Avoiding Abusive People in the DDO Community

[Furare]

"Abusive". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[slothinator]

If I'm not mistaken, OP has previously been very defensive about his particular play style in the past on these forums - and elsewhere. He believes all toons should be one class (no splashing) and fall into assigned roles, such as melee, healer, and trap monkey. He referred to rogue-assassins, battle clerics, and multi-class toons as "abominations". He advocated dumping con and str for all non-melee toons, and has said that heavy fortification is only necessary on melee toons as well.

Snootch, I believe you were unneccissarily hounded for your playstyle, and drew more than your fair share of elitist agro. However, attaching certain types of playstyle to certain types of players is wrong. There are plenty of jerks who are terrible players, and plenty of excellent players who are also a lot of fun to play with. The reason you were beat down so mercilessly was your absolute refusal to engage in dialogue about your play style. Your insistance that you knew better after a year vs. players with 4-5 years experience made you a massive target. Sadly, it does not sound like you have learned much based on your post.

There are no "roles" in this game. You build your toon your way, and you play it your way. You have stated that you have been successful using your style; I'm glad it works for you. It doesn't for others. You do not like the way others play; don't play with them. I'm glad to see you are still in the game and enjoying your experience. I just do not see what you hoped to accomplish - at least in a positive manner - with a post like this.

[stupid123]

Cool story bro

[sigtrent]

The OP here seems well intentioned, but honestly there are some aspects that really rub me the wrong way. And not too surprisingly there are a lot of real world political echos here.

The good
No one really likes abusive players, not even abusive players.
I agree that its a good idea to take an active roll in your community

The iffy
Exactly where abusive begins and annoying ends can vary a lot. If we go by the strictest definitions, then we end up calling about half the community abusive, robbing the term of meaning and creating an environment of endless persecution.

"Like minded people" smacks to me of real world exclusivity and discrimination and just sends all the wrong signals for my frame of mind. I like people who are different minded than myself. Too much of me in the world is probably not a great thing as much as I might sometimes imagine it would be more satisfying. Too much like mind = boring and taken to extremes = dangerous.

The no thanks pal
Multiclassing is a "red flag" for being abusive??!! Honestly those are extreme generalizations that if anyone actually followed these guidelines would lead to discriminating against very good people for no reason. Same goes for most of your points. Honestly it reminds me of real world discrimination practices where broad groups are labeled as dangerous because of some preference of style or cultural heritage when it has nothing to do with behavior or character.

The red flag for being abusive is someone who abuses others. End. Stop. Done. There is no way to accurately profile abusive people beyond that. Many killers seem perfectly nice until they kill you. That is after all how they get close. Common thoughtless jerks may well be easy to spot, but truly abusive people often are not. My advice is that as soon as someone is abusive to you, cut off contact with them as soon as you can. Drop party, squelch, report and move on.

Here are my signs for spotting abusive players

• People who keep asking you for favors and give nothing back
• People who inconvenience you without ever offering any apology (excuses don't count as apologies)
• People who tell you that you play badly without offering any help
• People who never accommodate what the majority of the group prefers
• People who curse and shout when in the company of strangers (different with people you know or have warned)

What all these have in common is a disregard for others when compared with themselves. The ones at the top are the ones I'd really watch out for. These are folks that will happily use you and never think twice. Towards the bottom its more likely they are just crass selfish jerks, not really abusers.

[KillEveryone]

/popcorn

This looks like a promising thread.

[Thucydides04]

Sorry buddy, but I disagree with your philosophy. Not everyone wants to wait around for a cleric or a rogue etc. Running the same quests repeatedly becomes mundane. At the end game, people do follow certain roles however completing the hardest quests on the highest difficulty setting requires more from builds than being able to do just 1 or 2 things well. Thanks for taking the time to post your philosophy though.

[Kominalito]

my take - the OP was griefed, and all of the points he made are analogous to the player griefing him.

[EyeRekon]

It was nice of the OP to pull all of this content into one place. Really the OP can be relabeled as a personality guide for the casual, new-ish, or sensitive DDO'er.

In a way Support those that think like you do is being done by the same abusers you have identified. They are trying to find others that play like they do with their LFMs saying "Be self-sufficient" and so forth.

I know it must be a bit discomforting to essentially be told: You're not quite what I was looking for and you're detracting from my enjoyment. In that regard the feeling would be mutual from your point of view of a more casual laid-back playstyle who would view that person as too serious and mean. Abusive... sort of. Not really though, if you aren't being cussed out and need to report them then I wouldn't even call it abusive. Expressions of dissatisfaction are not necessarily abuse even if it makes you feel bad.

Many enjoy the competitive element of games and consider it part of their achievement to have neat items, belong to powerful guilds, or possess other forms of expertise. You may be right that players who value these things tend to fit the profile of someone you like to avoid. The good news? There are probably several guilds out there with the same attitude.

Yes some people actually are abusive types and you can put an end to it with /squelch and sharing your experience with your friends. If it is awful enough it may even be reportable and you can let Turbine handle it for you. As for the Forums... Well that does need a lot of work. There is not much you can do to get away from unpleasant people. The best advice is: Don't Feed the Trolls. Do not respond, to not respond to someone's response to a troll. Just move along.

I see far more viciousness on the forums than I do in-game and it is a matter of psychology. The short answer is they are cowards concealing themselves and acting with no concern over reprisal or harmful consequences. In-game, as opposed to forum, it has no anonymity cover and there are tangible consequences such as loss of characters that you are attached to.

Having worked with Customer Service departments before it is astonishing how customer attitudes and intensity change between email, phone, or in-person. In case it is not obvious, people are far more polite in-person than over phone & email - even for the exact same complaint. Something about having to look another Human being in the eyes, or hear them respond, makes the aggressor feel nearly as vulnerable (people can fight back afterall; show just the right amount of disrespect to someone can cause them to fix your mouth). Put another way people often project themselves far more aggressively in writing (and voice to an extent) than they do physically. All bark no bite.

I recall a lawyer that wrote very aggressively where the words would just jump off the page and shout at you. Meeting him in-person he was a quiet, meek, short little man. Go figure.

[hityawithastick]

Step 1: Create account.
Step 2: Play the game.
Step 3: Add people you like to your friend list.
Step 4: Add people you despise to your squelch list.
Step 5: ????
Step 6: Profit!

[furbyoats]

Step 1: Create account.
Step 2: Play the game.
Step 3: Add people you like to your friend list.
Step 4: Add people you despise to your squelch list.
Step 5: ????
Step 6: Profit!

Warmer...Warmer...Disco!

[siver]

Please, stop encouraging the abuse of people who do not think exactly like you.

Recommending people avoid players who choose to play with the multi-classing system (which Turbine intended to be used) is abuse.

Implying that anybody who seeks to have "self sufficiency" is a red flag for grouping is abuse. Stating that they are going to abuse the healer for not "zerging along" is also abusive.

Claiming that people who zerg do so in order to be "making fun of those who want a better entertainment experience." This is not only abusive, but false, as many who zerg do so because they PREFER the entertainment experience which zerging provides. Calling it inferior simply because you prefer something else is bordering, or even crossing into, hateful speech.

The same with insulting anybody who belongs to a large guild.

On a related note, I would like to state something here: Guilds do tend to develop a personality, based on the members. The size does not affect this. If you find players you like in a level 90 guild, then you'll likely have few problems with other players in that guild. If you find players in a level 5 guild which are abusive toward your playstyle, then you may want to avoid members of that guild whenever possible. This actually works in two ways. If you are in a guild, then you should realize that your attitude can color other people's opinions of you. I suspect that more than one guild has been ostracised by many people because one person happens to speak too loudly and insulted people who otherwise would have worked quite happily with that guild.


As for your final three recommendations, I have the following to say:

1) Meeting people is good. This is a massively multiplayer game, after all. Only playing with people who think like you is not such good advice. A part of the fun I find is in encountering different styles of play, and perhaps you'll even find a way of playing you enjoy more than your current one by doing so.

2) This is terrible advice. Specifically, it is encouraging segregation. Support those who think in a positive manner. Whether you agree with them or not, should not be important. If you are in a party, do what you can to help the party out, whether it is something you prefer or not. Sometimes, by doing something you always avoided, you might even find you were avoiding something fun (important note: fun is subjective, so what I find fun is not the same thing you'll find fun).

3) I agree that we should support Turbine's policies. The problem is that sometimes, they can be unclear. For example, some people might think that typing several paragraphs gives them the right to seek to insult, harass, and defame anybody who plays in a different style than they do. I do not believe that is Turbine's intent at all, personally.

[Stormanne]

What I glean from the OP is that if you do not play the game exactly how he plays it, you are abusing him...somehow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxOwH...eature=related

[Kmnh]

<sarcasm> The right answer to this thread has exactly two words, and is likely to draw cube aggro </sarcasm>


On my experience, the self-sufficient/byoh/zerg people are the fun ones to hang around with, and the ones that lock others on "roles" are the ******* high-school kids.

The people who have responsibilities have to be self-sufficient, or they won't get much from their playing time. A party of zergers can keep on going while you are AFK to attend your kid or answer the phone.

The ******** with too much free time in their hands can do multiple lives on multiple characters. They are the ones playing full ****** barbarians, saying "hjaste me! hjeal me! u no good u stealin ma kills" on party chat.

As for single-role characters being bad... They usually are. Specially when that role is "healbot", "trapsmith", "bow ranger" or "buffbot". They are not much useful. You and your party would have more fun playing with multi-role characters.

[Snootch]

I appreciate the quantity of trolls on the DDO Forums. They help make my points, obviously, which gives great credence to folks who speak out against the abusers in this community. It is only a matter of time before the Moderators remove those accounts which abuse us. (Of course, these folks will simply create phantom accounts as recourse, proving again my points.)

For those who do not understand what I have written (based on your conclusions), it is best not to argue simply to argue. In fact, there is no need to try and discredit someone, especially when he speaks the truth. Why troll and flame on a video game forum, I wonder? Someone mentioned adulthood in their trolling post. Hard to be taken seriously with that argumentative and trolling style, obviously.

I understand the writing style of some of you, as you have also bombarded my inbox at DDO with similarly offensive and rude language, as well as having gone to other websites to flame me personally. The people who have abused the DDO Community have written here in this thread for all to see. I am hoping that other readers will find the applicability of my words to many of those who have responded. It is as clear as day, and these is your helpful warning against people and guilds who engage others like this. (Those engaging in the abuse continue to turn a blind eye to themselves.) Continuing this practice on the Forums should shame the abusers, if they are serious people, and should get them banned, if the Moderators are looking to clean this place up.

Thanks again for providing my views with greater credibility, as the inexperienced reader might not have known about what I was talking.

Good day.


Snootch

[Truga]

Snootch

Holy wall-of-text. Is there a tl;dr version?

[BitkaCK2]

I multi-class but I'm not an abusive person or player.
I like to be self-sufficient but I'm not an abusive person or player.

I don't zerg. However zerging is not, in of itself, an indicator of an abusive person or player. If you join an LFM that says "zerg" then you zerg. If you join an LFM that says "no zerg" then you don't zerg. Whether or not the person respects the wishes of the group they just joined is an indicator of an abusive person or player, not the fact that they prefer to zerg.

If someone is sending me abusive /tells I will report harassment and not just squelch. Squelching reinforces bad behavior without consequence. Reporting harassment reinforces that bad behavior has consequences.

Just my 2c,
bitkaCK2

[TDarkchylde]

Holy wall-of-text. Is there a tl;dr version?

"I don't like the way nearly all non-newbies play the game, so instead of finding like-minded players to run with, I intend to force everyone else to play like I do."

[Culver.Civello]

The beginning paragraph seemed written by a FBI profiler describing some of the peeps who play this game.

This isn't profiling... this is Stereotyping. There is a difference.

@OP While those might be true for some individual players, it is by individual circumstances. Not all players doing said things act the same way. I know some great people who play like you've stated.

Oh well... I shall sit back and...

/popcorn.

[Narmolanya]

Today's after school special, how to avoid mean people.

There are jerks everywhere. In school, in the workplace, at the mall, just everywhere including DDO. The answer to being happy in life is to not spend your adult life crying how they hurt your feelings. Instead just cut them from your life and move on. Luckily in DDO we have this nice feature called squelch that makes it oh so easy.

You totaly and completely lost me once you started your profiling of what to look for in a mean person. This simply isn't true and just a list of what you personally dislike due to you close mindedness about multi classing.

I have played the game for four years and I have met many a jerk in game. Some are bragers, some are not. Some are multi classsed, some are not. Some are in the uber big guild, some and in a guild I have never heard of. If they are a mean person it will be come apparent quickly enough with out the stereotyping.

[Arkat]

Today's after school special, how to avoid mean people.

There are jerks everywhere. In school, in the workplace, at the mall, just everywhere including DDO. The answer to being happy in life is to not spend your adult life crying how they hurt your feelings. Instead just cut them from your life and move on. Luckily in DDO we have this nice feature called squelch that makes it oh so easy.

You totaly and completely lost me once you started your profiling of what to look for in a mean person. This simply isn't true and just a list of what you personally dislike due to you close mindedness about multi classing.

I have played the game for four years and I have met many a jerk in game. Some are bragers, some are not. Some are multi classsed, some are not. Some are in the uber big guild, some and in a guild I have never heard of. If they are a mean person it will be come apparent quickly enough with out the stereotyping.

Yes


+1

P.S. Enjoy your new fully-extended Greenis!