How do you control a Toxic Community like World of Warcraft or most other MMOs have?

[Triceron]

I've detailed my solutions repeatedly in multi-paragraph responses, so I'm not going to dignify your weird assertion by repeating myself.

Then that's your problem, not mine.

You have to deal with your own inability to articulate your reasons. Don't bother replying if you're not interested in having a conversation.

[arkanon]

It often has to do with how you say it. If you say "switch to arms retard, your aoe is garbage" instead it's now toxic instead of helpful.

Ok, now what about "Switch to arms, your aoe is garbage". Is that still toxic?

Now what if you say "hey buddy, give arms a try for the next boss - the AOE will shred the adds"

And that person responds "shut up dude, i know what im doing, im a hell of a lot better than you" and then starts linking achievements for mid tier heroic bosses, even though hes dead last on the meter. Now whos toxic? Is everyone toxic?

[Triceron]

Ok, now what about "Switch to arms, your aoe is garbage". Is that still toxic?

Now what if you say "hey buddy, give arms a try for the next boss - the AOE will shred the adds"

And that person responds "shut up dude, i know what im doing, im a hell of a lot better than you" and then starts linking achievements for mid tier heroic bosses, even though hes dead last on the meter. Now whos toxic? Is everyone toxic?

"The game is toxic"

[NineSpine]

They provided catch up gear at the time they were implemented and were part of gearing up for non-raiders, just as Visions and assaults are now. Your idea of an "explorer" as someone who doesn't actually care what content they are doing and not someone who wants to experience story and level reputations is pretty nonsensical to be honest, so I apologize for not understanding you meant "slower achiever" and "regular achiever". You're not forced to gear up in any instanced content right now if you don't want to and still achieve personal progression. You're not forced into M15s to personally progress, and the likelihood you'll encounter much toxicity is much much lower while running an M+0 or a world boss.

What you just described as an "explorer" is not at all what I said, and it's also not "my concept". The Bartle taxonomy of player types is not some random shit I made up. It's one of the most widely used concepts in professional game design. When I worked at a studio one of the first breakdowns we did on any major design decision was how it would work for the four-player types.

One of the first characteristics of an explorer is they dislike time limitations, and another is they don't like feeling like they need to do the same thing over and over in short time frames... yet your argument here is that its fine for all the old content to be rendered obsolete in favor of visions... a completely time-gated and extremely repetitive activity. What an explorer wants is the ability to work on all of these things and get rewards from them, but the game is saying "No, fuck all that, heres some time gated, repetitive content and the only thing you can do to gear up otherwise is M+.

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Then that's your problem, not mine.

You have to deal with your own inability to articulate your reasons. Don't bother replying if you're not interested in having a conversation.

Don't bother replying to me if all you are going to do is demand I repeat myself ad nauseum when you clearly refuse to listen in the first place. Maybe you are new to the forum, but pro tip: You can look at all my posts where I already went over this again and again.

[arkanon]

"The game is toxic"

So if no one was playing the game, it would still be toxic? with zero players?

If a noob fails at a quest, and no one is around to tbag his corpse, does he still blame the healer?

[Lex Icon]

Assuming their Gender - TOXIC


Questioning their ability and skill in game - TOXIC

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Attacking those who want to win - TOXIC


This is the issue with this entire thread, and entire subject - what is and is not Toxic will differ greatly from one person to the next. Thats why Blizzard doesnt just swing the banhammer like some in here have suggested - me saying "hey dude, you should try Arms for this - the burst AOE is amazing on the adds" wouldnt be viewed as toxic by many, however, all it takes is one person to be mildly offended and boom - banned.

this is just a bunch whataboutism. the fact is if you can't be bothered to get a group of players that fit your criteria of what they should be able to do you should just shut up and play the cards you've been dealt or leave them to their own devices.

if you're of the mindset that everything needs to be perfect then you've got no business joining rando groups made up of rando people.
i imagine skilled people already know this and do exactly that.
so people throwing tantrums in pugs about performance probably don't even fit that bill.

people who are helpful aren't getting called toxic.

[Nurasu]

What you just described as an "explorer" is not at all what I said, and it's also not "my concept". The Bartle taxonomy of player types is not some random shit I made up. It's one of the most widely used concepts in professional game design. When I worked at a studio one of the first breakdowns we did on any major design decision was how it would work for the four-player types.

One of the first characteristics of an explorer is they dislike time limitations, and another is they don't like feeling like they need to do the same thing over and over in short time frames... yet your argument here is that its fine for all the old content to be rendered obsolete in favor of visions... a completely time-gated and extremely repetitive activity. What an explorer wants is the ability to work on all of these things and get rewards from them, but the game is saying "No, fuck all that, heres some time gated, repetitive content and the only thing you can do to gear up otherwise is M+.

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Don't bother replying to me if all you are going to do is demand I repeat myself ad nauseum when you clearly refuse to listen in the first place. Maybe you are new to the forum, but pro tip: You can look at all my posts where I already went over this again and again.

Well I'm not a game designer, but everything I can find says explorers couldn't give less of a fuck about gear progression. I'm not shocked to learn today that WoW has't been designed for them since TBC launched and the amount of current content shrank drastically. I'm also not shocked that according to Bartle, they would enjoy playing Mechagon and unlocking its recipes, mounts, and other secrets.

Is this a poor source? https://www.interaction-design.org/l...type%20players.

I guess the solution would be to eliminate catch up gear and hope that slow-achievers don't reach the end game in their gear progression before the next expansion, so they aren't funneled together. Of course this also affects new and returning players that want to play current, challenging content, which I would say would be the majority.

[Echocho]

Well I'm not a game designer, but everything I can find says explorers couldn't give less of a fuck about gear progression. I'm not shocked to learn today that WoW has't been designed for them since TBC launched and the amount of current content shrank drastically. I'm also not shocked that according to Bartle, they would enjoy playing Mechagon and unlocking its recipes, mounts, and other secrets.

Is this a poor source? https://www.interaction-design.org/l...type%20players.

I guess the solution would be to eliminate catch up and gear and hope that slow-achievers don't reach the end game in their gear progression before the next expansion, so they aren't funneled together. Of course this also affects new and returning players that want to play current, challenging content, which I would say would be the majority.

Catch-ups should be drastically lessened imo. At the very most it should award gear equal to previous tier normal mode raids so you're ready for this tier normal mode.

[Nurasu]

Catch-ups should be drastically lessened imo. At the very most it should award gear equal to previous tier normal mode raids so you're ready for this tier normal mode.

That won't lessen toxicity without also reducing the difficulty at the top end, like FF14.

[Triceron]

Don't bother replying to me if all you are going to do is demand I repeat myself ad nauseum when you clearly refuse to listen in the first place. Maybe you are new to the forum, but pro tip: You can look at all my posts where I already went over this again and again.

Again, your problem not mine. Being a 10 year member, you should be fully aware of how the game is played and how the game has always been 'achiever oriented' and that has not changed from Vanilla to now. Toxic behaviour has existed despite all the changes Blizzard as implemented, for better or worse.

Your suggestions don't tackle the problems at all, which is why I pointed out this is not a systemic problem but a behaviour one. You dont' need to repeat yourself because nothing was said to address any of the points I made.

[Echocho]

That won't lessen toxicity without also reducing the difficulty at the top end, like FF14.

No it was more of a side note. They can remove talents, spec switching, addons and dungeon timers as a start if they want to lessen it.

[arkanon]

this is just a bunch whataboutism. the fact is if you can't be bothered to get a group of players that fit your criteria of what they should be able to do you should just shut up and play the cards you've been dealt or leave them to their own devices.

if you're of the mindset that everything needs to be perfect then you've got no business joining rando groups made up of rando people.
i imagine skilled people already know this and do exactly that.
so people throwing tantrums in pugs about performance probably don't even fit that bill.

people who are helpful aren't getting called toxic.

Define helpful. You are still failing to see the issue - toxicity is entirely subjective. And you are entirely wrong - people say all the time that they do not welcome "helpful" comments from strangers, and they DO find it toxic for someone to randomly start giving advice to someone when it is entirely unsolicited.

Personally, i find your attitude of "you should just shut up and play the cards you've been dealt or leave them to their own devices" to be an extremely toxic attitude, encouraging poor play. According to your logic, if we join a M+ pug, and the tank says "hey guys, im making a coffee, brb 5 mins" in the middle of the run, we should just accept that and leave the group, even if its our key.

[NineSpine]

Again, your problem not mine. Being a 10 year member, you should be fully aware of how the game is played and how the game has always been 'achiever oriented' and that has not changed from Vanilla to now. Toxic behaviour has existed despite all the changes Blizzard as implemented, for better or worse.

Your suggestions don't tackle the problems at all, which is why I pointed out this is not a systemic problem but a behaviour one. You dont' need to repeat yourself because nothing was said to address any of the points I made.

It absolutely has changed, and I already detailed in multiple long posts how it was different.

I'm not really interested in this game where you pretend you cant scroll back a page or two and see the arguments I made already.

[goldlock]

It is a interesting concept... finally freeing the playerbase that wants to push progression from the playerbase that wants to... do other stuff?

It would be wonderful to see I just don't really expect to see it. The entire point of all these new "alternative" progression systems is to drag players kicking and screaming into afkable content.

[Triceron]

It absolutely has changed, and I already detailed in multiple long posts how it was different.

I'm not really interested in this game where you pretend you cant scroll back a page or two and see the arguments I made already.

After looking back at the thread - you detailed it in response to other people

If you are in conversation with me, you need to reply to me. If you are going to say 'I said all this other stuff' and it was directed at other people in the thread, then that is YOUR problem not mine. It is YOUR responsibility to bring that to the table in conversation. This isn't a roundtable discussion.

The only replies you mentioned were about things that don't actually solve or address toxicity. You are suggesting that the differences between hardcore and casual players are causing toxicity, but that is not inherrently true.

LFR is one of the solutions blizzard put in place to circumvent that paradigm, yet it ended up being the worst offender of toxic behaviour. The alternative I see that you may be suggesting is having complete separation of 'achiever' and 'explorer'. So is this a Non-Raid servers where there is zero Raid content? I don't know exactly what you mean by saying other MMO's already solved this when I'm not seeing any of your responses on a system that actually works. Do other MMO's have 'Casual Only' servers? Am I missing something here?

Final note on the matter - do not pretend that your conversations with other people apply to me. I am not the culmination of everyone you are discussing with. This isn't a 'hive mind' you are talking to. You need to keep track of what you're saying to who you're saying it to. If you can't deal with that then that's your problem, not mine.

[NineSpine]

Well I'm not a game designer, but everything I can find says explorers couldn't give less of a fuck about gear progression. I'm not shocked to learn today that WoW has't been designed for them since TBC launched and the amount of current content shrank drastically. I'm also not shocked that according to Bartle, they would enjoy playing Mechagon and unlocking its recipes, mounts, and other secrets.

Is this a poor source? https://www.interaction-design.org/l...type%20players.

I guess the solution would be to eliminate catch up gear and hope that slow-achievers don't reach the end game in their gear progression before the next expansion, so they aren't funneled together. Of course this also affects new and returning players that want to play current, challenging content, which I would say would be the majority.

You are interpreting it too literally if you think explorers literally don't care about gear at all. There is a difference between gear progression and the constant gear treadmill. Getting new gear is part of exploring, especially back when gear could have a larger impact on how you played rather than being a spreadsheet generated series of uniform upgrade. An explorer, for example, would love to complete a rep and get some awesome gear for it. The rep rewards are very lackluster these days, not only because the gear is useless so fast but because the game practically drowns you in similar rewards. The game throws mounts and pets and shit at you faster than you can look at them. If you were to go back to BC, mounts were pretty hard to come by, so a way an explorer could really appreciate that aspect of the game would be collecting them. Having a large collection was a point of pride. Now, everyone has eleventy billion mounts and there are inevitably thirty thousand that look like yours or even cooler all over the place.

"Of course this also affects new and returning players that want to play current, challenging content, which I would say would be the majority."

Good game design isn't about giving people what they want all the time. In fact, that can be really bad game design.

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After looking back at the thread - you detailed it in response to other people

If you are in conversation with me, you need to reply to me. If you are going to say 'I said all this other stuff' and it was directed at other people in the thread, then that is YOUR problem not mine. It is YOUR responsibility to bring that to the table in conversation. This isn't a roundtable discussion.

The only replies you mentioned were about things that don't actually solve or address toxicity. You are suggesting that the differences between hardcore and casual players are causing toxicity, but that is not inherrently true.

LFR is one of the solutions blizzard put in place to circumvent that paradigm, yet it ended up being the worst offender of toxic behaviour. The alternative I see that you may be suggesting is having complete separation of 'achiever' and 'explorer'. So is this a Non-Raid servers where there is zero Raid content? I don't know exactly what you mean by saying other MMO's already solved this when I'm not seeing any of your responses on a system that actually works. I see you mention Destiny 2 to someone else - what does Destiny 2 have anything to do with WoW? I don't see the parallel and I don't see how that relates to toxicity since it still exists in Destiny 2, albeit less so for many different factors and reasons that may or may not be associated with achievement whoring. Do other MMO's have 'Casual Only' servers? Am I missing something here?

Final note on the matter - do not pretend that your conversations with other people apply to me.

The delineations I provided were in regard to Bartles different player types, not casual versus hardcore. Casual versus hardcore isn't relevant.

[Triceron]

The delineations I provided were in regard to Bartles different player types, not casual versus hardcore. Casual versus hardcore isn't relevant.

What is Bartles different player types? What does this even mean?

I don't think you are taking this conversation clearly because you are omitting huge chunks of context. Your dilineation has no context to anything that I have discussed regarding Toxicity.

You say Casual vs Hardcore isn't relevant, but just the same Explorer interacting with Achiever is also not relevant since it is not the basis on which Toxicity happens. There can be many interactions where that doesn't immediately result in mouth-frothing toxicity, or can be avoided completely if the Explorer does not rely on random pug situation to progress.

The meta is designed so that the expectation of running a random dungeon is to get it done quickly. This meta can not be reinforced with any systemic design. Even if you split off Explorer servers and Achiever servers, you will still run into new problems down the line because of the same issues in different ways. Some achievers not being 'extreme' enough, or explorers lacking options on things to do because they don't feel like they can find any meaningful progression on an 'explorer' server and can't find 24 other people to do a raid. What happens if you have an Achiever join late and is working their way up the ranks and learning the game and being called an 'explorer'? That's toxic behaviour too. We didn't really solve anything regarding toxicity, all we do now is divide the playerbase even further from interaction with each other, and that is not always a good thing.

At the core, toxicity is something inherrent to the individuals and the players. It is part of the 'culture'. Other MMO's do have this too if you are deep enough in its culture. It's not just to say 'well other MMO's don't have this as bad' because the cultures and dynamics are not WoW, and not stemming from system designs. Again, LFR is an example of how they tried to make a casual raid system for the 'explorer' types that reasonably no achiever should make use of, but people still do and still act toxic because they can.

To be frank, what you seem to be talking about has very little to do with actual toxicity. It may be addressing *one type* of toxic behaviour that stems from bad interactions between explorers and achievers, but that is not a solution to the problem itself nor is it tackling any major source of that bad behaviour. All that is being proposed is a separation of achievement from more casual progression. I'm pretty sure other games like Guild Wars 2 where gear and stats don't even really progress and casuals and raid progression are very much separated and not incentivized, there is still plenty of toxicity in this game.

[NineSpine]

What is Bartles different player types? What does this even mean?

Players can be broken down into four rough, overlapping categories: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers.

I don't think you are taking this conversation clearly because you are omitting huge chunks of context. Your dilineation has no context to anything that I have discussed regarding Toxicity.

You say Casual vs Hardcore isn't relevant, but just the same Explorer interacting with Achiever is also not relevant since it is not the basis on which Toxicity happens. There can be many interactions where that doesn't immediately result in mouth-frothing toxicity, or can be avoided completely if the Explorer does not rely on random pug situation to progress.

As I described previously, WoW has been increasingly designed almost solely for achievers. It pushes socializers and explorers into achiever-style gameplay where they don't belong. Explorers and socializers, generally speaking, aren't interested in min-maxing and optimization. They want to stop and smell the roses, maybe have a conversation about the roses. Explorers want to see things. Socializers want to interact with people. Achievers want to get shit done.

By designing the game almost exclusively for achievers, players who are not in that mindset get funneled into the achiever space. Achiever is not synonymous with hardcore. That's very important.

The meta is designed so that the expectation of running a random dungeon is to get it done quickly. This meta can not be reinforced with any systemic design.

The meta is entirely determined by the design, intentionally or not.

Even if you split off Explorer servers and Achiever servers, you will still run into new problems down the line because of the same issues in different ways. Some achievers not being 'extreme' enough, or explorers lacking options on things to do because they don't feel like they can find any meaningful progression on an 'explorer' server and can't find 24 other people to do a raid. What happens if you have an Achiever join late and is working their way up the ranks and learning the game and being called an 'explorer'? That's toxic behaviour too. We didn't really solve anything regarding toxicity, all we do now is divide the playerbase even further from interaction with each other, and that is not always a good thing.

Achievers are generally very resilient in regard to toxicity. They are competitive, they want to be the best, so they will act on criticism. Being told their spec or talents suck will make them change them. Being told they are playing wrong will make them change. Other players don't work that way. Being told they are playing wrong just gives them a negative experience, because they are likely playing that way for a reason. They might choose talents because that's what they find fun. For the achiever, the fun is in achieving.

An achiever working their way up through the ranks is unlikely to encounter a lot of problems with other types of players because working their way up through the ranks comes with an understanding that they are doing so, and often they don't know enough to be lecturing people yet. The content they are working through is also likely to be quite easy, which reduces friction. It isn't until they are playing with other achievers that the difficulty is going to be an issue.

All of this is on its head in retail wow. I suggest you watch Kevin Jordan on youtube. He was one of the original three designers of wow and he summarizes these points better than me.

[Lex Icon]

Define helpful. You are still failing to see the issue - toxicity is entirely subjective. And you are entirely wrong - people say all the time that they do not welcome "helpful" comments from strangers, and they DO find it toxic for someone to randomly start giving advice to someone when it is entirely unsolicited.

Personally, i find your attitude of "you should just shut up and play the cards you've been dealt or leave them to their own devices" to be an extremely toxic attitude, encouraging poor play. According to your logic, if we join a M+ pug, and the tank says "hey guys, im making a coffee, brb 5 mins" in the middle of the run, we should just accept that and leave the group, even if its our key.

i've yet to see the helpful stranger that you guys pretend to be. what i've seen en masse though is 1 toxic player berating everyone and draqging down the expereince for everyone countless times. someone new doesn't know the tactics? hardcore hero goes on a 2 hour rant about how bad that person is and initiates vote kick after vote kick. meanwhile the rest of us are just trying to complete the thing. if you group up with randoms you should accept that you might not get professional gamers on your team. if you can't handle that and start insulting everyone then yes you are a toxic person.

since i don't do m+ because i it does not interest me.. i gotta ask how often do you invite someone that takes coffee breaks? and how have you not made it know all over the internet that that person does that? anywho if you waqnt nothing but perfection then yes you should for sure seek out like minded people because you sure as hell won't find them in pugs waiting for you.

[Triceron]

Players can be broken down into four rough, overlapping categories: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers.



As I described previously, WoW has been increasingly designed almost solely for achievers. It pushes socializers and explorers into achiever-style gameplay where they don't belong. Explorers and socializers, generally speaking, aren't interested in min-maxing and optimization. They want to stop and smell the roses, maybe have a conversation about the roses. Explorers want to see things. Socializers want to interact with people. Achievers want to get shit done.

By designing the game almost exclusively for achievers, players who are not in that mindset get funneled into the achiever space. Achiever is not synonymous with hardcore. That's very important.

And what MMO's successfully separate this, or what examples of systems from MMO's do you have to illustrate your argument that other MMO's have already done it better?

I'm aware that you're trying to address a type of issue and problem that stems from mixing different 'personality types', but the problem I see is tying this into a discussion about toxicity which this really isn't.

The dynamic difference between an explorer and an achiever is not a major contributor to toxicity. The problem you're actually illustrating is that this game is being geared towards an achiever-centric game.

But that isn't a problem of toxicity. Nor is it a problem with the actual systems. The game is focused on achievers and not designed for explorers, and if this is the way the game is then the standard should be that explorers should stick to their own means of entertainment while avoiding those that are tied to 'achiever-centric' designs that should not even appeal to them. I gave the example of Guild Wars 2, which has a wide variety of community and a LOT of non-achiever content and PLENTY of Explorer content. Yet toxicity exists the same way in any situation that has them interacting. And there's no legitimate means to separate them or prevent it without punishing the social dynamic of the game entirely (from trading to finding people to play).

I've illustrated my counterpoints. I am not convinced there is a 'system design' that is befitting a non-toxic environment. I'm all for opening up the gameplay and allowing players more freedom in playing how they want to play, but I consider that a completely different topic to what should be about toxicity. The negative interaction between different types of players doing the same content is something that is inherrent in any medium. Where are the examples of co-existing systems that work?