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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.
On Toxicity, Expectations, and Gatekeeping: A Diatribe
roost
Member
Does a player who is afk during an encounter deserve the credit/loot?
What about one who spent the entire time auto attacking?
Or one that contributed 1/10th the damage everyone else did individually?
1/2?
At what point should a player be cut from a group for significantly underperforming? Where do we draw the line on the ratio of contribution to reward? Is it better to kick them? Or to try and teach them to play the game? Perhaps it'd be best to say nothing, and carry them through anyway?
Above everything else, players value their time. It's significantly rage-inducing to have 30-40+ minutes of your time wasted when it's not even your fault, when you have a single (or perhaps multiple) player(s) not only refusing to contribute, but actively being a detriment to the group as a whole. In Classic World of Warcraft, this problem often had to be solved by teaching the other player how to play at a decent enough level, since replacing them was time consuming and difficult. In current WoW, it's solved by booting them and relisting your group in the groupfinder. There will always be players who underperform, and there will always be groups with high expectations. The difference is figuring out which solution is more time efficient for the groupleader.
I understand the need to counter toxicity, everyone should feel welcome to play the game. But at what point does "fighting toxicity" turn into "brazen entitlement"? I've seen groups where people have been kicked unjustly, only underperforming by a small margin. But on the flip side, I've also seen plenty of groups that have tried to address underperformance, only to be met with cries of "toxicity" and "gatekeeping" from the offending player. It's not toxic to have high expectations for high level content. In fact, I would say that if you're unwilling to put in the time to learn the game at the same level as the group you're joining, why should you be allowed in? Why should your laziness grant you a spot in the group out of fear of being banned for "toxicity", a never-ending and ever-changing nebulous concept? Is it toxic to have high expectations? To some players, yes. Is it gatekeeping to kick a player for underperformance? Maybe, it's hard to say. Maybe they made one mistake and were booted. Maybe the group dragged them through 10+ wipes before deciding enough is enough. I've been through enough groups to be a part of both circumstances.
Expecting players to play at a certain level never was, should never have been considered, and will never be toxic. I myself have had to remove players who were significantly underperforming, at the level where they were in the bottom 10 percentile of players of their same class on that difficulty and boss. (Gray parsing) There are tough conversations that sometimes need to be had, and reluctant as I am to do so, sometimes these players have to be removed for the good of the group. I've been met with angry PMs of "toxic", "elitist", "gatekeeper", and I've been met with understanding PMs. It feels awful to be removed from a group based on your performance, I'll agree. However, oftentimes this pushes people to try harder, do more research, and practice their class more. If the game has certain rules around "making a player feel bad" for their damage (looking at you FF14), then this practice leads to players finding themselves in situations/groups where they're not only unprepared, but actively bringing down the group as a whole. Objective ways of measuring performance solve more toxicity than they create. In a way, it sorts people into categories that will match their own style of play, rather than jumbling the high-level, high-expectation players together with the players who are more laid back and relaxed in their method of play. These two groups will always have friction, and keeping them separate (I feel) is better for the health of the community.
There will always be groups that expect a lot of the people who join them, and there will always be groups that are more casual and forgiving. I just have a more old school point of view that you should find groups that suit your style of play, instead of demanding an unrealistic expectation that all groups should be welcoming to all players for all content.
What about one who spent the entire time auto attacking?
Or one that contributed 1/10th the damage everyone else did individually?
1/2?
At what point should a player be cut from a group for significantly underperforming? Where do we draw the line on the ratio of contribution to reward? Is it better to kick them? Or to try and teach them to play the game? Perhaps it'd be best to say nothing, and carry them through anyway?
Above everything else, players value their time. It's significantly rage-inducing to have 30-40+ minutes of your time wasted when it's not even your fault, when you have a single (or perhaps multiple) player(s) not only refusing to contribute, but actively being a detriment to the group as a whole. In Classic World of Warcraft, this problem often had to be solved by teaching the other player how to play at a decent enough level, since replacing them was time consuming and difficult. In current WoW, it's solved by booting them and relisting your group in the groupfinder. There will always be players who underperform, and there will always be groups with high expectations. The difference is figuring out which solution is more time efficient for the groupleader.
I understand the need to counter toxicity, everyone should feel welcome to play the game. But at what point does "fighting toxicity" turn into "brazen entitlement"? I've seen groups where people have been kicked unjustly, only underperforming by a small margin. But on the flip side, I've also seen plenty of groups that have tried to address underperformance, only to be met with cries of "toxicity" and "gatekeeping" from the offending player. It's not toxic to have high expectations for high level content. In fact, I would say that if you're unwilling to put in the time to learn the game at the same level as the group you're joining, why should you be allowed in? Why should your laziness grant you a spot in the group out of fear of being banned for "toxicity", a never-ending and ever-changing nebulous concept? Is it toxic to have high expectations? To some players, yes. Is it gatekeeping to kick a player for underperformance? Maybe, it's hard to say. Maybe they made one mistake and were booted. Maybe the group dragged them through 10+ wipes before deciding enough is enough. I've been through enough groups to be a part of both circumstances.
Expecting players to play at a certain level never was, should never have been considered, and will never be toxic. I myself have had to remove players who were significantly underperforming, at the level where they were in the bottom 10 percentile of players of their same class on that difficulty and boss. (Gray parsing) There are tough conversations that sometimes need to be had, and reluctant as I am to do so, sometimes these players have to be removed for the good of the group. I've been met with angry PMs of "toxic", "elitist", "gatekeeper", and I've been met with understanding PMs. It feels awful to be removed from a group based on your performance, I'll agree. However, oftentimes this pushes people to try harder, do more research, and practice their class more. If the game has certain rules around "making a player feel bad" for their damage (looking at you FF14), then this practice leads to players finding themselves in situations/groups where they're not only unprepared, but actively bringing down the group as a whole. Objective ways of measuring performance solve more toxicity than they create. In a way, it sorts people into categories that will match their own style of play, rather than jumbling the high-level, high-expectation players together with the players who are more laid back and relaxed in their method of play. These two groups will always have friction, and keeping them separate (I feel) is better for the health of the community.
There will always be groups that expect a lot of the people who join them, and there will always be groups that are more casual and forgiving. I just have a more old school point of view that you should find groups that suit your style of play, instead of demanding an unrealistic expectation that all groups should be welcoming to all players for all content.
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Comments
If you are in a Guild then you will have more scope to practice. It is difficult to practice if you can't get into groups though. Toxic encounters will always happen in PvP and players who want PvE Competitiveness do so because they are less likely to PvP. I do not expect most players in this category to end up playing Ashes.
The harder the content gets the less forgiving I am. I feel that players should be responsible for knowing where their skill is and where they need to improved before trying something. Raid ready includes being able to do on par DPS and the mechanics at the same time. One thing FFXIV does right that no other MMO does is have practice groups for raids. These pug groups are made of players who have never attempted an encounter and simply want to try to learn the fight with no expectation of a clear. There is little toxicity that arises from such a group because everyone is going in with the mind set that they want to progress and don't expect a clear.
Other games don't have this or can't have this, so the pressure is on from the start to bring your A-game. It is when people are clearly not raid ready that I feel it is right to be upset with them. This is the line where people step into the instance looking to get carried and bring the whole group down. To me, this sort of thing is unacceptable. Even then I am not going to be toxic unless I met with an attitude from someone who is not raid ready.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
This is in the context of playing with random groups, or perhaps a mixed group with half guildmembers/friends and half randoms.
Same deal. You will just need to be patient with the PUGs to find the friends that make a good group with respect to what you want. Some people are going to be jerks, whether intentional or not. I don’t think you can expect a game or developer to do the work for you. It’s a social game that requires development of social skills.
As for rewards within the group if there are multiple loot rules then there should be options to reward the better performers. Playing with like minded players also helps, and some of that takes time to discover who is delivering and who is not. Although if there are various themes for group play, some characters will be stronger in PVE vs PVP and vice versa.
I think it is also why there’s no group finder. The intent is to discover who to play with which builds player-to-player relationships and communities. Seems to me that Intrepid would prefer more time spent on this area of the game. It also makes a good group, guild and community that much more valuable.
Also, if you are forming a party there is nothing wrong with asking about your builds, gear, consumables and strategy before starting out. If a player doesn’t know the better options or isn’t really serious about PVE or PVP compared to the rest of the group then you can either offer a tryout or decline the offer to join the group, politely. I suppose a lot of that depends on how much time and patience you can afford. And it goes both ways. Perhaps a group of friends who are not super competitive and instead have a more casual play style may not want a hard core player in their group who’s going to be focused on optimal performance.
It’s like pineapple on pizza; some love it, others hate it.
Rather, I would remember them, if they seemed to be chronically AFK and just not invite them to group anymore.
In Ashes, the reason to raid is to kill the Winter Dragon in order to end the perpetual winter, so...
I'm going to assume that people who join us all want to put an end to the perpetual winter.
Also, I think it's going to be easier to find groups interested in doing the same thing at the same time.
We will know the people living in our towns and cities who are on at the same time we are and we will know where their homes and Freeholds are.
That perpetual winter will have a negative impact on everyone in the town/city, so... I dunno why someone joining a group to end the perpetual winter would choose to just be AFK the entire time.
But, if someone does, just don't invite them next time.
...Have you ever played an online game before? Regardless, it sounds like you only read the very first sentence of my post, since nothing I said was about AFK players. I only mentioned that to establish that there is a wide spectrum of player contribution, from rock bottom to star player, and establishing the line of acceptable contribution will be different for every group. Therefore, it's unrealistic to punish players for holding a standard.
"Why would a player be bad if he has the same mutual interest in clearing this content as I do?" Because they're bad, lazy, don't want to learn, still learning, want to be carried, etc. It's really not that hard to comprehend a scenario (extremely limited as your example may be) in which a player's contribution is extremely low. Try to broaden your scope beyond this frost dragon thing, because I see you bring it up in threads all the time and it's not exactly the slam dunk example you think it is.
With the kickstarter, and for several years after that, there was talk about how the game would have a solid raid game, and about how players that want competitive raiding will find it in Ashes.
The idea was that the game would appeal to PvE players and get then hooked, and then those PvE players would become targets/content for PvP players.
Obviously, this is all on the context of everyone being aware that no one was only PvE, or only PvP and that many players will find themselves 50/50 on each.
This was a departure from other games (from L2, through Archeage, BDO and Albion) where PvP players target other PvP players, because the game doesnt have PvE players.
This would resolve the issue of players leaving the game as they lose at PvP more and more often. If you are a PvP centric player and find yourself losing, you are more likely to leave (this is why Crowfall is designed as non-persistent - I'm sure you've seen the discussions on this).
The thought was that the people losing most of the time in PvP were in the game for the PvE, and so didnt care nearly as much about losing in PvP.
As an idea, this was (and still is) revolutionary. This is what I bought in to.
Obviously, if there isnt content that requires PvE centric characters, there wont be PvE centric players. This means the game will fall back to just being another in a long line of PvP focused games (without PvE focused players, the games population will be PvP focused, regardless of the developers intentions), and will just be BDO2.
To me, if this is the case, this game will have missed its potential for the PvP audience, let alone the PvE, and those that want a good bit of both.
Um. That's what you wrote. And now you're saying I should have ignored that?
I don't care about "bad", "lazy", "don't want to learn", still learning, "want to be carried" etc people in my group.
Still learning people would be highly welcome. I don't mind "carrying" people who are actively participating.
I might mind if someone was chronically afk. And, if I thought they were, I simply would no longer invite them to group.
All the stuff I put in quotes is elitist bullshit. Doesn't concern me.
Google the words "rhetorical question" and get back to me. Or better yet go hang out in a tulnar roleplay thread or something if you don't want to actually discuss the main idea of my post. Not really interested in discussing game design philosophy and how it relates to real life player behavior with someone who wants to strawman what I said because reading 750 words is too hard.
All the bullshit excuses to kick people you cite are bullshit excuses.
AFK, might be a reason to kick someone, but really the better route is stop inviting them on future missions.
I didn't say anything about game design as far as I know.
Strawman would be arguing something you didn't write.
I think the goal is for PvE players to partner w/ a PvP player b/c it would be mutually beneficial. A few groups out of the 40 man raid focuses the mobs while the rest focuses on incoming PvP players sounds like the mix that Intrepid is pushing for.
As for "solid raid game" I think it really comes down to having realistic expectations. Everyone knows that this will be a PvP game at it's core and that the vast majority of the bosses will have to be designed w/ the idea that they're secondary to the players fighting themselves.
If anyone comes into AoC and expects raids remotely resembling Retail WoW or FF14 then you're kind of setting yourself up to fail.
We don't yet know if there will be auto attacks in Ashes b/c it's still not decided if combat will truly be Hybrid or go full Tab. Besides that one nitpick I agree that there's no reason to believe bosses in AoC will be much harder than anything players would face in Classic WoW b/c anything that is won't be clearable while PvP is actively happening.
Guild leaders and Group leaders will have the right to replace who they want , there will be no rules to prevent that. If a player is underperforming in my guild they will be bench for a better player just like a sports team. I will help struggling players improve but they are not going to be on the starting line up. Of coarse different guilds will have different ways of doing things but I am not going to let one player hurt the whole group in achieving what we want to accomplish in the game.
You do you, boo.
The game will have its top end bosses (in terms of lore and loot) in the open world. Cool, that's great.
That doeant mean the game cant also have a progression based raiding scene.
The thing is, a game with one or two bosses spawning a day, with one guild getting the kill credit - that isnt a game with a progression based raiding scene. That isnt a game that PvE raiders from other games would leave the game they are playing to go and try out. Hell, it isnt even enough to get PvE raiders that dont currentlynhave a game to be interested in Ashes.
I am not saying - and have never said - that Ashes needs to replace the open world concept it has with a progression based raiding scheme. That concept is core to the game.
I have always said Ashes needs to supplement its open world concept with a progression based raiding scheme - and even then, it doesnt need to be the same as existing games.
I mean from everything I've read the progression is largely in terms of farming mats for the highest tier gear. Not really in the sense of completing a raid.
I agree someone like Preach would likely hate this game. The game will likely largely be driven by it's PvP.
Asmongold's fans are going to be very disappointed with the reality of open world raids and non faction-based open world PvP. This is fine, Steven has said Ashes is not going to cater to everyone many times.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Your entire post is not something I have really ever had to deal with. I recruit and lead people consistently. I train and help others learn how to train. I have really only ever dealt with success while in charge of my guild. Sure I have dealt with this in random groups or in shitty guilds but I got to a point where none of those complaints really bothered me. Losing sucks but if people are incapable of learning from their mistakes, just move on and play with people who want to win (but do this in as polite a way as possible. No sense in adding drama where it doesn't need to be).
There will, however, be some players who want the best of the best group to obtain the best rewards and will be much more demanding than the average player. There are ways of going about pulling a group together other than being a jerk.
I think a good social system is well worth the risk of some degree of toxicity. Most issues will be solved by players just as most problem will likely be caused by players. For extremely bad behavior there should be a GM available to assist.
In my experience most "bad" players don't realise they are bad, and unless they know they are doing something wrong they won't be inclined to improve.
On top of this, in a group environment it's very hard to figure out where the mistakes are TRULY coming from. When I'm playing Dark Souls, if I die it's because I made the mistake, but in an mmorpg it's not so clear. Did I die because I stood in the wrong place or because someone else screwed me over? Did my dps drop because I was having to deal with someone else's mechanical mistakes, or am I just bad at my rotations?
Unfortunately, most players take data in the simplest form and look for the easy way out - "that player died during that fight, they must be bad" or "that player did the lowest dps in that fight, they must be the worst in the group". Now sometimes that is the case, but often times it isn't.
When I'm leading a group, and we wipe on the boss, I don't look to start assigning blame. Assigning blame doesn't achieve anything. Instead, I look into what happened, ask questions and try to figure out how to do the fight better.
There was one occasion in particular back when I was raiding in WoW BFA, we were stuck on a fight and not progressing because some of the melee dps were getting caught in a particular boss mechanic and it was ruining our overall raid dps. So what did we do? We changed the strategy, moving the boss to a different part of the room and suddenly the melee dps stopped getting caught and were able to improve their dps. 2 attempts after we made this change, we killed the boss.
So far I haven't had to kick someone from a group for "underperforming" because most of the time the situation can be handled by changing something in the tactics.
Well his fans might actually like the ability to be a completely degenerate mob and be rewarded for it
I mean, you are right here, but from what we have been told, those materials that players are farming for are dropped by top end raids.
A few quotes from Steven here, If Steven holds true to these statements and their implications, the game will be able to have a top end raiding scene that can in turn then feed the PvP scene.
That is all I am after, Steven holding true to his word.
That shouldn't be too much to ask.
That sort of thing is par for the course in raiding in most games.
Literally every encounter in EQ2 raiding had things like this that needed to be done.
You say you want this kind of thing, yet you have no idea what is needed for this kind of thing to actually exist. In the example given, the only reason it was known that the melee DPS were under-performing was due to a combat tracker telling the raid that this was the case - the players themselves would not have known without a tracker, and the guild would have been completely blind as to what the issue was.
This is how combat trackers are used in literally every raid guild with any success at all.
You say you want this, yet you argue for it to not be possible.
Raid leader: The boss isn’t going down quick enough.
Melee: because we can’t reach the boss.
Raid leader: Alright can we move the boss closer to the melee please?
Don’t credit that to some combat tracker.
Also, you have never been in a raid that didn't have a combat tracker running, stop making up bullshit obviously fake scenarios.