Toxic Groupings
Daily Ramble 29: Toxic Groupies
Today was a day where I had to deal with toxicity in some games I’ve really grown to enjoy. Toxic players showed up in both Albion and SMITE and while I dealt with it with practiced disregard, I certainly hope it doesn’t become the norm.
Living with bad PUGs
Over the past few days I’ve ran into some problems with the expedition LFG system in Albion. Not that there is a problem with the looking for group chat channel nor the solo sign up for expeditions. The issue has been with some of the participants.
After last week when I ran through an expedition with an Arcane Staff tank, I though I’d seen the worst, but we were at least able to get through that dungeon successfully. This weekend, I encountered everything from underleveled tanks who pulled every group of mobs in the dungeon to those who expected speed runs from a PUG.
Somehow it seems that the atmosphere of expeditions has changed and I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s because people have run outta premium time after launch or have gotten tired of repeating the same dungeons over and over. Or maybe it’s guilds pushing members to create alts to collect lower level mats around the cities. I don’t know, but hopefully things will revert back soon beacuse I really hate to see such a fun sandbox start to fill with toxicity.
Aphrodite
Albion isn’t the only place where I experienced negativity this weekend. In my quest to get 18 gods mastered so I can play ranked in SMITE, I’ve been using the Assault game mode to randomly chose gods for me to master. The other day, I ended up with Aphrodite in the game and since I’ve seen her played pretty successfully in matches for and against me, I thought she’d be a good god to try out and learn.
Unfortunately, I ended up in a game with someone who really wanted to play her. They claimed to have a level 10 mastery of her and when I indicated I wanted to learn how to play her, instead of offering suggestions and help, they chose to berate and verbally assault me. I felt like I was playing League of Legends again with the level of toxicity they were spewing. At least I realized I’ve learned one thing from League – how to turn out negative, destructive teammates.
Hopefully these instances are unique and short lived – I hate to see either of these games become as toxic as League of Legends.