In all honesty, IMHO the forums right now are garbage. They have no added value for my experience with the game and although I have been on these forums since the start I am seriously considering just quitting the forums and getting my information on the game from my guilds discord server.
Basically there are two things that are really making my forum experience terrible right now.
The lack of moderation. Now I read that Salty is trying to get more mods for the forums, but for what purpose? No offense intended to the mods (and I mean that 'cause the job you do is a thankless and time-consuming thing), but what good are mods every time I report an abusive post all I get in return is a silly PM saying “Thanks for letting us know about this. We agree there is an issue and are investigating.” ? Yet nothing happens after that 'cause even the most persistent abusers are still on the forums.
Every single relevant topic (OK, I am exaggerating here, but it’s definately a lot of them) degenerates in either a meme-bombed mess or a name calling shouting match, returning us to point number 1…
Seriously people, is it so difficult to behave a little more civilized?
I understand that we’re all passionate about this game and probably have strong opinions about it but that’s no excuse for the behavior of some people these last 2-3 months!
So please, let’s all just try to get along and treat eachother with a little more respect and patience.
I kinda disagree.
I guess I am more choosy of what conversation I join.
I kinda get annoyed at multiple threads for same topic.
Oh, and there a bit too much "i did not read you long post but I’ll still give you an answer that is just as long
I’d have to say that I’m in the middle of these two comments. I can’t agree that the forum has “no added value”. There are countless helpful posts and threads where people take up their free time making calculations/guides/spoilers to help the community. I think it would be unfair to discount the value that adds to the community.
On the flip side, the uptake in childishness, arguments and drama is tiresome. No doubt. However, it’s pretty tame in comparison to every other game forum I have ever been on. So, I don’t agree that the mods here are any worse than other game forums.
Frankly, I’ve been around long enough to know which people’s post to just ignore since they annoy the hell out of me. I just wish they would change the forum software they use so they could actually have a “real” mute feature. That would be heavenly.
@Darkness I am sorry to see you considering vacating the forums. You have been here as long, or longer than I and it would not be the same without you.
That being said… no this is not the same forum from two years ago, or even 6 months, we have lost a lot of long time players/forum members to burnout or frustration with updates, etc.
Old personalities leave, new personalities join. It’s the stewpot of personalities that make the forum what it is. Which, imho, is all the more reason for you to stick around and keep your voice a part of it. You’ve always been a civil and respected contributor in my eyes. We need MORE of that, not less…
And this. I am very grateful that a lot of the disagreements I’ve been involved in have been mutually respectful. You can disagree with someone without attacking the person.
Me too, and I would offer this as advice to everyone.
There’s definitely been a decline in reasoned discussion over time. A lot more people losing their minds, threatening to quit, raging, advocating boycotts, dear johns, etc. It’s definitely not the same place it was when I was a lurker a couple of years ago. Much more like other forums, much less civilized and thoughtful.
I think it’s a victim of a growing community. It’s easier to be civil when everyone “knows” everyone. The game has expanded and the audience grown. A shift to the lowest common denominator is unfortunate but expected.
That’s inevitable when you get a bigger population of players, and you combine that with a ton of transition periods. Layer that with devs lowering resources that people were accustomed to (twice), you have to know that the blow back will be monumental.
Plus, it doesn’t help that the mods are all on one timezone. It surely seems obvious that people have taken advantage of that in the present and past.
I don’t agree with the “growing population”. Maybe the number of players increased, but not that much on the forum (with so many great contributors leaving)…
And I agree with the OP: the forum became useless. Because:
confrontation became the standard: now we don’t share opinions, we are fighting for our opinions. As soon I proposed a nerf, I know that someone is going to name me as a “fun killer”.
contributors who left the forum weren’t not replace by new contributors. Maybe because new players are not that interested in the game.
contributors have been screwed patch after patch. I did a software ToDo Monitor, but now it’s totally useless as I cannot read data. I asked to devs a solution and the best answer that I get “we can imagine to give you some data”. Of course, I never get anything. I’m still waiting for the open API which will never be their priority and so on, never be released… I did that to help the community, not to hack the game (which is required if you want to decrypt data…). I’m looking for solutions for the GoW Event spreadsheet, but it doesn’t smell good…
number one lack of feedbacks from the devs. Players get tired of that and who want to discuss about a new idea if devs will not answer? There were some ideas about banner to improve the UI: no dev answer.
