Guild Wars 2

Okay, I’d like to start of that besides the following I’m going to say, I’ve always REALLY liked the community of Guild Wars 2. People have always been helpful, and I’ve had really fun times with just total stranger in this game.

So yeah, I basically quit for like 8-12 months. Including the break, I’ve played this game since release, and one of the things I liked most about this game was the community. The amount of help I got from total strangers was just amazing. If I couldn’t get this hard skillpoint, people would come from across the map just to help me, and that’s just the most simple example, I think most of you guys understand what I mean with “good community”.

However, since I came back, I was tired of my first character warrior, so I decided to make a mesmer, which I really liked. So in the summer holidays, I made an 80 mesm, which is a pretty annoying class to level, so full of proud and fully geared, I decided to start off with a PU mesm build, which is one of the easier condi based builds for mesmer as far as I’ve noticed (won’t go any further into this, this is just my view on the class, not willing to start a discussion about this). Because I was new to the class, I thought this “noob friendly” build would make me more effective in PvP as a shatter build, since the entire clone thingy was just new to me.

And then this happend, I literally got 3 PM’s from 3 different people on 1 day, telling me how bad I was at mesmer, ranting about just everything I did wrong, and that PU mesmer is the most noobish class ever, you get the point. Now I’ve never had a simular situation in this game before, so I just thought this was just a rare scenario. These people are just all over the interent. Too bad for me, it didn’t end that day. Ever since I got like daily people ranting about my class and my playstyle. Now I have to add that I might not be the best player, yet you have to take me on my word that I’m far from a bad player. Eventually changed playstyle (shatter mesmer), got less rants, yet still got some every few days. Kinda made me sad, didn’t really bring up the good old memories of guild wars before my break.

So yeah, months have passed with angry kiddo’s PM’ing, and meanwhile I created another 80 with some tomes of knowledge I got from PvP, and decided to make a thief, to have a little fun roaming alone in WvW when my guildies / friends are offline. So I got it like 80 today, geared it up and I wasn’t 5 minutes in WvW, before I saw roaming thief from a different server. I was walking along with a warrior, so we attacked him, and the thief was decent skilled, I could tell that. Yet we managed to put him down, and it didn’t take him any more them 20 seconds before he got my nickname and he was just flaming how bad I am and that he would do terrible things with my moms. I even explained him that I was new to the thief profession, so he decided that challenging me to do a 1v1 would solve this problem. Like, why. Why 1v1 someone who is new to the class. How does that make sense, my brain hurts searching the logic in this.

For real, why do people do this stuff. This “new” part of the community is new to me. Why would you take the effort to PM some “bad player” to tell them how hard they suck in the game. Am I the only one noticing this change, compared to the beginning of the game? Don’t get me wrong, I’m used to people like this. I mean, it’s the internet kitten , trolls are everywhere. I’ve played competitive shooters before, man that is some messed up community. But is there a dramatic increase of them in GW2, or am I just unlucky meeting every single one of them?

Every game with PvP is like that, Guild Wars is no different, I would go as far to say that GW2 has one of the nicer pvp communities out there.

I’ve personally seen a lot of people in PvP where if they encounter a player that is doing something they don’t agree with or sees them doing badly, they’ll call them out with inappropriate and unnecessary comments. This has happened to me before when trying out new builds in PvP.

I usually just make a joke to brush it off or ignore them. They’re just being immature and not worth the effort.

Here’s a bit of a history lesson. When you scare away your casuals, your RP, and your open world PVE players almost all you’re left with is the hardcore players and the terrible cookie cutter grinders. That’s it. That’s what’s happened to the game, seriously. And what’s more is we warned them this would occur back in Nov 2012 that they were scaring away the players who actually typically stuck with good games for years and improved the community. I’ve never been on an RP server ever where an RP player is actually acting like this, the same goes for a true casual, they generally have great communities on these servers. Many of those players became disgusted at the direction of the game and decided either to leave permanently or to wait. I personally am waiting. Give it time, if they keep in this direction they’ll get the good players back.

That is very sad. Its not anything you were doing wrong, its just sometimes people arent the greatest. Don’t let a few bad apples spoil the bunch. This is an awesome community. And there are far more good people than bad.

pdavis.8031:

That is very sad. Its not anything you were doing wrong, its just sometimes people arent the greatest. Don’t let a few bad apples spoil the bunch. This is an awesome community. And there are far more good people than bad.

Yes. I love you all.

OP: I’m sorry you had such a miserable “welcome” after your sabbatical. Here’s my impression:

• The GW2 community overall hasn’t changed. People are overwhelmingly fun and helpful.
• There have always been jerks around, especially in PvP. I remember a lot of posts around release time complaining about similar trash talk.
• I agree it’s hard to ignore people when they call you names, but imo the best revenge in PvP is beating them.

Good luck and welcome (back) to Guild Wars 2.

I’d say its a bit of you being unlucky in getting put in matches toxic players but also an increase in those kind of people. I picked the game up about a month ago after a 5-6 month break and it was way worse than I remember. I’ve gotten a ton of angry whispers/map/team chat comments for running meta builds, playing X class, running non-meta builds, pretty much anything and everything. I’ve actually had people follow me to different pvp servers just to harass me, it’s sad.
My advice is to just create a chat tab that is nothing but your guild chat or combat log for regular pvp, guild chat/party if you’re with someone in wvw. It saves you a lot for frustration at dealing with the toxic people. Or you can just block them as they come, but just dont ever respond to them. They’re sad little children who need that kind of attention so just ignore it and they’ll give up.

Are you new to the internet?

Seriously though, it’s very easy for people to be kitten’s when sitting in front of a monitor as a nameless, faceless person with no repercussions. It’s easier to ignore people who don’t remember that they themselves were new to the game at one time and were trying different builds to get better rather than to dwell on it.

Also, it’s really all relative as already mentioned. Go play games like CoD and BF. You will see the true meaning of a toxic community, especially on the consoles.

I’ll add one word: megaserver.

You can’t have a caring community without community.

There always is a tiny fraction of the playerbase that is less than community-oriented. Provide an environment that fosters the anonymous nature of the internet, set up situations where community is not modeled, dilute community values by breaking community identity and spreading the “guardians” of those values too thin and the result is you end up promoting the behavior from those with no understanding or regard for the consequences of their behavior, since the normal social tools for enforcing consequences is gone.

@OP: thank you for still caring. Good luck out here as the trend will probably continue.

Well, said Tigi. Though I have enjoyed my time in gw2 (I pre-ordered and played since a few days before official release), I have uninstalled it and downloaded wow again to try mop and wod. So far I am having fun again. I used to play in Piken Square. With the mega server thingy I stopped seeing most of the roleplayers I used to see and interact with. Not only that, but I was really fed up of being forced to spec to “zerker” in order to be able to clear dungeons in a timely manner, without having to be afraid of being kicked. Where are the emotes and motions for roleplaying, and even interactable chairs? Why, after two years, is condition still really bad in pve? Why, after 2 years, are some weapons still terrible in pve? Why, after two years, do we have only one extra path in a dungeon? I love LS, but each time it is released you can complete it in less than 2hs. These are just some complaints in a plethora of them. The game is still beautiful though and its huge potential , that has been there since day 1, can still be realized. When I see that happening, I will consider a return.

No, it’s just summerkrill.

Wait until mid september and you will see much less toxic players. During July all the way to mid August the community became ridiculously toxic.

But that’s just summer.

i think the answer is in there:
PU mesmer is a rather toxic build, its the mesmer’s equivalent of spirit rangers, MM necros, turret engis and hambow warriors,
you’re stirring rat poison into everyones soup and some of them aren’t going to be happy about that.

in pvp people don’t like crutch builds, and a build based around spamming NPCs while running away and hiding it the epitome of a crutch build

sorry if this seems blunt but i think its your answer

This is typical of PvP, unfortunately, but I think you were just unlucky in being grouped with the dregs of our community. There’s lots of really good players who will even call their team mates out for it if they’re being toxic or abusive.

By the title I thought you were inviting us all out for drinks.

Strangely enough my first character was also a Mesmer and literally on my first day playing I got PM-yelled at by a couple people telling me “You don’t know what the kitten you’re doing!”. And this was in PvE…just wandering around with my awkward scepter trying to kill fireflies.

Of course they were right, but it gave me a very bad impression of the game out of the gate. This proved to be the exception rather than the rule though. The more I’ve played the more I saw it was just the usual minority of rude people that are in any community. Don’t sweat it…just block/report when needed.

And don’t feel bad, Mesmer is probably one of the hardest professions to be quickly ‘good’ at, especially while leveling. I encourage you to check out the Mesmer forums, there are a lot of extremely skilled and considerate Mesmers on there willing to help out and give pointers to improve your mesmerizing.

Edit: And btw I don’t think there are any playstyles that are toxic. There are playstyles/builds that might be less effective in a certain game mode, but that’s always open to debate. When some people get frustrated fighting a PU Mesmer or getting stun-locked by a Warrior or a constantly stealthing thief or whatever I say let them be frustrated. Psychology is half of every battle.

tigirius.9014:

Here’s a bit of a history lesson. When you scare away your casuals, your RP, and your open world PVE players almost all you’re left with is the hardcore players and the terrible cookie cutter grinders. That’s it.

So which one of those are you? The terrible cookie cutter grinder or the hardcore player?

On a related note I started playing PU mesmer because of all the hate it gets. I find the PMs amusing and love holdig a point and killing anyone who tries to 1v1 me.

Maybe _in_toxicated!

chugs

Irrledd.3508:

… I literally got 3 PM’s from 3 different people on 1 day, telling me how bad I was at mesmer, ranting about just everything I did wrong, and that PU mesmer is the most noobish class ever, you get the point. Now I’ve never had a simular situation in this game before, so I just thought this was just a rare scenario. These people are just all over the interent. Too bad for me, it didn’t end that day. Ever since I got like daily people ranting about my class and my playstyle. …

Which server / world are you on? What is your gameplay style? What parts of the game do you like most? What is your GW2 gaming goal? What time do you normally log on?

All of these are important questions. It sounds to me that you have 2 problems:

(1) You’re on the wrong server
(2) You are also hanging out with people whose playstyles don’t match yours.

Some servers tend to attract certain types of players. For example, it’s no secret that Blackgate has alot of hardcore players. BG is the place to go if you’re looking for a hardcore guild. Jade Quarry and Sanctum of Rall servers are both PvX (which means they do a little bit of everything in the game). Tarnished Coast (my world) is a Roleplaying / PvX server.

The Megaserver system tends to group players with other people based on home world, guild, and friends list. Whenever you meet someone you want to see again, add them to your friends list.

If people continue to be mean towards you in chat, right click on their name and select the Block command. If they are typing mean things in /ME chat (grey chat), press Y to open your Contacts window, click on the Blocked tab on the window’s left side, and add their name to your block list.

I added you to my friends list since I’m in a friendly community. That should help pull you towards folks in my groups.

If you’re not part of a guild, look for a guild that will help you master the Mesmer and thief classes. Make sure the guild caters to your playstyle too. It will definately be helpful if you join a guild that has people who log on at the same time as yourself. If you’re on a NA server, consider trying to join a friendly PvX guild on the Jade Quarry, Sanctum of Rall, or Tarnished Coast servers. There are alot of friendly, knowledgable folks on those three servers who can help you get up to speed with your favorite classes.

If anyone wants to recommend other friendly servers, please feel free to add their names here.

Bad Company

Irrledd.3508:

For real, why do people do this stuff.

Because they have emotional problems that they can’t cope with in “real life”. Mean people aren’t mean because they’re happy, and misery loves company.

And though most PvPers are as well-adjusted as anyone else, PvP in any game tends to attract people who crave a sense of power over others to try to compensate for feeling powerless in the rest of their lives.

Like most people, if approached in the right way under the right circumstances, they can be helped.

Unfortunately, the context of a video game is neither the right way or the right circumstances, so the best course of action is to use the “Ignore” option if necessary, and report anyone actively harassing you or otherwise violating the Guild Wars 2 Rules of Conduct if things become more problematic.

Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of GW2 players are great people, so it’s really not at all hard to accentuate the positive and appreciate the fact that, all things considered, the GW2 community is a lot less toxic than most.

Thing you gotta realize about PvP is that for some people, talking crap is part of the experience. They don’t genuinely wish harm to you or your mother – they’re just having a go at you and seeing if you’ll hit back.

There is another kind of crap-talking PvPer as well – the one that I would call a “rage case.” They will basically get mad about anything and everything (particularly if they lose in some capacity).

Your best bet with the former is to ignore them or hit them back. Your best bet with the latter is to put them on ignore.

If ANet try to seperate the players base on their experience, it might get less often.

You toss a pro players to play with an inexperienced players, and that is the results, you’ll get.

Oh! I almost forgot…

Get yourself some exotic or ascended gear. It also helps to raise your achievement points too.

From my personal experience, I noticed that these type of PUGs tend to respect squishy players who use high level gear. Some of those aggressive, rude players are coming from games like WoW where owning high level gear is a mark of achievement. Yeah, I know…. that’s st___ thinking. But those folks have been conditioned to think that way for a number of years.

I notice that alot of rude PUGs quit harassing my Engie & Ranger when they see the characters ascended gear as well as my achievement points. That’s one of the things I do to limit bullying in this game.

If someone has a better solution to this problem. I’d like to hear it!

Kta: Dont join any zerk, meta, speed run, farm run, dont join any AP+ achivment. Stick to the safe zone.

Irrled: From what it seems you have bad luck and found a lot of psicological ill and/or psiquiatric people (without treatment of course) in too litle time. Theres studies that demostrate that they concentrate in MORPGs, GW2 is perphaps the less afected, but affected of course.

Haishao.6851:

tigirius.9014:

Here’s a bit of a history lesson. When you scare away your casuals, your RP, and your open world PVE players almost all you’re left with is the hardcore players and the terrible cookie cutter grinders. That’s it.

So which one of those are you? The terrible cookie cutter grinder or the hardcore player?

You seem to have missed something in the post you quoted.

Lucius.2140:

Kta: Dont join any zerk, meta, speed run, farm run, dont join any AP+ achivment. Stick to the safe zone.
.

LOL! Thanks for the response. Doing that stuff just to “stick to the safe zone” would make the game unplayable for me. I love doing all the stuff you mentioned.

Lucius.2140:

Kta: Dont join any zerk, meta, speed run, farm run, dont join any AP+ achivment. Stick to the safe zone.

This.

People that are good at speedrunning simply join speedrun guilds. Those people don’t need to pug, they have a guild for all their speedclearing needs.

Those that write all that “Zerk only no necro no noobs 396k AP only” bullkitten in LFG are simply hurt, wannabe elitists.

I tried joining a few of those with my zerker and let me tell you this, they spend more than half an hour to make their perfect zerk group and then wipe on the first boss trying to do it in a “pro” way. Ragequits follow.

If you want speedruns without any summerkrill, join a guild. If not then just roll a pub-friendly build, join casual runs.

tigirius.9014:

Here’s a bit of a history lesson. When you scare away your casuals, your RP, and your open world PVE players almost all you’re left with is the hardcore players and the terrible cookie cutter grinders. That’s it. That’s what’s happened to the game, seriously. And what’s more is we warned them this would occur back in Nov 2012 that they were scaring away the players who actually typically stuck with good games for years and improved the community. I’ve never been on an RP server ever where an RP player is actually acting like this, the same goes for a true casual, they generally have great communities on these servers. Many of those players became disgusted at the direction of the game and decided either to leave permanently or to wait. I personally am waiting. Give it time, if they keep in this direction they’ll get the good players back.

Completely agree with this assessment. More so, the toxic part comes from the Dev’s combat designs. They insist on creating Meta builds, like your PU build, that are very strong and easy to play. After getting near instant feedback from the player base, the Dev’s sit on it these builds for months on end. Which infuriates players whom have to deal with it day in and day out. Power creep is another issue that we’ve been sledge hammering into the Dev’s heads without it making a dent. Two second fights are not skillful nor fun. So after such a long time, players just get angry or leave or both.

If only the dev’s would create an EotM type instance where differing rules apply so players can test them BEFORE they make it into the general game. Test servers should be a common feature for every MMO.

GW2 is still one of the nicer communities out there. Try going to any other online game, the hate is even more rampant. Ignore people who are kittens or insert their own definitions into the game, they aren’t worth the effort and are likely not very good people irl.

I think people in GW2 are a bit nicer, because they are more lay back etc.

But I really dont’ think it stand out as this super nice community everyone talks about.

You do get complained for playing the way you want(like the OP says). And that probably happens even more in GW2, because apparently people think they can play the way they want.

There are some players in every game demographic who make such comments. It’s my understanding that the console market is generally worse than MMO’s.

IndigoSundown.5419:

There are some players in every game demographic who make such comments. It’s my understanding that the console market is generally worse than MMO’s.

I haven’t seen the console market that bad, really. Although in the console market, due to the relaxed game modes and lack of punishment, you have more people who QQ and generally avoid direct confrontation when they lose a fight. Whereas in MMOs you typically get jabbed with a condition of some sort – such as Dishonorable.

Consoles only get bad after a few years of dissolving. Granted this could be said about many games – the ones who play in the first year are generally a lot better than the people who are playing 3-4 years later. It’s why I try to maintain a regular update to my game collection, the worst communities I’ve found are communities that have been diluted for more than 2 years.

tigirius.9014:

Here’s a bit of a history lesson. When you scare away your casuals, your RP, and your open world PVE players almost all you’re left with is the hardcore players and the terrible cookie cutter grinders. That’s it. That’s what’s happened to the game, seriously. And what’s more is we warned them this would occur back in Nov 2012 that they were scaring away the players who actually typically stuck with good games for years and improved the community. I’ve never been on an RP server ever where an RP player is actually acting like this, the same goes for a true casual, they generally have great communities on these servers. Many of those players became disgusted at the direction of the game and decided either to leave permanently or to wait. I personally am waiting. Give it time, if they keep in this direction they’ll get the good players back.

Still plenty of nice casual people playing the game in PvE. It’s PvP that’s the problem here. I PvE all the time and I run into nice people pretty much every day.

hannah mee.7925:

IndigoSundown.5419:

There are some players in every game demographic who make such comments. It’s my understanding that the console market is generally worse than MMO’s.

I haven’t seen the console market that bad, really. Although in the console market, due to the relaxed game modes and lack of punishment, you have more people who QQ and generally avoid direct confrontation when they lose a fight. Whereas in MMOs you typically get jabbed with a condition of some sort – such as Dishonorable.

Consoles only get bad after a few years of dissolving. Granted this could be said about many games – the ones who play in the first year are generally a lot better than the people who are playing 3-4 years later. It’s why I try to maintain a regular update to my game collection, the worst communities I’ve found are communities that have been diluted for more than 2 years.

I wonder if that can be generalized to other online gaming communities? How long has MMORPG.COM been around, for instance?

Admittedly, my experience with console gaming is somewhat limited. However, I hear that the abuse of female players can get really bad. There’s even a website dedicated to mocking the worst of it.