alt Hacker NewsGreat game, technically impressive, but the community can be quite mean and toxic. I played for around a year after having played other TA Spring RTS for a few years prior, and if you don’t follow the exact meta of the month (whatever that might be) in terms of build order and things, people can get really aggro and your team can vote to kick you and take your units.
Also, one particularly aggravating part of the community is that it’s considered courtesy to surrender once the front line is broken instead of playing the game out and letting the back eco players try and recover it.
The drafting for picking map spots is done in order of seniority, and the good players take all the low stress spots which leaves the newer players to take the more difficult spots. This feeds into a loop where the senior players get aggro at the new players for letting the front break down, but simultaneously they won’t take it themselves even though it’s the more important position.
I stopped playing because I felt like I had a lot of negative interactions in every 2nd or 3rd game. The front player blames the back player, the back player blames the front player, everyone flames the weakest player.
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Hey, PtaQ here, BAR’s Community Manager. I’m sorry this was your experience. There are definitely some very competitive lobbies, but harassment is not acceptable. Please report any players involved, as reports are the only way we can identify patterns and take action. We have an active moderation team and do review them.
For a more relaxed experience, I’d recommend trying less established meta maps. Lobbies marked “rotato” rotate maps after every game and are usually among the chillest. Players tend to be less rigid about roles and expected builds there, which generally leads to more positive interactions.
This is a common reaction and the response is common too: this is only the case if you follow the herd to 8v8 and the two club-like maps they fixate on. But if you study the community for 5 minutes first, you can walk past those two “pubs full of toxic jerks fighting” there are a dozen other options. Single player, PvE, 1v1 through 4v4 and FFA. These (smaller) game modes lack the level of drama you see in 8v8. You just have to go into the quiet restaurant with nerds playing chess and other board games instead of the obvious mess of a drunken bar across the street.
Not my experience at all when I played around a year ago. There were plenty of noob-specific / noob-friendly lobbies with a mix of helpful players and fellow casuals.
Wow, that sounds awful. That's beyond optimising the fun out of a game, it's straight up refusing to have fun. One wonders what they get from it?
This very much depends on the lobby. I don't think this is unique to BAR either - it's just that 8v8 is the most popular mode.
Lots of players mean more chances to get a toxic guy who doesn't recognise their own faults and blames others.
I actually just don't really agree about the assertion on player slots. If anything, the better players get the more likely they are to play a front slot, because they have an outside influence on the chances of their team winning.
This is a classic take by a non-competitive player that would be better suited playing PvE or campaign games.
That being said, there's nothing wrong with that. Just understand that when people are trying to win, they have skin in the game, and are investing time and effort to win every game.
> Also, one particularly aggravating part of the community is that it’s considered courtesy to surrender once the front line is broken instead of playing the game out and letting the back eco players try and recover it.
Yes, it is courtesy not to waste other people's time. Not sure where the controversy is, rather than your misunderstanding. Usually it's quite evident whether the game is lost (again, if you are a somewhat competitive player).
> I stopped playing because I felt like I had a lot of negative interactions in every 2nd or 3rd game.
You need somewhat of a thick skin to play competitive team games. This goes just as well for more popular games like DoTA or CS2. It just seems you didn't, but it's not the game's fault or its community's.
I feel like many team games would benefit from full mute by default. I played Valorant like that for a while and my experience was infinitely better.
Welcome to any competitive game ever... Your team isn't winning within within the first 3 minutes of the game? Better forfeit and go next.
It's amazing the degree to which streaming/online communities around video games have destroyed the games themselves. Every update to every game launches a large scale effort to find the "meta" which is then instantly disseminated to the most try-hard assholes on the Internet. Anyone who dares to develop their own strategy/style/loadout is up against hordes of people (a growing proportion every day) who just copy whatever the Youtubers figured out.