PoE Forums Are Broken – How to Fix Toxicity & Engagement

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

Uh, I made the opposite experience. When I went toxic mode 1-2 times, the people on the other side just got more toxic. And that went on until the topic derailed and no one participated anymore. And that was the moment the thread went into oblivion.

Yup, thats exactly how it happens.

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

Toxicity never helps the game in the end. You may have "won" the argument when you were the last to answer, but you lost the war - that is, to make this game better. That's why we bought EA, isn't it? That's why we invested money and time. We wanted to be part of this new game that has the potential to be the best ARPG that has ever existed. While it still has many flaws, it's still in EA and many changes will happen. The best way we can participate while its in EA is to give good constructive feedback and make suggestion on how to make the game better.

But trading toxicity between players? I doubt that this will help.

Unfortunately war of making game better is irrelevant, GGG won't react to any feedback, even detailed down to code snippets for them. Unless really large amount of pissed players pile in 1 thread, like it happened with multithreading crash.

And white knights do good job of not allowing that to happen. Even if all you ever speak about is adding more options, not irreversibly changing core game to your tastes, someone is going to personally attack you until you are discouraged from talking further. Usually with kinda absurd logic of "you just want this because you cannot complete X in the game".

Result is feedback being splintered in dozens to hundreds of small threads over time, so GGG may safely ignore it even if those threads combined yield same result of 500+ pages of pissed players as recent crash topic.

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

Unfortunately war of making game better is irrelevant, GGG won't react to any feedback, even detailed down to code snippets for them. Unless really large amount of pissed players pile in 1 thread, like it happened with multithreading crash.

And white knights do good job of not allowing that to happen. Even if all you ever speak about is adding more options, not irreversibly changing core game to your tastes, someone is going to personally attack you until you are discouraged from talking further. Usually with kinda absurd logic of "you just want this because you cannot complete X in the game".

Result is feedback being splintered in dozens to hundreds of small threads over time, so GGG may safely ignore it even if those threads combined yield same result of 500+ pages of pissed players as recent crash topic.

I want to be clear here:

Toxicity and Whiteknighting are two sides of the same coin. Both are equally bad. While toxicity is rude, aggressive and degrading, whiteknighting is (like the term "knight" suggests) elitist and doesn't allow any kind of criticism at all. Funnily enough, whiteknighting most often ends in toxicity as well and in the end it's a personal shitstorm between two fractions, but no one will gain anything out of that.

About GGGs participation here:

I don't expect GGG to answer topics here. What I do expect however is, that their forum staff is reading along the lines here and take things to heart. That's the only thing important for me. If they would entirely ignore this forum, I'd rather want them to remove this feedback section entirely.

Pinned thread: Auction house discussion
Pinned thread: XP on death discussion
Pinned thread: Portals discussion

etc etc

Even

Pinned thread: vent here

The format of these forums was outdated in 2012... I'm sure the mods do notice some of the stuff that gets persistent bumping (e.g ui giga feedback), but yeah this place isn't in a great state if we're honest.

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

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Uh, I made the opposite experience. When I went toxic mode 1-2 times, the people on the other side just got more toxic. And that went on until the topic derailed and no one participated anymore. And that was the moment the thread went into oblivion.
....

That's the reason why toxicity is employed.
Those who use it, know that eventually it leads to the conversation getting derailed / deflected and ultimately it ends the discussion.

And then later on when someone else might want to discuss this again, the trolls leap on and try to shut that down with more toxicity of the "we've already resolved this" kind. Whereas the reality is that you cannot resolve someone else's opinions and preferences for them without invalidating their right to have these opinions and preferences.

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cid951#3156 wrote:

Pinned thread: Auction house discussion
Pinned thread: XP on death discussion
Pinned thread: Portals discussion

etc etc

Even

Pinned thread: vent here

The format of these forums was outdated in 2012... I'm sure the mods do notice some of the stuff that gets persistent bumping (e.g ui giga feedback), but yeah this place isn't in a great state if we're honest.

+1, but if left unchecked, all pinned threads will dissolve into "vent here", so it will only work if GGG periodically locks threads and recreate each anew. They actually used pinned threads long time ago in poe1 feedback, but without latter part, so just locked and I assume deleted those threads eventually.

But since poe2 temporarily shares forum with poe1, search function shows critical points gathering most negative feedback are mostly shared between poe1 and poe2. Skill balance, visual clarity, death log, trade, UI, exp penalty, nerfs performed right on top of hardworking players, rampant bots and RMT.

In my experience such amount of feedback correlation on any single issue would be enough for any other company to come up with solutions without completely removing original play mode if it is so dear to some manager's heart. GGG ignores most of it, no wonder so many people go toxic.

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

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Gang5ter15#1071 wrote:

People mostly stop answering. If you call out their nonsense. They have nothing more to say. They dont have arguments in the first place.
If someone is Toxic and basically has only insults to tell, then you have two options. Call the person out or ignore it. You cant argue with someone who didnt make any arguments.

Uh, I made the opposite experience. When I went toxic mode 1-2 times, the people on the other side just got more toxic. And that went on until the topic derailed and no one participated anymore. And that was the moment the thread went into oblivion.

Toxicity never helps the game in the end. You may have "won" the argument when you were the last to answer, but you lost the war - that is, to make this game better. That's why we bought EA, isn't it? That's why we invested money and time. We wanted to be part of this new game that has the potential to be the best ARPG that has ever existed. While it still has many flaws, it's still in EA and many changes will happen. The best way we can participate while its in EA is to give good constructive feedback and make suggestion on how to make the game better.

But trading toxicity between players? I doubt that this will help.

Depends if i go full toxic with insults sure then it derails pretty quick. But if you stay reasonable call out they are not even arguing and should stay constructive and they simply only use Straw Mans or Ad Hominem or any other bogus argument, then they have no reason to answer honestly. Unless they go full crazy. Which does happen. I did have that once or twice with some people going full crazy. Especially on Discord had one guy literally just went on spamming gifs for 10 Minutes straight. He went a little insane.

It would help alot if GGG puts up some disclaimer they noticed the Feedback about certain stuff. And put up some rules. That the Feedback in this Forum should be Constructive instead of simple complains that dont help anyone. As i said before. Its often the loudest people that get the most attention its not only the case in feedback like this, but also in things like politics thats why populism works so well. Thats off topic tho.

So lets say 65% of the people are fine with EXP penalty and 35 are not. But the 35 make several post in this Forum each day. While the 65% do not post they are fine with it. From an outside perspective you get the feeling the community does not like the penalty. Even tho its the opposite.
But then you have to consider that there are many people who dont mind both. If its there or not.

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EffKayZA#1861 wrote:

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

....
Uh, I made the opposite experience. When I went toxic mode 1-2 times, the people on the other side just got more toxic. And that went on until the topic derailed and no one participated anymore. And that was the moment the thread went into oblivion.
....

That's the reason why toxicity is employed.
Those who use it, know that eventually it leads to the conversation getting derailed / deflected and ultimately it ends the discussion.

And then later on when someone else might want to discuss this again, the trolls leap on and try to shut that down with more toxicity of the "we've already resolved this" kind. Whereas the reality is that you cannot resolve someone else's opinions and preferences for them without invalidating their right to have these opinions and preferences.

That is a good point. Thats why its fairly important to not derail the discussion. One way is legit calling out they are not arguing right now. And only using insults. Or any other bogus argument like straw man. In english its mostly called informal fallacy. German has a way better name for that "Scheinargument".

pls delete

Coming here is like a trip to the zoo when you go to the monkey enclosure and the monkeys are running around screeching and flinging their shit at at wall. No amount of stickied threads or forum format changes are going to change that, this place stopped being a place to gather any sort of worthwhile feedback a long time ago. The forums could close tomorrow and it wouldn't matter in the slightest.

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Randall#0850 wrote:

Coming here is like a trip to the zoo when you go to the monkey enclosure and the monkeys are running around screeching and flinging their shit at at wall. No amount of stickied threads or forum format changes are going to change that, this place stopped being a place to gather any sort of worthwhile feedback a long time ago. The forums could close tomorrow and it wouldn't matter in the slightest.

To be honest? Yeah, it feels exactly like that right now. Though I would say it could still work with enough moderation.

GGG put some of the most toxic guys on probation and I don't see them posting here anymore. Shows, that punishment can work. Because right now, these people abuse the anonymity and think they can get away with everything they do here. They are entitled and this feeling of superiority lets them be toxic. And as soon as they face some harsh consequences (like probation), they stop posting. GGG should do this WAY faster. On top of that, we definitely need sticky threads for the most common topics like exp loss, 1-portal, warrior issues etc. This would make the forum way more clean and maybe give us back the potential to be a useful section in this forum.

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

In my experience such amount of feedback correlation on any single issue would be enough for any other company to come up with solutions without completely removing original play mode if it is so dear to some manager's heart. GGG ignores most of it, no wonder so many people go toxic.

yeh some ppl wont take no for an answer- and all the companies and probably their parents that caved prior are to blame, cuz it thought these individuals that if they keep it up eventually it will work and they will get what they want.

mhm, some ppl wont realize world is never "yes or no" and "black and white". If large chunk of your customers requests a specific feature, would you keep refusing for 10 years just out of personal pride for your Vision? I mean you would, that much is clear, but there is always a way to solve by adding more options and let players customize their experience, it is not a novel approach.

Imagine ordering coffee with milk and hearing "nope, we have standards here, how dare you. Take what we have, pay and behave". How many customers would remain in such fine establishment?

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Coming here is like a trip to the zoo when you go to the monkey enclosure and the monkeys are running around screeching and flinging their shit at at wall.

Side note: lol, guys, even being toxic can be performed with at least some style:) If I started calling people names even indirectly, modders would delete it instantly.