Paradox developers are tired of dealing with a culture “that is not enjoyable to take part in.”
Forums aren’t supposed to be enjoyable for developers. You should be fully expecting negativity and criticism. The benefit of a forum is picking up on things that could be used to improve a game. There’s little de facto expectation or pressure as most if not all games are never fully developed to addressing legitimate criticism. Ignoring forums is the norm. Too many candy-a** developers looking for positive feedback. As far as Blizzard developers are concerned, their interactions are generally useless or insignificant.
As for toxicity, there’s a demonstrable delusion among HotS players. The forum has declined in step with the game, not with so-called toxicity. Likewise, the game provides no support for the argument I recently heard that if the abusive chat reporting system is changed more players will be lost on the other side. Support exists for the opposite argument. The competitive games that evoke more toxicity are the games that prove to be more successful and popular. Gamers prefer to be challenged and enlivened, not to be put in safety bubbles. This is not to say “toxicity” should be allowed to go unchecked, but it should be handled intelligently rather than indiscriminately and arbitrarily. It’s no coincidence that a simplistic system made for the weakest and the softest has undermined this game.
What happens is that there will always be people making arguments on either side of a topic, no matter how invalid. This game has been an internal failure, not a community toxicity failure. A good developer is one able to accurately judge things, not one who relies on small self-selected minorities to prop up his or her ego.
The nature of Paradox’s games means that user feedback can be invaluable. Archangel85 said someone sent them information on Turkish railways in 1936 a few weeks ago, taken from an old Turkish book, which was used to update the Turkish railway setup at the start of Hearts of Iron 4. Developers are also open to valid criticism and feedback, “but there is no point to it if it can’t be delivered with a minimum of respect for each other.”
“If you want to have a forum where developers are willing to go and answer your questions, then it is also your responsibility to build a place where we feel welcome, and where we can disagree in a productive and professional manner,” Archangel85 said. “It costs you nothing to assume that we were acting in good faith. None of us wake up in the morning and go to work in order to do a bad job.”
This is hallmark behavior of weak developers. First, look at what they find to be valuable feedback. A minute “technical” aspect that accomplishes nothing in the big picture. You see this repeatedly with Heroes of the Storm developers. The game is in the crapper but all they post about are The Lost Vikings bugs, for instance. Second, these people’s egos are too fragile to identify stupidity, confidently dismiss it, and even take something valuable in it.
That’s the thing about gaming. From top to bottom, from developers to players and posters, there is just a pathetic mental weakness.
Should all game discussion just move to Reddit or Twitter?
Because them retreating to Reddit’s disproportionate positivity has helped them to check the game’s decline. /s How the hell do you have a discussion on Twitter with character limits?
It’s just sickening after the thorough thrashing this game has taken to still see the same old weakness that enabled it to happen.
No, in the old forums you had a presence defending the game. Despite being proven wrong you still maintain an illusion that you were a constructive poster. Typical immature gaming forum behavior. The people who in the end are the destructive posters never realize what they’ve done wrong because they were “polite”, and dare to continue rationalizing their roles.
