We have to talk about community toxicity.

[AuldWolf]

So, the way everyone's been behaving lately. I have to ask—does this look healthy to you? It's an unfortunate pattern I've seen all too often in the past.

I feel that when a game is doing well, I'll see threads where the vibe and the average consensus is "Hey, it doesn't matter. The game is fun and I'm having fun." and some will list off things they really like about the game that distinguish it.

When things start to fall apart though, everyone gets defensive and toxic. It all becomes this quagmire of character assassination and personal attacks, trying to undermine anyone who might air a legitimate concern or worry, and almost desperate to post a rosy picture by shouting down anyone who'd dare to disagree or show a hint of dissent.

Which of these reflects the Guild Wars 2 community right now?

What makes a game look alive is the positivity of the community. You're alienating anyone who drops by here to talk, and that's showing in how the Steam numbers—the largest PC storefront, with the most marketing—continue to plummet. They drop by, and they see this anger, lashing out, toxic, and hateful. And for anyone who's been on the Internet long enough? That's just the last desperate gasps to defend a dying game.

If you want Guild Wars 2 to look more alive, you have to be more positive with those who drop by. Instead of focusing on personal attacks, insults, character assassination, and frankly intellectually dishonest behaviour? Have the attitude that it doesn't matter how the game is doing right now, it's fun. If it's only around for six months more, that's fun you can have with it.

The thing is is that thanks to Dragonflight even the WoW community is being less toxic and more positive right now. You're signalling the demise of your own game by behaving this way. No one acts like this unless it's cognitive dissonance and they're trying to hide an uncomfortable truth from others and maybe even themselves. So don't do this.

If you really believe that Guild Wars 2 is doing okay? Then focus on what you LIKE about it. What's fun for you? What separates it from ESO, FFXIV, and WoW? Show off your characters, do some fashion wars, and talk about the new content.

Right now, this looks like the forum of a dead game. One defended tooth and nail by its last, angry defenders who're desperate to hide the truth for as long as they can. This is why people keep asking if the game is dead, or if it has no future, because that's the impression all this aggressive toxicity gives.

Whether you want to fix that or not is up to you.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από VeeSlays:

Complaints I do not at all agree with:

The community being toxic and a problem. I am not sure if you're referring to the community as a whole, or only on Steam.

He's taking his own bad experience on Steam Discussions and conflating it as being representative of the entire GW2 community. He put up a thread a few weeks ago asking if the game was "dead on Steam" as a direct result of "the grind", claiming that it was one of the most hardcore grindy, non-casual-friendly MMO's on the market. People told him he was wrong, that GW2 is one of the least grindy MMO's around currently. Since then, he's also been going around now insisting the game has a hostile, toxic community, on top of repeating his previous claims. Make of that what you will, I can't say anything judgemental about it.

[KenoZuki]

This community is one of the least toxic ones out there. I say this, being a guild leader of a 300+ member guild

[Crow Buddy]

On the subject of toxicity in GW2:

For me, it's been a mixed experience. The majority of the GW2 community has been nice/kind rather than acting toxic. Let's call it a 70/30 split, in favor of nice people over trolls.

One time, for instance, a random person mailed me 50 gold because I complimented them on their Legendary staff, Nevermore, and encouraged me to start the staff quest line. That was super cool.

Another time, I was teaching a new group of players how to do a Strike mission, and we ended up doing ALL of them after hanging out for a few hours together. By the end of the experience, we'd added each other to our friends list. Love those experiences.

Another time, I got to play with AyinMaiden (GW2 Streamer, Youtuber) in Harvest Temple, and she was streaming our Strike mission on Twitch. It was really fun!

So, a lot of it depends on which modes you decide to play, who you allow yourself to be surrounded by, and what you're ultimately looking to do.

Open World/PvE general content is filled with tons of very kind folks.

If you run Open World boss trains, party quests, Hero Point trains, Legendary bounties, OW meta events - I've found most folks are pretty nice and welcoming. I've even joined a few guilds as a result.

However, Raiding, Strikes/challenge modes, more serious, dedicated group content - this is where I've come across more toxic behavior.

If you join a group and the Commander appears to be overtly toxic, I would just leave. You don't owe them an explanation. This is your time and your experience - just leave. You'll find another group and be happier.

People get way too into the game and start acting like it's a job, and not a thing we're all doing for fun or to connect with community. They can lose their perspective quickly.

if you're unhappy with your experiences - try to look around for an inclusive guild, maybe a smaller, more casual guild, and try to group with them whenever you can. Thankfully, between the forums, Discord, youtube/social media, there's a ton of those guilds out there, so with a little digging/research, you'll find home.

I don't have enough experience with PvP to say one way or the other, so I won't comment on that.

[Vee]

I find it hilarious that some people here seem to know every little detail about the game and it's players, like they've got inside information nobody else knows about. Then if you, as someone who enjoys the game and have played it since launch try to say anything you're met with silly, ridiculous comments that don't make any sense.

"the real playerbase have silently moved on since EoD and got replaced by new ones who don't know much about the game."

Huh.. I find it weird that me, my guild and commanders that have ran boss and event trains since the beginning are still around. Content creators still play. Then you of course have all the players who return to the game after breaks and still enjoy it. I take breaks from MMOs all the time but always find my way back to GW2. But I guess we're all fanboys who don't know much about the game. Lmao.

Also, stop using graphics as any argument against people not wanting to play or get into the game. I'll be surprised if people care so much about graphics in an MMORPG.

I personally find GW2 the most aesthetically pleasing MMORPG of them all. At least I don't feel the need to use reshades to make the game look better as I do in FFXIV and ESO. Both being dull, grey and boring to look at 90% of the time. Especially ESO. I still play them though, because they're FUN.

Anyways, new content or not, I'd gladly put $100 into GW2 if I just found out about it and the game looked interesting. That's a lot of content for the money.

[Eli]

Steam discussion forums are always toxic.

[Eddie]

GW2 community is the best there is, What are you on about lol.

Steam is just an entire different sub-species of humans. Ignore steam forums. The gw2 forums/discord/in-game are amazing.

Maybe not in PVP but who plays PVP anyway lol

[ah_puch]

You must have a different definition of "amazing" since the official forums are infamous for toxic fans and heavy censorship, just like how the subreddit was. Currently there is 1-2 people over there having seizures and bickering about "what anet meant" with the vague studio update about the new expansions. For some reason, they are 100% convinced the new expansion cycle will be even better than HoT and PoF, while ignoring the complete failures of the studio with EoD + 12 month drought + Gyala Delves + horrible class balance updates.

Subreddit is gone forever now at least, good riddance.

[ah_puch]

The "community toxicity" is self explanotary. Like you mentioned, healthy mmos with secure playerbases don't have such problems as they are too busy enjoying the game. Games that are in trouble are full of people saying "You said what about my game??" as it's appearant to everyone the game is in trouble and there is nothing they can do when even throwing extra cash at the devs don't fix anything.

Any online game that has more activity outside the game than inside the game is a failure. Not sure if GW2 can ever get out of this though, certainly not this year.

[Tuathaqin]

People who don't play the game should not make statements about the ingame population.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από ah_puch:

Any online game that has more activity outside the game than inside the game is a failure.

Good thing that's not the case here, then, since Guild Wars 2 has plenty of thousands of players in-game "too busy enjoying the game", compared to barely over a dozen people talking regularly on Steam, a quarter of whom are trolls taking advantage of the lack of moderation to continually make up lies about how dead the game is on a daily basis with no repercussions.

[ah_puch]

Not at all, big three has plenty of tens of thousand of players in game too busy enjoying the game. ESO has 20k players on Steam alone. GW2's entire population can't even match that. How small is that. No wonder they are trying so hard to be heard since no one listens or cares about a small niche mmo. After subreddit's closure, literally no one talks about GW2 other than some odd ones who go to other game subs and ask people "Have you played GW2 yet?" which get shut down on the spot and they leave embarrassed and regretting their decision to bring GW2 into conversations where people were talking about FFXIV's new patch or whatever.

Big three have easily 1000% more players than GW2 in game yet about 10% of GW2 players outside the game. That's like maybe 1% of their entire population on the forums whereas GW2 has 10% of their entire population who instead of playing the game, spend their lives on forums. That's a starking difference and frankly, quite sad.

[Tuathaqin]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από ah_puch:

Not at all, big three has plenty of tens of thousand of players in game too busy enjoying the game. ESO has 20k players on Steam alone. GW2's entire population can't even match that. How small is that. No wonder they are trying so hard to be heard since no one listens or cares about a small niche mmo. After subreddit's closure, literally no one talks about GW2 other than some odd ones who go to other game subs and ask people "Have you played GW2 yet?" which get shut down on the spot and they leave embarrassed and regretting their decision to bring GW2 into conversations where people were talking about FFXIV's new patch or whatever.

Big three have easily 1000% more players than GW2 in game yet about 10% of GW2 players outside the game. That's like maybe 1% of their entire population on the forums whereas GW2 has 10% of their entire population who instead of playing the game, spend their lives on forums. That's a starking difference and frankly, quite sad.

Interesting statistics. Care for citing a source?

[ah_puch]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από AuldWolf:

So, the way everyone's been behaving lately. I have to ask—does this look healthy to you?

Not at all. It's been especially haywire ever since the lead system designer's departure, Gyala Delves part 2 being received horribly, a badly received studio update and an already hated upcoming balance update.

Never seen such a low point for this game. Not like this. The community's current hysterics only serve to expedite the problem. Not a good look for the community.

[Tuathaqin]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από ah_puch:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από AuldWolf:

So, the way everyone's been behaving lately. I have to ask—does this look healthy to you?

Not at all. It's been especially haywire ever since the lead system designer's departure, Gyala Delves part 2 being received horribly, a badly received studio update and an already hated upcoming balance update. Never seen such a low point for this game. Not like this.

You seem to like to mention the departure of that specific empleyee, as if they were the only person working on the game and insinuating that their leaving has anything to do with how you view the game that you don't play and also that their position in the studio remained unfilled.

[ah_puch]

Since GW2 is one of the only "big" mmos that doesn't even have a community manager, their small player numbers on steamcharts are doing all the community work for them and it's not doing them any favours.