Strife: S2 Games' Antidote To "Toxic" MOBAs

[Yuuki]

Maybe with a MOBA (and Awesomenaughts is about the only one I play) this sort of thing is unavoidable but the moment I see the suggestion that new players should start by go reading guides & FAQ's or watching instructional video's I get completely turned off. From my perspective, playing a game by simply following a step by step path others have already laid out is the lazy ass way of doing things. Or it's kind of like cheating, someone who rather than figure the game out themselves through playing & experimenting immediately hit the guides to get the absolute best uber build.

There is some breathing room because newbies typically only get matched against other newbies. Matchmaking systems try to factor in stuff like rank/skill (roughly) and do their best, but ultimately people are all very different and learn at different speeds (or plain refuse to learn) and matchmaking can only go so far. There will be conflicts especially in the intermediate levels.

When you're talking about an online competitive game it's generally moot to play the "I'll figure it out on my OWN!" card because...well, it's competitive. You need to use every advantage you can get, and turning down basic handy advice from veterans (i.e. guides) is only gimping yourself, these are games with EXTENSIVE skill curves and there is a shit-load to learn.

I must make it clear that going through guides/videos is not going to turn anyone into a champ overnight, heck no, it's silly to compare it (even remotely) to cheating. A newbie is still going to be a newbie no matter how many guides they go through in a game like DotA or League of Legends. 95% of skill is primarily obtained from learning, practicing, applying and improving in real matches. Having friends playing with/against you and giving you advice is really nice.

I'll give you an example I'm very familiar with (or at least I was) - World Of Warcraft PvE, raiding & equipment customization. If some newbie came along to a raid saying "Don't worry I'm just trying out different stuff, I'll eventually figure out the best talent setup/enchants/gems for me and what ability rotation works best!" he's going to get fucking BOOTED and yelled at to look up a guide on how to play his class optimally and min/max his gear optimally. He's already supposed to have figured that stuff out, the ACTUAL "figuring out" part happens in how to work together as a group to beat the boss, that's what the challenge is supposed to be!

Same thing in a MOBA, people can't be taking forever to learn the basics when could easily learn that with guides. The "figuring out" part is how to use your hero optimally, how to work in a team, and how to win the match. That's what happens when a game has such an extensive skill curve.

If you think MOBA's are bad then a game like Starcraft II will make your brain explode. I still haven't ventured into SC2 multiplayer because that game's skill curve scares the shit out of me.

 

[saintdane05]

If you think MOBA's are bad then a game like Starcraft II will make your brain explode. I still haven't ventured into SC2 multiplayer because that game scares the shit out of me.

If so, you need to watch BRONZE LEAGUE HEROS and see some people who are guaranteed to be worse than you.

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[Eddie451]

Escapist writers seriously need to stop using the term MOBA, it is setting a bad precedence and making people think MOBA is what these games are called. They are A-RTS games, MOBA doesnt fucking mean anything specific to this genre.

 

[Voltano]

I'm confused by these tactics in reducing harassment. Didn't "Guild Wars 2" already get released months ago, and was praised for its mechanics in encouraging "stranger support" against hostile forces? Could the same mechanics of "Guild Wars 2" be applied to a MOBA game?

My biggest concern is the Karma system as that could be abused. There seems to be a safe-guard where players with low Karma's vote is of less value than a high-Karma player, but a rotten player can still "Blitzkrieg" a series of negative-votes to ruin another player's reputation.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It's great reading the comments on this, makes it very clear who comes from the cutthroat circle of players.
Sadly some of the features will make it less of a competitive / cooperative game but they also aren't the only MOBA out there, you get 5 new ones every week.

 

[shirkbot]

As I said just the mute option alone is enough of a fix. Someone raging too much at you, set them on Ignore/Mute, you won't hear from them again.

Lots of MMO's have that option to drastically lessen harassment/abuse claims, also saves staffing & resources for the company because they don't need people manually going over millions of chat logs. Throw in DOTA's karma + tribunal systems and your game is set. No need to kill communication between players.

It seemed to me that this was just reducing communication between opposing teams, which doesn't strike me as particularly problematic. I'd actually be somewhat surprised if there's not some kind of all-talk for friendly matches, and if there's not there's always Skype. Either way, you're right that the mute feature itself is usually enough. We'll just have to see what happens.

 

[Frostbite3789]

-snip-

I fully understand that people are competitive and they are going to get annoyed when you botch, or when you're new, or when they're losing, but that doesn't excuse being a jerk. Scream, shout and rage all you like, but just have the courtesy to do it in the privacy of your own personal Angry Dome, rather than spewing vitriol at people over the internet. All it does is reduce your community in both size and social standing. If you have something helpful to say, then figure out a polite way to say it because it makes people much more likely to listen to you.

This isn't about protecting "Timmy" from some bad words on the internet. This is about people that would otherwise play the game but don't because the community is so infamously acidic and unreasonable. I know it's certainly a huge reason I avoided even looking at the genre for a long time. I still refuse to even touch most of them outside of LAN parties because I don't want to deal with people being at each others throats, even if they're not at mine. It's just not fun.

And I do apologize if I'm being a bit of a jerk myself. This just happens to be something that tends to irk me.

And you can't imagine a world where people get irked by extremely poor play and ignoring teammate pings? If I b ping someone 6 times and they still go in, I have every right to be irritated with them.

 

[shirkbot]

And you can't imagine a world where people get irked by extremely poor play and ignoring teammate pings? If I b ping someone 6 times and they still go in, I have every right to be irritated with them.

I do see where you're coming from, you probably don't even take it to the stereotypical extremes, but surely you can see some benefit is getting it toned down. Swear and curse all you like, insult their mother if you must, but in private. If they're ignoring you, that's a legitimate problem, but resorting to abuse doesn't accomplish anything, and that's really what I'm against. All it's done is make the community infamous for its acidity and created a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle where those players that are abusive become concentrated in the genre. It's just not good for anyone.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

I can't explain it, but I have zero interest in MOBAs. I also have zero interest in SC2, WoW, and Call of Duty. It's almost like I don't want to play my video games with a bunch of racist, homophobic, misogynistic 12 year olds.

Chalk me up as someone who might play these games if the communities weren't so reliably terrible.

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

(LoL's Karma reportedly is doing an ok job)

She is, but there's only so much one woman can do!

... jokes aside, their suggestions don't go beyond what is currently on offer in say League of Legends. Easily mute abusive players? You can already do that on LoL with the click of a button. A karma system? Already implemented in LoL, alongside a report system overseen by a player-run tribunal.

And the other suggestions are bizarre; limit player communication? That's going to severely curtail the possibility of cooperation, friendly communication and actually coordinating a team. Make cooldowns invisible? Again, limits teamplay, and probably leads to more frustration: "Well that would have been a successful mid lane gank but it is literally impossible to tell if your abilities are on cooldown." etc.

 

[Frankster]

So really the people being rewarded here will be the ones going "honor plz" at the end of every match?

Otherwise disagre with not being able to see cds for ulti, if anything showing ulti cd would have saved me a ton of grief in lol when playing karth and paired with players expecting me to spam his r like an angry god.

 

[teisjm]

"The first step is to limit communication to teammates, and to provide an easy system to mute abusive players. S2's also removing the ability to see the cooldowns on your teammate's abilities"

This, to me, would only help to enforce my existing idea of only playing if i play with a group of friends i'm in skype with.

The karma system seems to be a nice idea. Dunno if it would work best as an anonymous system, to lessen begging, or as a fully visible system, so people will realize who despises them, and for what.

A thing i think could help, would be to keep K/D/A stats a team thing, and not personal thing, as it will increase the focus on teamplay, and not turn it into an internal competition for beeing the best on a loosing team.

Possibly even make kill rewards shared evenly. I know i've had my share of rage thrown at me for "kill stealing" and when i tried to not land the killing blow, our target sometimes slipped away, and that was suddenly my fault as well. (used to always end up playing support/babysitter in support hard-carry lane in HoN)

Make sure to keep a (possibly hidden) player skill tracking system, so players get's paired up with equally skilled players, and a leaver tracking/punishing system, so games aren't ruined by the rageing idiots leaving mid-game.