Concerning the recent influx of toxicity and negativity.

[Deathi]

To be honest, after beeing through this bad cheating times the first? ranked-pre?-season, having reported tons of obvious botters, just to see them days after again, and nowadays reading about people gotten reported for toxic behaviour or sabotaging teams in ranked tons of times with nothing happening, I still feel writing something in the justification is kinda a waste of time, and stopped doing it a long time ago.

But, they could probably always take cs:go as an example and at least add the most “popular” ones to it, without the need to write anything, beeing self-explanatory (abusive text chat, abusive voice chat, aim hacks, whall hacks, other hacks).
Btw, this is some other point where I lost the believe someone really looks into these reports. If some support-person really would be working with this date, at least this person would be pressuring colleagues to put more options into it. And can it really be this complicated adding a few more options…

[Eox]

@Deathi said:
And can it really be this complicated adding a few more options…

As far as I know, it would require them to re-do the whole database, which would take a lot of time. Hence why it’s not a top priority. The system works, it’s just that the “offensive name” category is kind of multipurpose for now.

[AlbinMatt]

To me, DB doesn’t feel too toxic. I’m often on the 3 bottom slots at the scoreboard, and I can only gather a handful of times when someone actually berated me. Mostly just one person being obnoxiously loud and often times it’s the guy right below or above me. The top scoring players are often calm and try to hush the chat, or are lone wolves with levels in the triple digits.

[bgyoshi]

I do what I can but I’m certainly no patron saint

I try to encourage more constructive criticism and call out obnoxious whining and how to correct it when I can. But no one’s perfect man

Seems like no matter what the devs do, people only have negative things to say about DB. Amid all the requests that have spent years going ignored, the updates that do include community requested things all get ripped on, always. I can’t remember a single game update that didn’t cause some egregious issue that caused players to rave about how they’re quitting the game now.

People can’t just weigh in their opinion on how they feel about the update by itself, the update’s always some sleight by the devs to ignore the community and ruin the game.

No one can disagree without being a hater and no one can agree without being a fanboy.

There was no fanfare when the devs reset the horizontal recoil purely due to player feedback alone

No praise when they increased the Grandeur damage from 36 to 38 exactly how the community asked

No love when they not only announced new mercs, maps, and a timeline, but then DELIVERED on all of them. When it was announced, it was great. When it was delivered, it was hell.

No hurrah’s for every update that Javelin gets nerfed more and more also purely by community feedback. Instead of “Thanks for the change now do this other thing!” it’s always “WELL THANKS BUT THAT ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH OP OP OP OP OP OP”

No gratitude when they finally rolled out the balance updates, as the community has been begging for. Everyone pretends the next update is the final update of the game instead of giving feedback on how the change has affected gameplay so they can make future tweaks.

With the exception of a vast minority, of course.

It’s great that people get vocal about the changes they want but the rhetoric and how they approach the issue needs to change. Y’all can get the same thing done with less piss and vinegar.

[Xenithos]

Here’s my personal answer, I am one of the least toxic people I know. However if I’m in a terribly balanced match, or I’m hearing someone who’s level 7 cussing out some other player I’m not going to stand by either. I’m going to complain, or vote to kick him with the reason why AND report said player.

Now, as for forums, I’ve only recently really just flat out been firm with my thoughts because of the direction SD’s been taking DB recently. TL;DR - They’re constantly balancing the game away from one person’s level of skill being able to take down entire teams. They’re also not fixing the problems the game has because of merc stacking, and addressing the way the game is shifting from them releasing these newer mercs and changing older ones which to me is one of the biggest problems in DB. One Guardian that knows how to play is a pain. Two? You have permanent uptime on no explosive abilities, rendering certain mercs as near useless. Three Arties on Chapel? Rofl, name the map Attack on Arty. >! Oh wait, they got two Guardians now. Whatever.

An easy example - Snipers, even the best snipers in DB are having issues with the sniper changes, especially the Fel-9, which feels awful and broken. Add in this pause after firing a shot before we can even switch weapons to run away or use our sidearms and it’s beyond awful and broken, it feels insulting and demeaning. If a player had at one point enough skill to headshot five players in 5 seconds, then why are you taking that away from them? It’s a SNIPER. They’re also balancing things in ways that don’t FIX problems but make them worse. Easy example is Sparks. For the last 3 updates in a row they have nerfed Sparks and Aura (Aura’s actually fine now honestly…) of which they’re trying to fix her selfishness with her packs… by giving herself less hp with a pack… requiring more packs for her to heal herself to a safe HP value. There’s something wrong here!

! Do you know why most high-skill players are selfish with packs? Because they’re often the only ones on their team competent enough to revive and heal the rest of the players. So they use those packs to guarantee their team’s survival. It’s just how Sparks is. If you want to stop players from being selfish, either make her pack cause her to start gaining her hp for a few seconds, separate her healing so that she cannot gain healing from packs, or give her a limit on how much HP she can heal herself with over time. Or maybe lower the cooldown on her packs in the first place! NOT this. NOT what you’re doing right now.
Some other balancing rant crap (MPs and sniper play):
! And nerfing Machine pistols is well, uncalled for, but you made MPs her primary weapon. I don’t even shoot with them anymore SD, I just jump at people and use my cricket bat or switch to my sniper. Speaking of snipers, when you need perfect accuracy and timing to stop someone from being revived with a Fel-IX that you JUST killed it sucks to be a sniper. Aimee, because of these changes, is no longer the character that’s running around crazy hopping off walls wielding a sniper with precise fury. And Kira has turned from a high skill and position requiring character to one that can barely ever get her Laser down as easily as she used to, and now runs around with a katana stabbing people.

…And don’t get me started on our most recent view-kick changes

But I agree, we shouldn’t be letting negativity be toxicity, and we shouldn’t be putting them down for it, but instead trying to help them. It just seemed* for a while that they forgot about their player-base and what they had made their game for and that they don’t really care. Especially with this last patch.

[Xenithos]

@bgyoshi said:
I do what I can but I’m certainly no patron saint
Seems like no matter what the devs do, people only have negative things to say about DB. Amid all the requests that have spent years going ignored, the updates that do include community requested things all get ripped on, always. I can’t remember a single game update that didn’t cause some egregious issue that caused players to rave about how they’re quitting the game now. People can’t just weigh in their opinion on how they feel about the update by itself, the update’s always some sleight by the devs to ignore the community and ruin the game. No one can disagree without being a hater and no one can agree without being a fanboy.
I can agree with everything said here. Or at least that it’s the way things seem as of late.

There was no fanfare when the devs reset the horizontal recoil purely due to player feedback alone
There wasn’t just player feedback, and yes, there were thanks in numerous locations.
No praise when they increased the Grandeur damage from 36 to 38 exactly how the community asked
Except that several people thanked them and it was literally the perfect change, and the several different posts thanking them also got likes… so… what are you on about? And better question, why aren’t they just doing a few more things as the community asks as well?
No love when they not only announced new mercs, maps, and a timeline, but then DELIVERED on all of them. When it was announced, it was great. When it was delivered, it was hell.
This is where I had to disagree with you. Completely. I’ve already shown the math on this comment. They did not meet their promise and deliver on mercs in 2017. But going past that, only was I very happy with their timeline, map delivering, and recent buyout from Nexon throughout 2017, I even made a video about it thanking them and tweeted it at them. No one saw it. When those things were announced, it was great. When it was delivered, they KNEW there was going to be issues with releasing a merc that destroys all explosives that has no healing, they KNEW there were going to be problems with releasing a merc that has instagibbing when Fragger’s frag barely does anymore. They knew, period. It wasn’t hate, it was expected. And I still personally loved them for bringing those new mercs that they did get into the game anyway.
No hurrah’s for every update that Javelin gets nerfed more and more also purely by community feedback. Instead of “Thanks for the change now do this other thing!” it’s always “WELL THANKS BUT THAT ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH OP OP OP OP OP OP”
No comment, I’m tired of her getting nerfed. And yeah, I think they could do better on balancing her and a number of other mercs. That’s part of why they should be coming to their community for feedback. We just need to not be buttholes about our delivery of our feedback to them too.
No gratitude when they finally rolled out the balance updates, as the community has been begging for. Everyone pretends the next update is the final update of the game instead of giving feedback on how the change has affected gameplay so they can make future tweaks.
I was happy to see numerous balance updates. In fact I was ecstatic about the shotgun changes, and so far I think shotguns have been balanced well! They’re usable in high level play!
With the exception of a vast minority, of course.
That’s… an oxymoron. You legit contradict yourself, but okay.
It’s great that people get vocal about the changes they want but the rhetoric and how they approach the issue needs to change. Y’all can get the same thing done with less piss and vinegar.
I agree dude. Only reason I ever disagree with anyone is because I disagree when people don’t have facts straight or their opinion to balance the game is completely stupid. Such as making Proxy’s mines fly through the air and detonate like Automatic Frisbee’s of death, which yes is a real thing someone’s asked for. And If I don’t understand and someone else sets me straight? I remove every single disagree, and I thank them. That’s how we should be acting.

[StIwY]

@AlbinMatt said:
To me, DB doesn’t feel too toxic.

Seems like you are playing the wrong game

[bgyoshi]

@Xenithos said:
That’s… an oxymoron. You legit contradict yourself, but okay.

I know dude but to avoid saying “The majority of people” every single time, I switched to saying “No” and then added the caveat of “The minority are excepted” to demonstrate that I understand people DO give devs the praise and love I’m claiming they don’t, but the amount of people giving love and praise is paled when put next to the sheer number of hate comments and dislikes.

I praise the devs hard work whenever I can and voice my displeasure when it matters but I’m still going to consider myself in the minority of people that show praise of any kind to the devs.

[Xenithos]

vast
adjective
of very great extent or quantity; immense.

minority mi·nor·i·ty
noun
the smaller number or part, especially a number that is less than half the whole number.

Rofl, I know what you were saying, I was just saying I found it chuckle worthy that you had vast minority together. Usually the term is vast majority, vast minority isn’t a thing afaik.

[bgyoshi]

@Xenithos said:
vast
adjective
of very great extent or quantity; immense.

minority mi·nor·i·ty
noun
the smaller number or part, especially a number that is less than half the whole number.

Rofl, I know what you were saying, I was just saying I found it chuckle worthy that you had vast minority together. Usually the term is vast majority, vast minority isn’t a thing afaik.

ex·tent
noun
the area covered by something.
“an enclosure ten acres in extent”

the degree to which something has spread; the size or scale of something.

So a vast minority is a great scaling of minority. Minority is small, so scaling minority makes it smaller.

It IS an oxymoron which is apparently contradictory, but is not a contradiction. B)

[Eox]

@bgyoshi said:

@Xenithos said:
vast
adjective
of very great extent or quantity; immense.

minority mi·nor·i·ty
noun
the smaller number or part, especially a number that is less than half the whole number.

Rofl, I know what you were saying, I was just saying I found it chuckle worthy that you had vast minority together. Usually the term is vast majority, vast minority isn’t a thing afaik.

ex·tent
noun
the area covered by something.
“an enclosure ten acres in extent”

the degree to which something has spread; the size or scale of something.

So a vast minority is a great scaling of minority. Minority is small, so scaling minority makes it smaller.

It IS an oxymoron which is apparently contradictory, but is not a contradiction. B)

Could you guys come back on topic ?

[Xenithos]

@bgyoshi said:

@Xenithos said:
vast
adjective
of very great extent or quantity; immense.

minority mi·nor·i·ty
noun
the smaller number or part, especially a number that is less than half the whole number.

Rofl, I know what you were saying, I was just saying I found it chuckle worthy that you had vast minority together. Usually the term is vast majority, vast minority isn’t a thing afaik.
So a vast minority is a great scaling of minority. Minority is small, so scaling minority makes it smaller.

It IS an oxymoron which is apparently contradictory, but is not a contradiction. B)

@Eox said:

@bgyoshi said:

@Xenithos said:
vast
adjective
of very great extent or quantity; immense.

minority mi·nor·i·ty
noun
the smaller number or part, especially a number that is less than half the whole number.

Rofl, I know what you were saying, I was just saying I found it chuckle worthy that you had vast minority together. Usually the term is vast majority, vast minority isn’t a thing afaik.

ex·tent
noun
the area covered by something.
“an enclosure ten acres in extent”

the degree to which something has spread; the size or scale of something.

So a vast minority is a great scaling of minority. Minority is small, so scaling minority makes it smaller.

It IS an oxymoron which is apparently contradictory, but is not a contradiction. B)

Could you guys come back on topic ?

[teflonlove]

@Eox said:
Could you guys come back on topic ?

I guess if I would reply with a “He’s dead, Jim” meme it would get me permabanned so here’s a serious contribution:

While I don’t have any scientific data, my personal level of toxicity seems to depend on external factors I currently have no control over. Specifically the other players I end up with.

Problems

As others already pointed out in several threads by plenty of people one currently does not have much choice with which people to team up. CMM, Stopwatch, Ranked - all 3 games modes typically lump inexperienced and experienced players together resulting in something that is not fun for either. Even teaming up with friends is only a partial solution because the other side still is a random bunch of people with typically insane skill spread.

Combine that with a little ignorance (“I main sniper in every game, worry about yourself”) and lack of education (“no speak English”) and the fun goes down even more.

Then there is the fact that the ingame voice chat is broken since day 1 and a large part of the player base it too quiet to understand even though their microphone works fine in Discord, Signal, Skype and so on. This makes it hard to communicate with randoms and help them to improve (assuming they do speak English).

Now I do acknowledge that SD has taken steps to improve things (adding the assault course where players learn to drop ammo, making Vassili more expensive, …) but so far these have been band aids at best.

Possible solutions

My personal hypothesis is that SD can reduce toxicity a lot by improving the game design. Simply hoping for people to treat each other more respectfully just doesn’t seem realistic to me.

There have been plenty of suggestions how to do that, so I summarize just a few that I felt are the most promising ones (credits to to various OP’s I’m too lazy to track down):

• For unranked players in ranked matches, assign an initial rank for the first game based on the level. By now SD should have enough data to know the median initial rank for each level. Then for the first 5 or so matches double or tripple the impact of the result on the rank. So even if some smurf starts at bronze 3 at level 7, he should be gold 5 after a few matches.
• For CMM, make different queues for players that are inexperienced, somewhat competent and competent. A simple could be level gates (for example level 1 - 7, level 8 - 15, level 16+ though possibly other numbers might be better) and maybe some mechanic to detect particular skilled players or smurfs.
• Allow players to choose how much of a skill spread they are willing to accept in CMM and ranked. No more bronze players teaming up with cobalts.
• Let players announce their preferred mercs and roles before the game so match making can consider it when building a team. For example I might say “I prefer to play rhino but I can also play medic or fire support”. Once match making found a team that I will fit, it should tell me the role that it deems most appropriate. “Sorry, no playing sucky Rhino for you this time, fill in as somewhat decent medic please”.
• In Ranked, allow each team to ban a merc. Or maybe even two? This would give SD more time to fix particular broken mercs (like Fragger :trollface:).
• Add another group of servers to mess around for fun. Probably this needs another game mode (something simple like point control) where people can goof of as Katana-only Phantom, defib killing Auras, Javelin stackers and so. Probably this would also be the place where all the 12 years olds and players with CSGO in their username would meet, so they won’t have to spread their “gg ez” gospel on other servers anymore.
• Except for the “fun” servers enforce a single merc rule for at least some mercs (e.g. no more 4 Arty or Kira defense on Chapel).
• Add an easily accessible offline mode where people can explore maps and try out mercs.
• We don’t really know how ranks are computed but the current algorithm still seems to, uhm, have some potential for improvement. It should consider the role(s) the player took, the need for that role (only or 2nd medic - good; 3rd sniper - bad) and how he performed (medic with plenty of support XP - good, sniper with 3/27 KDR - bad).

Inb4 “But some of these suggestion will spread the already small population even more”: currently we have a single population (mostly playing casual) and a dead ranked mode because the game is less fun than when min 10 and 20 servers were around (which wasn’t an ideal solution either). If the games becomes fun again for 2 or 3 smaller groups of this population, all of them will all grow again.

[Darkwolf3802]

Toxicity mainty happens due to an unhappy playerbase. Lack of new content, lack of fixes (competitive wait times and rewards) and lack of playerbase. Ive been playing this game since early access and I can tell u that there arent half as many ppl playing as there used to be. U could find a match at anytime of the day on the US East servers now overnight there r 0 games. Back then you could obtain just about anything that the devs offered in the market. Now its impossible to obtain any ranked rewards due to 0 games and nobody wanting to wait 15+ min in a que for a measly 60 ranked points and thats if you win. 10 points is just a slap in the face by the devs and a bigger slap when u realise all that stuff listed is impossible to obtain.
If the devs could release some new content to bring players back, make competitive worth queing and make the competitive rewards possible to obtain they would see things settle down once again.

[GatoCommodore]

@Darkwolf3802 said:
Toxicity mainty happens due to an unhappy playerbase. Lack of new content, lack of fixes >(competitive wait times and rewards) and lack of playerbase.

no not really, if its caused by lack of content i wouldnt be still playing on pub every few days.
and i still play ranked every weekend

[Eox]

Removing this from pinned messages.

[phobiatic]

There’s never need for hate or negativity on the forums. Surely not if the game is in a beta state, any positive feedback can help the developers as much as reporting bugs.

For me the hate and negative posts come from the less active community. Since less and less players are playing the game (less then 2k on peak hours on a Sunday etc) they move towards the forums to see how the game is holding up. Think more and more people are getting a little bit disappointed where the game is going after waiting nearly 3 years for a release.

I had high hopes once they released the beta with reference to “Enemy territory” like game play, since I’ve been playing and loving that game for over 6 years(9k+ hours played). Now 3 years later, the game feels more like Overwatch than enemy territory ever was(used to easy play 50hours a week early beta, now I don’t even get 5 hours). We went from a long TTK shooter to now a reaction shooter and explosion mayhem. Even tho the developers stated they don’t want to have counter mercs, well guardian is all about countering explosions (since they don’t find a way to balance them, they make a merc to counter them and go against their own goals).

Add to it that we have recently a lot of known bugs without fixes and change that shouldn’t be a high priority, it is expected that people are in a less happy mood (Proxy mines not exploding, phantom doesn’t prevent enemy from exploding mines, aim punch still in the game, some mercs getting nerfed while obvious other mercs are left untouched for a very long time, high ping servers, shots not always registering etc).

Since the game is still in beta, I miss the connection between the developers and the community. They always ask us for feedback but we rarely see anything done with them. It is now where the developers should be transparent about what they are planning, like you guys have been keeping us in the dark for nearly 2 months + about the last merc. Give us more information why it is delayed etc… not just go “we still working on it”. Without being transparent and more open to the community, the game will only lose more players and more people are willing to express themselves in a good but more likely in a bad way with the recent negativity as a result.

[ThunderZsolt]

I used to post frequently on this forum (maybe some people here remember me), but stopped doing so mainly because of the negativity. I still read it sometimes to check if there is something interesting going on, so I’ve seen this thread.
No reason to share my thoughts when only a minority appreciates it, most of the time you get overwhelmed with negative comments.

And no, I’ve never posted rants or other nonsense you regularly see from 1 post accounts which are either fake, or completely clueless players.

I did quit playing ranked because of the almighty Stockholm servers, so I might experience way less salt than those who still play it, but that was enough for me to completely disable the ingame voice chat.
When I play with friends, we speak via discord.

Also I barely read the text chat - and when I do, it is because I check if the person to be kicked is AFK or not. (I only kick AFK players, newbies don’t bother me that much).

The negativity had an impact on my playtime as well.
Not like I was a veteran or something (played ~400 hours total) but I’m not really motivated to play, it is more like a time sink for me (read: I play when I’m bored to hell, and have nothing better to do).

This also comes from the lack of good players. There used to be a bunch of simply good players, who had a brain paired with decent aim, and it was interesting to play against them - and I could learn from every encounter and improve.
I can wreck newbies (even though I play worse than I used to) and I get wrecked so hard by the very good players, that I barely learn anything from them.

I trust the devs however, I really do. I even bought the Arty obsidian last weekend although I’m not really playing as him any more.