Why do people enjoy complaining about a game more than they do playing it?

Beta-Ray Bill

People complain because if it’s not voiced they can’t fix problems. Some do because they’ve put enough into it both time and money to actually have a place to speak here.

to you it may sound like a complaint, but to them it’s well deserved criticism. If a company you invest in does something wrong, never just sit there and say, “guess I’ll let them walk all over me. I’ll adjust.”

stand up and be honest. It’s a partnership. You help them and they should help back. Lately.. a lot of people have been ignored

Punisher5784

Jaedenkaal said:

Punisher5784 said:

When people complain on the forums about a particular topic and other players join in, it means they're not alone, this problem is bigger and the devs need to fix/adjust the issues in the game in order to maintain their customers

Well, it means a few hundred people feel that way. Or say that they feel that way on the internet. And we're not always right. Remember when Red Hulk was previewed and everyone thought he was terrible?

Who was that? I thought he looked awesome. First time I ever whaled a character. He started my journey to 4* land. I think ppl were disappointed about Red, as opposed to Hulk's black but that's about it

Jaedenkaal

Well, underwhelming, perhaps. 4* Cyclops was similarly panned, iirc. 

Alsmir

1. People don't enjoy complaining.
2. They complain because they care about it. If game keeps changing for worse, players are ignored - they start to complain. The are worried that eventually MPQ will become so bad that they will not enjoy it anymore.

vinsensual

By OPs own logic he/she should have left general discussion for 6 months. Instead he/she complained because he/she wanted to see improvement in something he/she cares about. 

Alfje17

Alsmir said:

1. People don't enjoy complaining.
2. They complain because they care about it. If game keeps changing for worse, players are ignored - they start to complain. The are worried that eventually MPQ will become so bad that they will not enjoy it anymore.

1. Have you ever been to the UK? It's a national sport here! As is queuing and complaining about queuing of course.

JarvisJackrabbit

Why does my wife stay with me when I don't wash the dishes for the umpteenth time or have a few too many drinks at the Bills game (I feel you Browns fan)? She will offer reasonable complaints but we stay together because those two examples do not represent the entirety of our relationship. We've purchased a home, have children, etcetera. Also, she's hopeful that my undesired behaviors can change.

Many MPQ players have invested vast amounts of time and financial resources into playing it, and those involved in producing the game are working to offer something that facilitates ongoing support, but you can't please everyone all the time.

Admittedly, this is hyperbolic and a bit of apples and oranges, but the psychology of the situation is not terribly complicated. I think the OP has been given ample context to constitute an answer.

Complaints can't be viewed in a vacuum, otherwise a thread about complaining is just more complaining.

Dartmaster01

This has to be the most redundant thread on the forum.  "There are to many complainy posts. Wait, I can always complain about it."  At what point do you become the problem OP?

Daredevil217

JarvisJackrabbit said:

Why does my wife stay with me when I don't wash the dishes for the umpteenth time or have a few too many drinks at the Bills game (I feel you Browns fan)? She will offer reasonable complaints but we stay together because those two examples do not represent the entirety of our relationship. We've purchased a home, have children, etcetera. Also, she's hopeful that my undesired behaviors can change.

Sunk cost fallacy?  Lol, I kid.

As for the OP, I agree.  The complaining is out of control on this forum.  I see there being two types.

Type 1 - Constructive Criticism: making suggestions about how things can be improved, using sound data, making reasonable arguments, thinking from multiple perspectives (including developers and players not at your tier).  I was one of the biggest "complainers" when vaulting happened, andI posted a laundry list of reasons why it was ultimately bad for the game for players at a bunch of different levels and was not a sustainable model given the goals the developers set for us as players.  Ultimately the developers responded and stated they were open to changing the system and then eventually did months later.  This felt constructive. I would like to see more of this on the forums.  Ultimately though we get more of...

Type 2 - Destructive Criticism: Threats of rage quitting and tightening the wallet, biased limited anecdotal evidence, only thinking from your own perspective and not other players, assigning malicious intent to developers, and worst of all, painting yourself as a victim.  "The developers are making me do X", "I have to play Y amount!", "Is this what you intended?", as if you the player has no agency.

I am not dedicated enough to grind out Lightening Rounds for a week straight.  I'm not a fan of the Thor event being Lightening Rounds as a whole.  But rather than say "the developers are making me play 72 matches!!", I simply won't play, or will do seeds (like I do w/ regular LRs), or whatever else I feel.  If I don't want to play 40 wins, I won't do that either.  Yes the developers are responsible for their part, but each player is also responsible for theirs. 

Beta-Ray Bill

Dartmaster01 said:

This has to be the most redundant thread on the forum.  "There are to many complainy posts. Wait, I can always complain about it."  At what point do you become the problem OP?

I don’t think he’s complain. More like confused on the way people act

Jaedenkaal

Beta-Ray Bill said:

Dartmaster01 said:

This has to be the most redundant thread on the forum.  "There are to many complainy posts. Wait, I can always complain about it."  At what point do you become the problem OP?

I don’t think he’s complain. More like confused on the way people act

Satisfying answers to questions about the way people act are rarely found on the internet, in my experience

shardwick

We're complaining because the game is going downhill and we want it to be better. But you start to go through a process with it. An aspect of the game sucks so we voice our suggestions on the game's official forum. Those fall on deaf ears by D3/Demi. They put out a survey asking us to rate our willingness to suggest the game to others and how they can make it better. Again, no new features that the community wants. So complaining with constructive criticism slowly turns into just complaining with a healthy dose of snark (where I currently am) because why does it matter anymore to leave constructive suggestions if the guys that are green-lighting pretty braindead decisions don't care enough to really interact with the community? So people keep complaining as more unpopular decisions get implemented and then those complaints start to pile up, people get more agitated because they enjoy the game in general but hate to see it going in one direction so then they either complain even more or just throw up their hands and quit the game and find something else to do.

donnel

Imagine you played a game for a long time, like an MMO. You continued to support the game (i.e. via VIP, etc..), because you enjoy it, but also you know other people who play and it's part of your routine. 

Now, the developer chooses to make a bunch of changes at once, without warning. The stuff you used to do to get x rewards, you now have to spend at least 30% more time to accomplish (win-counting). Where those rewards once were a fixed and easily achievable target, now they're a crapshoot of working harder/getting luckier than 490 other people.

They decide to gate high-level content behind a paywall (5* essential in story mode). Furthermore, you know that chance of competitiveness you used to have playing with your full roster? The developer's decide they only care about you paying for and obtaining the newest best characters.The few folks that decide to do so (or are lucky enough to gain it by effort, etc..) will almost automatically win any event just by participating in it. 

I get that MPQ has this pay to play (well) element to it, ever since champ levels and cp and 5* heroes. I've never seen such an obvious attempt to extract more revenue, though, than what's happened in the past month. I'm complaining in the hope that the dev's listen to their fanbase and reconsider some of these changes, because if not, it won't be any big deal. No more complaints from me, I'll head off to something else. 

Daredevil217

shardwick said:

They put out a survey asking us to rate our willingness to suggest the game to others and how they can make it better. Again, no new features that the community wants. So complaining with constructive criticism slowly turns into just complaining with a healthy dose of snark (where I currently am) because why does it matter anymore to leave constructive suggestions if the guys that are green-lighting pretty braindead decisions don't care enough to really interact with the community?

This is a good example of what I was talking about.  Because you don't like a change you assume that the entire community feels that way and then complain.  I personally do not have the results of the surveys they did so do not know what it is people wanted that they implemented, or why.  I know that after the tests, a poll on these forums showed that people preferred wins-based to points-based progression.  But that's a small sample size.  I assume that the win-preference is even more true for the more casual players not on the forums and for the people who didn't play pvp at all because they could not really progress.

Beta-Ray Bill

Daredevil217 said:

shardwick said:

They put out a survey asking us to rate our willingness to suggest the game to others and how they can make it better. Again, no new features that the community wants. So complaining with constructive criticism slowly turns into just complaining with a healthy dose of snark (where I currently am) because why does it matter anymore to leave constructive suggestions if the guys that are green-lighting pretty braindead decisions don't care enough to really interact with the community?

This is a good example of what I was talking about.  Because you don't like a change you assume that the entire community feels that way and then complain.  I personally do not have the results of the surveys they did so do not know what it is people wanted that they implemented, or why.  I know that after the tests, a poll on these forums showed that people preferred wins-based to points-based progression.  But that's a small sample size.  I assume that the win-preference is even more true for the more casual players not on the forums and for the people who didn't play pvp at all because they could not really progress.

Dude it’s not about the change of how to earn the progression rewards, but the change of the progression rewards. Now you have to earn less by putting in more time.

if you don’t see this then you aren’t active enough in game. Most people would care less if they just needed to earn 40 wins for all cp and 4*, but it’s just a 4* cover. And by 40 wins you’re way above the 900 mark it used to be.

that on its own is valid enough to complain on. People who do compete actively in this game are losing out more than the casual people who decide to skip this pvp because they didn’t feel like it

Beta-Ray Bill

Jaedenkaal said:

Beta-Ray Bill said:

Dartmaster01 said:

This has to be the most redundant thread on the forum.  "There are to many complainy posts. Wait, I can always complain about it."  At what point do you become the problem OP?

I don’t think he’s complain. More like confused on the way people act

Satisfying answers to questions about the way people act are rarely found on the internet, in my experience

Idk people do a good job of acting like idiots on the internet lol.

shardwick

Daredevil217 said:

shardwick said:

They put out a survey asking us to rate our willingness to suggest the game to others and how they can make it better. Again, no new features that the community wants. So complaining with constructive criticism slowly turns into just complaining with a healthy dose of snark (where I currently am) because why does it matter anymore to leave constructive suggestions if the guys that are green-lighting pretty braindead decisions don't care enough to really interact with the community?

This is a good example of what I was talking about.  Because you don't like a change you assume that the entire community feels that way and then complain.  I personally do not have the results of the surveys they did so do not know what it is people wanted that they implemented, or why.  I know that after the tests, a poll on these forums showed that people preferred wins-based to points-based progression.  But that's a small sample size.  I assume that the win-preference is even more true for the more casual players not on the forums and for the people who didn't play pvp at all because they could not really progress.

And how many people on the forum did you see that were in favor of a hybrid system that would cater to both those that prefer to get rewards via wins and those that prefer the old point based system? And how many times did you see a developer interact with people about the tests, outside of someone like brigby? That was the point of my post. People suggest great stuff all the time but pretty much everything we say falls on deaf ears so many get more annoyed by many changes and, thus, complain.

Daredevil217

shardwick said:

Daredevil217 said:

shardwick said:

They put out a survey asking us to rate our willingness to suggest the game to others and how they can make it better. Again, no new features that the community wants. So complaining with constructive criticism slowly turns into just complaining with a healthy dose of snark (where I currently am) because why does it matter anymore to leave constructive suggestions if the guys that are green-lighting pretty braindead decisions don't care enough to really interact with the community?

This is a good example of what I was talking about.  Because you don't like a change you assume that the entire community feels that way and then complain.  I personally do not have the results of the surveys they did so do not know what it is people wanted that they implemented, or why.  I know that after the tests, a poll on these forums showed that people preferred wins-based to points-based progression.  But that's a small sample size.  I assume that the win-preference is even more true for the more casual players not on the forums and for the people who didn't play pvp at all because they could not really progress.

And how many people on the forum did you see that were in favor of a hybrid system that would cater to both those that prefer to get rewards via wins and those that prefer the old point based system? And how many times did you see a developer interact with people about the tests, outside of someone like brigby? That was the point of my post. People suggest great stuff all the time but pretty much everything we say falls on deaf ears so many get more annoyed by many changes and, thus, complain.

Sure I’d prefer a hybrid system.  But I don’t know what a nightmare it’d be to code or if it’s even feasible to have two progression systems running simultaneously, one where you can regress and one where you can’t. I’m not a developer so it’s hard to speak on how hypothetical solutions would be better than ones actually implemented. 

Similar situation with vaulting. Of course as a player I’d like a million different token stores and more control over my roster development. There are a bunch of different things they could have done to appeal to all player bases, but I don’t know how much variability they want us to have with our roster development versus how much direct control. I mean it’s the random chance that keeps us playing for another shot at the slot machine after all. 

My point in all this is there are always factors that we aren’t considering.

shardwick

And it would be great if a developer could interact with the community so that people could at least know that they are being heard and maybe shoot down some things like "Yeah, we considered a hybrid system but we think it would introduce a lot of bugs into the game so for now we'll just focus on win based and keep testing things out. Not saying a hybrid system won't ever be done, just not anytime soon." But we don't get that. "We really want to see this. We want that." Hey, guys, here are some Nightcrawler and X-Men boosts. Have fun! "Ummm huh? Who asked for that?" 

purplemur

This topic and all the ones like it are antagonistic behind "I'm a nice guy, why u mad bro?" type of lead in. There is no room for discussion or engagement with this topic, whats the point of starting a topic like this? : iz troll bait folks.
-Enjoy complaining? liking an unpleasantness? that is not a reasonable motivation and an incongruous/dishonest way of framing a narrative:read any one of the complaint threads and the displeasure is easy to comprehend and sympathetically understandable if one looks at it from without.
-more than playing?: I spend like 35 minutes sometimes on the forums before I spend 2.5 hours grinding away every.single.day. How long does it take to scroll through vaultwhine or wingripe threads anyways? I don't even think brigs or ducks spends ALL that much time on the forum.

When people were complaining about Lockjaw I began to suspect troll bots/farmers.  Invariably someone with a MashupOfwords42 for a name pops into a thread and; not disagree, but, invalidate one side of a discussion/rant with these seemingly innocuous "why complain?"{see also "but don't all lives matter?} posts. I think they are fabricated just to ingrain strife and discord(not the app) in a public setting. It's either all part of the Russian cyber war machine against the west ....or silly rabbits just don't realize how tinykitty demanding this game can be on people who do love it.