New Forum Policy: No Hateful Posts

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On that topic, developers have feelings too. I care about the health of my team, and that includes their mental health. Some threads recently have honestly been incredibly hurtful and horrible to read. I have a thick skin, but I will not tolerate the forum causing my developers to feel upset about the reaction to the hard work they're putting in. They love constructive feedback on their work and really like hearing the good and bad points that you've seen in it.
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This is something forum users seem to forget in the anonymity of the internet. Although I didn't like D3, I felt sorry for Jay Wilson when the shitstorm came over him shortly after D3's release. The hating isn't that harsh here, but there were some (imo) pretty inappropriate comments around. Good move.

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Gixxerdude wrote:

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haplessG00N wrote:

Good. In game mutes also.

^^ This, I turn off my in-game chat 90% of the time now because the quality of people posting ingame has dropped significantly.. I used to always try to help people with questions but even just a minute or two of reading chat completely ruins the experience for me.

I 'in-my-own-way' can fully understand why the forum policies are being updated and I throw an appreciative nod to you caring about your co-workers/developers quality of life while on the job..

Global and trade 5055 aren't too bad. They're the unofficial official reddit channels, but as it is mostly full of redditors expect random sporadic moments of hostility and total offtopicness. You also won't get any real trading done more likely than not, but poe.xyz.is(yay shop indexers! so nice!) can really help with that.

This is a wise move, especially if it's affecting the development. I love GGG for its transparency and openness to community feedback but at the end of the day you are here to make a game not run a political establishment. I hope this change doesn't impact your broader reputation as "that one dev that actually listens" (I doubt it will).

Anyway I hope the team knows that there's a vast sea of PoE players who enjoy the game quietly on their own and don't feel the need to vocally point out their appreciation for it (I expect the proportion of players who quietly enjoy rather than quietly simmering with dislike is quite a bit larger). On behalf of those players thank you for your continuing awesome work that only seems to keep getting better.

There are only 3 words that can describe my feelings about this change...

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OverUsedChewToy wrote:

Anyway I hope the team knows that there's a vast sea of PoE players who enjoy the game quietly on their own and don't feel the need to vocally point out their appreciation for it (I expect the proportion of players who quietly enjoy rather than quietly simmering with dislike is quite a bit larger). On behalf of those players thank you for your continuing awesome work that only seems to keep getting better.

+1 :)

Yay! I love this change!

It's sad to hear that some of you are taking the vitriol to heart. I know this isn't a great excuse but please remember that this is the internet after all. I'm not saying this to make excuses for people, but just so that you guys don't take some of the negativity so personally. This sort of thing appears on ALL forums all over the internet no matter what it's about (I bet you'd still get 1% trolls spreading hate on forums about finding a cure for cancer). I personally 100% support this move and I hope you guys find some peace (of mind) because of it :)

Here's the thing - you can't stop the "trolls" or the "negative" threads and all that stuff. When you have unstoppable forces met with immovable objects - well - you get a really big catastrophe.

So maybe instead of squelching all of the hatred, maybe give it a place to go - Maybe open up a "non censored / no holds/no admins" forum - tucked away at the bottom. Forum mods can move hateful posts/threads to this forum category - and the developers don't ever have to open it to look at it.


In the end - I feel like you're going to spend more time chasing after people who will do anything to get their words across (and they will get it across, they will... yes... they will - it's not right to think anything different) when it may be easier to just give them someplace to be trolly. Not that it condones the behavior, but that we accept, in an internet age, that we can't be naive enough to think we can control.

Because once everything is "cleaned" up here - then it'll be taken somewhere else, completely out of the control of GGG - and it WILL happen, that can't be denied or ignored. Would you rather be able to control it to some degree, or have no say in what happens...

Just some Psych thoughts to think about...

it's a little sad that it needs to come to this, but i think it's the only responsible thing to do.

yes the naysayers will accuse GGG of censorship etc, but the forums were degrading to a state of where constructive criticism was getting incredibly difficult and proper well-thought out feedback was getting washed in a wave of rage and ranting.

good luck with this! i support it!