Toxicity, Teamwork, The Forge and The Gorge

[The 2C3D]

Oh boy, this is gonna get some interesting responses...

I really tend to hate voice chat, so I’ve been bound to playing with random people in the Forge and while it’s far from awful, it’s the worst I’ve seen the DST community. The Gorge, however, was the best I’ve ever seen us, and I wanted to see if I could come up with a theory as to why.

tl;dr: In the Forge one bad player can doom the team. In the Gorge, one good player can carry the team.

How to Construct a Salt Rack:

What makes a player feel salty after they’ve lost a match? It’s not just losing, it’s deeper then that. It stems from the feeling that you failed for reasons you had no control over. The game was unfair, the odds were stacked against you. This can be caused by many factors from randomness to arbitrary, inconsistencies in the rules, but the one most pertinent to the Forge is the other people on the team. If someone else on your team played wrong you might die with nothing you could’ve possibly do to save yourself. Naturally, if you die from factors beyond your control you will be frustrated and that can lead to toxic outbursts from people seeking to unshackle themselves from feeling like they failed. Blame the teammate. Shout at the teammate.

It’s Not Your Fault But Mine:

We’ve all met the player who cripples the team by refusing to do their job properly. The Wilson who stole the Living Staff. The Wolfgang who thought it was his job to smash every rock in sight. The Winona who got so caught up in attacking she forgot to heal... These are the people who get keelhauled by their teammates. The Webber who wakes up the Grand Forge Boarrier. Smaller outbursts are awarded to the Wilson who doesn’t revive people, the Willow who didn’t save her cataclysm or the Woodie who shook hands with the Boarilla one too many times. The harder it is to fix someone else’s mistake, the more frustrating they are and the more likely they are to inspire toxicity. You can’t make someone else drop their equipment and Wigfrid can’t decide to heal mid-match. The Forge is full of opportunities for you to kill your teammates or them to kill you without someone else getting a second chance to make a save. If someone had a real, fair chance to save themself but failed alongside their teammates, they are less likely to have a toxic outburst because they had some counterplay, a chance to save themselves, and therefore must shoulder some of the blame.

More Rocks in the Forge Then Berries in the Gorge:

Right now, let’s try a little experiment. Try to think of a ways a new player could accidentally sabotage their team in the Forge vs the Gorge. Here’s what I thought of:

Spoiler

Forge: Break stoned enemies. Wake up sleeping enemies. Steal critical equipment. Don’t revive. Don’t take aggro as a tank. Do take aggro and lure enemies to the healer. Pick Wendy. (jk)

Gorge: Take money and buy all the wrong stuff. Pick all the berries on the map. Take the axe and don’t chop.

This isn’t a complete list, I’m sure, but it’s no accident that I haven’t included doing nothing. I’ll get to that later

It’s quite a lot easier to ruin things for everyone if the Forge then it is in the Gorge. There’s more chances to ruin your teammates run in the Forge by doing things like smashing rocks then there are chances to ruin a run of the Gorge by picking all the berries. Hence the title

Counterplay:

I always judged my skill as a cook in the Gorge by how many mistakes I could recover from my teammates making. Imagine using this philosophy in the Forge. The better you are at saving the team from a bad healer, the better you are at DPS. It’s ludicrous! The reason for that is counterplay. In the Gorge you can almost always make up for a teammates mistakes. It’ll make the game harder, but you can still do a salt run yourself, or go plant some wheat. This makes it feel more like you’ve been given a fair shake when you’ve got a malfunctioning teammate. Compare the Forge: If your teammate isn’t healing properly, you can’t really take over unless they want you to AND your playing a staff user. Now don’t get me wrong, especially for revival, the Forge does have some opportunities to save your team, but they are fewer then in the Gorge. The more chances you had to save your team on their way down, the less you’ll feel like your loss was beyond your control and the less likely you’ll be to get angry at your teammates.

Worse Then Nothing:

 So, if counterplay so important, then you need two things: first, you need people to be able to take over for each other. You need to get rid of things like weapon roles that forcibly lock people into their jobs. Once that’s done we get to the point: You have to try to prevent people from being worse then nothing. You want to make sure that no matter what happens, nobody ever does anything but add to the team. Now, there will always be ways for trolls to ruin things, but you really don’t see that many trolls and while frustrating, the really common problem is when people ruin the game by accident. Thus, you want to minimize the ways for people to accidentally ruin things.

And Some More Words I Want To Put on Your Screen:

Fortunately for future events, Klei really seems to have this figured out. The Gorge came after the Forge, and I think the reason the Gorge did it better is because Klei had this figured out long before this thought so much as crossed my mind.

Also, since I can feel some of comments already, remember that we’re kinda Klei’s evangelists here on these forums, so you were probably one of the people who carried their teams, and that the Gorge wasn’t easy at all for teams of random, more average, people. (Really wish Klei published win rates in the Gorge stats) If you still want to whine that we shouldn’t make events easier for “the casuals” please include a screenshot of your event history with “Never Satisfied” completed.

[Monkey Cups]

The Gorge was also an event where your team comp didn't actually matter. Anyone could play anything in Gorge and it was fine. With Forge however we have the problem of certain characters getting rendered obsolete. That gets us the whole Woodie vs Wes debate, and people insisting no one but Wickerbottom can heal.

[Zeklo]

I agree completely about where toxicity is coming from, but despite that I still personally found Forge more enjoyable.

The very fact that the Gorge could be solo'd (apart from some achievements probably) rubbed me the wrong way. In Forge if one player isn't contributing the team's chance of success plummets—yes—not impossible but definitely remarkably worse, but it's for the very reason that when you do your job that it's so satisfying.

"I was needed." "I contributed." "The team couldn't have done it without me." "We did it a great job."

And that's simply something I never got from the Gorge, unless I was playing cook.

[The 2C3D]

1 hour ago, Zeklo said:

And that's simply something I never got from the Gorge, unless I was playing cook.

Ah, I always played cook, so I missed that bit...

[Serph]

IMO both events were bad in the opposite extreme ways.

Forge is "toxic" in every way. It requires fighting skill, characters are unbalanced, mistakes are unforgiving, one troll alone can make it unwinable, bossfights are stressing, etc Gorge has toxicity potential but it's so easy that anyone with a guide/friend can do it so most people dont bother. It requires no real mechanical skill, only time management of simple activities.

To me Forge is almost as frustrating as Overwatch while Gorge became boring after i "solved" it. Forge is technically a much better hardcore challenge but Gorge was clearly made to be acessible for newbies while also allowing pros to use their skill to cook for hours.

Either way there has to be a balance here somewhere, i hope Klei finds it for the next event.

[The 2C3D]

10 minutes ago, Serph said:

To me Forge is almost as frustrating as Overwatch while Gorge became boring after i "solved" it. Forge is technically a much better hardcore challenge but Gorge was clearly made to be acessible for newbies while also allowing pros to use their skill to cook for hours.

Either way there has to be a balance here somewhere, i hope Klei finds it for the next event.

Yeah, I let the Gorge off a little easy for not being toxic.

I wonder if a community progression system would be a good way to make us “re-solve” an event like the Gorge every few days and render guides obsolete really quickly. Could works buts it’s a stretch of an idea at best.

[collect12]

First of all, I'd like to say this was really well written. Nice job.

What you talked about here really touched on why the Forge feels much more frustrating than the Gorge; teamwork matters much more in the Forge than the Gorge, and it is very possible that one player can ruin the match for everyone. The Gorge was built in a way where cooperating could only improve everyone's chances, as doing it alone was possible, but difficult. 

3 hours ago, Serph said:

Forge is "toxic" in every way. It requires fighting skill, characters are unbalanced, mistakes are unforgiving, one troll alone can make it unwinable, bossfights are stressing, etc Gorge has toxicity potential but it's so easy that anyone with a guide/friend can do it so most people dont bother. It requires no real mechanical skill, only time management of simple activities.

I also really agree with what's being said here, the Gorge and the Forge are definitely two extremes in the game, where the Forge demanded complete cooperation while the Gorge had massive room for error. 

Hopefully, for event three, Klei finds a balance between those extremes, where the game can be fun without being overly stressful. 

[axxel]

It was stated that the Forge was designed for 6 players. We cannot blame that part, we could only blame technical issues like lag and bugs or the players themself. 

Comparing the Gorge to the Forge mifgt be like comparing apples and pears...it's a huge difference. Maybe the Gorge was more a timed puzzle to solve than fighting through prewritten rounds. You see, the lenght differs, too. It's because you (the cook) have much more control WHEN this round will end. It's because you will eventually have a red coin to use 3 milk for 3 favor-giving meals. This never appears in the Forge. So we have to stick with reliable teammates and skill level. Of course you could fail the Gorge if you are a beginner (e.g. empty Cookbook). 

[brbrmensch]

On 11/17/2018 at 11:57 PM, The 2C3D said:

Counterplay:

I always judged my skill as a cook in the Gorge by how many mistakes I could recover from my teammates making. Imagine using this philosophy in the Forge.

pick woodie, pick mail armor and speed hat  (even better with steadfast armor and regen garland). done, you can now save the whole team from boarillas and boarior single-handedly, rhinos was a major change in game though - now it requres infinitely more teamplay than before

On 11/18/2018 at 2:09 AM, Xehanightmare said:

That gets us the whole Woodie vs Wes debate, and people insisting no one but Wickerbottom can heal.

what debate? there are people who still think chars are balanced evenly?

[Monkey Cups]

15 minutes ago, brbrmensch said:

what debate? there are people who still think chars are balanced evenly?

There's an entire thread on this same forum dedicated to people arguing over whether Winona or Wickerbottom is the better healer, and there are an obnoxious amount of people insisting Wes is completely useless.

[GetNerfedOn]

9 hours ago, Xehanightmare said:

There's an entire thread on this same forum dedicated to people arguing over whether Winona or Wickerbottom... 

There are  two or three of these threads. As a Wick main i do see the utility of Winona in healing; I just prefer Wick due to her exam quotes of all things xD

 

Honestly, i do acknowledge and utilize the technical advantages for each character i play, but in the end it's skill which takes the cake. 

Play with which character you so wish, just play well and don't troll. just sayin :/

[brbrmensch]

15 hours ago, Xehanightmare said:

There's an entire thread on this same forum dedicated to people arguing over whether Winona or Wickerbottom is the better healer, and there are an obnoxious amount of people insisting Wes is completely useless.

my point was that some characters have so much advantage over others, it's just lame to deny it, and "you can win as 6 wes" is not an argument against it, they are arguing about different topics