How do you feel about post dislikes and like based "rating" system?

Now, I'm not sure what exactly Cordovan meant by it and whether he means to apply this globally or not. But he mentioned something like this on the stream and that he wants to try it.

He mentioned that a dislike/like system may have benefits - like, make it more visible what people really want/don't want as "quality" feedback loop. While likes alone, as a way to express some sort of silent agreement, don't strike me in a bad way, the dislike system does - forum (or any sort of online engagement for that matter, so that would include something like the official reddit or discord too) would be really just a minority of total player base, no? So there is no logical argument that the thing mostly disliked here on the forum would be necessarily a totally bad idea for the game. This appears as a logical conclusion to me, unless all their money SSG gets really lies with all those vocal players from the forum... but I highly doubt it - most likely than not, there is a huge portion of unvocal players who contribute to the game's earnings. Even some of the frequent posters wouldn't bother to just follow up on every single thread and click their like/dislike to make sure SSG gets a "proper feedback loop." Thus, I feel like SSG should judge all ideas on merit and their own grey cells, because any idea or feedback given may be insightful in some way - and restrain from any sort of bias based on what's liked or disliked the most here on the forum. It's worth to mention it's easy to hit a like or dislike button. It's harder to actually explain yourself in more detail and true, not everyone has the time or patience to do that, but if someone does, isn't that worth of any consideration and fair treatment, even if some happen to dislike it and clicked a button en masse?

Furthermore, he said that a "rating" based on those likes (I think?) may prompt some threads more than others (on main page?). Personally, I don't think it's a good idea either. The only threads ever prompted would be lag ones and screaming game is dead ones, without any coherence, even worse than before - any sort of constructive discussion and interesting story/world design/housing/and whatnot threads falling even more behind and buried, due to "low engagement" (likes) numbers. It's the truth of the matter people massively like/dislike such "trending rage" threads, easily written, and very general so "whatever goes there" - if they're a simple controversial title - rather than something very specific with a larger text. Something like this may work with reddit - which is usually a short format anyway, to talk about the game but as far as feedback goes the reddit rule is to blindly downvote anyone who says a single bad word about any aspect of the game into oblivion. Doesn't really sound like a format good for a forum though. Plus, I like the chronological aspect of the forum, and thread rating/prompt system based on some kind of factors really sounds like it would do away with that chronology, to some degree

That's my two cents, what do you think?

it is something the lotro forums used to have back in the days and was then removed. if Cord wants to reintroduce a rating system now tho, it will be just like reddit: any post that is not of undying praise to ssg will be downvoted into oblivion, or viceversa, any post from someone who likes something will be downvoted, turning this place into one massive circlejerk one way or the other

OH HELL NO! Just in case I wasn't clear, let me say it one more time. OH HELL NO!

Like/Dislike options in a forum are nothing more than popularity contests, and targets for intimidation.

I am against this in the strongest possible sense. Horrible, terrible idea.

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Originally Posted by elvenes

it is something the lotro forums used to have back in the days and was then removed. if Cord wants to reintroduce a rating system now tho, it will be just like reddit: any post that is not of undying praise to ssg will be downvoted into oblivion, or viceversa, any post from someone who likes something will be downvoted, turning this place into one massive circlejerk one way or the other

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Agreed all the way.

Plus, one more thing about the dislike button - it's very easily a passive almost-harassment tool. I say almost because it's not exactly harassment = can't really blame someone for disliking a post when there exists such a feature nor do you have any idea why they clicked the button. But if people continue to dislike your posts under specific threads based solely on the main post - and it no longer matters what you might say or explain further in a thread, but just who you are and how you phrased things previously - then it's almost like you're being targeted, so pretty much results in "feelings of harassment." Something like this can be experienced on places like reddit firsthand.

I mean, sure, it's true "forum" format is the archaic format, but seriously, in general... the internet and discussion formats of today aren't as ideal as they might appear. There are plenty of issues there that are worth to consider and "modern traps" not to fall into/behavior not to encourage.

Can we like or dislike posts from "blue names"? And what benefit we have from such system? Likes and dislikes counts like feedback? We have many things - we ask for them for years, and have silence in response. Like why they remove bonus rep scrolls without decreasing grind for some factions, or when ex-end game stuff will be revamped like they revamp Hytbold. If such questions have huge amount of likes, how it bother developers? Don't see it. But what I can see is huge war using with likes and dislikes between creeps and freeps, especially discussion related The Moors.

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Originally Posted by Elmagor

Don't see it. But what I can see is huge war using with likes and dislikes between creeps and freeps, especially discussion related The Moors.

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lol... yeah. I get maybe something like a thumbs up/like in case people want to agree without saying anything (though there is something like a ripple effect too, and likes given for whatever reason breed more likes, it's not exactly based on any merit, that's how social media works). But having both likes and dislikes is really a bad idea

They used to have this, and it was abused. It still worked fine for the most part, but the frequent posters either had really high or really low reputation, regardless of the quality of their posts, and a few people would try to game the system too.
Not sure how it would do now. The forums are less active, and there are more people that just lurk.
Having a rating system is nice because then I can just say "I agree" or "I disagree" without typing something out.
But for that same reason, it leads to LESS community interaction on forums, so I'm not sure.

Personally, I'd rather they did things like...made it so we could upload personalized icons, maybe just made it have to be approved and something lotro related. Or other features to make it more social, like maybe having a page for information about your characters, servers, what you like to do in-game, etc. Even just adding some of the features the site used to have like location, etc.

There are so few posts here a week, I think it would be a waste and not really change much. Spam would obviously get downvoted pretty fast, but other than that, I think it would be abused to downvote different opinions, and I don't like that idea.

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

...While likes alone, as a way to express some sort of silent agreement, don't strike me in a bad way, the dislike system does - forum (or any sort of online engagement for that matter, so that would include something like the official reddit or discord too) would be really just a minority of total player base, no? So there is no logical argument that the thing mostly disliked here on the forum would be necessarily a totally bad idea for the game. This appears as a logical conclusion to me, unless all their money SSG gets really lies with all those vocal players from the forum... but I highly doubt it - most likely than not, there is a huge portion of unvocal players who contribute to the game's earnings. Even some of the frequent posters wouldn't bother to just follow up on every single thread and click their like/dislike to make sure SSG gets a "proper feedback loop." Thus, I feel like SSG should judge all ideas on merit and their own grey cells, because any idea or feedback given may be insightful in some way - and restrain from any sort of bias based on what's liked or disliked the most here on the forum....

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This actually did happen on another game I played years ago. There were a bunch of people on the forums very vocally insisting that the game force people onto the pvp server to play. (It was a pvp game, but had a pve server that you could swap to and from.)
The game managers did so, thinking it was the popular desire of the playerbase, and then the forums blew up with outrage over it because the people who enjoyed the game for the story, etc. didn't frequent the forums, and all-of-a-sudden were being forced onto the pvp server where they were being ganked while questing. I thiiink the change was reversed, or maybe there was some middle ground reached. But it really took the people in charge of the game by surprise since the people who frequented the forums HEAVILY favored the pvp aspect of the game.

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Originally Posted by elvenes

it is something the lotro forums used to have back in the days and was then removed. if Cord wants to reintroduce a rating system now tho, it will be just like reddit: any post that is not of undying praise to ssg will be downvoted into oblivion, or viceversa, any post from someone who likes something will be downvoted, turning this place into one massive circlejerk one way or the other

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Amen. These mechanisms are nothing but disguised censorship. If you dislike someone's opinion, you offer counter arguments, you don't silence them with a downvote.

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Originally Posted by paintpixie

This actually did happen on another game I played years ago. There were a bunch of people on the forums very vocally insisting that the game force people onto the pvp server to play. (It was a pvp game, but had a pve server that you could swap to and from.)
The game managers did so, thinking it was the popular desire of the playerbase, and then the forums blew up with outrage over it because the people who enjoyed the game for the story, etc. didn't frequent the forums, and all-of-a-sudden were being forced onto the pvp server where they were being ganked while questing. I thiiink the change was reversed, or maybe there was some middle ground reached. But it really took the people in charge of the game by surprise since the people who frequented the forums HEAVILY favored the pvp aspect of the game.

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Nice example. I feel like all spaces would be heavily biased here in some direction, whether that's the forum, reddit or discord. But not exactly indicative of lots of other - silent - players, who may - completely silently - find some ideas beneficial/unbeneficial. The devs have their analytics of course but even that does not always help - you can't monitor things that you've never even tried, for example, right? And even regarding things they can and do monitor with great efficiency, something like the most played/replayed quest does not always equal the most appreciated flavor in the game nor is that the only type of thing that should ever be in the game, most likely. So, regarding certain matters, like suggesting features that not even exist in the game yet, would be very much subject to that category - logic and reason should ultimately be guiding factors, not just some "numbers" and "clicks." Both for the devs in general (though it's understandable if it gets lost or ignored sometimes) and the Guide of the team who can decide to roll with certain ideas and concepts, so someone like Sev.

Actually, I think LOTRO does strike that balance well when they really try. But I feel like introducing likes/dislikes wouldn't help with that and yeah, would be rather counterproductive and serve to maybe obscure things. Consider a basic psychology and time constraints - A dev: "don't have time to read too much right now, ohhh, there is that trending thread with so many heavily liked and disliked posts, I'll take a look and thoroughly read those." It's basic psychology that creates a bias here, it's natural really. While it's good to be aware of what many amongst your most fanatical, vocally active community may like/dislike, it's really not that important as to become a sole highlighted thing... in the grand scheme of things of developing the game for everyone - and not just any game, but an old engine game that should look into the future and try to survive years into the future, on our present day market, by appealing to all sorts of players - the IP is strong and there is no open world/mmo Middle-earth substitute in sight, so they can still manage a lot here, in theory.

NO. Absolutely not.

If you do not agree with a post, or agree with it, post it with an intelligent response. "Downvoting" is typically anonymous, and doesn't serve any purpose whatsoever. This isn't Reddit.

This was just a bit of theorycrafting chat in the middle of a livestream since weighing features do exist under the hood of the new forums and we could give it a try if we wanted to, but this is not a matter of "Cordovan wants to..." But, since people want to discuss it here:

The main thing it could help address is to give the wider community an opportunity to weigh in lightly without having to commit to the stress and anxiety of defending themselves from often intense responses by a small but loud group of people with a differing opinion who consider themselves the majority. The fallout of not agreeing with the opinions of regulars can be tough sometimes. It's true that only a small percentage of players post but far more read, and this is probably the biggest reason a majority read but don't post. Many players who otherwise disagree with an idea tell us privately they don't reply due to the difficulties they would face if they tried to speak, and it can lead to people believing "players want X" when in fact it is maybe a dozen or so frequent and loud posters representing their opinion every time the topic is raised on the forums. Ideally people who enjoy the forums would be willing to listen to others without engaging in negative behavior, but we've seen too often how things actually go, both on the part of people who are more supportive of ideas and those more opposed. Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

By adding a no-impact unlike/downvote, it gives people an additional perspective. If a post has twelve people across a six page thread insisting that "everyone" wants X but the post has 50 likes and 2000 dislikes, it could be informative, and it is not the kind of information you would get by the current way things work. As people have stated, there are of course a bunch of reasons NOT to do an up/downvote as well. I was a big opponent of the Reputation system, getting rid of it was one of my first orders of business when I took over forum management here. If anything like this was ever brought to the new forums it would have to work differently from that old system. But I don't want to simply not consider it due to the issues caused by a different and very outdated system from a decade-plus ago.

Would a different system be able to help counter the belief that six people who post a hundred times over the course of a month about an issue represent the majority? Maybe, maybe not, but it's at least worth thinking about, since nothing is actually being proposed at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

...The main thing it could help address is to give the wider community an opportunity to weigh in lightly without having to commit to the stress and anxiety of defending themselves from often intense responses by a small but loud group of people with a differing opinion who consider themselves the majority. The fallout of not agreeing with the opinions of regulars can be tough sometimes. It's true that only a small percentage of players post but far more read, and this is probably the biggest reason a majority read but don't post. Many players who otherwise disagree with an idea tell us privately they don't reply due to the difficulties they would face if they tried to speak, and it can lead to people believing "players want X" when in fact it is maybe a dozen or so frequent and loud posters representing their opinion every time the topic is raised on the forums. Ideally people who enjoy the forums would be willing to listen to others without engaging in negative behavior, but we've seen too often how things actually go, both on the part of people who are more supportive of ideas and those more opposed. Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

By adding a no-impact unlike/downvote, it gives people an additional perspective. If a post has twelve people across a six page thread insisting that "everyone" wants X but the post has 50 likes and 2000 dislikes, it could be informative, and it is not the kind of information you would get by the current way things work. As people have stated, there are of course a bunch of reasons NOT to do an up/downvote as well. I was a big opponent of the Reputation system, getting rid of it was one of my first orders of business when I took over forum management here. If anything like this was ever brought to the new forums it would have to work differently from that old system. But I don't want to simply not consider it due to the issues caused by a different and very outdated system from a decade-plus ago...

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This is a good point. I often see threads with many views but only a handful of comments. And perhaps if the votes were showing up, people would be less hesitant to post their different views here, too. Even those in the minority, if they realized there were even a couple people who also agreed with them, might be more likely to say something.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

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Would a different system be able to help counter the belief that six people who post a hundred times over the course of a month about an issue represent the majority? Maybe, maybe not, but it's at least worth thinking about, since nothing is actually being proposed at the moment.

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If the intention is to have a way to gauge the mood of the player base who frequent this forum, then I would invite you to look at how Paradox Interactive handles this on their own forum. Under the Like button, there are several choices:

- Respectfully disagree
- Agree
- Like
- Love
- Amused

Please, no reddit-like upvote/downvote.

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Edit: note that the above mechanism is open to the lurkers, so long as they're members.

We have famous quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry book - "We are responsible for those we have tamed". Yes, forum hostile and tough for some people who prefer more user-friendly acitvity or play game without go deep into details. You can blame players who harsh to other people (especially when they disagree with their opinion). But in same time, you can blame developers, because they focus discussions in other places, and kinda forget about forums. Since people don't get full information (for different reasons), they consider something shady here and blame developers, or other players. You can blame panic and pain, because we see our servers slowly dying, we see players go away from Lotro, and we don't want to see that. We want to see Lotro getting more players and more $$, but don't know how to do it. Because of that, people don't like changes, because they like Lotro what used to be that 15 years and don't agree what we need changes. For good, or for bad. But we truly need them.

Yes, forum need some changes, and some changes will be great. But how it change people here? They keep acting same way.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

...By adding a no-impact unlike/downvote, it gives people an additional perspective. If a post has twelve people across a six page thread insisting that "everyone" wants X but the post has 50 likes and 2000 dislikes, it could be informative, and it is not the kind of information you would get by the current way things work. As people have stated, there are of course a bunch of reasons NOT to do an up/downvote as well. I was a big opponent of the Reputation system, getting rid of it was one of my first orders of business when I took over forum management here. If anything like this was ever brought to the new forums it would have to work differently from that old system. But I don't want to simply not consider it due to the issues caused by a different and very outdated system from a decade-plus ago.

Would a different system be able to help counter the belief that six people who post a hundred times over the course of a month about an issue represent the majority? Maybe, maybe not, but it's at least worth thinking about, since nothing is actually being proposed at the moment.

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All this. So many earlier were worried that the button would work as it does on Reddit; that's a pretty broad assumption. As far as frequent posters go, you don't have to read/respond to a thread that ticks you off. A "no-impact unlike/downvote" would be just fine with me.

To be precise, I wasn't trying to say "Cord wants to do that". It wasn't exactly clear to me how any of that would even function, in theory, if it ever came to pass.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

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I mean, it's clearly an issue if trying to take everyone into account, but this sounds a bit like they don't want *a forum* at all though, more like they wish for some special pools linked by SSG in private messages - and fully anonymous - which would be far more useful (as feedback I mean) than any illusory, subject to "hype" likes and dislikes situations. I would dig the pools idea, actually, if you actually asked about brand new things as well, not just the typical ones that are already in the game or in development but you just need specific feedback on them. Would be far more useful to have periodically than any bickering at the forum and like/dislike wars.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

By adding a no-impact unlike/downvote, it gives people an additional perspective. If a post has twelve people across a six page thread insisting that "everyone" wants X but the post has 50 likes and 2000 dislikes, it could be informative, and it is not the kind of information you would get by the current way things work.

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It might but still, does that really matter, if 2000 people passively disagreeing with a click (which means they bother to frequent the forum because they've registered here in the first place) may not even be the majority of the entire player base of the game (many of which may not even frequently read the forum/reddit/etc), so that's just a surface level info anyway - having it displayed would only convince people it's the other side that "is the majority!" and should be listened to by the devs, which is more like changing the appearances, but the mood stays the same (plus maybe less people actually type things since now they can just click things?). Well, I don't know how many players the game actually has, but certainly far more than the number of people frequenting the forums???

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Originally Posted by grallonsphere

If the intention is to have a way to gauge the mood of the player base who frequent this forum, then I would invite you to look at how Paradox Interactive handles this on their own forum. Under the Like button, there are several choices:

- Respectfully disagree
- Agree
- Like
- Love
- Amused

Please, no reddit-like upvote/downvote.

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Yeah, that's certainly a better idea than your typical like/dislike button, and maybe make it somewhat neutral too, with fun lotr-based reactions or something? No idea how it works at Paradox and how it looks in practice, but isn't a respectfully disagree pretty much an equivalent of a dislike here, nevertheless? As I see it, even though it's prevalent online these days because the space has become what it is, one of these major negatives here is that people can massively disagree with facts/reality itself, without having to put in an effort to put it into words (and miserably fail at it if they try to put into words, since reality and logic tend to verify such things, always).

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

...No idea how it works at Paradox and how it looks in practice, but isn't a respectfully disagree pretty much an equivalent of a dislike here, nevertheless? As I see it, even though it's prevalent online these days because the space has become what it is, one of these major negatives here is that people can massively disagree with facts/reality itself, without having to put in an effort to put it into words (and miserably fail at it if they try to put into words, since reality and logic tend to verify such things, always).

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It's nothing more than a visual indication. In other words, threads don't disappear, or they are not displaced at the bottom of the page, when they are massively 'disagreed upon'. On the other end, even such a light-weight mechanism can skew perceptions and induce 'peer pressure' in one direction or another. But the damage is limited. That being said, and in my experience online, trying to cater to the 'safe-space' crowd almost always lead to further and further encroachments, until censorship becomes the norm... I would avoid it altogether if it was up to me.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

This was just a bit of theorycrafting chat in the middle of a livestream since weighing features do exist under the hood of the new forums and we could give it a try if we wanted to, but this is not a matter of "Cordovan wants to..." But, since people want to discuss it here:

The main thing it could help address is to give the wider community an opportunity to weigh in lightly without having to commit to the stress and anxiety of defending themselves from often intense responses by a small but loud group of people with a differing opinion who consider themselves the majority. The fallout of not agreeing with the opinions of regulars can be tough sometimes. It's true that only a small percentage of players post but far more read, and this is probably the biggest reason a majority read but don't post. Many players who otherwise disagree with an idea tell us privately they don't reply due to the difficulties they would face if they tried to speak, and it can lead to people believing "players want X" when in fact it is maybe a dozen or so frequent and loud posters representing their opinion every time the topic is raised on the forums. Ideally people who enjoy the forums would be willing to listen to others without engaging in negative behavior, but we've seen too often how things actually go, both on the part of people who are more supportive of ideas and those more opposed. Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

By adding a no-impact unlike/downvote, it gives people an additional perspective. If a post has twelve people across a six page thread insisting that "everyone" wants X but the post has 50 likes and 2000 dislikes, it could be informative, and it is not the kind of information you would get by the current way things work. As people have stated, there are of course a bunch of reasons NOT to do an up/downvote as well. I was a big opponent of the Reputation system, getting rid of it was one of my first orders of business when I took over forum management here. If anything like this was ever brought to the new forums it would have to work differently from that old system. But I don't want to simply not consider it due to the issues caused by a different and very outdated system from a decade-plus ago.

Would a different system be able to help counter the belief that six people who post a hundred times over the course of a month about an issue represent the majority? Maybe, maybe not, but it's at least worth thinking about, since nothing is actually being proposed at the moment.

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I recall that system being used at LOTRO forums more than a decade ago & it got removed because justified reasons. That system got abused to give bad reputation to other players, as a form of harrasment. I'm not gonna describe the ways that it got exploited (no need to give ideas), only tell that it was bad. Please, don't bring it back! :eek:

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

This was just a bit of theorycrafting chat in the middle of a livestream since weighing features do exist under the hood of the new forums and we could give it a try if we wanted to, but this is not a matter of "Cordovan wants to..." But, since people want to discuss it here:

The main thing it could help address is to give the wider community an opportunity to weigh in lightly without having to commit to the stress and anxiety of defending themselves from often intense responses by a small but loud group of people with a differing opinion who consider themselves the majority. The fallout of not agreeing with the opinions of regulars can be tough sometimes. It's true that only a small percentage of players post but far more read, and this is probably the biggest reason a majority read but don't post. Many players who otherwise disagree with an idea tell us privately they don't reply due to the difficulties they would face if they tried to speak, and it can lead to people believing "players want X" when in fact it is maybe a dozen or so frequent and loud posters representing their opinion every time the topic is raised on the forums. Ideally people who enjoy the forums would be willing to listen to others without engaging in negative behavior, but we've seen too often how things actually go, both on the part of people who are more supportive of ideas and those more opposed. Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

By adding a no-impact unlike/downvote, it gives people an additional perspective. If a post has twelve people across a six page thread insisting that "everyone" wants X but the post has 50 likes and 2000 dislikes, it could be informative, and it is not the kind of information you would get by the current way things work. As people have stated, there are of course a bunch of reasons NOT to do an up/downvote as well. I was a big opponent of the Reputation system, getting rid of it was one of my first orders of business when I took over forum management here. If anything like this was ever brought to the new forums it would have to work differently from that old system. But I don't want to simply not consider it due to the issues caused by a different and very outdated system from a decade-plus ago.

Would a different system be able to help counter the belief that six people who post a hundred times over the course of a month about an issue represent the majority? Maybe, maybe not, but it's at least worth thinking about, since nothing is actually being proposed at the moment.

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This reply is why it's important to have a diverse set of players on CM staff in my opinion. Obviously I understand that SSG is a small operation and to my understanding Cord is the only CM.
But my point is this, Cordovan engages with the game in a relatively casual manner (nothing wrong with this, casuals make up a large majority of the population), which means he is naturally more inclined to sympathize with the casual segment of the population. Terms like "loud minority who think they're the majority" have been thrown around consistently by SSG CM staff to refer to primarily endgame players (raiders and PvPers).
Here is my issue. The current system certainly does not properly represent the wants or needs of the greater lotro community. But Cord's proposed replacement does not necessarily create an improved feedback system either. It could certainly be abused to create incorrect assumptions about what the population wants. What it does do, is amplify the opinions of the player group that Cord specifically sympathizes with. Again nothing wrong with being casual, and it's natural to sympathize with people who are similar to you. However, the issue is that when a CM sympathizes with a specific player set and has a distaste for another player set, that will color their CM decisions and their communication with the team even if it's not intentional.
Currently this isn't really an issue as Orion and ONN are very active on the forums in development discourse. But should we ever return to a time where the CM is the only way to pass info to developers it could become a real problem that there's no diversity of player type on the CM staff.
My final thought that I'm sure the CMs and devs are already aware of, majorities of players aren't necessarily always right about what would be a good or bad change to the game. I think there's a decent chance that the *majority* of players thought that trivializing the acquisition of endgame gear was a good idea in the darker years of this game. But it turned out creating a proper endgame treadmill to acquire BIS gear actually creates higher player retention and is part of why the game has seen a boost of population in the last few years relative to the dark times (Flower picking-Mordor Xpac). But all of that is fairly irrelevant to my original point. Just a thought on how players sometimes have incorrect notions of what makes a game "good."

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

The main thing it could help address is to give the wider community an opportunity to weigh in lightly without having to commit to the stress and anxiety of defending themselves from often intense responses by a small but loud group of people with a differing opinion who consider themselves the majority. The fallout of not agreeing with the opinions of regulars can be tough sometimes. It's true that only a small percentage of players post but far more read, and this is probably the biggest reason a majority read but don't post.

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The problem with this is it gives the wider community the power to change how a post is perceived regardless of whether they actually read it thoroughly or not. That was my experience on the lotro sub-Reddit recently when I was giving a new player advice about classes and the majority misinterpreted it as "Lore-master is an easy class" which was the exact opposite of what I said. Thankfully one person engaged me on the topic so I was able to clarify and hopefully interested parties were able to see that. But by lowering the barrier to engage, I think the only thing you're accomplishing is encouraging groupthink over critical discussion, which is not really what a forum is for in my opinion. And to the extent that developers need help sorting out which is which, the current level of discourse on class changes lead me to believe they don't need it.

It's also true that, quite often, the majority is wrong. Faster horse and all that.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

Many players who otherwise disagree with an idea tell us privately they don't reply due to the difficulties they would face if they tried to speak, and it can lead to people believing "players want X" when in fact it is maybe a dozen or so frequent and loud posters representing their opinion every time the topic is raised on the forums.

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I can sympathize with people who want to express themselves but have anxiety about being "wrong" in a given discussion. To those people I recommend the following strategy: make your post and move on like I do. You have no obligation to engage reply guys with a chip on their shoulder. But at the same time maybe they do have some knowledge to share on the topic worth looking at. So give it a look if you're comfortable. But then move on.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

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Of course there's no way of verifying anything about the anecdotal "everyone I know" qualifier, and thus no way of knowing whether they're actually the silent majority or just the opposite. But if the majority of these messages are all expressing the same opinion on a subject, then you have useful data that should be consolidated into its own private feedback channel rather than trying to merge it into forum functionality.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

This was just a bit of theorycrafting chat in the middle of a livestream since weighing features do exist under the hood of the new forums and we could give it a try if we wanted to, but this is not a matter of "Cordovan wants to..." But, since people want to discuss it here:

The main thing it could help address is to give the wider community an opportunity to weigh in lightly without having to commit to the stress and anxiety of defending themselves from often intense responses by a small but loud group of people with a differing opinion who consider themselves the majority. The fallout of not agreeing with the opinions of regulars can be tough sometimes. It's true that only a small percentage of players post but far more read, and this is probably the biggest reason a majority read but don't post. Many players who otherwise disagree with an idea tell us privately they don't reply due to the difficulties they would face if they tried to speak, and it can lead to people believing "players want X" when in fact it is maybe a dozen or so frequent and loud posters representing their opinion every time the topic is raised on the forums. Ideally people who enjoy the forums would be willing to listen to others without engaging in negative behavior, but we've seen too often how things actually go, both on the part of people who are more supportive of ideas and those more opposed. Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

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I get what you're saying, but maybe just add a like/ support vote then?
It means people can express approval of something and it's less likely to be abused (imo) than dislike/ downvotes.

If you post an idea and only 10 people like it, you can let it go and think: oh well apparently its not something others support/ want.
If you post something and 200 people downvote you, it feels really bad and might even further stop people from posting.:P

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Originally Posted by Fadil

I get what you're saying, but maybe just add a like/ support vote then?
It means people can express approval of something and it's less likely to be abused (imo) than dislike/ downvotes.

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I have seen a few forums where none of the likes/dislikes were anonymous, and that could help with trolling. One would hover over the "dislike" and "like" buttons, and much like Facebook you would get a list of people who liked/disliked the post. Additionally, each user profile would show the amount of "likes" and "dislikes" they have issued.

This way, the ones that are only here to troll and have nothing meaningful to contribute, will get noticed quite quickly, and perhaps they won't be taken as seriously when they actually post something.

Another thing to note is that regardless of the above, when a post gets say....7 likes and 39 dislikes.... the author might be inclined to add a post with "39 dislikes, really guys?" and get upset about it.... which would increase the amount of moderation needed on a forum, because that will without a doubt get out of hand at some point.

I was always on the "we need a dislike button" side when it comes to Facebook, but I totally understand why they didn't do that, as it would become a much bigger and more massive trollfest than it already is. As such, if anything is going to be implemented I would say do it like so:

1) Only allow like/upvote, nothing else. If you don't agree/like the post, you don't do anything and move on.... if you like it and want to show some support, like/upvote the post.
2) Make it visible to everyone: Show exactly who liked/upvoted your post, and who liked/upvoted other posts.

As far as I see it is that the players come here to give their honest opinions. We would not have had Orion's comms thread if he'd realised this.

Sadly we don't have truth and honesty as part of the Community Guidelines. As a result of needing some token journalistic support where none was to be found elsewhere alliances were formed. That two CMs fell into the same pitfall has been a shame for the game.

Back door whispers to someone shown to be duped in such a way has harmed the game beyond their understanding.

I'm unlikely to contribute to the Lore or Artistic discussions because they are not in my field of expertise. I can appreciate the efforts of other players who try to better the game on such matters as I can those who construct a scene with housing items, one memorable one a Hobbit Bakery. I'll likely take some time to go look at the efforts of those engaged in the current competition at it's conclusion.

We seem to be locked into a world where decisions are made without much thought with a lot of wasted effort trying to justify them and refusing to look at all the evidence. Some take a few hours of a mantra "it was stolen" others can take 100 days of "I was right" to restore their "faith".

For me decisions are a line rather than one for a fixed point in time. Adapting to changes with further intel over time. I'm still open to evidence that dissuades me that the championing of "victims" of the forums are any more than not having such a champion come to the rescue in some past. My "bully" found himself in a finger lock on the bus home, my unconcerned continued reading of my book suggested I didn't care so much for his pain nor some lasting damage. Try it; put your thumb on the nail of a finger, close the finger and tug a bit. Freed me from taking it into my future.

The coven of whisperers have been open about it in their own channels for all to see. If you bother to look. I always forget if it's the seventh or ninth level of Dante's hell that houses the panderers. Comes down to your own moral compass if you choose to exploit such chums or attempt to help them.

Where is the review of Valaring when you have not made the journey to cap before? A new burglar on another server because it was only going to be a big fail at outset, and were told it would be? More an attempt at distancing from past errors of judgement but still wary of the backlash?
How does avoiding so many game systems give you the context to take our grievances up the chain and represent all of us?

All this does is make it easier for other victims to be marshalled by those with a following from the gift of a prime slot or favoured Discord or YouTube channel to further harm and direct the game in their ignorance, chasing other motivators outside of the game itself.

How else do you get to the point you actually hire one victim and give an interview to the architect of it all? "Being interviewed by a friend, how does that work?"

Come to the forums with an open mind and up for discussion just don't come as obvious victims of the spin, even your own.

Fundamentally such systems pander to the mob rather the 99 Percentile that might be in a better position improve things. Like the reporting system that would be better served with a forum (as with other Daybreak Games) and more input on the merits and means for any fix.

I fully expect another slap so bye bye, just in case. Will take some time to marshal followers... and pull those strings...

I could only see something like this as a bad thing. The last thing this games "marketing" dept. or EP needs is a way to point at random posts and say "See its popular" before getting a dumbass change made. The Bifurcation of the Dwarven gender would undoubtedly be popular with people who have NO idea what Lotr is and yet it would be all the more to the detriment of the game as a whole when trying to maintain some semblance of continuity with the books. ("See all those random upvotes from completely clueless randos?! Now we NEED to put it in the game.")

I like the idea of having your vote be visible to other forum users, if they do end up implementing a voting system. If a system like this was implemented, I do like the Reddit feature that collapses post within a thread once they reach a certain amount of downvotes. It doesn't make them disappear, so people can still read them should they choose. I don't post here a ton, but do jump into threads when I have a strong opinion about something. I mostly use the forums as a way to get info about what is happening with the game, such as the rep accels disappearing. I would've never known if I didn't visit the forums. Something like that would help people cut to the meat of a post and avoid the sometimes very long arguments than can take up pages of a thread between just two people.

Ultimately, I don't know how much a voting system would work anyway. More people might visit the forum, but if they feel the quality of posts or atmosphere hasn't improved, they won't stay long. There are some users here who are on all the time and comment and argue in every single thread. A voting system isn't going to stop those people from submitting dozens and dozens of posts per day. They want their opinions heard and probably like to debate every topic. Being downvoted isn't going to discourage those types of people. I think that gets lost in the alleged "toxicity" of the forums. It's not just that some feel the forums are filled with negative people who complain about the game. Some feel that posts often turn into a private IM session between the same group of users. I think people have found other mediums for which to discuss LOTRO and communicate their opinions if they don't like the atmosphere of the forums.

I'm not a big fan of downvotes on forums like this, but giving upvote and other more neutral options I think could be useful. There are many things I read which I generally agree with but I don't have anything to add to the discussion so I don't post anything. Having an upvote option lets me show some support quickly and easily.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

This was just a bit of theorycrafting chat in the middle of a livestream since weighing features do exist under the hood of the new forums and we could give it a try if we wanted to, but this is not a matter of "Cordovan wants to..." But, since people want to discuss it here:

The main thing it could help address is to give the wider community an opportunity to weigh in lightly without having to commit to the stress and anxiety of defending themselves from often intense responses by a small but loud group of people with a differing opinion who consider themselves the majority. The fallout of not agreeing with the opinions of regulars can be tough sometimes. It's true that only a small percentage of players post but far more read, and this is probably the biggest reason a majority read but don't post. Many players who otherwise disagree with an idea tell us privately they don't reply due to the difficulties they would face if they tried to speak, and it can lead to people believing "players want X" when in fact it is maybe a dozen or so frequent and loud posters representing their opinion every time the topic is raised on the forums. Ideally people who enjoy the forums would be willing to listen to others without engaging in negative behavior, but we've seen too often how things actually go, both on the part of people who are more supportive of ideas and those more opposed. Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

By adding a no-impact unlike/downvote, it gives people an additional perspective. If a post has twelve people across a six page thread insisting that "everyone" wants X but the post has 50 likes and 2000 dislikes, it could be informative, and it is not the kind of information you would get by the current way things work. As people have stated, there are of course a bunch of reasons NOT to do an up/downvote as well. I was a big opponent of the Reputation system, getting rid of it was one of my first orders of business when I took over forum management here. If anything like this was ever brought to the new forums it would have to work differently from that old system. But I don't want to simply not consider it due to the issues caused by a different and very outdated system from a decade-plus ago.

Would a different system be able to help counter the belief that six people who post a hundred times over the course of a month about an issue represent the majority? Maybe, maybe not, but it's at least worth thinking about, since nothing is actually being proposed at the moment.

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I'm sorry Cord, but I'm against a system like this in the strongest possible sense.

I like the idea of upvote/downvote for the reasons Cordovan stated, but also if we could be sure that 1) One individual forum user could leave only one vote, not more and 2) only those who have been forum users 24/48 hours or so can vote.

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Originally Posted by Curuer_Bauglir

Ultimately, I don't know how much a voting system would work anyway. More people might visit the forum, but if they feel the quality of posts or atmosphere hasn't improved, they won't stay long. There are some users here who are on all the time and comment and argue in every single thread. A voting system isn't going to stop those people from submitting dozens and dozens of posts per day. They want their opinions heard and probably like to debate every topic. Being downvoted isn't going to discourage those types of people. I think that gets lost in the alleged "toxicity" of the forums. It's not just that some feel the forums are filled with negative people who complain about the game. Some feel that posts often turn into a private IM session between the same group of users. I think people have found other mediums for which to discuss LOTRO and communicate their opinions if they don't like the atmosphere of the forums.

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You NAILED it. Thank you.

Rather than a like or dislike thumb on individual posts, I would prefer to see a simple survey. Can be anonymous, maybe throw in a couple of mithril coins for participating in a long one. Do you like female dwarves? Y/N. Would you like to see more lore history recreations like Sarn Ford? Y/N

Throw that onto the weekly coupon page and a lot more regularly visiting people will see the survey. A lot of surveys have a comment section at the end of them if you want to say more about it... anonymously, if the devs really want to have good, honest feedback that is not socially biased. And the survey question is bound to generate a lengthy forum discussion on it, lol. Enter the forum discussion at your own risk :p

I thought we had evolved beyond this in the years since it was removed....

Maybe watch this episode of the Orville before you make a decision on unstructured democracy.

The Orville - Majority Rule

Fiction with insight.

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Originally Posted by Curuer_Bauglir

There are some users here who are on all the time and comment and argue in every single thread. A voting system isn't going to stop those people from submitting dozens and dozens of posts per day. They want their opinions heard and probably like to debate every topic. Being downvoted isn't going to discourage those types of people. I think that gets lost in the alleged "toxicity" of the forums. It's not just that some feel the forums are filled with negative people who complain about the game. Some feel that posts often turn into a private IM session between the same group of users. I think people have found other mediums for which to discuss LOTRO and communicate their opinions if they don't like the atmosphere of the forums.

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There is this sentiment that was born across the online space in recent times (with the coming of the new "safe space" generation and propagated by the rise of modern social media) that discussion and some sort of argument/intellectual engagement between the two or three parties = toxic, offensive, troll, negative, bad, ban it. Even when it's not and all parties engaged are actually 100% fine, respectful towards each other in their own ways and otherwise just passionate individuals willing to put some of their time into such discussions. Usually, they don't break any rules either, their only offense being that they've spoken or engaged. Even if you don't like what they say, or if they're seemingly too negative or bitter about something, that doesn't mean they're toxic and should be gone from public view (and you're free to put people on your ignore anyway...). My only observation is that true toxic (so actually toxic and far from nice) is when people start calling other posters SSG fanboys and throw less-than-subtle offences at SSG - I think that's something to moderate a bit more harshly but Cord shouldn't really punish anyone for just... taking part in mutual discussion, even if that's a one-on-one it's perfectly OK. It IS a forum, after all. Go and look up the genesis of this word, seriously.

I wasn't much active for years before I decided to "break the ice" but that would be due to my complete unawareness of certain sections of the forum (because of how buried they are) and the General section, which was mostly what I paid attention to at the time, gets dominated by some... typical debacles which are always at the top (lag, game dead, ssg destroyed it, nerf stat X, decrease stat Y - for the hundredth time :) ) While some of the other sections, like Adventuring, are very confusing what can be found there, and hard to figure out they have some cool things, and we lack some categorization for those "cool" things, so hopefully Cord takes care of that one and maybe we get specific sections/subforums for story discussion, landscape design, Bill's music etc. Even at reddit, the prevailing sentiment seems to be that Adventuring is the most interesting part of the forum some of those reddit users actually pay attention to, so would be nice to make this more of a heart of the forum, right there with General and much better categorized, not just an afterthought category "here goes whatever" (and half of the story, landscape design, adventuring matters usually goes into General anyway, as things stand, since Adventuring isn't really outright stated to serve those specific purposes right now and it's more of a "tribal secret knowledge" of the experienced posters to put something under Adventuring - but put something under General and it may get lost... dominated by you know what).

I would also love the Bug/Prevailing issues section of some kind (though do point it out players are supposed to report all bugs though the official bug report system regardless and maybe make it clear it's not a section to talk about lag :P ). Because we do end up discussing or asking about some bugs, changes, or issues with the game anyway, or providing feedback that's a bit more detailed/spontaneous than the one that is being provided through the bug queue - and there is no category for it, so it's always scattered between General/Adventuring/other sections. Furthermore, it's kinda annoying when players are talking about some issues and a dev appears with a plead that we should report through bug queue, assuming we haven't done that, which maybe they're justified to mention, just in case, since that's not clear whether we've done that or not. But annoying nevertheless. So by having a section that explicitly states how to report bugs but at the same time allowing to post regarding some bugs and issues in this section, you make it clear that when I post in this section I do this for a reason, not because I'm ignorant and haven't submitted any of those bugs. Sounds very useful.

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Originally Posted by Elebraen

Rather than a like or dislike thumb on individual posts, I would prefer to see a simple survey. Can be anonymous, maybe throw in a couple of mithril coins for participating in a long one. Do you like female dwarves? Y/N. Would you like to see more lore history recreations like Sarn Ford? Y/N

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This really sounds like a better way of including feedback loop from people who are "afraid of" posting because "there are some people who might post something" (without doing anything wrong, actually) that they don't want to see posting because they tire of their activity - and yet they are choosing not to post, so then, how can anything change if they can't provide their two cents through their own activity, regardless of what others who are active may say? If they did, it would be different, more views the better. Even if all "unpopular" active posters who dare to say things were banned, which is apparently the undying wish of some redditors regarding this forum, who is going to be left then? The very people who don't feel like engaging with different POVs at all? I don't know, this is kinda self-contradictory, in my mind

But yeah, the survey is something everyone could participate in, actually. Only the questions would need to be better and very detailed, somewhat. It's not enough to ask whether I support female dwarves - you gotta ask for specifics of how I support them. I may support female dwarves and even female avatars but I may not support soft-skinned midget female dwarves with small beards. This is also the fault of any like system, if you wanna use it for some sort of feedback loop - it's not really detailed. Someone liked something in the heat of the moment, ok, but no idea what are the specifics of their support if they don't say anything.

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Originally Posted by Ryvick

("See all those random upvotes from completely clueless randos?! Now we NEED to put it in the game.")

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THIS. I like to think the devs have their brains but at the same time there is something about such "hype" that's simply human and tempting. I don't know how any of it functions under the hood but the implementation of blue water (and how it was executed) due to numerous bug reports that stated "water isn't blue enough" well... it really shook my confidence. That's the sort of empty feedback that you gotta look at the bigger picture or some kind of specifics and arguments, not just at numbers and go "oh well, I guess we gotta try it" (and with a half-assed attempt at that, that self-evidently didn't look any good and had me 100% convinced it was just a bug - ideally you shouldn't need any posters to point out self-evident things like that). Sounds like the devs don't need yet another feedback loop where mere clicks and number appearances may convince them to do something because "that's what people want!" but actually butchers the game in some way. Avoid the hype temptation, so to speak...

Over the course of a couple decades of playing MMOs and being an active member of their forums, I can whole heartedly agree with Cordovan is saying about a small group of forum members with loud voices sounding like the majority most of the time.

There are some people that spend more time on the forums than in the game the forum represents. They "play" the forums, and they look for any post that in any way threatens "their vision" of what the game is supposed to be and shoot it down immediately with an air of authority as if they are somehow a voice for the developers.

If anything, I think that giving the average forum user a way to weigh in on the topic of threads is a good thing. The more you allow your users to respond with out being the target of reprisal for doing so is a good thing in my opinion.

Be aware though that these forum warriors don't play fair. They will have multiple accounts created solely for the purpose of adding more weight to their opinions.

If you plan to use forum likes/dislikes to gauge "what players like" and "what players want" you have to ask some important questions:

What percent of LotRO players have a forum account? Are some types of players over-represented?

What percent of forum users actually log in? Are some types of players over-represented?

What percent of active users read suggestions and use the like/dislike feature? etc.

I certainly hope they do not switch to such a system. Having moderated forums quite intensely (though a long time ago), it was very easy to see a pattern where the functions are used to swing toward bias.

False readings from false data. People in favour of an opinion use the function to shoot down anyone of the opposite view, and vice versa.


Besides that, we don't need it here. If someone posts feedback on the forums here, opposition is very fast to come forward within the thread.

I agree entirely with what Cordovan said.

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Originally Posted by Pharone

Over the course of a couple decades of playing MMOs and being an active member of their forums, I can whole heartedly agree with Cordovan is saying about a small group of forum members with loud voices sounding like the majority most of the time.

There are some people that spend more time on the forums than in the game the forum represents. They "play" the forums, and they look for any post that in any way threatens "their vision" of what the game is supposed to be and shoot it down immediately with an air of authority as if they are somehow a voice for the developers.

If anything, I think that giving the average forum user a way to weigh in on the topic of threads is a good thing. The more you allow your users to respond with out being the target of reprisal for doing so is a good thing in my opinion.

Be aware though that these forum warriors don't play fair. They will have multiple accounts created solely for the purpose of adding more weight to their opinions.

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There is a big difference between an idea that is suggested for the sake of change and an idea that would add to the game. I, and I would say the majority of others, "jump" on ideas that we know hold no tangible betterment of the game and indeed would detract from our OWN enjoyment of the game were they to be implemented (And some that are just dumbass ideas). Current Male/Female dwarf depiction is not just a game trope and is led by the quite clear definition in the books. To alter that would reduce numerous players enjoyment and immersion in the game world. That would be an example that offers no tangible benefit and would only serve to diminish the game. Others would be "Flying Mounts", FFA or World PvP, Friendly Orcs and more.

Also I hardly think anyone is using multiple accounts to support their dislike of an idea. If anything I have seen people using multiple accounts to try to support bad ideas. And don't get me started on the people who blow in from nowhere then flood the suggestion forum with a dozen ideas ranging from "Completely re-write your game engine from scratch" to "Lets do away with leveling altogether" and then mysteriously disappear a week later only to show up again in a year to re-post the same nonsense or 'bump' their completely unresponded to posts.

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Originally Posted by Ryvick

. And don't get me started on the people who blow in from nowhere then flood the suggestion forum with a dozen ideas ranging from "Completely re-write your game engine from scratch" to "Lets do away with leveling altogether" and then mysteriously disappear a week later only to show up again in a year to re-post the same nonsense or 'bump' their completely unresponded to posts.

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Oh those people are something else!

PRO for this feature! Upvotes and downvotes help to find useful postings and makes it harder for spammers to annoy people.

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Originally Posted by Elebraen

You NAILED it. Thank you.

Rather than a like or dislike thumb on individual posts, I would prefer to see a simple survey. Can be anonymous, maybe throw in a couple of mithril coins for participating in a long one. Do you like female dwarves? Y/N. Would you like to see more lore history recreations like Sarn Ford? Y/N

Throw that onto the weekly coupon page and a lot more regularly visiting people will see the survey. A lot of surveys have a comment section at the end of them if you want to say more about it... anonymously, if the devs really want to have good, honest feedback that is not socially biased. And the survey question is bound to generate a lengthy forum discussion on it, lol. Enter the forum discussion at your own risk :p

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This is a very good idea. It would be a poll seen by much more players than the small number who use these forums.

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Originally Posted by Curuer_Bauglir

Ultimately, I don't know how much a voting system would work anyway. More people might visit the forum, but if they feel the quality of posts or atmosphere hasn't improved, they won't stay long. There are some users here who are on all the time and comment and argue in every single thread. A voting system isn't going to stop those people from submitting dozens and dozens of posts per day. They want their opinions heard and probably like to debate every topic. Being downvoted isn't going to discourage those types of people. I think that gets lost in the alleged "toxicity" of the forums. It's not just that some feel the forums are filled with negative people who complain about the game. Some feel that posts often turn into a private IM session between the same group of users.

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/agreed 100%.
I dont think an upvote/ downvote system will change that.

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Originally Posted by Ryvick

... I, and I would say the majority of others, ...

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This is the kind of statement that likes/dislikes/upvote/downvotes works against. Let the users say if they agree with you or not. You simply saying they agree with you, is just you assuming you are the majority. You may be the majority, but how about letting the actual user base confirm that for you instead of just assuming it.

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Originally Posted by Ryvick

Also I hardly think anyone is using multiple accounts to support their dislike of an idea.

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You must not have ever been part of the EverQuest community. This is a regular practice over there. You see "new" forum accounts all the time, and they generally parrot the same points of view of very vocal individuals that argue on every single thread. It's way more common than you probably realize, and it is very destructive and toxic behavior.

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Originally Posted by Ryvick

And don't get me started on the people who blow in from nowhere then flood the suggestion forum with a dozen ideas ranging from "Completely re-write your game engine from scratch" to "Lets do away with leveling altogether" and then mysteriously disappear a week later only to show up again in a year to re-post the same nonsense or 'bump' their completely unresponded to posts.

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I hate that too. This goes right along with what I was saying about disgruntled ex-customers that troll forums for games they no longer play just because they are hateful individuals.

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Originally Posted by Fadil

/agreed 100%.
I dont think an upvote/ downvote system will change that.

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I feel like an upvote/downvote system will allow the customer base to over talk the vocal minority that plague the forums. If you have six people that post on every thread arguing with anything anybody ever says, that's going to be six votes (up or down). When you add in the one hundred or so other customers (for whom never or rarely post/reply) that come along and upvote/downvote a thread/response, then it helps drown out those six bad apples.

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Originally Posted by Pharone

...Be aware though that these forum warriors don't play fair. They will have multiple accounts created solely for the purpose of adding more weight to their opinions.

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Yes, this has always been a problem here.
And I'm sure it's not special for this forum. But it's always been very obvious here, maybe because of the smaller community.

To be honest, I'm not sure what the need is for a game company to even host their own forums, these days. They could just as easily link to an "official reddit" or something similar.
These forums have been neglected for a long time. Even the site itself seems very out-of-date, with lots of features that have been removed over the years, etc.
I admire them for thinking of revamping things. It could be really nice. But the more that I think about it, the more I wonder about it. I guess, with them hosting it, they do have more control over the content. But is that necessarily better?
Personally, I'd rather have a forum tied to the game than use reddit. But if the forum is just going to BE reddit, why not just link to the reddit, close the forums, and call it a day?
(I'm not saying that it would be like reddit, I guess I'm just speculating about things a bit.)

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Originally Posted by Ryvick

Also I hardly think anyone is using multiple accounts to support their dislike of an idea.

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Oh, but they do, and something like this will make them do it all the more.

That said, I tend to not bother much with the forums at all nowadays, only stepping in occasionally to add a point here and there. Nobody can give good old fashioned, honest feedback here anymore without being labelled with some sort of name. So may as well run with this and weed out anyone honest that's left. Keep it all unicorns and rainbows so to speak.

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Originally Posted by Pharone

This is the kind of statement that likes/dislikes/upvote/downvotes works against. Let the users say if they agree with you or not. You simply saying they agree with you, is just you assuming you are the majority. You may be the majority, but how about letting the actual user base confirm that for you instead of just assuming it.

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The very idea that users hitting likes or dislikes can "confirm" whether someone belongs to the "majority" or not is flawed IMO and the exact reason why it just feels like just adding more confusion on the devs side of things, rather than be equally open to all feedback and ideas. Because I think it is safe to assume there is no "majority" to be found here. This forum, reddit, or discord, we're all probably minority and a fracture - more vocally active but a fracture - of a player base. It really depends on how "strong willed" and practical the devs are.

In general likes seem ok to me (not dislikes though) but I'm not sure how strong willed the devs are in such situations, so still have doubts. They sure are strong willed whenever something is unquestionably desired and can't be even argued against but, well, they are simply limited by time/resources, so then it's a no brainer to be strong willed and ignore that. But when you get this seemingly energetic response from 500+ players through likes, now that's a bit different and may seem tempting to give it more value, like "that's what people need" and not even stop to ask the question does that make sense, does that make the game better or worse, does that inconvenience other players, and is this really worth it for the entire player populace as a whole. It's one thing to add a cosmetic item of Dwayne based on community phenomenon (completely optional feature) and it's another to redesign something, refrain from ever considering something, or change something based on community "majority" / likes/ dislikes/ whatever, when said community may not exactly be reflective of the real player base as a whole (not to mention things like a potential new player/customer you may get if you play your cards right, as a business).

The idea of an Upvote/downvote system is something i'd like, not everyone will agree as some don't already, but in my opinion i think it would help, and agree with what Cordovan said about such a thing.

Clearly, given my contributions, it would be silly of me to think I was speaking for anyone else. I thrive on digging into the game's systems. The motivations of it's players and devs. All the way up to board level - mostly for my own amusement. Not sure if that screenplay should be a thriller or a farce. It does have Luxury Yachts and a sanctioned Oligarch so maybe the former but also... nvm.

I did step in on another thread suggesting an addition source for enhancements in all innocence. But if taken up it would make my easy game even easier, no one want's that!
I try to be good but there are all too many innocent requests made that players make without the wider knowledge of how others are in place to abuse it.

That request to tweak a skill in some way when others are happy and rely on it working the way it does.

The coming changes to power and mastery a host of muscle memory lessons for many of us and key spammers as ever unconcerned. What's all the fuss about?

Context of another viewpoint.

Give us a Bug forum with SC/Dev only OP and have a bump. Perhaps. But if so few are going to see the more nuanced of bugs they just won't get a look in like the current system, we would still get to point out the workarounds or implications and cut out some unnecessary work. Dwayne would never have been removed.

Frankly, what is so wrong with views to denote interest, too many cliques with the keys to the city for my liking. Some times I would like an "unview" and have some of my life returned.

Handing the Royal Sceptre to a certain Discord Server. Or the moderator of the Official one or are there two still? Same with the report post deal, direct a few friends to add weight.

I just realised, I don't even see a report button, where is it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pharone

I feel like an upvote/downvote system will allow the customer base to over talk the vocal minority that plague the forums. If you have six people that post on every thread arguing with anything anybody ever says, that's going to be six votes (up or down). When you add in the one hundred or so other customers (for whom never or rarely post/reply) that come along and upvote/downvote a thread/response, then it helps drown out those six bad apples.

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Yeah, you certainly have a point there!

It's just that from a personal pov I really dislike downvotes.
Allow upvoting/ support, sure.
I have some experience with Reddit communities and with their moderation. The downvote function can really be abused.
I was one of the moderators of a political sub and people from other subs just flooded our sub with downvotes, without ever engaging other than that.
And the truth is: it upsets certain people when they post something and 200 people downvote it.:P

We disabled the downvote option, and only allowed people to upvote.
That worked very well. People were able to show support for certain posts, and trolls stopped bothering.:)

Ah that ikle triangle. ^

I did say I don't comment on the visuals, not my sphere...

I was never under any assumption we had free speech on the forums but the suggestion to actively deny it by players seems such a poor direction to go if that's the opportunity people are seeking to exploit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

This was just a bit of theorycrafting chat in the middle of a livestream since weighing features do exist under the hood of the new forums and we could give it a try if we wanted to, but this is not a matter of "Cordovan wants to..." But, since people want to discuss it here:

The main thing it could help address is to give the wider community an opportunity to weigh in lightly without having to commit to the stress and anxiety of defending themselves from often intense responses by a small but loud group of people with a differing opinion who consider themselves the majority. The fallout of not agreeing with the opinions of regulars can be tough sometimes. It's true that only a small percentage of players post but far more read, and this is probably the biggest reason a majority read but don't post. Many players who otherwise disagree with an idea tell us privately they don't reply due to the difficulties they would face if they tried to speak, and it can lead to people believing "players want X" when in fact it is maybe a dozen or so frequent and loud posters representing their opinion every time the topic is raised on the forums. Ideally people who enjoy the forums would be willing to listen to others without engaging in negative behavior, but we've seen too often how things actually go, both on the part of people who are more supportive of ideas and those more opposed. Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

By adding a no-impact unlike/downvote, it gives people an additional perspective. If a post has twelve people across a six page thread insisting that "everyone" wants X but the post has 50 likes and 2000 dislikes, it could be informative, and it is not the kind of information you would get by the current way things work. As people have stated, there are of course a bunch of reasons NOT to do an up/downvote as well. I was a big opponent of the Reputation system, getting rid of it was one of my first orders of business when I took over forum management here. If anything like this was ever brought to the new forums it would have to work differently from that old system. But I don't want to simply not consider it due to the issues caused by a different and very outdated system from a decade-plus ago.

Would a different system be able to help counter the belief that six people who post a hundred times over the course of a month about an issue represent the majority? Maybe, maybe not, but it's at least worth thinking about, since nothing is actually being proposed at the moment.

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I support these changes, as a player who feels intimidated by some of the louder voices on the forum.

It is so true that there is a minority group of loud voices on the forum. You can recognize some of these names in almost every thread. Indeed, many of them have posted in this very thread. One has to wonder where these individuals find so much free time to be constantly posting so much.

I think these people, because they are so "loud" (constantly present and posting on the forums), give off an illusion of being in the majority. I think they themselves even come to believe they are in the majority as a result. These people, by coincidence, are also some of the biggest complainers. Most of us are actually very grateful for so many of the new features and updates to the game!

I find it very off-putting and I'm sure other new players feel the same way. It would make us feel a lot more welcome in the community to be able to input our voices through a ratings, "like/dislike," or upvote/downvote system.

Against it. It only promote toxicity and hive minds/circlejerk. Look at reddit (in general). You either have "positive" hivemind reddit where negativity gets downvoted to oblivion, or the opposite kind. And the more it goes one way, the more the other side will simply leave, until they are all gone.
I'll take LOTRO reddit for obvious reasons as an example. Positive or positive leaning thread gets 90+% upvotes. Anything that is even remotely negative, including "please help" issues, or an opinion about something they dislike, even if minor and argumented will get no more than 65%.
Outfit of the day ? 99% upvote today, 97% yesterday.2 "love the community" back to back threads ? 90%.
Meanwhile : "how to disable combat music ?" (they don't like it) 67%. "I don't like Mordor" (controversial opinion right there) 70%. "Please help, LOTRO crash" 40%. I did a search of "controversial" threads : LOTRO's lag issue. The first 2 were sitting at 65-67.

On reddit you can find plenty of hivemind that goes either way. LOTRO reddit is fairly tame compared to some.

Upvotes/downvotes only promote a "like it or leave it" or "hate it or leave us" places. Neither are healthy nor interesting. And they certainly not encourage debate or discussion, they stifle it.
Case in point, posted in reddit in a thread about this proposed "feature" :

Quote:

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I'd say yes if only to have the toxic minority realize how minor their views are.

Not everyone has the time or wants to write a lengthly argument only to be replied with "but actushually".

I'd imagine the minority of toxic posters would be easily downvoted given how outdated their povs are, which is always a plus.

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"I'm only for it if people I disagree with are on the losing end". Literally say they'll downvote people they disagree with without offering any argumentations against it and hope they'll get downvoted enough to feel bad ?. I won't even start with the "majority" vs "minority". Remember kids, you are always part of the "silent/positive majority" (which, obviously, makes you right), and people who disagree with you are always part of the "loud/vocal/toxic minority".


That's why forums usually encourage "positive" vote system. No downvotes, only upvotes. Or emoji like in discord. That way even if what you say is controversial for most forumer (or an active group of them), you don't get removed by the mob.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daguest

It only promote toxicity and hive minds/circlejerk. Look at reddit (in general). You either have "positive" hivemind reddit where negativity gets downvoted to oblivion, or the opposite kind. And the more it goes one way, the more the other side will simply leave, until they are all gone.
I'll take LOTRO reddit for obvious reasons as an example. Positive or positive leaning thread gets 90+% upvotes. Anything that is even remotely negative, including "please help" issues, or an opinion about something they dislike, even if minor and argumented will get no more than 65%.
Outfit of the day ? 99% upvote today, 97% yesterday.2 "love the community" back to back threads ? 90%.
Meanwhile : "how to disable combat music ?" (they don't like it) 67%. "I don't like Mordor" (controversial opinion right there) 70%. "Please help, LOTRO crash" 40%. I did a search of "controversial" threads : LOTRO's lag issue. The first 2 were sitting at 65-67.

On reddit you can find plenty of hivemind that goes either way. LOTRO reddit is fairly tame compared to some.

Upvotes/downvotes only promote a "like it or leave it" or "hate it or leave us" places. Neither are healthy nor interesting. And they certainly not encourage debate or discussion, they stifle it.
Case in point, posted in reddit in a thread about this proposed "feature" :

"I'm only for it if people I disagree with are on the losing end". Literally say they'll downvote people they disagree with without offering any argumentations against it and hope they'll get downvoted enough to feel bad ?. I won't even start with the "majority" vs "minority". Remember kids, you are always part of the "silent/positive majority" (which, obviously, makes you right), and people who disagree with you are always part of the "loud/vocal/toxic minority".


That's why forums usually encourage "positive" vote system. No downvotes, only upvotes. Or emoji like in discord. That way even if what you say is controversial for most forumer (or an active group of them), you don't get removed by the mob.

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Wait, you're saying it will promote "toxicity," and your example of its implementation is Reddit, where "negativity" gets "downvoted into oblivion"? You don't think negativity is toxic?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aurehir

You don't think negativity is toxic?

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Negativity as in completely bonkers unreasonable rants without any sort of arguments and just nostalgia for 2007 and SoA, aka "the game is dead!" - sure, ok, that's quite silly and toxic.

Literally everything else "negative" = a player requests help annoyed by something, a player may be dissatisfied with something, a player doesn't like a feature or a region, a player doesn't like a change or a story retcon, players discuss lore, different POVs of different players clash in a debate etc etc. Sounds perfectly normal to me, and something that *may* be a valuable feedback, especially if somewhat argumented, not just screaming something incomprehensible.

Their example was spot-on and I noticed those exact examples/reaction ratios when scrolling through reddit today. That's unfortunate truth about reddit, though I do like to engage regarding certain matters like housing/the world or post screenshots or answering questions (and similar types of engagement).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

This was just a bit of theorycrafting chat in the middle of a livestream since weighing features do exist under the hood of the new forums and we could give it a try if we wanted to, but this is not a matter of "Cordovan wants to..." But, since people want to discuss it here:

The main thing it could help address is to give the wider community an opportunity to weigh in lightly without having to commit to the stress and anxiety of defending themselves from often intense responses by a small but loud group of people with a differing opinion who consider themselves the majority. The fallout of not agreeing with the opinions of regulars can be tough sometimes. It's true that only a small percentage of players post but far more read, and this is probably the biggest reason a majority read but don't post. Many players who otherwise disagree with an idea tell us privately they don't reply due to the difficulties they would face if they tried to speak, and it can lead to people believing "players want X" when in fact it is maybe a dozen or so frequent and loud posters representing their opinion every time the topic is raised on the forums. Ideally people who enjoy the forums would be willing to listen to others without engaging in negative behavior, but we've seen too often how things actually go, both on the part of people who are more supportive of ideas and those more opposed. Instead of posting on the forums, these folks get their feedback to us elsewhere. I frequently get Twitter/Discord/Forum Private messages along the lines of, "I don't dare disagree with 'the forums' on this, but here's what I and everyone I know actually thinks:".

By adding a no-impact unlike/downvote, it gives people an additional perspective. If a post has twelve people across a six page thread insisting that "everyone" wants X but the post has 50 likes and 2000 dislikes, it could be informative, and it is not the kind of information you would get by the current way things work. As people have stated, there are of course a bunch of reasons NOT to do an up/downvote as well. I was a big opponent of the Reputation system, getting rid of it was one of my first orders of business when I took over forum management here. If anything like this was ever brought to the new forums it would have to work differently from that old system. But I don't want to simply not consider it due to the issues caused by a different and very outdated system from a decade-plus ago.

Would a different system be able to help counter the belief that six people who post a hundred times over the course of a month about an issue represent the majority? Maybe, maybe not, but it's at least worth thinking about, since nothing is actually being proposed at the moment.

---

There are two problems with this kind of system, not that I don't advocate for a better system in general however.

1. Well known players on the forums/ingame generally will have people who will spam dislike their posts and/or spam like their posts regardless of the content of the post itself - the same as any person could simply ask their friends, and kinmates to like their post or dislike anothers posts, it is still not true representation of the community's feelings.

2. When it comes to making decisions surrounding class balance, and taking advice, there are definitely people who are more knowledgeable and more experienced than others, this does not then mean that anybody elses opinion is irrelevant or should be discounted, but when developers are not necessarily engaging with the playerbase at every step of the design process (which of course would be an arduous task and rather unrealistic), it is hard to know who developers are listening to, and where they are getting that feedback, especially as more and more it seems to be being conducted off the official forums, and to that end I say, either make an official discord server, (and take a leaf out of Runescape's book or another hugely successful official game-discord), or be transparent about where feedback is being given, and how everyone can do so.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aurehir

Wait, you're saying it will promote "toxicity," and your example of its implementation is Reddit, where "negativity" gets "downvoted into oblivion"? You don't think negativity is toxic?

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I mentioned that Reddit have negative and positive hiveminds. My argument is that both "positive" and "negative" only places are toxic cesspool. Shutting down people who disagree with you is toxic.


Sorry to break it to you but forced positivity by removing any negativity, no matter how constructive or as right it can be, doesn't make for a happy place.

This is doubly true when it can easily be abused by group of people who will downvote someone they don't like simply because they don't like the person.

I wouldn't mind a rating system. The benefit is that it would give a voice to the hundreds (thousands?) of people who lurk forums but don't feel comfortable posting. The downside is obviously if someone posts something that one persistent person feels strongly about they can easily go to a large community Discord like Ghyniverse and rile up a group to come out and down or upvote without even thinking..making certain posts seem either more or less valid than they really are. I could see this happening with anything related to PvMP.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Strider5548

I wouldn't mind a rating system. The benefit is that it would give a voice to the hundreds (thousands?) of people who lurk forums but don't feel comfortable posting. The downside is obviously if someone posts something that one persistent person feels strongly about they can easily go to a large community Discord like Ghyniverse and rile up a group to come out and down or upvote without even thinking..making certain posts seem either more or less valid than they really are. I could see this happening with anything related to PvMP.

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There are more problems with a rating system than that. On a personal side, your post is being judged, whether fairly or not. And it takes a lot of courage and a thick skin to lay your own thoughts out there and accept the feedback. Thumbs up can be encouraging, but thumbs down will make you run. You really have to feel strongly about something if you are not a regular poster on the forums to want to make your own opinion known because you're trying to break into an established social clique of regulars who have 1,000+ posts and can practically read each other's minds. This thread is a wonderful example of those strong feelings, where people that rarely post are making their opinions known on the topic. And I for one, appreciate that.

But there are as many voices for as for against. Thumbs are like waves that ebb and flow, and they'll bowl you over when they get too big in either direction. How many thumbs down will make you run away? How many thumbs up will make you think your own garbage is pretty good?

Simple survey question: Do you like riding stable elks with giant horns in a forest of trees with low-hanging branches? Y/N

I understand the desire to make the forums more useful in giving accurate feedback. Most players don’t come to the forums often, if at all. Certainly the players who are enjoying the game and encountering no real difficulties are unlikely to show up. And those same people will therefore likely not be heard if decisions are made solely on forum feedback.

I don’t know if a thumbs up/thumbs down system would encourage more folks to participate, though. It might in some cases allow an idea’s popularity to be more accurately judged. But it might also end up scaring off those who might want to post. Another poster mentioned sending out surveys — perhaps a link to a survey on whatever changes are being considered could be put on the log-in screen, or the character selection screen. I think those might be more effective if the goal is broader and more accurate feedback.

I find likes useful when you agree with the post, have nothing constructive to add and commenting "I agree" seems like waste of time. The ability to comment with various emoji like in Discord also not bad IMO.
I don't like rating systems based on likes and dislikes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aurehir

I support these changes, as a player who feels intimidated by some of the louder voices on the forum.

It is so true that there is a minority group of loud voices on the forum. You can recognize some of these names in almost every thread. Indeed, many of them have posted in this very thread. One has to wonder where these individuals find so much free time to be constantly posting so much.

I think these people, because they are so "loud" (constantly present and posting on the forums), give off an illusion of being in the majority. I think they themselves even come to believe they are in the majority as a result. These people, by coincidence, are also some of the biggest complainers. Most of us are actually very grateful for so many of the new features and updates to the game!

I find it very off-putting and I'm sure other new players feel the same way. It would make us feel a lot more welcome in the community to be able to input our voices through a ratings, "like/dislike," or upvote/downvote system.

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There was a thread about paying for some additional band width as an individual option. Did you feel unwelcomed in that thread? For me it seemed you'd be happy to reward SSG even more than you do already to raise yourself up out of the mire of performance. Leaving us to carry on suffering. Perhaps the reason is that other forum users have analysed the proverbial out of both the technical and business reasons why it might be unattainable. We should be standing together on the Picket Line so all benefit. Even those who aren't sufficiently advanced in the game to see many of the problems yet and avidly support SSG, and are in for a shock when they do.

What would have made a difference to that discussion would be a Blue input (from the guy who'd have to implement it) to tell us if this was even technically possible and another from the business side saying if it could be paid for. We are left to squabble.

As ever it's SSG in a Daybreak "straight jacket" - no comment. At best some spin for enough to believe.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aurehir

Wait, you're saying it will promote "toxicity," and your example of its implementation is Reddit, where "negativity" gets "downvoted into oblivion"? You don't think negativity is toxic?

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There is nothing particularly toxic about a poster being negative with an opinion. Outright trolling, just being negative or mean for no reason, is toxic yes, but negativity, in general, where a player may be expressing that they dislike something about the game isn't.

Some players really like x in the game (positive feedback), some don't (negative feedback). Differing opinions, that's all. Neither is toxicity, while they are simply opinions. It's when a player comes in and trashes the opinion of another it turns to toxicity, whether or not the original opinion was a negative or positive one.

Players should feel comfortable with coming to the game forum and expressing how much they love a certain function in the game. Likewise, players should feel comfortable coming to the game forums to express how much they dislike a certain function in the game. Neither should be shot down, called names, ridiculed or be subjected to shut down tactics.

All the chatter about post count in here is one such tactic. It doesn't matter whether a poster has 5 posts under their name or 5 thousand. I have 15K posts, over 10+ years, the vast majority of which are from my early years in the game, where I defended the game to the hilt, and offered help to others. So much so that my name got dragged around a few external sites by players that either left these boards or got banned for their more negative opinions. My experience as a "positive" poster here didn't result in anything great. I don't agree with shutting down debate as long as it's civil. Name-calling and plain mean interactions aside.

Labelling someone as "toxic" just because they have something negative to say about something isn't right in my book. What's worse is when a player actually does like something, but they make suggestions for improvement, which is then seen as a complaint, toxicity or something else negative. It happens all time here on these boards.

OKAY...

Let us take this thread as an example. By and large it has been very civil and has amassed at least half a dozen different solid viewpoints on this very subject. So,

Do we really need a system that means just because you disagree with someone else' view - you would therefore feel obliged to downgrade them?? And on the flip side of that, just because someone has the same opinion as you - you upgrade them?

That is where madness lies.

We can have decent conversations without the petty need to boost or demoralise someone's ego. If you don't like what they say, then write it in a post like we have done in this thread. No need to increase the pool of anonymous keyboard warriors.

Also, it would stifle the conversation massively. Some people would not post their feelings for fear of losing a rating. I can see why it would work for Cordovan because it means we are moderating the forums for him but at such a huge cost to our already limited freedom of speech when it comes to game matters.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LabadalofDorlomin

OKAY...

Let us take this thread as an example. By and large it has been very civil and has amassed at least half a dozen different solid viewpoints on this very subject. So,

Do we really need a system that means just because you disagree with someone else' view - you would therefore feel obliged to downgrade them?? And on the flip side of that, just because someone has the same opinion as you - you upgrade them?

That is where madness lies.

We can have decent conversations without the petty need to boost or demoralise someone's ego. If you don't like what they say, then write it in a post like we have done in this thread. No need to increase the pool of anonymous keyboard warriors.

Also, it would stifle the conversation massively. Some people would not post their feelings for fear of losing a rating. I can see why it would work for Cordovan because it means we are moderating the forums for him but at such a huge cost to our already limited freedom of speech when it comes to game matters.

---

I'm totally on board with every part of this post.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LabadalofDorlomin

OKAY...

Let us take this thread as an example. By and large it has been very civil and has amassed at least half a dozen different solid viewpoints on this very subject. So,

Do we really need a system that means just because you disagree with someone else' view - you would therefore feel obliged to downgrade them?? And on the flip side of that, just because someone has the same opinion as you - you upgrade them?

That is where madness lies.

We can have decent conversations without the petty need to boost or demoralise someone's ego. If you don't like what they say, then write it in a post like we have done in this thread. No need to increase the pool of anonymous keyboard warriors.

Also, it would stifle the conversation massively. Some people would not post their feelings for fear of losing a rating. I can see why it would work for Cordovan because it means we are moderating the forums for him but at such a huge cost to our already limited freedom of speech when it comes to game matters.

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Sorry but this thread solves nothing and is a prime example of what's wrong with this forum.
Did you not hear/ read that a large group of players signal (as they have done so often on this very mb) that they dont dare to post here, that they feel intimidated
or just simply dislike the extreme toxicity of these mbs?

Do you think this thread solved that or do you just not care?

If people who feel too intimidated to post here, might add to a discussion by upvoting (still dont support downvoting for reasons I described) it might
give a hint how people think about certain issues. A LOT better than having to wade through the endless posts of the same tiny group
of toxic posters...day in day out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DoRonRon

There was a thread about paying for some additional band width as an individual option. Did you feel unwelcomed in that thread? For me it seemed you'd be happy to reward SSG even more than you do already to raise yourself up out of the mire of performance. Leaving us to carry on suffering. Perhaps the reason is that other forum users have analysed the proverbial out of both the technical and business reasons why it might be unattainable. We should be standing together on the Picket Line so all benefit. Even those who aren't sufficiently advanced in the game to see many of the problems yet and avidly support SSG, and are in for a shock when they do.

What would have made a difference to that discussion would be a Blue input (from the guy who'd have to implement it) to tell us if this was even technically possible and another from the business side saying if it could be paid for. We are left to squabble.

As ever it's SSG in a Daybreak "straight jacket" - no comment. At best some spin for enough to believe.

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What Aurehir posted was a thoughtful contribution about why many folks don’t post here often. Your reply was a perfect demonstration of the vituperative bile and bitterness that keeps many posters away. If SSG really wants these forums to be more useful, they need to curb behavior like yours.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Varmintkiller

What Aurehir posted was a thoughtful contribution about why many folks don’t post here often. Your reply was a perfect demonstration of the vituperative bile and bitterness that keeps many posters away. If SSG really wants these forums to be more useful, they need to curb behavior like yours.

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There was literally nothing wrong with what he said?

It is well within our rights as paying customers to call out bad customer service publicly, and it is well within your right as a paying customer to also disagree - but "curbing behaviour like yours", again, if they were actually toxic or trolling, sure, but they aren't, so no?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Varmintkiller

What Aurehir posted was a thoughtful contribution about why many folks don’t post here often. Your reply was a perfect demonstration of the vituperative bile and bitterness that keeps many posters away. If SSG really wants these forums to be more useful, they need to curb behavior like yours.

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/signed
Up and down votes wont solve this. Moderation might.
Being told that because you support a game, you contribute to the suffering of others or you are just a noob who
doesnt understand the game enough, is a prime example of silencing people and should NOT be allowed here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fadil

Being told that because you support a game, you contribute to the suffering of others or you are just a noob who
doesnt understand the game enough, is a prime example of silencing people and should NOT be allowed here.

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That's not what they said. What it said was: We should all stand on the frontline equally (opinion). I disagree with the idea that players willing to pay even more (than we already pay - many of us do pay for the game in various forms) should receive a better bandwidth than others. (opinion, disagreement). The real change would be an answer from SSG. (suggestion) Etc. Nowhere, in the quoted post, I can see "silencing" and "you are just a noob!" assumptions (they did mentioned "even those not yet advanced in the game" but it was end of post and no indication it refferered specifically to the OP, just a comment, that you comment on something doesn't mean each of your sentence is always directed at the OP). The OP could keep posting, there is literally nothing stopping them. Plus, it's true such an idea could contribute to some suffering of others who don't wanna pay extra = if you give somebody priority treatment, then it's natural you would be taking some "bandwidth" from others in such a model. I don't see how pointing that out is bad? It's like... a fact? a circumstance? a natural consequence?

How is any of that toxic again? And deserving of a ban or warning etc? Could you define this toxic for me in a way that I know how to avoid it and it's clear to me what is toxic and what isn't?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

That's not what they said. What it said was: We should all stand on the frontline equally (opinion).

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That is literally what he said: "For me it seemed you'd be happy to reward SSG even more than you do already to raise yourself up out of the mire of performance. Leaving us to carry on suffering".

There is no evidence the poster in question supports this idea, I even went to the thread in question to see if the poster had posted
something like that and he/ she didnt.
Its therefor complete nonsense aimed at silencing someone/ attacking someone's opinion.
And it doesnt in any way, shape or form address the actual points the poster posted.

Then there's this about: "Even those who aren't sufficiently advanced in the game to see many of the problems yet and avidly support SSG, and are in for a shock when they do.".
Thats a nice way to suggest someone is a noob, though he picks his words more careful than that.

The post in question is a prime example how people on this mb are getting silenced.

Its irrelevant, it doesnt address any of the issues the original poster posted and its a further continuation of the idea
only negative opinions are allowed here.

The majority of people on this platform isn't "trolls". An up/downvote system will prevent bad posts as it generally will get downvoted to oblivion. And if a post gets tons of upvotes its probably because a lot of people find it good.

Good initiative to modernize the forum, you shouldn't have to write a post to dislike/like something, an up/downvote system fixes this. I'm all in favor of this. And it might breath some life into the forums again and make it more interesting.

It sounds like the people who don't want it are afraid of getting downvoted.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

That's not what they said. What it said was: We should all stand on the frontline equally (opinion). I disagree with the idea that players willing to pay even more (than we already pay - many of us do pay for the game in various forms) should receive a better bandwidth than others. (opinion, disagreement). The real change would be an answer from SSG. (suggestion) Etc. Nowhere, in the quoted post, I can see "silencing" and "you are just a noob!" assumptions (they did mentioned "even those not yet advanced in the game" but it was end of post and no indication it refferered specifically to the OP, just a comment, that you comment on something doesn't mean each of your sentence is always directed at the OP). The OP could keep posting, there is literally nothing stopping them. Plus, it's true such an idea could contribute to some suffering of others who don't wanna pay extra = if you give somebody priority treatment, then it's natural you would be taking some "bandwidth" from others in such a model. I don't see how pointing that out is bad? It's like... a fact? a circumstance? a natural consequence?

How is any of that toxic again? And deserving of a ban or warning etc? Could you define this toxic for me in a way that I know how to avoid it and it's clear to me what is toxic and what isn't?

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How about this: what if, instead of answering you or posting about the original topic at all, I brought up some unrelated controversial opinion and claimed, without evidence, you would support it? And then said that your support of that thing made the rest of us suffer. And then topped it off by saying explicitly that people who support SSG are just too inexperienced to know better … in other words, “noobs”.

Posts like that are part of the problem. Posts that excuse or support that behavior are another part of the problem. And this is coming from people who have thousands and thousands of posts here.

I don’t know if you’ll get it. It’s not really important that you do. But SSG should understand that allowing this sort of behavior to continue will mean these forums will continue to offer only a very narrow and slanted point of view.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fadil

That is literally what he said: "For me it seemed you'd be happy to reward SSG even more than you do already to raise yourself up out of the mire of performance. Leaving us to carry on suffering".

There is no evidence the poster in question supports this idea, I even went to the thread in question to see if the poster had posted
something like that and he/ she didnt.
Its therefor complete nonsense aimed at silencing someone/ attacking someone's opinion.
And it doesnt in any way, shape or form address the actual points the poster posted.

Then there's this about: "Even those who aren't sufficiently advanced in the game to see many of the problems yet and avidly support SSG, and are in for a shock when they do.".
Thats a nice way to suggest someone is a noob, though he picks his words more careful than that.

The post in question is a prime example how people on this mb are getting silenced.

Its irrelevant, it doesnt address any of the issues the original poster posted and its a further continuation of the idea
only negative opinions are allowed here.

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You're being completely ingenuine on this, sorry. So I went to this thread now too, and this is literally what OP posted "What if SSG offered a premium bandwidth connection option with little to no lag? This could be available for purchase through the LOTRO Store or via subscription. That way, players who care enough about lag would immediately be able enjoy a game with minimal lag, and we would be able to provide SSG with the resources they need to fix the lag problem for good."

Again, this is all relevant then: their suggestion in practice would give bandwidth priority to some chosen ones by taking away from all others and the poster outright suggested this so they support this idea. Checked. They did posted something like that. Checked. It does address the point of this thread because the OP asked this poster whether they felt unwelcome under this other thread and why, since nothing really happened there other than people just disagreeing, pointing out some flaws of the idea etc, but that alone isn't what should be silenced. That's what made the post relevant to the discussion here - his question and description of the situation, since the issue of players being unwelcome is being discussed here. Relevant. Checked.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fadil

Then there's this about: "Even those who aren't sufficiently advanced in the game to see many of the problems yet and avidly support SSG, and are in for a shock when they do.".
Thats a nice way to suggest someone is a noob, though he picks his words more careful than that.

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Or much imagination maybe? Why always view everything as hostile? Why be paranoid at every step of the way? Why? There is nothing to indicate this intention at all. They might as well be throwing in a genuine commentary at the end of their post referring to newer players who haven't reached cap yet and may not yet be fully aware of some the lag issues to be experienced at cap where it's particularly harmful. The end. It's you who chooses to attribute some perceived, conspiracy "thinly, carefully disguised attack, ah, they're a sneaky one!" 80% chance it wasn't the poster's intention at all and it wasn't even directed at the OP but they genuinely meant hypothetical newbies not yet advanced far in the game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Varmintkiller

How about this: what if, instead of answering you or posting about the original topic at all, I brought up some unrelated controversial opinion and claimed, without evidence, you would support it? And then said that your support of that thing made the rest of us suffer. And then topped it off by saying explicitly that people who support SSG are just too inexperienced to know better … in other words, “noobs”.

Posts like that are part of the problem. Posts that excuse or support that behavior are another part of the problem. And this is coming from people who have thousands and thousands of posts here.

I don’t know if you’ll get it. It’s not really important that you do. But SSG should understand that allowing this sort of behavior to continue will mean these forums will continue to offer only a very narrow and slanted point of view.

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You want to lecture me, OK. Then analyze the situation carefully before you do, because as said above, I went to check the OP's thread again (his suggested idea) and the comment in question under this thread. Nothing of what you said is true. The comment under this thread referred to that other thread and described the situation from this another thread, pretty much how it happened, and he did that as a response to the exact user who opened up this other thread (with the question whether they felt unwelcome there and why and describing the situation from the thread, which again, was perfectly ok, on point, and didn't have anything outright toxic).

I find it difficult to believe people are really intimidated about posting on these forums. Just looking at the "Suggestions forum", the vast majority of suggestions have ZERO replies, positive, negative, anything at all. Would it really be intimidating to post in support of something that has had NO feedback at all? And is dissenting feed-back automatically a call for "Oh they are just trolling" or "Hating on me"? I can't imagine what people would feel if they visited the WoW or FF14 forums that have a "like" only system and the General Discussion forums for both of those game are completely overrun with actual trolls and little to no moderation of any kind. Those are quite clearly dumpster fires of forums.

But some disagreement over opinion or an idea is suddenly trolling?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

You're being completely ingenuine on this, sorry.

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I missed that post and I now see it. I thought this was about another thread and checked the wrong thread.

I still stand by what I said though: its disgusting to bring up someone's position in a completely different thread, about a completely different subject, in this thread
when all someone posts is that she/ he finds these mbs intimidating.

OP posted she/ he finds the mbs intimidating and that a few very loud voices intimidate others.
OP is 100% correct, as this thread shows.

Unless you think its fair game to bring up your completely unrelated posts about completely unrelated subjects, here to make my point?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LabadalofDorlomin

OKAY...

Let us take this thread as an example. By and large it has been very civil and has amassed at least half a dozen different solid viewpoints on this very subject. So,

Do we really need a system that means just because you disagree with someone else' view - you would therefore feel obliged to downgrade them?? And on the flip side of that, just because someone has the same opinion as you - you upgrade them?

That is where madness lies.

We can have decent conversations without the petty need to boost or demoralise someone's ego. If you don't like what they say, then write it in a post like we have done in this thread. No need to increase the pool of anonymous keyboard warriors.

Also, it would stifle the conversation massively. Some people would not post their feelings for fear of losing a rating. I can see why it would work for Cordovan because it means we are moderating the forums for him but at such a huge cost to our already limited freedom of speech when it comes to game matters.

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I'm not sure responses in threads would matter, but the subject of a thread would. As we know from current forum activity, forum threads can often stray off course and lots of downgrading via responses that are not relevant to the thread topic would skew results.

I think it's just better all around to let people say what they want to say. If they want to big up something about the game, then they should go for it, without being hindered. Likewise for someone with a complaint.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ryvick

I find it difficult to believe people are really intimidated about posting on these forums. Just looking at the "Suggestions forum", the vast majority of suggestions have ZERO replies, positive, negative, anything at all. Would it really be intimidating to post in support of something that has had NO feedback at all? And is dissenting feed-back automatically a call for "Oh they are just trolling" or "Hating on me"? I can't imagine what people would feel if they visited the WoW or FF14 forums that have a "like" only system and the General Discussion forums for both of those game are completely overrun with actual trolls and little to no moderation of any kind. Those are quite clearly dumpster fires of forums.

But some disagreement over opinion or an idea is suddenly trolling?

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I agree; and that is precisely the trap a Reddit-like upvote/downvote mechanism would spring. It's so much easier (an 'safer'...) to click a button rather than having to articulate one's opinion into a coherent post. I can already see how this would stifle the conversation and give way to the sort of mob rule we've seen on so many other social media platforms.

[You want to lecture me, OK. Then analyze the situation carefully before you do, because as said above, I went to check the OP's thread again (his suggested idea) and the comment in question under this thread. Nothing of what you said is true. The comment under this thread referred to that other thread and described the situation from this another thread, pretty much how it happened, and he did that as a response to the exact user who opened up this other thread (with the question whether they felt unwelcome there and why and describing the situation from the thread, which again, was perfectly ok, on point, and didn't have anything outright toxic).[/QUOTE]

You’re right, I should have looked up that old thread started by Aurehir. DoRonRon didn’t falsely ascribe an opinion to him. Instead, he took an actual opinion of Aurehir that was totally unrelated to this thread, and used it to deride Aurehir and claim that Aurehir would leave everyone else to suffer. And then, yes, said people who support SSG are just too inexperienced to know better.

I could do that too. Someone recently started a thread about animated people in boats, and how he/she would like those added in at some point. Nothing to do with this thread. But what if I ignored the fact that it was off-topic, and said something in this thread like “Oh, animated people in boats would make more lag, we’d all suffer for your silly animated people, only people who are inexperienced would ask for such a thing.” Can you honestly say you would be just fine with it? Can you honestly not see that it’s just a personal attack? (I don’t really have a problem with animated people, so don’t let this example send the thread shooting off in that direction.)

Again, though, convincing you is not really important. SSG just needs to understand why the forums are not that useful when it comes to feedback. I think they do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Varmintkiller

What Aurehir posted was a thoughtful contribution about why many folks don’t post here often. Your reply was a perfect demonstration of the vituperative bile and bitterness that keeps many posters away. If SSG really wants these forums to be more useful, they need to curb behavior like yours.

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It was an opinion, much like your post is your opinion, only, theirs isn't attacking another forum user. Having a go at someone because they have an opinion is what stifles posters here and why many people do not post. Bile and bitterness? Where? The poster used nothing of the sort.

The only bile and bitterness I see on the forum is when a poster comes in and shoots down another, calls them out, labels them, and chastises them for their honest opinion. If you don't like what a forum poster has to say, disagree with them and add your own viewpoint. What you think of their opinion, as another forum user is neither relevant or important.

Its why I don't frequent the forum as often as I used to. I come in here, add my thoughts on how something (something that I like already, but think could be better) in game can be improved, add some helpful hints for other players who are having problems with something, and then I'm labelled as a complainer for giving constructive feedback.

Can't be bothered with that. time is too precious to waste providing feedback just to be shot down in flames for it. SSG ask for it, players give it, some positive, some negative, and ALL should be welcome. I'm sure it is from SSG's standpoint, they just need to take care of the players trying to police what feedback they think they should get.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bjute

The majority of people on this platform isn't "trolls". An up/downvote system will prevent bad posts as it generally will get downvoted to oblivion. And if a post gets tons of upvotes its probably because a lot of people find it good.

Good initiative to modernize the forum, you shouldn't have to write a post to dislike/like something, an up/downvote system fixes this. I'm all in favor of this. And it might breath some life into the forums again and make it more interesting.

It sounds like the people who don't want it are afraid of getting downvoted.

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Why would anyone here be afraid of being downvoted? Does anyone really think that a voting system is going to make any difference whatsoever to the outcome of suggestions and feedback on the forum?

All it may do - at best, is alert the forum moderators of hot topics - either way. A thread with a lot of thumbs up may be worth taking a closer look at and a thread with a lot of thumbs down will probably warrant an even closer look at. It's business at the end of the day, and if it were mine, I would be more worried about the unhappy customers than the happy ones. Happy ones usually don't leave, resulting in lost revenue.

A voting system wouldn't affect me. I'd post as I always post. What makes me avoid the forum is forum users trying to police the posts of others, and there is a massive amount of that happening here the last year or so. Its unhindered and unaddressed. Nothing else bothers me. I can wade through negativity like it's cool water on a hot day, same for positivity. What I can't manage, or won't to be more precise is forum users (note, not official moderators, just other players) trying to police other forum users.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fadil

I still stand by what I said though: its disgusting to bring up someone's position in a completely different thread, about a completely different subject, in this thread
when all someone posts is that she/ he finds these mbs intimidating.


Unless you think its fair game to bring up your completely unrelated posts about completely unrelated subjects, here to make my point?

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It's not something that realistically happens very often. Say, if the poster in question actually does this with every single one of their posts as consistent argumentation tactic of sorts and is being utterly irrelevant in many such postings, true, seems like a bad behavior. But if that's just once in a moon, specifically to paint a relevant example (which it was here, regarding matters so heavily discussed here), I don't think it's "disgusting" If you're not going to do that in your every response to me, then sure, why not, feel free to bring up any of my other posts under any of the other threads, if it's relevant. I'm in a public space, consciously putting word out there in a public space - it's not my private space or private chat or private secret that's not allowed to reference, it's a huge difference

I think the issue is really unsolvable and ultimately boils down to people who expect long discussions and wanna say something, anything, positive or negative, but anything goes, no stifling of freedom of speech, and people who are very easily offended or don't want to put much into words or don't want to see long discussion between some parties and they're fine with harsh stifling of freedom of speech, even if based on mere conjecture and "fickle" so it's just as likely an innocent party will be harmed/banned in the process.

Maybe we should all have badges under our posts, choose either "I tend to write lengthier responses and view a forum as a place of (sorta) academic discourse. Feel free to engage me and challenge my view point, no tabu" and "I'm easily offended and don't like any heated discussions, I view my favorite game forum as a safe space for me to relax, please don't engage me" This may sound bizarre but I suspect it would solve the problem much better than any likes, dislikes, systems of shaming, harsh moderation, emotes etc. At least in general discourse, though there is still a question of how the heck am I supposed to add something and/or disagree with the other party who keeps posting peculiar suggestions or opinions but expects just a safe space... so in theory I shouldn't engage them? Maybe we should have a rule that says I can just post "Strongly disagree! I have reasonable arguments against it but can't post more" - the end - but in order for it to be fair the OP is forbidden from engaging any of those posters any further about this matter and trying to continue their original post or paint it like they're in the right despite disagreements, otherwise they'll be punished too. Someone gets their friendly safe space and can discuss their idea with people who think alike if they want, but otherwise you're stuck with a bunch of disagreements under your post and can't even ask why or try to convince them - something in exchange for something, no? And I can avoid triggering such people who don't feel "safe" here whatever that may entail. An original ruleset/community enviroment that I think probably doesn't exist anywhere online but hey, maybe LOTRO can be the first to implement it and revolutionize the internet :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

It's not something that realistically happens very often. Say, if the poster in question actually does this with every single one of their posts as consistent argumentation tactic of sorts and is being utterly irrelevant in many such postings, true, seems like a bad behavior. But if that's just once in a moon, specifically to paint a relevant example (which it was here, regarding matters so heavily discussed here), I don't think it's "disgusting" If you're not going to do that in your every response to me, then sure, why not, feel free to bring up any of my other posts under any of the other threads, if it's relevant. I'm in a public space, consciously putting word out there in a public space - it's not my private space or private chat or private secret that's not allowed to reference, it's a huge difference

I think the issue is really unsolvable and ultimately boils down to people who expect long discussions and wanna say something, anything, positive or negative, but anything goes, no stifling of freedom of speech, and people who are very easily offended or don't want to put much into words or don't want to see long discussion between some parties and they're fine with harsh stifling of freedom of speech, even if based on mere conjecture and "fickle" so it's just as likely an innocent party will be harmed/banned in the process.

Maybe we should all have badges under our posts, choose either "I tend to write lengthier responses and view a forum as a place of (sorta) academic discourse. Feel free to engage me and challenge my view point, no tabu" and "I'm easily offended and don't like any heated discussions, I view my favorite game forum as a safe space for me to relax, please don't engage me" This may sound bizarre but I suspect it would solve the problem much better than any likes, dislikes, systems of shaming, harsh moderation, emotes etc. At least in general discourse, though there is still a question of how the heck am I supposed to add something and/or disagree with the other party who keeps posting peculiar suggestions or opinions but expects just a safe space... so in theory I shouldn't engage them? Maybe we should have a rule that says I can just post "Strongly disagree! I have reasonable arguments against it but can't post more" - the end - but in order for it to be fair the OP is forbidden from engaging any of those posters any further about this matter and trying to continue their original post or paint it like they're in the right despite disagreements, otherwise they'll be punished too. Someone gets their friendly safe space and can discuss their idea with people who think alike if they want, but otherwise you're stuck with a bunch of disagreements under your post and can't even ask why or try to convince them - something in exchange for something, no? And I can avoid triggering such people who don't feel "safe" here whatever that may entail. An original ruleset/community enviroment that I think probably doesn't exist anywhere online but hey, maybe LOTRO can be the first to implement it and revolutionize the internet :D

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While in general, its not considered great to refer to other threads because it can become confusing to readers that aren't aware of them, people do do it here and for many different reasons. There are people in this thread that have done it. Some do it from a positive stand point, some to defend their own viewpoint and some from nothing but a neutral stance. I see no issue with it. It's nowhere near as toxic as name calling and there is far, far, far more of that going down.

Your idea of little badges made me laugh. They would have to be interchangeable though. I can see yours as "Welcomes Debate" in this thread, however, in the dwarf thread, it would have to be "Approach at your own peril." See what I did there? Referencing a different thread is about as far from toxic as it gets. Seriously though, if people can't handle a little negative feedback, they should maybe stay away from the internet. Its a cakewalk here, mild and cool compared to many other forum sites.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Varmintkiller

I could do that too. Someone recently started a thread about animated people in boats, and how he/she would like those added in at some point. Nothing to do with this thread. But what if I ignored the fact that it was off-topic, and said something in this thread like “Oh, animated people in boats would make more lag, we’d all suffer for your silly animated people, only people who are inexperienced would ask for such a thing.”

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In this example it clearly sounds snarky though, with no room for doubt. If it was framed more like the post in question, so "Did you feel unsafe in that boat thread you made? Animated people may cause more lag but since you support that, you would be evidently fine with leaving us stranded with even more lag. SSG should also provide a comment about the subject rather than stay silent, so we have some idea of how feasible something like this would be. We should all stand in one row and try to benefit as a player base. Even the players who are yet to advance further in the game and avidly support such changes like animated boat NPCs, but they are in for a huge surprise when lag hits." (Which doesn't really make me feel like you're specifically referring to me in that last sentence) If that's the case, then OK, feel free to do that, you have every right to. Although note... to that, I can respond: Yes, I felt safe under that thread, in fact I kept posting, because there is nothing that stops me from posting. Also, here is why I don't think animated people on boats would influence lag, which is very likely. Etc. Whereas, it would more difficult to defend against the lag affecting other people argument in the discussed OG example. Bandwidth is bandwidth, after all, it doesn't sprinkle out of a thin air. If it's getting prioritized towards somewhere, then that means those who aren't prioritized would surely feel the results of the prioritization. So we have some underlying differences here, and in the end, yeah! Feel free to refer to my posts or threads.

Anyway, makes me wonder, would you support my crazy solution from the post above? :P Sounds revolutionary and such rules would be easy for me to follow!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arnenna

Your idea of little badges made me laugh. They would have to be interchangeable though. I can see yours as "Welcomes Debate" in this thread, however, in the dwarf thread, it would have to be "Approach at your own peril." See what I did there? Referencing a different thread is about as far from toxic as it gets. Seriously though, if people can't handle a little negative feedback, they should maybe stay away from the internet. Its a cakewalk here, mild and cool compared to many other forum sites.

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I can proudly wear many different badges! Why not! Make this a collectible game. Like crypto kitties. You can have your forum "stance" displayed to inform others but also a cool collectible images proudly displayed, gather them through in-game deeds :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arnenna

Why would anyone here be afraid of being downvoted? Does anyone really think that a voting system is going to make any difference whatsoever to the outcome of suggestions and feedback on the forum?

All it may do - at best, is alert the forum moderators of hot topics - either way. A thread with a lot of thumbs up may be worth taking a closer look at and a thread with a lot of thumbs down will probably warrant an even closer look at. It's business at the end of the day, and if it were mine, I would be more worried about the unhappy customers than the happy ones. Happy ones usually don't leave, resulting in lost revenue.

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Earlier in the thread I referred to the latest fiasco with blue water - this is one of the factors that make me feel a bit concerned our devs aren't ready for it :P Like, something like this happened, based on such "numbers" feedback, but shouldn't have happened, it was silly and wasted dev effort. Numbers feedback and "hot" feedback are not always good feedbacks that you should blindly follow, as others have already mentioned in this thread, and seems like the devs already cave in to such "hot" bug reports, so adding "hot" like/dislike factor would be even greater risk of such fails due to apparent demand (which I say apparent, because again, I'm not convinced the total number of forum users is any way indicative of the larger player base - and people not entirely satisfied don't always choose to complain about it, some get burnt out and just silently quit, for example - they don't offer feedback nor ideas). So unless you're a Forever-In-Open-Beta steam game, it's not something smart to focus on "hot" forum feedback, from a business standpoint - because as a business you're also looking at the big picture - fixing major graphical bugs seems like a better business decision and good image for the game, for example, than trying to satisfy some complainers who will most likely not quit over something superficial like "water not being blue enough"

So, in theory, downvote me to oblivion and I wouldn't care. But in practice it's far worse to keep the balance (as a dev) when you're constantly exposed to these "hot hot" reactions that make you feel like "ah, we gotta do it, or ah, we can't do it because look at that, 1k dislikes" - but maybe for 1k dislikes there are 10k silent players who would actually find something appealing?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

I can proudly wear many different badges! Why not! Make this a collectible game. Like crypto kitties. You can have your forum "stance" displayed to inform others but also a cool collectible images proudly displayed, gather them through in-game deeds :P

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Ohh I know it for sure. I've been on the pointy end of quite a few of your badges for sure, as you have on mine. Holding grudges though, and carrying baggage for weeks, months or even a year or more, not my bag. Don't think it's yours either. Seems we both understand the nature of debate, how to get past it and still hold the ability to sit and enjoy a cool drink in each other's company later on.


I'm wearing my "Cheeky Monkey" badge today :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

Anyway, makes me wonder, would you support my crazy solution from the post above? :P Sounds revolutionary and such rules would be easy for me to follow!

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I would have no problem with you and others here having badges, or trading badges, or collecting badges, for whatever reasons you like. I likewise have no concern about which of you stays, or goes, or posts more, or posts less.

My sole concern with the forums is that SSG not come to the mistaken conclusion that what gets posted here by the thousands-of-posts forum royalty somehow represents how most players feel. Sure, it would be nice if others found the forums useful, but I don’t really see why SSG should prioritize it, particularly if they can get more useful feedback elsewhere. To that end, as I posted earlier, I think surveys could work.

Anyway, as long as SSG seems to understand the limitations of the forum’s input, I’m more than happy to go back to just playing the game and only coming here to check the announcements threads. And you folks can go back to doing whatever floats your boat. Get it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

I can proudly wear many different badges! Why not! Make this a collectible game. Like crypto kitties. You can have your forum "stance" displayed to inform others but also a cool collectible images proudly displayed, gather them through in-game deeds :P

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OK, the idea of "forum stances" made me LOL. "Another long-winded post about lag, time to switch to Endurance stance..."

As you were.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Varmintkiller

I would have no problem with you and others here having badges, or trading badges, or collecting badges, for whatever reasons you like. I likewise have no concern about which of you stays, or goes, or posts more, or posts less.

My sole concern with the forums is that SSG not come to the mistaken conclusion that what gets posted here by the thousands-of-posts forum royalty somehow represents how most players feel. Sure, it would be nice if others found the forums useful, but I don’t really see why SSG should prioritize it, particularly if they can get more useful feedback elsewhere. To that end, as I posted earlier, I think surveys could work.

Anyway, as long as SSG seems to understand the limitations of the forum’s input, I’m more than happy to go back to just playing the game and only coming here to check the announcements threads. And you folks can go back to doing whatever floats your boat. Get it?

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The thousands-of-posts forum royalty? That's a prime example of exactly what I was talking about earlier. That's a bit rich coming from someone who accused someone else that their wording made someone else look like a "noob", yet your ok with using wording that makes someone with a high post count look like they are favoured in some way or see themselves as a majority.

Trust me, if post count had anything to do with either of those things, the game we play would be much different and a few people who use these boards, along with the friends they randomly pull in to back them up wouldn't be permitted here.

Post count holds zero sway with SSG. Ask them.

You've just undone all the good things you actually had to say with one pretty toxic phrase. Well done you!

Time to stick on my "Not Interested" badge and bow out, which to be honest, i should have done a page ago. This was always heading to this exact spot. It's why I don't stay here long anymore or bother to try to give SSG feedback when they ask for it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

It's not something that realistically happens very often. Say, if the poster in question actually does this with every single one of their posts as consistent argumentation tactic of sorts and is being utterly irrelevant in many such postings, true, seems like a bad behavior. But if that's just once in a moon, specifically to paint a relevant example (which it was here, regarding matters so heavily discussed here), I don't think it's "disgusting" If you're not going to do that in your every response to me, then sure, why not, feel free to bring up any of my other posts under any of the other threads, if it's relevant. I'm in a public space, consciously putting word out there in a public space - it's not my private space or private chat or private secret that's not allowed to reference, it's a huge difference

I think the issue is really unsolvable and ultimately boils down to people who expect long discussions and wanna say something, anything, positive or negative, but anything goes, no stifling of freedom of speech, and people who are very easily offended or don't want to put much into words or don't want to see long discussion between some parties and they're fine with harsh stifling of freedom of speech, even if based on mere conjecture and "fickle" so it's just as likely an innocent party will be harmed/banned in the process.

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Nah, sorry but that's not what is at stake.
Prime example: you are in this post completely misrepresenting what other people, who you disagree with, think/ want.
Ofc it's that they are easily offended...ofc it's that they want to harshly stifle freedom of speech..:rolleyes:
How about you actually try to listen to what they want, instead of misrepresenting their opinions?

A lot of people (myself included) who post here dont mind long discussions, or replies, and usually arent easily hurt/ upset about attacks.
That doesnt mean those attacks or the excessive negativity here are okay though.
Some continue to ignore that there are quite a lot of people who do feel these forums are too toxic, up to a point where
they either completely stop posting here, or maybe only lurk and find other ways to express themselves (as in contacting devs in other ways).

If those people could upvote posts they agree with, its simply giving them some freedom of speech too and a way to express what they like/ dont like about the game.
Or was that freedom of speech only meant for some and not for others.:P

I humbly apologize to any readers of the LOTRO forums who ever felt offended or intimidated by my posts. I want to get that out there. I'm not sure if I'm one of the voices Cord has in mind, but I want to mention that, before I started posting, I was pretty under-confident and scared to post. I often got into some lore debates with others that made me honestly write out a post when I had some down-time and then delete it just out of concern that, "I don't want to get embroiled" in this or that lore debate. Sometimes, someone will post a big response to something I wrote, and I'll just decide, "not worth my time today," and I can see it going both ways.

I have to thank SSG- because, really, just overcoming that hurdle of under-confidence was a much needed boost to me. But I think I often overcompensate and go in the opposite direction and . . . end up with these super-long posts. I think I get very . . . well, excited about Tolkien and the game, and I can see how just the idea of getting a big block of text in response to something can seem very overwhelming to folks.

So, if I'm one of "them," I'm very sorry- and hope whatever forums changes they make, they'll make players less afraid and able to share their own enthusiasm for the game, Tolkien, etc. :)

Cheers! :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fadil

If those people could upvote posts they agree with, its simply giving them some freedom of speech too and a way to express what they like/ dont like about the game.
Or was that freedom of speech only meant for some and not for others.:P

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I wasn't against a like alone (but no to dislikes ), though I do have some concerns related to the likes making things seem "hot" (but forum, even the one with increased activity through likes, is far from majority anyway). You said I misrepresented something but I don't think I did. You weren't really who we discussed, after all, and if you say you're fine with discussions, ok, that was never in question. But we were discussing specific statements you and others made regarding a supposedly "disgusting" behavior of the other poster (or even calls for "weeding out" of such people) and now you quickly try to shift the subject once I challenged you on the toxicity arguments you made. Anyway, to each their own, arguments were made.

I think it's safe to assume the devs aren't exactly much influenced by this forum, as of right now. Seems rather fair. They do read some posts and threads, and they see things, but they're more likely to go "oh that's something interesting" or "those arguments and screenshot examples sound reasonable" when they read something that actually evokes such thoughts as opposed to "oh, that's a huge demand numbered in thousands, gotta do it!". It may appear there are some numerous entitled people here screaming this is how the game should play/how it did play in its "golden" age but it doesn't mean the devs listen to those people, can't think of any recent example that they do.




Yesss, I want useful surveys... I think this is how a potential dwarven survey should go. And send it by associated account email to every -confirmed active- player of the game!

Female dwarfs. Which one do you like better? You can choose more than one! Let's settle this matter once and for all!

Current models:
- Classic, just male models used.
- Dis - very soft femininized body, small beard, older female dwarf who evokes a grandma feeling.
- Fastrith, Hersegg (have links to wiki images of them too) - very soft femininized bodies with strong curved shapes, not of strong posture, humanly feminized hairstyles.
- Ragna the Fierce, Ausma etc - custom female designs, but similar to classic.


I think you didn't strike a good balance yet:
- Make dwarven woman recognizable as women through customs, attire, and beards/hairstyle, not as much body shapes
- Dwarven women shouldn't use hairstyles and attire associated with women of other races
- etc

And other specific questions, like, women dwarfs should have visible boobs, yes or no. Women dwarfs should have more stony expressions, yes or no. Etc.


Then, players who choose too many answers, only make their stance that they're fine with "whatever" apparent (and contributing their number to most options) but SSG can viably choose between the actually most popular specific ones

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phantion

I humbly apologize to any readers of the LOTRO forums who ever felt offended or intimidated by my posts. I want to get that out there. I'm not sure if I'm one of the voices Cord has in mind, but I want to mention that, before I started posting, I was pretty under-confident and scared to post. I often got into some lore debates with others that made me honestly write out a post when I had some down-time and then delete it just out of concern that, "I don't want to get embroiled" in this or that lore debate. Sometimes, someone will post a big response to something I wrote, and I'll just decide, "not worth my time today," and I can see it going both ways.

I have to thank SSG- because, really, just overcoming that hurdle of under-confidence was a much needed boost to me. But I think I often overcompensate and go in the opposite direction and . . . end up with these super-long posts. I think I get very . . . well, excited about Tolkien and the game, and I can see how just the idea of getting a big block of text in response to something can seem very overwhelming to folks.

So, if I'm one of "them," I'm very sorry- and hope whatever forums changes they make, they'll make players less afraid and able to share their own enthusiasm for the game, Tolkien, etc. :)

Cheers! :D

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Lovely post. As long as your not sticking labels on people, calling them names, ridiculing them (ie, calling them stupid, unwise, ridiculous etc), or a personal bugbear of mine - misquoting them or changing their actual words into something completely different - then nobody should be feeling intimidated or offended by what you post. Doesn't matter if its a one liner or half a book, or whether it's your 5th of 20,000th post. I've never seen you post anything remotely offensive or intimidating. Just want to put that out there before I go.

@Arnenna

It's your journey that many are still to make. A pity we can't pull together so that they need not make it.
+1

@TesalionLortus
/bow
+2

How did the act of "quoting" turn into defcon 5 for some?

Sorry Arnenna :( you would have got the same number in the proposed system.

I'm a very chilled guy. I have slept the day away.

Because if I play in the wee small hours I can experience the game as many others can. No one else for miles around and immediate missions hand in. Some elite sport on another screen or a host of great podcasts to explore to widen my knowledge.

I do watch those streams that talk of "toxic" forums to grateful followers to believe when it's only because their nonsense was found out here. Trouble is their nonsense is not monitored even on the official and skews opinions as well as poorer game choices. But if the followers are so taken in, what CAN they offer to discussions? A few thumbs down on command? Trawling those very "toxic" forums for some nuggets of wisdom to convey not beneath them though.

It's the same on their live streams, start asking questions that might reveal the pretence and watch the body language, how dare we challenge them. I stick to videos now.

All a bit precarious to have so many platforms you have no control over in order to create some following and the pot of gold, that only a few attain. Other motivators have to be in play.


We will be accused of putting up a stalking horse next...

@Phantion

You raised a good point. I rarely touch any Lore discussions. Have read Lotr perhaps 3 or 4 times; first time it came to me, as the youngest, loose in a manila envelope much tattered. More pristine tomes came later. Being more techy it was never going to be with a scholarly mind set.

I'm not exactly intimidated to venture into those discussions, it's just that I can recognize there are others with a vast wealth of knowledge to inform their postings.
If I was to venture there I'm sure someone would put me straight on misconceptions I might have. I'm intelligent enough to not fight futile battles I'm never going to win.
I would not presume to up or down vote in ignorance either.


It would be like a "metric" that reports a value to SSG and not the multiple reasons that contribute to it. "Smart" devices and tech just handling over a choice of what to look at into the hands of mob generated AI or who knows what clod. An Idiocracy?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fadil

I missed that post and I now see it. I thought this was about another thread and checked the wrong thread.

I still stand by what I said though: its disgusting to bring up someone's position in a completely different thread, about a completely different subject, in this thread
when all someone posts is that she/ he finds these mbs intimidating.

OP posted she/ he finds the mbs intimidating and that a few very loud voices intimidate others.
OP is 100% correct, as this thread shows.

Unless you think its fair game to bring up your completely unrelated posts about completely unrelated subjects, here to make my point?

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Quite often I start off a reply with questions to clarify the circumstances. It might be very relevant to what they are seeing. My intention was to engage with the poster who felt marginalised and only raised the prior thread as a test case to gauge if that had been such an occasion and if I might take the opportunity for some self reflection in the future. I would however value their contribution still. Another seems to have assumed that duty. I can forgive not finding the specific thread, no point in locking yourself into an opinion on bad intel.

I do put the effort into reading whole threads before my contributions, in order, too often I see the work around offered up and excepted by the OP with thanks and yet followed by posters just replying to the OP with just the same advice or something else entirely and not at all relevant having missed out on the building picture.

It is very frustrating when OPs come with such little context and hope for some help. Might explain why CS all left or moved up if snowed under with such vague reports. I'm selfish, free them from the largely irrelevant and get to the nuanced bugs for a change. I don't hold up the devs and engineers in such regard as other's might because I had a few years doing code reviews and fixing bugs. No blame culture but not a no responsibility culture. Sort it and move on. I got to work with some very clever people and took their brilliance and turned it into innovative software for our clients. Systems analysis is a process. For me, seeing someone admit to not getting "math"(s) is just another piece of intel, we all reach our limit, mine was in University and rather stalled things.

I'm not immune to errors, you can find me coming back to a thread when it happens to hold my hands up. It might be more onerous for others to do that.

We can't just assume peoples thought process so we should take steps to find them out. Perhaps endeavouring to find out is seen as an attack when it's about reaching some commonality with which to proceed. Comes from dealing with the client's staff who are to use the software up to figuring how to implement what my boss came up with. Am I to deliver a button to press or software to bring the talents of their designers into it? The latter was so much easier, for me. I can appreciate the less user interaction with the software the better, just not in an MMO.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

Would a different system be able to help counter the belief that six people who post a hundred times over the course of a month about an issue represent the majority? Maybe, maybe not, but it's at least worth thinking about, since nothing is actually being proposed at the moment.

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No it wouldn't. Putting a cap on the amount of posts by those six people would be more effective.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fadil

Sorry but this thread solves nothing and is a prime example of what's wrong with this forum.

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And you think that having a upgrade or downgrade button will solve all these problems? It will actually cause more problems?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fadil

Did you not hear/ read that a large group of players signal (as they have done so often on this very mb) that they dont dare to post here, that they feel intimidated
or just simply dislike the extreme toxicity of these mbs?

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So, what you propose is to create another added system on top that will still prevent folks who don't like forums for whatever reason and also on top of that, stifle the few folks that do actively post on threads?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fadil

If people who feel too intimidated to post here, might add to a discussion by upvoting (still dont support downvoting for reasons I described) it might
give a hint how people think about certain issues. A LOT better than having to wade through the endless posts of the same tiny group
of toxic posters...day in day out.

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What you are actually doing is creating the scenario that you state that you're trying to avoid. By having a system whereby the audience votes by popularity makes the reader almost instantly discount anyone on a low rating. I know you say that you don't like downvoting but think about it... even having a neutral rating is the same as being down rated.

Right now you can either read or discount what the serial posters say if you don't aqree with them which makes a rating system moot. The IMPORTANT thing should be the subject and not the individual posters. We do have a Thread rating system already in place but it is rarely used. In fact the only times I tend to see it used is within Sub-threads for individual issues such as a class forum or MP etc...

So, maybe this is what Cordovan could work on making more usable and easier to define the output instead of designing a system that beats down on individual posters.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LabadalofDorlomin

And you think that having a upgrade or downgrade button will solve all these problems? It will actually cause more problems?



So, what you propose is to create another added system on top that will still prevent folks who don't like forums for whatever reason and also on top of that, stifle the few folks that do actively post on threads?

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How does allowing people to upvote certain posts, stifle others?
I can post something and then see that no one upvotes it, that only signals to me that not many players agree with a particular idea I posted, and you move on, period.

Unlike you I am not talking about a scenario with ratings (which would actually be an incredible bad idea), and I posted multiple times I think downvoting is a bad idea.

Quote:

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Right now you can either read or discount what the serial posters say if you don't aqree with them which makes a rating system moot. The IMPORTANT thing should be the subject and not the individual posters.

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The IMPORTANT thing should be that many signal they dont post here at all because of the negativity/ toxicity of the forums.
Do those players matter at all?
I dont see anything in your post that would change that or that would make the forums more welcoming to all players.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TesalionLortus

Now, I'm not sure what exactly Cordovan meant by it and whether he means to apply this globally or not. But he mentioned something like this on the stream and that he wants to try it.

He mentioned that a dislike/like system may have benefits - like, make it more visible what people really want/don't want as "quality" feedback loop. While likes alone, as a way to express some sort of silent agreement, don't strike me in a bad way, the dislike system does - forum (or any sort of online engagement for that matter, so that would include something like the official reddit or discord too) would be really just a minority of total player base, no? So there is no logical argument that the thing mostly disliked here on the forum would be necessarily a totally bad idea for the game. This appears as a logical conclusion to me, unless all their money SSG gets really lies with all those vocal players from the forum... but I highly doubt it - most likely than not, there is a huge portion of unvocal players who contribute to the game's earnings. Even some of the frequent posters wouldn't bother to just follow up on every single thread and click their like/dislike to make sure SSG gets a "proper feedback loop." Thus, I feel like SSG should judge all ideas on merit and their own grey cells, because any idea or feedback given may be insightful in some way - and restrain from any sort of bias based on what's liked or disliked the most here on the forum. It's worth to mention it's easy to hit a like or dislike button. It's harder to actually explain yourself in more detail and true, not everyone has the time or patience to do that, but if someone does, isn't that worth of any consideration and fair treatment, even if some happen to dislike it and clicked a button en masse?

Furthermore, he said that a "rating" based on those likes (I think?) may prompt some threads more than others (on main page?). Personally, I don't think it's a good idea either. The only threads ever prompted would be lag ones and screaming game is dead ones, without any coherence, even worse than before - any sort of constructive discussion and interesting story/world design/housing/and whatnot threads falling even more behind and buried, due to "low engagement" (likes) numbers. It's the truth of the matter people massively like/dislike such "trending rage" threads, easily written, and very general so "whatever goes there" - if they're a simple controversial title - rather than something very specific with a larger text. Something like this may work with reddit - which is usually a short format anyway, to talk about the game but as far as feedback goes the reddit rule is to blindly downvote anyone who says a single bad word about any aspect of the game into oblivion. Doesn't really sound like a format good for a forum though. Plus, I like the chronological aspect of the forum, and thread rating/prompt system based on some kind of factors really sounds like it would do away with that chronology, to some degree

That's my two cents, what do you think?

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A forum based rating system would never work ..
theres not enough players active on the forum to give an accurate cross section of player population ( truly there are less than a hundred regular posters on the forums )
If ssg is serious about getting a yardstick measurement on the players likes or dislikes then the only way is to have a small questionnaire added to your accounts email :
Every account weather f2p or vip can be involved .
Ssg could send out the questionnaires monthly , quarterly or annually : personally I think quarterly would work especially in the beginning as to address the most important issues sooner than later .
Then perhaps after a year of the quarterlies ssg could reduce the frequency .
This is the best way for ssg to get concrete answers to what are the games main issues are .
Also its the best way to keep a finger on the pulse of the game .
One thing ssg could do to make sure of a high player involvement in the questionnaire would be to offer random awards ( say Lp gifts to 10 players that answered the questionnaire ).
If the rewards were high enough it would help curtail any players apathy and ensure a decent player involvement .