For fun?

This thread does bring back so many memories; Ah, KittyKrusader, you always knew how to make my weekday full of lulz.

The flame war that caused the S&I forum to be moved down here was bad enough that if the participants had been in the same room it would have been a physical fight.

Not kidding.

They banned the worst offenders and moved it to "For Fun!" to give the implication that any suggestion made here should not be taken too seriously, because it is, in fact, just a suggestion.

When it was in Development people were acting as though anything suggested in this forum was guaranteed to happen (who knows, maybe they really thought it was)

In "For Fun!" it is clear that these are PLAYER suggestions and they are not guaranteed to happen. Being in Development implied that the devs were getting personally involved in it.

Personally I can't wrap my brain aroud the mindset that would see things that way, but apparently a lot of people DID see it that way.

The way the devs seem to work with the section now is, they wait until a suggestion has been around a while. If it gathers popular support, won't be game-breaking, and withstands all the criticism thrown at it, they take a look at it to see if it's something they want to do. They DO read the section, they just don't post in it to avoid giving the impression that they support something that they may only be commenting on.

Actually most of the problems I saw were with the suggesters rather than the suggestees. As was said before a few people regarded their suggestions as inviolate. They also seemed to believe that only the devs themselves had the right to point out any potential flaws in the suggestion. Their response to criticism was to immediately rail against the person who said they didn't like the it followed by stating at the top of their virtual lungs that only devs were allowed to comment on idea. Then they would report all messages in the thread that were against their idea.

Jranger was particularly good at getting these types riled with his one word reply of "no".

Now as to why a person should quote a message that was posted immediately before their response. Suppose this post is the last one you read in this thread today. Tomorrow you want to see why the thread has gone on for another 10 pages so you click the little triangle. The first message you see says "Yeah, that pretty much sums it up as I remember." or maybe "You are a complete and udder nincompoop and I can't believe are capable of forming a sentence and breating at the same time without that miniscule clump of nerve tissue you call a brain being overtaxed." Do you remember what that reply is to? If not then you have to scroll back. And if you do remember the last post (and likely you would since my posts are awe inspiring as I'm sure you've realized) then do you assume that the reply was to me or to somebody five posts up who was talking about something else?

Ok done rambling... I think. Let me check...

Yep, done for now.

Well, that's something I can relate to! People tend to be all negative all the time. Constructive critisism seems to be perma-absent on sections like these.

If you don't like the idea, come with a better one, suggest changes or stick to the one post saying "Soz, I personally imho think this is a bad idea".

My reason for ever posting an idea is because I want ppl to help me fine-tune it, not to take credit for a fully tought out perfect idea. E.g. Here's something I thought of that could be really cool, HOW can we make it work. An idea might hit a dead end, but instead of pointing ot the problems with it, it's way more fun to work around the problems and see how far you can take the idea.

Sure, most ideas will fail miserably, but no ieas will be realized when ppl immediately bully any and all suggestions. I personally have a bunch of ideas I think would be really cool, but since the forum merger and the effects of it, I would never ever concider suggesting them on the forum. (Ok, short tip: Enemy AI & New enemies among others. Think Aliens parasites, 1.000's of clockwork gears style foes/stargate replicators, guerilla hit'n'run tactics and some other nifty features and high stress factors). Oh, well, guess noone will miss'em anyway.

To me it also seems people like the old-style game so much they're terrifyed it would change although people admittedly think it's too easy. Imho making it harder is not the same as making baddies with more hitpoints or more devastating attacks, or better regen or... Remember how you jumped the first time in frostfire when they actually followed you through the elevators? Maybe I should just get the latest Resident Evil, because I'm getting a bit off-topic now aren't I?

It's a weee difference between the examples you give and the "No, I don't like you're idea and I'm gonna tell you why *I* hate it and hate *you* for suggesting it".

Actually you've all given me an idea for a forum change (that's likely not gonna happen, huh). On these threads we should have a vote button and a red/green bar showing of how many /signed and /ohgodihateyouandyourideas. That way you wouldn't have to clog up the thread with No's and those that think the idea have (some minor raw, unharnessed, need-work) potential could discuss it. Hmm, yes, that would be cool!

The interesting thing is that criticism is in the eye of the beholder. Let's try the following. I'm going to make a suggestion that has shown up here before, show the typical responses, and comment on how the suggestors have responded.

Suggestion: I think we should be able to do a complete respec including changing your power sets. Say I play a stone tanker to level 20 and decide that it's just not for me. I think I should be able to respec it as an invuln tanker. I've already put a lot of time into the character so I don't want to just delete it and reroll.

Response 1: No. That idea would ruin the game.

Response 2: No because there is too much potential for abuse. There are many power sets that are weak in the beginning but overpowered in the end levels. Your example of stone tanker is one of these. A player could take advantage of this by playing another type of power set until they had worked their way past all the levels where a stone tank would struggle, and then respec into the stone. Or possibly even respec into fire in order to turn their damage absorbing tank into a damage dealing farming tank.

Response 3: I think this is a great idea. I just got MoG on my regen scrapper and it sucks. If I had known it was such a terrible power I would have rolled him as a SR instead.


I have seen people respond to comments that are exactly like the one above in multiple forms. Some will look at suggestion 1 and dismiss it (which they should because it contains no explanation). Then look at number 2 and respond "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I guess it does open some sets up to abuse."

I've also seen people react to such responses by calling numbers 1 and 2 trolls who only get fun out of shooting down others ideas. And then state that responder number 3 is the only reasonable comment in the thread because it points out another problem that the suggestion could help with.

So like I said. Criticism is in the eye of the beholder. And I have yet to see a suggestion thread where more than one or two people are trolling or being negative just to be negative. Most often the outcry of abuse comes simply because some people are only looking for positive responses. If you can find a suggestion thread, any suggestion thread, where people dogpiled on the poster and were overtly hostile I would like to see it.

I'll admit that some suggestions will get an overwhelming negative response to an idea but that's often because it's an idea that nobody likes, not just because people like being negative. The /duel suggestion is one of these as pretty much any open pvp variation. It doesn't mean the forum base is attacking the poster. It's just that open pvp tends to be about as popular as removing all attacks except brawl so that nobody can have a better powerset than anybody else.

Mandu and Memphis_Bill both have some good points.

Far more often than not, when you see a suggestion thread degenerate into a flame war, it is the original poster who initiated it, because they took ANY negative response to their idea as a personal attack.

Usually goes kinda like this:

OP: I have this idea (goes into what their idea is)

Response 1: I don't like that idea because: (explains why they don't like it)

Response 2: I think this is a bad idea: (explains why they think it's a bad idea)

OP: What?! That's the best idea ever! You are both idiots for not agreeing with me!
(continues with their rant against the 2 people who have responded, insulting them repeatedly)

And when one of the responders posts again to defend themself the flame war begins.

Very seldom do I see S&I flame wars begin any other way. So, next time you see a flame war in an S&I thread, scroll back to see who started slinging insults...I bet 9 times out of 10 it was the original poster who started it.