About Toxicity in PvP

[WhoIsThis]

It wasn't always so bad as it is now though, I use to pvp & it was a nice fun thing, now it's just a over competitive cesspool of just angry people scream who rushed and who didn't & died, that is why I wouldn't touch pvp now with a 30 foot pole if my life depended on it.

I'd say the 2010-2011 era was the best as far as civility went. Then introducing guilds helped too, as one spent a disproportionate amount of time with guild mates.

After reading many threads about how PvP is the most toxic it has ever been, I am making this thread to share my opinion on the problem.

Over the years, Pocket Legends has gone through many changes that has changed the way people play and talk. However, trash talking has become more and more abusive. There are several reasons behind this in my opinion:

1. Pocket Legends is a videogame. Everyone in the game is playing behind a screen of some kind in the safety of their homes. Anyone can tell another person on a video game to kill themselves usually without any repercussions simply because there is anonymity online that is not prevalent in real life.

2. The "All items are tradable" update. What I have observed is that many feel the need to prove their superiority over others, whether it is through skills in PvP or limited edition vanities. The whole "newgen" phrase is being used more and more as many feel the need to show that they are superior to others based on when they started playing the game. They can not show this superiority through vanities anymore because all of them are tradable. Personally, I am not upset about this update because it allows us to use vanities for what they are really for: looks. If you like the way an item looks then you should not have a problem with others having it because you can rock your own style without worrying about exclusivity.

3. PvP can be frustrating, especially with class imbalances and the advantage given to one player over another because of "rushing." People are vengeful and seek to kill the ones that "rush" them or beat them consistently. This results in teaming and the trash talk we see today. Like I stated above, people want to feel like a special snowflake or more powerful than others. Often, these people who trash talk have a lack of control or power over their own lives (lack of friends, getting bullied, etc).

4. Trash talking is learned behavior. Toxicity results in more toxicity.

There is nothing wrong with friendly competition. In fact, competitive banter helps one another improve their game while finding mutual respect for one another. Trash talking is part of sports, not just videogames. Many great basketball players, such as Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Larry Bird talked trash to tilt their opponents. It is an effective strategy to get in your opponent's head, however the toxicity in Pocket Legends borders on abuse.

Often, the greatest players do not say, they just do. The time you waste typing away could be used to improve your game.

Balance is the one that can be most controlled and I agree that there needs to be a lot of work done to get the balance right. In practice, the 3 sets (int, dex, and str) could be asymmetrically balanced, but they all need to be viable at end game. Otherwise it renders an entire build ineffective (Ex: int mage has seen some big swings).

It is for that reason that I spent a long time writing some very lengthy posts on getting balance right.




There are communities that do attract a more mature client base. It really depends though. I find that a rating system would be good in some games, especially MMOs. I find elsewhere that it is often the hardcore places that have the most mature audiences, although there are usually a few contested sub-forums.

I think the bigger issue is the lack of morality in today's society. It's truly accurate that some people don't naturally have a moral compass. Some have to be taught and after learning they realize how it is a far superior alternate to the behavior of toxicity. However, with a new age of smart phones and television shows, parents are too busy with themselves and their social media to parent. Thus kids never learn how to treat others with respect like our earlier generations did.

Now, we are living in a world of zombies on smart phones who are incapable of thinking for themselves and instead love to be herded from one decision to another because they lack the mental capacity to make a conscious effort to do something they themselves believe in. They do what others do because their brain has been turned into a sack of potatoes from modern society.

Furthermore, I am not sure about the rest of the world, but I know that my fellow youth in the United States have this sense of entitlement to everything. They don't seem to understand the wealth of privileges we have. They don't see the work that went into giving us the freedoms we have, they think they are hot sh** because they "earned" those rights. They were given to us, we didn't earn anything. People feel entitled to whatever they please, it's truly sickening and I believe that sense of superiority is a big reason we find ourselves in the current situation.

I agree with this. It's not just in video games, but it is everywhere.

I don't see most Gen Y people as being entitled though. We are living in a pretty awful economy and most people are struggling to get by. This is alarming: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...ills/84665088/. Inequality is a serious problem and if you read look up the economic indicators ... it is bad news for us formerly middle class people. I think that people would be a lot more civil shape if the economy were better.

I suspect that most people from centuries ago if they were magically transported from the past to the age of the Internet would do the same.



To be honest, on a lot of of forums, I'd be open to the idea for higher quality posts of having the option of having real names or some way to identify the profile of the poster. It would however strictly be optional.