28 replies to this topic

[Monky]

Socket7, on 04 December 2012 - 12:27 AM, said:

Oh look. It's THIS thread again.

Constructive criticism is all well and good. Filing bug reports and how to reproduce bugs is AWESOME. Reporting players who exploit game mechanics against the CoC is good.

But that's not what you see here most of the time.

Most of the time you see here on the forums, is... well exactly what you've written. A verbose rant that does nothing but say "I'm mad and I've got an open mic in the form of the "New Thread" button.

We don't need these threads. We need threads where people point out ACTUAL problems and pose REAL solutions.

We do not need "This MMO is doomed I'm taking my toys and going home!" threads. We do not need "Well THIS company made this entirely different game and that's somehow relevant to the fact I have problems playing an unoptimized beta on my 6 year old PC."

Actually I would say that constructive criticism -is- what you see here most of the time. usually the non constructive threads get shut down pretty quick. You're either exaggerating what you see or are dismissing people who disagree with you as doom and gloom sky is falling people. I was accused of the same thing for pointing out and arguing against the CTF-IM, even though I specifically said I don't think it's gamebreakingly OP. Ranting against people expressing their opinion is exactly what this thread is against, and it's exactly what you did.

Jman5, on 04 December 2012 - 12:27 AM, said:

OP, your entire premise is based on the flawed assumption that the whiners are always right and the people who disagree are wrong.

There will always be a massive amount of complaining about any game. I don't care how many millions of dollars and man hours you pump into it, people will claim the game is terrible and that whatever the developers are doing to fix things, it will never be enough.

What makes it worse is that a lot of the outrage you see on a day to day basis here is based on willful ignorance of what is coming down the line. Every day I see half a dozen new threads about how "imbalanced the Streak SRM is, and why isn't lazy PGI even acknowledging this issue?!"

However, if they had bothered to look into the command chair subforum, they would see a regularly updated log on the progress they are making toward balancing the SSRM 2.


So let's stop assuming that every whiner is correct and start reading up on all the updates coming out of the command chair. Because we could save a lot of time by educating ourselves.

I'm starting to feel like I'm white knighting for OP, but this is exactly the thing you just railed against - flawed premise. You assume that because whiners can be wrong, non whiners can't be wrong. Seriously, re-read this thing you typed - you said because people who didn't read about the incoming streak nerf are wrong, no one should take head of anyone who says anything. At least, that's the way you sound. If you're more reasonable than that feel free to say what you deem to be reasonable.

Edited by Monky, 04 December 2012 - 12:40 AM.

[Lonestar1771]

Socket7, on 04 December 2012 - 12:27 AM, said:

Oh look. It's THIS thread again.

Constructive criticism is all well and good. Filing bug reports and how to reproduce bugs is AWESOME. Reporting players who exploit game mechanics against the CoC is good.

But that's not what you see here most of the time.

Most of the time you see here on the forums, is... well exactly what you've written. A verbose rant that does nothing but say "I'm mad and I've got an open mic in the form of the "New Thread" button.

We don't need these threads. We need threads where people point out ACTUAL problems and pose REAL solutions.

We do not need "This MMO is doomed I'm taking my toys and going home!" threads. We do not need "Well THIS company made this entirely different game and that's somehow relevant to the fact I have problems playing an unoptimized beta on my 6 year old PC."

First of all, who are you to decide what these forums "need"? When did you become the judge and jury on what counts as a useful topic to talk about and what is mindless drivel? Stop being pretentious and get over the fact that people have differing opinions from that of your own.

Not to mention that many people here can't actually enjoy the game right now due to poor optimization. Others also (myself included) find it much more interesting to play FWO instead of the actual game due to it being more or less broken. How about you stop making excuses for PGI and recognize that they are not the Mechwarrior Messiah you are looking for.

[Lonestar1771]

Samantha, on 04 December 2012 - 01:04 AM, said:

You will suffer persecution from the Yes Men of the PGI, they may put you on the cross and light you with their righteous forum flame posts full of ad hominem, scorn, hate.

You dare to speak as a equal amongst them and question their authority on deciding what's posted on these forums.

There will be much gnashing of the teeth, for you question their god, and whether this game was created by false prophets;

In their eyes, you are a traitorous blasphemer, to be spat upon and stoned in these forums to show loyalty to their masters.

Be strong in your convictions brother, for the time of truth is coming, and them and their god will be judged as they have judged others.

And "Beta" will not be enough to grant them mercy on the day of judgement.


The Chronicles of FWO: Cycles 4:12

I'd rather be a shepherd than a sheep

[Taizan]

I don't know about this. Whining usually isn't about making valid complaints backed up by a rational argument, its simple attention craving and often just serves the purpose of venting.

Nevertheless I see lots of valid complaints in the forums, very many constructive ideas floating around & sensible remarks on what is amiss without much (publicly visible) attention by the devs.

What I've learned from other boards is that if you want a reply from a developer its beneficial to leave out "loaded questions" and give enough room to hear out the dev's thoughts about an issue. Even then though the ensuing vitriol, used by a minority to derail threads, often seems to scare away an official response.

Yes moderators could take care of that. The GW2 forums for example emloy this. Every thread where an Anet dev posts in is basically being monitored by mods with a magnifying glass These threads are moderated very heavy handed, leading to the impression that the moderators are some hard-*** **** dudes that relentlessly swat down any criticism or constructive feedback. A situation that surely isn't desirable either.

The "ask the devs thing" seems to be a middle ground, offering a safe environment for offering developer thoughts and a place where almost any question can be asked without much arbitrary deterioration by trolls and spammers.

Edited by Taizan, 04 December 2012 - 01:28 AM.

[Jello2142]

Undead Bane, on 07 November 2012 - 03:11 AM, said:

Hello everyone!

Couple of hours before the forums were flooded with threads about how much the game got broken. Now they are flooded with threads "stop whining", "it's all about you", "the game is fine, you are not" etc.

While first flood I find to be very good, the second one is terribad. Let explain, why, taking as an example all but dead MMO SWTOR we have right now.

But first on general.

"Whining" is good, because it is not mainly whining. It is complaining about the bad sides the game has. PGI got lucky to get a very involved community (just like Bioware was before with SWTOR), that actually cares for the game, wants it to succeed and gets very upset, when the game gets... let's just say "not fun" instead of broken. Then tonns of posts about it emerge.
I hope, the devs read and understand the posts, otherwise, we will end up like SWTOR.

So, about SWTOR now. That WAS a promising game with high potential because of universe it was running in (don't you see the resemblance?). BUT. At certain point the devs went on with decisions, that proved the trusting community, that noone gives a **** about them. And the community just vanished. Soon, the game vanished too.

It's not a secret, that commonly, active gamers, who actually love playing, spend more time in the game, rather than on forums. So, if the game is fine and has mechanisms, that allow to communicate, they communicate there. Once the game starts going in wrong direction, active gamer leaves the game and goes to the forum, to write a complaint. Or, if he finds the same one he has, he reads the reaction on it and then takes decision whether to keep hoping for best, or leave and try something else.

Forum posters, on the other hand, live on forums. They love the forums, want them clean and nice. Probably, they love forums more, than the game, that they find "ok". So, once some complaint shows, they swarm it and write things like "game is ok, you are broken", "stop whining, the developer knows better" and so on.

And critical thing in their relationship is developer's reaction. SWTOR became the example of poor developer's reaction (actually, NONE) and decisions and died eventually.

Forum posters dominated on the forums, swarmed every thread, not a single solid complaint had a crew reply or reaction. In fact, all the reactions were exactly opposite to the ones players hoped to get. So, devs knew better and killed the game eventually, making it poor WoW clone with not much to do. They did listen to forum posters, who though everything was ok, and lost all their dedicated player base meanwhile

So, if you come to the forums after poor decision and think "omg, these people whine again... the game is ok" - know, that if you didn't see this "whine", that would mean that the game died and lost dedicated player base.

Be glad that you have that much "whining". As, I hope, PGI is.
And PGI, please, let us, gamers, know, that we are somehow heard.
Just plain silence and damage control won't do the thing for you.

PS
We do remember the big letter about OB delay, We loved it, it showed, that you listen to at least turbo-hyper-giant reactions of the gamers. However, I hope, that the reaction does not need to get that high for you, PGI, to take it into consideration - the dedicated gamers community does not have stamina to make such reactions every time something goes wrong.

What are you talking about PGI constantly responds to posts with sarcastic BS all the time!! You know the equivelent to a ******* spouting off " NO YOU ARE" when they have heard enough from one of there peers, is that not good enough for you??

[Jacmac]

Having seen a lot of MMO's go down the toilet in the past ten years, I don't think forum whining or rants have all that much to do with it. In fact, I believe the arrogance of the game design leaders/producers/decision makers are directly responsible because sometimes (usually the wrong times) they attempt to out-guess or out-think prevailing wisdom. The leaders that have a 'vision' and believe that they know what's best regardless of what their own rank and file developers/play testers might think, those are the guys responsible for failure. Or success; they aren't always wrong.

Edited by Jacmac, 04 December 2012 - 08:35 AM.

[Pendraco]

I don't mind some good constructive criticism, a well written rant or a discussion about a feature, weapon....etc. But for the love of Blake, please take a few moments and see if there aren't a dozen threads with 15+ pages on the same topic that you could add your voice too before creating a new topic.

[Wired]

Don't be mad, haters.

Edited by Wired, 04 December 2012 - 09:27 AM.

[Jman5]

Monky, on 04 December 2012 - 12:36 AM, said:

I'm starting to feel like I'm white knighting for OP, but this is exactly the thing you just railed against - flawed premise. You assume that because whiners can be wrong, non whiners can't be wrong. Seriously, re-read this thing you typed - you said because people who didn't read about the incoming streak nerf are wrong, no one should take head of anyone who says anything. At least, that's the way you sound. If you're more reasonable than that feel free to say what you deem to be reasonable.

I'm not seeing how you can twist my words to mean that non-whiners can't be wrong. I wasn't saying or trying to imply that non-whiners are always right. I was saying that being a whiner doesn't make you right by default. On top of that, many complaints (that are reasonable) are based on the ignorant assumption that PGI is not doing anything about said complaint. The reality is that they have written extensively about correcting said complaint and have a timeline for a fix.

Just to be super clear:
Complaining or defending various aspects of the game does not make you wrong or right by default. I have written plenty of constructive criticism on this forum as well as argued against the implementation of other proposed changes. However there are a lot of angry posters who have clearly not done their homework. Those people's argument that X,Y or Z needs fixing is not wrong persay, but they are wrong to say that the devs are doing nothing.

Edited by Jman5, 04 December 2012 - 09:56 AM.