In Battlefield it’s mandatory that at the end of every game, someone on the losing team has to go on a hunt for a scapegoat and single out one of the 32 players as responsible. I can only imagine how bad that would be if there actually was one player who blew the game.
Gotta say Desslock , truly our competitive skiing is full of emo-rage stuff, since truly small margins matter they will blame quickly anyone else for their own suck, it’s utterly rare to see someone with the guts to judge what happened on ones own effort, and when they do, they usually get lauded with sportsmanship and praised.
Funny how in MMA all the trash talk is just theatre. IRL these guys all very much respect eachother. You never see post-fight rage, its all hugs and hearty shakes afterwards.
Guess LoL would be improved if people could punch one another thru the screen in unexpected ways :P
I play a lot of World of Big Shooty Things. In tanks, which had gotten to be toxic as fuck in ten mostly slavic languages, they turned off chat-to-enemy team. That did a WORLD of good. It’s not a friendly place like an BJJ gym, but it aint nearly as bad as it ever was. Ships on the other hand, still has enemy chat, but never gotten as toxic as tanks. Sure you get some rants once in a while, but more often you get a “nice shot sir” from the red battlewagon you just wtfpwned with a big ol torpedo salvo. Ships is slower and very much a dad-game among MOBAs I think. perhaps that explains the relative civility.
hah hah I was searching for it, I didn’t see it was posted already.
As has been said, not only do I agree this is a serious societal problem (and the #1 reason I avoid most multiplayer games like the plague), but also agree that it’s main cause is anonymity. Very few people communicate with other humans in real life with such toxicity for fear of consequences. I believe that the only solution is to de-anonymize gaming by requiring real names and even addresses. It would be resisted with the ferocity of a billion fiery suns, but the toxicity and assholery would stop overnight.
I think most people tend to asshole, depending on a few factors. Being anonymous helps. Feeling like you’re in your “safe space” helps too.
It’s like how some people become raging assholes when behind the wheel. No idea how to fix it.
With LoL, it just has so many players that inevitably you’re going to get a bunch of shitgibbons. I don’t think the game creates sociopaths, it’s just that lots of sociopaths play it.
However, some games do specifically have mechanics that attract those types.
Today a local man was shot and killed by police during a swat raid instigated by a CoD match…
It happens now, it would become more common this way.
Anonimity is not the issue. Lack of real-life consequences (and a clear connection between the troublesome actions and said consequences) is the problem.
I agree the transition would take time and there would be horrible incidents like that (as there are now), but I’d like to believe that eventually there would be no reason for the initial animosity and they would dissipate.
And, granted, this is what @nogwart seems to be getting at. The anonymity enables the lack of consequences. I’d certainly agree there is truth there, and why people behave more toxically online.
There’s one flaw with the Greater Dickwad Theory. It’s not that anonymity turns normal people into assholes, its that assholes are emboldened to be more so due to anonymity. In face to face they would suffer consequences, be it social shunning, loss of face, or perhaps just a straight up punch in the face. Online hey risk none of that, since their behavior does not follow them into the real world.
Pegging real names and addresses without dealing with that first is only inviting worse toxicity. Because now that behavior can follow their targets into the real world in ways they are unlikely to experience themselves. I’m not going to call the cops, or send a creepy letter with pictures of your house and family to someone, but the person who would could do that more easily, and not risk being known. After all, if you play matches with hundreds of people, how do you know which one sent the letter with know return address?
Living in a third world country teaches you some things. One of those is what I said above - the problem is lack of consequences, not anonimity. If people know they can get away with something, they’ll do that something regardless of anonimity. Anonimity helps as far as it enables the lack of consequences, but otherwise, it is not the problem at all. I’m sick and tired of knowing people who do terrible things just because they can get away with it, anonimity or not.
Brazil is a cesspool of terrible people who will do terrible things because they know they’ll get away with it - because “everyone does”, or because law enforcement doesn’t care, or because the legal system is too lenient, or because they have enough money to pay bribes, or because they have connections in the “right” places. Rule of law? Pfffff. I wish.
Also, brazilian gamers. Don’t get me started.
I had to chuckle at this, because it’s been so true in my experience. As soon as I see Portuguese being spoken in chat, I find myself mentally cringing a little.Which is kind of unfortunate, because the best people I’ve ever met in my life are from Brazil.
Anonymity does create assholes, if by “asshole”, you mean “defector in a prisoners dilemma”. In decision theory studies, it’s repeated games (i.e. maintaining a reputation between iterations that generates cooperation in the long term.
Well, I know some really great people here, but I feel like it’s in spite of Brazil, and not by any chance because of it. ;)
Honestly, spending two months living in one was educational in that way too. So often it was interesting to see who was in on the hustle, just because I was clearly a foreigner. Especially funny as the end of my time as by then I was aware of the scams, and so could laugh as they tried to hustle me.
I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work.
Not to say they didn’t get me a time or two. There are two specific instances where I got hustled that I can recall. It wasn’t great, but the amounts were small. Chalk it up as the price of an education.
That said the people were usually pretty good, and friendly. It’s just you could see the cracks if you knew where to look.
It’s not just anonymity + audience. It’s also the lack of moderation. Riot does have a report system but I’m not convinced it works well. Note that I think part of the reason it doesn’t work well is too many people won’t report shit behavior. The system relies on both multiple reports for individual incidents and reports on series of incidents piling up.
Still, I think there are problems on Riot’s end. I’ve reported overtly racist behavior before and never knew if there was a result. It’s true that you won’t always see the “a summoner you have reported for bad behavior has been suspended” or whatever message. But it’s very easy to get new accounts. I think the perceived slowness with which Riot acts leads to apathy in the community. Combine that with the memers and you get the usual shithole that can’t even be called a “community”. And that’s the real problem.
I only pop on to play Arams occasionally or do Urf (thanks for ruining that, Riot). But you still see flaming and absurd behavior there. I was in an aram and a chogath on my team lost his mind because he asked us to let him wave clear for sustain and then our Viktor accidentally caught a creep with a laser while poking them enemy. The cho kept burning summoners uselessly (or to steal undeeded healths), wouldn’t fight until everyone on our team was dead (and then he’d just feed), and split the rest of his time either afk or flaming. We all reported and I actually got the “summoner suspended” message shortly thereafter.
Another game saw someone ask to trade for my Jinx in champ select. I denied (the player had Kalista, who I can’t play very well) and nothing was said. We had a great comp and I thought we’d easily win. While I was under tower an enemy swain tried to snare me. I would have easily dodged it but the Kalista waited until that moment to bind her ult to me and it got me killed. I said “wtf?” and then the flaming began. “Idiot jinx refusing to give me my main” lol. Every time we got into a fight the Kalista would ult if I was about to get kills to rob me of kills. Then spent time flaming my score (I think it wound up 2-9-whatever) and telling me what a bronzie I was. Did anyone else on the team report? No idea. I did I never knew if the account got suspended. That’s really frustrating, frankly.
Every kid is a rough diamond. Every kid need education to shine.
Some many people is still a rough diamond, and will never shine because they where never educated and is now too late.
Communities that grown to see as acceptable some asshole behavior will have many assholes and will cultivate a asshole group of people and culture.
To me a asshole is somebody that was never told to behave better. And / or one that live in a community where theres not better accepted examples in behavior.
Also this is bigger than us. People from a family or even social environment where assholes behaviors are accepted may be asshole despite our best preparations.
I totally agree. We had great BF 1942 / Vietnam / BF2 servers and we built up a great community that had a lot of fun playing together. Active admins = less asshats.
What can we do to convince the developers to add this back in? My guess is the reason they went away from dedicated servers is b/c microtransactions make them a lot more cash than dedicated servers and they would want as big as a population as possible to attract new people and with dedicated servers, this removes a significant portion of the population unless you go looking for a dedicated server.
Thoughts?
You should realize that even though your opponents appear to be harming you, in the end, their destructive activity will damage only themselves. In order to check your own selfish impulse to retaliate, you should recall your desire to practice compassion and assume responsibility for helping prevent the other person from suffering the consequences of his or her acts.
Naw just kidding, flame them back.