’s easy for all the whiners and complainers to annoy and distract, but there are still plenty of people just playing and having a good time. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about the occasional complainer, or people getting into arguments; that’s just human behavior. I’m talking about the people who consistently bash other players and initiate conflict by being overly critical.
I was thinking a reputation attribute, negligible to the actual game, it would be more of a social component. Players could like or dislike other players, and it could just be a straight-forward number to signify how well a given player gets along with the people he or she plays with. It doesn’t have to be that, I would just like a way for those of us who feel positively about the game to say, “we don’t like this guy, all he does spew negativity in the map chat and criticize everyone.”. Or maybe if people are reported just for spewing hate, they are limited on how frequently they can enter map chat text.
Like I said, doesn’t have to be those ideas, it doesn’t have to be anything at all. I just wanted to see if anyone else feels the same or if I just miss the good ol’ days of my MMOing. Thanks for giving me a place to rant :P

I don’t suffer from this much, for the simple reason that I read a lot of “one sided” discussions, someone speaking with someone else that I can’t read.

The black list in GW2 is almost bottomless (I am extremely generous when it comes to welcoming ppl in my BL, I read 3 different european languages and block trolls from all 3, yet I have not reached any BL limit). Black list whoever behaves as you described and you will be fine. There aren’t that many trolls and black listing them all is achieved quite quickly. Also black list ppl that enjoy arguing with trolls for hours, and you chat will be devoid of corruption !

I’m starting to wish they had a block feature on these boards too.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I’m starting to wish they had a block feature on these boards too.

There’s something that is good enough: remember the name, then pretend the owner does not exist. Scroll past their posts, do not read anything they say, even if it is aimed at you directly. Do not acknowledge their existence, do not feed the troll, do not give in to their click/comment bait. It’s not as useful as a block feature, but it does the trick. Be like me.

(laugh) You’d be surprised how large my ‘mental ignore’ has growned just today. But I’ll give it a further try in the future, Zera.