I am very fine with the forum software itself. When I browse one of the "new forums" put up by many games (e.g. Blizzard), there is so much garbage and clutter included, such as "estimated reading times" and a bar that keeps scrolling with a timeline. Also, so far ALL "modern" forums are stuck in 2000 - with their 4:3 aspect ratio. I do not wish to have 30% of my PC screen empty with the background of the forums. If you want readability by having shorter lines, you either want to see the doctor, get glasses or simply drag your browser window smaller until the line breaks are fine for you. The problem I have is it is tied to the Lodestone, so when something's slow, it's most likely Square Enix' weak Lodestonesoftware. I talk about checks if you have a subscription running, checks if you have played in the past 2 weeks, checks about people's character for the mugshots etc. etc.

Another good thing, not present in many video game forums, but it comes at some places (e.g. Disqus) are downvote buttons. Eww, why? You can still determine if a post is succesfull by the upvotes, but downvotes take away incentives to actually voice your reasoning. Also, as a nature of discussions, you usually have someone against you, and then the downvotes only matter by a few that were first to downvote and others won't read because of said bad votes of a post, no matter what is actually being said.

 What I dislike is the lack of moderation. Look, as Lalafell, you probably know what I am talking about. Some Lalafell post something and immediately, 5 grunting and drooling players gather to create in total 16 spamposts about the "lack of knees", the general body size or that we are toddlers and pedophiles - no matter what the actual thread was about. A group of thread-derailing hooligans that violate several rules at once - and nobody gives a damn. I reported two outright extremist posts which are still on the forums ("Purge [Lalafell] with fire"). That is stuff Hitler and Stalin would be proud of - replace "Lalafell" with "Jews" and "Fire" with "Gas"- but nothing that should be in the forum or the game. It even violates two very well-defined rules, and both I put in the report box. Nothing happened. So I contacted the actual support to ask if the forum is now an unsupervised playground - 5 days later: "Sorry for the inconvenience, I will give that info to my supervisors." I reported again - nothing. This is just one and very crass case, if I would put in all the disruptive bullshit that are "giving players or groups of players a negative impact" then I'd have a much longer list. But all this disgusting Lalafell hate and harrasment that made even this player eventually change her to a Miqo'te is just a prime example of lack of moderation and the idiots running rampage since then. "Since then" is roughly Christmas holiday weeks. Maybe they fire their staff? On the 8th this month ONE thread has been moved into a subforum, so there IS moderation going on. But extremist filth is fine I guess..



I also realized a small change in my behaviour here lately, it's probably the very definition of a "toxic" environment - you slowly get poisened yourself until it's too late.


Sincerely,