The Devs aren't your personal friends and valid criticism isn't "harrassment"

[EcoReck]

The recent issues such as housing, hrothgars, healing, or lack of job depth are all valid points of concern.

"But death threats" what death threats? This always gets brought up in this discussion when people in the community have issues with something in the game, yet there is never any of these type of comments in criticism thread. It's a baseless scapegoat that is constantly used to dismiss points of discussion and criticism.

These people need to stop taking these valid points of criticism as a personal attack to themselves nor do they need to find every excuse to let them slide. We are paying for a service and they are paid to provide a service.

[MellowMink]

I have no doubt that at least some death threats exist, and those should definitely be taken seriously, including by company representatives and members of law enforcement who should be readily enforcing rules and laws against any threats. Anyone saying that threats don't happen period is neither helpful nor realistic.

Fortunately, at least on the forums, there seems to be a much larger amount of civil and constructive criticism that I’ve seen than threats or harassment, and I hope that’s all taken into account by community managers or developers who study these forums to compile player feedback; more civil perspectives shared by paying customers is important when improving an ongoing product. Equating civil criticism with genuine harassment isn’t fair, yet I hope moderators tackle the latter for sure; it needs to be readily addressed.

[Darthgummibear]

I have no doubt that at least some death threats exist, and those should definitely be taken seriously, including by company representatives and members of law enforcement who should be readily enforcing rules and laws against any threats. Anyone saying that threats don't happen period is neither helpful nor realistic.

Fortunately, at least on the forums, there seems to be a much larger amount of civil and constructive criticism that I’ve seen than threats or harassment, and I hope that’s all taken into account by community managers or developers who study these forums to compile player feedback; more civil perspectives shared by paying customers is important when improving an ongoing product. Equating civil criticism with genuine harassment isn’t fair, yet I hope moderators tackle the latter for sure; it needs to be readily addressed.

Based on what facts? Oh wait, you don't have any.

[Kaurhz]

I'm just going to quote Albert Mehrabian here:

it’s not what you say it’s the way that you say it.

Whether they are valid criticisms or not is one matter. Whether those criticisms are adequately communicated without them turning abrasive is another situation entirely. For me personally, it is not a matter of defending anyone or anything but simply put calling people lazy or incompetent, or stating that they should be fired is not conducive to a productive conversation or debate.

EDIT: I sympathize, I really do for people that don't get what they want, but peoples' issues do not preclude basic human decency when referring to an individual. If it has gotten as bad wherein the developer has had to go on record about it then I think it's a telling sign that some people just aren't simply expressing some critique of the game itself.

Personally, if I were a new player looking to get into the game, I would say had I seen the forum, I would be dissuaded more by how people express themselves on here than the state of the game itself. Which is an issue in and of itself.

[Nethereal]

calling people lazy or incompetent, or stating that they should be fired is not conducive to a productive conversation or debate.

If the person who selected the hrothgar hair is the same person who selected the viera hair, they should be fired. Your thoughts?

I dunno what exactly you're implying here, I am one of '' those '' Europeans who doesn't approve of mass-shootings rofl?

Ah yep.

[Kaurhz]

If the person who selected the hrothgar hair is the same person who selected the viera hair, they should be fired. Your thoughts?


Ah yep.

See I would have given you benefit of the doubt if your issue was pertaining to the simple fact that the hairstyles gutted the ears of Hrothgar, and that they should have conferred with the community prior, rather than as an afterthought.

But since your issue seems to come across as "They don't have good tastes; they didn't select good and nice hairstyles, they must be fired" - I'm going to go ahead and call this reaction the embodiment of being melodramatic. So I will maintain my stance in that it isn't conducive nor productive to be having this debate. If you rather they have gone a different route of simply engaging with the community at large and doing a poll on social media, on the forums, or even via a PLL, then I'd have been inclined to say they should have - Even agreeing with this sentiment much so that I would say they need to be more in-touch and interactive with their community.

Enjoy your day.

[Nethereal]

See I would have given you benefit of the doubt if your issue was pertaining to the simple fact that the hairstyles gutted the ears of Hrothgar, and that they should have conferred with the community prior, rather than as an afterthought.

But since your issue seems to come across as "They don't have good tastes; they didn't select good and nice hairstyles, they must be fired" - I'm going to go ahead and call this reaction the embodiment of being melodramatic. So I will maintain my stance in that it isn't conducive nor productive to be having this debate. If you rather they have gone a different route of simply engaging with the community at large and doing a poll on social media, on the forums, or even via a PLL, then I'd have been inclined to say they should have - Even agreeing with this sentiment much so that I would say they need to be more in-touch and interactive with their community.

Enjoy your day.

You are entirely correct in your post.

I in fact hold both statements true to myself.

Not only do I think they have poor taste in hair styles, but I also think their lack of communication is a real issue.

Instead of simply making race specific hairs and satisfying one group of people and mildly upsetting another they went straight to cutting off ears which for the majority doesn't satisfy anyone.
This after years of radio silence really tells me they're out of touch.

I imagine there are some people that wouldn't mind having their ears cut off if they simply asked: "Hey so here's some race specific hair, if you want regular hair fast we probably need to cut off their ears, if not it'll take awhile. What should we do?"
Instead they went straight to hacking off their ears releasing a lower quality of product compared to what would be race specific hair and their excuse is: It's complicated.
But the modders have shown it's not. If you're a small indie dev company getting one upped by modders sure but SE? With no explanation? No.

They would rather chop off your ears than allow clipping or simply making more race specific hair and getting back in touch with the community.

[Iscah]

If the person who selected the hrothgar hair is the same person who selected the viera hair, they should be fired. Your thoughts?

As I've said in other threads, I don't think they are "choosing" specific hairstyles to work on at all. They have recent ones and the oldest shared and unlockable styles. Hrothgar got the same first six styles as Viera; the next six for Viera follow the pattern: early shared hairstyles and unlockables from various sources, plus one recent style.

And in any case it's a ridiculously flimsy reason to fire someone just because you're unhappy with one decision they made.

[Packetdancer]

"But death threats" what death threats?

I think it also depends on what you define as "death threat". A person who posts "THIS WAS A CRIME AND I HOPE WHOEVER WROTE THE LOTTERY CODE GETS RUN OVER BY A TRAIN" or "I hope whoever let this get through QA catches COVID and their whole family dies" or whatnot is likely spewing angry hyperbole and definitely not making an active death threat, but I can promise you that it still doesn't feel good to encounter those as one of the devs for whom train-related death is being wished.

And those posts do exist. I haven't seen any on the official forums, thankfully, but you do not have to search terribly far in other parts of the internet to find examples of them.

And, I mean... anything else aside, while anger is understandable, those sort of venomous posts are counter-productive to folks who have actual, rational feedback like "Please give us an explanation of exactly how this went wrong, both for transparency and because doing the sort of investigation writing a thing like that needs will help you fix your process so stuff like this doesn't happen" or "Considering many of us already removed our money from the placards before you announced the lottery would be re-run after it's fixed and thus no longer have active bids in, it feels like it might be more fair to reset any remaining lotteries and let everyone bid again" or whatever.

In my own past game development experience, when I encountered a thread containing wishes for violent death upon team members, I know I personally just noped the heck out even if I knew said venom was hyperbole. Which is, I think, understandable... but did also mean if there was useful feedback in the thread somewhere later than the "I HOPE YOUR DOG IS RUN OVER BY A CAR AND DIES" type stuff, I also ended up noping out on those useful posts as a result.

[IdowhatIwant]

Whether they are valid criticisms or not is one matter. Whether those criticisms are adequately communicated without them turning abrasive is another situation entirely. For me personally, it is not a matter of defending anyone or anything but simply put calling people lazy or incompetent, or stating that they should be fired is not conducive to a productive conversation or debate.

EDIT: I sympathize, I really do for people that don't get what they want, but peoples' issues do not preclude basic human decency when referring to an individual. If it has gotten as bad wherein the developer has had to go on record about it then I think it's a telling sign that some people just aren't simply expressing some critique of the game itself.

Personally, if I were a new player looking to get into the game, I would say had I seen the forum, I would be dissuaded more by how people express themselves on here than the state of the game itself. Which is an issue in and of itself.

I will say for dungeon content and savage / normal mode raids, this content does feel more lazy, which is why I personally call the devs lazy at times. That being said it may be a shift of focus which is why this content feels that way, which I think that shift of focus is the wrong direction, which is just my opinion. I don't like that the dungeons all feel very copy / paste of each other with different back grounds, and I don't like the Trials and Raids do not have any differences. But no, no one should be fired unless they did something extreme to hurt the game on purpose, or something like that. And when I say extreme I mean like delete the player data base or something not add a crappy piece of content. As far as tone goes, people can use what ever tone they want honestly, it's not up to other players to determine what kind of tone people can or can't use. It's really up to who is going to actually read it and take it into consideration to determine of the tone is something they wish to continue taking seriously or not.

If I were a new player and looking into the game, usually the games forums are the last place I would go for any information as it is typically a pretty bad place for information. It's hard to say what the new player experience it like, as many forms of media in my opinion over praise this game and lack any sort of criticism or problems with the games, or vice versa. This game in its current state is either loved or loathed right now which sucks and it will likely stay that way until it's next expansion as well as the next WoW expansion. I think WoWs competition is needed for this game to improve as it will either go in the right direction and stay competitive or the wrong direction and see a decline.

I think it also depends on what you define as "death threat".

I think it is fairly obvious what a death threat is, the fact that you had to make this post is pretty sad.. Wishing ill will one some one is not a death threat, a death threat would be to threaten someones life in some capacity. It is so hard to take this sort of talk seriously today because it is so commonly used in social media for views today. That being said, people completely over reacted about the housing issue, and were completely immature for doing so. If you complain that you have waited x years for a in game house... what is a couple more days.