Behavior of players
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5 Oct 2020, 19:49
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Journals
I am writing this post, because I do not longer wish to tolerate the behavior of certain players within our community.
I have not been properly around myself in the period between the last LAN and the recent NationsCup. This has been the same period in which discord obtained a lot of activity within our community and became the new standard. The introduction of discord gave rise to many advantages and can be generally considered as a huge success. However, in my eyes, it came with one major downside. That was the behavior of some players.It saddened me when I made my return to hear stories from others who lost their fun in their game due to the toxic behavior from others. To the bullies themselves; I can only wonder how someone can lose so much track from reality to justify their own toxic behavior and have no longer any empathy towards others.
This post is also supported by the events of last Sunday, where players refused to continue to play the tournament. Players should realize that such behavior is not accepted by any means. To absolutely erase all misbehavior might be an illusion, but I would like to contribute in my own way to a more healthy community.
Going forward, this means that misconduct of any kind during tournaments will lead to exclusion from future events, both online as offline. After careful consultation with
Aniky, we have also decided that misbehavior during tournaments will lead to a severe punishment for the gathers self.I am firm believer of second chances. Anyone who has been excluded from gaming due to his behavior, but is willing to talk about it in an adult way, is free to get in touch with me for a chat to tell his side of the story.
To conclude, one or more players are as of right now excluded from future tournaments.
Respect means valuing others
Who?
Disclaimer: This comment is not aimed at anyone in particular. Not that I care about some people being butthurt but mostly because I talk about the general atmosphere in ET 6vs6 ranked.
Let me save your time if your ego is too big and you don't want to read about someone who never achieved anything in ET, save some of your lacrimal fluid, and stop reading here. It's your right to stay in your own silly mindset. :)
Fun gaming vs serious gaming:
I can understand that people want to compete at a high level. I value skill as much as some people playing this game. I'm one of the guys who get excited after seeing an incredible goal, an athlete breaking a new record or more simply, I love the sweet melody mAus makes with his Thompson after hitting several headshots within a couple of seconds. Now you can wonder, why is it so relevant to the current situation? Well, whether it's Messi, Usain Bolt, or mAus, these guys practiced hard ON THEIR OWN and blamed no one else than THEMSELVES when their team failed. You can come up with some counterexamples but it's not my point. My point is: fix your errors before blaming others. It's easy to have an influence on YOUR mistakes but you can't control someone else's mistakes. It's a fact and you should accept it if you don't want to be frustrated playing a not so active game until the end of your life.
Does serious gaming really make sense on ET?
If you want to play for the beauty of the game and high-quality gaming in a good atmosphere then props to you and I encourage you to do so. There's nothing wrong. Now, if you get irritated by other's skills because you think you are the best, in an e-world where top players are for a long time gone, let me write here a couple of words. So yes, you are the best ET player in 2020. Congratz. Where's your cash prize? Where's your monthly salary for being a cyber athlete? Where are the fanboys sucking your dick cause you're the best? NOWHERE. All you get are some 30 yo grownup men who don't give a shit about who you are. Please, think about it the next time you are about to play ranked.
My 2 cents:
I know there are some parts in this comment that may seem as if I'm trolling. Maybe I am, maybe I am not BUT I am deadly serious about the idea behind each point. I think the rank system is good and bad at the same time. I know for a fact that I would surely not have played about 1k league of legends ranked game a year if there was no ranked system. So it's good I am sure it helps in getting more ET matches played every day. The drawback is that with the actual system, the "bullies" will always use it as a way to compare their e-penises and it will end up nowhere. Especially, when the bullies are the ones being encouraged rather than being punished. Correct me if I'm wrong but I've never heard of anyone getting banned for his poor behavior towards another player maybe because "the bullies" are in fact sheep.
That being said, big thanks to
The players of dot: For saying that the only light you had this summer is the one from your monitors
A! Aurora: For calling you a noob on hirntot public server and saying that I hope riflegrenade gets fixed next patch. I was just a bit upset because my aiming accuracy dropped from 70% to 69% because of you.
The whole uGc clan, for trying to inflitrate your team before the game starts in an attempt to hear about your tactics and no, I won't send you picture of my titties you perverts.
Warmest regards,
End of the story :)
When I came to the community in November 2019 the large majority was very welcoming and glad to help a noobie out.
After a couple of months some rotten eggs started constant bullying in discord and obviously most of the time i just ignored it or stood up for myself (because most of them are really sad cases of humanity) I hope more people will stand up too these people. It would probably be better in the long run to just ban these people for a long long time...
Over and out
Bobika and Bloodje are truely toxic, trolling people who asked nothing, publishing pitures of people and this almost everyday
Just because of them we lost a number of new motivated players on etpro .... it's unbelievable.. and nobody ever did anything before.
It's also so obvious who you're talking about, because the gather regulars are so toxic that they cover everything. Get them banned for a while and allow gather to become something positive again. I know several people in the follow.et community who do not play gathers because they do not want to be shouted at, and there is really no defence for it. Imagine being an adult, in 2020, playing a 17 YO game and shouting at people for getting a full or whatever. It's ridiculous!
Get rid of the shitmunchers, make gathers more welcoming, advertise it positively, change the reputation of it. It can be rescued, but it'll need some work
Change starts with you, but it does not start until you do.
I mean, don't get me wrong, gather has been toxic for a lot longer but I did get the feeling that with the LAN people realised that at the end of the day playing this game is about the nostalgia and the fun within the community. But seeing the behaviour of some players, I guess that was not the case.
I'm really glad that you made this post and finally said what a lot of us (especially people who have been around since the very beginning) were thinking. Unfortunately it is important to mention that a lot of those "toxic" people get enabled by those who are supposed to be in charge. I get it, trolling is fun and trolling "mad nerds" is even funnier but if you contribute to the issue as an admin, what's the point in punishing the rest?
I think for this endeavour to have any kind of credibility, the people in charge need to be held accountable as well. (Not talking about the cup yesterday, just in general.) Change has to happen within the community on both sides if you want to sustain a positive environment. But as I said, I think it's a big step into the right direction to actually call things as they are. So well done :)
And with that: #follow.et loves all of you and we can only hope that one day every single person in this community will reach the level of carelessness and idiocy as you can only find it within the chaotic ranks of this top11 world team.
First thing is that I find it amusing but understandable that people don't see through you or they simply just don't care enough about recognising fake people, Seba. I wish you atleast had the decency to name me & those others specifically or reach out in PM as you so happily mention for people to do. No shame there. :)
I said immediately after it was published that there is DIV1 with 3 teams and we play the only game that actually made sense in 3h (well 2h, but I was here since 19h to see if teams actually signed up and if it will happen, you know - to actually be there and play) - that I won't play. I had a replacement for me in that case as well and everyone knew, but without being a dickhead towards the others, I assume 5 other people just didn't decide that ME not playing makes it pointless ;)
Also there is the factor of YOU guys asking us nicely to get a team together not that long ago, to give you a good pracc - so we've spent quite literally atleast 2h spamming people and getting together a decent team to GIVE YOU GUYS a good pracc and then you suddenly decided you wouldn't play. Stop pretending you are all nice and never did any shit towards anyone else.
Also stop pretending like you guys are the nicest people around who have never flamed anyone :D "look in the mirror" quote being nicely hypocritical right there.
So you haven't been around but you take what someone says to you with full trust, because I guess people only tell you the full truth every time? :D
Considering how obvious there is the leaning towards "toxicity" on Discord I feel there is also quite a need to verify a few things in that aspect.
I have NEVER flamed any new or bad player because they play or played bad. I think there could be enough people to actually underline this fact. That I start by time flaming someone is usually the cause of their own actions - if there are people who troll or flame and then can't accept getting the same back, that's their issue not mine.
The biggest cry baby regarding "bullying" would quite obviously be Eric (I suppose you have heard some crying from him through outlaw? XD) - I haven't flamed him at beginning, everyone else in the community put in the effort to help him (Squid gave calls for him on TS so he could concentrate on playing, Cupra taught him ton of shit etc) but then something one time just switched and he started trolling in games and flaming back (that's probably his "back yourself up" lmao), which was the turning point where people started flaming him - deservedly so.
In the Discord community from my POV I can say I genuinely just disliked Eric & Tomuf (whom I also defended at first, when he was getting flamed by ipod - but his crackhead brain just made me get irritated by him), the rest is pretty much just a flame-for-flame if you want to say it that way. I also defended Dave, t1mmae, Metzor etc etc, you can't say that I've been toxic towards players without a reason - whether it was needed to continue for a longer time is debatable and probably no, but it isn't like that those players are angels without fault and they just got bullied/insulted/flamed for no reason.
tl;dr - stop pretending like everything is so one sided :)
I rather try to come up with solutions here than to start a yes/no discussions about the minor things.
If I said something that's a lie, do you atleast have the decency not to seem fake publicly and call it out here?
Why sign up if you won't play? Cups take some waiting, it is the way they work, why not be patient or dont sign up?
I agree with this, you aren't generally one who flames, but this shouldn't be a point to pride yourself on tbh - everyone needs to be more welcoming, everyone needs to be more positive, everyone needs to play nice and not flame - this should be the absolute basic of playing gathers, not something to boast about
Then those people would say "let's play gather" instead of trying to get people to play the game vs Elysium, but apparently it was me, who made everyone leave. :)
2) Sebhes' point about toxicity and flaming was aimed towards me as well as some other people, so it's just an explanation, nothing I pride myself in. Wish I was able to chill out more and not be as competitive when it comes to play and wanting to win, hence why I may go over the edge quite often, but that's just how it is :)
It's just a person to person and I've never really been one to get affected by what a random person I don't care about tells me on the internet, I would just give back what I receive in that way - again not trying to approve it or say that it's the right way to deal with it, but there is too many snowflakes around.
What comes specific towards you is the one that I just made fun of you or trolled you for the fact that you thought you were a good rifle because you get kills with it on public - that's really all, I've never had any agenda against you or anything. I suppose that similarly to rezta at lan, where he was a super nice guy you would be also and we could have a laugh or a beer. I just vent my frustration that way and if you ever felt that offended that you took it to your hurt, you should've just said so and I would've stopped :)
Ive already pmed you and asked you to stop publishing pictures of me, wearing my real name, stop your bullies on me, you never stopped, you never ever answered on discord and all you did was saying in public after i asked you why you do this "mxt0r stop pm me"
2) You probably dont remember you yourself photoshopping pics of me and posting them yourself
3) On public it had nothing to do with what you are talking about now :)
So stop denying and talk like you're the victim
Assume who you are and what you do.
But what should I have done ? Saying "Ok" or "Thank you" everytime during all this time and hope that one day, someone makes finally a serious subject about this ?
Look Reb, everybody accusate him of doing it, it's not like i'm the only one complaining, he is doing the same to everyone..
I've never denied doing something that I've done, so stop trying to twist what I'm saying there.
What wrong i've done ? tell me. publishing 1 picture of you after you made around 40 memes on me and shared in public pictures i didn't allow you to share + making fun of my real name and threatening me and telling me you want me to die etc... ? Yeah ok if so, then i did wrong :) i admit
Admit yourself that you're breaking all rules and that you're a bullier and stop doing it.
I mean you probably have a problem of properly understanding English which is why you get so upset and just don't get a lot of stuff - unless you have some mental deficit that isn't related to understanding what's being said, then that's my bad and I apologise.
I made 40memes of you? I suppose that's a lie - I probably only made that gopro meme & then 1v1king emoji, which were simply funny and 99% of people laughed at them, not directly at you - that was something you managed to do yourself.
And what wrong have you done? You insulted me as much as I insulted you, but I atleast have the guts to admit that some things I've said may have crossed the line, you're denying all of that and acting like you are only a victim who's done nothing :)
Oh ! BObika apologizing xd I don't know why it looks so fake but.. ok i accept.
No, not about that 1v1king and gopro memes, I've always been fine with it and said it was indeed funny.
Na, I didn't insult you as much as you've done. or should you show me in private then, all the times I've insulted you ? and then i'll show you after all the times you've insulted me, i'm afraid that you'll have some text to read.
The only thing i've done was to "spam" for 1v1, liking a format you don't like so you thought i was a weirdo because of it.
I always admit my mistakes, i've had some talk with admins about it already, I had a talk with someone else who's not admin but with who i had a little issue too about it,
I already tried to have a peace private conversation with you, to have explanation, to ask you what i've done to you and i would have shared also my opinion but you always ignored me or showed in public the fact that i spam you.
What else could I do ?
he said "99% of ppl find pictures of others funny" - maybe just the 0.5% find the pictures funny (webe devix mayan and our headadmin aniky) . the real 99% of the community do not want any type of pictures shared or made into memes or emojis
I don't mind the rifle comments myself. I know being a good rifle on public does not translate to being a good competition rifle. But it is one of the reasons I almost stopped playing ET gathers, since I almost never get a chance to play rifle. I always need to play defensive medic... and than people wonder why I get lowest damage. It's a vicious cycle.
starting with calling me a coma drunk all the time, very funny because i played over 100 gathers and have been drunk for exactly 2 games at 3 o'clock at the weekend where you were not even around. i rarly drink alcohol at all but noone cares, because testi, bobika or you just starting with "oh he's drunk again", simply because i don't deny it (because i got tired of doing so).
next time you ban me for shooting a pf 1st spawn on supply like it's EC final or most important game ever.
i can go on and on with more examples but i really believe you're that narrow-minded and arrogant that you only see mistakes in others.
"not that it matters as i wont waste my time discussing such pointless stuffs" yep, thats always your answer when i asked you why you banned me for.
that proofs that i am right with what i said before.
Every time u got banned it was pretty clear so any further explanations were not needed, otherwise re-read the rules and u might get a hint next time.
Clean your own doorstep before talking about others.
ETPro and it's community was always divided into two categories, one which was there to say they were proud to participate in any kind of cups (for fun only) and other which aimed to win or perform in their best abilities. Obviously when u put those two together, it comes to things such as this topic talks about. Having players who are competitive from their nature and players who dont care if they win or lose is just never gonna work out.
At the very start, we had two separate gathers, 6v6 and 6v6 ranked, while 6v6 served for fun games where everyone could chill out and play casually without worrying of being flamed or being put under pressure, 6v6 ranked was created with the purpose of giving competitive group of players their own ladder which would serve as a "serious buzzines" style, with tactics and everyone giving their best in order to win each game. As obvious as it was, the 6v6 ranked thrilled in activity shortly after it was created as majority of community is still having the same mentality, while the 6v6 "fun gather" was slowly dieing, having game here and there over the course of week.
With that in mind, we obviously knew this is not going to work out as the lower tier players and those who did not wish to play 6v6 ranked would not have any kind of games going as that group of players was simply too small to keep activity up, so we were forced to fuse both ladders together and with that set up some kind of guidance / rules to keep games as best for both sides. If u came to play 6v6 ranked gather games, u had to follow specific rules in order to be allowed to as the goal was still to keep the games as competitive as possible.
Having done that, u simply had somekind of draft cup where u had top tier player being in same team as lower tier player or those who didnt bother playing serious at all and that obvious would never work out. At the beginning everyone was trying their best, higher tier players teaching others how to play, how to make calls, how to play their spots in the team and so on and so on, while lower tier players were trying (most of them) to keep with that and do their best. Obviously when u had certain group of individuals who after multiple games (30+ games) would still ignore the ingame calls, tactics or just do whatever they wanted, others got annoyed by it and hence the flame and toxicity started to come into the gathers.
Problem is sadly not as one sided as everyone is trying to make it look in this topic, but both sides are to be blamed for it, good players might get annoyed because they know before hand that certain individual is simply gonna make a game unpleasant and unfun for them by just doing random shit that they re not supposed to be doing, while rest of team is trying hard to win game. When players such as Cupra, toxic, Peliku, razz, Joshua and i could name them a lot more start raging / flaming someone because of how they play, u know there are some serious problems from those ppl as well. The above mentioned players did their best to teach newcomers and lower tier players how to become better but after a while, even they realized that with some its simply waste of time as they will never listen to tactics or their role in team.
6v6- ranked gather was always aiming for competitive style of gaming and while 6v6 died because there were lack of such players, there's no other way than try to find a middle path from both groups. Better players will have to try to keep their cool but so should lower tier players start listening to ingame calls and do what they are told if gathers are to be a thing in a year or so.
I could of easily separate both formats again, making it 6v6 fun and 6v6 ranked and it wouldn't take a genius to find out which one would be more active after a month. If there are so many players that dislike the atmosphere of competitive 6v6 ranked, reach me out at discord and we can arrange separate gathers again so those who dont feel like playing under pressure or being flamed can join 6v6 fun gather while the rest who feel being competitive can maintain playing among themselves 6v6 ranked gathers and both sides will be happy.
When looking at any problems, u have to always check what caused it, each action will have own reaction, noone is flamed without a reason and my point above proves it. If anyone feels the need to talk about it or suggest anything, my pm is open here or at discord. I added additional settings at one of our bots at discord so most of spam / flame should be auto deleted and offenders muted on spot.
As for any future cups and such, given the fact i have hosted multiple of those myself and even with recent NC, i definitely know how Jere felt having to deal with such issue, so when someone is hosting a cup, even if u have to wait a bit longer because the brackets couldnt be perfect from start go, try to realize how much work is being put from that individual hosting a cup and that the person is basically spending their entire evening to make something for the community, so instead of quitting without a proper reason, step into their shoes and look how they feel when having to deal with such cases.
There can and will be multiple future cups in ET, but only if the entire community makes a step forward and try to appreciate things that are done for them from some indivdiuals who love this game and dont want it to die yet.
I think we can all admit there are some players who dont really fit a 100% in these gathers nowadays, for being way below the avg skill level, not listening to comms, not doing what they have been told to do and/or not even being able to understand some basic English. I think we can all name a few examples.
However, with making a 'one for all' gather, we have to deal with this. Its just the way it is and there is nothing to do against. Maybe its time to start thinking about making 2 'divisions' if you dont want them to participate in the gathers but then again, how are we/you ever going to decide who can play in div 1 and who can play in div 2?
The last question brings me to the main problem we're dealing with right now IMO. We just have too much 'so called pro players' calling everyone else shit and thinking they're always doing the best things possible. It already starts before a gather even started. "Oh I am not with player X in the team but with player Y, I am going to troll" (the first time I read that I obviously thought it was troll, but then again people who say things like that come TeamSpeak and start groaning/whining even BEFORE the 1st round started!). Bye motivation for the rest of the team.
These new time pro's still think ET is gonna make them rich one day. Unfortunately there is nothing to play for (anymore) in this game and when there was actually something to play for they were nowhere to be seen.So why dont we all enjoy the game we love (otherwise we wouldnt be around after so many years) as long as possible?
Next to that, as I said before, just being around in the Discord channel 24/7 only to laugh at people, to flame people, to tell people they have 20 IQ or 'negative IQ' (favourite words of some among us), to tell people they dont have a life or a job,... Its just fucking sad. As an head admin u shouldnt participate (!) in these kind of 'discussions' or this behaviour. That just doesnt make sense at all. By the way, I am not saying you're the only one. I am only saying you are one of them.
I used to remember you - we even played some games together back in 2013 - as a nice guy with respect to others. Unfortunately you arent showing that anymore on Discord.
Can also start talking about the specific Deti case, but I wont do that as this isnt the main cause of my frustration.
I just hope this whole topic is going to change some small things, bring back some respect towards everyone else and will give us back the fun this game gave us all a lot of times before (both off and online).
Exactly this. You can't expect players to change their attitude or behaviour when you [talking about being an admin in general, not about one specific person] are more than willing to either participate or quietly sit back and watch it all unfold. It is more than possible to mute someone without it being a discussion, to not insult someone for misbehaving or to refer people to private messages. I know it can be tedious to have to explain rules over and over again to people who are more interested in trolling than actually listening, but being an admin means having certain responsibilities. You know, this whole "nip it in the bud before it escalates" thing instead of adding fuel to the fire.
We're all human, of course everyone has a bad day here and there and sometimes you simply cba to deal with the kind of madness that occurs within the community, which is totally fine, but we have all seen it happening that more than one admin lost their cool more than once... or 20 times... or all the time.
Trying to keep the game alive should not compromise your integrity as an admin, meaning you shouldn't turn a blind eye to toxic behaviour simply because those people keep the game going.
There is a working bot that has even 4v4/5v5/2v2 etc on Scoof's discord which is the same, why don't players who "dislike" the toxicity or don't play on schnee's discord just go and play on that one?
It's not like everything and ESPECIALLY the activity just suddenly happened. It took us talking to people, promoting it, inviting people we knew so we could play the game after it's been dead for over a year. The fact that people just simply aren't willing to put in the effort to make the same happen on Scoof's discord (WHILE already having working bot and everything) is a bit funny.
Parzi :
I can only agree with this.
That's what I said one year and a half ago already. Admins made the decision to keep the bullies around and never punished anyone for insulting / bullying people (which is IMO far more concerning than missing a spawn / taking full in a gather game XD ) ; I guess they feared they'd lose too many players. Having said that it didn't prevent the nutters and wanna-be-pro-players to make their own private discord and poach players from the Schnee server ... And yes my dears, it doesn't pay off to be weak, it never does.
The fact is that it creates a very negative atmosphere, it is more nerve-racking and anxiety inducing ... Admins are-were WEAK. They totally overlooked the bullying perspective and hid behind the following narrative ' the community has always been toxic ' ; That's WEAK and PITIFUL. And it's a vicious circle, unfortunately, out of social mimicry and conformity, you can get good people turned into baddies / doomers with this crap (youngsters, people with lower mental strength, people who have been bullied before and who lost faith in humanity). And this toxic environment can disrupt everything ...
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https://greatshot.xyz/renders/3858
Aye aye aye !
https://discord.gg/Gge3XU
If the most chilled guys I've ever met in this game manage to rage/get tilted over the top, it rather says something about the rest, than them, no?
Im not pointing fingers by the way i sometimes notice the way we treat eachother in gathers sometimes in a rude matter. I think most of us have a good enough living to put the anger/tilt/rage aside and just go on..
Sidenote; i think that constructive feedback towards the less skilled players but also constructive feedback to the admins can do no harm to noone..
It was also mentioned number of times that a new player has never been flamed straight away and was offered pointers as to what to do and how to improve, it usually takes more than just one one or a couple of games for people to get tilted at those guys.
Atleast whenever i play a gather game which is way less than some others, i would atleast try to motivate instead of jumping on the flame bandwagon. But like i said it might be just character traits.
I feel as an "more experienced" player responsible for an "healthy game environment" in ET and as far as im concerned thats the only thing that promises the continuity of this community so perhaps that is like sebhes said the relevancy of making a post like this: discussing how to fix the car instead talking about how broken it is.
The poor players CANNOT help being poor. As a poor player who has played this game since 2003 and still remains reasonably poor, I know I can do some things to get better, but ultimately I cannot drastically change my skill level unless I want to nerd gathers 24/7 for a year or something.
The "older/skilled/experienced" players CAN help getting tilted and ragey. You shouldn't blame players being tilted on poor players, because they literally cannot help being poor. The better players need to stop raging and should be mature and adult enough to do that.
As better player you can expect these ''poor'' players following tactics (playing on their position) and a class. But you should not expect anything further. If you just accept that fact, you won't be that annoyed if they make a mistake.
For example I can't remember anyone flaming you in the games you've played - maybe someone calling you out for doing something stupid, but that happens with everyone to everyone and by everyone - the problem is that some people just aren't even able to play the spots, do what's asked of them and explained to them + on top of that they don't talk or give comms.
Those 3 things are basically the minimum.
I never got flamed by you. I don't mind playing with you in gather. But I got flamed pretty hard a couple of times. Even when I did the bare minimum. It would be great everyone was a bit more relaxed.
Tomfu is actually believing it already as he said to jere yesterday:
" A! ToMfu [9:50]: jere you got me 3 times in duel at obj... how come I can't, I feel like i am 100 . acc but I don't hs"
When he had 20acc, so apri pls dont go full seareal and be another pathological liar.
Aye aye aye XD
Some people get banned for 5 months because they called Aniky a retard.
Others can type "I hope you die @name" 4 times in a single day without even getting muted.
(Just open the search bar on the right and look for keywords like die/cancer/retard/piece of shit and you'll quickly see how some people get away with anything while others get banned immediately. Your problem is admins being fickle and spineless, not the general attitude of most players.)
Kevin is making points to try and improve things, let him do that.
There are a lot of players who won't do gathers because it has a shit reputation for newer/worse players (most of follow.et regards the gathers as some sort of aggressive joke and won't play in it). This moment could be used as an opportunity to invite players who wouldn't usually play gathers to play them. Could even hold a one-time gather evening for new gatherers to get people involved, stay positive and play some games.
Problem is what to do if in one of these games someone is abusive. A lot of games use a private reporting system? Is there a way to privately report players to the bot for a reason, and then they are looked through by admin? Just some thoughts
Most of the time to me it doesn't seem like a matter of some toxic trolls deliberately setting out to make as many people mad as possible, or of people blatantly trying to hurt and insult others, conducting themselves in an unacceptable manner. (That's where I draw the line of unacceptable behaviour.) In the gathers, what we have is people with personal grudges towards one another being put in the same team and expected to play nice and work well together in a competitive environment. It's rarely been a clear case of a victim and a perpetrator, though unfortunately that has happened sometimes too, and in those cases I think admin intervention is appropriate. You'd be tasking the admins with settling dispute after dispute. I quit being an admin at the discord precisely because I felt like my job was trying to stop people who hate each other from going at each other. At a certain point, it's up to the players to have a conversation and settle their differences. They shouldn't need the help of someone with authority to be able to get along.
It's just my opinion, but I think the solution (if one is needed) is somewhere else than in enforcing rules about toxicity more strongly. Stricter moderation can play a role at times, but I don't think it solves the underlying issue. It's too late to start correcting people's behaviour. The tensions between players are already there, have been there for years in some cases. In my opinion, it would be more productive to find ways to ensure certain people don't end up in the same team, or in the same queue. If admins start intervening more, I can see it escalating to people using the admins to get the people they dislike banned, creating even more pointless drama.
Sure it sucks sometimes that it's not such a nice and "healthy" environment, but I wouldn't like to see it turned into a place where you need to be afraid of what you can say either. Sometimes some people just need thicker skin, sometimes people just need to chill out, sometimes people just need to accept it when things don't go their way in-game, and sometimes people need to be more flexible. Just try to get along please. Everyone will be better off for it...
Anyhow, if the flame/argue/issue is happening IG, ban is a solution, if it happens on Discord, mute might be the good call. I don't think it would be relevant to ban someone for each and every slur they make on Discord, muting them is enough in the first place. Obviously, it can lead to a ban depending on how often it occurs
This is a pretty good point until you realise some people will genuinely be in the Q 23hours a day just to troll other people :)
I'm banned since 2019 can't be toxic anymore. What a coincidence. Someone get it wrong. Keep banning players so you will drown in your own venom.
Hypocritical wankers.
But then comes aniky and bans you for having some 5 clowns mutes
With the Quakecon @ Home I started playing RTCW. And that is a big difference when playing Gathers, look at potatostein for example. Big mistakes in gather, but people know it's a game and it's about having fun. I did not experience any comments or flaming yet. Even though I played pretty bad a couple of times.
First thing's first... everything is about perspective. We could very easily point our fingers towards certain abusive characters on discord, and this is very easy. But I think we should all look at each other first, because every single person is doing something wrong. Literally, I can look at myself, Aniky, hazz, sebhes... every single person in discord has done something wrong. We cannot focus on one aspect alone as we will not get anywhere.
I got extremely active in the ET community again between March and July of this year due to COVID, and this is when I learned to understand it all. For those that know me, my mindset is always about having a "serious" gaming. Serious doesn't mean having the best players at all times, all it means is... having a team of 6 people that are willing to make some kind of effort to work together to make it a good game. It means people actually trying. You can see that there are a lot of people that don't try. This has been the case for a long time in the gathers, and when I didn't used to play that much it didn't used to effect me too negatively. But when I was very active, it got to me and I started reacting negatively, and I started becoming someone I didn't like. This is when I stopped playing as much and started RTCW.
I see people have mentioned the RTCW being less toxic. The truth is... that it is. It could be because players are generally older than those that play ET. But one thing that needs to be mentioned is that the skill level in RTCW gathers is LOWER than that of ET gathers. In RTCW it's pretty normal that there are 3-4 lower skilled players in each team, whereas in ET, you tend to get 1 or 2 lower skilled players in each team. Forgetting the level of the game, the main difference here is the atmosphere and expectations on comms. I also have to admit, that the lower skilled players in RTCW troll a lot less, and make an effort. So one has to look at everything. I always believed that if someone wanted to play but take the piss and play alone, they should just go on public. The ET public servers are still active, so they should just hop on there.
If I see a queue with a bunch of lower skilled players, it is unlikely that I will join. I have joined some, but because of my mentality, I don't tend to enjoy it too much. I'll manage to play one everyone now and again, and I'll remain calm, but if I play a few games in a row, then it becomes tough for me. Is this fair? Well it doesn't matter cos one can't always control how they act after having to deal with the same frustrations time after time. A lot of the experienced players have tried to make games better for everyone but teaching the lower skilled players some basics, but as someone already mentioned, after x amount of games, one loses patience.
I had tried to revive the private gather as I believe this was a way to help better everyone's situations, but I failed in reviving it. We maybe got 10-14 active days but that's it. The biggest problem here wasn't splitting the community, the biggest problem here was having to play "God" and decide who got in and who didn't. It wasn't fair on some people that weren't invited, and some people that were in shouldn't have been in. In reality, the minute you need to decide who is good and who is bad, is the minute everything is going to fail. I had tried to setup a cabinet to decide but I failed at this also as it was too late. Politics started getting involved and I just gave up on the idea of a private gather.
I had spoken with Aniky / Schnee about how to create a way that everyone can enjoy games, and it just didn't work. Schnee wanted to use the ranking system which would have been a disaster as people like ipod / testi had very low ranks so wouldn't have been in, and some of the lower skilled people had top 20 ranks so it wouldn't have fixed anything. I was pushing the idea of setting timings of when there would be either skilled gathers, or lower skilled gathers so that we could group up everyone accordingly at each time slow. I had also pushed an idea of re-visiting the 6v6 (fun) and 6v6 (ranked) channels and promoting them in that way. Probably both ideas would have failed, but it fell on deaf admin ears.
At the moment, if you look at the ET community right now, you'll just see a broken and disjointed unit. Arrogant "skilled" players, selfish "unskilled" players, unlimited trolling, lots of sensitivity when it's retaliated, and an inefficient admin team following suit.
I mention the admin team following suit.. and taking part in all the trolling, and judging etc. Again, it's easy to point fingers but I don't see anyone else volunteering to take up such a thankless role. I was a Clanbase admin once upon a time, and it was awful. It's like being a referee in football, everyone hates you. Some (or a lot) of it is your own fault, but not all of it. I think at this stage, one shouldn't be scared to cut down on harsh behaviour in fear that it will reduce activity.
What is a potential way to amalgamate the so called skilled and unskilled community so that things can maybe improve? Maybe it's too far gone right now but one can only try. I would suggest a 1-day draft cup. Keep the cup short, 3-4 games max so that everyone can finish in the same evening. No loser bracket, but encourage the teams that lost to find another team to play against. What are the chances of something like this having any kind of effect? Low... but why not try and hope for the best?
What's the easiest way to make it slightly better?
Showing some respect to one another.
Speaking to each other like human beings rather than animals.
Making an effort when there is something you don't agree with.
Easing the trolling and the abuse.
Keeping the banter friendly.
And definitely.... not going personal at all. I don't care if someone is mentally challenged, physically challenged, unemployed or whatever. No one here knows what the other person is going through in real life. They could have just been made redundant, they could have lost a loved one, they might have just been diagnosed with some illness. A lot of people that play, do it to escape from something else. You don't want to come online to escape your life for a couple of hours to find that once you come online on discord, people have found your instagram / facebook or that of your gf or whatever, and they're just taking the piss out of everything.
TLDR version:
Everyone is in the wrong. Play nice. Get involved. Make an effort. Don't be dicks. If you can't control yourself, take a timeout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHmmjnEdtx8
well said tox.
follow.et are looking into doing something like this - we did a Valorant cup on similar lines a few weeks ago in the follow.valo community and it worked really well. Stay tuned!
While I've had numerous games where some of the better players have given up even before the game started like @eron said.
Why just don't the better players just play scrims like in RTCW if they don't want to play with low skillled/some specific players?
That's a proper dose of self-reflection right there
I cannot find this journal right now, but I remember that couple of months ago someone made a journal about toxic gather players, so it's not like this problem is quite new. For me it's hard to believe that some players are flaming others for being bad in 2020, like how retarded you have to be when you flame others while being one of 20 remaining active players yourself?:D
Anyway, it's funny that you "consulted" this issue with Aniky, so the guy who is most likely one of the most toxic players on gathers. What is more - he's like admin of these gathers, which makes this even more ironic. I have some kind of sentiment to Aniky as being admin of one of the organisations I played for, but at the same time he's one of the reasons I haven't sticked to gathers after I wanted to make a little come back to chill with ET in the evenings once in a while. It's simply not fun being flamed when trying to relax.
Still nice try to revive what apparently should remain dead
I had joined again last year but already left in March 2019 due to toxic behavior and bullying. Seems nothing has changed.