How to not be toxic

Basic etiquette while playing this game.

1. Playing the game

I would like to begin by saying I'm a gold player, and am well aware of the less than appreciated status the league has in the community. Sadly, most of it is well earned, thanks to a majority of idiot players with no respect for the game. Hopefully this guide will help you not be one of them.

Brawlhalla offers both competitive as well as casual play, one of the features that I like. If I'm feeling good, I might go into ranked, but if I'm just chilling, or practising new moves, I'll often go into friendly 2s, try to read my teammate and work with them, as well as noting how different opponents react to different moves I put out. This has exposed me to a variety of play styles, but there are three in particular that annoy me a lot.

1. SPAMMING.
This is possibly the most toxic play style you can have. And sadly, gold is filled with spammers. Just hitting nsigs and ssigs and dsigs does not make you a good player, and it's very annoying when you're just trying to chill. I started out as a spammer, I'll readily admit. It takes no skill, just position yourself somewhere near your opponent and just launch a volley of sigs. People everywhere are like "just git gud nub". While yes, I have now learnt to avoid most spam and punish, it is very very off-putting. I lose respect for someone the instant I see them spamming sigs. You see this most often with literally every lance legend, Thatch, Nix, Queen Nai, and Teros. Orion, from the lance legends, gets a special mention here. Small stage+Orion = extreme toxic. His sigs cover literally the entire stage. I have seen good Orion gameplay too, so it's not the legend itself, but how you choose to play him. The simplest way to STOP SPAMMING is by practising combos, learning strings, and learning to READ YOUR OPPONENT and attack appropriately. Don't just spam. It annoys people to no end. Both in casual, where you're looking to just chill, and competitive, where you're literally a single ELO point away from plat and then along come a series of spammy Orions.

2. Passive Air Play
Let me explain: there's good air play, and there's bad air play. The latter is especially common in scythe players, where they'll just stay in the air the whole game, just touching for a second. While it's a good strategy, literally the only thing they do is dair. They don't even continue a string or bother to read after that. Just stay up in the air, and make you chase them all around. If you just stood still, they'd just stay at the other end of the map. If you tried chasing them, well, you'd feel like jumping off the stage and killing yourself. Good airplay, on the other hand, would consist of baiting, reading, strings, and pretty much keeping you on your toes. Maintaining control of the ground is a real thing in Brawlhalla, and it should be fought for. There is no fun in me chasing you around when all I wanted was to see a couple of good reads on your part and just chill. Learn positioning and getting under a legend's reach. Will help with reading and beating spam too. I want to fight you, not die of boredom.

3. Players who disconnect when they get KOed.
Dude, what? You lost a stock. So what? What level of pettiness are we on? If I wanted to play with bots, I wouldn't have selected matchmaking. This is extremely common with spammers. The moment they find their spam doesn't work, they just disconnect. Again, it makes me lose all respect for you. Despite the extreme disgust I have for Orion, I have never once disconnected from a match, no matter how bad it got. I know for a fact spam is punishable, me not being good enough to defeat it is not an excuse to be petty and whiny and annoying. Stay and fight. It's the equivalent of you throwing away your salary because a person who worked harder earned more. Like what?
I usually wait for a while after they DC, in case they genuinely had network issues. But it's becoming more and more common lately, and it's annoying. Don't be toxic and just leave because you think you're going to lose. I've had my ass handed to me when my opponent had just one stock left and I had three full ones. Even if you lose, I'm not going to rub it in your face. I don't even know you, maybe you just had a bad day, dude. Stick around. I come to play with real players, not bots.

2. Taunting

Alright, now on to taunting.
Usually, taunting doesn't put me off. In competitive, it only seems fair to boast, and in casual, it often makes me laugh, cheers me up, because it's so humorous. Even the salt taunt: like the saltshaker is bigger than the legend, dude. How can you not smile?
Where does it get toxic? When you use it for no reason, and especially when you're spamming.
An example, you're playing Orion. I haven't seen a single string from you, but I'm still reading you, punishing you, and whooping your ass, watching you sig your way with your lance across the entire stage. I KO you, and you come back. I respectfully let you pick a weapon, and you continue sigging. Somehow, I'm a bit tilted and I fall. NOT because you were good, but because I miscalculated a bit, or maybe I lagged out (happens a LOT in Brawlhalla.) You KO me, and you taunt.
That's toxic. You don't deserve to boast, because you have nothing to boast about. You are not a good player yourself, you don't get to boast on me. If, on the other hand, I tried reading you but failed, and plummeted to my own death, and you taunted: that would be taunt-worthy. You managed to escape my reads. You baited me, and I took it. You are worthy of boasting over me.
This is the kind of behaviour you see from golds. Spam spam spam, not a good move in your entire arsenal, reads = 0, and then, by accident, you get a KO, and you pretend like you're the best thing since sliced bread.
When can you taunt then? I like to taunt before every match, saying, "Hello! Nice to play against you today!" It is also acceptable to taunt after a good game, when you have defeated your opponent fair and square. That freeze frame on your victory is alright. It is also okay to acknowledge a stupid move you did, or a stupid move your opponent did, providing you're at the same level as they are, not a spammer. If you got a toxic taunt, and you punish them well for it, the salt taunt is well deserved.
Finally, if you feel like you can't win it, and you think your opponent played well, just before you die, you can always taunt, letting them know you genuinely think they were awesome. A sort of, "Goodbye! It was nice playing against you, I had a fun time! Good strings!"
Don't be toxic. Taunt responsibly. It's only okay to taunt after every kill if you're playing with friends, and you know they aren't gonna be mad. Otherwise, don't.

3. Ending the game

You've just finished a match, managed to taunt just before the end, and you felt you easily defeated your opponent.
DO NOT TYPE "EZ" or "NOOBS" or WHATEVER.
If you easily defeated them, there were too reasons. 1) They were way below your league or 2) They were having a bad day. Neither reason is sufficient for you to steamroll over them. They might be just learning the game, maybe trying a new legend, maybe they might be having connection problems (again, very common in Brawlhalla) or maybe they were just having a bad day. Don't make it worse for them. That's about as toxic as you can get.
The same goes for when you lose. There's no need to call them a spammer and accuse them of playing broken legends or weapons. Unless they say "ez noobs" after having two Orions just spamming across the entire stage the entire match. If you've got nothing good to say, just don't say it. If it wasn't a remarkable match, just say "GG" and leave it at that. If it was a good match, maybe a little "wp" would be nice. I've often told people I admired how they played their legend, how they played a weapon, how they read me. Numerous times I've thanked people for not spamming legends like Thatch. Appreciate the good parts of your opponents gameplay, if they deserve it. Otherwise, a "GG" really says it all. The few times I've come across high plats and diamonds, they've destroyed me so hard, but I always had a smile on my face at the end, because I enjoyed the game. I enjoyed watching them use ingenuity to completely massacre me, instead of just spam spam spam spam. And I tell them that. They've put in effort to get where they are; appreciate that effort. Tomorrow, that could be you.

Most of the people I play with are in the 1400-1500ELO range, but I'm sure this applies to all leagues. Remember, you aren't Sandstorm. Or any of the other top players like Boomie, Cody Travis, Cosolix, or any of the others. Have you watched how they play? They don't spam, they don't passive play, and they sure as hell don't toxic taunt. If they don't feel the need to lord their accomplishments over the rest of us, we shouldn't be lording our relatively noob gameplay over others.

Just have fun, appreciate one another, and don't be toxic. Brawlhalla's got a good community, don't spoil it.

[K5E_Assassin]

In lower ranks we wait for the weapon in the middle to spawn and then fight for it no hitting until it spawns

[Exhumed]

I'm going to do the exact opposite of everything in this guide, thanks for the guide on how to be toxic mister.

[π]

[π]

So salty lol

[π]

Good

[FwSoup]

i think spamming is just a play style my brother spams alot and i tell him to stop he uses frikin zarel and wu shang

[Kyoku お嬢]

why is there an argument in the comments. It's legit a game.. That's it.. a game.

[Velorace]

friendly casual atmosphere

Wutf ur saying?

it is broken as hell, dude.

There is no balance at all...

[Velorace]

@Winter for real? :D

No wonder why i knew he was op :D

[Kaya]

@~ Velorace ~ lol I think Shwerpy or somebody mentioned in one of their vids that spamming Thatch can get you to diamond lol

It is a playstyle, just not one that is conducive to the friendly, casual atmosphere the game tries to create.