"Cynically negative" community cause of communication breakdown

[Grimnakh]

A jaunt through Ornyx's post history looking for examples of the phrases "locking this up" or "closing" and comparing that with how often relevant information is being replayed from the development team should be enough to convince any objective person that he's doing it way too often. Sometimes it's warranted, sometimes not so much.

I can vouch for report trains though. And that they don't even read the tickets. I sent something almost totally unrelated to my ban, and rather than respond to my actual ticket, they simply sent an "after careful investigation" copy pasta. I actually didn't break any rules, but Ornyx said something to the effect of "I hope we don't have this dicussion again." According the the email I got, my ban was because I brought up the issue in another totally relevant thread, after being "warned by a blue."

The reason was "being combative with a forum agent." let's not forget he came into that thread of his own volition. It would have been better for everyone if he had never responded at all. He had my email besides.

My recent bans 2 days in a row were conpletely innocuous. I just posted that I liked the leveling changes and I thought people were overeacting. No name calling, no spamming, no insults and yet temp bans 2 days in a row (the people on the forums really really dont like the leveling changes) the post they quoted in my suspension had absokutely nothing that would even remotely justify a ban, and ya, copypasta when i appealed. People just gang up and report people with opinions they dont like on there and Blizz doesnt hire enough forum staff clearly.

[Gigabear]

My recent bans 2 days in a row were conpletely innocuous. I just posted that I liked the leveling changes and I thought people were overeacting. No name calling, no spamming, no insults and yet temp bans 2 days in a row (the people on the forums really really dont like the leveling changes) the post they quoted in my suspension had absokutely nothing that would even remotely justify a ban, and ya, copypasta when i appealed. People just gang up and report people with opinions they dont like on there and Blizz doesnt hire enough forum staff clearly.

Sorry that happened to you. I actually am one of those opposed to the changes to leveling SPEED(scaling is great), but would never want to shut someone else down for an opinion.

[SirCowdog]

I think community they want is already there, they are just not vocal over social networks or forums. How can they be vocal when you have people making threads and claiming "If you are not here to shitpost about Blizzard then this thread is not for you"? And even if you make a thread that is not about shitposting, then someone specifically comes to turn that thread into shit posting.

Like I said, Blizzard needs to put in the hard work. Their CMs and forum mods are going to have to really get down into the details and ban individual posters. That's what it's going to take. Being lazy or sloppy about that is going to have lazy and sloppy results. If there's a good thread with a handful of shitposters, get into that thread and sort the good from the bad. Ban the trolls, and leave the good posts to create actual discussion.

I am sure that there isn't any properly made constructive feedback which was rejected or closed and if they close a thread, it's not because of one or two trolls, it's because thread went of the topic due to those "idiots" and Blizzard is just there as a 'judge' to say "you went too far. Make new thread if you want more focused discussion on the actual problem" and those "idiots" never talk about the problem. Or, they do because they think they know what's the problem but most of the time, they don't and then "Waah Blizzard is not listening to feedback".

Actually that's EXACTLY what happens. A good, constructive feedback thread is started. A handfull of trolls start trolling. A mod comes in and nukes the entire thread for being off topic. If you try to create another thread, THAT gets closed too for being a duplicate.

That's EXACTLY the kind of lazy modding that I was talking about when I said Blizzard is getting the community they deserve. They absolutely MUST have a finer touch than that if they want to foster a better community. Simply throwing out the good because of a few bads is exactly what lead to the situation they're in right now.

Also, it's not proper feedback when you focus on how devs are communicating with playerbase.

At this point in the situation, that's actually a legitimate topic for discussion. Players are paying for a service and don't like feeling like they're being completely ignored. CMs exist to help with this, but clearly the problem isn't even being addressed. That's absolutely something that can and should be talked about, as long as it's done so in a reasonable manner. I'd cite the civil discussion we're having right now as an example of how that could be done without turning toxic.

If this thread were on the official forums, it would have been locked and deleted pages ago. Consider that.

[clevin]

Then don't focus on the negative, obviously stupid shit?

Ignoring the actual good feedback and focusing in on the negative useless crap as though it's the only thing available is just being disingenuous. Great! We get it! Negative people are negative. That doesn't mean EVERYONE is. Stop listening to and emphasizing that garbage and focus in on, and use, the people who are actually providing good feedback in a constructive way, even if that doesn't reinforce your own beliefs or plan for the game!

Ignoring everything that doesn't echo your own propaganda, and calling it cynically negative, toxic, or whatever else, is bullshit. Yeah, there's lots of useless nonsense out there. But there's also lots of useful stuff too.

Pretty much this. You get the behavior that you encourage. They don't seem to encourage the good, rational stuff much, they post far too often on silly crap and they don't discourage the over the top toxic stuff enough.

Look, I get that the CM team has other duties but if one of those isn't engaging with the community they need to rename those people to something else and hire people who DO engage. I would bet that if you hired 10 people and told them that most of their job was to engage with the community and to encourage good posts, discourage truly toxic ones and, while it's OK to be silly sometimes that they shouldn't have those posts be more than 10% or so of their posts you'd see a turnaround in the forums. Not a perfect forum... but I bet you'd find them of a lot more value.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

You need to learn how to read sir. There was no implication of how much CM's do in any of my posts whatsoever. My statements were concerning what CM's do, not how much CM's do. As I've stated multiple times, a CM's job is literally their title: "community manager". They are to manage the community which does involve engaging with and abating the negative portions of the community.

There is a way to wade through the shit and do their job; it's called community management. You blaming the community is basically equivalent to you blaming a customer for being upset due to being dissatisfied with the service. It'd be like a business claiming that a customers Yelp! review was rather angry thus they have no reason to try and engage with them or attempt to distill something constructive from it.

Also, if a customer gets crazy in person then yeah a manager will step in and tell the customer to leave, but it's a completely different story over the phone or online because there's no threat of immediate escalation to physical violence. A customer can't get so angry that they will punch me in the face through the phone or computer, but that can happen in store, so your target comparison doesn't work at all.

The post has a community manager asking the question "Why should we engage with cynically negative players?". I'd like to ask you, if they don't engage with "cynically negative" portions of the community then how are they not ignoring criticism? I'm just dying to see you reply with a goal post move where you claim that they're just ignoring bad or nonconstructive criticism.

No, I'm blaming the customers for throwing their shit, cursing, demanding people be fired. Its fine if your burger wasn't made correctly and you bring it to the front and show them and ask for a remake. Its not fine to call the workers "fucking stupid people who should be fired," yelling, screaming, etc... which ironically has been going on in this thread. The latter is the type of person that CM was talking about. Nothing in his post said constructive criticisms are bad. Nothing.

But the type of person the post was about IS bad/non-constructive. People in this very thread are cursing, name calling, and demanding people be fired. Thats cynically negative. And you'd have to be a special type of person with zero self-awareness to pretend like thats actuall constructive. Its not moving goalposts, its literally pointing out to you the type of person he said he will avoid.

Physical violence isn't the only reason people are thrown out of stores. Words/tone/temperament are just as likely to get your thrown out, because its unnecessary and abusive. My comparison works. When I was a store manager I literally threw people out of the store for being racist, cursing at guests or workers, throwing things, yelling... and none of it was because I was afraid of physical violence.

The community as a whole is the problem. Its a vicious circle where they think its okay to abuse people, demand they are fired, and they become even more cynical and negative. Then they post in threads like these acting self-righteous and correct, when they are part of the problem.

I'll never say Blizzard is perfect. I've criticized them on these boards plenty. I've been playing since 2005, so I have plenty to criticize them for. But the community is disgusting, and embarrassing and often doesn't deserve to have their threads considered.

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As an employee and much more as a supervisor, it is your job to deescalate the customer's current condition is. It's part of your job description to hand out satisfactory customer relation and service. If the customer is irate and becomes more at the end of the conversation then you need to have seminar at handling customer relations. You have to understand were their frustration is coming from and you have to think like you're in their shoes. That way you can offer a good solution to their current situation and turn into a good solution as wel as feedback.

False, someone who is being irate "feelings causing great anger" need to step out and deal with their emotions before trying to address any issues. If you're irate, you are a danger to yourself and others, and clearly aren't thinking very clearly.

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And yet we have a ridicoulus amount of evidence from WoD and Legion beta that proves that even with constructive, polite and reasonable feedback you will still get completely ignored. No "intelligent, coherent and civilized conversation" ever happened.
As I said in my previous post, it should be no surprise that if you go under radio silence for months and ignore every type of feedback, even the most constructive part of the community will eventually turn negative and rage-y.

I don't really understand how a WoW player could ever be on Blizzard side on this. THEY couldn't manage "cynycally negative feedback" and never bothered to ban/punish overly agressive posters, THEY choose to start cutting communication more and more every expansion, THEY chose radio silence on every choice they made, rather explaining the community their reasons, and THEY singlehandely decide the community is happy because their stupid time/played metric is going good.

Also, I would expect a company like Blizzard to be able to handle it's community. LoL and DoTA have a far more bigger and way more toxic community, yet on their US forums, Twitter and Reddit you see developers constantly responding to feedback. With Blizzard general attitude in many aspect of the game, you can't really blame the community for running wild with the "small indie company" meme.

I'm on their side on this topic because I've seen what the CM was talking about first hand and its ridiculous.

Just because they aren't arguing with you in your "genius" thread, doesn't mean they didn't read it, doesn't mean they didn't consider it, and it doesn't mean they didn't record the data in some manner. I mean, every week when some guy posts a thread about how he wants the tinker class, or thinks we should have orc paladins or something... does blizzard really need to copy+paste the exact response they made to it last time? Either way, blizzard loses. If they copy and paste someone will be upset. If they read it and choose not to make a tinker class, someone is pissed because they are being ignored. Its just a bunch of whiny people stomping their feet when they don't get what they want.

[Gigabear]

False, someone who is being irate "feelings causing great anger" need to step out and deal with their emotions before trying to address any issues. If you're irate, you are a danger to yourself and others, and clearly aren't thinking very clearly.

This is a prime example of what the poster you quoted was trying to explain. The poster can't simply "deal with their emotions" and return as if nothing happened because the issue they are up in arms about is the cause of those emotions in the first place. The CS rep needs to understand where the frustration is coming from and see if they can resolve it. When the situation itself is the cause of those emotions, only by changing the situation can the emotions be dealt with.

If you dismiss people who are "cynically negative" because you made them that way, then nothing is ever going to get fixed.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

The poster I quoted did not act untoward in any way and was still treated like shit by Blizzard. His story is fairly typical of what I've seen from others and my own experience with Blizz CS as well.

My first reply in this string was honest and fully deserved by Blizz. Sorry but when you sugar-coat things you aren't getting at the real issues.

How do we know that? Have we seen any of the transaction? Shit, if we just want to go by unbacked anecdotes, I could give you all mine.

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You can't bring outlaw rogues anywhere. Trash spec. While you can bring sub or assassination rogues their pirate spec is so poorly designed. That and melee hunters are garbage.

edit: a word

How constructive and helpful. I'm sure blizzard will rush right in to take this to the drawing board.

[Wildberry]

Same thing with WotLK - during the expac itself, everyone was shouting at the top of their voice how it was "lazy and easy, dumbed down, incomplete" yadda yadda... and then several years on you keep seeing WotLK at the tops of a lot of "best expac" lists.

"The WoW community is 1 person."

[Strakha]

the community has always been terrible, but now the CMs are terrible too. if you dont want to do your job just quit.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

This is a prime example of what the poster you quoted was trying to explain. The poster can't simply "deal with their emotions" and return as if nothing happened because the issue they are up in arms about is the cause of those emotions in the first place. The CS rep needs to understand where the frustration is coming from and see if they can resolve it. When the situation itself is the cause of those emotions, only by changing the situation can the emotions be dealt with.

If you dismiss people who are "cynically negative" because you made them that way, then nothing is ever going to get fixed.

Controlling your emotions is part of being an adult. If you don't you;re just being childish. Why exactly should that be taken seriously? If you're upset about your mcdonalds order being messed up, ask to have it fixed. Don't throw the burger in someones face.

The community isn't doing itself by raging, cursing, etc. That isn't feedback. Its not constructive. Its just non-sense.

[Gigabear]

If you're upset about your mcdonalds order being messed up, ask to have it fixed. Don't throw the burger in someones face.

I love these sorts of analogies, but this one is a bit flawed. It's more like telling them you want no pickles 3 times and taking it back THREE TIMES, and then they take off the pickles, onions, kethcup, mustard and even the darn patty and hand it back to you telling you this is exactly what you asked for. Oh, and it's not changing no matter what. And if you continue complaining, they're going to ban you from the restaurant.

[Caolela]

How do we know that? Have we seen any of the transaction? Shit, if we just want to go by unbacked anecdotes, I could give you all mine.

OFC we don't "know" for certain, but as I said, his story is fairly typical of what I've seen from others and my own experience with Blizz CS as well.

[Grimnakh]

I love these sorts of analogies, but this one is a bit flawed. It's more like telling them you want no pickles 3 times and taking it back THREE TIMES, and then they take off the pickles, onions, kethcup, mustard and even the darn patty and hand it back to you telling you this is exactly what you asked for. Oh, and it's not changing no matter what. And if you continue complaining, they're going to ban you from the restaurant.

No its more like you come into the restaurant and demand they offer the orange chicked nuggets again like they did a year ago and if they dont begin offering the discontinued product again you stand in their lobby talking to everyone about how crappy the manager is and how much better burger king is and how they offer both teriaki and orange chicken nuggets so clearly burger king cares about thier customers and mcdonalds doesnt.

I agree they need to work harder on identifying posters that are serially toxic and removing them for longer periods of time, thats the only way those forums will improve, but they probably dont have the budget to actually sort that out without an exploitable algorithm. They arent perfect thats for sure but Ive been a fan of thier design decisions a lot since WoD so in a biased way I suppose I think they do have a reasonable way to figure out whats good for the game despite forum noise that seems to constantly miss the mark.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

I love these sorts of analogies, but this one is a bit flawed. It's more like telling them you want no pickles 3 times and taking it back THREE TIMES, and then they take off the pickles, onions, kethcup, mustard and even the darn patty and hand it back to you telling you this is exactly what you asked for. Oh, and it's not changing no matter what. And if you continue complaining, they're going to ban you from the restaurant.

Nice logic but most people will not share this opinion. However I stand with this view of how Blizzard treats it community as of late ESPECIALLY with Overwatch.

[Vynny]

No, I'm blaming the customers for throwing their shit, cursing, demanding people be fired. Its fine if your burger wasn't made correctly and you bring it to the front and show them and ask for a remake. Its not fine to call the workers "fucking stupid people who should be fired," yelling, screaming, etc... which ironically has been going on in this thread. The latter is the type of person that CM was talking about. Nothing in his post said constructive criticisms are bad. Nothing.

But the type of person the post was about IS bad/non-constructive. People in this very thread are cursing, name calling, and demanding people be fired. Thats cynically negative. And you'd have to be a special type of person with zero self-awareness to pretend like thats actuall constructive. Its not moving goalposts, its literally pointing out to you the type of person he said he will avoid.

Physical violence isn't the only reason people are thrown out of stores. Words/tone/temperament are just as likely to get your thrown out, because its unnecessary and abusive. My comparison works. When I was a store manager I literally threw people out of the store for being racist, cursing at guests or workers, throwing things, yelling... and none of it was because I was afraid of physical violence.

The community as a whole is the problem. Its a vicious circle where they think its okay to abuse people, demand they are fired, and they become even more cynical and negative. Then they post in threads like these acting self-righteous and correct, when they are part of the problem.

I'll never say Blizzard is perfect. I've criticized them on these boards plenty. I've been playing since 2005, so I have plenty to criticize them for. But the community is disgusting, and embarrassing and often doesn't deserve to have their threads considered.

First, words on a screen are not the same as someone shouting those same words at you in real life . . . get a grip.

Second, I said that they need to engage with cynically negative people in order to distill something constructive from it. If you know english then you know that if you have to distill something out of something else then it is not already that thing. Meaning, if they have to distill it to get something constructive then it is not initially constructive to begin with.

Third, how is throwing things not physical violence? Also again, words on a screen are not anywhere near the same as someone shouting those same words at you in person.

Lastly, yes the community is a problem, perhaps we should ask why the community seems so poorly managed and start expecting better results from the community management team . . . oh wait, you think that managing the community isn't actually their job so why would you ever expect better performance in community management from the community management team?

[Grimnakh]

First, words on a screen are not the same as someone shouting those same words at you in real life . . . get a grip.

Second, I said that they need to engage with cynically negative people in order to distill something constructive from it. If you know english then you know that if you have to distill something out of something else then it is not already that thing. Meaning, if they have to distill it to get something constructive then it is not initially constructive to begin with.

Third, how is throwing things not physical violence? Also again, words on a screen are not anywhere near the same as someone shouting those same words at you in person.

Lastly, yes the community is a problem, perhaps we should ask why the community seems so poorly managed and start expecting better results from the community management team . . . oh wait, you think that managing the community isn't actually their job so why would you ever expect better performance in community management from the community management team?

My analogy was 1000000% more accurate than the one I rebutted, its not the exact same thing because.. its an analogy..

I didnt say managing the community wasn’t thier responsibility, I have a lot of criticisms on that. But when your mismanagement has wound up summoning a Sha of salt it isnt time to take the Sha’s advice on how to design the game, its time to cleanse the forum of the Sha so that reasonable people can discuss design.

[Kul Tiras]

The WoW forums have communication?

Respectful threads disappearing forever cause they call out blizzard on all their bullshit and get massive support?

Questions about why threads disappear get you banned?

Questions about stealth nerfs disappear?

Pointless threads like "I like pie" get answers from "blues" and "greens" but insightful threads don't even get a blip until it puts too much pressure on blizz and they get closed down?

Ruled by a vocal minority mob of faggots who start criticizing people on their achievements and gear even though it has nothing to do with their posts? Who jerk each other off with left and right hands, mouth and anus, to enforce their feeling of being someone in life by shutting down constructive threads?

Cynically negative? You goddamn right you useless mod faggots, you made us this way.

[Realitytrembles]

Its that "customer is always right" bullshit mentality.

Nothing bullsht about it. If I give someone my money in anticipation of being satisfied with a product/service they are providing, and I am then unsatisfied, their butt is mine.

Unless, of course, they don't want my money anymore.

[Vynny]

My analogy was 1000000% more accurate than the one I rebutted, its not the exact same thing because.. its an analogy..

I didnt say managing the community wasn’t thier responsibility, I have a lot of criticisms on that. But when your mismanagement has wound up summoning a Sha of salt it isnt time to take the Sha’s advice on how to design the game, its time to cleanse the forum of the Sha so that reasonable people can discuss design.

I didn't say to just do what they day, but to engage and try to distill something constructive from it.

Take the legion pathfinder for example. A lot of people were mad that we finally got flying and then Argus came out. A lot of those people who were mad did not put forth very constructive criticism. You could decide to not engage with them which intensifies the salt because they as paying customers who are entitled to service are outright being ignored, or you could engage with them, figure out what about the situation upsets them, they continue being salty because it can't really be fixed, but then the devs can do a better job next time around by maybe having pathfinder part 1 allow flying in the leveling zones, and part 2 allows flying in whatever zone they add in (hypothetically speaking). Also, as this happens more and more, that negative portion of the community that is currently constantly complaining about the devs ignoring them will stop feeling that way and be much more satisfied customers.

Or the CM's can just act like standoffish pricks by publicly complaining about how they don't see any reason to do certain less fun aspects of their job such as directly dealing with salty customers. Seriously, imagine if you were a customer in a store and a sales associate was openly complaining about how customers are too picky and stingy regardless of if that's true or not which it certainly could be true.

[Wilfire]

Ornyx: cynically negative community is the cause of communication breakdown
Community: cynically negative blues and mvps are the cause of communication breakdown

Just leave it. Neither side will concede.