314 replies to this topic

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Roadbeer, on 26 April 2013 - 02:54 PM, said:

The way the community interacts with the employees is worse. Keep smacking a dog and sooner or later it's going to bite you.

Its a never ending cycle
Theyre mean to us, we're mean to them... chicken or egg?

jeffsw6, on 26 April 2013 - 05:16 PM, said:

An open, General Discussion forum is needed. The fault with it is with the moderators, not posters. The reason there were 20 PPC QQ threads every day, and 20 LRM ones before that, and so on, is because the moderators are not effective. They don't merge threads or move them into a more appropriate sub-forum except when they've grown frustrated with particular posters or subjects, and then, they do it en-masse and create anger among posters.

That is stupid. It's why PGI probably needs more effective community staffers than the ones they've got. Moving or merging threads should be routine, and not seen as "suppressing discussion" by players; but the moderators' actions have created the current, negative atmosphere. It's upon them to use the tools at their disposal -- simple moving/merging threads -- to have a wider variety of discussion topics in General, and to encourage actual use of the sub-forums, instead of treating them as a dumping ground for unwanted opinions.

TL;DR: The fault lies with unprofessional moderators, not posters.

Kind of both but this change is just ugly and bad

also; is there a point to mechwarrior news? Theres all of 2 posts there and you guys disperse news anywhere other than here mostly anyways.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

This change does smack of divide and conquer to me

[Naja]

Niko Snow, on 26 April 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

Surprisingly to some: Since these initial changes, we have seen an increase in new unique and returning visitors, an increase in visitors to specific sub-forums, and an increase in approved and constructive posts and threads generated in those sub-forums. There has been an immediate decrease in duplicate threads (with exception to those threads duplicated to discuss the loss of General Discussion and how it would spin the forums into a Dark Age.) Despite a slight increase in reports in the immediate aftershock of the changes; Overall, there was a decrease in the number of unique reported players and high threat reports. We will be hopeful to see if this pattern continues.

Correlation does not imply causation I'm afraid. An increase in unique forum visitors cannot be attributed to a change in forum layout, as being 'unique' implies they never experienced the pre-changed layout to begin with. As for returning visitors, it's likely that they are returning to watch how the changes effect the community, and have no long term interest in returning once the excitement dies down.

An immediate decrease to duplicate threads is irrelevant information without a comparable total thread count to weigh it against, and as you yourself noted, many of the regular forum community members are more focused on ensuring the return of general discussion. This is the biggest issue right now, so of course this is what will get the most attention. MG's and PPC's are on the back burner, but do not think that this is a permanent situation in any case.

As for the decrease in reported threads, it is of the general consensus of much of what I have read, that the number of deleted player posts has significantly increased over the past few days. So if by reported you mean 'reported by players', then due to an increase in moderator prominence and possible defensiveness, this is not at all surprising. If reported includes posts deleted by moderators alone, then I'm afraid I just find that a little difficult to believe.

In short, although I applaud your attempt to provide information, as openly sharing things is always nice, the statistics you provided are without context, so the conclusions you draw from them are questionable, and ultimately of no consequence. I am well aware you never specifically drew any connections, but I would hazard a guess that the implication of your comments are rather obvious.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Naja, on 26 April 2013 - 07:21 PM, said:

As for the decrease in reported threads, it is of the general consensus of much of what I have read, that the number of deleted player posts has significantly increased over the past few days.

Yeah it just seems that the mods are able to delete or move to k-town stuff faster.

Id hazard to call BS on the duplicate threads being less profuse. Id be MORE likely to post multiple threads in several areas now because a.) I dont know where the players are now and b.) I dont know what new subforum to put it in.

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 26 April 2013 - 07:28 PM.

[Critical Fumble]

I keep saying this: more visitors is not always better, especially in intelligent discussions. The change I've noticed is that the the areas previously covered by suggestions and game balance boards have had an increase in people with the inability to thing beyond their own tiny perspective and/or fail to read enough of the thread to actually contribute properly.

Unless of course those boards are just popularity contests, in which case all we need is polls. Don't you know how many virtual cyber trees have to die to make these posts? Kind of wasteful if its just condensed into "for" or "against".

[Mycrus]

Niko Snow, on 26 April 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

Surprisingly to some: Since these initial changes, we have seen an increase in new unique and returning visitors, an increase in visitors to specific sub-forums, and an increase in approved and constructive posts and threads generated in those sub-forums. There has been an immediate decrease in duplicate threads (with exception to those threads duplicated to discuss the loss of General Discussion and how it would spin the forums into a Dark Age.) Despite a slight increase in reports in the immediate aftershock of the changes; Overall, there was a decrease in the number of unique reported players and high threat reports. We will be hopeful to see if this pattern continues.

[Roadbeer]

Greyfyl, on 26 April 2013 - 03:48 PM, said:

Didn't take you long to come to PGI's defense did it?

Go ahead roadbeer...I'm sure you are just waiting to tell me how wrong I am.

I'm sure, if I bothered to check, that I could find at least 20 likes from you when I've railed against things like 3PV and the rumors of monetiation of CW, And I'm sure you keep a screen shot of my Q&A with Bryan about the 'demographics' of MW:O under your pillow at night, but y'all have selective amnesia when I'm spending just as much time telling you when your wrong. Call me a defender or white knight... whatever. I call bullcrap when I see it... don't want to accept it, that's fine, but you don't sign my paycheck or sleep in my bed, so I'll just keep on keeping on,

Edited by Roadbeer, 26 April 2013 - 08:42 PM.

[smokefield]

i still think, as some of the previous posters..that the main reason for the initial chaos in the GD forum was the moderators team. Rethinking the forums is a good idea. Removing GD allover was a mistake. Restructuring the forums without asking first a feedback from the community, and more...removing the only place where you could get that feedback..was another mistake.

lets see now what they got...

[Lindonius]

[Jestun]

Fitzbattleaxe, on 26 April 2013 - 02:39 PM, said:

These changes will definitely help. Especially the news and meta sections.

One point though:

A perfectly civil thread that merely asked where people should go to generally discuss the game was locked because "why would you possibly want a general discussion section other than to hurl insults at the devs?" You can read my posts. I've never said anything negative about the developers. The person who started that thread may not have either. And yet the moderators of this forum felt free to hurl insults at anyone who was upset at the change. "If you don't like it, then you must be a whining *****, so we're not going to listen to you". I think you have a great game here, even if I don't agree with every design decision. I'm a software engineer myself, and know that things are often a lot more difficult than they appear from the outside. But the manner in which some of your employees interact with this community is disgraceful.

Not only that but he asked what topic would not focus on one aspect of the game so as to not fit into sub-forums.

I created a new thread to discuss this, since it was not against the rules nor a duplicate of another thread, but it got deleted. Not locked, deleted.

The answer is 3rd person view.


Yes... it has a topic in the hot topic heatsink, but only because of all the chat in general discussion about it. So let's ignore that for now.

3rd person vs. 1st person covers:

Balance
Map design (to discuss whether 3rd person can be used to look over / around cover)
Engine capabilities (to discuss the viability of the 3rd person view to render based on the line of sight of your mechs cockpit)
Matchmaker rules (should they be kept separate or will that split the playerbase into too many queues?)
Community Warfare (separate CW for 1st person and 3rd person or go back on the "1st and 3rd will never have to play together" promise?)

And so on.

[BoydofZINJ]

I miss the polls forum... i was going to post something and have option 4. There is no 4.


Wait it was complete garbage... so good for you PGI... now give us more content and fix the bugs... wne are we goign to design new assaults, lights, and mediums for trial mechs?

Edited by Boydsan, 26 April 2013 - 10:38 PM.

[Jestun]

It is a shame though.

The problem of "forum community pissed off that general discussion has been deleted" would be much better solved by reinstating the general discussion forum!

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Jestun, on 26 April 2013 - 10:33 PM, said:

When there is too much criticism to delete all the threads follow PGI's example - just delete the entire General Discussion forum!

Agreed
--yes, I just quoted your sig lol

Boydsan, on 26 April 2013 - 10:37 PM, said:

I miss the polls forum... i was going to post something and have option 4. There is no 4.


Wait it was complete garbage... so good for you PGI... now give us more content and fix the bugs... wne are we goign to design new assaults, lights, and mediums for trial mechs?

Apparently UI 2.0 minimizes the necessity of trial mechs somehow

Jestun, on 26 April 2013 - 10:37 PM, said:

It is a shame though.

The problem of "forum community pissed off that general discussion has been deleted" would be much better solved by reinstating the general discussion forum!

Yeah but its much easier to listen to the white knights and kissasses who are telling you how much better this is.

[Jestun]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 26 April 2013 - 10:43 PM, said:

Yeah but its much easier to listen to the white knights and kissasses who are telling you how much better this is.

What you do is use PGI logic.

"We know lots of people on the forums don't want 3rd person views, we've seen that from all the polls with 80%+ voting against it. But we have decided that the default position on this issue is 'we want it' and since the forum population is considerably lower than the number of accounts created we have decided that more people want it than don't."

Just switch out "3rd person view" with "deletion of general discussion" to update it to this situation.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Jestun, on 26 April 2013 - 10:46 PM, said:

What you do is use PGI logic.

"We know lots of people on the forums don't want 3rd person views, we've seen that from all the polls with 80%+ voting against it. But we have decided that the default position on this issue is 'we want it' and since the forum population is considerably lower than the number of accounts created we have decided that more people want it than don't."

Just switch out "3rd person view" with "deletion of general discussion" to update it to this situation.

Yeah I was gonna take a stance that reflected that oh so famous

Bryan Ekman, on 21 March 2013 - 04:39 PM, said:

Honest answer.

The analysis on those who voted, showed that the majority of votes came from a very narrow demographic of our player base. And while they represent some of core players, they did not necessarily represent the opinion of the general user base. The majority of our players never visit, post, or read the forum content, so the poll could be considered weighted in favour of a specific demographic.

Since the majority of players who have an issue with 3rd person come generally from the core players, we elected to address this issue via this forum post to collect all of the concerns and ideas that this group faces or has with 3rd person.

line but my anger got the better of me

[Jestun]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 26 April 2013 - 10:50 PM, said:

Yeah I was gonna take a stance that reflected that oh so famous



line but my anger got the better of me

That post still annoys me.

The part of the BETA community which uses the forums the provide feedback are the ones you should be listening to - they are actual beta testers.

The ones who have never looked at the forums, never given feedback on anything... chances are they are just treating this as a free demo. All they do is help keep the queue times short and potentially stress test the servers.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Jestun, on 26 April 2013 - 10:55 PM, said:

That post still annoys me.

The part of the BETA community which uses the forums the provide feedback are the ones you should be listening to - they are actual beta testers.

The thing about that is that if it really were, what would be the point of a test server in a beta?
Testing the testing inside the testing after the devs Q&A test it but before it gets on the testing server
Betaception O.o

Jestun, on 26 April 2013 - 10:55 PM, said:

The ones who have never looked at the forums, never given feedback on anything... chances are they are just treating this as a free demo. All they do is help keep the queue times short and potentially stress test the servers.

And those are the people they listen to. The ones who dont talk.

Pretty much says it all there

[jeffsw6]

CYBRN4CR, on 26 April 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

Moderators are human too you know.

They are humans with a job to do. Keep in mind, I am not sitting here posting personal attacks toward any moderator. I am criticizing their practices, because they have solicited feedback from the community (us) and clearly, one of their concerns is that General Discussion had a lot of duplicate topics and drowned out the variety that should belong there. That is their fault, and it's not mean to point that out.

CYBRN4CR, on 26 April 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

Or the fact that hundreds of duplicate threads kept on appearing because barely anyone used the search function because they think that their thread is somehow "different" when it's not. Why do you think people started breaking out the popcorn and said "oh look it's this thread again." It's not because the moderators were doing a bad job. It's because they were tired of moderating a system that was broken.

The reason for that constant stream of duplicate threads is because:

• they lock or move threads instead of simply merging them into already-existing ones and leaving it all in General, in ONE THREAD, so that other topics can still load onto the first page
  
• the search feature doesn't actually work

It is not good that anything like "which highlanders are you buying?" or "check out my camo" gets drowned out by PPC QQ. That can be fixed by directing the moderators to use the moderation tools more effectively -- in other words, learn to sticky and merge, instead of lock topics so more players will just start more threads. The incredible stupidity of that was made self-evident by the general discussion forum.

This all boils down to poor leadership.

[TOGSolid]

Quote

A perfectly civil thread that merely asked where people should go to generally discuss the game was locked because "why would you possibly want a general discussion section other than to hurl insults at the devs?" You can read my posts. I've never said anything negative about the developers. The person who started that thread may not have either. And yet the moderators of this forum felt free to hurl insults at anyone who was upset at the change. "If you don't like it, then you must be a whining *****, so we're not going to listen to you". I think you have a great game here, even if I don't agree with every design decision. I'm a software engineer myself, and know that things are often a lot more difficult than they appear from the outside. But the manner in which some of your employees interact with this community is disgraceful.

While there are those of us who are capable of holding ration, intelligent conversations that would benefit from a nice GD forum, the sad fact is is that the majority of people who would posted in the old one were just complete ********: Any attempt to bring in more iron fisted mods who would shut down the trolls would have resulted in an outpouring of "OMG PGI IS SQUASHING DISSENT" just as bad as this one.

Quote

Overall, there was a decrease in the number of unique reported players and high threat reports. We will be hopeful to see if this pattern continues.

Which isn't surprising since a lot of the more vocal GD regulars would just spend their time hurling abuse at PGI, spouting off conspiracy theories, and trolling the threads.

Quote

I keep saying this: more visitors is not always better, especially in intelligent discussions. The change I've noticed is that the the areas previously covered by suggestions and game balance boards have had an increase in people with the inability to thing beyond their own tiny perspective and/or fail to read enough of the thread to actually contribute properly.

So the areas that were previously shielded from the jackasses due GD sucking them all up are subsequently having less quality discussion because these people have migrated over?

And yet people are arguing that GD had more quality discussion. El oh el.

Edited by TOGSolid, 26 April 2013 - 11:16 PM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

TOGSolid, on 26 April 2013 - 11:14 PM, said:

While unprofessional from a mod, yes,

Even this guy sees the problem lol
Guess there should be a rotational mod system then. You stay in for so long, but when you start getting worn down and start acting unprofessional, theyre replaced with fresh guys who arent apt to act that way.