I’d be surprised if people were unaware of the recent rant (If not, please read before reading the rest of this post.)
A lot of people seem to be taking sides after the recent situation regarding Vetex’s statement on PvP - some for it, some against it, but I think it is simply a side effect to the community at large.
There seems to be little to no balance in the community, and there’s never an opportunity for both sides to get along, which I believe is affecting the morale of nearly everybody. Community members, Devs/testers, almost nobody is safe from whatever drama is happening with the community.
I think it’s just sad at this point, and I think there NEEDS to be brought light on this situation, as I believe this could spiral out of control and get significantly worse.
Although I do not always agree with Vetex, I agree fullheartedly in this whole predicament about the toxicity of some parts of the community, and that it needs to be addressed.
If possible, I would like some other’s opinions on all of this, and potentially how some things could be bettered.
In general agreeance with what you stated. As someone who only dabbles in pvp with friends and the occasional random I believe the issue doesn’t stem from PvP itself like a lot of players say; but the community surrounding it. I’ve met many kind players in this game, however I feel seeing one of those far extremes of player contains more toxicity than most communities I have been in on this platform.
Diehard PVP iplayers are a vocal minority. The only reason other people do PVP is to defend themselves from hardcore PVPers (which they often fail to do). A changing meta means a less effective way of defending themselves. This is why balance changes are so controversial in the community.
I agree with Vetex. This game fundamentally isn’t built for combat. It was more of an afterthought no matter how you look at it.
From seeing how vetcords general channel was after the rant (spoiler: not good lmao) my consensus is that they are a bunch of children and i just hope vetex doesn’t overwork himself or take the pvpers complaining too hard on himself.
Honestly, a rework to how the pvp system is implemented might be necessary at this point. Imo at least part of the reason the pvp community in ao tends to get so toxic is because of how the system fundamentally works. The main draw for pvp, the imfamy system, makes you go out and jump someone which will inevitably lead to people who get jumped having distain for the people who jump them and insulting them, and a scummy kind of playstyle for the jumpers to get as much damage as possible as quickly as possible on someone unprepared for a fight
If we wanna solve people being toxic about balance changes we might want to first fix the general attitude towards pvp that is so often had. If pvp as a system is breeding toxicity those people will continue to be toxic towards things like balance changes because thats how they interact with the game.
Personally i think the best way to do that would be something that rewards “non-toxic” interactions between players. For example: raid bosses that might take a large group of players to kill, this would force people to work together and be “nicer” to each other. Or maybe even rewards for doing “honorable” actions. Like if you help a player beat a boss, or defend someone being hunted that increases you “honor” which could give you cosmetics or titles. These ideas are hastily put together, but in general typically games that are less toxic (ie deep rock or helldivers) try to have more reasons to work with another player than to go against another player.
I would probably sympathize with vetex more on his rant if he wasn’t also ignoring real concerns because he makes it sound as if any sort of pvp complaining is just toxic and not a critique.
The real issue which he also did mention is toxicity. Many game mechanics were put in place to allow growth for a very toxic community, making many players constantly alert and unable to even socialize because EVERY max level is a potential threat. This is really not the way to go with the game because it fuels paranoia and stops people from just randomly talking with each other in-game and so on.
If we want a less toxic community then stuff like the bounty system need to go. People care too much about the leaderboard and some funny numbers. In WoM I couldn’t remember the last time I was ganked frequently and even when guild update released people were being kind and going around warning me about gankers and such. I believe that was mostly because outside of guild infamy there was no incentive to random kill and that’s what we need in AO. Thank you for listening to my schizo rant I’m trying to compete with vetex
