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Comment by ben_jones | Hacker News Reader

Overwatch remains one of the most toxic games I've ever played. I've put well over 1,000 hours into that game but haven't played for about 9 months now, and honestly its a breath of fresh air (to not deal with it anymore). There's something about the rank structure of the game (and others I've heard about like LoL and Dota) that encourages beratement.

Apex Legends conversely has been amazing in comparison. Maybe its because its new, the tagging system, that its a free game, or that there is no ranked structure (yet), but I've met nothing but cheery people and the occasional crude drunk. I've played with a couple shy women, but (anecdotally) have seen not one iota of what i've seen in Overwatch (aside from crude usernames that are prevalent everywhere).

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It's likely because there is no ranking structure. DotA 2 used to have nicer community, until rankings were implemented, at which point the number of people who explode at the slightest error very noticeably blew up. Once you add in rankings, not only do people get mad at any possible chance of losing rank points in ranked mode, unranked mode becomes seen as a playground where a certain contingency of people think it's okay not to try at all. As a result the game deteriorates in quality no matter which path you pick.

>DotA 2 used to have nicer community, until rankings were implemented, at which point the number of people who explode at the slightest error very noticeably blew up.

I disagree with the point that dota 2 had a nicer community. The game grew out of Dota 1 and many of the attitudes from that game carried over. It was standard practice for new players to be called noobs. Then there's the infamous "Welcome to dota. You suck."

Can't say I agree. I played Dota 2 during the earlier part of the beta, a little after the first International. I also played a good deal of League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. At that invite-only stage it was almost certainly nowhere near as bad as either of those games by a fair margin. Players were in fact reasonably friendly and helpful oftentimes, where in the same situation HoN players would be non stop berating you and calling for a surrender at 20 (the classic action RTS experience). And while I slowly noticed more angry players over time, it never fully deteriorated to that HoN level until after rankings were introduced.

What part of "Welcome to DotA, you suck" is toxic? Its a funny quip that accentuates the difficulty of DotA for new players, or even moba players that are new to DotA. Understanding you are bad at the game is the first step to getting better.

>Overwatch remains one of the most toxic games I've ever played.

Try solo queue comp CS:GO. CYKA BLYAT, IDI NAHUI PIZDEC.

Off-topic, but how's cheating on CS:GO?

I wasn't a particularly good player, but as a 1.6 enthusiast, and a CS:S addict (on a brutally admin'd clan server), the rampant cheating in CS:GO was game-ruining for me.

I don't mind eating lead from a skilled player, but cheating just sucks the fun out.

When I played overwatch in a casual way a few years ago (never ranked) I definitely rarely encountered any sort of toxicity. It was much better than dota for sure.

Dota has gotten better as a game as years gone by.

This is something I've observed in general. If an old game is still being played, the community is generally good. I'm not sure if it's the removal of people chasing newer stuff, or perhaps because the remaining people playing are doing so because of friends they made.

>Dota has gotten better as a game as years gone by.

Not from my experience. I quit Dota around 2016 because the community was becoming too toxic. I think MMR ranking system they introduced was a big factor. For me the sweet spot was 2013 to 2014, the game felt a lot more fun and casual.

I was never much good at the game but I used to play a lot 3 hours+ a night every night for almost 4 years. I calibrated at 2k MMR when they introduced the system (which is very low) and over two years slowly grinded my rating to about 3.8k at peak. I found that higher I climbed worse the attitudes of people I was playing with became.

It got to the point where I was deliberately avoiding solo queue and only queuing in party with friends until I started logging in less and less and just stopped all together - one day I was sitting at my PC about to log in and just kind of had this epiphany 'Dota isn't fun anymore, why am I logging into this game where I know people are going to insult and belittle me.' I haven't played since. I still have a lot of good memories of early years of Dota but I kind of look at it with horror about what that community morphed into.

Agreed on Apex Legends, which now that I think about it seems kind of odd. I think a game that builds tension like that, where games can last 20-30mins, where a teammates mistakes can easily cost you the game, is asking for toxicity, but I don't recall any at all in the ~20ish hours I've played so far. And that's with a lot of mic usage (both me and other players).

Because it's a new game and people haven't "figured out how to play" yet.

My first game of AL was great, and I was paired with a talkative and helpful teammate and one silent but cooperative one. After that it ranged between silence (Comms and text) to outright hostile. I like the tagging system and appreciate not everyone can voice Comms, but everyone can type hi. I went back to OW.

Not to say OW is without problems, obviously. Not related to OP is throwing and smurfing. I was in a Stay As Team group that got dumped into a large group of smurfs. They let us cap and win and didn't even contest, but would occasionally just mess with us to show off their mechanical skill. Most of them could have 1v6'd us. Most of our team reported them, but it was just really disappointing.

OW definitely has problems, I just find them less than other games.

What region were you playing in, and have you tried others? I get that ping might be an issue, speed of light being uncooperative and all, but I'd be curious to know your experience based on region and what times you play.

>that its a free game

Wait... Shouldn't it be the opposite? Paying for the game should make you more reticent to being an ass because losing access to it means you've lost money.

Optimistically I believe humanity is generally good such that if you get a massive number of users the good overwhelms the bad. Contrast this with Overwatch who (IMO) has a shrinking userbase of increasingly hardcore/invested players, and the worst tends to shine through.

I wonder if this suggests that hardcore/invested gamers tend to be less kind than casual gamers or if this is anecdata.

> I wonder if this suggests that hardcore/invested gamers tend to be less kind than casual gamers

I can't prove this scientifically, but yes absolutely of course "hard core" gamers are more likely than casuals to be raging toxic asshats in any kind of competitive environment.

When I used to play games more the open source/free ones always had pretty decent communities and behavior, though it might have been an instance of finding servers that managed things appropriately and then ignoring the rest.

I believe men's cognitive biases predispose them to seeing the fact they've spent money as justifying some sort of entitlement. To such people, getting justice for perceived slights is worth burning everything down around them. If someone undeserving is on their team, they would rather lose than see that person win, like crabs in a bucket.

I have even seen people admit to doing this. That's why you can't appeal to reason by explaining that their behavior is contributing to the loss. Once someone begins to rage, they have already decided that justice is more important than victory.

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