Bad/casual players with worse attitudes than the good "elitist" players

[HakuroDK]

Can we not form a causal link between skill level and toxicity? That's as bad as saying maturity level scales with physical age. And as anyone who has watched a Friday Night Magic tournament will tell you, 40-year old children do exist.

There are toxic good players just as there are toxic bad players, and there are polite good players just as there are polite bad players.

Generalizing all bad players as being toxic only serves to generate a stigma that every player who doesn't perform up to snuff is a toxic player, which in turn will only serve to scare away the nice players who are more than willing to accept constructive criticisms.

Note that I say CONSTRUCTIVE criticisms. Just telling someone "You suck, git gud" isn't an eye-opening revelation and it certainly doesn't give a bad player any advice they can put into application.

Like... I was in an Aurum Vale run for my relic a while back. And in that run, there was a tank who was, like, a Level 47 DRK who admitted to being new to the job and had Level 40-45 gear on his person. The healer and the other DPS were shitting on him so hard for constantly losing hate despite the tank doing everything in his power to hold it, the DPS never using Quelling Strikes, and the healer never using Shroud of Saints to reduce their own aggro. And not once did they give him any advice, nevermind any advice that he could actually apply as a tank. It was all "OMG, you suck. You should uninstall the game. What a horrible tank."


tl;dr: There are toxic people everywhere, and it has absolutely nothing to do with skill level.

[Malevicton]

That's as bad as saying maturity level scales with physical age.

It does though. That doesn't mean everyone's equally mature (as you said, 40 year old children exist), but people are generally more mature as they get older than they were as children. There are still very mature children, and immature adults, but those mature children will continue getting more mature and the immature adults will generally get somewhat more mature as well.

"There are toxic good players just as there are toxic bad players, and there are polite good players just as there are polite bad players"

There are, but you're forcing a binary here. It's not a question of whether or not they exist; that much is obvious. The question is one of relativity. Is one of those demographics more prevalent than the others? Just because all 4 groups exist doesn't mean the population is split evenly in 25% pockets. In most people's experiences, the rude bad players outnumber the polite good players, though the silent players of all groups outnumber their counterparts. The population is essentially Neutral>Rude>Polite.

That still doesn't mean it's causal, but whether or not it's causal doesn't really matter. The problem is that the pattern exists, regardless of where it came from or how it started. I don't think anyone's saying that being casual makes you toxic, but proportionally there are more toxic casual players than hardcore. 1 story from AV doesn't really change that.

[Archaell]

tl;dr: There are toxic people everywhere, and it has absolutely nothing to do with skill level.

I have to disagree with this as we don't deal with absolutes.

There is a relationship between how much player can take before they become toxic. Better the skill, lesser chances of failing and getting enraged. So bad players with short temper are more prone to become infuriated than good players.