BHVR confuses me with toxicity
I have to admit I find BHVR's attitude about toxicity to be confusing. On the one hand, I do believe, regardless of opinions about the end result, that DbD's devs care about their game, do their best with a complicated situation, and want to see their game thrive.
However, and regardless of whether someone feels people should just ignore it or not, there is a substantial minority of players that are cesspools of toxicity. This obviously bothers people as seen by the very frequent threads on the issue including toxicity towards people doing nice things for their opponents and people learning new killers and BHVR thinks this toxicity is completely fine.
I can't get anyone else to stay with DbD as this toxicity drives new players away. It does hurt player retention because who wants to try a new game, get tbagged at the exit gates and then told they're trash after? I, ironically enough, have been playing Civ 6 more and more recently so I don't have to deal with toxicity.
Whether BHVR recognizes it or not it's harmful to their game and business and even if they put out a statement saying they encourage good sportsmanship it could help and would cost almost nothing. While it wouldn't stop it it could help discourage it. As an example, League of Legends managed to turn around their toxicity and the community in Planetside 2 is welcoming to new players due to the company's stance instead of hostile to new players like DbD is.
Honestly, this makes no sense to me at all and even just making a statement would help. I guess I'm mainly just venting since I can't get new players to stay and I don't see anything from BHVR that could help this situation.
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No one wants to play a game where they try their best, or even give mercy to the other side, only to get slammed on verbally after the match.
Being insulted and belittled is NOT part of internet culture unless one is a complete anti-social troll, and I can't see why BHVR is taking this stance.
But they'll probably change their tune once everyone with decency leaves, and the only people playing are the most toxic people, doing nothing but screaming at each other and flooding the report forms with fake hacking accusations, and all the reviews talk about how toxic the player base is. 🤷♀️
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That is true, but think of Ringu and how many new players that will bring to compensate for the lack of them now. It is foolproof!
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It's an odd one.
BHVR seem to have set up a certain...dissonance between their positions, which are, to my mind, mutually contradictory.
On one hand, they push themselves as a hard progressive safe space for all players regardless of identity criteria, to the extent where I think they honestly go too far at times.
But on the other hand, they've confirmed on several occasions that they consider 'smack talk' in postgame, up to basically anything short of credible threats and hatespeech to not only be acceptable, but an integral part of multiplayer gaming.
I think that this position is more than a decade outdated.
Other games dealt with this once they reached a certain level of popularity (LoL), or devolved into complete cesspits and remained niche (Smite, for example).
It's a tricky balance to find - but I think most reasonable people can discern between good natured ribbing and being a butt turkey.
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I think people who are seriously offended by tbags or chat are the minority - and they are offended by a lot of other things.
This is a game for adults and as one you should be able to deal with this stuff. And this is by far not the only game with some toxic players.
Also from a sales perspective - rage and anger generate far more engagement and interaction - you see how successful this game is.
Why should you change too much is the money is flowing?
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Nowadays, I can barely tell. Back in my day, young Lost Star, things were different. Trash talk was the norm and both sides enjoyed it. Nowadays, the people who "trash talk" are more like walking condom advertisements. I miss the good natured fun that used to be present before the era of "dogwater." Oh, how I long for the creative insults that made me want to perform better. You have made me nostalgic... And depressed. Things will never be the same, we just need to get used to this new age of "trash talk" where you just roll your eyes and wonder what sort of mental trauma they have gone through to be acting the way they are. Le sigh.
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Yeah, 'back in the day' was a different time.
I got into gaming in my late teens, and that was usually in the arcade.
In terms of online gaming, it was Starcraft and Unreal Tournament. The latter definitely had a...lively community, but as everything was lobby based, if you made a name for yourself as a butt, you'd have huge trouble finding games. Plus, communities were usually smaller, so people kind of knew each other - who was okay with a bit of back and forth, who really didn't enjoy it and who sometimes took it too far.
Now, thanks to automated matchmaking, there is no accountability, which is where moderation has to step in.
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This is the part I don't get. League had their Tribunal. Planetside 2 has their mentor bonuses, says toxicity is bad and made it so you can't squat on another player's body. In Dbd, the new players are bullied, BMed and insulted.
The health of any business depends on getting new customers and player retention. BHVR is good at getting new customers (eg Epic) but keeping players is more and more of an issue.
Making a statement would help. Increased moderation would be even better but BHVR doesn't do even the initial steps towards combating toxicity.
I'm not going to say Dbd is dying or anything melodramatic like that. It has too many licensed killers but the game could be healthier and it's not. With opportunities given up also comes a loss of revenue that could have helped address issues. However, Dbd won't get better unless they (BHVR) actually do something to help. And, honestly, it's frustrating to try to bring new people into a game just to have them quit because the environment is so toxic and unwelcoming to new players.
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Successful this game is? It's been going down since September, and just lost another 7% average players after the 10% it lost in November. They are hitting below numbers that normally a chapter release won't jump back from.
This game WAS successful. For quite a while. The community WAS better, and more of a safe place for most people - we had different groups all playing to have fun.
With a bit of research you can tell the direction the game is heading currently. I am sure BHVR is aware of it, and most likely talked about it - but they wouldn't have an idea of what to do about it just yet, and certainly not enough information to make a statement to the community.
(The games also not losing players only because of the toxic community). They have a lot on their plate right now, as they normally do.
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I'm perpetually baffled at BHVR's indifference to this. Like, this can't be good for player retention, right? So often I hear of new players that played for like three hours and went "never again" due to an overwhelmingly unpleasant first experience and couldn't be convinced to give DBD another shot. All the hostility in the playerbase is very tiring, very unwelcoming, and I know that I'd rate it as the #1 thing that drives me away from this game. I could much more easily stomach bad balance decisions and unfun strategies if I couldn't consistently trust the other side to be a dick about it.
It's not something you can avoid by turning off chat, either, because the general mood in this game is terrible. Far too many players hate you for what side you're playing and will make a point of playing like an ass, and letting you know they're playing like an ass, because they have a complex about survivor/killer players the size of Indiana and have decided you all deserve to burn in hell for someone else's sins.
The sad conclusion I've come to is that BHVR either can't or doesn't want to put resources towards improved moderation, which is why we get the laissez-faire "do whatever you want in the ball pit" until the toxicity reaches the point where they could face repercussions for ignoring it (hate speech and death threats) and will then finally sleepily swat at the problem. Before that... it just genuinely seems to me like they don't want to be bothered, and the "we think this is normal for the online gaming experience" is an excuse for not doing anything. Because I can't imagine why they'd be interested in preserving players that are nothing but horrible to everyone they meet and actively drive off other paying customers, or convert them into players that will drive off other paying customers. The money game doesn't really check out when most of these routinely-toxic individuals could be convinced not to behave like turds if their ability to play the game was on the line, and they frequently drive off new players in addition to increasing everyone else's burnout and just generally convincing everyone they meet that it's a terrible and unrewarding idea to care about the other players' experiences, because they sure as hell don't care about yours.
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It took LoL nearly a decade before they did anything. Maybe ADL need to do a new study to motivate BHVR to do something.
https://win.gg/news/how-toxic-is-league-of-legends-a-new-report-has-the-answer/
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You don't really have to ban or anything like that. Even Dota is using cool-downs on emotes etc and that is really toxic game, even heroes are toxic there...
It's not like anyone would stop playing game for not being able to do it...
You are not supposed to punish players, you just don't let them do it.
Fuck flashlight macros.
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Tbf there are way more games out there that also have insanely toxic ppl.
I used to play world of warcraft and I had atleast in every 1-2 dungeon 1-2 ppl out of 5 that where insulting others in the chat.
Same goes to call of duty oof.
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Toxicity and bordem go hand to hand. It does often cause games to get a stale taste in their mouth and its a issue that is incredibly hard to combat. I hope they can find that balance at some point
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On the subject of other games, I think WoW is a great example for this thread as a cautionary tale. I played WoW from closed beta to partway through Cataclysm and the player base was overall decent then. WoW has become a lot more toxic since then and it has also lost a huge amount of players including to FF XIV; a more welcoming game.
A more welcoming and less toxic community means more players and it baffles me that this isn't recognized.
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if you can not handle tbag 2022 or childish insults you should only play offline or not use the internet. If something like that provokes you from a person who will never meet you in life or even see you then you should think about it. I have only about 800 hours on PC and DbD the community is not toxic, normally I play almost only shooter and there it is just brutal: play Rust, Overwatch, League of Legends, CS:GO then you know what Toxic means.
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