Maybe it's time we get one since the current VO forum layout is not working.

- if we post something in General that has some 'complaints' about gameplay or behavior of some players there, we get smacked because that is not the appropriate place to post stuff like that so you always suggest we move it to RP Forum.

- if we try to comment on something posted on Bugs forum that goes beyond just registering and describing a bug - we get smacked and asked to take it to RP Forum

- if we go into some heated arguments on Suggestions forum about some suggestion - we get smacked and asked to move it to RP forum

- if we post something that is not strict RP in the RP forum (as you often suggest we should do in other forums) , we get smacked for posting something that is not strict RP.

- if a RP forum thread, thanks to some heated arguments, devolves into a bitching thread - we get smacked and thread locked.

So, how about we consider a new 'Complaints' forum where, for instance I can say 'yoda you're a dik' and he can reply 'no u r'.

Is there any solution that we can do it in forums except in-game on ch 100?
Not sure if you ever check the ch 100 logs Inc but as someone said (and I put that in funny quotes) it have turned into a channel for 'general insults and stuff'.

If the things stay like they are, most of the posts will always end looking like this:

Knock knock

Why not just keep complaints private and on tickets? A complaints forums will just end up full of smak talk between players that cannot agree to differ? Also when Inc suggests "other forums", he means not this forum at all. Like take it to the SKV forums, or the TGFT forums.

-1

oh ffs

-1

-1 My observation is that most of the smacking seems to be for either something entirely inappropriate or excessively personal attacks. Finger pointing should be handled through support tickets when necessary imo.

And 99.999% of it looks like regurgitation of old grievances.

Yeah -1 myself.
I will just take it to the in-game channel for general insults and stuff.

@yoda

Why not just keep complaints private and on tickets?

Because some things would have never been addressed if we did not bring them into the open by publicly speaking about them.

Support tickets are great for many situations but not all of them since support tickets also serve as a way to hide some dirt under the rug without the playerbase knowing about them when they definitely should know about them.

Because some things would have never been addressed if we did not bring them into the open by publicly speaking about them.

Support tickets are great for many situations but not all of them since support tickets also serve as a way to hide some dirt under the rug without the playerbase knowing about them when they definitely should know about them.

I couldn't agree more with this. Sweeping dirt under the rug invites drama. Transparency and honesty are the antidote to drama.

So, your suggestion does have merit.

It's not healthy to keep feelings bottled up. People need a place to express themselves fully and without restraint. I don't agree with the notion that it necessarily spills into other forums where such rantings are not appropriate.

-1

The only things I advise to take to RP are in-character discussions of guilds and characters, fan fiction, and other RP stuff. It is not a place to complain about the game in general, discuss bugs, argue about suggestions, or for heated arguments that are not in-character or exceed the Rules of Conduct.

"'yoda you're a dik" has no place in the VO forums at all.

We've been gentle in enforcing the ROC, but I would not advocate opening a forum that encourages something that is specifically disallowed by the ROC. Inc could change the ROC if he sees fit, but its clear that the personal attacks spill into all the other forums.

-1

but its clear that the personal attacks spill into all the other forums.

This only happen because threads get locked prematurely, leaving things unsaid. If you allowed those threads to come to their conclusion naturally, they wouldn't spill into the other forums.

The negativity shows up in other interactions in other threads regardless of locking. We have LOTS of experience with this. The things that are said that get the thread locked have no place in the VO forums, and the unsaid things are unlikely to have a place either. That's what people aren't getting: this is not a free speech zone where everyone gets to say what they want however they want. Personal attacks do not belong anywhere in the forums.

I completely agree with you Whistler.
RP forum should be RP only but if you read my initial post you can see that we were actually forced, or to put it mildly - 'nudged' by Incarnate to post some threads of public interest in RP forum.

Also I have to thank you for being very lenient with your rulings so far.
As I said before, support tickets are great for many situations but not all of them since support tickets also serve as a way to hide some dirt under the rug without the playerbase knowing about them when they definitely should know about them.

The question that remains is - can we say anything out loud and where?
Is the new GS policy to hide all unpleasant game and player related stuff under the rug through support tickets so it never reaches general public?

If it is, just say so. No free speech of any kind (not just inappropriate language and personal attacks), end of discussion.
We can accept it but we need to hear it being said.

This only happen because threads get locked prematurely, leaving things unsaid. If you allowed those threads to come to their conclusion naturally, they wouldn't spill into the other forums.

Actually, I'll go with restating what Fluffy said:

And 99.999% of it looks like regurgitation of old grievances.

There is no "natural conclusion". People don't eventually agree-to-disagree and then ride off into the sunset together. Things just spiral downwards, until people get so fed up they stop reading the forums or playing the game entirely.

It's not healthy to keep feelings bottled up. People need a place to express themselves fully and without restraint.

There are only a handful of you who really actively engage in this kind of thing. And usually that is regurgitation of something old, or blowing something new out of proportion. We're actually just fine with you being bottled up.

I couldn't agree more with this. Sweeping dirt under the rug invites drama. Transparency and honesty are the antidote to drama.

These things are often framed as means of "saving the community" or "rooting out evil", but it's ultimately grandstanding BS. Like people ask for a policy decision on a plugin, ok that's reasonable, then I make a policy decision, but then it keeps getting brought up 32498923 more times, because you didn't like the outcome, or want to "remind people" or something. Get over it, and move on.

If individuals are a real abusive problem, write a support ticket and we'll handle it. If someone is genuinely cheating or exploiting the game in some way, again, write a support ticket and we'll look into it.

There are already systems in place for dealing with the game's issues, your "discussions" just tend to create new issues, or exacerbate old ones. And give everyone a headache.

Boring.

-1

We're actually just fine with you being bottled up.

Got it, blissful ignorance is the key to happiness.
Thanks for your honest opinion and answer. If, by accident, I post something contrary to blissful ignorance policy in the future, fell free to ban me immediately.

The question that remains is - can we say anything out loud and where?
Is the new GS policy to hide all unpleasant game and player related stuff under the rug through support tickets so it never reaches general public?

If it is, just say so. No free speech of any kind (not just inappropriate language and personal attacks), end of discussion.
We can accept it but we need to hear it being said.

This forum has never been a place of "free speech". This is the private forum of a private company that makes a game with policies defined by one guy. That isn't very free or democratic.

There's nothing "new" about that, as Whistler says, we've just been gentle in the application of force.

Ultimately, the outcome of some bad new situation is up to whatever policy decision I make. And then, once I've made that decision, people can take the game or leave it. That's a kind of a harsh reality, but it's how.. any game like this works?

since support tickets also serve as a way to hide some dirt under the rug without the playerbase knowing about them when they definitely should know about them.

Generally speaking, if something happens through support tickets, I make a public policy statement in a newspost later, to say what behaviour is or is-not acceptable. That basically "skips to the important part", without all of the mudslinging and name-calling that goes from public discussions with a lot of excessive hyperbole. (The PK thing, for instance, would have been about 10000x better, if it had just been handled in support tickets and then a newspost statement).

I'm not against actual discussion of potential policies for new issues (which have not been addressed before), and these could be framed on Suggestions, but they have to be handled in a manner consistent with Suggestions.. which is professional, speaking to the topic at hand and not the individuals, avoiding hyperbole and zero personal attacks.

And then, once a policy decision is made on a new subject.. then get over it, one way or the other, and move forward.

BJs, is anything stopping you (or anyone else) from posting any support tickets submitted (and any response thereto) in Off Topic? Boom - transparency achieved.

If that were done real-time with the initial report, that wouldn't really be any better than creating intentional discussion threads. A lot of tickets are just as hyperbolic (or moreso) than the forum threads causing the issues.

Like, in the world of security vulnerabilities, there's usually a period of responsible disclosure where the given vendor has time to fix the issue and release a statement, prior to people going public. In that world, the period is usually somewhere around 60 days, but with serious vulnerabilities can be more like 6 months.

If you're just posting ticket contents that are essentially "closed", after a couple of weeks, that's probably ok? (although I'll feel a bit badly if people beat up on Curt for naive responses, he's doing his best, but still learning how to handle some situations). But, in the case of some cheat-reporting situations, it can take longer than a couple of weeks for us to even figure out how widespread a given problem is or has-been (like the PKs, for instance). Especially if we're juggling it against major outages or other concurrent problems.

But, basically, if you give us a reasonable window of time to research an issue and make a policy decision and newspost, there probably won't be much value to posting the ticket contents anyway? And I'm not sure that any of that would fulfill BJs's desire for immediate and maximum public discussion.

Transparency doesn't really require discussion, and such threads should be (knock on wood) rare (even if tickets themselves are not). Perhaps a de facto mod policy of allowing the OP to quote their ticket as an FYI and quote responses, but disallowing any other posts or commentary in the thread? Probably more effort than it's worth, though.

In other news, this thread was completely worth it just to have Inc. also refer to Bojan as "BJs".

-1

lol.

Transparency doesn't really require discussion, and such threads should be (knock on wood) rare (even if tickets themselves are not). Perhaps a de facto mod policy of allowing the OP to quote their ticket as an FYI and quote responses, but disallowing any other posts in the thread? Probably more effort than it's worth, though.

Well, yeah, there's no user-accessible way of locking a thread right now.. I mean, what your describing is interesting, and possible, but without some development would definitely devolve into a discussion immediately (and even with auto-locking, any hyperbolic accusation would still spark a flame elsewhere).

And ultimately, it's really the timing issue that's the problem. Posting "XX person is an awful cheater", without our having any time to look into it, creates all sorts of consternation and people lining up to attack/defend the accused, and then has this fog-of-paranoia that persists for ages afterwards (years), regardless of whether it was even "real".

In reality, 99% of the situations reported to us end up having no merit at all, after we look at the logs. It's almost always someone misunderstanding or mis-interpreting something innocuous. We've had people be absolutely sure of something nefarious, only to find in the logs that actually the polar opposite was true, where the very people they blamed were clearly looking out for them and actually cared.

But ultimately it's really the timing challenge. If an OP would wait 30 days before posting a closed ticket, that might be ok. But posting concurrently with creating a ticket basically exacerbates the problem, and will take these 99% "non-problems" and turn them into "perceived problems" that echo around the community for years to come.

Also, while in theory this would only happen some tiny fraction of the time, the people looking for public grandstanding would seek this out the same way as they do with forum threads.

Basically, the only way this would work for me is with some reasonably lengthy delay after a ticket has been closed. Then that would probably be fine. But again, I don't think this would do anything to mitigate some people's desire to immediately shout any suspicions with the largest possible megaphone.

In other news, this thread was completely worth it just to have Inc. also refer to Bojan as "BJs".

(eyeroll), I just kept going with your acronym and didn't read anything into it.