It also depends on the genre/community.
For city-buildet (especially indie ones), tycoon games and economic strategy in general, people are usually very chill with the most heated discussion being about nerdy gameplay issues.
Put the average Gamer in a chat lobby and, yeah, you’re gonna have some slurs.
But people generally seem a lot less monstrous when they are “by themselves” weirdly enough.
Games like Journey and even Death Stranding demonstrate this. Same with achievement statistics for Good/Hero vs Bad/Asshole decisions (although that tends to get tainted by the former having better rewards. Looking at you Bioshock…). But what I find the most fascinating are the “single player MMOs” like Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy 14 (?). Let’s focus on GW2 since the latter tend to be insufferable if you dare besmirch The Greatest Online Community Ever™:
In normal overland gameplay, basically NOBODY talks to each other and… it is delightful. People will hop off their mounts to help fight off a strong enemy or to res someone and then move along, even if they already 100%ed that map. Same with jumping puzzles where it is very common to wait for someone to help show them the next jump.
But as you get more and more human interaction, things go to shit. Chatting while waiting for a world event? The barbs come out. Completed said world event? A troll will 100% put down an interactive decoration to prevent people from getting the chest. And if you actually use LFG to party up for a dungeon or a (non-quickplay) fractal? You can bet people are going to criticize your build or complain you aren’t doing enough DPS. And I’ve noticed that with the various SP-MMOs I’ve played over the… decade.
I am sure someone who paid more attention to psychology than I can explain that it is based on the human need to perform for others. But I just always find it fascinating how often Gamers are LESS shitty “in the shadows” as it were.
Agent_Karyo@piefed.world 4 days ago
lath@piefed.social 4 days ago
Yeah, I’m actually very thankful of veterans on GW2. Even now there’s a system in place where they take charge of world boss raids and help the newbies complete them for the extra rewards.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
The Commander System was there from launch, I want to say? More for WvW though. But yeah, really fun when you get a competent clan organizing Triple Trouble or whatever. Or a REALLY incompetent one (shout outs to SiN!) who bicker amongst each other and berate players for not leaving the instance and fail miserably because they never actually communicate what to do (and shout at the randos who are trying to fill the gap).
I… actually kind of dislike the Mentor/Apple though (which I think came later?). Great when someone pops it on because they are going to run bounties and want to encourage people to join them. Not so much when they leave it on and you can’t tell if there is something going on the other side of the map or is just somebody mining copper.
lath@piefed.social 4 days ago
Plenty of games have features that rarely get used or no longer attract interest after some years.
So the ones that do and do it well should be appreciated.
And yes, seeing mentors on the map can get weird when you don’t know what’s going on with them. Real weird.