I mean, there must be something stuck up there right? Dude, I will take the full ban but someone needs to say it; you need to step back and calm the hell down!

I have not made one hostile post in years! Every single one in fact has been either helpful, or at worst a bit of a tongue in cheek comment about the whatever-the-current situation is and what do you do practically every time? Spew out word documents of drivvel, accusing me of having a hidden agenda (I really don't), without actually mentioning your intended target but all the time using words from the intended targets post... makes you seem like a school child John, and you know what? I'm not the only person you are reacting like this to recently. I have seen you do it time and time again to people, and some of them are quite new and actually deserve a chance to make a few honest wrong comments!

I personally think you need to take a break from the forums, let Ray cover bugs, close suggestions and go on holiday or something, because if you keep this up it wont be just me that fucks right off. I get it, you do not like me, and I do not blame you. I try hard not to be liked so at least I do something well. But you are sounding more and more like the spoiled brat every day. We GET it, it is YOUR ball, and YOU want to score or YOU are going home and taking YOUR ball with you.

Well mate it is OUR community, and OUR free time and money. Sure, Guild are doing ok and don't need the latter, and you may even think you do not need to former and that is great! In that case why are you here?

Yeah, don't bother answering. I'm Out.

Find that swarm and remove it from your ass before others follow suit.

Ban

XD

I'm sorry incarnate but i agree with yoda a bit , most of the players in suggestion forums are getting treated like trash.

This needs to stop. This just raises more problems, pisses off the community, even while all we want is balance in the game and improvements, so VO can become to be a better place for everyone.

But treating ppl like trash because we have ideas is very bad for the game, and ruins the community.

Most of us have been here for years, killing weeks in it. But only implementing suggestions of few individuals and ignoring 10+ players with a fresh mind and rejecting all their suggestions makes things look very biased. People made suggestions including myself to improve something, and not to break it.
Capgauss buff and PCB changes are a good example.
Also the fact I was muted on a thread because I wanted to suggest how to fix something. Ignoring what I suggested and treating something as a bug what clearly isnt made me lose all my motivation to the game.
We tried to explain to you what is the problem with turrets shooting forward. But instead of thinking twice ranted at us, stating its a bug and locking the thread. Its very bad to yell at ppl who want to help the game. So... This have to stop. Or very bad times coming for VO.

Usually devs are supposed to be helping and friendly. Who want more people to play their game. In VO the oppisite is happening

Dont take this as anything personal. We love you and your game, but THIS NEEDS TO STOP!

My honest opinion and feelings about VO

I think incarnate has long ago made the calculation that publicly slamming people is an acceptable cost of doing business in light of all the other inhuman amounts of work he’s undertaken. What’s the loss of a person here or there in the grand scheme of things? We can all choose to play or not play under these conditions.

This is counterproductive.

I debated as to what to do with this thread, and whether to reply.

First, the fact that the thread has such an unnecessarily rude title says a lot about the lack of basic common courtesy (yes, directly addressing yoda's choices here). It's hard to respect the author and the message with an opening like that. Some users are quite entitled and rude (honestly not targeting any particular person with this statement) on a regular basis, which makes it challenging at times to respond perfectly - we're all human. Just yesterday I took a moment away from lunch to answer somebody's user interface question in-game, and he proceeded to be rude and abusive. He thought I was an employee and I guess that made it okay somehow in his mind (he knows who he is - might not read the forums anyway).

"But only implementing suggestions of few individuals and ignoring 10+ players with a fresh mind and rejecting all their suggestions makes things look very biased."

This assumes that it is true that Incarnate favors individuals and will implement their suggestions. After observing Incarnate for over 19 years, I can tell you that this is false. I believe I have been around longer and have earned more trust than most players, but if I have an idea that does not align with his vision - he will say so in no uncertain terms and it will not be implemented. People need to let go of the belief that any particular player, guild, or play style is favored. It isn't. Piracy, trading, mining, and so on are viable play styles that the devs created and attempt to keep in some sort of balance today - with an eye on how they will change and balance in the future. The devs and guides support the guild interface, but pretty much try to stay out of their business other than that. There are no favorites.

I think everyone needs to assess how they interact and adjust accordingly. The Suggestion forum exists for the purpose of sharing and discussing ideas. There is no guarantee that suggestions made here will be enacted or even responded to. There is a link at the top of the Suggestions forum that has tips for how to use it. It would be so much more constructive if people made more effort to express themselves politely and clearly, and to listen to the responses. I am often left wondering how people manage to negotiate in their daily lives when they bury their communication in hyperbole, rudeness, assumptions and bias. Clean communication is a top-level skill that can benefit us in every aspect of life.

Dude, I will take the full ban but someone needs to say it

Okay, that statement itself raises the question: ban you from what, exactly? From Suggestions?

People throw this stuff at me a lot "you're just going to ban me anyway!@#". You do realize we've perma-banned exactly one veteran player in 20 years, right? And that was after I spent two unpleasant years privately trying to get the guy to change his behaviour?

I mean, that doesn't really align to the narrative of the crazed school-child you're trying to advocate.

Spew out word documents of drivvel, accusing me of having a hidden agenda (I really don't), without actually mentioning your intended target but all the time using words from the intended targets post...

I'm not aware of any "hidden agenda" that I.. suspect you of having? I honestly don't know what you mean.

I've always responded to people's text, without mentioning the individual.. half the time I'm talking to a bunch of different people (like, in this very response). If anything, I'm generally trying to respond to the discussion, more than the personalities.

I get it, you do not like me, and I do not blame you.

Actually, I don't dislike you at all; I was happy to see you came back.

You do have a long history of taking our (direct) forum interactions extremely personally, and rage-quitting over relatively minor technical discussions, and then deleting all your threads and leaving for six months.

But, I do definitely have an expectation of veteran players to take the time to read what I'm writing, and to pay attention to it. Particularly if a thread is on Bugs.

I've written before, at some length, about the "signal to noise ratio" problem, basically that if any given thread gets so clogged up with discussion and opinions, it makes it more difficult for us to know what's going on. So, that kind of thing is not allowed on Bugs.

There's no forum more specifically focused than Bugs, and it only is that way because I've locked a lot of threads and deleted a lot of posts.

Well mate it is OUR community, and OUR free time and money.

There's a level of discipline that's expected of participation on Suggestions and Bugs, that are completely different from the other forums. The rest of the forums might be "Your" community (at least to an extent), but these two are definitely not.

These two represent my time, and if myself or another moderator steps in to say "the conversation needs to move in this way", people need to pay attention, and do that. Case in point:

Also the fact I was muted on a thread because I wanted to suggest how to fix something.

You literally responded to a post, where I said I wasn't interested in suggestions on how to "fix" the issue, with content about how you wanted to "fix" the issue.

Now you're posting on here, trying to claim that what you did was correct. You clearly don't understand how the Suggestions Forum works. We use "thread mutes" to clarify that, so you won't make the mistake again.

Use of Suggestions is a Privilege, Not a Right.. that's not a new statement, you can find threads I wrote about this years and years ago. I definitely read and take input from others, but people absolutely must be willing to also listen to me.

If you find my content and contributions to be "word documents of drivel", then Suggestions is probably not a good fit for you.

You're here, talking about the future of the game, with the game's sole designer. If you aren't willing to read what he has to say, you're completely failing to understand the point of the forum.

Vendetta Online is not made by democracy. Yoda wants to blast me for being some kind of "spoiled brat", but.. just a couple of posts later, is the expectation that if 10 people agree on something, I'm apparently "supposed" to implement it. Which basically means that some people don't understand the basic underlying point of this forum:

I am going to implement whatever I think is best, because VO is defined by my personal vision, and always has been; but I'm willing to listen to what you have to say. I might agree with it, or I might not, and you can take that or leave it.

I've always been honest about that, since the earliest days of this forum, but some people seem to forget.

I think incarnate has long ago made the calculation that publicly slamming people is an acceptable cost of doing business in light of all the other inhuman amounts of work he’s undertaken.

That isn't really true, but I understand why it might seem that way. What I do have is a situation where, if there's some kind of major issue at stake (like, say, a problem about Turrets that I didn't know existed), it may become a priority for me to find out what's going on, as quickly as possible (in this case, to meet a release deadline, before we announced the feature in a Newsletter).

Anyone who has participated in the forums, and on Suggestions, knows how easily threads go off the rails here, whether it's varied opinions, or people aligning to particular "factions" or whatever else. If I'm really trying to drill into the nature of a problem and get actionable information from people, I'm going to start wielding the administrative hammer with little restraint, because I need people to actively pay attention to what I'm saying.

To some it might seem trivial to express a one or two sentence "opinion" at the end of a post largely built around data. But the whole point of why I will say something like "stop giving me opinions on how to fix things" is expressly because the next people will then use that to drag the thread further off, and then it'll page-wrap and then I'm back to having pages of useless rambling.. when I'm objectively trying to resolve a gameplay issue.

So again, I will definitely slam people in particular situations. I have a very low tolerance for hypocrisy, for instance. Or people not-reading what I just wrote. But, those are not new. And the latter is definitely in the service of productivity, because we've had a lot of bananas threads that were really pretty pointless from a pragmatic standpoint (and used up a ton of my time, for no added value).

I mean, there must be something stuck up there right?

I am absolutely extremely stressed-out, burned-out and drained.

To (try) to be extremely brief, the level of hostility I experience on a daily basis is very different from what it was five years ago (or certainly any time before then). It's been slowly escalating over the last few years.

I don't mean VO forum threads, and I don't mean "random grumpy internet newbies". I mean focused and directed hatred from a variety of different, disconnected, long-time players, via email, tickets, store reviews, facebook posts, comments on whatever rare press coverage we can get, etc.

I don't want to go off into the weeds on another topic, so I'll stop there, but I will comment that the backdrop of community-interaction that I deal with is very different than what it was for the first ~15 or so years. It also isn't something I can "ignore", because it impacts everything we would want to do from a marketing or outreach standpoint.

I personally think you need to take a break from the forums, let Ray cover bugs, close suggestions and go on holiday or something, because if you keep this up it wont be just me that fucks right off.

Starting this thread is like the most dick-ish possible way to tell someone to take a vacation. Not everyone has that luxury. What I "do" is not just "Suggestions". I've been trying to take time off for the last 2 months, to try and appreciate our all-too-brief summer; but it's been a non-stop set of "explosions and fires", and that just is what it is.

If I let a situation like the economy exploits keep-going (because I "go on vacation"), do you know how much worse that gets for us? How much longer and more painful the cleanup is? The player-anger and recriminations? Do you know how many tickets I've gotten, in the last month, from people yelling at me, over and over, to return their ill-gotten credits?

Should I "go on vacation" and create a force-multiplier of that problem?

In Closing

- I definitely get really frustrated if people don't read what I write, ignore it, and continue to do whatever they want (and particularly in Suggestions and Bugs). Guess what, you don't get to "TL; DR" the game's designer on the game-design forum.

- I actually thought that Yoda and Greenie's contributions to the Bugs thread were not "bad", but they were not in keeping with it having become a Bugs thread. I didn't think there was any bad intention, but Yoda clearly ignored what I wrote. The thread had lost value to me, and threads on Bugs only exist if they have value to the developers. There is no "Bugs Community". We're militant like that, because it's necessary to keep the Bugs threads actually useful, otherwise they become a trainwreck like everywhere else.

I mean, look at the Bugs Forum, there are three locked player-threads on page-1. Suggestions has zero (until this one, most likely). This seems to be more about "Yoda is butthurt" than me behaving unusually in regards to a Bugs thread.

- I'm definitely stressed out, but I did my level-f***ing-best to produce workarounds to some of the reported issues as quickly as possible, which is evident from what we shipped today. We were up until 4:30am trying to ship a release, which didn't end up being possible until this afternoon. Now I'm burning more of my weekend, responding to.. whatever this is.

- People have the wrong expectations. Yoda's fundamental point is that if I keep getting irritated at players, then players won't be around. My fundamental response is that.. I agree: if people aren't willing to read my "drivel" and adjust their activity, then yes, either I'll stop reading Suggestions, or there will be a reduction in access.

I try to be pretty diplomatic, the majority of the time. I've been forced to say "this is my game and I'm going to change it how I see fit" a number of times in the last week, because people have been really quick to assume "bias", or that I should be doing things on some majority-basis, which is not how this has ever worked. But I wasn't mean about it, I just clarified the way things are, and that I'm actively trying to listen.

I don't particularly like having to be blunt about how things are, I'm not trying to push people away from making Suggestions. But people need to start from a place of basic understanding of what we're doing here. I am NOT here to do "what you want". I'm here to do what I think is best for the future of Vendetta Online as a whole.

Henry Ford famously said that if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said "faster horses". And I get a lot of "faster horse" type Suggestions. But I really do try to listen, and integrate people's thinking, and respond quickly as a dev-studio. Which, we've proven time and time again.

- Maybe, if the lead developer seems stressed out, this isn't the most productive way to approach that? Because, I definitely could use less of "this" in my life. I actually don't hate Yoda at all, as I said before, and I generally find his contributions to be worthwhile. But, if I have to lose him (or others) to have a reasonable Suggestions forum where people read my comments, that's probably net-positive for the community?