Just why is GW Community so Rude?

[BodhiNightwind]

Originally Posted by Shadowspawn X

Does the difficulty level of GW contribute to the rude culture of the GW community? Someone made a thread recently supposing that GW full of children ruining the game. Many quickly pointed out that jerks and rudeness was coming from all ages in the GW community. So I would like to explore why everyone is GW is not not singing kumbuya and bonding at the hip. I think its because GW is an extremely demanding game. I have never played another MMO but I have heard of people doing laid back activities in other games such as crafting and fishing. These people who play these games just log on for a playful rump in the sandbox it seems. Meanwhile GW is a warbox with no time to chill, once you leave the outpost its “game on” or die. Scrubs, n00bs or any type of mistake can’t be tolerated because any incompetence on anyone’s part can make an eight man team fail in pve or pvp. Many people because of the difficulty of the game I believe are frustrated and hostile. Think about your friends list. It is probably strictly made up of good players, guys you held halls with and ran though elite and hard mode missions more utilitarian relationships than anything else, when was the last time you failed a mission or got wiped in pvp and bothered to add those people to your friends list? GW is the skill>time game which is why we all love it, yet the cost of the challenge is an extreme intolerance for imperfection in our community. Given this I don’t ever think GW will have a friendly community, even the charr are rude and rank you when they win. Yet I would rather fight HM charr than fish any day. Thoughts?.

From my limited experience, it seems that anet has set up GW especially for the douchiest gamer.

In LOTRO, i got a warning for calling a spammer a spamtard.
I didn't even whisper it, I said something like "Use the trade channel spamtard" , lol and i got a warning for behaviour...

ANET on the other hand, reluctantly sets up a reporting system, which Threatens you that you can be banned for "abuse" though it doesn't say what constitutes abuse.

Also as you've mentioned, the NPCs are pretty juvenile, Among the worst being in Polymock.


I don't think it has anything to do with difficulty of the game.
Everyone knows they can act like an asshat in GW and get away with it, and the nicest people sometimes even break after putting up with douchy IMs and chuck norris crap and your mom crap and 'that's gay' and all other manner of childish crap, that they too start acting like a douche.

Meanwhile in games where there are actually mods who actually care whether or not the players are being harassing, this sort of thing either doesn't happen, or it gets nipped in the bud.


The games with the nastiest players , in my limited experience, are those with no monthly fee. I think that's the only thing, again in my limited experience, i can attribute it to. I wouldn't say it has anything to do with the difficulty of the game.
jmo.

[Cebe]

Originally Posted by Shadowspawn X

Scrubs, n00bs or any type of mistake can’t be tolerated because any incompetence on anyone’s part can make an eight man team fail in pve or pvp. Many people because of the difficulty of the game I believe are frustrated and hostile.

This idea of "nothing but the best being tolerated" is translated through this forum whenever anyone posts a build for help or criticism also. People of the community will only ever direct the person posting the build down one of the few "accepted" routes. For instance...someone posts a pretty decent Warrior build...it doesn't have Dragon Slash or "Save Yourselves!" but it could get someone through PvE quite nicely. The community will almost always channel that person down the route of having a typical "god mode" build, just like everyone else, and then have the audacity to complain about people using "cookie cutter" builds.

I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with channeling a new player toward the "most effective" build, I just find it highly irritating that just about every Warrior build posted gets turned into a D-slash build, every Paragon build gets turned into an Imbagon build, every Elementalist build being turned into a Mind Blast build. I sometimes wonder if it's completely irrational irritation, because it's frustrating that there are, these days, very few builds which are considered by the community to be "acceptable"...anything else is cast out and the creator called every name under the sun.

I think, Shadowspawn X, you over-exaggerate about people failing if one person even puts one foot out of line, because you can beat PvE with very little practice and very few skills. I do however understand your comments about rudeness. It's not nice to see someone flamed extensively for their desire to use a skill which isn't deemed "acceptable", or for their desire to play the game a certain way. The happy medium is lost, I feel, whereby there were many builds which would have been acceptable to PuGs, where now there are only a few. I'm not in any way saying discouraging "bad" builds is wrong. There is a big difference between a "passable" or "workable" build and an outright "bad" one. There are indeed some ideas out there which need to be "fixed", such as when certain fellow alliance members of mine give their Monks Charm and Comfort Animal because they "like the pet". I have no qualms over telling them to ditch it and suggesting replacement skills, but I do feel the community needs to regain a lot of the tolerance and trust it once had.

[fireflyry]

Originally Posted by Zahr Dalsk

I am personally of the opinion that it is never possible to avoid people acting quite rudely over the internet without strict moderation and rules, and even then it's impossible to prevent quiet, persistent, subtle hostility.

Speaking from 18 months experience City of Heroes, whose abuse policy is almost non-existent and certainly less policed than GW's, disagrees with you and there have been plenty of other MMO examples presented here by others where this type of thing either doesn't happen at all or occurs far less frequently that have similar moderation and "Terms of Use" agreements to that of GW.

Bad analogy but if CoH is classified as "Carebear", the definition apparently being a player base that is helpful,encouraging and polite, GW is most certainly the "Boyz in Da Hood" of MMO.

In saying I do agree it's a component of human nature to some degree, especially given the nature of the medium we are talking about, but it is far from impossible to attain internet communities that behave in a civil manner without strict moderation or rules to police such behavior.

As already mentioned there are a fair few MMO examples where this is already, and in many cases has been since release, a non-issue hence I still question the effect other influences such as subscription costs, server selection, persistent/non-persistent world, number of players, censorship ratings, etc, etc, have as moderation and rules clearly seem to have little to no effect overall.

I would add to those saying "lighten up guys, it's just a game", I have no objection to a bit of good old Tony Soprano "busting my balls" banter in any game, in fact I enjoy it, and realize humor and intention are hugely subjective but straight out abuse is pretty clear cut to me.

[Rocky Raccoon]

Originally Posted by Gift3d

Kids play video games. That's what they do. Wherever there is a video game, there will be kids.

Now, if you see a 14 year old kid playing a computer game, and an old hairy 40 year old guy playing a video game, which do you think would look less appropriate? The 40 year old guy.

The GW community, for some unknown reason, is FULL of these people who are 30+ years old spending massive time on Guild Wars. Their carebear attitude and habit of taking everything far too serious is pretty much opposite of the people of the age group that SHOULD be playing video games (14-20ish) who are lighthearted players who can joke around. That's where the nuclear war happens. It's like when cold and warm air fronts collide, what do you get? A tornado. And in this case, it's a shitstorm tornado of over-punctuation and reports, and "NOUNOUNOU DIK DIK DIK" 's.

I can only say this is one of the most ignorant posts I have read on Guru. Who are you to say who SHOULD be playing a game. Age is just a state of mind and as far as I know games don't have an age limit.

[fireflyry]

Originally Posted by EPO Bot

Play Counterstrike much? Welcome to the void.

BOOMHEADSHOTZ!!11!!

Seriously though I gather the thread is more MMORPG comparatively focussed.

Rudeness in FPS is a no-brainer.

Originally Posted by Franco Power

Good, now apply the same technique in game and you might just avoid almost any arguement that you may came across in your path.

I've already agreed it's avoidable to a large degree but what do you do in an eight person high-end team when one person starts a flame war that could cause, at worst, a team wipe, at best, an unavoidable annoyance for the rest of the run or mission?

Seriously....get real and realize that ignoring such behavior does not automatically eliminate it from your game.

[Franco Power]

Originally Posted by fireflyry

Seriously....get real and realize that ignoring such behavior does not automatically eliminate it from your game.

Originally Posted by Franco Power

And you honestly think that you, a person behind a RPG character who the 15 year old you is talking to, has never met before and already thinks he is better then you are and is right anyway,can change that kids mentallity? Do you even know how teenagers work? Honestly, how old are you yourself? Because anyone who has kids or has worked with kids before, sees this as a failed battle, to reach a troubled teenager you have to be very carefully in the way you approach the situation, you have to analyse the kids emotions through body language and the way he talks, you can't see any of this behind a computer screen, it's a failed battle 99% of the time. But please, keep it up if you think it works.

If you actually tried to understand what I write instead of sticking to your "I'm right and you're wrong" mentallity that causes and is the reason of why you have such a bad opinion on this community ( mainly because not many people put up with it and specially not on a online game).

Feel free to keep trying to prove to these people that their wrong thou, I wish you best good luck and will sent you some head ache pills.

[Snow Bunny]

If you think the GW community is really that rude you need to get a thicker skin.

[Trub]

Kids will be kids, jerks will be jerks.
KITE!! KITE!! KITE!!
Recognizing, and avoiding the problem children, continues to be the best tactic..

[Shadowspawn X]

Thanks for the insightful comments and interesting point of views guys. I still think there is a correlation between the difficulty of the game and the rude factor. Anyone notice how polite the community was when kicking back at the dragon festival? Are these the same players? It seems if they are in a laid back atmosphere they chill out. Then when the laid back atmosphere disappears (festival ends) everyone reverts back to Mcnasty gamer from hell.

[Trub]

To Shadowspawn:
MOST guildless players are either griefers, or folks that don't have time for orginized play.
Most players with no social interaction with a guild, or friends..do lash out for attention.
When you can't ignore them...just avoid them.
I'll go out on a limb and say MOST GW players are here for fun...not to ruin our enjoyment of the game by being rude.

[Sparks Dawnbringer]

Actually, the GW comunity is just like any other it's the bad ones that get all the attention. I have found many helpful palyer here but unfortunately the rude, nasty loud mouth idiots scream the loudest and make the most noise and seem determined to ruin the game for everyone. I also think there are a lot of very young boys playing who confuse being loud, rude and vulgar with their manhood.

[Aleta]

Ok so I'm an older *cough* gamer. Sorry about that but time does go by.

I played GW for a good long while and the degeneration of the attitudes overall made me decide to move on.

I won't go into "in the day" sort of thing but people of all ages where much nicer then now.

I now play Everquest II and enjoy it very much. Maybe it's " a romp in the sandbox" but I don't think so. From day one the community has been helpful, friendly and fun.

No I can't do high end raiding even after 18 months and a lvl 70 toon because I am not in a raiding guild nor do I have raid gear.

There's a lot more to work for and better rewards.

But the big draw is the community. You can leave level chat on even - what a concept.

I don't have to ping my build or have consumables or one skill kills all.
If there is an instance we go into and it's a wipe, even in a pug, people help you go over any mistakes so you can learn and do better.
I've even had fun in pugs in EQ big difference.

GW I have fond memories off but /shrug the better game won

[DreamWind]

From my experiences I notice it comes from the design of Guild Wars. A lot of areas you are forced to team with other players, and it is generally encouraged to do so. In PvP it is required. So a lot of times you are forced to "deal" with players who are significantly worse or more annoying than you are. Also other players who are significantly better or less annoying have to deal with you as well, but you might not realize it.

Basically most of the rudeness I've noticed comes from rage in these situations. I'm not one of those types, but you'd be surprised how many there are.

[Dorian Orenda]

Rudeness has nothing to do with age. It has to do with maturity. I have met plenty of very nice people in game, young and old, and also plenty of jerks, young and old.

[the_jos]

So a lot of times you are forced to "deal" with players who are significantly worse or more annoying than you are. Also other players who are significantly better or less annoying have to deal with you as well, but you might not realize it.

For me this has never been much of a problem except in a few areas.
It's just a matter of asking a couple of questions when someone enters the team or make a judgement on the skillset.
When most of the team members seem to be good it's easy to take a less experienced player without him/her being a burden.

Most of the people I think are rude are the ones who think they are good but actually are not.
If you are good, you adjust the team if you know you have a weaker player.
If you cannot do that, don't take that player or don't blame/rage.
If you fail to judge how good a player is... maybe you are not as good as you think you are.

Shadowspawn said that he thinks that rudeness and the difficulty of the game have a correlation. I think he's right.
In easy parts everyone can lead a winning team.
In the hardest parts only few can.
People get upset when they find out they cannot lead and most of them will blame others. And team members also have no right to be rude, they should have observed the party leader and seen if he's a good leader or not.

Might sound stupid but in most teams it's clear from the start if it's an easy ride, medium ride, hard ride or complete failure.

And always keep in mind that you are playing with humans.
Someone might just need to quit playing because something important irl happened.
Those things happen from time to time, no need to rage because of that.

[Coraline Jones]

Originally Posted by DreamWind

From my experiences I notice it comes from the design of Guild Wars. A lot of areas you are forced to team with other players, and it is generally encouraged to do so. In PvP it is required. So a lot of times you are forced to "deal" with players who are significantly worse or more annoying than you are. Also other players who are significantly better or less annoying have to deal with you as well, but you might not realize it.

Basically most of the rudeness I've noticed comes from rage in these situations. I'm not one of those types, but you'd be surprised how many there are.

I think that this is 100% accurate, at least for PvE. I can say that at some point in time, it was believed that all-human parties would be superior to AI controlled players. Right now I can say that this is almost entirely untrue for the majority of the game, unless you're running a textbook build used to basically farm or "run" the elite areas.

Guild Wars does a really lousy job of actually teaching players how to run an effective build or running with some smart strategy. Usually most players will just play solo with H/H, and for the majority of Normal Mode, you can run a totally ineffective build because the AI will cover for your bad play.

At some point the players will get roadblocked because eventually their super-bad playing gets them stuck somewhere. This is where they ask for their guildies/PUGs, because they will blame the "bad" A.I. for their inability to beat a mission. Of course, the gut reaction is to absolutely ignore any player that tells them that they need a different build or a total change in strategy. The usual phrase that I hear is: I've made it so far doing it this way, and so I don't see why I need to change it.

If you think that I'm talking about some exotic strategy, I'm not. Here's an example: Three assassins that aren't using any Elites is guaranteed to wipe your party if they continue to tank and "expect" the one monk in the party to keep up. This kind of rule should be about as clear as day to anybody. But I swear that as late as last month, I had to monk a mission that was just like that, and the subsequent wipe actually improved conditions, as most of the players left and I was able to run two players and get Masters Reward by replacing every former-human spot with heroes and henchmen.

Need another great totally-true example? I was asked to monk for A Time For Heroes. I said that they should just pay the runners 1K to do it if they had trouble with the mission. But these were my friends--three year veterans of the game--and they said that it wasn't any "fun" to do it that way. In the end, the party layout consisted of four air spike elementalists, one BHA ranger, and three LoD monks.

I said that there's no way that this kind of party layout can work as an elementalist or ranger can't tank, but they said enough spike damage surely was the magical secret in beating the Great Destroyer. The plan was to basically run around to "safe" hardened lava spots, and spam Extinguish when they were burning. I said that this was the absolutely worst way to beat the Great Destroyer, and he can be killed with a variety of methods: Touch Ranger, Pain Inverter, Spoil Victor. If they were that worried about burning, then just equip Frigid Armor. The response that I got was--and I'm dead serious--that this kind of strategy was "cheesy" and running those builds were akin to "exploits".

So according to my friends (again: three-year GW veterans), if it takes you less than five minutes to kill the Great Destroyer, then you must have been cheating because it is supposed to be hard work!

[ArkNayarr]

Originally Posted by Gift3d

Kids play video games. That's what they do. Wherever there is a video game, there will be kids.

Now, if you see a 14 year old kid playing a computer game, and an old hairy 40 year old guy playing a video game, which do you think would look less appropriate? The 40 year old guy.

The GW community, for some unknown reason, is FULL of these people who are 30+ years old spending massive time on Guild Wars. Their carebear attitude and habit of taking everything far too serious is pretty much opposite of the people of the age group that SHOULD be playing video games (14-20ish)

And that's when I stopped reading this thread. If you belong to this age group I would like you to know that you are wrong. And if you don't belong to this age group I would like you to know that you're wrong.

There's no age where you should be playing video games and there's no age when you should stop. "Normally" is a word used to describe a lot of video gaming ("Normally for kids" "Normally not for adults") but if you honestly can't see that games are marketing more to adults than kids (by a HUGE ratio) you missed the bus.

And it isn't about "Taking a Joke." There's a huge group of people who play this game and you cannot possibly expect them all to be the same. Some are immature, some are mature, some make jokes and some are serious, some don't care if you win or lose and some demand perfection. And you what? It's perfectly fine. I'd say 90% of the time the problem is finding people you don't agree with. And it breaks the game.

On the topic of the Rude GW Community, I really don't believe it. Of course there's the rare rude player, griefer or scammer. But they're no where near the majority. I find the GW Community to be distant, but not rude. And I blame the distance on ANet, Introducing Heroes (Which I actually do like) and Creating Tons of Outposts over 4 Games made it more difficult to find people.

Some may infer that distance as a standoffish quality, but it's not.


Jeez, I need to shut up, huh?

[StarrTheInsane]

Originally Posted by Coraline Jones

But I swear that as late as last month, I had to monk a mission that was just like that, and the subsequent wipe actually improved conditions, as most of the players left and I was able to run two players and get Masters Reward by replacing every former-human spot with heroes and henchmen.

People have gotten used to playing with customizable AI help, so when they play with other players, sometimes they forget that not everyone is attacking the same target (which you never have to worry about with h+h). It becomes a total clusterf#$@ when people don't pay attention or call targets.

Originally Posted by Coraline Jones

So according to my friends (again: three-year GW veterans), if it takes you less than five minutes to kill the Great Destroyer, then you must have been cheating because it is supposed to be hard work!

It's like refusing to go from a typewriter to a computer. Modern conventions of the game. They gave you a challenge, but they also gave you the tools to deal with it. Alot of people think it's cheap to have the power to just walk in and pwn the final boss, but that's why those skills are there. *sigh* I feel your pain.

[RotteN]

Originally Posted by Shadowspawn X

Does the difficulty level of GW.

lol, what ?

GW is far from "difficult". Anyone with half a brain can easely finish pretty much everything.

So what if there are no "leisure" activities like fishing or crafting ? Damn, if you want to fish, go to a lake/river and fish there. If you want to play GW, fire up your computer and play a game. Straight out of the outpost action !

GW is just like any other gaming community. Both bad and good behaviour everywhere. Get over it, grow a spinal cord or something.


(yes, i am well aware the above text wasn't "nice" in any way. I liked the irony of it and didn't rephrase it :P )

[Chthon]

Originally Posted by Shadowspawn X

Does the difficulty level of GW contribute to the rude culture of the GW community? Someone made a thread recently supposing that GW full of children ruining the game. Many quickly pointed out that jerks and rudeness was coming from all ages in the GW community. So I would like to explore why everyone is GW is not not singing kumbuya and bonding at the hip. I think its because GW is an extremely demanding game. I have never played another MMO but I have heard of people doing laid back activities in other games such as crafting and fishing. These people who play these games just log on for a playful rump in the sandbox it seems. Meanwhile GW is a warbox with no time to chill, once you leave the outpost its “game on” or die. Scrubs, n00bs or any type of mistake can’t be tolerated because any incompetence on anyone’s part can make an eight man team fail in pve or pvp. Many people because of the difficulty of the game I believe are frustrated and hostile. Think about your friends list. It is probably strictly made up of good players, guys you held halls with and ran though elite and hard mode missions more utilitarian relationships than anything else, when was the last time you failed a mission or got wiped in pvp and bothered to add those people to your friends list? GW is the skill>time game which is why we all love it, yet the cost of the challenge is an extreme intolerance for imperfection in our community. Given this I don’t ever think GW will have a friendly community, even the charr are rude and rank you when they win. Yet I would rather fight HM charr than fish any day. Thoughts?.

I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. Most people's tolerance for bad players ends where the bad player's ability to completely waste their time begins.