Guild Wars 2 and making a better community

[Man W/ Club]

So after finishing winds of change and reading a lot of zen, buddhism and tao teh ching i realized the gap between player perceptions.

Elitism= Fanaticism
Scrubbery=Lethargy

The middle way= show compassion towards all players and try to find new ways to reach them and help them, no matter how rude, obscene, stupid, lazy or ignorant, and improving your own play and taking your own actions. Look I know a lot of you may not play guild wars and go on with your lives, but this post is aimed at you who will join us in guild wars 2.

If you want a better community, its up to you and you alone, the individual. I shouldn't be telling anyone what to do but I just want to speak my mind about this after playing this game for so long and seeing so much strife between players and the cause of that strife and drama. The cause is simply, its ignorance. The result is widespread suffering.

im not saying dont swear. Swear if you want
im not saying dont be rude, be rude if you want,
im not saying dont be a complete elitist, use elitism to get better pugs if u want
im not saying dont play like a casual scrub without any drive to improve your play and yourself, play how you want

all i am saying is be mindful of your actions in game and how they affect other players.

you could be that guy who calls the WoH warrior a total noob, you could be that guy who acts unreasonably nice and the WoH warrior becomes suspicious (im suspicious of insurance salesmen), or you can relate to people in game and they will listen to you and its not hard, and perhaps have an effect on their play and their perception, no one is too ignorant to see the truth if u show it in the right light. i always found in RA teaching newbies is fun once u know how to do it. it involves master of healing and some gold offered as bait/dare to try kill it when u know they cant.

We have all been in this together for the last 7 years whether we like it or not, and we may not all like each other and we might think there are too many immature kids on the internet, well, is it the kids fault they are immature or society's? the point is the change comes from within you and your own beliefs. if you believe you are better then everyone else online then you will come off as an asshole just as i did myself when i was a raging 14 year old elitist many years ago.

instead of hating show some respect and respect will follow.

probably didnt need to post this and people will criticize me about sh it whatever i dont care

[Martin Alvito]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

This is why your logic does not work. You can't solve the problem alone, and it's therefore stupid to try.

The only functioning solution is to put together a smaller community and only admit people that adhere to the social code. That way, you can socialize with pleasant, skilled people and minimize your dealings with irritants.

The broader community will always be terrible due to the one-time-purchase model. ANet is never going to dedicate the resources to police community behavior, because they don't derive enough revenue from doing so to cover the costs. The result is that you have to do it yourself, and the only way to make that work is to make the community you're policing small enough to be manageable.

[Man W/ Club]

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

This is why your logic does not work. You can't solve the problem alone, and it's therefore stupid to try.

The only functioning solution is to put together a smaller community and only admit people that adhere to the social code. That way, you can socialize with pleasant, skilled people and minimize your dealings with irritants.

The broader community will always be terrible due to the one-time-purchase model. ANet is never going to dedicate the resources to police community behavior, because they don't derive enough revenue from doing so to cover the costs. The result is that you have to do it yourself, and the only way to make that work is to make the community you're policing small enough to be manageable.

look like i got more reading to do, thanks for the link,

however, i still cling to the belief that the individual has an effect, not because I want to change anything, but because I believe I alone have power and choice in my own life.

My point is this. You form selective groups, and you exclude those of which you could have helped. Sociology is good if its maintained well, and turns into tyranny and oppression if not because you emphasize so much on policing and so little on individual merit.

Where does it say that an individual can go out of their way to relate to people who are hateful, ignorant and lost, perhaps i need to read more and its there, but in my experience you can relate to everyone any anyone as long as you have the courage and the compassion to do so.

and it is never stupid to try, people can change, you jsut have to relate to them well, if talking to a 15 year old kid talk about booze and tits and they will relate. Stop hiding in the ivory towers of university and excluding the 'bums' and 'street kids' of society (metaphorical for GW community).

[Chthon]

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

This is why your logic does not work. You can't solve the problem alone, and it's therefore stupid to try.

The only functioning solution is to put together a smaller community and only admit people that adhere to the social code. That way, you can socialize with pleasant, skilled people and minimize your dealings with irritants.

The broader community will always be terrible due to the one-time-purchase model. ANet is never going to dedicate the resources to police community behavior, because they don't derive enough revenue from doing so to cover the costs. The result is that you have to do it yourself, and the only way to make that work is to make the community you're policing small enough to be manageable.

Well ain't that depressing?

There's also some tertium quid here -- the rules of the game are going to regulate social behavior. (Or, as Lawrence Lessig puts it, "code is law.") A-net has some power to weed out anti-social behavior structurally by removing the incentives to be a jerk or by making it impossible, or at least impractical, to be a jerk.

Examples:
1. Removing the incentive for anti-social behavior -- In one of the early GW2 dev interviews, the dev stated that the idea behind world battles is to eliminate rank discrimination by making even bad players have a net positive impact for their teams. (So at least they understand the idea; we'll see how the implementation turns out.)
2. Making anti-social behavior impossible -- adding a confirm button for all party members before leaving pre-searing made it impossible to drag an unwilling perma-pre to post.
3. Making anti-social behavior impractical -- taken together, an auction-house with a price tracking feature and a trade interface with unique names and icons for every item and always-visible text display for every item would make trade scamming so impractical few people would bother.

[drowze]

I believe GW, or any other online community, is just like a real world community. I have a circle of friends in real life, and I have that in game as well. I go about my usual way when pugging, and try to be nice (I have never used the word "noob" to make fun of anyone), and through that I may encounter more nice people and they might become friends as well... as in real life.
There are also people that act like Aholes... Do you try to be understanding for every Ahole you see in real life? I do not, so I don't do that in game either.
Guilds/Alliances/Friendlists exist to form your own ingame community, and I find that enough.

Since you seem to like reading stuff, I found "Coming of Age in Second Life" by Tom Boellstorff pretty interesting. It's about virtual vs physical reality. His conclusion I believe was that a 'virtual' reality is a reality nonetheless and should be treated like that.

[Lanier]

Originally Posted by drowze

There are also people that act like Aholes... Do you try to be understanding for every Ahole you see in real life? I do not, so I don't do that in game either.

The difference that I see is that way more people act like assholes ingame than they do in real life. In my opinion, it is a problem with the GW community (and any online community where lots of players interact with each other I guess), but there isn't really anything one can do about it. Sometimes you just have to ignore elitists, and hope that one day they'll realize how sad and pathetic it is to act like a jerk to newbs or casuals in an online game.

[jcegt87]

so now where introducing the 10 commandments of online community to GW2

uh hu

[Swingline]

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

The only functioning solution is to put together a smaller community and only admit people that adhere to the social code. That way, you can socialize with pleasant, skilled people and minimize your dealings with irritants.

The broader community will always be terrible due to the one-time-purchase model. ANet is never going to dedicate the resources to police community behavior, because they don't derive enough revenue from doing so to cover the costs. The result is that you have to do it yourself, and the only way to make that work is to make the community you're policing small enough to be manageable.

We have those, they are called guilds and alliances.

Originally Posted by jcegt87

so now where introducing the 10 commandments of online community to GW2

uh hu

This is called the EULA which has codes of conduct.

[Restorate]

I definitely agree.

I don't think we can change the people behaving this way, but we can promote better behaviour. Being in the cross hairs, of those in question, can make game enjoyment arduous. This is often the case for me, as a new player.

I can say the way I deal with it is by assessing exactly why I was targeted and realising the absurdity of what happened. This does become tough, though, when it seems that every player conducts themselves unsociably.

Personally, I believe invdividual effort matters. Rome wasn't built in a day. If there is a noticable improvement in the community's behaviour we can make it easier for people to dismiss hurtful comments.

[LanaDarkess]

Just like in Kama dist 2 the other day, some guy was spamming in local chat what he wanted to buy/sell and I told them that there was a "Trade" chat for that, but he continued anyway, just like we have people in life that take everything for granted and treat others like the gum stuck to their shoe.

I understand what OP wants, but realistically, not everyone is going to be all "nice and fluffy and happy" all the time. I myself am generally a nice person, but catch me on a bad day....

This is like asking the entire world's inhabitants to stop being aholes and be fluffy to everyone. Not gonna happen, unfortunately.

[Amy Awien]

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

There is no cost involved.

.. ANet is never going to dedicate the resources to police community behaviour, ...

You can not 'police' plain rude behaviour and you can not 'police' people into cooperation.

[akelarumi]

First of all I want to speak out, I hate rudeness in the game, though occasionally I reply kinda rude to someone who acts rude him/herself.

But I want to make a point of the uniqueness of the community of online games. We all come from all over the world, from different cultures and country's. though for the most time we all get along. What is considered rude behaviour in one country/culture can be totally polite in other cultures.

Thinking one can change the community is imo not worth the effort. Though you have a bit of influence, trying too hard to change the world will result in dissapointment. But more important is that I could ask you the question "Who are you to decide what is right or wrong?" That may sound harsh, but by saying you want to change the community, you say there is something wrong with the community, therefore your saying there is something wrong with me (as I'm part of that community) so your judging me. In my culture it is very rude to judge someone and I could be offended (though I understand you did this with the best intentions).

My point is, saying there is something wrong doesn't change anything. Don't lecture, don't preach. When someone is trolling, just ignore. There is a saying "Don't feed the troll". The best way to get rid of troll's is to ignore them. local chat has an off-button.

[Man W/ Club]

Originally Posted by akelarumi

First of all I want to speak out, I hate rudeness in the game, though occasionally I reply kinda rude to someone who acts rude him/herself.

But I want to make a point of the uniqueness of the community of online games. We all come from all over the world, from different cultures and country's. though for the most time we all get along. What is considered rude behaviour in one country/culture can be totally polite in other cultures.

Thinking one can change the community is imo not worth the effort. Though you have a bit of influence, trying too hard to change the world will result in dissapointment. But more important is that I could ask you the question "Who are you to decide what is right or wrong?" That may sound harsh, but by saying you want to change the community, you say there is something wrong with the community, therefore your saying there is something wrong with me (as I'm part of that community) so your judging me. In my culture it is very rude to judge someone and I could be offended (though I understand you did this with the best intentions).

My point is, saying there is something wrong doesn't change anything. Don't lecture, don't preach. When someone is trolling, just ignore. There is a saying "Don't feed the troll". The best way to get rid of troll's is to ignore them. local chat has an off-button.

Here is the thing, I used to think like that, and yes i completely agree its wrong to judge people and its wrong to gossip about crap and attach yourself to anything and be needy.

The thing is, when i act real, not 'fluffy, but real, like 'cool', everyone seems to just relate, let it out, and i know im not the crazy one.

You get on the bus in the morning and no one talks to each other, they all just stare out the window with headphones in. Yes its understandable, they dont know you, and its rude to go around talking to people u dont know... or is it?

There is a fine line between anything, that includes brown nosing vs compassion.

Brown nosing is like 'i like your armor it looks like my favorite manga do u want to add me so we can cyber' (wtf someone actually said this to me)

be real is like 'my armor is manlier then urs, lets duel in ur guild hall loser forks over 10k gold'.

shooting the shit is fun if u do it right

Also about telling people what they can and cant do... i said in the first post people can do what they want just be mindful of all the consequences of any action and any repercussions.

[Martin Alvito]

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

There is no cost involved.

This is patently false on two levels:

1) If it weren't costly to be nice to other people, we wouldn't have a problem in the first place.
2) Personal experience should tell you that it's costly to be nice to other people when they are jerks to you.

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

You can not 'police' plain rude behaviour and you can not 'police' people into cooperation.

Sure you can. You kick them out of your community. Being in the community has value, and so the threat of getting kicked out creates leverage. Basic deterrence, per Schelling.

@Swingline: Yes, we call these communities guilds and alliances. The point is that your choices are to invest the time and effort in building a community to suit, find an existing one that fits your needs well enough, or deal with those sufficiently rude and unpleasant that no one will take them into a community.

Originally Posted by Man W/ Club

however, i still cling to the belief that the individual has an effect, not because I want to change anything, but because I believe I alone have power and choice in my own life.

A healthy attitude, but it helps to start with attainable goals. You're not Atlas, and so you can't carry the world on your shoulders no matter how hard you try.

Originally Posted by Chthon

Well ain't that depressing?

Social choice theory often is. There's a reason economics is still called the "dismal science". It's often much easier to demonstrate the impossible than the possible with mathematics once you start dealing with complex phenomena.

[Man W/ Club]

Martin I disagree the idea that being humble and letting go of my ego is costly.

I think it nourishes the soul when you truly help someone who is lost. I feel nourished at least, I hope you do too.

Economics is a dismal science because we do not understand the human condition.

Life is suffering
The origin of this suffering is attachment
let go of attachment
??????
no more suffering

[Omar Charrbane]

This all comes down to one thing; Stereotype Ragenerds

I know alot of elite players who are cool and helpful, anlot of noobs that are cool and willing to help. I consider myself a casual gamer in terms of playstyle, but I'm dedicated to my Guild and the community. While I may not be able to clear out areas/dungeons with ease solo, I will definately try to help someone do quests/vanq/whatever even if it comes at a cost to myself (cons/survivor etc).

I'm a Warrior.
I use Gust.
I use Endure Pain.
I run a FoWsc build with Balanced Stance instead of I Am Unstoppable.
I Use the Bison Cup.
I am sometimes seen with a Melandru's Stalker, with 3 Beastmastery.

Get over it. Anybody who get's legit MAD over stuff like this is a plain loser. Straigh up. Loooooseerrrr. Go outside and lrn2socialskillz.
This stuff cracks me up, it's brutal.

It's sort of insane that you actually have to tell people not to be retarded apeshit.

"OMFGFFFF!!!NOOB SCRUB WTFWTWFWTF!???? Y U HAV GUST?!
Vs.
"Hey Omar, I do this dung all the time, you should totally bring (insert skill here) instead"

Me: "Okay!"

[Amy Awien]

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

This is patently false on two levels:

1) If it weren't costly to be nice to other people, we wouldn't have a problem in the first place.
2) Personal experience should tell you that it's costly to be nice to other people when they are jerks to you.

You're reasoning in circles.

Being nice doesn't cost anything, but it generally does benefit those involved. I can only pity those for whom being nice somehow costs something.

Sure you can. You kick them out of your community. Being in the
community has value, and so the threat of getting kicked out creates leverage. Basic deterrence, per Schelling.

You mean you believe the only incentive for being friendly is not getting
kicked?

A healthy attitude, but it helps to start with attainable goals. You're not Atlas, and so you can't carry the world on your shoulders no matter how hard you try.

He didn't intend to carry the world, just himself, as in 'my own life'. If that is not attainable, then what is?

There's a reason economics is still called the "dismal science".

It's not a science. It fails miserably. It fails because it doesn't understand people.

[Martin Alvito]

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

You're reasoning in circles.

No, it's a sufficiently elementary proof that I didn't see the need to spell it out. But, given that:

- We have a population. In that population, for each individual "being nice" either has c > 0, c < 0, or c = 0
- We agree that being nice has social benefits for oneself
- We observe people not being nice

It follows that for at least some people in that population, c > 0. If c < 0 or c = 0 and being nice confers social benefits, we would always observe people being nice. We don't, so for some people it must be costly.

That's not a circular argument. It simply infers something that must be true about preferences given behavior.

As far as the second claim (being nice to jerks is costly) is concerned, I'm willing to bet that if I hit you in the face, your initial impulse will be to hit back. Suppressing that urge is costly; you have to exert mental effort to do it. The amount of negative stimulus necessary to provoke a fight/flight response may differ across people, but scratch any of us hard enough and there's a barbarian lurking.

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

You mean you believe the only incentive for being friendly is not getting kicked?

No, but getting kicked (or the threat thereof) is generally the enforcement mechanism for whatever set of social rules a guild or alliance imposes. You made the claim that you can't 'police' people to be nice. But that's demonstrably false, since you can potentially outweigh a c > 0 for being nice with social benefits directly contingent upon being nice using the kick mechanism.

In other words, you can make jerks not be jerks if you have enough of a hold over them, and if you must engage them it's sensible to do so only on those terms.

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

He didn't intend to carry the world, just himself, as in 'my own life'. If that is not attainable, then what is?

He's arguing that making a better community is up to each individual player. It isn't. Since we can infer from the proof above that anyone that prefers to be nice already is, he's preaching to those where c > 0. But the community is too large for any individual player to reasonably expect to have an impact on community behavior simply by being nice. The result is that we have a collective action problem since c > 0 for those players.

You solve those problems by contracting around them, not by telling people to change their preferences. Denying reality isn't going to get us anywhere.

Originally Posted by Man W/ Club

Life is suffering
The origin of this suffering is attachment
let go of attachment
??????
no more suffering

By this logic, you never should have cared enough to make the OP.

[Man W/ Club]

Martin Alvido, are you a Vogon? Do you pass on problems to others, do you have the ability to think for yourself or do you just want to feed this massive ego that must always be official and following the regulations?

I am humble enough to admit when I am wrong. I always try to doubt my opinions then use the scientific method to understand how my actions affect the lives of others.

If my actions improve the lives of others I stick to them. If they only feed my selfish ego then I let go of it.

Its not hard

[fireflyry]

In any free to play format it's always going to be an uphill battle.

Not saying such things don't occur in subscription games but it's far less frequent and the maturity levels are far higher in my experience.

In Guild Wars it's automatic for me to switch off everything but Guild and Alliance chat and I think it's easier this way.I'm there to play a game, not try and change the communities definition of acceptable behavior.

I also think that such behavior is actually fun for others.They enjoy the immature tanties and insults and hey....I'm not their parents.At times I was often the same when younger, stupid, rude and arrogant.If we are given the tools to exclude such behavior from our personal experience I say let the kids be kids and rage all day if they want.

Heck I even find it entertaining at times and they will grow out of it on their own, out in the real world.Trying to attempt such change in an MMO is futile at best.

Originally Posted by drowze

I believe GW, or any other online community, is just like a real world community.

Have to disagree.

One word: Repercussions.

You can get away with pretty much anything online in terms of rude behavior as long as your within the rules of the given format which is symbiotic with how effectively those rules are policed.

Do you think those same people walk up to complete strangers in the street and scream obscenities like they do in MMO.

Not a chance.