Changes at Goa

Cromcruaich

Can't get enough of FH
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having reading problems? where did i say that?

So ignoring your usual confrontational manner, your response I am assuming is 'no, i dont think the GoA response would of been any different'. I'm glad weve established that. :(
 

Cromcruaich

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The problem here is forumittes in general are given an inch, and want to go the mile. If they said anything "unofficial", it could give false hope, or in the forumittes case, a promise that a timescale and plan are in place and will be implimented at exactly the time they said and the place they promised, without promising...or acutally saying....or doing...

Again, the double edged sword of the chicken and the egg pop up again, if they do say something that doesnt happen correctly they get flamed, if the dont do something they say - even unofficially - they get flamed. Sometimes its best to play the three wise monkey routine, keep ya trap shut and you wont get flamed as theres no direct ammo.

However, the ammo the player base has now can be nailed down to timing - ie taking wayyyy to long to make desicions or even keep the people remotely updated, the rats leaving the sinking ship conspiracy - now they are all bailing to WAR leaving poor Taryx to run the whole shebang, and of course the general poor quality of information on the portal (their friday not-so-news) that is about as entertaining as dentistry.

Looking back over the past 5 years, we players have critisised GOA for a lot of things, poor communication being the primary. I work for the NHS and its run on a similar model, tell people f*ck all and they will have f*ck all to complain about. Comparing GOA to Mythic was always hard, they had the tools and money to do what they liked, but having said that GOAs web site is more complicated to maintain and update that the Herald, which has more information in a much simpler format, one you can even search too!

In essence, keep ya gob shut and hope the debt collector doesnt hear you, or give false hope and get shot down for it, damned if ya do, damned if ya dont.

Agree and understand that. But if they are going to keep contact going in a media other than the very dry friday news, then my suggestion would be a good 1/2 way house - they dont have to commit to dates, they dont have to continue on defending themselves against the storm of posts going on in their thread - but they get the chance to perhaps express themselves in a more friendly and jocular way, giving them a more human face. Think the new encumbents have a good oportunity here, they can show things can be different - they can choose to at least fight the corner of the players (even if internally things arnt as clear cut) rather than just being the official staid face of goa.

They could also work to lighten the news up as well, no technical reason at all that they cant change it to be in a vein closer to Mythic.
 

Thorwyn

FH is my second home
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Dec 22, 2003
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4,752
Forums are always a double-edged sword. Usually, the worst thing you can do is let a developer post on a forum of his own game. I´ve seen devs systematically anihilating their own game while trying to find explanations and excuses for things. And even if they´re posting good stuff, there´s always the tendency to rip it apart by twisting the words, quoting out of context and other things. How many times have we seen this happening here, when Requiel posted something?
As for announcements... this is a true story. We once made an official annonucement on our forums, that the new patch for game X will be available next monday. Now.. exactly at 0:03 on Monday morning, there was a thread, saying: WHERE IS THE PATCH? IT`S MONDAY!!!!
 

Sharkith

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I do think that the industry could spend a bit more time thinking about forums though. From what I can see there is very little analysis of what is happening and what they represent. For example, when your in game your forced to interact with others in real time according to face to face interaction rules. This is essentially time lmimited communication that remains relatively uncomplex.

Forums allow you to get past those limitations by:
a) providing communications with the capacity to develop a memory i.e. the term thread indicates a chain of communication over time with a common line of discussion
b) communications can loop back and develop a degree of complexity on forums something that is not easy to do in game. With the capacity to loop back and feedback people can develop rules of conduct and norms of behaviour without that capacity that a forum brings then communication is limited

There is a lot of other things we could say here but essentially I don't think the current thinking I have seen on various blogs and what not is anyway near able to cope with the complexities of what is happening on forums.

To follow up on Ambs point above if the industry insiders are confused about noise its because they are most likely unsure about their own objectives and what they want from a forum discussion.

Sharkith
 

Conway

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Mar 22, 2005
Messages
159
Secondly, the 'vocal minority' squawking on forums may only be 20% of the playerbase, but that doesn't mean their opinions are not relevant or representative. Many more people read forums than post on them, and imo those people are more likely to post if their views are not already represented, meaning there's a good chance that the views expressed on the forums are broadly supported by the community at large. Of course there will be those who want nothing to do with forums, but there's no evidence for the beleif that those people are the 'silent majority' and that they necessarily disagree with the 'vocal minority'.

Actually I believe people are less likely to post on a forum with an agressive culture if they disagree with the opinions of the 'vocal minority' because they may get flamed.


One example of this kind of mentality is the way GM's often cite - "the people on this forum are not representative of the whole server" and other nonsense like that. Usually they combine this claim with a second claim: that they are in a better position to know the views of the server and so their views are more right or more authentic.

OK then tell me how can you honestly know? By what criteria?

You cannot.

Interesting question. So how much does this forum represent the views of the playerbase?

I actually analysed a thread to try and find out. The "What would YOU class as grief play thread'. This one seemed to have attracted comments from more than a usual number of infrequent posters, so was a better comparison than most.

My theory is that if there is a difference in the opinions of people who post on the forum and those who don't, there should be a noticeable difference in the opinions of those who post a lot and those post a little.

In this thread there was an argument over whether abuse of more casual players genuinely happened and was a factor in them leaving. So I looked at the 32 posters, and tried to split them into two camps. Those who said there was abuse. Those who said there wasn't, was no evidence for it/or any behaviour was perfectly justified. Some posters didn't comment on this, or not in a way I could understand.

I split the posters into frequent posters and infrequent on the arbitrary rule of whether or not they had more posts than the 500 limit when I listed them.

Then I added up the numbers who thought yes there was abuse, no there wasn't, no clear opinion.

It came out like this:-

Frequent posters
Yes there was abuse 4
No there wasn't abuse 7
No clear opinion 8
Total frequent posters 19

Infrequent posters
Yes there was abuse 6
No there wasn't abuse 3
No clear opinion 4
Total infrequent posters 13

This is obviously has a lot of holes in as a scientific analysis, but roughly two thirds of frequent posters giving an opinion thought no, two thirds of infrequent posters giving an opinion thought yes.

So there seems to be a difference.

My theory is that means there is also likely to be a difference in opinions between those who post a lot on this forum and those who never post. Logically it may be an even greater difference.

And 90% of cat owners who fed their cats Trixibelle's feline delight said their cats loved it... No, I made that one up.

Did anyone other than Sharkith read this far?
 

Thorwyn

FH is my second home
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To follow up on Ambs point above if the industry insiders are confused about noise its because they are most likely unsure about their own objectives and what they want from a forum discussion.

It all depends on the state of the game. During the developement process, any .. and I mean ANY discussion with outside sources is absolutely deadly. You have a vision and you have to work hard to make it go gold. There is no time for arguments in this phase, becaus changing one bit of the puzzle might affect the entire picture. You just don´t want to waste energy and ressources that might lead to a dillution of your project.

After release (and for all future updates), I tend to agree, that forum activities and presence is important. However, it takes a lot of time and manpower to acutally filter all the valid points. One thing that I ´ve learned is, that people (mostly) never seem to know what they want. They usually just know what they DON´T want.

Also, it´s kinda hard to discuss things when you´re arguing from a different background. The players usually just see the results and are asking for changes. The developer knows, why it´s impossible to implement the feature, but can´t say it withouth revealing too much inside informations. (This is the situation I described in my last post... devs should never post. :))

There´s a lot more to say about this, but I`ll leave it at that for the moment. Just to sum it up: it´s not that simple. :)
 

Sharkith

Can't get enough of FH
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Those who said there wasn't, was no evidence for it/or any behaviour was perfectly justified. Some posters didn't comment on this, or not in a way I could understand.

Did anyone other than Sharkith read this far?

Hi Conway,

first of all the categorisation is flawed anyone who says "any behaviour was perfectly justified" is categorically different from someone who says there was no abuse/no evidence for abuse. Keep those categories seperate and retry your analysis.

The problem of course is that even with this analysis you know that the representation problem still stands? Without any systematic data the whole issue is intractible and for me a non-starter to base an argument that justifies someone claiming they know better. It needs more detailed investigation

There is no way of knowing if forum posting frequency is anything to do with being a casual gamer and even if frequency was a good indicator. Let me give you an example from Eve - I know someone who reads the forums inside out and who plays the game every night and any time he can on weekends. He never posts on the forums but he plays in a hard core PvP corporation. He shares the views of many of the forums posters and doesn't see the need to post anything on CCP's main forums why? Because all he wants from the game is to play and he cannot be arsed with all the forum politics.

The Daedalus Project: Time Spent in the Meta-Game

Have a look at that link. Forum activity is wider than we think here - obviously a lot of people post on guild websites but will not post here and so on. So we agree that freddys house is not representative of the in game population. So what? Is that justification to then claim that someone knows more? I don't hink so because unless you survey everyone there is no way of knowing.

Rather what we should be saying as Ambera says above. Forums represent a 'range' of opinion all of which will be shared by the server population to different degrees. There is no real way of knowing whose opinion is the more representative without systematically collected data.
 

Sharkith

Can't get enough of FH
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There´s a lot more to say about this, but I`ll leave it at that for the moment. Just to sum it up: it´s not that simple. :)

I agree there is tons more to say about it and I would not be sure I have all details by any means. The industry is growing but the research on the phenomenon is in its infancy. I will run another check on the research databases to see if I can find anything else. There is a lot on online communities but relatively little on games as far as I can see.
 

Ctuchik

FH is my second home
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
10,459
So ignoring your usual confrontational manner, your response I am assuming is 'no, i dont think the GoA response would of been any different'. I'm glad weve established that. :(


all i'm saying is that if all the fking whiners on this board DIDNT pour abuse towards the GM's and GOA, then MAYBE we would have the new GM posting here aswell by now. dont fucking try to blame anyone else for them not wanting to be here. i can even understand them for not making a friday news. coz all there seem to be generating is even more whine/flames/abuse. so why fucking bother?

seems like NOTHING is pleasing this fucking community anymore.
 

Conway

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Mar 22, 2005
Messages
159
Health warning. This is really tedious. Reading it may bore you.

Hi Conway,

first of all the categorisation is flawed anyone who says "any behaviour was perfectly justified" is categorically different from someone who says there was no abuse/no evidence for abuse. Keep those categories seperate and retry your analysis.

The problem of course is that even with this analysis you know that the representation problem still stands? Without any systematic data the whole issue is intractible and for me a non-starter to base an argument that justifies someone claiming they know better. It needs more detailed investigation

There is no way of knowing if forum posting frequency is anything to do with being a casual gamer and even if frequency was a good indicator. Let me give you an example from Eve - I know someone who reads the forums inside out and who plays the game every night and any time he can on weekends. He never posts on the forums but he plays in a hard core PvP corporation. He shares the views of many of the forums posters and doesn't see the need to post anything on CCP's main forums why? Because all he wants from the game is to play and he cannot be arsed with all the forum politics.

The Daedalus Project: Time Spent in the Meta-Game

Have a look at that link. Forum activity is wider than we think here - obviously a lot of people post on guild websites but will not post here and so on. So we agree that freddys house is not representative of the in game population. So what? Is that justification to then claim that someone knows more? I don't hink so because unless you survey everyone there is no way of knowing.

Rather what we should be saying as Ambera says above. Forums represent a 'range' of opinion all of which will be shared by the server population to different degrees. There is no real way of knowing whose opinion is the more representative without systematically collected data.


Its flawed in a lot of ways because its a quick bit of analysis of a small amount of data with some unavoidable personal interpretation. I wanted to see if people's opinions were consistent across groups with different levels of forum activity. I included two categories together because people who say that abuse is justified are admitting it exists. Dividing the two means there is more personal interpretation of what the poster is saying.

However for what it is worth the split of opinions on whether casual players received abuse in rvr then becomes:-

Frequent posters
Abuse never happened 4
Abuse might have happened, but was a reasonable response to someone affecting a fight 3
Yes there was abuse 4
No clear opinion since the post did not mention the subject 8
Total frequent posters 19

Infrequent posters
Abuse never happened 1
Abuse might have happened, but was a reasonable response to someone affecting a fight 2
Yes there was abuse 6
No clear opinion since the post did not mention the subject 4
Total infrequent posters 13

Looked at that way only 1 out of the 9 infrequent posters expressing an opinion denied abuse ever happened, while 4 out of 11 frequent posters denied it ever happened.

My point wasn't that frequency of posting is an indication of a casual gamer. You could argue that few casual gamers would spend hours a week posting on a forum, but in fact some people may like forums more than playing so they might.

My point was that less frequent posters on this forum did tend to have a different spread of opinions from those that posted a lot, and since they post less, those views are seen on the forum less. Given those two groups differ it is logical to assume the group of players who do not post here differ as well.

I agree people may post on other forums to this one, forums more to their taste. Again those forums may not be representative of the opinions of the player base as a whole. The point that was raised wasn't about other forums, it was about this forum's claim to represent the opinions of the whole player base.

Basically, this is a similar situation to analysing the performance of a lecturer. A few students may go out of their way to volunteer an opinion on the lecturer. That opinion will usually be at an extreme of good or bad. If every student is handed an anonymous questionnaire, then the results can be very different.

GOA have the information from this forum. They have systematically collected data from player surveys though there have only been a few of those on limited topics. They also have data from rightnow complaints. I have no idea how much it is analysed but they do have a set of information not publically available for legal reasons. Another interesting point is they have lots of information from the non english servers for comparison. Problems due to game design should logically be popping up on all servers. Problems local to one server indicate a different root cause. Potentially they can work out a lot from that. I emphasise, potentially.
 

Sharkith

Can't get enough of FH
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The point that was raised wasn't about other forums, it was about this forum's claim to represent the opinions of the whole player base.
The statistics that your using now look less significant to me, I would of course admit that there seems to be a trend, but there is now way of knowing if that is not just a result of random fluctuations of views from the population.

My point was never that this forum can be representative it was that trying to use the fact that it is not representative to then go on and argue that someone knows better or more is not an appropriate argument.

Even if someone has other information such as righnow reports that is simply another vocal minotiry who are not happy with some aspect of the game. In other words I have every sympathy for the position of GM's I do not have sympathy however for the above argument when it is used on forums to justify unilateral decisions.
 

old.Whoodoo

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10% of all road accidents are caused by drink driving!!
Read a huge campaign in the 1960s, while the message is clear that being drunk at the wheel isnt good, the average person took it to read:
10% of all road accidents are caused by drink driving!!

90% are caused by sober drivers, so get pissed before you get behind the wheel!
And so the campaign was promptly withdrawn. This is all I have to say about statistics.

As a couple of others have mentioned, some communication can control the flow of flames, a little corporate show of face can go a long way if they just said "Hi, we give a shit" from time to time. It reassures the people they are they and are doing something besides easting pizzas in their stereotypical IT basement. Not the rubber stamp stuff we see on Fridays, any McJob monkeyboy can do that, its in the job description with "Do you want fries with that?".

Does FH represent the population, well I do belive it gives a good cross-section of players, old and new, hard core and out-for-fun. But no matter, its a place for news about the game, and when you read the news about anything, you look for something new and informative, not old and dragged out. We scroll all day long looking for the glimpse that our beloved game will get fixed, something new is happening, or that we are genuinely being heard and our cries are being answered. As I said before, it has been such a long time since we have heard anything positive or otherwise that is is getting just as silly as the Prydwen DB crap, and that took over a year to sort out!

To me it doesnt matter whether we play or not, if Im hard mode WTFPWNer or Mr Casual, we all have the same questions, just some are more vocal asking it, while somejust sit and wait to hear their answer before spurting their opinion.

The changes at GOA tbh make me uneasy, they now have the "excuse" (maybe the wrong word) that they are new, and have to catch up first. If every employer let this happen lots would go out of business rapidly, imagine turning up at A&E and the nurse says "sorry, my first day, dunno wot to do", as if!

Controlling the rumour mongers and giving the community that glimmer of hope that someone gives a monkeys pizzel will go a long way to stop insane posts like mine that give the reader RSI of the eyballs, as well as the constant flames and maybe the odd bit of praise.

Who knows, onward with the mass debate (I think 23 pages qualifies!)
 

Conway

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Mar 22, 2005
Messages
159
The statistics that your using now look less significant to me, I would of course admit that there seems to be a trend, but there is now way of knowing if that is not just a result of random fluctuations of views from the population.

My point was never that this forum can be representative it was that trying to use the fact that it is not representative to then go on and argue that someone knows better or more is not an appropriate argument.

Even if someone has other information such as righnow reports that is simply another vocal minotiry who are not happy with some aspect of the game. In other words I have every sympathy for the position of GM's I do not have sympathy however for the above argument when it is used on forums to justify unilateral decisions.

Its hardly statistically significant but as you say there is a trend.

I suggest you reread my posts. I was purely looking at whether a cheap and cheerful analysis came out for or against the often made claim that this forum represents the views of the whole player base. It had to be a comparison between frequent and infrequent posters since I can point at their posts, whereas my personal knowledge of the views of infrequent posters is of course personal.

I was not going on to argue whether or not someone else knows better or more. I made some statements in reply to this bit of your post.

I don't hink so because unless you survey everyone there is no way of knowing.

Rather what we should be saying as Ambera says above. Forums represent a 'range' of opinion all of which will be shared by the server population to different degrees. There is no real way of knowing whose opinion is the more representative without systematically collected data.

In response to that I commented on what systematically collected information there was. As I said player surveys have been on limited topics. Other information is from rightnow, which obviously is not totally representative. For example, though I have personally seen a lot of abuse of people in rvr for conflicting with rule sets imposed by other players, I never actually reported any of it. So my experiences are not represented in that data.

Anyway, its all houses built on straw.

My feeling is that this forum represents the views of the people who post on it. Nothing more, nothing less, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with admitting that when stating your case. These are the opinions of a group of current and ex players. Anyone know how big a group that is? How many people post here more than once a week or fortnight for anything other than signing up to raids?

The views of those players aren't all the same. They are in conflict. Its not one man one vote on a forum. If you post your opinion a lot then its seen more than someone who rarely posts. Some people won't be the first to post something because of the potential agression, but will post to agree after someone else has posted. It distorts the picture of what people as a whole think. Its why I on rare occasions actually post something here. I post when I think the noise level is drowning out what some people are saying.

As a side issue, when a number of people post saying they experienced something, you might accept that it could have happened without demanding screen shot evidence. In a court of law, witnesses don't have to give photographic evidence to be heard. How many people have screen shots to prove the TT incident happened? I've never seen one, but I'm willing to accept it did without them.
 

Cromcruaich

Can't get enough of FH
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Messages
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all i'm saying is that if all the fking whiners on this board DIDNT pour abuse towards the GM's and GOA, then MAYBE we would have the new GM posting here aswell by now. dont fucking try to blame anyone else for them not wanting to be here. i can even understand them for not making a friday news. coz all there seem to be generating is even more whine/flames/abuse. so why fucking bother?

seems like NOTHING is pleasing this fucking community anymore.

So you are fucking saying if the gm's hadnt received fucking abuse they would of fucking being posting now? Thats fucking clear.

But could you fucking clarify this fucking point you fucking made 'dont fucking try to blame anyone else for them not wanting to be here'. Anyhow, the fucking GM's arnt in fucking place formally yet, dont fucking jump to fucking conclusions, they could fucking well start fucking using the fucking forum to fucking communicate with the fucking community in due fucking course.

thank fuck.
 

Cromcruaich

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
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Messages
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Health warning. This is really tedious. Reading it may bore you.




Its flawed in a lot of ways because its a quick bit of analysis of a small amount of data with some unavoidable personal interpretation. I wanted to see if people's opinions were consistent across groups with different levels of forum activity. I included two categories together because people who say that abuse is justified are admitting it exists. Dividing the two means there is more personal interpretation of what the poster is saying.

However for what it is worth the split of opinions on whether casual players received abuse in rvr then becomes:-

Frequent posters
Abuse never happened 4
Abuse might have happened, but was a reasonable response to someone affecting a fight 3
Yes there was abuse 4
No clear opinion since the post did not mention the subject 8
Total frequent posters 19

Infrequent posters
Abuse never happened 1
Abuse might have happened, but was a reasonable response to someone affecting a fight 2
Yes there was abuse 6
No clear opinion since the post did not mention the subject 4
Total infrequent posters 13

Looked at that way only 1 out of the 9 infrequent posters expressing an opinion denied abuse ever happened, while 4 out of 11 frequent posters denied it ever happened.

My point wasn't that frequency of posting is an indication of a casual gamer. You could argue that few casual gamers would spend hours a week posting on a forum, but in fact some people may like forums more than playing so they might.

My point was that less frequent posters on this forum did tend to have a different spread of opinions from those that posted a lot, and since they post less, those views are seen on the forum less. Given those two groups differ it is logical to assume the group of players who do not post here differ as well.

I agree people may post on other forums to this one, forums more to their taste. Again those forums may not be representative of the opinions of the player base as a whole. The point that was raised wasn't about other forums, it was about this forum's claim to represent the opinions of the whole player base.

Basically, this is a similar situation to analysing the performance of a lecturer. A few students may go out of their way to volunteer an opinion on the lecturer. That opinion will usually be at an extreme of good or bad. If every student is handed an anonymous questionnaire, then the results can be very different.

GOA have the information from this forum. They have systematically collected data from player surveys though there have only been a few of those on limited topics. They also have data from rightnow complaints. I have no idea how much it is analysed but they do have a set of information not publically available for legal reasons. Another interesting point is they have lots of information from the non english servers for comparison. Problems due to game design should logically be popping up on all servers. Problems local to one server indicate a different root cause. Potentially they can work out a lot from that. I emphasise, potentially.

Could be interesting to extend that if you had the time. You ofc realise the shortcomings in such a small sample, and its hard to avoid thread subject bias, for example if someone starts by saying 'There was abuse', then its much more likely that replies that follow would be people saying 'no there wasnt/prove it' etc than people replying 'yes I agree, there was' - as an illustration of how difficult (well impossible it is to perform that sort of analysis).
 

Takitothemacs

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 8, 2004
Messages
329
Sanya makes a good point in her exit interview with warcry about the role of community management...

Good community is a little marketing, a little CS, and a little old-fashioned mud-wrestling on behalf of your players. It's important to work with the whole team to achieve a consistent message, of course, but at the end of the day, it is the responsibility of the community weenie to stand up for players, for player feedback, and for realistic expectations. If that means a few bruises (from all sides), so be it. (see article: WarCry Network : News : Sanya Thomas Leaves EA Mythic: Exclusive Exit Interview)

Perhaps this message or sentiment is what's been missing from the exiting GM's... here is hoping that the new GM can make a better fist of things that have gone before.

Note Sanya's point about the community weenie's job being about the players... I've more often felt that GOA treats its players (paying customers) as more of an annoyance than people to whom GOA has a responsibility.
 

Sharkith

Can't get enough of FH
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Messages
2,798
I suggest you reread my posts. I was purely looking at whether a cheap and cheerful analysis came out for or against the often made claim that this forum represents the views of the whole player base. It had to be a comparison between frequent and infrequent posters since I can point at their posts, whereas my personal knowledge of the views of infrequent posters is of course personal.

I was not going on to argue whether or not someone else knows better or more. I made some statements in reply to this bit of your post.

We are at slight cross purposes then so lets not labour it. I agree with everything your saying and its quite clear to me at least that we do agree. I also follow and agree with a lot of what Old.Whoodoo is saying.

Now if this is the case then it is surprising that all the flaiming is such a big issue, after all you can ignore it since it isn't that significant.

Anyway, its all houses built on straw.

A nice conclusion to this aspect of the topic I think. :)
 

Takitothemacs

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 8, 2004
Messages
329
oh and just to quote another snippet from Sanya's wisdom which perhaps some of the GOA people should take on board...

I think I made a good case for truth and transparency. It's so... obvious, but there it is. Players KNOW when you're lying, 99% of the time. That extra 1% is what really causes the trouble, because when they figure out that you lied, AND THEY WILL, payback is hell. I never lied. I fully admit I always tried to put the best possible spin on bad news, though.

Old GM's have lied and been found out... however even then they never backed down or admitted they were wrong... which is why they continued to get a hard time... we the players are the jury when it comes to how things are going... and the GM for all their sins are often in the dock... the simple fact is that once the jury hear that the GM lies about a single thing then their credibility is 100% shot to bits... it takes a lot of work for them to claw back even the tinyest bit of trust... if they can be bothered... Requiel to my mind lied and was found out (be it he was told to lie or not is irrelevant) and not once did he admit it, he still maintains till the day he left that he was right... that was and will remain in my opinion Requiel's biggest failing as a GM.
 

Conway

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Mar 22, 2005
Messages
159
Could be interesting to extend that if you had the time. You ofc realise the shortcomings in such a small sample, and its hard to avoid thread subject bias, for example if someone starts by saying 'There was abuse', then its much more likely that replies that follow would be people saying 'no there wasnt/prove it' etc than people replying 'yes I agree, there was' - as an illustration of how difficult (well impossible it is to perform that sort of analysis).

Of course. Sadly I don't have the time to do the larger scale analysis of threads which could come up with some really interesting things.
 

Conway

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Mar 22, 2005
Messages
159
Now if this is the case then it is surprising that all the flaiming is such a big issue, after all you can ignore it since it isn't that significant.

Sorry I really didn't understand that one. What led to the conclusion that flaming isn't significant, and is your reference to flaming about flaming on the forum or in game?
 

Cromcruaich

Can't get enough of FH
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Messages
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Of course. Sadly I don't have the time to do the larger scale analysis of threads which could come up with some really interesting things.

Aye, wouldnt be the best way to spend a day :). My post was a bit superflous as old.W covered it anyhow, and you we're aware as well. Ahh well, bring back post count counters and i win! ;)
 

Shike

Can't get enough of FH
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So you are fucking saying if the gm's hadnt received fucking abuse they would of fucking being posting now? Thats fucking clear.

But could you fucking clarify this fucking point you fucking made 'dont fucking try to blame anyone else for them not wanting to be here'. Anyhow, the fucking GM's arnt in fucking place formally yet, dont fucking jump to fucking conclusions, they could fucking well start fucking using the fucking forum to fucking communicate with the fucking community in due fucking course.

thank fuck.

I see a potential Padawan young Crom ^^
 

Sharkith

Can't get enough of FH
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Sorry I really didn't understand that one. What led to the conclusion that flaming isn't significant, and is your reference to flaming about flaming on the forum or in game?

Its a logical step. If forum discussions are not representative then the flaming cannot be representative of what the playerbase think of either the company or the GMs. If you accept that which you seem to. Then surely it makes sense to conclude that all flaming on forums like this are not really that significant and should be ignored from the perspective of the company? Surely then we should not really worry too much about what is said here?

After all we know that people like Shike openly admit to having chosen the dark side and that he does it for entertainment. Its probably better to not allow one's leg to be pulled then isn't it?

I was just taking the line of thinking a step further and reflecting on where this would all go....
 

Labbe

Fledgling Freddie
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Dec 22, 2003
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*off topic*

After all we know that people like Shike openly admit to having chosen the dark side and that he does it for entertainment. Its probably better to not allow one's leg to be pulled then isn't it?

So it's better to pull Shike's finger? Hmm..

*off topic*
 

Conway

Fledgling Freddie
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Mar 22, 2005
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Its a logical step. If forum discussions are not representative then the flaming cannot be representative of what the playerbase think of either the company or the GMs. If you accept that which you seem to. Then surely it makes sense to conclude that all flaming on forums like this are not really that significant and should be ignored from the perspective of the company? Surely then we should not really worry too much about what is said here?

After all we know that people like Shike openly admit to having chosen the dark side and that he does it for entertainment. Its probably better to not allow one's leg to be pulled then isn't it?

I was just taking the line of thinking a step further and reflecting on where this would all go....

You can if you wish follow that logic and say that the flaming on forums like this is not representative of what the playerbase think of the company or the GMs, and should therefore not be significant when the company makes decisions.

I wouldn't agree that makes the flaming on forums not significant in a wider sense. It is significant in that it deters some people from expressing their opinion on the forums. It is significant in that it tends to encourage similar behaviour in game. It is significant in that it deters company employees from giving information on forums since anything they say can and will be taken down in evidence, misquoted, and used against them. It may also be significant in that it adds to the total mass of bad karma in the universe if you are into that kind of thing.

I won't comment on people being destructive for entertainment or self publicity since people like that really are insignificant. :england:
 

Sharkith

Can't get enough of FH
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nice post Conway,

sounds like a classic paradox which is probably something best left to another place.

Thanks for the discussion.

As for pulling Shike - that comment scared me.

Sharkith
 

Cromcruaich

Can't get enough of FH
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You can if you wish follow that logic and say that the flaming on forums like this is not representative of what the playerbase think of the company or the GMs, and should therefore not be significant when the company makes decisions.

I wouldn't agree that makes the flaming on forums not significant in a wider sense. It is significant in that it deters some people from expressing their opinion on the forums. It is significant in that it tends to encourage similar behaviour in game. It is significant in that it deters company employees from giving information on forums since anything they say can and will be taken down in evidence, misquoted, and used against them. It may also be significant in that it adds to the total mass of bad karma in the universe if you are into that kind of thing.

I won't comment on people being destructive for entertainment or self publicity since people like that really are insignificant. :england:

When all said and done, things could be done and approached a lot better than they have been, no matter about getting into a discussion about forumites. That much is clear from the example Sanya set. She had a platform, in this case the Mythic site, where she could engage in an informative, witty, and well written way - it really was a breath of fresh air to read those grab bags - GoA and specifically the English Community Managers could do similiar, but they choose not to. <shrug>. I personally always had the impression that the English Community Managers, we'rnt serving the community, but serving GOA. Now no matter whether or not that is the case in reality, and putting aside arguments that GOA are the CMs employers - I should be made to feel that indeed the community managers are pushing the communitys interests, and I dont think i'm alone in the opinion that I never felt that that was the case to any significant degree.
 

old.Whoodoo

Can't get enough of FH
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When all said and done, things could be done and approached a lot better than they have been, no matter about getting into a discussion about forumites. That much is clear from the example Sanya set. She had a platform, in this case the Mythic site, where she could engage in an informative, witty, and well written way - it really was a breath of fresh air to read those grab bags - GoA and specifically the English Community Managers could do similiar, but they choose not to. <shrug>. I personally always had the impression that the English Community Managers, we'rnt serving the community, but serving GOA. Now no matter whether or not that is the case in reality, and putting aside arguments that GOA are the CMs employers - I should be made to feel that indeed the community managers are pushing the communitys interests, and I dont think i'm alone in the opinion that I never felt that that was the case to any significant degree.
Well said, this sums up a lot of what has already been said to a tee without the abuse :)

Now if only the rest of us could put posts like this together, maybe GOA GMs might talk to us once again.
 

Shike

Can't get enough of FH
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forum with ingamelogin to be allowed to post and nazimodding is the only way it ever will work 100% over a long time Conway.

THEN it will be significant, not otherwise.

Look at VN for example, thats as close as an official gameforum for DAoC you can come and that places is just horrific and has always been. FH is just a little fart in the ocean and has no real significance in any way at all :) Which in its turn makes us all, even you... unsignificant, not only the flamers and tossers ^^
 

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