Guild Wars 2

I posted some time ago about the toxicity in raids, that was actually the same toxicity you could find before in the fractals and dungeons for all those speedrunners golddiggers that run those maps.

Anet has already stated that those game mode were a completely failure: by nerfing to the oblivion the rewards on those maps and developing the raids.

Because some people here stated that maybe i was wrong, that i was playing for such a sort time (2 hours in PUG) maybe i had very bad luck.

I can now and after many more tries say: The toxicity in any kind of event in GW2 is real. It has expanded not only to raids and dungeons, but also to any meta event you can play in the game, that could be the world bosses or the meta events in HoT.

Mapchat plagged with insults and nasty comments about other players or events, the must to use TS in the raids that make you have to listen all those unhappy people is saying, whispers with nasty comments… Everything is so bad that actually i couldn’t bring me to play for some days already.

Is that the people’s fault? Or is it Anet on how they designed the events to work knowing the community they already had?
What could be done to solve this issue?

I mean, with this keeps up i’ll have to leave the game, i’ve expended so many hours that really makes me sad but i can’t keep up with all this toxicity.
Playing for some hours in this kind of environment for days could affect your personal life and make you very miserable. Is it worth it?

Welcome to the new and improved free to play business model; toxic behavior goes hand in hand with f2p like cookies and cream. Plus the release of HoT and all it’s attached elitism has turned what I once considered the most friendly MMO community into another typical cess pit. I think you can firmly put the blame for this change all on Anet’s shoulders so feel free to thank em for that.

fixit.7189:

Welcome to the new and improved free to play business model; toxic behavior goes hand in hand with f2p like cookies and cream.

F2P players can’t use map chat nor do they have access to raids and HoT maps. And dungeon elitism has been a thing for years.

People are usually nice until things go wrong and then the insults come out of the woodwork very fast.

But I’m not convinced that the open world environment has changed much in this regard with HoT. I’m inclined to believe that many were resting on their laurels for a while with things like SW farm and world boss train, and forgot what losing is like. Now those same people are getting hit hard with a combination of new/complex/coordinated zone events and raids, which are probably keying them up to yell at screwup play.

Speaking more specifically, I’m concerned about how quickly peoples’ attitudes morph when Tarir goes south (meaning it screws up, or communication is poor, not a reference to south being behind most of the time :P). I see a lot of competitiveness in people seeing their “sides” as some kind of separate entity, apart from the overall goal and I’ve seen it morph into outright insulting of the ability of other sides when something goes wrong.

I don’t know what to do about it though. I can’t make people see Tarir as a team event. If they want to see each side as a separate team, I can tell them off when they go off, but I doubt it’s going to do anything positive. Interestingly, I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed the same attitude with something like SW… I’m guessing because with SW, it is very easy to kill your breach boss early and then go help others. With Octo, you more or less pick a side and stick there.

this is what happen when you put a game into super carebear mode
ppl can just abuse each other without any repercussions

From what I’ve seen, overall, my server is still kind to a fault. In fact, I saw a player leading people in a train to Heroic Points in Tangled Depths. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are more kittens than usual with the free-to-play model.

Especially in PvP.

But I don’t believe the overall climate is ‘toxic.’ But, I will admit, anytime there’s failure of an event . . . blood feelings do tend to come out.

I’d be more concerned at how many of the maps are looking more and more abandoned during prime time. . . .

The game has always been like this: during Living Story #1, there were people who complained about every cooperative, open world effort and eventually, most folks realized that success was not only possible but that hard to achieve if folks worked together. There were always problems with competing rewards (loot from champs from scaled up events vs different loot from completing the relevant achievements), and those didn’t get worked out as well until probably Silverwastes + megaserver + taxis.

With raids, they are only as toxic as folks let them. If you join PUGs, it’s critical to establish early how well everyone communicates and how impatient folks are.

In every case, all we can do is:

• Be sure to communicate the mechanics for success early.
• Be sure to communicate with the relevant lanes or paths.
• Be sure at least one person in each area knows what to do.
• Be quick to help folks learn and slow to criticize.

It’s not always going to go smoothly, because nothing involving random groups of humans ever does. But eventually it does, because we’ve seen it with Scarlet’s minions, Scarlet’s marionettes, Escape from LA, Scarlet’s Marionettes 2.0, Tequatl 2.0, TT, Dry Top, and Silverwastes.

It’s kind of expected, if you think about it. ANet chose to cater to the hard-core elitist crowd, and they were already the quickest on the draw with insults. They’ve been emboldened because ANet’s moves have validated that they are important.

Previously, we would just treat them as we would any other bully: ignore them (both figuratively and literally) until they go away. But, with HoT, that’s no longer possible. The action is intense and only barely able to be played solo. Long-term progress is nearly impossible as a solo or casually.

ANet’s actions brought out the worst in the elitists. The problem is that they now actually believe they are entitled to their hostility against casual players. Just read the forums for an hour and you’ll see it all over the place. Any time you see the words “learn to play” or “L2P”, it’s a cinch you’ve uncovered one of them. Or, “it’s not that hard. I did it …”.

Interestingly, the actions of many casual players have indirectly contributed to this phenomenon. Many casuals have left the game, leaving fewer people willing to challenge this perceived “right” to be obnoxious. Thus, like the schoolyard bullies who shrink from real confrontation, they are emboldened by the drop in the number of people willing to challenge them.

But, I can’t really fault the casuals for leaving. Intentional or not, the game is moving to marginalize casual players, and that’s a 180 from what it used to be. It’s just not the same game any more. By definition, the casuals have other things they can be doing. GW2 is just pushing them to explore other options for their entertainment.

Can it be fixed? Only by a radical shift back to the games roots. Sadly, two things argue mightily that that will not happen:

First, fewer casuals means fewer people asking for changes back to the good old days.

Second, ANet doesn’t seem to be listening even a little bit.

I’m trying to stick it out. But, I’m having a more difficult time every day coming back to the game, and as time is passing, I’m spending less and less time playing than I used to. And I used to be one of the game’s and ANet’s biggest supporters.

This ‘toxicity’ you speak of is highly subjective though… There are ways around it. There is a working block feature, and a chat filter.

There is also a third (and far superior) method of overcoming this ‘toxicity’ that is taking over your gaming life. You can try to be like me. You can have a strong will and constitution to not give words any power over you. This third part requires an understanding of certain things that most people will likely never understand, but it IS something attainable.

Not even 30 minutes ago, I was told in map chat that I should never breed, all because I had the audacity to tell somebody that their idea of mounts with passive speed boosts in the gem store was not a good idea. Most people would be influenced to consider thoughts of self harm, or would foolishly believe that they really shouldn’t breed. They will take these words to heart and start on a downward spiral that depletes their self-worth and self-esteem. But not me.

You know what I did? I read the comment, laughed, and continued to explain why his idea was bad. I got my point across, everyone else agreed with me, and my ‘attacker’ was silenced by the natural flow of the conversation. Some other player tried to jump to my defense, saying “Wow he says one thing and you all attack him like that?” and my response to that player was “You call that an attack?” and I politely asked that player to spare me his concerns for my well-being because the words of that other player had NO EFFECT on me. At all. There is literally NOTHING that ANYONE can say in map chat to offend me. Nothing.

So, you can complain about ‘toxicity’ all you want, or you can be the change you want to see and be like me: take back the power you gave their words over you. I recommend trying to be awesome like me. You’ll be glad you did.

Toxicity is subjective, i rarely see it, but I dont try to tell other people how to play and know how to empathise, and I ignore people who try to tell me to use skill x etc. Fortunately GW2 does not have a damage/whoremeter mentality and there is no gear race or contention which is a BIG source of antisocial behaviour. My experience of antisocial players is that they invariably came from a mmorpg background other than GW1.

HoT is at fault. It causes frustration because of its many flaws and outright badly designed content.

Manasa Devi.7958:

HoT is at fault. It causes frustration because of its many flaws and outright badly designed content.

Oh sure, blame a game for a very personal, first world problem people have. It is all on the player, not the game. The game is just the medium that is exposing people to ‘toxicity’. Offense is always taken, never given.

comments/opinions in map char are of supreme indifference to me as I am sure mine are to others. Which is why I haven’t bothered to turn it on in over 2 years. On rare occasions I will get a pm or mail with a hateful comment. I don’t bother to respond just block and move on. I mean why do you even care what others you didn’t know existed until that very moment have to say.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

This ‘toxicity’ you speak of is highly subjective though… There are ways around it. There is a working block feature, and a chat filter.

There is also a third (and far superior) method of overcoming this ‘toxicity’ that is taking over your gaming life. You can try to be like me. You can have a strong will and constitution to not give words any power over you. This third part requires an understanding of certain things that most people will likely never understand, but it IS something attainable.

Not even 30 minutes ago, I was told in map chat that I should never breed, all because I had the audacity to tell somebody that their idea of mounts with passive speed boosts in the gem store was not a good idea. Most people would be influenced to consider thoughts of self harm, or would foolishly believe that they really shouldn’t breed. They will take these words to heart and start on a downward spiral that depletes their self-worth and self-esteem. But not me.

You know what I did? I read the comment, laughed, and continued to explain why his idea was bad. I got my point across, everyone else agreed with me, and my ‘attacker’ was silenced by the natural flow of the conversation. Some other player tried to jump to my defense, saying “Wow he says one thing and you all attack him like that?” and my response to that player was “You call that an attack?” and I politely asked that player to spare me his concerns for my well-being because the words of that other player had NO EFFECT on me. At all. There is literally NOTHING that ANYONE can say in map chat to offend me. Nothing.

So, you can complain about ‘toxicity’ all you want, or you can be the change you want to see and be like me: take back the power you gave their words over you. I recommend trying to be awesome like me. You’ll be glad you did.

I like the cut of your jib. +1

Daddicus.6128:

snip

I find it sad you cant seem to realize the things you say are just as toxic as what some hardcore toxic people say in game.

fixit.7189:

Welcome to the new and improved free to play business model; toxic behavior goes hand in hand with f2p like cookies and cream. Plus the release of HoT and all it’s attached elitism has turned what I once considered the most friendly MMO community into another typical cess pit. I think you can firmly put the blame for this change all on Anet’s shoulders so feel free to thank em for that.

Sums it up for me.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Not even 30 minutes ago, I was told in map chat that I should never breed, all because I had the audacity to tell somebody that their idea of mounts with passive speed boosts in the gem store was not a good idea. Most people would be influenced to consider thoughts of self harm, or would foolishly believe that they really shouldn’t breed.

I very seriously doubt that “most people” would consider any of these options.

That “most people but not me” comment makes me seriously wonder if Zera has ever met people.

anduriell.6280:

Is that the people’s fault?

Yes. People are kittens sometimes and there is not much the developer can do about it (except for a more aggressive ban policy maybe).

anduriell.6280:

What could be done to solve this issue?

Play with friends, turn off chat, block people that annoy/insult you, don’t try to argue with them and most importantly, don’t be a kitten yourself

anduriell.6280:

I posted some time ago about the toxicity in raids, that was actually the same toxicity you could find before in the fractals and dungeons for all those speedrunners golddiggers that run those maps.

Anet has already stated that those game mode were a completely failure: by nerfing to the oblivion the rewards on those maps and developing the raids.

Because some people here stated that maybe i was wrong, that i was playing for such a sort time (2 hours in PUG) maybe i had very bad luck.

I can now and after many more tries say: The toxicity in any kind of event in GW2 is real. It has expanded not only to raids and dungeons, but also to any meta event you can play in the game, that could be the world bosses or the meta events in HoT.

Mapchat plagged with insults and nasty comments about other players or events, the must to use TS in the raids that make you have to listen all those unhappy people is saying, whispers with nasty comments… Everything is so bad that actually i couldn’t bring me to play for some days already.

Is that the people’s fault? Or is it Anet on how they designed the events to work knowing the community they already had?
What could be done to solve this issue?

I mean, with this keeps up i’ll have to leave the game, i’ve expended so many hours that really makes me sad but i can’t keep up with all this toxicity.
Playing for some hours in this kind of environment for days could affect your personal life and make you very miserable. Is it worth it?

Actually Anet has not stated anything regarding Dungeons or Fractals. They did state they want to discourage dungeons because they want to promote fractals and raids.
And they also want to discourage anything that isn’t HoT or HoT-gated – so that’s why dungeons had to go.

They were too good a thing that was unfortunately not HoT-related.

This toxicity you mention is mostly because the game requires you to succeed now and many players are still very bad at the game – which leads to bad experiences, frustration and conflict.
You can’t “fix” a community issue through the game – you have to let people do their own thing.

Guild Wars 2’s community before HoT was much more “friendly” because everything was far more “fail proof” and easier. Thus people had an easier time and everyone got along.
With new difficulty comes new “toxicity” as people are no longer as forgiving of bad/uninformed/uninterested players.

Playing for some hours in this kind of environment for days could affect your personal life and make you very miserable. Is it worth it?

I honestly feel this is a gross exaggeration – and personally I think you need to “toughen up”. It’s a video game – find people you enjoy spending time with or learn to ignore people that are insulting you.

The game doesn’t need to change just because you feel pushed out of your comfort zone – perhaps it is time to improve your own capacity to deal with issues.

Game is not a wasteland – OP is making stuff up. I am sure Arenanet has all kinds of stats about who is playing and how much. But I don’t believe for a second that any zone is a wasteland.

Maybe I’m just oblivious? I personally haven’t had this problem with anyone yet.

…Well, there was this one engi who wouldn’t let me raid with him because I wasn’t immediately geared as a druid, but people like that are to be expected.

Toxicity has been a thing in open world for a long time. The insults thrown at a commander if tequatl or triple wurm failed were not even comparable to the odd elite tryhard pug kittens you could sometimes encounter in dungeons or fractals. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s more of the same when all the new maps are one giant meta event. Even more so since they last a long kitten time… No one likes having a full hour wasted.

As for raid toxicity, this is the very first content with a higher learning curve so obviously people will get frustrated.

Point is, none of this is new. I love how the “elitist” crowd gets painted in such a pretty picture as usual though. As if they’re the ones even regularly pugging…

Harper.4173:

This toxicity you mention is mostly because the game requires you to succeed now and many players are still very bad at the game – which leads to bad experiences, frustration and conflict.

If you think about it, this trend was foreshadowed in events like the Marionette, with people complaining in map chat about the event failing. Whether this is due to inexperienced or less-skilled players or not is not what matters.

In order for content to be harder, there has to be a possibility to fail. However, no one likes to fail. Add in the human tendency to blame anyone and everyone other than oneself for failure, and that’s a recipe for bad feelings. The absolute skill of the people present is not a factor. They may all be below average. However, since people tend also to have an inflated opinion of their own capabilities, and since they failed, someone else must be at fault.

Throw in internet anonymity and you’ll see those thoughts expressed.

DiogoSilva.7089:

fixit.7189:

Welcome to the new and improved free to play business model; toxic behavior goes hand in hand with f2p like cookies and cream.

F2P players can’t use map chat nor do they have access to raids and HoT maps. And dungeon elitism has been a thing for years.

15 Charrs agree.

I will give an example of what toxic is to me. It’s not people joke/drama or troll around in map chat. It’s down to a personal level that you can feel the hostility from an individual towards you.

You know when you beat SW and there is a chest in the south maze with a lot of dogs chasing you. I headed in to have my chest while I saw a bunch of dead people around the chest in mini-map. So one person started cursing another guy bringing the dog to wipe them all while they were opening chest. I actually saw a guy who possibly did that (or maybe he was just a survivor) on his way out because he passed the dog chasing him to me. As far as I was concerned, there was no one alive in the room so I just headed in trying to res them. The dog was with me, but I knew I’d lose its agro. Then I became the one getting called an idiot to bring the dog in… And another person tried to explained it’s not nice to do that. Apparently someone didn’t like the lecture and brought another dog after me and killed me…

So I guess I am an idiot after all. Trying to rez people and getting trolled. And probably became the criminal who caused their wipe? The toxic part is when I was getting called an idiot I actually felt his hate. And when he was doing that he didn’t care who caused it and would accuse anyone nearby with real hate.

I don’t see a lot of toxicity, it’s also subjective. There was a discussion in map chat in DS yesterday be cause we almost failed the boss and even the 3 bosses right before took ages be cause south wasn’t doing great. I just have to laugh about stuff like this, so I don’t really care. After we still managed to kill the boss people got easy on each other. Maybe there are people who feel here ‘massive toxiciy’ etc. but really; gamer’s are quite direct and toxic, ever played an MOBA? :-) Just get used to it and don’t take it serious – it’s a brutal world outside.

Conner.4702:

No one has the RIGHT to give you kitten as you put it. If someone can’t remain civil then they have no place in any group related content. The community has become more and more hostile over time, but the hostility was mostly contained in dungeons. Now that that has been nerfed to hell all those malcontents are out in the open world.

Rofl “oh god speedrunners are running wild! Please contain them!”

Omne.4603:

DiogoSilva.7089:

fixit.7189:

Welcome to the new and improved free to play business model; toxic behavior goes hand in hand with f2p like cookies and cream.

F2P players can’t use map chat nor do they have access to raids and HoT maps. And dungeon elitism has been a thing for years.

15 Charrs agree.

I loled at that.

cranos.5913:

Conner.4702:

No one has the RIGHT to give you kitten as you put it. If someone can’t remain civil then they have no place in any group related content. The community has become more and more hostile over time, but the hostility was mostly contained in dungeons. Now that that has been nerfed to hell all those malcontents are out in the open world.

Rofl “oh god speedrunners are running wild! Please contain them!”

Lol, I swear they try to blame us for everything that goes wrong in this game. Dungeons are cold and dead in the ground and apparently we’re still ruining everything for the shiny, happy outdoors people.

Yeah, we should all try to save our toxicity for the forums rather than the game.

Toxicity increases with difficulty due to frustration. Failed/failing dungeons and raids are always a hotbed of recrimination and rage. You don’t really see that much in “normal” GW stuff, although there was someone ranting and yelling at us in Triple Trouble recently. His main opinion was that we should “DO MORE DPS”. I thought it was a valid point and I immediately started pressing the number keys a bit harder.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Harper.4173:

This toxicity you mention is mostly because the game requires you to succeed now and many players are still very bad at the game – which leads to bad experiences, frustration and conflict.

If you think about it, this trend was foreshadowed in events like the Marionette, with people complaining in map chat about the event failing. Whether this is due to inexperienced or less-skilled players or not is not what matters.

In order for content to be harder, there has to be a possibility to fail. However, no one likes to fail. Add in the human tendency to blame anyone and everyone other than oneself for failure, and that’s a recipe for bad feelings. The absolute skill of the people present is not a factor. They may all be below average. However, since people tend also to have an inflated opinion of their own capabilities, and since they failed, someone else must be at fault.

Throw in internet anonymity and you’ll see those thoughts expressed.

The skill of the people present is a factor because it leads to frustration – the higher your skill level is the higher your frustration will be when an event or encounter fails and you realize you gave it 100%, did everything as best as you could ( which at a high skill level means a lot) and only failed because some people had no idea what they were doing and were twiddling their thumbs.
It sucks to go through an encounter at your best – pushing as hard as you can, straining yourself for those few extra percentages of performance and playing at your peak only to notice those around you going “yolo swag what am i even doing i’ll just press keys now”.

That’s where the frustration comes from.

I have no problem losing an encounter with on-point teammates – even if our best isn’t good enough to succeed I feel fine if I know everybody gave it their best and was as on-point as they could have been.
I get terribly annoyed when I do my best and others do the same only to fail because Carefree Chris has no idea what’s even going on ( no offense to people called Chris).

The other main source of frustration is from casual players having a highly inflated opinion of themselves because of core GW2 now being told to “get good” not only by “elitist scum” but by the game itself which is now punishing them much more than it did before.
Having your bubble burst and realizing you’re not as good at the game as you thought you were can only infuriate people.

I see no toxic wasteland. I must be lucky, and only see the Happy shiny people holding hands when I play.

Harper.4173:

The other main source of frustration is from casual players having a highly inflated opinion of themselves because of core GW2 now being told to “get good” not only by “elitist scum” but by the game itself which is now punishing them much more than it did before.
Having your bubble burst and realizing you’re not as good at the game as you thought you were can only infuriate people.

That’s one way very toxic way to look at it and to refer to that section of players, how very appropriate is a thread with ‘toxic’ in the title.

Another way to look at it is that the game that those people enjoyed for over two years and which they could play at whatever skill level they had was taken away from them and replaced by something aimed at the hardcore, highly-skilled players who were whining GW2 was too easy.

Fact is, had GW2 been like HOT then it’s likely it wouldn’t have survived because what games like GW2 pre-HOT and many others show is that the majority of players of MMOs these days don’t want to ‘work at it’ and many, like me, frankly aren’t skillful enough to do the kind of content the minority now spewing “git gud” manage.

Sadly, Anet listened to the minority and HOT is the result; whether it’s good for the game long-term IMO is very dubious.

The ‘casuals’ as you refer to them are angry because the game they had no longer exists and they paid a premium price to have it taken away.

in open HoT Maps, pve-metas, i did not find these all toxicity, an average I would say 98% of meta-events I attended were cooperative. I have now something like 20 or more sucessfull AB meta completed.

I have farmed Auric Basin Weapons, and collections that depend in Tangled Depths and Dragon Stand. The only thing between me and my Dark Harvest are now the stupid mini-games like fallen masks. All these metas requires a very cooperative community to suced and i find it.

If there is toxicity, as I predicted, that is related the Raids.

About Raids i just want to ask only two things.

1-put a option to disable that advertising on the game events section on the right, i have no interest in “experiment” raids.
2-Please put the raids in a different category in the LFG tool. Visual pollution is ruining the work of cooperative maps.

In dungeons “old times”, i didnt find that toxicity at all too. the frustated runs is a combination of squishy team+low dps team = wipe. When running dungeons i avoided lfg titles like “lf1m zerk” or “exp expected” and things goes fine.

Oh and you guys expect in a few days, will appear rooms sales in raids in LFG, as there was "Arah 10g, no participation needed ". As like in other MMOs, “elite content” ends in people using the game to make money fast.

Kerin.9125:

That’s one way very toxic way to look at it and to refer to that section of players, how very appropriate is a thread with ‘toxic’ in the title.
Another way to look at it is that the game that those people enjoyed for over two years and which they could play at whatever skill level they had was taken away from them and replaced by something aimed at the hardcore, highly-skilled players who were whining GW2 was too easy.

Here’s the deal – my way of looking at it is objective. That’s what is going on in the game right now. Regardless of how you feel about it that which I have described is what’s happening in the game with the new content.

Also – nothing was taken away form anyone – the game that these people enjoyed for over 2 years is still there – none of it has been touched, changed or made harder. The entire core GW2 experience is still there for people to enjoy at their “casual” pace and skill level.

What you wrongly believe here is that you and other “casual” players are entitled to the game’s development future – which you are not.
I would have understood your point if Anet had taken away the old content and changed it to make it harder – that would have been valid.

That however did not happen – simply more, new content that is also harder was added to the game. Does that take away the old content? No. Are you suddenly unable to enjoy what you enjoyed in the game up until this point? No.

What they did is simply added in more things – for years now hardcore players have asked for harder content and a lot of replies on the forums have been similar to “this is not what you should get – go somewhere else or quit -Anet doesn’t want to do this”.

Well now Anet has decided they did want to do it and thus hardcore content is in the game. Does this entitle me and other hardcore players to go “this is how it is now if you don’t like it go ahead and quit”-no.

Having more variety in the game is certainly not going to hurt it especially since they didn’t take anything away from you by giving something to us.

Fact is, had GW2 been like HOT then it’s likely it wouldn’t have survived because what games like GW2 pre-HOT and many others show is that the majority of players of MMOs these days don’t want to ‘work at it’ and many, like me, frankly aren’t skillful enough to do the kind of content the minority now spewing “git gud” manage.

And it’s a good thing that GW2 has remained at its core casual-friendly – with now the option for hardcore players to do hardcore things if they wish. The vast majority of GW2 remains incredibly easy.
The core game is not dead – and with time more hardcore and casual content will be added – thus giving all types of players more things to do in the long run.

The ‘casuals’ as you refer to them are angry because the game they had no longer exists and they paid a premium price to have it taken away.

I’m sorry did HoT also uninstall Core Gw2 from your system?
You’re basically making things up at this point. It was heavily marketed that HoT would be harder and more hardcore focused.
Raids were announced ages ago. The content was advertised as harder, the beta weekend events gave people a taste of how different the content was – we had youtubers cover it, there was plenty of indication that HoT content would be “harder” for the “casual player”.

If you got blindsided you got blindsided because you’re not an informed consumer and didn’t research the product you were planning to buy before buying it. That’s nobody’s fault but your own.

Harper.4173:

If you got blindsided you got blindsided because you’re not an informed consumer and didn’t research the product you were planning to buy before buying it. That’s nobody’s fault but your own.

If you say so.

However, ‘harder’ is nebulous, I certainly didn’t take it to mean ALL zone content was 1990s group-or-die and little to nothing was like GW2.

As for ‘research’, I read everything Anet published about it, nothing remotely described HOT’s reality, being a total departure from the game it changed to GW3.

Take control. Do as my partner and I did. Create a new chat tab that has all the usual options selected except “Map” and “Say” selected. Rarely is anything important said in either chat. You aren’t missing much.

Right, but is it a slap in the face to loyal veterans?

Those of you blaming HoT for turning the GW2 community into a cesspool clearly didn’t play GW2 pre-HoT.

The amount of bile in dragon stand has nothing on the trolling in WvW, the smack talk in sPvP, or booting people last minute out of a dungeon run.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Those of you blaming HoT for turning the GW2 community into a cesspool clearly didn’t play GW2 pre-HoT.

The amount of bile in dragon stand has nothing on the trolling in WvW, the smack talk in sPvP, or booting people last minute out of a dungeon run.

This seems odd to me. I have yet to see any bile in DS or WvW. I am on FA and I have never had anything bad directed at me in WvW despite the fact that I am a mediocre player at best. The only negative thing I have ever seen in WvW map chat was several months ago when a player wanted to be validated on TS and was suspected of being a spy for another server. And from what I saw of that convo, those suspicions may well have been correct. -grin- Most of the time map chat seems downright friendly on FA.

I don’t do DS very often, but for any organized map, my experiences have been pretty positive as well. Maybe I have been lucky?

Harper.4173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Harper.4173:

This toxicity you mention is mostly because the game requires you to succeed now and many players are still very bad at the game – which leads to bad experiences, frustration and conflict.

If you think about it, this trend was foreshadowed in events like the Marionette, with people complaining in map chat about the event failing. Whether this is due to inexperienced or less-skilled players or not is not what matters.

In order for content to be harder, there has to be a possibility to fail. However, no one likes to fail. Add in the human tendency to blame anyone and everyone other than oneself for failure, and that’s a recipe for bad feelings. The absolute skill of the people present is not a factor. They may all be below average. However, since people tend also to have an inflated opinion of their own capabilities, and since they failed, someone else must be at fault.

Throw in internet anonymity and you’ll see those thoughts expressed.

The skill of the people present is a factor because it leads to frustration – the higher your skill level is the higher your frustration will be when an event or encounter fails and you realize you gave it 100%, did everything as best as you could ( which at a high skill level means a lot) and only failed because some people had no idea what they were doing and were twiddling their thumbs.
It sucks to go through an encounter at your best – pushing as hard as you can, straining yourself for those few extra percentages of performance and playing at your peak only to notice those around you going “yolo swag what am i even doing i’ll just press keys now”.

That’s where the frustration comes from.

I have no problem losing an encounter with on-point teammates – even if our best isn’t good enough to succeed I feel fine if I know everybody gave it their best and was as on-point as they could have been.
I get terribly annoyed when I do my best and others do the same only to fail because Carefree Chris has no idea what’s even going on ( no offense to people called Chris).

The other main source of frustration is from casual players having a highly inflated opinion of themselves because of core GW2 now being told to “get good” not only by “elitist scum” but by the game itself which is now punishing them much more than it did before.
Having your bubble burst and realizing you’re not as good at the game as you thought you were can only infuriate people.

I believe my hypothetical scenario is more prevalent than yours. For yours to be, there would have to be more highly-skilled players than I believe is the case. Those who are less skilled can get just as frustrated at failure. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the frustration you’re referring to, but I believe that if rage is getting more prevalent, I think that the underlying issue is one common to most people, regardless of skill.

They don’t need to be many – just vocal. High skill players are usually the loudest and will speak their mind if they feel like they should.

Kerin.9125:

Another way to look at it is that the game that those people enjoyed for over two years and which they could play at whatever skill level they had was taken away from them and replaced by something aimed at the hardcore, highly-skilled players who were whining GW2 was too easy.

I don’t really get when people say that the game was taken away from them. Central Tyria is still there just like it was before. They only added a small set of maps which you must buy to play. If you consider yourself a casual that want to be able to play things at any skill level and heard that HoT is hard, why even bothering with the latter then? The whole game you already know is still there waiting for you.

On other MMOs I considered myself a semi-hardcore gamer, but on GW2 I’m just a casual, since I don’t do dungeons (I find them boring) and rarely do fractals (been thinking about changing that soon). I’m loving HoT, have played the raid on the day it was released and I instantly felt that I should improve, just like if I decided to play sPvP seriously. But I was never offended by that, since it’s part of those game modes. If you want to raid just for fun with no risks, World Bosses are there for that.

William Bradley Knight.2609:

This seems odd to me. I have yet to see any bile in DS or WvW. I am on FA and I have never had anything bad directed at me in WvW despite the fact that I am a mediocre player at best. The only negative thing I have ever seen in WvW map chat was several months ago when a player wanted to be validated on TS and was suspected of being a spy for another server. And from what I saw of that convo, those suspicions may well have been correct. -grin- Most of the time map chat seems downright friendly on FA.

I don’t do DS very often, but for any organized map, my experiences have been pretty positive as well. Maybe I have been lucky?

Fellow FAer here and although I’ve not yet ventured into WvW or DS, I have to say that the overall tone in map chat seems fine. I get the whole fact we’re on a megaserver but I believe there’s some map designation based on home server from what I’ve heard from a couple of people. Explains why I rarely see guilds advertise for a server other than FA. But I can honestly say that yes, I’ve seen a couple of flame wars in LA, had a couple of Teq runs (pre-HoT) that were full of abuse towards players who were unfamiliar with the event because people were too busy flaming to explain what to do, had a couple of people in the open world map-chat who’ve made me roll my eyes. That’s par for the course in any game though.

Out of the few names that’ve made it to my blocklist, all but 1 were gold spammers. The one who wasn’t was some dude who decided to whisper stalk me because I had the temerity to disagree with him once in map chat (I’d forgotten the interaction almost immediately, he pursued me a few days later via whisper). He thought that it was bugging me, I just felt like I was enabling him in his obsession by not blocking him :P My usual response to ‘umad?’ is ‘No, just bored.’

A lot of people say stuff just to get a rise. I have mental health issues and yes, sometimes they can worsen my depression. Never to the point of wanting to self-harm again or OD – the only thing that made me feel remotely that strongly was a hate campaign against me personally in another game with a playerbase far more toxic (and younger) than this. Not surprisingly, a lot of them played LoL and figured that as people were complete gits on there, they could talk like that to anyone, anywhere just because they felt like throwing a teenage hormone fuelled tantrum. Personally I think the guy who tried to whisper-stalk me with abuse has more mental issues than I do

So, there needs to be a bit of work on both sides – people remembering it’s just a game full of people you will most likely never meet or speak to outside of these pixels, as well as people remembering there’s people behind those screens who don’t want to listen to your abuse – whether you think it is or not. Being an kitten for no reason might be funny to you, some people don’t want the drama and come on to relax. How many hours you’ve got on your account/character doesn’t mean jackkitten outside of the game and isn’t even a judge of how ‘good’ you are at the game, not that anyone outside of the game even cares. As for people who are ‘too sensitive’, maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. However, reviewing your coping mechanisms isn’t a bad thing. If you find yourself getting too worked up, take a break or do something that’s positive – help out a guildie with something to reverse the negativity.

The current situation is not solely the fault of HoT although I can concur with the point made that increased difficulty is going to make people feel ‘crappy’ until they either adjust (I don’t want to say ‘git gud’ but the more time you spend on a game, the better you will get and no, it doesn’t have to be 10+ hour binges a day) or leave. Or ANet nerfs everything into the floor so the maps are on par with core Tyria.

Truth is, most people are jerks and that’s something universal online and offline. If you want to show that you don’t like the behaviour, simply don’t associate with those people. Tell people they’re a kitten often enough and they will eventually listen. It just depends on how you say it. I personally find out pointing out that their obsession with someone else’s online habits is actually rather worrying and that they should consider speaking to someone professional about it.

Yesterday while doing daily fractals i did 20 something, cliffside. In my party there were charr and norn wearing chicken wings. As i was carrying hammer those two were constantly running inside my char which caused 3 falls with hammer and two missdodged traps since i didn’t see kitten in front of me.

I told them to hide those ugly flapping things or at least run a few meters behind or in front of me. I didn’t insult them just told them how i feel because after third time running in the air stream or missing the ledge you kind of get a little angry. I was not insulting them. I just told them how things are. Now, somebody can say i’m an elitist piece of kitten because of that because it seems everyone now are delicate little flowers and you can’t say anything to anyone because you’ll be labled as toxic.

Please, seperate constructive critic and being toxic.

Same goes for raids. You have a group of 10 people that have to coordinate in order to not wipe for 3 hours. If you want to be that person who is the reason for wiping over and over in any group content because you can’t take or listen to any criticism, then mmos aren’t your thing. God forbid you listen and improve your gameplay. Better qq on the forums about it.

Oxidia.8103:

Yesterday while doing daily fractals i did 20 something, cliffside. In my party there were charr and norn wearing chicken wings. As i was carrying hammer those two were constantly running inside my char which caused 3 falls with hammer and two missdodged traps since i didn’t see kitten in front of me.

Just let us hide other people’s back pieces, that would be glorious.

Harper.4173:

Also – nothing was taken away form anyone – the game that these people enjoyed for over 2 years is still there – none of it has been touched, changed or made harder. The entire core GW2 experience is still there for people to enjoy at their “casual” pace and skill level.

This is false. Dungeons were nerfed and gold generation actions Tyria-wide were reduced. And Spirit Shards are no longer earned (they made earning XP useless after masteries are complete). By making XP worthless, they are essentially telling us that side activities are now useless (like doing events, rezzing people and NPCs, etc.)

On the flip side, Fractals is greatly improved. But, that’s also a change.

Kerin.9125:

Fact is, had GW2 been like HOT then it’s likely it wouldn’t have survived because what games like GW2 pre-HOT and many others show is that the majority of players of MMOs these days don’t want to ‘work at it’ and many, like me, frankly aren’t skillful enough to do the kind of content the minority now spewing “git gud” manage.

Well-said!