Player Courtesies do they even exist in this game?

[Makeda]

Hello everyone,

Something has been grading on my for a while regarding the way people act towards one another in this game. Mostly it comes from the "farm runs" people have ambition to complete the dungeons as fast as possible,
...
It just reminds me of the world of Warcraft community and it saddens me to see this happening here, the game is really good however the public experience has been horrendous at 50.

Mistakes happen and do not expect anyone to be perfect but we all actually "pay" to play the game and remember there is another person at the other side of the screen.

A number of elements work to promote the kinds of communities the speed levelers have found:

• The Duty Finder tool making random groups. No need or even ability to use social skills in forming groups.
• No account wide accountability. You can't even tell what server or FC a PUG-mate comes from.
• Cannot friend cross server, so Duty Finder groups are more or less forced strangers.
• Events/Fates on predictable cycles to feed farmers.
• No benefits built in for helping random strangers in the open-world.
• No ability to rez random strangers in the open-world, encourages just sitting there as someone else is stuck.
• Mob tagging exists, even if limited to 'leve' / quest mobs - you cannot help even if you want to.
• Vertical Progression system - encourages an "I'm better than you" mentality.
• Vertical Progresson system - encourages a need to keep farming up the 'latest / best' gear rather than the 'explore and make stories' situation seen in horizontal progression MMOs (City of Heroes / GW2 / soon EQNext).
• Trinity based combat model - sets up roles that do not have equal popularity, allowing the less popular roles to dictate play / enjoyment for players on more popular roles.
• Lack of build variety - one build for each class, so there is not much meta to explore, and usually a "right way" that you need to follow.
• Discouragement of alts - less ability to just sit out on another character to de-stress, and less ability to make a alternate theme character. Makes a roleplay community less viable (and such communities tend to be more social, and thereby make the servers they take over more friendly).
• Seemingly uninvolved community-managers so the inworld community feels 'unpoliced'. This might just be perception, but perception is often more important than reality.
• The English servers are the "foreigner" servers, and we can feel it. I'm sure this exact same issue happens in other MMOs for the Asian / European servers. Here, its happened to the English servers - and we're a community not used to that in MMOs we buy from western shops.

With a list like that you'd think I'd hate this game, but I actually like it a lot. I just have to work to avoid certain pitfalls the above list has built into it... and I know that eventually, the community will reach WoW levels and one won't even be able to "hide" in a good FC... But for now, its a very solid replacement for my former WoW fix.


Short version:
Duty Finder, Trinity, and Vertical Progression - will all eventually "kill" community here. So while I love the game I've recently landed on, I know the ride won't be as long as it was for me in WoW (where I held on for 7 years) - those things will eventually be more pressing than the benefits. It just becomes a question of how long can that 'eventually' be pushed out for each person.

.