Why are these forums full of complaints and negativity?

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Incoming wall of text. TL;DR at the bottom.

The OP is a common and valid complain found on every single game forum I've seen so far. And here's an answer, based on behind-the-curtain observations (community management, forum moderation, and so on).

Consider the whole population of players in a game, and compare that to the whole population of its forums: you're not likely to obtain a ratio higher than 10:1, usually much less, closer to a few percents. Thus any game's forum is all but representative of the real gaming population. It's nigh impossible to assess the actual opinions of your customers just by looking at the forums. This is not to dismiss the actual impact of such a media; yet nevertheless it's something to consider if, beyond starting/extinguish fires, one wishes to actually please or respond to a customer base's concerns at large, or just assess satisfaction.

You may find two kinds, or profiles, of customers' intervening on a forum: 1. those that actually use the forum somehow as a part of the product itself (be it to socialize, analyze, discuss, help, flame, you-name-it... it's a part of the experience, as they view it), and 2. those that have "something specific to say" and choose to go the forum's way.
=> The former (1) is usually a minority of a forum's activity (do note we consider 'activity' here, as in "raw number of threads/posts"; not 'population', as in "number of people actually involved"), since regular forums users tend to naturally refrain from being too vocal about several issues at once (having "been there and done that", they do indeed speak a lot, but these voices are scattered over an elevated number of topics, and vastly distributed in time).
=> The latter however (2), those that have something specific to say, usually come to a forum for that single purpose, thus for a rather short time (a few days, weeks at most, and more often than not for a single time on a single issue); and it's my experience they may be (and quite often, are) very vocal about it. You know, they come and speak, not so much to exchange opinions, as to be heard by others (the product makers in particular). They hope that their concern will be at least recognized by others, shared even, and eventually (ideally) taken into account. Let us now focus of this group, since it eventually prompts observations as the OP of the thread at hand.

It is my contention that when someone feels "unduly unsatisfied", belonging to a group who feels the same way is pretty much the first part in comforting, even healing, that they need in order to get over it (confirmation that leaving the product behind, over said issue, is a right/wrong choice for them). It's that common sense of belonging. Eventually, this venting may ease their disappointment or engrave it, slowly turning their subjective opinion into some sort of objective truth in their minds, regardless of the actual objectivity of said concern: confirmation by others is a powerful force in human minds (that, basically put, is what you want to avoid as a community manager, because it's that much harder to revert later on; which is why we usually consider that there is a sweet spot between "letting people vent" and "not ever replying to your customers"). Of course, most of these one-time concerns are negative, or else they wouldn't have been bothered to be spoken up in the first place (evidently, people usually don't voice the good as much as they do the bad, and besides as customers they don't feel expected to do so; however nice it may be to receive positive opinions for products' makers, such empathic behaviors is just not to be expected from most consumers in reality, with slight variations depending on the forums purpose and status of the product (think beta testing, think help forums, think "fan-service" features: obviously oriented settings)).

When consumers go through the whole process of writing and everything (quite tedious an effort for some non-regular forum users), it's because they feel entitled to voice their concern in some way (paying goes a long way into subjectively legitimating opinions, as one might expect in this age of consumerism), and even more so when the matter at hand is perceived as important enough to flip them out, to be a "game-breaker" (which, however non-intuitively, is a proof of "love" and dedication for the product in the first place: you don't bother criticizing things you don't care about). Perceived entitlement and importance of the matter is why these "my truth"-"doom-and-gloom"-posts tend to make up for most of the activity of any product forum, however anecdotal their author's actual participation may be, over a longer period: instantly, taking a snapshot of the first page, the sheer number of customers compared to regular forum users is just too important for this not to be the case. Even if only 5% of a product consumer base are disappointed by something, and considering how they will voice said disappointment, it's just too many posts to be counterbalanced by any form of "regular activity", day-to-day regular posters. And that's perhaps a clue as to why, in the end, most products' forums tend to look like tech support, indeed. It would be a different story if everyone used forums, but that simply is not the case, and probably never will be. The same might be said about Twitter, YouTube comments, and so on.

Expanding on that, if I were to make a vast simplification, I'd say that (1) is where most "white knights" come from, and (2) is where most "doom-and-gloom" complainers come from. There you have a perfect recipe for brutal clashes, the former feeling invaded in their home environment by a huge bunch of strangers threatening their appreciation of a product into which they put time and dedication. Alas indeed, people tend to be quite borderline (black-and-white opinions) when they express opinions on internet. You'd find sensible, self-moderated people within both groups but, on a side-related note, it's becoming sort of a rarity these days; unfortunately might I add, and obviously even more so on polarizing issues with popular games/products. I guess we have the whole media scene (politics or fanhood "polarization" etc.), and western-world individualism and to blame for that, but I'm probably digressing at this point.

Please do note that none of this is a qualification of the actual quality, or interest, of each group's postings, and one may indeed be surprised when giving a closer look at it. It's just not that simple. We're just assessing population versus activity, and what kind of activity these people actually engage into: how a forum "looks like", "feels like", at a glance, and perhaps a few clues why. Please do consider I'm not judging anyone here, but simply giving general trends (and as any generalization, it's bound to be somewhat wrong on the edge, somewhat true at its core, yet overall simply that: wishy-washy theory about a mostly blurry phenomenon). Also, english not being my mother tongue, I hope I didn't make too many mistakes which would have turned these observations into nonsense, let alone offense. If I did, rest assured it was not my intention, and please do accept my excuses in advance.


TL;DR: as you get more experienced reading/writing/moderating customers forums, you tend to know intuitively which topics emanate from what purpose, and it becomes easier to "sort it out" quickly, basically putting some threads into perspective (or simply ignoring them), while giving perhaps a bit more "value" (for lack of a better word) to threads that actually are the bread'n'butter of any community's social interactions. Which is quite different from the sum of a forum's activity, at least in terms of quantity.

[BlazeChronic]

snip

Incredible reply. In-depth look into the way forums work. If English isn't your native tongue, like you claim, whoever taught you English deserves a medal. Would read again, and I'll make sure to read any of your other posts, should I come across them another time.

Good job.

[Garnatian]

People who enjoy the game are playing the game and those who don't and looking for somewhere to vent.

[GinTama]

I cannot go into a thread or read a thread title without someone nagging or complaining about the game and talking about how "horrible" it is.
I usually like frequenting the forums of the game I'm currently playing but everyone here just cannot enjoy the game and all they do is whine and it puts me off.

why can't everyone just be happy and enjoy playing this game for now, there are obviously some things that still need to be worked on, but it'll smooth out eventually.

Easy, everyone that has a complain or cant play comes in here to post. Everyone happy is playing the game.

[Spoolx]

People only come here to complain, the happy players are just playing the game.

[Conkers]

everyone that has a complain or cant play comes in here to post. Everyone happy is playing...

People only come here to complain, the happy players are just playing...

Not really, the majority of players in MMOs do not post on the forums, whether they are blissfully happy with the game or unhappy with aspects of it, hence why for every "I quit" post on a forum there are thousands of players that quit without saying a word, the notion that anyone not posting on the forum and playing the game, is blissfully happy with it, is both ignorant and illogical.

People "complaining" on forums is useful as it highlights issues for the devs, if the devs are any good they will be able to assess what problems are actually a real issue and what aren't.

Incidentally the level of complaining (actual game issues aside) usually correlates to the level of communication from the devs (or lack thereof, as is the case with this game).

[SIXTYONESIX]

the notion that anyone not posting on the forum and playing the game, is blissfully happy with it, is both ignorant and illogical.

You know this isn't what they were saying, right? They didn't say that everyone playing the game is happy, just that the happy ones are playing and not coming here to whine, explaining the huge difference in whine threads and praise threads.

"Happy players are playing right now" is not the same as "People playing right now are happy."

[Arriverderci]

Because people mistake feedback for complaining.
There are some glaring problems in this game y'know.
Legitimate concerns SE needs to look into.
Now, the posts like, "Read up dungeons and qq people in Duty Finder noops horror stories."
Are just silly lol.
People who are generally alright with the game are playing though.
Also this:

"Why are these forums full of complaints?"

There are lots of things to complain about...

[Pandastirfry]

Because people mistake feedback for complaining.
There are some glaring problems in this game y'know.
Legitimate concerns SE needs to look into.
Now, the posts like, "Read up dungeons and qq people in Duty Finder noops horror stories."
Are just silly lol.
People who are generally alright with the game are playing though.
Also this:

just to throw this out there... An equal number of people mistake complaining for feedback...

[HiirNoivl]

I cannot go into a thread or read a thread title without someone nagging or complaining about the game and talking about how "horrible" it is.
I usually like frequenting the forums of the game I'm currently playing but everyone here just cannot enjoy the game and all they do is whine and it puts me off.

why can't everyone just be happy and enjoy playing this game for now, there are obviously some things that still need to be worked on, but it'll smooth out eventually.

Because people are bored.