If you could either prevent toxicity in games or cheating, which one would you choose?

[Jobbs]

I play competitive mp games and cheating can seriously ruin your day. I rarely interact with random people in games though and if they do say something terrible it doesn't affect me. I'm an adult and it's very hard for a random in an online game to phase me in any way. Cheating actually ruins games though.

 

[Deleted member 46489]

im glad the poll pronounced my name correctly

snowhite *hugs*

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Sorry. I should've checked before posting. In my brain it was Fatforall. I kept thinking, something about this feels wrong. Were 'For' and 'All' capital? Was it something else? Oh well.

*Hugs back* :)

 

[FormatCompatible]

Toxicity, by a mile.

 

[Dragoon]

Cheating easily. I rarely ever see toxic behaivor online, and I can usually de escalate if need be. The only super bad encounter in the last 2 years was a guy on FIFA's be a pro mode who was being racist because someone on the team was bad but was bad black and had an African name. Went about as well as you'd expect :S

 

[I KILL PXLS]

Toxicity easily. There are a bunch of games I wouldn't mind trying if I knew I didn't run the risk of getting flamed for whatever reason while learning it.

 

[Siresly]

I only play Battlefield.
I must've encountered cheaters, but I can never tell, unless it's blatant like when Battlefield had issues with cheaters who would automatically kill everyone on the opposing team seconds after they spawned. I occasionally get mildly annoyed by players who end up repeatedly murdering me, but if those players are cheating or are just good, I never know. The thing that actually frustrates me is good pilots, because often that just comes out of nowhere, suddenly you're just dead, whether you're on foot or in a tank. Unless the pilots on your team are of the same skill level, there's not much you can do about it. If it keeps happening I'll just quit and join a different server. I'd rather get rid of good pilots than cheaters. Cheaters effectively aren't really a problem as far as I'm concerned.

Toxicity is why I've hidden the text chat. Compared to other games it's never been that bad. Probably half of the little that's posted is "gg" or "ez", the other half is something even more worthless, and half of that is toxic. So...the noise to signal ratio makes me keep it hidden by default.

There's almost less than zero voice chat in public games, thankfully.
There being very little to no communication is a contributing reason why I like Battlefield.
I appreciate not ever having to deal with other shitty people, and the other players basically being dynamic bots.

But with me having basically already eliminated both cheating and toxicity as problems that impact myself, I'd need to exclusively consider the general impact they have on other people and other games.

And I say get rid of toxicity.

It depends on context and severity, but yeah, I think toxicity is generally much, much worse than someone being better at a game than they ought to be, having an unfair advantage. Toxicity can be everywhere. Most people aren't in the top 10% of rankings or wherever statistics start to feel like they matter. I don't have the widest perspective on how cheating can impact things, but to me it only seems to matter either in the context of serious competition, or if it's real blatant and/or frequent. And then it produces (mainly temporary) frustration and anger, ruins your fun. Versus the effects harassment, bullying, abuse, -isms and -phobias can have.

It's not even a competition. If it was, cheating would've won.

 

[Kingpin Rogers]

Depends on the kind of toxicity you're talking about. A Ness teabagging in smash just motivates me to win. But the other stuff even though it doesn't personally effect me I would be fine getting rid of.

I rarely see cheating in games.

 

[Strike]

Toxicity is way more damaging to a community. There's no patch for that.

 

[Deleted member 12833]

If it applies to forums as well, toxicity for sure

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This. Otherwise cheating. Online in game toxicity can usually be avoided

 

[Exist 2 Inspire]

I'm in the "Cheating because i have tools to deal with toxicity" camp.

 

[Zelas]

Cheating. There is already a solution for in game toxicity.

 

[OmegaNeon]

Let the people cheat. That's not important. What IS important is that toxicity means offending and/or hurting people online, through words and/or actions.

 

[Deleted member 67920]

Toxicity is a far more important and consequential.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Cheating. I can deal with trash talk as long as it's within limits.

 

[HeartlessNobody2134]

Toxicity for me definitely. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've ever encountered cheating. Maybe it's because I don't play on PC but cheating has never been a major issue for me.

On the other hand, when playing with randoms its mute city all day. Not to mention the messages you get from time to time.

 

[ZeWalker]

Cheating is way less prevalent than this shit

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What. Is that real? Video?

 

[Ashlette]

It is possible for multiplayer games to detect cheaters automatically. And they can act before those players ruin a game.

But this is not the case for toxic players. An asshole is guaranteed to spout their nonsense before they are moderated. And even if they are moderated, their negative impact on others has been irreversibly set.

 

[MonsterMech]

Toxicity I don't really play online due to hearing nigger and other terrible words thrown around too much. My son is becoming of age to play online and I'm weary of him playing for that reason.

 

[Zukuu]

Cheating is vastly less prevalent. Toxicity ruins often almost every game. So yeah, that.

 

[cardboardboxer]

I purposefully don't play any online games that require communication with other players (or even allow it- thanks Nintendo!) so I picked cheating.

 

[Retromess]

I don't play enough competitive type games for cheating to really be an issue.

It'd be nice to forever curb cheating in competitive games should I ever want to play them, but getting rid of toxicity would affect all of gaming across the board.

It'd make things so much nicer, imagine turning on voice chat and actually potentially being able to talk to someone without hearing endless slurs and threats and other terrible things. Even text chat in things like MMO's would be improved, which would be just swell, as someone who has done moderation in the past and has seen first hand the terrible toxicity online people have.

 

[Str0ngStyle]

racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic slurs and being assholes OR a fleeting win in a video game? Decisions, Decisions...

seriously, humanity is more important than one's win/loss record. Without question.

 

[zombiejames]

Cheating.

Someone's being a stupid little shit? Mute.

Someone's cheating? Wait, which player is cheating? Is it SniperBill32? Can we ban them? What if it isn't them? Oh, AAA Game Publisher knows about the cheating? So we can't ban them? How do we report the cheating? Will there be a patch? No?

 

[shadowsdarknes]

I don't interact with random people when playing.

So I would get read of cheating.

 

[mindsale]

You can't mute cheating.

 

[Coyote Starrk]

Cheating. I can ignore the children just fine, bit cheating actually affects my gaming experience.

 

[Ashlette]

Cheating. I can ignore the children just fine, bit cheating actually affects my gaming experience.

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Right, but the issue is toxicity towards someone else in your game. If you heard them harass another player, would muting them really solve anything?

 

[twdnewh]

Cheating for sure. Can mute/block people in-game. But cant stop a cheater.

 

[Coyote Starrk]

Right, but the issue is toxicity towards someone else in your game. If you heard them harass another player, would muting them really solve anything?

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Is it somebody I know or is it just another random person online?


Because if it's someone I know then yeah that would bother me, bit if it's just another random person then they can mute or block the person just as easily as I can. So you can turn off the assholes. Meanwhile you cannot turn off cheating.

 

[Weltall Zero]

Toxicity, of course. It keeps entire population groups away from games and is far more hurtful than cheating.

 

[Delicious Waffles]

Both bother me but I would say, if I had to choose, toxicity. No one should have to deal with that when playing a video game.

 

[Deleted member 283]

Toxicity, easily. Because logically speaking, to get rid of toxicity, would mean to get rid of its causes in real life, including stuff like racism, sexism, homophobia, trabsphobia, xenophobia, etc. And that obviously has HUGE, TREMENDOUS knock-on effects in real-life.

Get rid of cheating? That's nice, but that only affects games themselves.
Get rid of toxicity? You're not only improving the game, but the world outside it as well.

Not picking "toxicity" would be incredibly short-sighted in that kind of way. Because even if you don't have to deal with it in-game, by getting rid of it, you'd be improving the world outside the game as well, and to pass that up for something that only affects games themselves... I just don't get that at all.

And all the people saying "I can just mute people" or whatever... That's nice, but it doesn't always end there. Sometimes, that's only the beginning, and it only gets more nasty from there. Of course, I'm talking about stuff like this:

An Ohio gamer gets prison time over a 'swatting' call that led to a man's death | CNN

An Ohio video gamer who played a role in a hoax phone call that led police to kill a man in Kansas was sentenced Friday to 15 months in prison, authorities said.

www.cnn.com

Simply buying someone ain't going to fix anything like that.

And for those that can't see the article or it's not working for whatever reason, that's about a SWATing incident directly related to online gaming.

Of course, to be clear, I've fortunately never been swatted, nor have most people. And that much is obviously a good thing.

However, the point being that it nonetheless does happen, and that simply muting someone or blocking them is not some instant cure-all to toxicity.

Cheating can indeed ruin games and make them unfun.

Toxicity on the other hand, can flat out end lives period.

So if I actually had the power to do either of those things, toxicity, easily.

Because I don't have to have a SWAT team personally called on me over an online gaming session to have sympathy for those who have had to endure garbage like that, no one should have to personally endure it to have sympathy for people like that, and I'd gladly endure cheating 1000x over even if shit like that, if something that can easily lead to lives being lost, can be stopped instead.

Toxicity easily, and shame on anyone who says otherwise, because stopping cheating is in no way more important than what you could do instead with that kinda power, if it were real.

 

[Mesoian]

Toxicity

You can stop the lion's share of cheating with a decent anti-cheat program.

Ain't nothing in the world gonna stop people from being knobs on the internet to try and fill the void in their lives.

 

[Homura]

I dunno how anyone could choose cheating tbh.

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Because if I understood the poll correctly, it is asking for MY choice not what I think it's best for everyone.

 

[Dest]

Cheating, if only because most games that I play provide me utilities to mute certain players if they're being assholes so I have a means of mitigating that whereas I don't have anything like that for cheating.

 

[Got Danny]

How can you "handle" cheating?
It's literally out of your control.
Toxicity you can block reprot and ignore users

 

[Zafir]

I've played so many online games at this point, and it's not even that much of a question to me. I've barely experienced cheating. I remember seeing some cheaters when Apex Legends was new, and I see bots farming shit in WoW. That's about what I remember in recent memory, and I've put a lot of hours into Fortnite, Apex Legends, Dota 2, WoW, some fighting games and maybe a few other MP games.

In comparison Toxicity is a never ending problem that just ruins your gaming experience and mood. Sure, you can "mute" it, but why are you even playing a multiplayer game at that point if you have to mute everyone cos they're pieces of shit. That's not solving it, that's just stopping you from seeing their bullshit. They'll still go on to the next person to spout their rubbish. You basically can't go through many games in Dota 2 without someone tilting and swearing at the team because they lost their lane. It's exhausting and tiring.

 

[Phellps]

People downplaying the effects of toxicity as just avoidable behavior in this thread is really weird. Are we on the same website? Are we not reading the same reports about the widespread reach of toxicity or how it hurts both the community and individual players?

 

[MonsterMech]

To the people saying "just hit mute"

That's a shitty way to play an online game. Everyone doesn't have a group of friends to play with. Being unable to communicate in an online game kinda defeats the purpose of playing online.

 

[Lobster Roll]

Cheating can be detected and somewhat mitigated, though not wholly. Even with cheating being a component of online games, I'd say I encounter it less than 1% of the time. Toxicity (either from teammates or opponents) is probably about 75% or more. Toxicity is far, far worse in online gaming, and it ruins the fact that nearly everybody has a headset / microphone. Why bother unmuting if you're going to catch toxicity?

 

[Deleted member 135]

Cheating definitely. I can just turn off mics and messages from non-friends.

 

[Mirage]

What. Is that real? Video?

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Not sure which one exactly but it's from one of the 14 ~10 minute videos she made about the different stuff she hears playing games online.

OMG A GIRL Series

Ever wonder what female gamers have to deal with while playing games? Watch Spawntaneous' OMG A GIRL series to find out! It's not always pretty. #OMGAGIRL #s...

www.youtube.com

 

[dep9000]

Toxicity. It's ridiculous.

The cheating I can handle. Most of my online gaming is on PC and I rarely encounter cheating. It's an overblown problem, I think.

 

[jaymzi]

Wishing away toxicity would probably mean these toxic gamers would be better people in general. Easy choice.

 

[Deleted member 283]

How can you "handle" cheating?
It's literally out of your control.
Toxicity you can block reprot and ignore users

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How can you handle someone being so mad at you that they manage to figure out who you are in real life and call in a fake bomb-threat/hostage situation at your location to try and get you killed? Blocking someone ain't going to fix that.

Of course, most people never have to endure that level of toxicity. But that doesn't stop it from happening all the same from time to time. And even once is too much.

Whereas cheating is much more rarely life-threatening in that kinda way.

Like I said in my previous post, I've never endured that level of harassment. Most people personally won't. But I don't have to have personally experienced it to understand even once, that type of thing even happening one time in the world to anyone, and gladly endure putting up with even cheating times a thousandfold to make sure something like that never happens again, to anyone.

 

[adj_noun]

Magically removing toxicity is a far more wide-ranging and fundamental change to gaming than cheating (which is arguably a subset of toxicity anyway).

 

[Foffy]

Toxicity, as it goes beyond games. Cheating in games isn't a big deal because it's a video game.

 

[Deleted member 5086]

I'm glad the right choice is winning.

 

[Lothars]

Ending racism/homophobia/sexism in gaming > everything else, obv

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Yup no other answer imo

 

[Deleted member 283]

Magically removing toxicity is a far more wide-ranging and fundamental change to gaming than cheating (which is arguably a subset of toxicity anyway).

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Yeah, that's one of the things I don't get about the people picking cheating.

"Hmm, I have the options to have magical powers that could let me do something that to logically work in the first place would have to make people better both outside the game world and in it and logically also involve solving stuff like sexism, racism, homophobia, etc, but on the other hand, muting exists, so fuck the real world, pick the option that only affects gaming anyway."

Like, you have the power to pick an option that would better the world both inside and outside video games in this hypothetical, why in the world would anyone pick the one that only affects games themselves?

Even if muting works for you personally, even if you as an individual never have to deal with any of that, even if you personally never have to endure a single bit of it, think about all those people for whom things are nowhere near that simple, to how much better the world itself could be made by picking toxicity in this hypothetical.

To pick cheating instead, to put personal enjoyment in video games on that kind of pedestal if one had that kind of power in one's hands, even for the purpose of a hypothetical, I can't understand it, that's way too much if a selfish choice when those are the two options IMO.