Why is this community considered "extremely toxic"?

[CrawlFromThePit]

You have some serious growing up to do. You keep trying to apply workplace expectations to a video game. You continually demonstrate an extremely immature perspective of the situation, and lack of understanding of social norms in free time / social environments.

It seems clear you have never been involved in any team sports or activities outside your bedroom; "but coach, Karl made the same mistake 3 times so I'm swearing and yelling and screaming at him, isn't that what we are supposed to do?"

You have some serious control issues, and an overinflated sense of self worth - notice how in every single example you have given, page after page, in every single example it is you, the superior player, abusing and swearing at a lesser player. This tells me you believe you are one of the best players in the world, or you are so delusional you fail to understand players are probably frequently mocking your poor performance behind your back. Either that, or you only play in content far below your gear and ability to feel special.

No matter what the reasons or situation, you have demonstrated what a horrible and toxic part of the community you are, demanding that random strangers behave in a very particular way that meets your own personal standards, which is exceedingly arrogant.

I don't abuse or swear at players, that's once again your twisted narrative to make me look as bad as you imagine me to be instead of taking things at face value. I'm having a pretty civilized discussion with Necromantic over there even if we disagree it's an enjoyable conversation, why do you need to always come on the defensive like I strangled your cat and stuffed it in your cereal box?

I'm arrogant, I'll give you that. But that's not an argument, and it doesn't discredit anything I said. I don't think I'm the best player in the world, I dont even do anything over +20, I won't go to the MDI, I won't clear mythic EP. But I can definitely point out basic mistakes that the majority of players I pug with do, in a helpful manner, mind you, not by insulting right out the gate like you wrongly imagine me doing. I learned the game by playing with people far better than me back in vanilla/tbc and they would point out mistakes I did. It made me a much better player pretty quick, I'm very grateful for that, and like the saying goes "do to others what you want them to do to you". I believe we get better by sharing knowledge, I work in a teamwork environment where we communicate a lot to improve everything, the most efficient way to improve is point out the flaws and iron them out. I apply the same in game and in my life. It's a very positive and satisfying attitude that I think the gaming community is severaly lacking (which is ironic because my job is making video games).

It's important in life to understand your place, if someone is better than you, it's probably wise to listen to them, if you're better than someone, it's helpful to share your knowledge and give tips. The concept of "arrogance" comes from inferior people who don't know their place and refuse to learn from better people.
I'm in the same cycle, I'm not above it all, I took a break from BfA, when I came out the emissary affix was already out for a while in +10s and I had no idea what they did. I fucked up a few times, some people helped by explaining how to do some pulls correctly, I apologized for my mistakes, thanked them for helping me figure things out and now I do it properly, learned from failures and helpful tips. Now I can give back. People who don't want it like what you seem to be, can choke on it, it's their problem, not mine.

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Because it is not important. Mistakes are not important, you will do them, everywhere for the rest of your life. If you think you should need to feel bad when you make one say hello to depression and unrealistic expectations.

You should learn and deconstruct mistake. And try to avoid it. You wont but maybe it will happen less often. Accept it and move on.

Of course you should ONLY deconstruct your own mistakes.

Mistakes are extremely important, that's how human beings learn. If you don't learn from your mistakes it literally means you have a learning disability. I already explained the "feel bad" thing in another post but so you don't need to scroll through everything basically I only mean you should feel something, it's a little negative feeling that gives us the push to do better next time. We're not supposed to feel nothing or feel good about it. Normal human behaviour is feeling slightly bad after doing something wrong, it's no big deal, I'm certainly not talking about depression or breaking down crying.

[Specialka]

I played at a regional or national level in multiple sports, both team and individual, and have a degree in sports psychology. In a formal team environment, there are ability based grades - grading is done pre season, and you will be placed in a division the coaching team believe you match. If you are performing well, you may be moved up a grade, and if you are under performing, you may be asked to move down a grade. If one of my players started swearing and abusing another player over mistakes, he would be sidelined immediately, and reprimanded after the game.

That environment is similar to a competitive progression guild - and the situations explained translate quite well - this is why competitive guilds have structure - a hierarchy / pecking order. A guild with a strong culture would allow anyone to voice an opinion or idea, at the appropriate time, however they dont just have every tom dick and harry screaming over discord because the tank missed a taunt.

The real issue here is you are talking about low level PUG M+. So you are talking the equivalent of a random group of strangers throwing a ball around at a park - everyone is enjoying it - and you are the asshole screaming at the 11yo kid because he keeps dropping it.

If that makes you feel better to think that, I'll you be the 11year old kid. You really belong there.

[munkeyinorbit]

nope, you are wrong. Paying gets you a user license. Nothing more, nothing less.

That user license allows you access to all of the game not in the shop. For free. You don't have to pay for it. It is free.

[Specialka]

That user license allows you access to all of the game not in the shop. For free. You don't have to pay for it. It is free.

You said it yourself, you pay for your user license, hence it is not free. Then you can play the game and the game is based around playing content harder and harder to get better loot, etc....

[munkeyinorbit]

People would rather chase you down, expending cooldowns, potions, buffs, engineering items and quest items just to kill you instead of leaving you alone in a questing area. You are forced to PVP, regardless of where you go, what you do, who you play with or what class you play. That is toxic as fuck and the community has made it this way, you cant even afk in a neutral city for 2 minutes without a scum player camping you while the classic guards just sit there.

What a flawless and perfect 15 year old game thats not broken, not abused, not a cesspool of assholes, and is absolutely worth the bullshit and praise. /sarcasm

When you created a character on that realm the game told you that it was PvP. No one forced you. You made your choice. There is nothing toxic about being camped. It is exactly what you signed up for. There is nothing toxic about getting camped at a neutral city. You decided to go there. You decided to afk. You decided to roll a PvP server. Everything you described in your rant are down to your decisions. If you don't like it then roll PvE

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You said it yourself, you pay for your user license, hence it is not free. Then you can play the game and the game is based around playing content harder and harder to get better loot, etc....

You quoted me right below my post and you still got it wrong. Read it again.
Noooooooo. BAD SPECIALKA. I said read it, not fly in a rage and repeat yourself.

[Necromantic]

Dungeons in FF 14 are piss easy. Even with repeated mistakes you can nearly solo it in some case.

A +10 is far harder and a +15 even more. At those level, you can't have repeated mistakes.

I should have been clearer in stating the expert/extreme dungeons. The non-current, normal dungeons are overly easy. Heck, before the current expansion that changed how Scholar works, I could literally set someone on follow and go fully AFK while my fairy did all the healing.

When you created a character on that realm the game told you that it was PvP. No one forced you. You made your choice. There is nothing toxic about being camped. It is exactly what you signed up for. There is nothing toxic about getting camped at a neutral city. You decided to go there. You decided to afk. You decided to roll a PvP server. Everything you described in your rant are down to your decisions. If you don't like it then roll PvE

That's what I say too. Yes, it sucks when a sub-par max level player camps lowbies while thinking he's awesome at PVP. It sucks when it took someone consumables, all their CDs and even waiting until you pulled something before attacking you, in order to kill you. However, those are some of the risks you take rolling on a PVP server.

There are lots of fun things that can only happen on a PVP server but if you want to be able to do those things, you have to accept the other risks.

[Aliven]

Mistakes are extremely important, that's how human beings learn. If you don't learn from your mistakes it literally means you have a learning disability. I already explained the "feel bad" thing in another post but so you don't need to scroll through everything basically I only mean you should feel something, it's a little negative feeling that gives us the push to do better next time. We're not supposed to feel nothing or feel good about it. Normal human behaviour is feeling slightly bad after doing something wrong, it's no big deal, I'm certainly not talking about depression or breaking down crying.

Well no, mistakes are not important, important is able to see them as an event you can learn something from to avoid said event better in the future. It is the same mechanism if you make something good and can learn from it how to make it happen often.

Healthy response for a mistake is acknowledge it, learn from it (if possible) and move on. If you put negative fealing into the mistake thats on you.

[CrawlFromThePit]

Well no, mistakes are not important, important is able to see them as an event you can learn something from to avoid said event better in the future. It is the same mechanism if you make something good and can learn from it how to make it happen often.

Healthy response for a mistake is acknowledge it, learn from it (if possible) and move on. If you put negative fealing into the mistake thats on you.

The drive to get better to not repeat a mistake comes from the negative feeling. That's not "on you", it's a normal human behaviour. Not feeling anything after a mistake is actually a deficiency.

[Necromantic]

The drive to get better to not repeat a mistake comes from the negative feeling. That's not "on you", it's a normal human behaviour. Not feeling anything after a mistake is actually a deficiency.

The drive to get better to not repeat a mistake is to understand what you did wrong and how to do it right. Negative feelings mostly discourage people. People who are belittled and made to feel inept tend to lower their overall perception of their own capabilities. Basically, if you yell at a child, employee, teammate enough and call them stupid, they'll start to believe it and have no drive to be anything other than that. "Why try harder? I'm stupid afterall..."

[Aliven]

The drive to get better to not repeat a mistake comes from the negative feeling. That's not "on you", it's a normal human behaviour. Not feeling anything after a mistake is actually a deficiency.

No, it is not coming from negative feelings. If you have some source for that statement i happily eat my words.

[Specialka]

No, it is not coming from negative feelings. If you have some source for that statement i happily eat my words.

Why You want to strive to be better? What makes you move forward to be better?

[CrawlFromThePit]

The drive to get better to not repeat a mistake is to understand what you did wrong and how to do it right. Negative feelings mostly discourage people. People who are belittled and made to feel inept tend to lower their overall perception of their own capabilities. Basically, if you yell at a child, employee, teammate enough and call them stupid, they'll start to believe it and have no drive to be anything other than that. "Why try harder? I'm stupid afterall..."

No, it is not coming from negative feelings. If you have some source for that statement i happily eat my words.

Okay you two, we gotta set something straight. Negative feeling doesn't mean depression and suicidal thoughts EXCLUSIVELY.
When you make a mistake in anything in life, you feel something, right? And that feeling is certainly not pride, happiness or satisfaction. What you feel is on the negative side of feelings, like disapointment or frustration, these feelings are normally used to correct or improve things we do, humans use feeling to understand things, for ourselves. Some of that is better explained in this article that is medically reviewed: https://www.verywellmind.com/embrace...otions-4158317
It's all very basic feeling following an action, did you do good? Feeling good! Did you do bad? Feeling bad! The good feels tell you to keep doing what you do, the bad feels tell you to change something to improve the situation so you can reach the good feels.

It's just that, it's not any deeper, it's not about bashing someone on the head for 2 weeks straight for a simple mistake, it's not about pushing people to jump off a bridge or send them in the darkest depression. What you're doing is radical thinking by going to the furthest possible assumption and it's going way off track here.

[Orby]

Thanks to social media or at least the normality of social media every piece of media is toxic now, movies, TV and video games...

Its an entitled fandom that collectively gathers to divide the community and make it toxic due to strong views people feel overly passionate about, like their opinion is truth because they feel on the morally correct side of the argument and have people enforcing it.

You either strongly like something or strongly dislike something there's no middle ground, we choose one of the other to spite the other. People act like they are at war.

Luckily this effect is only exclusive to the internet. I can at least have adult conversations with my friends about movies, games or TV, be it the good and bad, by agreeing and disagreeing without being vilified for it.

[reemi]

Retail and Classic community is very good compared to games like LoL or Fortnite.

IMO People are more friendly in Classic, because they want to play together.

But, it's the same community, who is playing Classic and never played Retail??

[DazManianDevil]

Saying someone is toxic is basically making a claim that the person objectively is, regardless of who is the person they talk to.
Toxicity is a perspective thing. Very often I see when someone plays bad or does something wrong, if someone points it out WHICH IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, they take it wrongly, they think they're being attacked, they think they're being insulted, and it feels toxic TO THEM.

For people who understand that the concept of pointing out mistakes is to acknowledge them, fix them, and become better as a result, these remarks are not only NOT TOXIC, they are WELCOMED.

We live in a society where if you don't lie to people to tell them something positive they don't deserve you are automatically branded as a mean person. People lost all pride in improvingthemselves, they lost the understanding that challenges and shortcomings are what makes us better/stronger, they only want to feel good all the time even if they're bad.

Is someone calling you names out of nowhere? Okay yeah, that's toxic. Are they pointing out that you sit in fire, don't interrupt the right spell, focus the wrong target, don't use your active talent ability that YOU CHOOSE? Then they are not being toxic, you are being bad and you should not be this bad, so thank them for giving you a top on how to get better.

And in all that I'm not even gonna go on the very big subject of "it's easy to disregard idiotic comments and never actually feel toxicity from toxic players". In my view the most toxic players are those who just play like shit. I mean the game is 15 years old with all the information vailable everywhere. To me, playing bad is exactly "unpleasant and unacceptable". I,m not talking about undergeared character doing low dps, that's normal I'm talking purely about player skill, I can understand new players learning, but shitters buying their +10 carries and then joining groups with their 1.1k io score but playing like 152 score are fucking pathetic. It should literally be bannable.

I run into this a lot when I hang out with lesser progressed guilds. I enjoy lurking logs and coaching people, but when I try to help the average Heroic Raider I tend to come off as "A toxic elitist Mythic Raider" even though I'm a total casual, raid 5-6 hours a week and just managed 6/8m last night.
Example being I'll see a Fury warrior at 442ilvl, parsing Grey who can't kill Heroic Azshara. He needs help, but won't accept it. Sad times
PS: I've tried being sweet and polite and get ignored even more than when I'm blunt and direct v.v

[CrawlFromThePit]

I run into this a lot when I hang out with lesser progressed guilds. I enjoy lurking logs and coaching people, but when I try to help the average Heroic Raider I tend to come off as "A toxic elitist Mythic Raider" even though I'm a total casual, raid 5-6 hours a week and just managed 6/8m last night.
Example being I'll see a Fury warrior at 442ilvl, parsing Grey who can't kill Heroic Azshara. He needs help, but won't accept it. Sad times
PS: I've tried being sweet and polite and get ignored even more than when I'm blunt and direct v.v

Yup, and people have a very weird double perspective of other players. They think everyone is equal so no one should tell them how to play but at the same time they think that anyone who runs mythic raid does this 18 hours a day and is just an elitist. They'll just force any narrative to convince themselves that they are paragons of morality and victims being bullied by evil mean players.

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Retail and Classic community is very good compared to games like LoL or Fortnite.

IMO People are more friendly in Classic, because they want to play together.

But, it's the same community, who is playing Classic and never played Retail??

Communities are influenced by gameplay. Classic has a mix of people who think they're better than everyone else and want to prove it, but also people who understand that if they're assholes they run the risk of having a bad rep on the server. That's why there's very different reports about the type of community classic has. Retail has been around longer and changes very slowly so the kind of community is more "stable" in terms of toxicity levels.

[Aliven]

Why You want to strive to be better? What makes you move forward to be better?

The fact that i can improve. To be better that im currently. In better shape, more educated, be better person. Bring more to the people around me. To the community.

[Specialka]

The fact that i can improve. To be better that im currently. In better shape, more educated, be better person. Bring more to the people around me. To the community.

Yes, but what cause you to want to improve? The deeper motivation? You do not want to feel BAD if you fail those around you.

[Necromantic]

Okay you two, we gotta set something straight. Negative feeling doesn't mean depression and suicidal thoughts EXCLUSIVELY.
When you make a mistake in anything in life, you feel something, right? And that feeling is certainly not pride, happiness or satisfaction. What you feel is on the negative side of feelings, like disapointment or frustration, these feelings are normally used to correct or improve things we do, humans use feeling to understand things, for ourselves. Some of that is better explained in this article that is medically reviewed: https://www.verywellmind.com/embrace...otions-4158317
It's all very basic feeling following an action, did you do good? Feeling good! Did you do bad? Feeling bad! The good feels tell you to keep doing what you do, the bad feels tell you to change something to improve the situation so you can reach the good feels.

It's just that, it's not any deeper, it's not about bashing someone on the head for 2 weeks straight for a simple mistake, it's not about pushing people to jump off a bridge or send them in the darkest depression. What you're doing is radical thinking by going to the furthest possible assumption and it's going way off track here.

Not necessarily "feel" something. If I make an honest mistake, say at work for example, I just think "hmm ok, so that's how I do it." It's not even negative by any metric.

[Specialka]

It is. You just do not "feel" it by any kind of metric but somewhere inside you, it will be felt as "bad".

Human are emotional animals.