Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Many other things could still happen. Henceforth, Guild(s) will not control a Node due to those same " other things "
thx for clarifying though
The Angel gives (even that which isnt wise for them to give) to satisfy the desires of others at their own (and others) expense, even at the cost of their own demise.
The Demon takes all that they can get to satisfy their personal desires and destroys all in the way of that.
The Humans though, will stand shoulder to shoulder and realise the most precious thing is standing next to them and not below them or above them.
I will stand shoulder to shoulder for eternity, with those that choose to stand beside me.
Toxicity exists because the concept of community, humanity and civilisation is being wilfully and systematically destroyed and we watched idly by as it crumbled.
This game design and the majority of the people here fill me with hope that we have reached a turning point. That people have finally had enough. That people can finally see, that which was hidden and that which they didnt want to see.
Living in heaven or hell is a choice we make every second with every action when we choose to be a demon, an angel or somewhere between. The world we live in is a reflection of the communities nature.
A toxic person is someone that lacks maturity; is rude and generally not a nice person to deal with.
A toxic community is a cesspit which has its own members lash out at one another for the enjoyment of being able to put another person down.
I personally don't see this forum turning that way. I agree there will be more complaint threads because people will always find something to complain about; especially once the game is actually playable. But I expect most players to form tight knit communities within their own nodes and neighboring nodes for trade.
I agree that because it's possible for people to abuse mechanics and ruin an experience for other players; it will happen with certainty. But I'm sure regardless of how vocal they are, the majority of players won't be like that.
Some might think that a highly competitive, trash talking community that borders on anarchy and mods are absent is toxic.
Others might think that carebear land where any disagreement gets you shunned and/or banned 'because hurt feelings' is toxic.
Still others might think that a community where the mods are the '[developer] internet defense' constantly stepping in is toxic which wouldn't really have anything community itself at all. It should be clear that I'm not talking about this game/forum obviously but I figure I should say it anyways.
The answers are tough and most people have no interest in finding a positive answer.
How do we help to keep it positive and grow is a great question. I don't have all the answers but I would offer respect for self and others as a good place to start. That and patience. Be patient with people. Listen and seek to understand. Try not to be so emotional and think the worst of everything someone says. As people we tend to judge others by what they said/did and judge themselves by their intent.
If we can judge them by their intent even if it is worded in a terrible way. Maybe, just maybe we can avoid the toxicity we all fear.
The golden forum rule; "Don't be a ***** to each other and treat everyone with respect"
There is a person behind each and every forum name and avatar so would you say or do that to someone if they were actually standing in front of you? If the answer is no then that should be a hint it's probably not socially acceptable behavior.
(yeah, I know.......total character immersion break for a Skaven. I will 'try' to do better
Imagine starting new, you are out gathering and get ganked, flame on!
You build a nice little freehold, node gets attack, freehold gets destroyed, flame on!
You are transporting goods trying to be a better team player, caravan gets raided, flame on!
...repeat...
How long will someone who gets that mad really want to play Ashes?
New player out gathering and gets ganked? Explain about gathering in groups or within shouting distance of others citizenship or guildwise.
Freehold gets destroyed? Evaluate what went wrong in defense. Did you log on for the actual siege, or did you expect everyone else to defend your stuff? Did you coordinate with friends and guild members to provide support for your freehold in case of a loss?
Caravan gets raided? Did you hire an appropriate number of npc guards for the value of what you were transporting? Did you ask friends to ride along with you, and did you personally escort your goods from location A to B?
All mechanics to support new players that veterans interested in creating better players that in turn support them can communicate.
(1) deeply unhappy people IRL
(2) immature people IRL
(3) people with lack of perspective/balance IRL
The game mechanics may lend themselves to in-game conflict, fortunes may be taken, and cities razed, but that toxicity comes from people themselves outside the game. Plenty of people have baggage, so we'll see plenty of toxic players. Luckily for those who aren't, this is a true MMO, and we can choose to not play with toxic players. I think it will pay to be level-headed and polite so that you have groups with which to play.
A classic example in my past experience was Second Life. The game pretty much started off with no game systems in place to deal with toxicity. That was fine for a few months, but without safeguards the 1% of toxic players were able to grief and abuse 99% of the player base.
The studio reacted by putting in more GMs into the game. This also worked for a short while, but even a large team of GMs were soon overwhelmed by the toxicity. Then the GMs recruited members of the community to help them. Again, this worked briefly, but the power balance remained in favor of the griefer's; exploiting game mechanics to wreak havoc.
It was only after years of unhappy and negative experiences that the studio finally grasped the concept that the best way of handling toxicity is to implement game systems and mechanics that prevent it from happening in the first place. By then the game had a negative reputation that they never fully recovered from.
Studios repeat this same mistake over and over. TL;DR, there will always be toxic people, no matter what. The best way to deal with them is for the game systems to be designed to prevent or diminish their effect on the community. Hiring more GMs/mods or expecting the community to police toxicity themselves seldom works on its own.
I feel like the type of people AoC attracted with it's crowdfunding are people that aren't toxic, the people that invested money and time won't be the ones necessarily mouthing off at people, sure there is always a few.. but I guess that can't be helped.
Competition does not inherently breed toxicity, I feel like if the game was only comprised of the people whom currently bought into AoC, there would be small amounts of disagreements and smack talk in PvP situations, but I would like to safely assume it would all be in good fun.
I know I'm young and saying this probably sounds weird to all those older folks out there, but in all my years playing MMOs, I've never come across a mature person who trash talked, or was toxic in anyway whatsoever, sure they might occasionally rage, but that is understandable if someone is frustrated or had a bad day.
The type of people I feel you're talking about, are the people who won't invest, who come to games through Open Beta, the younger crowd that probably grew up playing Call of Duty screaming all kinds of profanity and whilst we cannot get rid of them the systems I hope will be put in place, will prevent any kind of malicious griefing and have a chat report system.
I apologise if anything is out of place or is worded wrong, didn't have much time to write this.
I'm a "glass is half empty, but at least the other half is full" kind of guy. I guess I don't see how a community, as a whole, can be toxic. But neither am I naïve.
Of course, there will be toxic posts and toxic in-game behavior. And there will be misunderstandings in the forums and in-game that will be misconstrued as toxic behavior. This is the glass is half empty.
The glass half full, though, is that I firmly believe that the great majority of people in this community (and in other gaming communities) are kind, helpful, and are simply decent people.
Well. Maybe I am naïve. That's ok with me.