Well Your Mother

Friday! Meaning the end of the week is approaching and we can relax because the weekend is coming! WOOT! With Friday's though you should know the Reader Post comes with it, and this week I have quite an interesting one for you. It comes from Mundo who has something to say about Toxic communities and player basses. It is quite an interesting read and for the most part I think he speaks the truth. So have a read

Now let's begin;

I'll probably bust someone's nuts right here by saying this. but 
F2P = more toxicity and age =/= more or less toxicity. 

I've been part of forum groups for more then 6 years now. both F2P and payed. and the results have mostly been the same. Free to play games tend to have more toxic players and Payed games tend to have less.

Why's that?
Well, let's take league of legends for example.

You heard about a cool game, you want to check it out! hey, it's free to play! awesome.
You register, you download and instal. and you start playing.
Easy right?

A bit to easy...

You see, the main issue with free to play games is that, you don't need to pay for a game, in order to play.

What that means is, that your uncle may play, your grandson may play, your kid can play. Everybody who has access to the internet (sorry Nkorea) can play the game without spending a penny on it.
And here's the issue right there.
and let's pause right here.
It's not bad in any way that everybody can install and play a game for free. But it's the genre of game, that is the culprit of bad behaviours.

What? Yes, you heard me.
The more individual skill a game requires you to have. the more toxic a game community becomes. 
Why? And what are games that require such skill levels?

You're playing one of those games right now.

Any real time games, FPS's, MOBA games, Even strategy games. They require much more skill then tabletop games or card games. Because those games tend to be well balanced. 
Balancing is a key factor in behaviour in players. because like in LoL. People become frustrated when somebody plays something they consider "overpowered". Like a gun in a shooter, a champion in a moba game, or a unit in a strategy game. The more frequently, or better said how popular it becomes. the more chance people will become frustrated about it.

Why's that?

Frequency, that's why. If you keep dying over and over by the same guns, by the same champions, or beaten by someone that spams the same units. Then you become frustrated, without any doubt. And you'll begin to think that you are being "outplayed" by unfair odds or unfair mechanics.

"Well Yasuo has a shield that blocks everything and a passive that's unfair to the others" 
"Well, everybody spams RPG's because it's to strong" 
"well, those bradley IFV's are to cheap and easy to spam so they become too strong." 

And why's that?

2 reasons, as i said before. The more skill a game requires, the more bad behaviour occurs.
And in a game like LoL, you need skill to be successful. and if a player lacks that skill. or can't develop it well. They'll tend to resort to easier ways to be successful. 
And i'm not saying noobs stick to OP champions. Or that every single new player is bad and will resort to easy ways to dominate. I'm not saying that, but it is a factor is such behaviour.

When we look at the LoL forums.

Where does all the toxic threads come from?
or why people cry all the time?

Champions, items and other players or outside causes...

the second reason is reflecting to others.

people who show bad behaviour in most of their games is due to them reflecting themselves to others.
What i mean with that is, if they play bad. they'll be flamed by others, and thus the person begins to flame as well. and the players are TAUGHT to show bad behaviour because they don't know anything else. when we look at good players, they know how to play right? Let's put him with 4 players who are "worse" then them skill based. Let's see how he responds.
Generally, nothing bad happens. In general... 
There are of course douchebags who's ego is the size of the eiffel tower, thinks that he's the best. start bullying his team, then complains about it backfiring as they start flaming him and then goes on to report the players he first began to bully.
Is it fair? No.
Does it happen? Defiantly.

So CoD's have the same amount of toxicity, why does F2P make it worse? 

Because in F2P games, you can have as many accounts as you wish. Nobody cares.
So if you're banned. You hop to the next account and continue playing. 
And so, this becomes a cycle of bad behaviour.

because what happens now is; 
"toxic player gets banned -> toxic player makes/logins to new account -> toxic player shows toxic behaviour toward new players as the toxic player knows what he does and the new players aren't -> new players start to show the same behaviour later on."

Monkey see, monkey do.

It's that simple.

With payed games, if they permaban your account on that game. it's game over for you, you either have to rebuy the copy, or stop playing.

So people don't want to take that risk. they PAYED for that game. and by getting banned, they can no longer play without rebuying. So they'll risk money.

And the SECOND you start spending money on F2P games, the more you'll think the same.
People who get their accounts perm'd usually didn't pay a lot of money.
people who spend hundreds of euro's on skins (like myself). will not risk their accoutns getting banned because that = money lost.

Plain simple. 

So does age reflects on behaviour?
No.
As i said before, behaviour is taught. not earned by age.

You can have a 50 years old rage out the same way a 15 years old does. However, maturity does have a factor on behaviour

Take Mount and blade for example.
has a mature community, nice bunch of people who you can have a laugh with, but the rage remains to a bare minimum. and when it does happen. the community either ignores, or kicks the player out their server. That brings us to the final factor:

Moderation.

Passive vs active

Games that has servers where people can choose from. for example, mount and blade. Or CoD PC. where you can select a server of your choosing has an impact on the player.
Because dedicated servers tend to have overwatch, admins kick people who not behave or violate rules. In other words, the community becomes the judge. = it has an active community

With games that have public servers that everybody has acces too, but nobody truely actively moderates. like the lol servers tend to suffer. Because nobody can put a halt to those people. 
You can ignore them. you can report them. But those players will play more games after you've reported them. and they might not even get banned at all. You have to rely on people later on to serve justice = passive community

With dedicated servers, if an admin decides you are annoying for the other players. he'll just say; Okay lad, that's enough. Good bye *kick/ban*.It scares them. And they'll now from the second they're banned or kicked, they need to start behaving because the people don't tolerate it.

And it works. it truly does. Try to rage in a dedicated server that's full, has admin(s) and try to be an annoying brat and tell me how that worked for you. it won't end well.

Simple as that. 

And there you have it. Besides the points about LoL being this game that takes a stupid amount of skill to play I agree. So to Mundo and everyone else who submitted something thank you wouldn't be possible without people like you doing so.

Enjoy your weekend everyone!