• The content is predictable (for the most part) so the fights are essentially the same even if challenging.
• To comfortably clear content, every member of the group needs to pull their weight.
• Once you know how to clear the content, it becomes rather irritating to watch people die to the same mechanics over and over for weeks.

Chibs wrote: »

Hi, I have been doing a lot of trials recently and man this is personally my least favorite scene to deal with. Vet/Norm Dungeon scene is the most the most chill to me, then pvp, then last is trials. Everybody to me in trials are just very toxic for the most part. What are your guys’s most and least favorite scenes?

Liofa wrote: »

I am raiding for years, both guild and PUG runs. The only time I see people being toxic was because the "victim" is bad. When people ask for "experienced" (this part is important) players for their PUG runs and you join as an unexperienced player, that's where the problem starts. When you explode the group on twins, bar swap on lightning boss, get knocked into middle platform on rakkhat etc. and many other easy mechanics, people will be toxic. Everyone can do mistakes sure but when you don't say anything in Discord/TS while people are trying to figure out what's the problem, it becomes a bigger issue. You just say "sorry I messed up" and that's all.

Another thing is, veteran dungeons are for 4 people so if you mess up, there is no big consequence to it. On the other hand, trials are for 12 people, significantly harder and time consuming. When you mess up over and over again, it is seen as a disrespectful act against the other 11 players and you will hear things that you don't want to hear.

Again, toxicity happens only when the player is bad and/or being disrespectful to the others. Especially raid leaders has responsibility of keeping the run as clean as possible, even though it means kicking a player in order to stop wasting time of other group members.

If you are not experienced, there are insane amount of raiding guilds that are looking for players. Join one, train yourself, get better and join those experienced PUG runs without any problems. No one started as extremely good player. We all started in garbage groups and trained ourselves to be better. There are steps to this game just like other games. You can't climb to the top of stairs with a single step. If you do, it will result in you wasting peoples time and you getting kicked. Don't do things you are not ready for. That's all.

Also it is not about the class you play as. Every class can pull enough DPS/Heal/Tanking to complete any content. I rather take a NB healer instead of a Templar one if the Templar is not ready and/or good. This applies to pretty much all raid leaders. I haven't seen one person getting kicked from a PUG groups because they play Magicka Templar DPS. Hope I could make a point.

AuldWolf wrote: »

Has it ever been any different in any game. I mean, look at League of Legends. Hell is other people.

The whole concept of trials seems to be meant only for extraverts with a high tolerance for sociopathic/unpleasant behaviour (and sociopaths themselves, since they love manipulating groups like that). I tried that scene for a little bit at one point and found it too stressful to bother with. As a person with Asperger's, GAD, and PTSD it's never been an enjoyable time. People are always so willing to get nasty and play the blame game. I don't know what about that is "fun." As I said, I think there's both a cut-throat instinct and tolerance thereof that one must have to enjoy these, I have neither.

I tend to prefer deep connections with a very small group of people. Usually that group isn't big enough to be doing trials, but that's okay. The content we can do is enjoyable and genuinely fun. From what I've seen from many modern MMOs, I'm in a very large minority thinking and feeling this way. Look at the response to the Wolfhunter DLC, there are a lot of unhappy voices about it being another group of trials. People are so sick of trials.

If we can be honest about this and not pull any punches? It's the curse of forced grouping, isn't it?

Like I said, it's a scene for sociopathic people and extraverts who can manage to be tolerant of that. The reason I say that is because you're locked into requiring X number of people to participate. The likelihood you'll get at least one sociopath in that group increases exponentially when the group size goes over 3. Each new person increases that risk drastically. So when a trial requires 12 people, the risk is monumental. This, conversely, is why so many people hate the Maw of Lorkhaj.

This is the very reason why I created a poll about dungeon DLC negativity. Since not a lot of people are happy with this.

The thing is? If grouping happens in an emergent way like it does in sandbox MMOs, you could actually have a group of 12 people without any sociopaths being present because the group builds up over time. You just hoover up new people as you go and boot out anyone who isn't playing nice. You can't easily do that with a trial, and that's the problem. This leads to lots of drama and stress that, by now, are the hallmark of the themepark MMO raid/trial.

Don't get me wrong. The last sandbox MMO I played was probably Istaria (dragons dragons dragons), I've not played one since. I prefer the lack of grind in a themepark MMO. What I do look at though is how problematic the forced grouping is in themepark MMOs and how popular an MMO would very likely be if it did away with it entirely.

The reason I say that trials should scale to the amount of people playing them is because that means that people would then be forced to play nice. You could kick someone without any negative side effects if the dungeon would continually scale down regardless of group size. That's how I think it should be, and that's the brave move that I think would fix raid content in MMOs. It's the forced aspect that creates these problems and creates groups with sociopaths you can't escape from.

There are people here who probably think that I hate the hardcore, that isn't the case. It's just that a.) I know what it's like to be a part of a minority demographic (I didn't get entitled when Scalebound was cancelled just because I love dragons, I didn't send angry letters to Microsoft demanding that they continue to fund it), and b.) I know that sociopaths can be found quite regularly in the hardcore community because they can get away with it there thanks to forced grouping.

Being the person I am, I have a zero tolerance for selfish, manipulative sociopaths who're only in things for themselves.

It's funny. Yesterday I was drunk tired on my crafting character who basically has no combat skills slotted. I have werewolf because it's fun, but that's about it. I had an Abyssal Geyser pop up on me whilst gathering in Summerset and thought it'd be a laugh to pop werewolf and see how I did. Other people turned up and I found I couldn't eat to sustain werewolf. Helpful. So when it timed out, I turned to leave. I felt guilty about it though because i didn't know how my presence had affected the scaling of the geyser what with my crafter being a CP person. So I said 'sod it,' and on a deathwishy whim I slotted a taunt and ran in there to pull some heat off of the other players. I died a few times, but if I could do some good there, then it was worth it. I just felt guilty. It was a selfless act when I was under the influence of the idiocy of sleep deprivation (I was also taking shortcuts by walking off cliffs like a lemming and resurrecting at the bottom because I thought that was a good idea).

Suffice it to say, it was a spark of how I used to feel in Ultima Online and Istaria. I never get those feelings in forced group content, since usually everyone is too busy creating drama, yelling at each other, and generally being puppets for whatever sociopath(s) are in the group (who tend to delight at that sort of thing).

So that's my thoughts on the topic, for whatever they're worth.

PlagueSD wrote: »

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Drummerx04 wrote: »

The super tier dps who pull 70k on the boss but die at the first mechanic they weren't expecting is pretty toxic though, lol

Yep, I'd rather have someone that can only pull 10-15k DPS and SURVIVE over someone that pulls 70K and dies 20 seconds into the fight.