I have a suspicion this will likely descend into a sea of flame, but we'll try anyway and see what happens. I'm incredibly disappointed with the state of Vanguards vocal forum community. I used to think that the EQ2 forums were the worst I'd seen for back-biting, whining, unconstructive comments, and generally off-putting attitudes. But I'm sad to say our home here has become just as bad if not worse. We are actively pushing people away from our game because of the attitudes on this forum. I am well aware that a forum represents a minority of the game's community, and that a large portion of people don't even come to the boards. But those who do? Dear god! There's apparently no pleasing The Vets (and I'm putting These People in their own special group, I'm sure we know who they are from their posts complaining about everything, whether it's good or bad and it isn't all veteran players). You can make a change for the better and still manage to anger them. You can draw in new people, funding, and attention and they still get upset over it. Make any change to The Vision or Their Game and they get up in arms and start crying for peoples' jobs. Any change is met with immediate scorn and hate, well before any actual testing has been done with the potential changes. And when someone who isn't a part of this vocal minority points out that "the numbers aren't that bad" they get flamed into the ground. This is bad enough. But when new people come, expressing valid concerns and the community reaction is to chase them off with pitch forks and fire? This is downright disgusting. I know it's not everyone who takes part in these activities. But we should all be ashamed of the state of our community for letting their voices rise up so loudly. When people are saying "I like this game but the inhospitable community is bad enough to make me not want to play" there is a very serious problem. I've been here, watching these forums long enough to have seen the community descend into this pit of whining, QQing, flaming... Trolls. I'm hoping I stay around long enough to see it get better.
i think the community is fine. There are much worse gaming forums out there, Check out Swtor its bad there. real bad
Koralith wrote: Its a tricky thing. One person who has the best intention can spawn comments they are QQing. It is sad but there are people that no matter what you say they thrive on it, makes them feel important I guess or just get childish thrill trying to aggravate others. Here in these forums there are not too many who post so I don't think its that bad. Eleusis is 100% correct, go spend an hour in SWTOR forums. I dare you to post one positive comment and come out alive!
try the EVE forums. heaven forbid if you are an industrial or high security player. Those people are just rude and not venting frustration at a neverending string of broken content and bad patches. They get personal.
Myself, as a veteran player, am very happy with the lag problem and lack of new content. Im also hoping for more fluff items and legendary items from SC bought items Just kidding. But its hard to stay positive all the time. Give us some slack =)
I've played other games with horrendous communities, VG isn't alone there. What makes VG 'special' in this case is the huge turn it's taken. It went from being adults discussing problems, to children bickering about their broken toys. I'm not saying people should be happy the game is in a damaged state. I'm saying people should be constructive, work with the people hired to try to fix the game. The Druid changes feedback thread is an excellent example of this. There are people in there who are actively trying to help, to provide cold hard numbers to back-up their feedback. But then they get slammed for it, and just post theory instead of backing up their comments. It's elsewhere too, but that's a pretty shining example of it. Ultimately, what I would like to see is the adult community that VG was. That was the community that, for me, made it fun to actually be social. The forum angst (and there's no better way to describe it than that) has bled over into the game itself, and it's made wanting to be social in game a chore. And that's not cool (and ultimately it's horrible for anyone new coming to the game who takes one look at the way our veterans treat not only our development staff but the new people and say 'forget that!'. Edit: To the last post above mine, I'm just as miffed about the lack of new content. But instead of whining about it, posting snarky remarks or calling for peoples' jobs I've instead tried to offer constructive criticism, to point out a lack and try and open dialog where it can be fixed. Of course, these attempts end up getting hijacked by the loud bark of the forum minority who wants to turn everything into a "You're doing this on purpose because you're evil stupid meanie poo-poo heads" whine.
Koralith wrote: You have got to be kidding me Koralith. You obviously do not know the 6 year history of VG well enough or the community that supports it well enough (the real community that has endured a ton over the 6 years) to make a statement like that. Many of us have invested thousands of dollars into this game we love, only to be shot down, ignored, palmed off and lied to, over and over and over again. Call us stupid, call us crazy, call us what ever you like but we are not QQers or childish kids whinging over broken toys, as you put it. We are passionate adults that expect a certain level of customer service and content for our money, Free to play "their way" would not even exist if it wasn't for those of us who kept multiple accounts active over the years to show support and I'm not talking about station passes...actual Vanguard: Saga of Heroes accounts, paying money directly to Vanguard. It makes me sad to see such words thrown around by people who know nothing of what we have gone through, a lot of us can't let this game go, to many of us, it's the best thing out at the moment and will continue to be until the lights are finally turned off. So when a simple change to some, causes rants and outrage by the Veteran's and hardcore raiders, you know it must be something game breaking, we don't cry over small things but lately, there have been monstrous f&%k ups without any explanation at all that affects our game play massively. When that happens, we will let the Devs and SOE know they have made a mistake but don't mistake that for QQing or tantrums, educate yourself first on why so many Veterans are making noise about something before labelling us all QQing children.
There can be as much whining on the forums as WoW has and I don't care. The "Forum Game" isn't as fun as the video game and I like the community there That said, these forums have always seemed pretty polite, especially in comparison to the WoW, EQ2, SWtOR, Rift, and GW2 forums. Usually the "complainig" is players either trying to call attention to a game defect or decrying some change to thier class. These complaints stem from an enjoyment of the game, not spiteful hatemongering. I can deal with that. edit: Just saw Kilsin's post above mine. Thanks for proving my point, LOL!
