Questions about your reception to Dawntrail

[AnimaAnimus]

So for example if forums say 50% unhappy with healers, 30% happy, 20% just don't care...there's not a real reason to assume the general game population won't skew the same way if asked.

That's how polls are done too. They never ask every single person who can participate, that would be absurd and impossible. They ask a portion and extrapolate the data from there. We also do not have an upvote/downvote system, like sites such as reddit, twitch or youtube, which skews to the positive since ppl do not want downvotes and want views and subscribers. Therefore they tend to either say something nice or nothing at all, making it an even more unbalanced than here until in inevitably becomes an echo chamber which makes those sources even less reliable unless you are trying to have your positive biases reinforced. It also makes the forums look super negative in comparison.

The big issue that comes to my mind when someone complains about the forums being too negative is that online we are missing key elements of our communication, body language and tone. So, even when you type in something that isn't really that negative or argumentative, it can sometimes be taken that way due to the lack of those two things. And since those posters are not talking in rainbows and unicorns some ppl see something they do not agree with an automatically assume the poster is being negative. This is also why constructive criticism is sometimes just viewed as criticism. Saying the forums skew to the negative may feel that way to some users simply because they are either used to the echo chambers of reddit, youtube and twitch, or because they do not agree with what is being said and automatically make the assumption that person is being negative, when in fact they could be just stating facts as they see them, posting with good intentions about something they see as detrimental to the game or just expressing an opinion that is different. Which is a big problem with the internet in general these days.