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Outriders' Endgame Community is Toxic, But It's Not Their Fault | MMORPG.com
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Outriders' Endgame Community is Toxic, But It's Not Their Fault | MMORPG.com
Over the past two weeks, Outriders has become a hot topic for several reasons. Recently, players have been complaining about getting kicked from groups due to their class or build in endgame. According to some, this has created a toxic community. There is truth to that, but to be fair, it's not the community's fault.
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The game does not make you be too impatient to not give someone a chance or to not coach them through a little. That is all on the player. The problem today is we have too many little shits who feel entitled to everything going 100% perfect every time or they throw a little bitch tantrum and start insulting and kicking people. No game forces that kind of behavior, that is all you. So let's not excuse this bullshit please.
The biggest issue with endgame is that did make it time based. Was the biggest bone head idea they had. Making loot depend on time in any game isn't going to make a good community builder. It does exactly what is happening here. It makes it where if you don't have the biggest cookie cutter build that does the most damage the fastest they you most likely will not be invited to stay in groups. The best thing they could do it get rid of the time aspect altogether. Just base the individual loot on damage done or healing of others if support spec. To easy to not fix it.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
In FFIV I was a white mage and we occasionally get really bad players who won't even listen when we advice them so we vote and kick. That is how it goes.
First of all, you can't communicate with "randoms" in this game. You can't "coach them through" anything. If you don't know them and they randomly join their group, and if they aren't on the same system as you, you can't do shit.
Worse, forcing players to choose between getting a reward or kicking a player isn't on the player, that's 100% the game mechanics. You can kick a player mid mission if they aren't killing fast enough, without warning. You don't get a chance to say "hey can you switch your build" or "sorry you just don't do enough damage" - and more times than not players will simply choose to kick you based on your class or even based on your gear.
The game mechanics are completely conducive to putting players against each other in Outriders where it should be cooperative. It's a PvE game. They force you to choose to kick players or run the risk of wasting your time.
So what you're telling me is,
"Endgame players behave in typical fashion for their kind."
I agree with some of what you say. It's been my experience that a toxic player is a toxic player no matter the game. They bring it with them game to game. A game like Outriders though provides them a reason to be toxic and even encourages it by design. It may not have been PFC intention, but they should know that systems that they have in place will foster that kind of response. If they didn't know that, then that tells me a lot about the developers.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
I get the argument that there is nothing wrong with kicking players who can't pull their weight, but the people who can't pull their weight are trying to earn the gear they need to pull their weight. They aren't being any more entitled than you are, nor any less. It's just a conflict of interest.
So if you're a bad player, you should make the game even harder on yourself by playing alone? Sorry, but that's idiotic at best.
I'd put some gasoline on it and light a match but that would be too much effort.
If you know you are an awful player why should you expect others to carry you. That is dumb. These are strangers and their time is precious. If they don't want to spend it helping you that is their prerogative and if they vote and kick you that is their right too. I have joined groups and the second I feel I am doing badly like falling down in jumping places and I'm unable to jump in certain areas I explain and leave. They can get another healer unless they say they will come and get me and help me get to them by going the long way.
Groups decide not you as an individual and you should respect that and not expect them to help you out and waste their time. Lots of times in FFXIV and other games I have come across players who simply expect others to just carry them without making any effort. Those players need to be kicked out.
That's pretty much what's happening here, but in many cases players aren't even giving the person a shot to prove themselves. You can't even really inspect other players builds, they just determine your worth on what your gear looks like.
In any other game, if you got to end game only to find that the mechanics skew almost exclusively to one style of play... and you automatically kicked one class just because they were that class and might not perform on the meta level... yeah I think those are game mechanics that encourage toxic behavior.
What the writer describes here is a mechanic in the game requiring them to progress quickly since it is time based as he says here
"When endgame is heavily focused on multiplayer, but rewards are primarily time-based, you can start to see a community skew into toxic territory very quickly."
Players of course are going to want to optimize.
Again I use FFXIV as an example when I played I always checked each fight to make sure as a healer I knew what to do because the others were relying on me and there was once this guy kept on triggering every trap and stepping on shit and the tank just "there he goes again" and we all laughed out loud. The fellow got upset and began to curse us we could have chucked him but we finished the dungeon with him and he left in a huff. For heaven's sake at least listen when we explain the mechanics of the fight to you.
I don't mind people making mistakes but when they never make an effort I will vote to kick. I mean when they let me in a group they ask if I can keep up meaning the tank is going pull at a speed and you have to keep at a very good pace and I say yes with confidence because I practiced. I don't expect more than what I ask myself.
This is the thing about games requiring groups and people not doing their part. They don't listen or check the dungeon so that they don't weigh a group down. If it is a guild group then by all means you can take it easy and make it a learning experience but when the dungeon notes of the group says they are doing a fast pull or going in hard and you cannot do it then leave or explain you cannot do it and see if the group accepts that. Make sure you make an effort if you're going to stay but even then it is not enough as is the case here then leave the game or just play solo. I would do that in this case or find others who have the same mind set. Just don't expect people to slow down and help you and don't whine and complain and call them toxic when they don't.
A group game + competition is always more toxic than an individual 1v1 game or a single player game in a PvE world (path of exile)
Starcraft 2 as the competitive portion is mainly 1v1 vs LoL or this game. So it is a different type of game.
Also, the complexity of the game influences it because of the barrier to entry is higher and it may select for older people who are less likely to be toxic. EVE has its griefers and spies and such, but overall, i believe it is probably less toxic than albion per se.
So i do believe the game can have a significant influence it. It is kind of like in medicine, surgeons are commonly known to be toxic whereas pediatricians are not. It is partly due to the culture of the fields and partly due to who goes into it. I believe games are the same, they can select for a certain type of person based on complexity and then the mechanics can influence toxicity as well.
Now i do agree that some people are naturally toxic players. I kind of am what i call a semi-toxic player revealed to me by my competitive play in sc 2. If i lose to what i think is BS cheese, like cannon rush or void rays, i get mad and toxic. I am really doing it cuz im projecting my own inadequacy for failing to stop the rush on to the other player.
Im not the type to trash talk if i beat someone, i often times try to give tips if i see a glaring error. Hence, why im only semi toxic.
I also could never do team competition like overwatch, i feel so bad if i dont pull my weight. It is one thing to suck and lose a 1v1 game but 100x worse to suck and cause your team to lose.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
The irony is these ppl arent even that good, they confuse being metaslaves with being good and think non meta players are bad even when they clearly perform better, oh and by "perform better" I mean the actual personal real time performance which often includes mistakes or missed timings, not some silly computer generated simmed performance that doesnt matter cuz they ll never reach it
That is what happens when Gamers TM havent succeeded in any way IRL so they try to obsess over video games which are designed to be beaten from the ground up and they confuse it as some sort of great skillful achievement to fill that weak fragile ego.
I was just reading a thread on the Diablo 3 subreddit started by a guy complaining about the elitism in GR groups that won't even consider him unless he has 2,000 Paragon Points... in seasonal play... 2 weeks into the season.
That is also speed of completion related but there is no extra loot for quick completion, just the ability to grind more in a given amount of time or bragging rights on the leaderboard.
I can't even imagine how much worse it would be there if there was also extra loot for quick completion times.
Dumb design is dumb.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
In the context of a single player game, quick completion rewards are fine. I'm reminded of Bonus Exp in Fire Emblem Path of Radiance (my 2nd favorite game of all time), which was there to compensate Low Turn Count players for the lower number of enemies they'd kill with more free experience to assign in the camp between missions.
In a multiplayer game, it just punishes certain playstyles, breeds elitism, and makes the game less enjoyable for anyone who isn't a speedrunner. Quick completions are their own reward, and they certainly shouldn't come with more loot per run.
This is how people think games should be played. D3 killed itself with the unlimited power and paragon not being capped.
I'm go back to my D2 tournaments taking my slow roll through enjoying games without the need for an epeen.
Man I wishing gaming in groups could be brought back like that, but alas I don't think it ever will be as everyone seems to want to have this amazing character until the next Fotm game comes out.