Reducing player toxicity
FriendlyNeighbour
North Join Date: 2015-01-25 Member: 201047Members
North Join Date: 2015-01-25 Member: 201047Members
So, I've been playing the game for about a year now. I got the game off the last Steam Winter sale but didn't really start playing until the early part of this past January. The game's playerbase has always had a high degree of toxicity. I assumed it was always thus.
What has intrigued me is that there have been a few NS2 and NS1 vets who have returned recently, some of whom have commented on how much more toxic the player base is compared to when they left off. Why is this the case? I don't know. I know that Riot Games had the same issues with LoL and while the problem didn't go away, they even assigned someone to specifically deal with the issue and from what I've heard there have been material declines.
If NS2 is to grow further, new players must face a much more hospitable environment. One possibility is to shut off chat/voice chat by default. And if not by default, then there should at the very least be a toggle. This is already standard in quite a few games, notably the battlefield games and the recent Battlefront game, as well. If I'm not mistaken, the recent CoD, BLOPS 3, also has it. So it's becoming an industry standard.
I also hope there will be a permanent mute function, as right now, mute only extends to the current playsession. Some people are just known flamers/spammers and as such, once you get comfortable on a server, instead of shutting down all chat, why not just shut down the noisy minority?
Right now neither of these things are in-game and I hope they'll be added ASAP. It shouldn't hopefully be a big issue to implement them. Over time, we can think more deeply and more thoroughly how to reduce the player toxicity over the long run. Maybe we can see what the LoL team did and learn from some of those lessons. But in the meantime, I hope we get permamute/chat off function as those two are increasingly the standard in game.
What has intrigued me is that there have been a few NS2 and NS1 vets who have returned recently, some of whom have commented on how much more toxic the player base is compared to when they left off. Why is this the case? I don't know. I know that Riot Games had the same issues with LoL and while the problem didn't go away, they even assigned someone to specifically deal with the issue and from what I've heard there have been material declines.
If NS2 is to grow further, new players must face a much more hospitable environment. One possibility is to shut off chat/voice chat by default. And if not by default, then there should at the very least be a toggle. This is already standard in quite a few games, notably the battlefield games and the recent Battlefront game, as well. If I'm not mistaken, the recent CoD, BLOPS 3, also has it. So it's becoming an industry standard.
I also hope there will be a permanent mute function, as right now, mute only extends to the current playsession. Some people are just known flamers/spammers and as such, once you get comfortable on a server, instead of shutting down all chat, why not just shut down the noisy minority?
Right now neither of these things are in-game and I hope they'll be added ASAP. It shouldn't hopefully be a big issue to implement them. Over time, we can think more deeply and more thoroughly how to reduce the player toxicity over the long run. Maybe we can see what the LoL team did and learn from some of those lessons. But in the meantime, I hope we get permamute/chat off function as those two are increasingly the standard in game.
Comments
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/forum/topic/18704216569
It's only toxic when small amounts of new people join a server with a larger veteran population
Last week a rookie told me that I was very polite and thanked me saying it was "a rarity on the internet these days." I asked him how his experience had been on other servers. He said none were as polite as tactical gamer, the server I was on, but none were that toxic.
This just one rookies comment to me, but it is not something I expected to hear.
For a game that a microphone is almost required, and at the very least highly recommended, I do not think shutting off mics by default will change anything. The toxic players are just a handful of veterans who's mics are not turned off. Defaulting it to off would only effect rookies.
One dude yelled at me and said i was a nazilover beacouse my country didn't start war with germany........
So we should turn off voice by default?
Worst I have been called is "noob" and half of the time I even deserved it.
Simple permanent personal blacklist like in the Heroes of the storm should work. Let the rare bad seeds shout all they want, while not knowing you are not listening
Also consider some of the players are drunk/on drugs at the moment and interpret their words with that knowledge.
What has intrigued me is that for someone who bought the game in the winter sale you like to say things like "NS2 and NS1 vets have returned to say xyz" except in this case you're using a false and somewhat toxic entry point to seem legit, the case is not that, and if so please provide the citations for it for these millions of returning vets who complain about toxicity, people who complained when the game was being developed barely stayed around long enough to care.
I am listening, but do i care enough to willingly accept your proverbial bullshit? the tentative answer for alot of people here is to actually discuss the issue but i am willing to tell you that first you tell us the problem and we decide if it's toxic, don't come here and tell us your experience was toxic and except anyone to care because that's immensely one sided and that akin to social terrorism and i won't accept that. I've lived to see NS live and i'll live to see NS2 live another day without being falsely misguided by representatives who get too much stick for being pandering touts.
Tell us your problems from start to finish, not when months have passed after you last played to decide, if you cared enough you would have played and muted people, you must have done something wrong if it's really affecting you to this extent.
Better yet tell the server admins about your problem and see there response because in all essense the community servers are run by decent people who want to have fun and they're the ones providing the service, if you don't like it please go ahead and purchase a casual server for yourself and people like minded to play on and see how many people come to your |CoR| type servers.
In NS there was a Christian Online Refuge where less then 1% of the population played on because they were either christian or they wanted low toxicity, however i played a few times there over the years and realized that the exact same people proporting to be against swear or "cuss" words and forms of bullying and abuse were dishing it out equally in the form of counteracting censors, people were accusing others of being abusive for acronyms of cuss words or words that could be misused to have ulterior meanings, things like chuckling after killing an admin who you were smashing could get you a kick or even a ban depending on the quality of your play. Least to say it felt like you were being controlled hence why a large population of people would go there just to swear and pretend to be christian and get banned without a worry because generally you could get unbanned for saying "sorry"
Sorry you've had a bad experience but that doesn't mean people are toxic, if anything the community has improved alot from the transition from NS1>NS2 as you weren't there for the amount of alienation that some players got on public servers, but that still isn't "toxic" it all had meaning and if you can not understand that then i implore you to extend your reach of search and try and integrate into our culture without first hating on it because at the end of the day telling people the game they love has a toxic community is like saying a great big fuck you to all those people who integrate fine?
Yeah here''s something for you, recently there was a sale in NS2 and we're in Australia where people are generally regarded as being "toxic" yet there were 1-2dedicated servers placed for them where some of those people you are calling toxic(or other people have called these people toxic) were training, teaching these new players how to play.
a few of those people stayed around the rest left, what was the issue? why did they leave? most of the people didn't even stick around for more then 2days worth of games and of the times i saw the interaction as an admin for a couple of the Australian servers reading the logs it all says it all.
Usually you have someone a rookie for instance or even someone who has played ns for a while come in and start going against the grain intentionally or unintentionally in the case of rookies and they get burnt for it, you got to understand that fire burns where fire burns.
In your case IeptBarakat you should know better, if you're going to the extent where more then 50% of the server needs to be muted then clearly you're not doing it right.
For OP again as below
"The grass is green where the grass is green, but the grass isn't blue where it is green.
You're cherry picking for where you get treated badly or where someone else gets treated badly in an illegitimate way and using that as an example of why all people who disagree with you are killing this game."
I've played NS/NS2 while having the commander muted, while having multiple muted, actually i play in game with my mic disabled and on public servers and sometimes in pugs, you might have met me in servers before under the name Archie(this isn't my main UWE account, but it's the only one i have left after the other one was lost in a forum backup error/migration?)
having the mic enabled/disabled on this game or having text chat enabled on this game won't change much aslong as you grasp the ability to play to begin with, you cannot use a flawed state of the situation to extend your own argument where there is none for experienced players or existing players of this community.
Team coordination requires you first to understand how to take note of your own situational awareness, become conscious in the form of your model, understand that audio cues are your extension. Understand that the place you need to be is the place others should be, if you aren't understanding how to play the game then either you get obliterated and learn from the experience or you play do good and bad at various times but still enjoy it. I don't know how many countless hours i've played this game and realized that the majority of people calling it toxic either have some stability issues themselves or get put in there place due to the fabric of the gaming communities ability to weed out people who don't want to learn and integrate.
edit:fixed a hotheaded typo sorry IeptBarakat
Are you misquoting me or something? Because I have never said that nor commented on the toxicity of the playerbase in this thread.
*not referring to anyone specifically
http://www.ensl.org/topics/1563 (FYI: I'm Senpai_Robot a.k.a Senpai_Twitchbot)
Not sure what exactly happened but it's clearly ensl.org matter and doesn't have a place here. We do not tolerate any name and shaming in this forum. ~Ghoul
I rest my case.
How much extra health, +-5 due to static server based timings is fine, will the fade have regenerated from innate regeneration?
Who?