Most toxic gaming communities you have come across.

[mrthejoshmon]

4 minutes ago, stru said:

Doomworld's Facebook group. I left it a couple years ago because of how atrocious it was. 

@Glaice (Mr. Chris) and some others did a fine job moderating it and actually fixed that shit right up as of now

[Ru5tK1ng]

I've been told by close friends that LoL community is far worse than Doom's. Making 1 mistake in a League match invokes the wrath of angry nerds wishing death upon you and your children's children.

 

I would nominate Doom but I don't think it fits the criteria of gaming community like other games mentioned. Across the Doom board, competitive players are a chunk of the toxic environment, but the rest of the drama and problems arise from people who don't even play the game.

[Linguica]

32 minutes ago, stru said:

Doomworld's Facebook group. I left it a couple years ago because of how atrocious it was. 

Doomworld doesn't have a Facebook group.

 

Actually this is the last straw for me. @Glaice change its name.

[Combinebobnt]

Blood doesn't have a toxic community because it doesn't have one

 

oops

[Amarande]

8 hours ago, lazygecko said:

Least toxic gaming community would be a more interesting discussion since the overwhelming majority of them are all so irredeemably toxic that comparing them is just pointless.

 

Doomworld scores unusually high in that regard. The level of discourse and civility here is among the highest of all communities I frequent, or used to frequent. Within the last 5 years in particular the social climate in most other forums has gotten remarkably worse and made me feel unwelcome to the point that I rarely visit any more, if not flat out leave. It's depressing to think about.

The fact that Doom is not a heavily team focused game probably has a lot to do with that. Cooperative play is largely a novelty occasionally enjoyed between friends (co-op focused wads are rare, and seem to have been a passing fad from around Squadron 417/MM1 era) and competitive play is every man for himself.

 

Most of the toxicity issues tend to occur in games where well-coordinated teams are important and where there is at least a midcore/hardcore tier aspect. These require people who do not have a consistent schedule with a fixed team to pick-up-group regularly (as you cannot simply go solo as in Doom) and as a general rule before long it gets harder and harder to find groups of a more laid back "chill" bent amid the sea of results seekers.

 

TBH, the more I think about it, the more I blame the economy - especially in NA (where there tends to be more complaint of toxicity than elsewhere). The US job market's dog eat dog, visible-results based nature tends to foster people who have or develop a Type A, productivity/results uber alles, toss people under the bus to climb faster personality. In turn, this likely results in a slant towards these attributes (which are pretty much the definition of what people regard as "toxic") among team gamers - people who developed this personality at work (or of course had it to begin with) are likely to have it bleed over into personal pursuits. Meanwhile, the people who make for a more positive community are often shut out of it, because they simply can't afford to be gamers to begin with due to not being able to keep a good enough job (laid back is one step from laid off, as one wag put it) or are having to do the multiple part time mambo (and therefore can't keep any kind of gaming schedule to be able to form groups around, thus are forced to join the random groups).

[Reisal]

1 hour ago, Linguica said:

Doomworld doesn't have a Facebook group.

 

Actually this is the last straw for me. @Glaice change its name.

 

Done. The name has been changed but I will have to think of a better name from what I changed it to for the time being (Doom for All).

 

It is now titled "The Doomyard", a play on Doom 2 MAP18's name "The Courtyard".

 

PS: I am not the head admin, I happen to be an active admin there and this group existed under the name before I was even a member there.

Edited October 23, 2017 by Glaice : Clarification

[Buckshot]

1 hour ago, mrthejoshmon said:

@Glaice (Mr. Chris) and some others did a fine job moderating it and actually fixed that shit right up as of now

They sure have. Night and day difference from what it was a couple years ago. Very nice and helpful crowd there now. 

 

 

 

 

[Nevander]

When I still played CSGO, that community was awful and full of aids. I'm glad I've completely removed myself from that community and decided to stay in this one instead.

[[McD] James]

8 minutes ago, Nevander said:

When I still played CSGO, that community was awful and full of aids. I'm glad I've completely removed myself from that community and decided to stay in this one instead.

 

As much as I loved playing CSGO, I certainly don't miss the players. 

[printz]

Not the most toxic at all, but I did feel some poison even on Doom3World.org, when that forum existed under that name. When I had some problems with DoomEdit running on Windows 7, I decided to ask on those forums about the problem, and wondered why nobody has bothered fixing it in some third-party port [I think there are other editors, but I didn't know then]. The answer I got was not that "oh, well nobody stepped up" / "why not try modern editor X", but some asshole telling me that "well duh, Doom 3 is 8 years old, nobody cares about that game, stop complaining" on the Doom 3 forums. Also, most mods were contentless graphic updates with unnecessary enhancements, rather than new levels. Now don't jump to the conclusion that it's all bad; it also had positive content, but that's the impression it left me when I first posted.

 

I hate how quickly the Doom 3 community dedication died. When I came in, nearly all links were dead. I wish people loved Doom 3 as much as people love elevators or trains.

 

The DieHardWolfers forum has some paranoid policy which only lets people with obscure email providers to join. I managed to get in using my iCloud email account. You also only have one chance to write your password (otherwise you're locked out for an hour) and your account may altogether be deleted for inactivity for many months or years. All this for a 25-year old video game. Conversely though, it's not toxic at all; people there are very nice… if you manage to get in contact with them. If anyone's to blame there, it's the admin who came with that policy. Maybe they don't know how to ward off spam bots very well.

[NeedHealth]

Slightly off-topic but the most advanced russian spam bot i know of has no problem defeating most captcha. Granted, this was many months ago that I happened to check it out*

 

* for curious reasons.

[Lila Feuer]

1 hour ago, printz said:

The DieHardWolfers forum has some paranoid policy which only lets people with obscure email providers to join. I managed to get in using my iCloud email account. You also only have one chance to write your password (otherwise you're locked out for an hour) and your account may altogether be deleted for inactivity for many months or years. All this for a 25-year old video game. Conversely though, it's not toxic at all; people there are very nice… if you manage to get in contact with them. If anyone's to blame there, it's the admin who came with that policy. Maybe they don't know how to ward off spam bots very well.

Yeah, I remember having to have my account verified or some shit. The community is nice indeed, but they are very small, their off-topic section is practically dead and void of any real topics, and they can't seem to get with the times (ECWolf modding and PK3 file formats are apparently too confusing for 30+ year veteran programmers).

[june gloom]

Thief is my go-to example, though it's partly down to the age of the original source material with not many updates, and a very calcified and doctrinaire fandom that has staked "ownership" over the series, making it very difficult for new fans to get involved. It will always weird me out how a developer that made its name by thinking outside of the box now has one of the most rigid and hidebound fandoms watching over its "legacy."

[Bauul]

A few people have mentioned Dark Souls, and this genuinely blows my mind. I would say DS fans are among the least toxic. People fall over themselves to offer advice to new players, and there's absolutely none of the "if you're not good enough I don't want to play with you" mentality, mostly due to how the game isn't team based at all.

 

DS is among the most chivalrous online games I've ever played. I mean, people stop and bow to each other before fighting! I'm not sure how the DS community could be less toxic.

[Ru5tK1ng]

6 hours ago, Amarande said:

The fact that Doom is not a heavily team focused game probably has a lot to do with that. Cooperative play is largely a novelty occasionally enjoyed between friends (co-op focused wads are rare, and seem to have been a passing fad from around Squadron 417/MM1 era) and competitive play is every man for himself.

Someone has never played CTF, TDM, Last Man standing, and any team based mods that have been around for years now...

 

Economy has nothing to do with any of this btw.

[DoomUK]

5 hours ago, Bauul said:

A few people have mentioned Dark Souls, and this genuinely blows my mind. I would say DS fans are among the least toxic. People fall over themselves to offer advice to new players, and there's absolutely none of the "if you're not good enough I don't want to play with you" mentality, mostly due to how the game isn't team based at all.

 

DS is among the most chivalrous online games I've ever played. I mean, people stop and bow to each other before fighting! I'm not sure how the DS community could be less toxic.

It's probably a case of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch, much like any gaming community. 

[Avoozl]

I remember the Quake Wars community was full of its fair share of negativity where the usual elite players treat you like shit for not being as good as them, but it wasn't overall toxic or anything and I do miss it.

[geo]

Dark Souls community? Are those the people who go around writing reviews "Skyrim is the Dark Souls of open world," "Contra is the Dark Souls of 8 directional shooters." Perhaps that's how they're toxic... they spread outside the community and infect them to market the word of "Dark Souls."

Edited October 24, 2017 by geo

[geo]

On 10/22/2017 at 9:56 PM, Ajora said:

I think Yahtzee said it best with "I don't believe in review scores because I don't believe that complex opinions can be represented numerically." 

And people on Steam heckled my reviews saying "all I need is one sentence and not 500 - 1,500 words." Some have demanded in comments that I give a number score. Its weird even if I can grant a game an 8/10 that doesn't mean I like it and will play it longer than the review. Plus just because I like a game doesn't make it a good game or something I'd recommend, it makes it like an abusive relationship I get along with.

 

As for non game specific communities... does Guardians of Greenlight count? They go and attack games they feel are unfit. Then again maybe they get along with one another and just hate things that aren't them. Jim Sterling fans too tend to jump on a bandwagon to hate things. There's something new this week to hate! Yay! Grab yer pitchforks!

 

Angry Joe community seems pretty toxic as does Jontron's fanbase. If Jontron is a part of something you bet there's gonna be news coming out of it and Jontron will be involved in said news and his fans will broadcast it. By just mentioning his name here there's a 90% chance the thread will become about him! Then again its burred in a longer post, so will people read this?

 

The ScrewAttack community seemed toxic years ago, even the owner himself seemed like he'd pick forum fights with people. Cinnemassacre (AVGN + more) comments are pretty toxic if not Youtube as a whole.

Edited October 24, 2017 by geo

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

17 hours ago, cyan0s1s said:

18 hours ago, printz said:

The DieHardWolfers forum has some paranoid policy which only lets people with obscure email providers to join. I managed to get in using my iCloud email account. You also only have one chance to write your password (otherwise you're locked out for an hour) and your account may altogether be deleted for inactivity for many months or years. All this for a 25-year old video game. Conversely though, it's not toxic at all; people there are very nice… if you manage to get in contact with them. If anyone's to blame there, it's the admin who came with that policy. Maybe they don't know how to ward off spam bots very well.

Yeah, I remember having to have my account verified or some shit. The community is nice indeed, but they are very small, their off-topic section is practically dead and void of any real topics, and they can't seem to get with the times (ECWolf modding and PK3 file formats are apparently too confusing for 30+ year veteran programmers).

This reminds me of when I tried to join up on some board dedicated to Raven Software's games (I'm pretty sure a different one from the one made by the tool who used to run NewDoom) which had some account verification process that I didn't hear back from until three months later and then it was a response saying I got the verification question wrong, even though I was fairly certain of it.  And Sega 16 which never responded to my application at all, ever.  I gave up on both of those after that.

 

But as far as community toxicity goes, eh, I don't stick around too long any place that seems overly unpleasant.  Multiplayer games circa 2000 could get kind of ugly; I remember ZDaemon had a guy who went by Rebdoomer and would spam "I am Eric Harris" to the chat among other things, and Quake deathmatchers of the time were always trashing on each other or making accusations of cheating, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that most deathmatches I poked into within the past year when my interest in such rekindled a bit (Doom, Quake, Quake II, Xonotic, Sauerbraten) were fairly decent.  Even Xonotic and Sauerbraten, which I expected to be cesspits thanks to their FLOSS nature, were pretty decent, I got called "retard" on Xonotic once but that was about it.  I guess for old games the people who are just in it to troll have probably moved on to more populated places.  It doesn't surprise me at all to hear people say that multiplayer communities for modern commercial games are terrible, probably in much the same way as the "still vaguely current for the time" stuff I was playing back when, but I don't play those so eh.

[Wereknight]

5 hours ago, geo said:

Dark Souls community? Are those the people who go around writing reviews "Skyrim is the Dark Souls of open world," "Contra is the Dark Souls of 8 directional shooters."

Never saw this kind of garbage. Why I walking in wrong neighbors? Aaaaand no not this kind of people. Those ones are just a bunch of idiots.

[Reisal]

5 hours ago, geo said:

Angry Joe community seems pretty toxic

 

That is mostly the YouTube commenters, the actual AJ forum is pretty good.

[Bauul]

8 hours ago, geo said:

Dark Souls community? Are those the people who go around writing reviews "Skyrim is the Dark Souls of open world," "Contra is the Dark Souls of 8 directional shooters." Perhaps that's how they're toxic... they spread outside the community and infect them to market the word of "Dark Souls."

That's just modern lazy games journalists who can't think of a better description for "game is hard".

 

DS has developed a reputation among gamers as a whole that is pretty tedious, but the actual community is pretty chilled about it all.

[geo]

50 minutes ago, Bauul said:

That's just modern lazy games journalists who can't think of a better description for "game is hard".

 

DS has developed a reputation among gamers as a whole that is pretty tedious, but the actual community is pretty chilled about it all.

Dark Souls is the Gradius 1 of third person medieval games.

[[McD] James]

Gradius 3 makes Gradius 1 look like Barney's Hide & Seek for the Sega Genesis. 

[Megalyth]

I tried SO HARD to beat Gradius 3. I think I got to stage 5 (the one with the collapsing dirt that you have to shoot out of your way) and I gave up after multiple attempts. If you die and have to restart the stage from a check-point, your pea-shooter starting weapon doesn't seem to have the juice to blast through, and upgrades are rare. I loved the game though, and the soundtrack is one of the best.

 

On topic, back during the time of the original Enemy Territory, I found the Splash Damage forum to be populated and moderated by some simpletons and assholes.

[june gloom]

On 10/23/2017 at 9:17 PM, Bauul said:

A few people have mentioned Dark Souls, and this genuinely blows my mind. I would say DS fans are among the least toxic. People fall over themselves to offer advice to new players, and there's absolutely none of the "if you're not good enough I don't want to play with you" mentality, mostly due to how the game isn't team based at all.

 

DS is among the most chivalrous online games I've ever played. I mean, people stop and bow to each other before fighting! I'm not sure how the DS community could be less toxic.

I'd say Dark Souls is a mixed bag. There are some really great people on the subreddits and tumblr fandom, but the games themselves seem to be populated by Giantdads and other douches. I finally played through the entirety of DS1 recently and I could usually tell when my invader was an NPC because it wasn't cheating.

[Bauul]

A lot of these conversations have got me really thinking though: what actually is a toxic community? Based on what's been written here, it could be any of the following:

• An elitist community unwelcoming of new players
• A fanboi community that refuses to accept criticism
• An aggressive community that features excessive hate and bullying
• A holier-than-thou community that believes there is a right and a wrong way to enjoy a game
• A community that has in-game cheaters
• An arrogant community that believes liking their game makes them superior
• A childish community who care more about Tumblr art and fan-songs than the game
• A trendy community that only likes a game because it's in vogue

 

Many of these are incompatible, yet all seem to be given as examples of a toxic community.

[june gloom]

Other than #5 and the last two, that was the TTLG Thief fandom.

[Amarande]

Bauul, as an MMO gamer primarily (single player RPGs and Doom are about the main exceptions) I'll go down your list -

 

Elitism is the primary ill that MMOs are heir to; depending on the game and specific content, there is more or less a spirit of circling wagons: once a critical mass of people have cleared expert tier content, they tend to become increasingly unwilling, on the average, to allow new people to join in on it - they would rather save their time for an easy farm and avoid having to re-progress the raid to bring newer blood up to speed. Some games are more laid back about it than others (FFXIV, LOTRO, and SW:TOR all generally being far more so than WoW or from what I hear anecdotally, ESO), but this exists to some degree in pretty much every MMO with difficult group raid content.

 

(This is why I brought up the economics argument, as to not have to PUG - and it is usually PUGs where elitism is at its zenith - all the time, you more or less need a consistent schedule with several other people - for the top tier content, group size being 8 for XIV savage and TOR nightmare ops, 12 for most LOTRO raids, and 20 for WoW Mythic raids. Naturally, XIV and TOR, both because of this and having more relaxed cross region allowance than WoW in particular, tend to lend themselves to being able to find groups outside the norm, whether it is late to the party/more casual progression or off-hours groups. Naturally, you can't game when you're homeless, and if you're doing the multi part time mambo how are you ever gonna have a consistent free block on a weekly basis? Hence the thought that the personalities that tend to thrive in full-time jobs in today's market are, along with high school and college students, most likely to dominate organized group gaming, at least. It is perhaps less gloomy than I first suggested as to just what types of personalities these tend to be, though, but it's hard to make a case that NA's work environment in particular isn't especially dog-eat-dog ...)

 

Fanbois exist, I'm not sure how much they really affect the game community overall. I find myself fairly sympathetic to their point though, I mean if you're going to put that much time and effort (and perhaps even monetary investment) to get good at a game, you want to think that investment isn't wasted, and coming to a realization that a game isn't that great more or less necessarily comes with that corollary, right?

 

Aggression and bullying are not so huge a thing in MMOs, apart from the manner in which underperforming players are called out in some games (it is again very game dependent, it helps that FFXIV, for instance, has no built-in combat parser to rate performance, and the use of third party addons is technically against the Terms of Service - there is a spirit of detente about it however as long as parser information is not used to bully people; at that point bans can and will be meted out. On the other hand, most WoW players run a DPS meter at all times, and woe betide the player who fails to measure up in many a PUG ...).

 

A holier-than-thou community and right or wrong way to play are largely exempt when applying the rubric to MMOdom; MMOs are numbers-heavy team games, and thus there actually is a right and wrong way to play, at least in advanced group combat content (where not using optimal methods means you actually are pulling less than your full weight, and many harder fights actually do demand the group give its all so one person choosing a "more fun" way to play that underperforms can result in 7 or more other people not being able to clear the fight!). Outside of group combat situations, there's generally a pretty relaxed atmosphere, at least that I've seen.

 

In-game cheaters are generally smacked down super rapidly in MMOs these days. Like Valve games and VAC, MMO operators do not kid around. FFXIV for instance indicates the exact number of people who got banned each week in a system announcement. It's not a small number, either (for instance the latest announcement shows over four thousand people were perma banned for participating in "RMT and other illicit activities" during just one week, namely 10/12-10/18).

 

Arrogance favoring a particular game - again, this I'm pretty sure is common among games that involve long term personal investment, see fanbois. As such, I can probably regard it as mildly toxic at worst.

 

"Childishness" hardly seems a problem. A large portion of my fellow MMOers are casual players who would rather focus on such things than on seriously raiding endgame. As long as you aren't seriously running group content where you're dragging people down by not caring sufficiently about doing your part, I don't see the issue.

 

Trendiness is rare in MMOs, and usually flows and ebbs with the release of a new one. I've never actually played such a game at or close to release, so I can't really comment.