Thanks for your reply.
I just want to address that Iām not looking for a āwhite knightā response here. The only reason to address the fact Iām from a large female community, is to draw attention to the disproportionate amount of toxic behavior females and other communities have directed to them online and in this game. Because we as a community share this information between us, its clear there is a big issue that mixed gender or all male communities might not notice. Thatās not to invalidate anyone elseās experiences of toxic players or poor behavior, My aim is a solution that benefits all people, not just women or marginalized groups.
I think in order to solve issue of creating safe spaces, larger issues must be tackled. The aim in my eyes would be to add the element of ācommunityā back into the game. Making it so that people need to interact and be part of a community to be successful on a large scale. If the game can create community, then that community will in turn change the behavior dynamic within the game. People will see that toxic, misogynistic and homophobic behavior does not translate into inclusion. servers will āself-policeā to keep the peace in a healthier way.
Some simple solutions:
- introduction of GMs into servers
- Better response to reports in game, feedback given on outcomes of reports.
- More natural interactions between Devs/ GMs and communities in the game, hop into our discords and get real life community feedback from your player base
More complex solutions:
If you consider the reason the safe spaces donāt currently exist (or are sparse) , is the large company format, that makes companies an exclusive area that does not need to interact outside of it own insular player base. this means players within these spaces only have to answer to their own leadership, which turn a blind eye to players behavior as long as they are good at PvP, part of the war roster, or in the friendship group. These companies are part of a wider issue, creating shell companies, merging into servers and dominating PvP and content. If you can fix this issue, you can force smaller companies, eradicate shell companies, and force these companies to have to interact with more parts of the community, increase accountability, and thus reduce the ability of toxic players or behaviors to be protected or tolerated within large groups.
To fix large companies, you have to change the reason they exist in the first place, which comes down to money, prestige (bragging rights and power) and content.
Content - Is fixed by adding casual war game modes into the game (scrimming). You allow the creation of 50 man teams that can compete in arranged battles or tournaments within or across servers. This allows all players access to war content, and removes the need for players to create large in game companies to horde themselves a section of guaranteed war content. With this could also come the introduction of 20v20 opr games for smaller companies and lower population servers.
Prestige - Is fixed with leaderboards for these game modes, with the potential for items or ābragging rightsā titles that make these game modes attractive to players.
Money - add rewards to these game modes. Iām not an economist, but right now the economy is in a huge state of inflation, there needs to be more gold sinks in the game. and more ways for casual players to obtain BIS. If casual players could gather untradeable materials, for untradeable gear rolls, with pve untradeable trophyās, then BIS becomes obtainable for all players. and devalues existing market prices. Most players in large companies buy gold from websites to keep up with BIS trends and metas, so they can continue to war with these companies. And most of the governors of these companies sell gold to make a full time income and play the game as a career. Thereās not an easy fix for this one, but it needs to be evaluated by knowledgeable people and fixed.
The final step is to limit war. You do this by adding a cooldown to war, an example would be 1 attack sided war, and 1 defensive war per day. This makes it impossible for large companies to hold multiple towns with shell companies and defend them with the same 50 man team. Right now some servers have 50 men per faction fighting every war, thatās only 150 people having that content. This will initially upset people, but if you imagine 1 person has 4 wars a day now, if he only has 1 war a day, yes he might be unhappy, but 3 different people get to war that day, and that math equals more happy people in the game. That 1 player can then go and find his additional content from opr or casual war game modes.
the key thing about this above all, is that it becomes difficult to hold more than one town if you only have one war team. which in turn means that smaller companies and individuals get opportunities for content and being mercenaries, and more players become involved in war efforts and COMMUNITIES. This concept would force people to have to work together. shell companies become redundant, because thereās not as much pull towards the benefits of owning a town when you can find your prestige, money and content in other game modes. This would then mean that companies would become smaller communities, interact more regularly, and the idea of self-policing or not hiding toxic players would return, because you could not afford to have these people in your groups if you wanted to be successful in the game.
TLDR: Bring back a community feel to the game by solving the problem of mega companies, forcing companies to be accountable for the words of their members rather than sheltering them.
. I mean a huge loss in the current population.
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