Each of us needs to take better care of OUR community...

Carnage_78

I need to get this off my chest as the forum is getting sourer with every day that passes. I’ve been playing this game for nearly 250 days. This forum has been such an amazing help & wealth of useful information to guide me along my quest towards a better team roster but I feel like this good thing is slowly slipping out of our hands.

These day, coming to the forum for various reasons & to find some more information, I feel like all I read about is someone asking for more stuff for whatever reason or a flurry of rage quitting because some players did not get what they wanted after a change in the game or such things. There is a very noticeable sliding trend in the wrong direction in my opinion…which right now I would summarize into “Please, enough about asking compensation for every little thing” & a few weeks ago by “Please, enough with all the rage quitting posts”.

Now, I am not saying that all of these are not legitimate demands or fair enough reactions to things that change, so please do not turn this post into a series of examples of what in your opinion should be fair or not in a circumstance or another. We get enough posts about all of that for you to express yourself under these threads…

The point I am trying to make is that, as a community, I think that we need to feel more aware of some type of social responsibility that we have regarding OUR forum. Although we experience some bumps along the way, I still play this game as I think that overall it is really fun to play (my alliance helps a lot in that category as we are a very social bunch) & is also challenging to compete against the player base for rewards which I sometimes find frustrating but most of the time feel more excited about than anything else (especially while in the middle of a shield hop).

I think that we all need to try & find more solutions or workarounds rather than focus too much on what is wrong with the game. Try to think about how we can all contribute to the community rather than complain. There are so many good contributions out there that I won’t list them all here but the fact & the matter is that it is out there and we need to nurture it more as a group, encourage it to grow rather than go unnoticed. Again, I am not saying that we should not discuss the issues that we experience with the game but I am only trying to say that we can’t lose sight of what this forum is all about in my opinion…the MPQ gamer community!

Helping each other do better is what this should be about. Informing players about a character strengths & weaknesses to allow better decision making for up & coming players, coming up with tools to help manage our rosters & progression, identify trends in character use along with good strategies to overcome some popular teams, techniques to do better in PvP or PvE, advice on how to invest resources efficiently, mistakes not to make, sharing anecdotes on stuff that happen to us that is somewhat unusual, trying to come up with original contributions & so on.

Right now, these discussions seem to be drowning in a sea of other negative things which I am not trying to eradicate but simply balance out to a better overall ratio. Maybe it is just me & how I perceive things as I read this forum on a daily basis but if I was a new player coming to the forum to get some insider information, I am not sure I would find what I want & need or then actually stick around at all to contribute to it which in the end only hurts the community.

Anyway, just my 2 cents in trying to plant a more positive seed our community…awareness is sometimes enough to encourage change.

Arondite

Forum is pretty well off actually. Disagreement and discourse are not bad things. If it devolves into personal attacks and all, sure, that's not really acceptable. Arguments are not only fine, though, but should be encouraged in any healthy society.

Carnage_78

Arondite wrote:

Disagreement and discourse are not bad things. If it devolves into personal attacks and all, sure, that's not really acceptable. Arguments are not only fine, though, but should be encouraged in any healthy society.

I completely agree with that...argumentation is very healthy but complaints repeated over & over again is slowly diluting the useful discussions in my opinion.

I don't think that the forum is in a bad situation at all...I am simply saying that we need to be aware not to lose our way.

Clintman

Interesting thing is, I do not see trolling rage. What I see is people so frustrated that they are venting their feelings in hopes that the developers will take note.

If people do not consistently let the developers know they do not like the game turning into a mega-grind just to get 1 cover after a weeklong PVE, how will the developers know how the player base is feeling.

Of course I have played since Beta and people are still complaining about the grind because it has actually gone the opposite direction. But hey, I remain optimistic. So, if you compare timelines of MPQ against something like... peace in the middle east, well fun PVE and balanced MMR are just around the corner!!

Carnage_78

Clintman wrote:

What I see is people so frustrated that they are venting their feelings in hopes that the developers will take note.

Fair point...it is a very good thing to have a forum where each player can express their frustrations & give feedback to the game development team. I am not at all against that...

Maybe it was just me getting over saturated & needed to get it out of my system...but I felt like I needed to say something if only for myself to move on enjoying the other more positive side of the forum which helped me so much over the months I've been playing. I am an optimist as well after all...

To be honest, it just felt good to write it out loud as it was annoying me not to say anything after reading so many posts about the same negative things all the time in recent days/weeks...

Spoit

Honestly, it seems like there are just as many posts complaining about the complainers at this point.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Honestly, it seems like there are just as many posts complaining about the complainers at this point.

It's the Cycle of Complaint. The same thing that happens after every major change. I honestly feel it was worse following the original Funbalancing.

I'm all for civility, though. Civil discourse is the ****.

Unknown

I think a lot the repetition is due to the complainers not feeling heard. When things get hectic like the last Ultron event, the devs and support are dealing with a lot at once. Further, it's not like the designers have full flexibility in responding because often someone will read something they post quickly and misunderstand it, and then complain about being mislead. When you're putting time and money into something, there's definitely at least some expectation of feedback when things go wrong or not as expected. When complainers aren't getting many emotional payments from the devs, it tends to turn into an echo chamber of complaints, drowning out anything that might hint that devs are not fully to blame. Devs are just an easy target; they're not even real people to most players.

I really hope they bring back the Q&A at some point. Even though a lot of it was fluff, it still showed effort to connect with the community, and showed that they could acknowledge some issues, hinting that other feedback was being heard even if they couldn't officially say so or take a position on it.

DaveR4470

I do think the tone has soured somewhat in the last couple of months.... but I also know, based on past experience, that it could be much worse.

Also, it's the same everywhere. I'm sure the Official Vatican Forums have a bunch of "Pope: Do you have a life? NERF COMMUNION!!!!!!" threads. Even Kerbal Space Program's forums, normally a bastion of calm and gentility, has seen an argumentative inter-forum schism relating to the game's release. It's just the nature of a collection of individuals to argue about something. Nature abhors a vacuum where someone isn't calling someone else "Hitler"....