Do players lack Sympathy? Has Apathy increased?

[CaptainV]

I will be honest its always been there but its alot more prevalent than it was.

Back in the day it was alot more about isolated elitism, people would be elitist within certain circles of community and that toxic attitude was not healthy for the game. The biggest issue is that its like a seed thats been planted, and grown for over 11 years.

That seed has finally bloomed and the problem is, it was always there to begin with. Its mostly because blizzard created a strong stigma to helping others by simply designing raiding, pvp, and most of their content towards "competition" rather than "cooperation". So instead of working together, you find alot of people would rather have all the glory to themselves and not share it at all.

This was the folley mistake, and the reason so much shit happens.

Hearthstone is an example of a game you can never be mad at, it has no chat box, no need to communicate, because only one person and one other person can play with each other at any time and you cannot chat to your opponent in any way to taunt or piss them off.

Its one of the only well designed examples of competition ive ever seen done right, because it focuses entirley on trying to compete, rather than trying to brag about competing.

[l33t]

Well... my opinion is, back in the 2004, gaming was created by nerds, targeted at nerds. And nerds are, by the very definition, a little bit better persons than your typical common modern internet bullie. Nerds understood that nerds are all around, and every player is a nerd, and they tried to be nice and helpful, because they felt like they were surrounded by their likeminded brothers and sisters. Like in every small weird community, people cared about each other.

Then, gaming industry gone massively big, games are now created by sales managers targeted at <30 IQ persons (lillte overexaggeration here, but you get the point), thus lots and lots of non-nerds flooded all and every gaming community. So, more often then not, instead of awesome nerds, you meet your common usual folks while playing games; and those folks don't give a flying f*ck about communities or stuff, they just "play for lolz"©. So, nerds stopped caring about all people around, and instead started caring about their guild/friend communities, turning back to grouping in weird small communities, again.

Still, I bet you'll find some good nerds who still care, that's for sure.

[Kallisto]

People have been complaining about 'younger generations' being rude for millennia, so I don't consider that a particularly compelling explanation.

Yeah the youth of today excuse is BS. Like you said it's been done for a long ass time. Hell one of the oldest known pieces of writing comes from ancient Assyria (up to 3000BC) which pretty much was a long bitch fest about youth of their day.

[Deleted]

It certainly doesn't help that the game has as many years on its back that it has now. People have a tendency to become more and more cynical/apathetic towards questions and behaviors that they have dealt with before.
It also doesn't help that our expectations have risen quite a lot. There was a time where most of us had very limited knowledge on a lot of elements on the game, especially dungeons and raids, you didn't exactly have to be a scholar of every single mechanic and your own class. That has somewhat changes to the point where a new player can barely do a single mistake (something like buffs that don't stack, I have seen people go full bleep mode on). As well as asking for help, can often land you either false answers (not even particularly well done ones) or just straight told to go look it up (which of course is what the standard almost is, but I think a lot of people don't quite understand that such a question often can bear a little more than just a wish to know that specific thing).

It is never fun being new to a game, especially old ones that have quite a lot of veterans that are to busy sitting on their rare mount on a postbox than to help retention rates of the game.
Which also somewhat hits the problem on the head. It is all great when everyone is having the same problem, because that leads to a great deal of cooperation. We have however somewhat left that model, and now just require that people can do choreographed fights, not talk and then we can split up and never see each again (LFG and LFR are of course important parts of this, and is likely what spun it completely out of control).

As for new players feeling either entitled or simply won't learn. That isn't exactly a new thing, I certainly remember telling people how to play paladins all the way from Classic, and the rate that people took that advice to heart was rather limited. Entitled, I am not even sure, I have never really seen it myself that someone new to the game demanded that they were given things. Of course people will point to Blizzard for all the welfare items and whatnot, but ultimately Blizzard likely realized that they had quite the barriers often set in place and you'd be hard pressed to get anywhere without quite the backing of a guild (which of course should be encourage, but neither should it really be the end all, be all).

All in all, to some degree yeah but it is likely a very natural process of the game.

[Pieterman]

Handholding from Blizzards side has drastically increased, so players are less inclined to care about other players problems.

[Sansnom]

TL;DR I just want to know if the increase in apathy and toxicity is because of the way the game has been developed over the years or is there a stronger underlying issue?

Has always been around. Not just here but everywhere in the internet world.

[cFortyfive]

Hearthstone is an example of a game you can never be mad at, it has no chat box, no need to communicate, because only one person and one other person can play with each other at any time and you cannot chat to your opponent in any way to taunt or piss them off.

Its one of the only well designed examples of competition ive ever seen done right, because it focuses entirley on trying to compete, rather than trying to brag about competing.

Thanks for that laugh. And yet there are people who are even triggered by emotes.

[Avaddon]

Has always been around. Not just here but everywhere in the internet world.

I'm not sure it has ever been as prominent as today. However that could just be a result of increasing population with access to internet. lol

[Deleted]

Games have been going down hill for a while since they tried to chase the mainstream audience.

I have seen so many people argue that games should made to cater to people who don't like playing games or don't have time to.

Honestly its going to get worse before it gets better.

[Deleted]

It's asocial game design that has been ruining the gaming community for years. If you take away the need for people to connect with each other then they wont because it's inconvenient and unnecessary. Do you think we wanted to help scrubs in vanilla WoW from the kindness of our heart? Hell no! We've helped because scrubs were potential assets and it was difficult to find people for anything back then. You had to have contacts for various activities in order to progress so you better had to make friends. When they added LFG, Raidfinder, crossrealm dungeons & battlesgrounds etc we no longer needed to establish and nurture contacts or friendships in our local communities because the game automatically started doing that for us much more effectively than we ever could. With these changes friendship and kindness became an unnecessary time investment with no yield. I gain fucking nothing from helping a scrub these days. What can a scrub possibly offer me that I can't instantly receive from a simple push of a button? Nothing, that's what. People have become expendable through game design and so they are treated as such.

Go play one of those hardcore mmo's, like EVE online. You know those games where people are still assets. You'll see how nice and helpful the community is in comparison. Then go play something that's even worse than WoW in terms of asocial design. Black Desert comes to mind. Nobody helps you in black desert. These people go out of their way to fuck with you. It's the same story in every mmo. If people are expendable then nobody is going to waste their time helping them. It's that simple. The game environment is what dictates its player base behavior.

[CaptainV]

Thanks for that laugh. And yet there are people who are even triggered by emotes.

If your triggered by emotes, somethings really wrong with you.

[voidillusion]

It's asocial game design that has been ruining the gaming community for years. If you take away the need for people to connect with each other then they wont because it's inconvenient and unnecessary. Do you think we wanted to help scrubs in vanilla WoW from the kindness of our heart? Hell no! We've helped because scrubs were potential assets and it was difficult to find people for anything back then. You had to have contacts for various activities in order to progress so you better had to make friends. When they added LFG, Raidfinder, crossrealm dungeons & battlesgrounds etc we no longer needed to establish and nurture contacts or friendships in our local communities because the game automatically started doing that for us much more effectively than we ever could. With these changes friendship and kindness became an unnecessary time investment with no yield. I gain fucking nothing from helping a scrub these days. What can a scrub possibly offer me that I can't instantly receive from a simple push of a button? Nothing, that's what. People have become expendable through game design and so they are treated as such.

Go play one of those hardcore mmo's, like EVE online. You know those games where people are still assets. You'll see how nice and helpful the community is in comparison. Then go play something that's even worse than WoW in terms of asocial design. Black Desert comes to mind. Nobody helps you in black desert. These people go out of their way to fuck with you. It's the same story in every mmo. If people are expendable then nobody is going to waste their time helping them. It's that simple. The game environment is what dictates its player base behavior.

I was about to write something but you just wrote it before and better :P

This is not "Vanilla was better" kind of speech. But basicly you needed to have the minimum lvl of politeness if you expected to find help, dungeon groups, guilds, wtv. Also it was very easy to get "marked" on a server has being that guy with a big mouth.

Now, if you can just login, press a button and go for a BG/Dungeon/Raid, it's easy for douchebags to insult the rest because... well they are douchebags, ninja need on items and stuff, you have 0 consequences for having this behaviour.

Basicly it is what it is because it was made this way.

[M1r4g3]

The people haven't changed, its 100% the game designers fault. Very few people are true assholes, the majority are just put in a environment that promotes such behaviour. WoW is a great example of that, there was/is far less toxicity in the older xpacks than the post wotlk ones, sure there were assholes back then but they were very few in numbers compared to now and that's a direct consequence of the design shift after tbc/wotlk.

[Snackpack]

Anonymity. Server community is much more tighter back in the day or on private servers. Guilds reputation and your reputation matter. Now with cross realm and grouping, i dont even care if people think im an asshole.

This is true. There were players blacklisted on my server as known ninja-looters/assholes and everyone knew to avoid them. Now you can be the biggest piece of shit you want and it doesn't matter... That said, in my opinion, society in general has gotten worse over the years so it would also make sense to me that the average player mentality has as well.

[cFortyfive]

If your triggered by emotes, somethings really wrong with you.

Wasn't on my behalf they changed emotes and added cooldowns. Also the amount of friendrequests and nice conversations I had playing anyfin was certainly an equally enriching experience so your claim of people never getting mad seems exaggerated. It merely might mask the issues better.

[clevin]

Aside from the fact that people can use google, one difference in the WoW community is the relative death of guilds as the LFG/LFR community has risen. When I was new, later in vanilla and early in TBC, I asked questions in the guild I was part of. People are much less likely to be a jackass to someone in their guild, so I would imagine my experience was fairly typical. Now, I get the feeling that people ask in trade/ggeneral etc and there, they get people who aren't in a guild with them, or they ask here and we don't know them at all.

[Darktbs]

Its not a problem with the game or with new players,but i think both help for the grow of toxicity.But they are not the cause,i believe the players that already play are the ones to blame.

On a Online game is expected that a new player,old player or any kind perform well for the team to win.The problem is,not everyone is a expert in said game,so the fault of the lose fall in the player shoulders with a huge amount of rage.Repeat this situations in multiple games and multiple times you have a bad environment where everyone refuses to talk to each other because people are assholes.

Why ask something in game when you can just google it and avoid be welcome by assholes?

The players create a toxic environment and the game does not punish for bad behavior nor reward for good behavior.

[melodramocracy]

As long as I've been playing this game, there's always been a pretty significant number of players who think that their own time has far more value than anyone else's. The games design for the past several expansions has encouraged that.

[MoanaLisa]

The people haven't changed, its 100% the game designers fault. Very few people are true assholes, the majority are just put in a environment that promotes such behaviour. WoW is a great example of that, there was/is far less toxicity in the older xpacks than the post wotlk ones, sure there were assholes back then but they were very few in numbers compared to now and that's a direct consequence of the design shift after tbc/wotlk.

It is such bullshit to blame the game for personal actions. Players are responsible for what they do and say. If one acts like an asshole it's pretty easy to confirm that they are indeed an asshole every time they think they can get away with it. There is no particular methodology for forcing someone to be nice. People make their choices and that's on them. You can't crap all over on some player or group and then say "The game made me do it." It's bullshit, all of it.

[voidillusion]

It is such bullshit to blame the game for personal actions. Players are responsible for what they do and say. If one acts like an asshole it's pretty easy to confirm that they are indeed an asshole every time they think they can get away with it. There is no particular methodology for forcing someone to be nice. People make their choices and that's on them. You can't crap all over on some player or group and then say "The game made me do it." It's bullshit, all of it.

No matter how the game is made, people are always responsible for what they say and they do, 100% correct and couldnt agree more.

However, accountability, or the lack of it, puts a incentive on some ppl to react or perform some actions that they wouldn't normally do.