atWar can be a welcoming community

There was a great article about a month ago regarding toxic gaming communities, and how it doesn't have to be that way. It compares the WoW and FFXIV communities (disclaimer -- I've never played either of those games), but the lessons learned apply just as much to atWar.

I have been talking about the toxic community problem here on AW since literally day-1. This is not a problem unique to AW, but this article gives me hope that 1) it doesn't have to be this way, and 2) the policies I set out from the beginning are the correct ones. In short, my policy has simply been to get the small % of toxic people out of this community, even if it means we lose a little bit in activity or if I lose revenue. I would rather do those things and have a better community (and a healthier game) in the long run.

Toxic people here have often attempted to use the excuse "I shouldn't be banned because atWar needs players" to justify themselves. I've said this before, and I'll say it again -- However many players AW has does NOT justify bad behavior. We have never accepted this excuse, nor allowed it to influence our moderation actions. If you can't behave yourself, we will kick you out, no matter who you are.

I have always been comfortable with this stance because I know, from first-hand experience, that the majority of AW's players are nice, normal people. Many are even welcoming and friendly! (Its well known I lurk on secret alts... I've met and become friends with several people who have been kind, welcoming, and have helped teach me the game -- who literally have no idea they are really talking to "Dave". They're just good people.) Unfortunately, when you have a few loud assholes causing drama, the good people tend to go quiet or even inactive.

Fortunately, the actual number of people we have permanently banned is surprisingly small. Sometimes it seems like a lot because of certain people who create tons of alts to try and avoid their bans, but if you take the alts into consideration, the actual number of *people* we've permabanned is probably around 10-12. That's out of a community of (roughly) 10,000 active users per month. In other words, something like 0.1%.

I think we've made good progress toward cleaning up this community, but clearly there is still work to be done. I think it's possible we've inadvertently become too lenient over the last several months. This article serves as a reminder of why our moderation policies are important, and that perhaps we should be enforcing them even more strictly.

I will copy & paste an abridged version of the article which conveys the key points, below. (You can read the complete article here.)

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(begin article)

The fact that World of Warcraft has a pretty unpleasant community isn't news, of course; people have been talking about the game's problems with its community for many years, though in recent years perhaps some of the attention paid to WoW's community issues has faded as the game's player numbers have declined and other games -- notably Riot's League of Legends -- have struggled very publicly with their own toxic community issues. In the past few months, though, there appears have been a significant downtick in the relationships between World of Warcraft's players, its streamers, and the company itself -- at the heart of which lies the question of the game's toxic community and accusations of who bears the blame for it.

The specifics of this all make for a weird, messy story that's perhaps best summarised in Ethan Gach's Kotaku article on the matter this week. In brief, however: a popular WoW streamer (with a history of promoting some pretty questionable behaviour during his time in WoW) switched over to playing Final Fantasy XIV on his stream and, totally enamoured of how welcoming and pleasant the community for Square Enix' game is, made some extremely negative comments about WoW's own community and its toxicity.

...

It's playground drama, honestly, and nobody involved comes out looking especially good -- not the streamer, not Blizzard, and certainly not any of the crowd of idiots who escalated the whole mess by revealing people's identities and otherwise harassing one another. But while the playground drama itself absolutely isn't worth your attention, the stakes in play behind the whole mess are of some interest.

WoW has had a hell of a run, for sure -- it remains one of the most commercially successful games in history, and its record for subscription revenue will be hard to beat -- but it's now struggling to keep subscribers engaged. Streaming has become a vital piece of the puzzle in terms of marketing and building profile for a game, especially for an online title -- and that means that a very popular streamer getting into a heated public spat over how unpleasant the game's community is (and whose fault that may be) is a problem that will ultimately spill over onto the company's bottom line. The stakes aren't just "people are mad on the Internet", then; they're measured in subscriber numbers and revenues and, ultimately, in some degree of impact upon how long WoW remains viable as a game service.

Underlying the whole argument is a pretty unchallenged but actually quite remarkable fact -- that WoW, coming up on two decades on the market, still hasn't solved problems with in-game abuse, harassment and generally anti-social behaviour that have been present in the game from the outset and have, if anything, only become worse and more deeply ingrained as time has gone by.

The question of whether the toxicity of WoW's community is the fault of the game's creators or of streamers and other community "personalities" (spoiler alert: it's definitely the creators' responsibility, but if your streamer persona is a performatively angry asshole, you probably weren't exactly helping) is really secondary to this larger reality -- that one of the industry's most popular games is plagued by a community so unpleasant, unwelcoming and toxic that it's likely stunting the possible market growth of the game itself and, at this point, actively accelerating its decline.

The focus on this issue, after all these years, comes precisely because another game has come along which puts the lie to all the exaggerated shrugs, weary sighs, and "ah, players, whaddya gonna do?" responses with which Blizzard (and many, many other game operators) has dismissed the viability of properly policing and managing its community over the years. Square Enix' Final Fantasy XIV is flavour of the month in the MMO world for a variety of reasons (many of which simply boil down to "it's really good"), but perhaps the most remarkable thing about the positivity surrounding the game is the regularity with which we see posts praising the game's community for being helpful, welcoming and friendly -- even to the point of being tolerant and forgiving of inexperienced players' mistakes in the challenging end-game raids.

...

So, how did they do it? What magic spell did Square Enix weave to create a large, popular MMO with a community that's open, welcoming, tolerant, and enthusiastic about helping newcomers? I don't want to oversell FFXIV's community here -- nowhere in this world is truly an asshole-free zone -- but sexist, racist, or otherwise bigoted abuse is essentially unheard of in the game, and for every impatient person raging at a newbie who made a mistake on a tricky dungeon mechanic, there are half a dozen other players telling the newbie to ignore the idiot and offering to help show them the ropes. Isn't that more or less what every online game operator has been claiming to be an impossibility for the past twenty years or more?

Honestly, it's almost depressing to realize that what Square Enix did to achieve this is... precisely nothing special. They just did what any half-decent community moderator knows is required from the outset, but which so very few game companies are willing to do. They told support and GM staff to take a strongly punitive stance on abusive behaviour, harassment, hate speech and so on, and empowered them to actually get rid of users who violated those policies. Their policy was a "broken windows" approach, it seems; they recognised that allowing the loudest, most obviously unpleasant players to stay in the game would send a signal to others that this behaviour was tolerated and even lionised, and render the rest of the community unmanageable.

I don't want to say "and that's it", as if making those choices really were simple and without complications -- but, well, in some senses that really was it. There's no magic, just a set of sensible baseline policies and a willingness to actually police and enforce them -- even at the cost of some users' subscription revenue, which seems to be the red line other companies balked at crossing easily. The size of the effect is far greater than the sum of its parts, precisely because removing the most egregiously toxic and aggressive users also sends a powerful signal to other users -- or perhaps more importantly, removes the powerful signal which tolerating those toxic users' behaviors would have sent.

It nips in the bud the kind of negatively reinforcing group behaviors that end up turning a whole community into an unpleasant place. Without cause to believe that acting like a dick will be rewarded and cheered on by other users, it turns out that most people simply choose not to act like a dick -- and eventually, the disapproval of other players for unpleasant behaviour in the game creates a positive reinforcement loop in the community, as new players quickly see that this is a game community in which they're going to catch a lot more flies (or make a lot more friends) with honey than with vinegar.

...

This whole spat between streamers and developers over this -- daft pubescent melodrama as it may be on the surface -- reveals two very important things to anyone thinking about running an online service game. Firstly, despite years of being dismissed as too difficult, creating a good community is perfectly possible as long as you're prepared to actually put in the work and enforce sensible rules that keep malicious and abusive actors out. Secondly, doing so is really worthwhile commercially -- because it turns out that there are far, far more people out there who'll subscribe to your game because it's got a reputation for being welcoming, than there are people who'll unsubscribe because they're not allowed to use slurs or threaten to rape each other. A game community as a whole, it turns out, can also catch far more flies with honey than with vinegar.

(end of article)

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Makes sense >:)

Beautiful Post!

Written by gothboy, 23.09.2021 at 14:40

Beautiful Post!

Stop up voting yourself JEEZ

Too lenient? Tell that to Waffel...

Written by gothboy, 23.09.2021 at 14:40

Beautiful Post!

You probably won't see 2022 on this game.

And that makes 2 of us.

I unsarcastically wonder if AW is still in time to catch those flies; time will tell

Written by RaulPB, 24.09.2021 at 08:25

I unsarcastically wonder if AW is still in time to catch those flies; time will tell

I could be wrong, but I believe the answer is yes, and here's why:



This is how many new users registered each month, for the last year. (Guest accounts are excluded.) As you can see, it usually averages around 4K new users each month.

Now in fairness, I don't know how many of those are alts -- I assume a lot of them are -- but even if 50% of all new accounts were alts, that's still 2000 new users each month, on average. (I don't think it's really as high as 50%, but it's a nice easy number for sake of argument)

My point is, atWar has plenty of new users coming in. The problem is that only a small % of them stick around. There are lots of reasons why they don't stay, but I think the toxic community is one of them.

Btw, those statistics look damn good over the last months

I'll share one more example. atWar has a big database of registered users -- almost 750K as of this moment. Obviously most of those accounts are inactive at this point. Some will never come back. But a lot of them can and do come back. We saw this happen last year during the big covid spike -- not only did we have new people coming in, we had lots and lots of "old timers" coming back too. There is a huge "reservoir" of potential activity if we could get old players to come back and, most importantly, stick around.

Now, again, I know there are lots of reasons people may have for not sticking around, and the community is just 1 of them. But...

A few days ago I happened to see a conversation in the main lobby chat. There was a player who had just come back to atWar after 2 years, and was asking what was new. Another player -- who I won't name, but he's one of the known toxic people around here -- was going on about how dead the game is, staff is out to get him, mods/admins are corrupt, blah blah blah. Now put yourself in their shoes... if you've just come back after 2 years, and everything you hear is negative, why would you stick around?

The only people who complain about the moderation are, generally speaking, the toxic ones who are always in trouble because of it. The vast majority of AW users approve of the job our moderators do, and some even want us to enforce the rules MORE strictly. (I'm not just making that up, we know it because of the responses we got to our Survey.) The player I saw complaining is one of those guys who barely even plays the game, he just hangs around to complain about how badly he feels he's been treated -- in other words, he's just a drain on the community. He contributes nothing.

If I'm answering the question "what's new in the last 2 years", there are a lot of good updates I can mention: CW betting, the new playoffs system, new strategies, daily login bonuses, earning PC from games, the PC transfer feature, allowing non-premiums to play Promo'd maps for free, not to mention lots of bugs that have been fixed. Now I know what you're thinking, this is all just a drop in the ocean, and you're right -- there are still many other things that we're working on adding, still bugs to fix, etc. But considering how badly atWar had been neglected prior to my arrival, I think it is fair to say there are lots of good things to say about the progress we've made. (Again, I'm not saying things are perfect -- we still have a long way to go -- but there are honestly more reasons for optimism than negativity at this point.)

When old players come back after long period of inactivity, we should welcome them and encourage them.

Written by Dave, 24.09.2021 at 18:00

Now I know what you're thinking, this is all just a drop in the ocean, and you're right

Actually, that's not what I was thinking of. It was more like this:

Written by Dave, 24.09.2021 at 18:00

But considering how badly atWar had been neglected prior to my arrival, I think it is fair to say there are lots of good things to say about the progress we've made.

One of the factors that got me tired of the game was its state of neglect, the quality going downhill, bugs, unplayability, lack of overall supervision, etc. which also lead to many of my closest acquaintances leaving the game, and eventually myself too (as a former supporter I was really into the game at some point in time so it was harsh to feel like I wasn't enjoying the game anymore).
So seeing a red shield wandering around the forums and in game surely surprises and comforts me seeing any progress being made is already good enough in itself for a game like this. I believe I can agree with everything else said in this thread.

Trying to get new players to play clan wars, I saw how toxicity drove them off.

Written by Dave, 24.09.2021 at 17:27

My point is, atWar has plenty of new users coming in. The problem is that only a small % of them stick around. There are lots of reasons why they don't stay, but I think the toxic community is one of them.

tbf, people tend to get over toxic people, especially if their are beyond adolescence, imo the real problem with atwar is how unfriendly its towards noobs (i think the tutorial is still the same since i joined in over 7 years ago), purging that 0.1% toxicity is important and should be done, but people usually dont stick around because there is nothing to "stick" them around.

Furthermore, I consider that NWE must be destroyed

I don't get it

Written by Tribune Aquila, 28.09.2021 at 10:25

I don't get it

we still ♥ you

Written by j-e-s-u-s, 28.09.2021 at 09:24

Written by Dave, 24.09.2021 at 17:27

My point is, atWar has plenty of new users coming in. The problem is that only a small % of them stick around. There are lots of reasons why they don't stay, but I think the toxic community is one of them.

tbf, people tend to get over toxic people, especially if their are beyond adolescence, imo the real problem with atwar is how unfriendly its towards noobs (i think the tutorial is still the same since i joined in over 7 years ago), purging that 0.1% toxicity is important and should be done, but people usually dont stick around because there is nothing to "stick" them around.

i mean who is unironically unfriendly to noobs.

The ban that hurt AW the most was that of Death1812, SP police's founder who was selfless, kind that he used to actually give you his account's password if you asked for it
his only problem was being an omega pervert :/

The experience of seeing a r8 get kicked from Wars of Religion as the Papal States because some high rank was spectating and wanted the spot. This is truly the way to grow a community

Written by Zephyrusu, 29.09.2021 at 19:09

The experience of seeing a r8 get kicked from Wars of Religion as the Papal States because some high rank was spectating and wanted the spot. This is truly the way to grow a community

There's this annoying trend of a lot of high ranks playing easy and comfortable noob picks instead of playing the challenging picks meant for high ranks...

Spectator chat should be muted by default when making a clan war or a duel. Too many toxic trolls who think they're the best player of all time entering and giving their stupid commentary and criticising everything you do, puts you off.

Cws are a spectacle, I think muting them detracts from the community and you can always turn off game chat.

Fully agree with combating toxicity. In every area of the game.

I've been playing League of Legends a lot lately, and I love the experience with their moderation system. They're VERY STRICT (permaban at 4th offense but you can also be permabanned right away depending on what you did). They give you all the tools to mute/ignore players, and good defaults (chat filter ftw). While it sucks to lose a game due to trolling team, it feels EXTREMELY SATISFYING to report them and get a message a few hours later saying that they got punished.

These are things I would love to see in atWar: automatic punishments (when it is clear that ur SP or ELO farming, for example), more strict rules, and letting people know when their reports are processed. In fact, I would go to the extreme of making punishments public... maybe it will make people feel embarrassed and that is a strong deterrent.

EDIT: an example of league's system in action on someone you may know. xBugs ruined a game with unsportsmanlike behavior and his account was permanently banned as a result .

Written by RaulPB, 25.09.2021 at 09:49

Written by Dave, 24.09.2021 at 18:00

But considering how badly atWar had been neglected prior to my arrival, I think it is fair to say there are lots of good things to say about the progress we've made.

One of the factors that got me tired of the game was its state of neglect, the quality going downhill, bugs, unplayability, lack of overall supervision, etc. which also lead to many of my closest acquaintances leaving the game, and eventually myself too (as a former supporter I was really into the game at some point in time so it was harsh to feel like I wasn't enjoying the game anymore).
So seeing a red shield wandering around the forums and in-game surely surprises and comforts me seeing any progress being made is already good enough in itself for a game like this. I believe I can agree with everything else said in this thread.

Well, I'm not supposed to say it in public but I agree with you both that the game was not getting as much "care" before Dave. Now it is getting more updates, although I do still wish it received more...

Written by clovis1122, 07.10.2021 at 21:36

Fully agree with combating toxicity. In every area of the game.

I've been playing League of Legends a lot lately, and I love the experience with their moderation system. They're VERY STRICT (permaban at 4th offense but you can also be permabanned right away depending on what you did). They give you all the tools to mute/ignore players, and good defaults (chat filter ftw). While it sucks to lose a game due to trolling team, it feels EXTREMELY SATISFYING to report them and get a message a few hours later saying that they got punished.

These are things I would love to see in atWar: automatic punishments (when it is clear that ur SP or ELO farming, for example), more strict rules, and letting people know when their reports are processed. In fact, I would go to the extreme of making punishments public... maybe it will make people feel embarrassed and that is a strong deterrent.

EDIT: an example of league's system in action on someone you may know. xBugs ruined a game with unsportsmanlike behavior and his account was permanently banned as a result .

Written by RaulPB, 25.09.2021 at 09:49

Written by Dave, 24.09.2021 at 18:00

But considering how badly atWar had been neglected prior to my arrival, I think it is fair to say there are lots of good things to say about the progress we've made.

One of the factors that got me tired of the game was its state of neglect, the quality going downhill, bugs, unplayability, lack of overall supervision, etc. which also lead to many of my closest acquaintances leaving the game, and eventually myself too (as a former supporter I was really into the game at some point in time so it was harsh to feel like I wasn't enjoying the game anymore).
So seeing a red shield wandering around the forums and in-game surely surprises and comforts me seeing any progress being made is already good enough in itself for a game like this. I believe I can agree with everything else said in this thread.

Written by Crow, 05.10.2021 at 11:58

Spectator chat should be muted by default when making a clan war or a duel. Too many toxic trolls who think they're the best player of all time entering and giving their stupid commentary and criticising everything you do, puts you off.

maybe player(s) of a duel(cw) should be able to mute certain toxic commentators from the game chat during the game(guests and others included).

People dont leave this game because of toxity. People leave this game because of trolls and because the game gets retarded. Leavers and trolls ruining games makes us leave the game.
Any other game has penalty system for trolls and leavers. Toxicy was not even their first priority.

You spend hours to play 1 game then get trolled or when someone leaves the map or ruins it, thats hours wasted > hence reason to leave atwar is high. So its just logical that atwar is played by less and less people.

Written by ITSGG1122, 09.10.2021 at 11:43

People dont leave this game because of toxity. People leave this game because of trolls and because the game gets retarded. Leavers and trolls ruining games makes us leave the game.
Any other game has penalty system for trolls and leavers. Toxicy was not even their first priority.

You spend hours to play 1 game then get trolled or when someone leaves the map or ruins it, thats hours wasted > hence reason to leave atwar is high. So its just logical that atwar is played by less and less people.

Right now the penalty for trolls and leavers is that they don't gain any SP or PC from the game... and of course you can add them to your banlist too.

But this is why I reworked how the Abandoned Games % is calculated... to quote myself:

Written by Dave, 28.03.2020 at 02:14

Be careful though, at some point in the future I'll be adding a way for people to block users from games if their abandoned % is above a certain threshold... so try to keep your percent low!

... that's still on my list, it will happen at some point.

Quote:

Written by Dave, 28.03.2020 at 02:14

Be careful though, at some point in the future I'll be adding a way for people to block users from games if their abandoned % is above a certain threshold... so try to keep your percent low!

... that's still on my list, it will happen at some point.

Can you add a warning message when a player tries to leave the game laying out the consequences of leaving games? Perhaps that may sway some people to not leave if they are made aware of the immediate consequences of their actions and what will happen in the future if they keep up this behaviour.

Written by Dave, 09.10.2021 at 12:19

Written by ITSGG1122, 09.10.2021 at 11:43

People dont leave this game because of toxity. People leave this game because of trolls and because the game gets retarded. Leavers and trolls ruining games makes us leave the game.
Any other game has penalty system for trolls and leavers. Toxicy was not even their first priority.

You spend hours to play 1 game then get trolled or when someone leaves the map or ruins it, thats hours wasted > hence reason to leave atwar is high. So its just logical that atwar is played by less and less people.

Right now the penalty for trolls and leavers is that they don't gain any SP or PC from the game... and of course you can add them to your banlist too.

But this is why I reworked how the Abandoned Games % is calculated... to quote myself:

Written by Dave, 28.03.2020 at 02:14

Be careful though, at some point in the future I'll be adding a way for people to block users from games if their abandoned % is above a certain threshold... so try to keep your percent low!

... that's still on my list, it will happen at some point.

If somehow there was a voting system after a game has ended and people could vote if someone intentionally trolled or if they could vote to give honor to someone. In that case people could get temporary ban with a message saying to stop this behaviour etc.