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  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,821 Chairperson of the Boards

    Hahahahahaha, I was thinking wayyyyyy before that. By the time that stuff happened they were already long gone from here, at least by the standards they set earlier. Those things brought out some pretty ugly abuse but by that point they'd stopped reading and responding daily.

    I want to say it was the insane overreaction to the back-to-back nerfs of Sentry and Xforce/4Thor that drove them away, but there might be something else I'm not remembering. There's also a clear split that happened pre- and post- true healing (go look up that thread if you've got a spare month and a desire to lose all faith in humanity).

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    Ohhhh... Yeah.
    I remember the first year they were really active.
    In hindsight I think it was to establish a community here.
    After that was done, they just shifted back a few gears because - apart from Ice - they never actually LIKED the interaction.
    Buf it's all speculation.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,821 Chairperson of the Boards

    Eh, I think they liked it until they didn't, and they probably stopped liking it when it turned into a bunch of crazy people screaming at them all the time. I imagine they don't allow that sort of thing in the Discord channel. I also imagine it'd be fine if they started posting here again, but maybe that ship has sailed.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,275 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:
    What's funny is that the forum used to be the place to go to get all that insider info, when the game started and for the first few years. Ice used to jump into random threads and answer questions, and Demiurge/D3 read basically everything that was posted here. Other folks, including the lead designer and other designers, posted frequently and answered questions frequently.

    I don't know why that stopped.

    I think it stopped because the forum became incredibly, almost repulsively, toxic toward those folks -- the level of constant abuse directed at them was honestly embarrassing to the few of us who were sane. At some point they completely wrote off the forum and all we got were announcements.

    What's funny is that once the developers stopped posting and reading here, all those toxic players also left. They'll come back during any sort of big change, but they don't bother otherwise.

    I've always been intrigued by the definition of what toxic meant on message boards. The reason I got the moderator job at jq.com was because previously there was nobody but Joe and he didn't have time to do it so there was basically no moderation. On my first day I was handed the tasks of:

    Banning a poster who made a **** threat
    Deleting pornographic images that had been posted in the forum
    Creating a set of posting rules for the forum which immediately made me enemy no.1 to those running wild with the anarchy
    Rampant disrespect and personal insults to creators (and sometimes their spouses)
    Oh and one guy wanted to fight Chuck Austen the X-Men writer. I didn't do anything about that as Chuck didn't post there and well he was a terrible writer...

    This was the official board of world famous artist and Editor in Chief of the no.1 superhero company in the world! Don't get the wrong idea, it wasn't all bad but until that point it was the wild wild west. In part that was because at this period Joe and Bill had a bit of an edgy online persona and could rub people up the wrong way so I guess it drew in a fair share of trouble.

    What sort of "toxic" things were on these forums? I am honestly fascinated. I have never seen anything beyond mild grumbling. I got a formal warning last month for mildly rebuking some guy who turned up to have a pop at the Devs, I can't imagine this place ever truly being filled with actual anarchic trolls? I know there were more moderators here in the past when I first started lurking yay years ago. Was there a period when the boards were unmoderated? That would explain a toxic atmosphere more readily.

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    I think it was pretty mild, especially after seeing your examples.
    i always felt this place was well moderated, a tad over-moderated even.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,275 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Bowgentle said:
    I think it was pretty mild, especially after seeing your examples.
    i always felt this place was well moderated, a tad over-moderated even.

    I agree. The moderators do a good job (even if I disagreed about that warning, lol.) There was one moderator who was forever moving topics and I got into trouble for moaning about him. Otherwise though this place is pretty sedate and people might get snarky but it is still sort of a nice sort of snarky. Like everybody is Keanu Reeves. I would have loved the dedication posters here have to staying on topic back in the day!

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,821 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2023

    In those days they just didn't have enough moderators for the level of activity, and sometimes some of the moderators were quite anti-developer themselves, so they'd let stuff through.

    No offense but it's a lot easier to moderate the forum today, when it's getting 10 or 20 posts a day, vs 500 or 1000. A lot of that discussion happens in Line or Discord now but it wasn't always that way.

    As far as the actual toxicity, it was pages upon pages of people calling the developers malicious or hateful, accusing them of personal vendettas, cash grabs, pump and dump schemes, slaps in the face, etc. It was generally accepted in the larger community that the developers were not only clueless but actually evil and that players were actively being exploited/cheated/milked of money. Many of these players justified hacks or cheating because of this.

    Like, we laugh at Hound defending the developers at all costs, sometimes -- well, in those days I was frequently called a shill for them, because I thought some things were accidental, or done for good reasons. The attitude was just gross and it was pretty much universal. It's still around but not as prevalent among all the noobs who only started playing in the last 6 or 7 years.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,821 Chairperson of the Boards

    Here's one: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/10239/true-healing-discussion-live-6-25

    This was basically the beginning of the end of them posting here.

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    My god, 71 pages.
    I was trying to find a post from me in there, but... Yeah, no.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,275 Chairperson of the Boards

    Yeah, ain't no way I am in for 71 pages! Some griping starts on page 2, it is not so far aimed directly at Ice himself but it is more what I would call whiny self entitled than toxic and certainly nobody as yet seems to be an actual psychopath. Did you get forum topics asking for posters to post the measurements of their gentleman's package? Heh. That was a fun one! I shall read some more and see where it goes.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,821 Chairperson of the Boards

    I can dredge up some stuff that's likely worse; that was just my first thought.

    The really cool thing about this forum is that during the first, say, 3 or 4 years of the game, everything was here -- alliance recruiting, a thread for every PvP and PvE, season summaries, detailed strategy guides, conversations that developed most of the strategies we still use today -- and it's all still there if you go looking for it.

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    Toxicity? A lot. When it's impossible to keep a mature discussion, that's when I call it a toxic approach. I can remember the famous slap in the face, for absolutely whatever reason able to imagine it (I can remember someone accusing devs that chavez always was creating critical balls on the board corners, and he was serious). And of course devs where the evildoers and half of their time (when not working on the game), were discussing the best way to destroy the players.
    But also there was toxicity toward other players: there was the rightful player type, the f2p, enduring the devs' evil attempts to destroy their game experience, and after that there was the infamous player type: the awful whales.
    They were the most disgusting persons, putting money into the game and hence quenching the money thirst of greedy devs (without these players devs probably would make the game 100% free). Also because they buy better characters they steal the best rewards from rightful f2ps, and even sometimes they ask for challenges! Someone suspicious of being a whale rightfully deserved the most acid quotes.
    Of course I fought a lot of them here.
    Now I'm losing the edge.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,821 Chairperson of the Boards

    ...I can't believe you read all that.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,275 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:
    ...I can't believe you read all that.

    Every Time I tried to skip a lot I hit an important quoted post! It is like the thread knew I was trying to cheat...

  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,236 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2023

    I recall that time and that post quite well. It was early in my MPQ playing days and I was probably still a 2* player then.

    I was a definite abuser of Prologue healing back in the day.

    As Entrailbucket noted, there were lots of 50+ page threads in those days anytime players even slightly thought things went against them. On the other hand, it was VASTLY more difficult to build your roster in those days. There was no such thing as saved covers and other goodies (champ levels for more resources) we take for granted today so it was easy to waste lots of covers (ie had to sell them for ISO) and other resources so it definitely felt a lot worse when a change happened that caused more wasted resources and time.

    KGB

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,275 Chairperson of the Boards

    In all seriousness that thread was poorly moderated in my opinion and if it is an example of general behaviour then it was less a problem with toxicity and more a problem with the allowance of spam, repetition and irrelevance. There was absolutely nothing new on page 30 than page 10 and there is evidence that there were multiple threads on the same topic. Maybe the Mods were stretched but when they did appear they seemed more interested in adding their own opinion than keeping things in line. It seems to back up what Entrailbucket said about them not exactly being on side with what they were supposed to be doing. I only had experience with one of them and he was a poor moderator in my opinion at the time and his actions were reversed by Brigby as being inappropriate. So you can see where some of the problems lay with the forum. Ice was left without much help it felt.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,821 Chairperson of the Boards

    I remember being embarrassed about that thread at the time...like, I felt bad that players said some of the things they said, and didn't want to be associated with them. I haven't read it recently and I probably won't, but that change and the reaction to it was a pretty clear starting point from the era of "demiurge/D3 all over the forum" and the era of "basically just announcements."

    I don't know if it's the reason why or if it just happened around the same time, though.

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    No, don't misunderstand it.
    At that time the usual behaviour was to rant and complaint about everything, and to call devs thieves here or there.
    Someone quoting and arguing them, defending game or devs (exactly like me), was a person trying to call attention, being incivil, kind of trollish, etc...
    It was really hard to change that perception, but it happened.

  • UNC_Samurai
    UNC_Samurai Posts: 402 Mover and Shaker

    @entrailbucket said:

    @DAZ0273 said:

    @Sekilicious said:
    Nah they ask. Ice answers. Not to mention there are dozens of people posting questions there. Literally tens. Hopefully we get those kind of numbers someday

    Isn't that basically a Catch 22? If the Forum was the primary source of updates and information, then should it not get "those numbers"? I have been to the Discord on many occasion and it is really not the ideal place to find actual solid information because it is a blur of people talking nonsense with the odd relevant game thing chucked in and it all scrolls down if you are not there at that pertinent time, it is quite distracting. And hey - I enjoy talking nonsense, don't get me wrong, lol! It just seems a bizarre place to give out all this salient information about the game to then have that brought back here, an official company forum and be parroted by third parties/non official sources. Even yourself as a moderator of THIS forum are sourcing information from non-forum sources (i.e. Facebook yesterday) and thank you for that but if that was all here as well then you wouldn't have to go above and beyond.

    It has been this way forever so likely nothing will change it just seems a very strange use of an official forum.

    All those players are on Discord because that's the place to go to get insider information. Demiurge folks used to hang out there, answer questions, and drop hints and previews. It was pretty small until that started, then when it became a way to get an advantage, it became mandatory.

    There's not really an advantage to getting some clarification a few hours early. Nothing compared to the people elsewhere who...learn about things days, even weeks in advance.

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