Palmertos opinion on the word “toxicity”

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March 6, 2021 at 3:26 am #72213
Palmerto
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I’ve decided to sit down and write this note to give my opinion of what “toxicity” is, as it’s often thrown around too much these days. On a server such as this, where looting and sieging are romanticized and somewhat praised, a boundary needs to be defined between FOUL PLAY and TOXICITY. Foul play is anything like an attack/ ganking someone, but with good reason and sometimes provoked. That’s what we do here. There are friends and allies, people fight. I personally would love the siege aspect if it was seen as more of a game, a real “battle” between two crews. The castle is being sieged, who will win the fight! Launching and planning attacks is one of the reasons people play PMC.

As of late, many people have moved over to the toxic side of things. Everyone knows about the Covid mental health stuff and taking anger out on people online, so I won’t explain that, but it really does play into this point. Many players, majority pvpers, don’t see this as a game. It has a strange hint of real life for them. They invest their emotions into the game, and thus do what it takes to preserve their emotions. If staying happy means winning a 1v1 or siege, then that person will train and train till they win that fight. Having happiness be so quantifiable is dangerous in my opinion. This is where toxicity emerges: when players are not acting to enjoy the game but rather to preserve the emotions they’ve attached to the game. Now I get it, I’ve put many hours into my builds and would not want to see them blown up, you could say I have an emotional connection to them. But when I lose a raid, I don’t become actually angry in real life. Maybe a bit annoyed yes but I never walk away from my computer with a changed mood because of something that happened on PMC. Toxicity can be defined as anything that results from heightened negative emotions. It usually takes the form of in chat harassment, continued sieging, etc. When the sieges go on for hours it loses the fun of being a friendly contest. It’s no longer a respectful match, a test of skill, rather it’s an attempt by the perpetrator to make the victim sad or get a rise out of them. This is the most toxic thing one can do online: trying to mess with real life emotions until you eventually succeed.

The issue we run into is policing morality. Governments have found that policing morality just isn’t possible, so laws and rules are designed to encourage good behavior. Laws usually associate toxicity with criminality. (I’m making a broad generalization I know.)

So then, what is my solution? I’m no expert so my theory may be imperfect, but there are a few things to do that may help

1. increase siege cooldown, make it apply to all players(you can’t just get a friend to siege again), and make it apply to all claims in a radius.

2. Disable a Sieger’s ability to use to flex loot during a siege or after, turn of their crew chat during, and turn of messages. I personally would advise a complete mute for both parties while a siege is ongoing, or maybe people in the fighting crews can’t cross message.

3. Discourage insiding . Yes it’s part of the game, but considering that some players have left due to being betrayed by close friends, I think it’s worth it. Some kind of mechanic to prevent insiding is advised.

4. Players who are known to be toxic should be more heavily policed. I know staff are working on this, and the community is grateful for it.

5. INTENTIONALLY trying to make someone seriously sad/ angry/ depressed should be taken very seriously. Phrases such as “Kill yourself” should be punished severely. Mental health is no joke these days. This refers to my point above. The goal of this would be to encourage fair play and discourage those who take their emotions out on the game.

These all come with the risk of deterring pvpers and making people mad or claim “princess craft.” Well, looking at recent activity I think changes need to be made. Most people who claim these things are the perpetrators, the toxic players. PMC uses punitive justice, and I support this. My most important point: those who are not contributing to the community should not be a part of the community at all. I don’t care how long someone has played or how much they’ve donated, it one player is detracting from another’s experience severely, causing players to quit, be overly upset, etc. the community would benefit from having them GONE. Again, I am not against pvp, raiding, or looting. It adds a fun edge and danger to the game, provided functionality to builds, and develops crews like real life societies. I am, however, against the use of these mechanics to harm someone’s real life mental state. This is a GAME! Contests are fun. Many don’t treat is as such.

I hope this has helped. Sorry about the length, some deep concepts here. Let me know if you need elaboration or more insight.

King of Silent Hill
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March 7, 2021 at 9:43 pm #72250
GodsDead
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After speaking palmerto they assure me this thread isn’t in reply to the support page information https://piratemc.com/support/ which I put up March 5th a day before this forum thread was made.

This is not something worth assuming, my exact point and reason I created this section on the support page was specifically to explain that mental heath is an issue behind a lot of peoples behavior, Covid being one cause that is keeping people online ALL the time with little to no face to face attention, Its posted as an aid to people that they need to take a break from being online in general and get some human contact that isn’t random people on the internet arguing over how XYZ feature should work on a Minecraft server. This is a very dangerous statement to make about mental heath issues attached to Covid.

If someone is being a bad human, they are yeeted off the server, nobody cares if they have bought things. point in case this guy screaming the same day this post was created saying we should bend over for contributors. Not how this works here.

https://piratemc.com/topic/dont-suck/

The amount of people that have private messaged me saying “I will buy XYZ if you unban me” is astronomical. You don’t see this side of the server, as I don’t make it public for the purpose of drama.

Toxic behaviour does not come from technical implementations on a Minecraft server, I have run multiple game servers before this, forums before Social Networks existed, Before we had Voice chat in games. There has and always will be Toxic behaviour when there is a medium for people to give their opinions online behind an anonymous handle, so sadly toxicity is a general issue with an overall headspace of some people that spend too much time on the Internet, which I have described in the Support page I posted previously.

If you need something to blame Discord is by far the worst platform to exist in recent history when it comes to breeding ground for groups of Toxic behaviour. Heres a great article with 2 experts that define toxic behavior for you. https://psychcentral.com/blog/whats-a-toxic-person-how-do-you-deal-with-one#1

So What’s a Toxic Person Really?

“Often the person is deeply wounded and for whatever reason, they are not yet able to take responsibility for their wounding, their feelings, their needs and their subsequent problems in life.

They may overidentify and act out the parts of who they are, such as the victim, bully, perfectionist or martyr, They act from these parts trying to get their needs met, albeit in an extremely unhealthy way.”

it’s common for people with toxic behavior to: create drama in their lives or be surrounded by it; try to manipulate or control others; be needy (“it is all about them all the time”); use others to meet their needs (such as “narcissistic parents”); be extremely critical of themselves and others; be jealous and envious of others, bemoaning their bad fortune and others’ good fortune; abuse substances or harm themselves in other ways, and be unwilling (or unable) to seek help from loved ones, a therapist or a recovery program.

This is an amazing description which describes the exact behaviour that I have seen and would classify as “toxic behaviour”. its a general term, used out of Context.

What you said here:

Many players, majority pvpers, don’t see this as a game. It has a strange hint of real life for them.

Is my point, playing too much, being online too much and needing to take a break. This is what I have said on my support page.

This on the other hand..

The issue we run into is policing morality

Made me laugh, sounds like a 15 year old from /r/iamverysmart/

Define: Morality:
principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.

Right or wrong, so in the context of a Minecraft server that’s just following rules bud. its not a definition of policing toxic behaviour.

Now if I just focus JUST on your suggestions, these should have definitely been separate and not part of your “toxic” theories.

1) Increase siege cooldown. yes sure, make a suggestion in discord for it. Don’t request mechanics that don’t exist tho as it just cant be done without great effort by someone that forks the plugin.

2) “Disable a Sieger’s ability to use to flex loot during a siege” Ok, this should say “Disable during siege”. Not “flex loot”, Now as much as disabling chat during a siege MAY reduce some toxic chat, it does greatly impede a group of players that are trying to work together in a siege, this also does not prevent them from just using discord. You have forgotten that other means of commutation are available.

3) “Discourage insiding” You forgot to mention how you want to technically implement this.

4) “Players who are known to be toxic should be more heavily policed” They are, its entirely on people not reporting issues, you have made this a post 1day after I sent out a public service announcement telling people they need to be reporting people for this EXACT reason. This was the direct reason I spent 3 hours making the support page https://piratemc.com/support/ that clearly states this exact thing.

5) your entire point 5 is called “Bullying” this has always been policed and is a rule. Again, if you are not reporting. Nothing can happen. AGAIN you have posted this 1 day after I have put out a public service announcement telling people to report every small issue and specifically telling people to report everything in https://piratemc.com/support/
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