On Toxicity - Is There A Solution?

I think that some kind of reward system would definitely do a decent amount to encourage survivors not to be quite so arrogant and gloaty, but honestly, I think the solution to this problem is gonna have to be - at least in part - fixing the balance issues so survivors can't four-man-escape quite so easily, and make them feel some more pressure to actually just leave in the endgame.

I really do feel you, though. Multiple times I've had the last survivor in the trial just stand in an exit gate until the timer's nearly down, solely so they can teabag me and run out. I don't give them the satisfaction, and they will quite literally stand there until the last second before finally running out, it's really annoying.

And the amount of times where my team has done nothing wrong and got BM'ed is also uncountable with many sets of hands.

And how would you stop swfs from abusing it?

Seen it plenty in WoW pvp premades, people report or vote to kick random pugs and the pug gets booted etc.

It's happened on steam and google review often enough.

Actually ban people for being toxic instead of acting like it's okay/acceptable would be a start. This game and dev team are the embodiment of that Simpsons scene. "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"

No way the devs can stop it really... its a mindset problem and has to be fixed by changing their mindset. When everyone else is doing it, people see it as the "cool" or "funny" thing to do, so more people start doing it in response...

The only way the devs can change some toxic behavior is by adding cooldowns to certain things which could affect gameplay. Like not being able to spam crouch, flick flashlights, etc. That is something they could do to help eliminate toxic behaviors, but that doesn't resolve the issue with players being toxic to each other.

I second this.

I've had people text me homophobic slurs(cause I'm a lesbian) cause of this game and just the other day apparently the reason I'm soooo bad at this game is cause I'm a woman lmao.

But did I get super bothered? No cause there is just ######### people and you gotta get on with it.

I'm not justifying but being realistic. There are ######### people and to actually try and act like you can take that away is just not realistic.

It's not a millennial thing, why even say that?

If you're older you should have enough sense that people are just ######### sometimes and there's nothing that can change that.

The point is that some people look to a frustrating culture and go 'this sucks, can we change that?', and other people look at a frustrating culture and go 'not only is this inevitable, but if you're bothered by it, you're the loser and you need to get over it.'

There's very obviously an issue with player nastiness in this game, and while the issue can never be entirely expunged, it can definitely be reduced on the simple fact that it's currently entirely unpunished and that other communities, while always containing bad sports, have managed to be not quite as systemically hateful as this one. And the issue will never go away if the community continues to accept it as just another part of the game and belittle players who take issue with it.

As an aside, OP, I'm frequently lowkey awed reading your posts. It's rare that you express an opinion that I don't share in its entirety and I've always appreciated your thoroughness when doing so. I don't have very much to say here that you haven't already and I quite like the idea of thumbs ups meaning something.

I get that but in the same breath I'm just pointing out the reality of the situation.

It sucks people are toxic but that's just the way it is, I would welcome a system to tackle slurs etc... but not in game bm personally cause it's just a game.

If people are directly using slurs and being that type of way then yeah a system should exist but for me personally. I just accept people are gonna be immature and disgusting cause it's just the reality of some people really suck sadly.

I ain't justifying it, that's just how I see it.

I appreciate your comment about agreeing with my opinions a lot, we can't always agree but I can say I respect you completely and your views♡

Just as a note, "don't look at the flashlights if they are physically harmful to you" is not exactly an option. If killers could completely avoid seeing any slight hint of flashlights, they would be utterly pointless. And looking away from your screen is also difficult.

Can we please, if nothing else, leave the onus on BHVR to prevent that from being possible, rather than blaming the people who just want to play the game for photosensitivity?

It doesn't affect me beyond being annoying, but that's an extremely weird thing to defend.

By this logic why have laws since people are going to break them anyway?

The thumbs up will definitely not be abused by people spamming it because they can lol.

Toxicity will never be fixed in this game and that's goes to every game there is. You can't put punishment on someone for spamming their flashlights and pressing the crouch button repeatedly. Either press the continue button and don't read chat or report them if they did say something offensive like racial slurs or life threats.

Also the toxicity in this game is just childish. There's a lot of games with worse cesspool than this not that I'm saying any of this is makes it any better but I just disagree on anyone saying this is the most toxic community in a game there is lol. It's far from it.

I told you in that other thread a lot of immature kids and teens play DBD. It’s a video game so us adults are usually the minority. Do yourself a favor and look at the profiles of players who are toxic- you will see a trend of indicators pointing to them being minors. It’s not always the case I know- but we have to start taking children into consideration whenever you see a lot of bad behavior. Watch when VHS comes out- you’ll hear all the kids on the mic in nearly every game. F13 was the most graphic & goriest Asymmetrical Horror Game and it had waaaayyyy too many kids in there ragequitting, teabagging, cheating, glitching, team killing, cursing you on the mic, screaming, making noise, etc. etc.

It's simple to belittle this whole thing by framing it like survivors crouching or clicking a flashlight is the actual problem. It's not. Language exists and actions have agreed-upon meanings. I'm not pissed that a player is clicking buttons, I'm pissed because the player is telling me "haha ######### you look at me" when I'm just trying to unwind. I don't care when a survivor is tbagging me when they first spawn in or if they're injured and run up to my gen; I care when they do while they're bodyblocking me into a corner, or wasting my time at the gates, because the message they're conveying is different, obvious, and mocking. And I don't like when a stranger walks up to me and starts mocking me without provocation. Call me 'triggered' if you like for having emotions or being capable of dislike. Some rando being rude doesn't have any sticking power and I'll forget it as soon as the next match starts, but it still ruins my mood while it's going on, and it's the leading cause of me wanting to put down this game. I don't care if I got absolutely destroyed in a match, but I do care when the survivors were sore winners. I don't care if I die, but I do care if I spent four minutes bleeding out while the killer nodded on top of me.

People have suggested limiting flashlight clicking or crouching via mechanics, and while that's something, I doubt it would be effective. A new language of disrespect would form around those restrictions. People are always going to find ways to express themselves, whether that's positive or negative. And because shallow trash-talk is difficult to quantify or measure up against a set of enforceable rules, measures to discourage it have to focus on rewarding players for not doing it. It's not a participation medal (which has always struck me as a straw argument anyway), it's because banning someone for excessive tbagging and saying 'ggez' is fairly idiotic and that's the stick on the other side of this carrot. Rewarding people for a good deed? The good deed has already become the rarity in this environment and any increase in goodwill is still progress towards unravelling this snafu, externally motivated or not. It's not like that's an unusual thing. The whole of society is founded on a careful network of rewards and threats keeping everyone in line. And linking these potential rewards to a thumbs up from other players means it always remains subjective and can't be gamed. Really, the only restriction that needs to be put in place is that players who queue together can't rate each other. But I digress.

I'm here to play a game for fun and my definition of fun doesn't involve people who are being dicks to me for no reason. The only way for these people to ever fit into my definition of fun is for me to bypass annoyance into active sadism (so to where I'm not only unbothered by them, but delighted in any salt I can extract while doing it), and at that point, I'm part of the problem. Honestly, you can say whatever you like about me being too soft and needing to toughen up, but in a game like this, you want more players like me to exist - players that aren't jaded or spiteful and have empathy for the other side whilst playing. When I queue up and either one or four random people are set against me? I'm nothing special, but I'm better for player retention than the guy who's playing Basement Bubba to sublimate his frustration from his last match, or the guy who routinely tunnels at five gens because he's beyond giving a ######### about the other players, or the SWF whose goal is to see just how much hell they can put the killer through in one match, or the solo who screams about every page of the survivor rulebook the killer broke and how everything they played, ran, or did was an undeserved crutch. The ideal match is one where players left having fun, not pissed off at the other players. And the current environment is kind of horrible at that because it encourages players to build grudges until they're 100% done with everyone.

A lot of the players that behave in a provocative manner aren't inherently bad people. Some of them are, and griefing was always their objective. You can't avoid those; they exist in every community in the world, online or not. But others do it because they've gotten frustrated with other players and have reached the point where they expect hostility as a baseline (and so react to it preemptively or perceive it where it doesn't exist), and others have simply learned it from their environment and think it's the cool/funny thing to do. Those people are matching the tone of the community and can be peeled back just by making this environment less awful.

In any case, nothing's going to change if nothing's ever tried.

It's terrible advice.

The same can be said of slurs and various other forms of mental torture. Just sounds like you're making excuses is all. We could, you know, ban it instead? But I know people who are into DBD hate actually attempting to fix issues. Much better to let it fester.

Both sides BM and are sore winners/losers in end game chat/messages. Survivors teabag in exit and killers slug last survivor shaking head no and spamming their power on top until EGC timer or bleed out (whichever comes first). Both sides after winning will rag on the other for losing while playing meta perks even though they too are running meta perks.

While thumbs up actually doing something to bring some positivity into the game would be nice I don't think it will stop BM and toxicity in chat/messages.

BMing I don't see ending. There's already the devisive nature of the game, both sides claim they have it worse than the other and that the other is more mean (both sides suck). Then you have content creators helping push the survivor v killer animosity - BMing in their streams, stoking anger in their communities against the other side, encouraging BM by saying the other side is just being sensitive or they can do it because other side does. People like watching the BM videos and try to recreate them in game, be just like that streamer they idolize. There's also people that just enjoy getting under a randoms skin and BM is easiest way.

Ending toxicity in chat/messages would be easy fix - get rid of chat and move those resources to other things in game, assign everyone a DBD ID for reporting so players can't go into each other's profiles (can't message if can't see profile).

There are SWF groups that play not to win, but to abuse killers in every way they can, mostly their endgame chat is something like that:

"ezgg", "uninstall plz", "noob killer".

Removing endgame chat is like kicking the cherry off from the top of the toxic cake.

Well then thats the time to play slug only, I hate swf like that but nothing you can do about it other than get used to it. The frustration goes away with more playtime

Yeah, force them to play both roles... they'll understand what each role is going through and stop acting like children.

Whether it's worse is subjective, but as for killers being less toxic than survivors, absolutely. The difference is that a lot of frustrating killer strategies have an actual benefit and therefore can't be assumed to be toxic without other indicators. They're still bad for the game's health and they don't engender any goodwill, but there is a reason people do them beyond to provoke the other player. I hate it when I get tunneled out, but I always try to keep in mind that the killer player is trying to win and I'm probably just unlucky.

One is an attitude issue and the other is an issue with game balance. The latter definitely leads to the former, but while they're related problems, the impetus is different.

Awful to face isn't synonymous with toxic. It's a bit like what StarLost just described. A player flashlight/sabo saving against a killer isn't toxic. A player flashlight/sabo saving against a killer, BMing, and refusing to let the game end in favor of continued annoyance is toxic. A killer proxy camping and tunneling a player isn't toxic, but a killer spending 2 minutes nodding and hitting the hook is toxic, and a killer who facecamps the first survivor they catch to death is probably toxic because the loss from that strategy typically outweighs the gain and it's mostly employed for salt farming. But there is still a chance they're just new and don't know how to play the game. The endgame will usually reveal which one they are.