stopping ForumMaster from destroying BattleMaster

[SaDiablo]

that is still perception,  the game played find like I said imo.  As far as the game dying, that is the typical norm in the game industry.  Once you make a game it reaches a peak then slowly starts to die.  The fact is that battlemaster is not dead.   Honestly this all comes down to opinions so there is no victory in it, it will need compromise.

That is why I posed the question to you Stabbity, I didn't really think it was the greatest of ideas

[Stabbity]

that is still perception,  the game played find like I said imo.  As far as the game dying, that is the typical norm in the game industry.  Once you make a game it reaches a peak then slowly starts to die.  The fact is that battlemaster is not dead.   Honestly this all comes down to opinions so there is no victory in it, it will need compromise.

That is why I posed the question to you Stabbity, I didn't really think it was the greatest of ideas

Good, I was worried there. I have always been a fan of not reinventing the wheel. We have a system, it works well, and I challenge you to find a flame war or some sort of inappropriate behavior involving the role play forum. Scrapping it would be a terrible idea. We have entirely too many unfinished features to suddenly switch to something else. Its very squirrel like behavior "Oh we need this!" "Oh lets !@#$ up the forums!" "Oh lets develop a new RP mechanism!" "Oh lets rework the battle code!" then a month later everyone is sitting there wondering why we have all sorts of have finished projects floating around.

[Anaris]

This:

I would disagree, the game played just fine without forums in the past

does not imply this:

and would survive going forward.

Removing the forum now would severely alienate many of the most active and dedicated players—the ones who are actually interested in participating in, and creating, a broader BattleMaster community.

Would it kill the game, by itself? Probably not. But would certainly deal it a grievous wound.

[SaDiablo]

Then it comes down to finding a middle ground doesn't it   

[Geronus]

I agree 100% with Stabbity.

The problem with the premise of this thread is that it starts out with an unsupported supposition, that the forum is actively harming the game. Like Stabbity, I see no evidence of that at all. In fact I tend to believe the opposite (though I have no more evidence to support my position than Tom does), that the forum is a net positive. Tom, after arbitrarily shutting down most of the forum in what I consider to be a significant overreaction, has now challenged us to come up with ways to solve problems that for the most part we either don't believe exist or don't consider to be nearly as apocalyptic as the title of this thread would suggest, just so we can get our forum back.

I cannot fix what is not broken, nor can I make much in the way of meaningful suggestions to solve problems that I do not perceive. The decline of interaction in the game has a million possible causes, but first and foremost I would blame the historically low player density, not the existence of the forum. The solution, which is already being considered elsewhere, is shutting down islands. As far as the atmosphere of the forum, it really is not that bad. People gripe, they complain, they argue. This is not bad in and of itself, and moreover it's human nature. When it comes to the problem of real personal attacks and flames (which are far from frequent in this community, making what incidents do occur stand out all the more), more stringent moderation could easily mitigate what does occur.

Compared to most internet communities, this one is a model of comity. People here are civil to each other 99% of the time, even when they're disagreeing vehemently about something. Conflict, in and of itself, is not the problem; it's only when actual insults are getting tossed around and people's feelings are actually getting hurt that there is a problem, and I don't think that happens every day here. Has it happened? Yes. Can the problem be 100% eliminated? Of course not. Can it be managed and mitigated without completely destroying the forum? Absolutely yes it can. I think stricter moderation would solve the only issue that I do agree exists, which is that sometimes disagreements turn nasty. Hell, if you want a perfect forum, just prevent posts from appearing until they've been approved by a mod. As I mentioned, I know of one site that does exactly that.

Tom, you think the forum is harming the game. Fine. I think that what you've done here is harming the game. It will certainly have a negative impact on my experience.

[egamma]

When you have a MAGISTRATE going around and openly accusing a realm of cheating for months, there is a problem.

I was at the point where if I saw it one more time I was going to take it to the magistrates for repeated abuse, but then the locals were closed.

Well, you should have opened a case about said Magistrate. I was much more upset about him continuing to rain down accusations on the remaining players AFTER the multi was removed--and I gave him points and sent him notifications about his conduct. I very nearly opened a case about his conduct as well. But surely Tom saw all those posts, and still felt comfortable having him as a Magistrate?

We certainly should have been more strict as moderators from the get-go. I think the locals would still be here if we had been; I also think they wouldn't be all "fun" and "interesting" like everyone remembers them. There'd be a lot more muted players, deleted posts, and closed threads. Maybe everyone wouldn't like the locals if they had been moderated properly.

[Penchant]

Well, you should have opened a case about said Magistrate. I was much more upset about him continuing to rain down accusations on the remaining players AFTER the multi was removed--and I gave him points and sent him notifications about his conduct. I very nearly opened a case about his conduct as well. But surely Tom saw all those posts, and still felt comfortable having him as a Magistrate?

We certainly should have been more strict as moderators from the get-go. I think the locals would still be here if we had been; I also think they wouldn't be all "fun" and "interesting" like everyone remembers them. There'd be a lot more muted players, deleted posts, and closed threads. Maybe everyone wouldn't like the locals if they had been moderated properly.

Unless the moderation policy was fun is not allowed, I highly doubt the locals wouldn't have been fun and interesting with proper moderation.

[Stabbity]

Well, you should have opened a case about said Magistrate. I was much more upset about him continuing to rain down accusations on the remaining players AFTER the multi was removed--and I gave him points and sent him notifications about his conduct. I very nearly opened a case about his conduct as well. But surely Tom saw all those posts, and still felt comfortable having him as a Magistrate?

This stems from my time as a team leader in the army, but I have always been a fan of having things solved at the lowest level possible. The most recent of his posts were condemned publically by persons of port with nice big red letters and I saw the behaivor cease. That was the end of the issue in my eyes until this thread came up.

If a problem can be stopped with a PM, or some big red letters I feel the magistrates don't need to be bothered, but apparently it is a part of some huge hivemind of a forum lead campaign to destroy battlemaster.

[Tom]

When I started this game, everyone was scared to !@#$ when he only read the name "Tom".
You were so afraid that a lightning bolt would hit you that you just closed your eyes when his name appeared on your screen no matter if IC or OOC.
Now I see a much more liberal Tom asking people about their opinions...and getting the bill for it.

In some sense those were better times, but in other senses they were not. It was also mostly a time where the game was small enough and my time investment in it so massive that I really knew most things that were going on. So I could police the game very closely.

But it also meant that I could not properly play the game under my real name, for example.

When Tom's not acting like a religious zealot whose Bible has just been questioned, or treating me with condescension that wouldn't befit a spoiled child, I will give him respect. But like many people—Tom included—treat me like crap and I will respond in kind.

At least for me I can say that I know Tim long enough now to not feel attacked personally when he attacks my postings. There's a few others on the boards where long years of online-friendship allow us to be more direct with each other than usual.

[Tom]

The topic is stopping forummaster from destroying battlemaster, which is frankly, dumb. From what I've seen the forum hasn't detracted one bit from the game of battlmaster, and I have yet to see any evidence that this is the case.

Present evidence that the locals are harming Battlemaster, and I'll listen. Otherwise this entire thread has been just a waste of space.

You have seen quite a bit of evidence, you (and others) just reject it. The evidence is that people think it does, and complain about it in their leaving-the-game message (when you leave the game, there's a final message asking for feedback sent by e-mail to me directly). There were also quite a few postings to this very topic that support the point.

For soft factors like this, impressions matter. If everyone on the block thinks that the new neighbour is a registered sex offender and rapes young girls, it doesn't matter if it's true or not, they will react as if it were, shun him and lock up their girls. That is an extreme example, but conceptually, it's the same. If people think that the forum is a meta-strategy discussion place and that an in-crowd controls it and that unless you "win" in the forum you can't properly play the game or whatever else it is, then that is the damage, even if it is all made-up lies.

Your arguments refuting these things I don't ignore. They just don't matter. Sorry to say it this plainly. Posting arguments why the forum isn't such a bad place on the forum, where all the people who avoid it because they think it is will never see it will change absolutely nothing.


Yes, it's unfair. But let's get our priorities straight: The forum is there to support the game, not the other way around.

[Tom]

removed by moderator

Must disagree there, these people do matter. However, they don't matter as much as you would think from sampling posts in the forum. As I said elsewhere, less than 10% of the active players create almost 90% of the posts on the forum. The forum is very, very far from representing the player base.

[Stabbity]

So Tom, would you lynch that neighbor then, or get your trusted neighborhood welcome comitee to dispel the rumors?

I agree the forum has a bad rep among some circles. Is it entirely justified? No. Perception is reality, some have said, but you can use reality to alter perception. We have lost some players in some nasty spats the did in fact involve the forums, and I do pay close attention to the harrasment cases brought up. From what I have personally observed most of the nastiness occured in game. I will talk with some of the others I know and respect around the community while I'm !@#$ing off at work, and over the next couple days put some guidelines down for the local boards. I'll pitch them to you and see how you feel about them, and maybe we can institute a trial unlock and see how things go.

[Penchant]

You have seen quite a bit of evidence, you (and others) just reject it. The evidence is that people think it does, and complain about it in their leaving-the-game message (when you leave the game, there's a final message asking for feedback sent by e-mail to me directly). There were also quite a few postings to this very topic that support the point.

For soft factors like this, impressions matter. If everyone on the block thinks that the new neighbour is a registered sex offender and rapes young girls, it doesn't matter if it's true or not, they will react as if it were, shun him and lock up their girls. That is an extreme example, but conceptually, it's the same. If people think that the forum is a meta-strategy discussion place and that an in-crowd controls it and that unless you "win" in the forum you can't properly play the game or whatever else it is, then that is the damage, even if it is all made-up lies.

Your arguments refuting these things I don't ignore. They just don't matter. Sorry to say it this plainly. Posting arguments why the forum isn't such a bad place on the forum, where all the people who avoid it because they think it is will never see it will change absolutely nothing.


Yes, it's unfair. But let's get our priorities straight: The forum is there to support the game, not the other way around.

And I could get a list of people who came back to the game or who decided to actually try out BM by reading the locals forum. Every person who started playing again or for there first time negates one player who quit. Also if its the impression that is the issue, then we can work on getting rid of the false impression. Some people have a bad impression of the game is a terrible reason to get rid of the forums because the impression can be changed, and the problem solved without having to get rid of a forum people enjoy.

And Tom, people saying I don't like the forum for such and such reason is not evidence, thats an opinion. You saying people quit the game over the forums truely isn't evidence either. Posting at least a number of people who gave the forums as a reason for quitting could be considered evidence, although actually quoting the emails you received where people said that they quit because of the forums is real evidence. If you believe there has actually been evidence of the forum being bad for the game, then quote just one piece of evidence posted. One false piece is egamma's Magistrates links because they all also happened outside of the forums and the forums was a small part of it, where another venue like IRC could have been used if the forums didn't exist at the time.

[Tom]

actually quoting the emails you received where people said that they quit because of the forums is real evidence.

Uh, this topic started with such a quote?

So Tom, would you lynch that neighbor then, or get your trusted neighborhood welcome comitee to dispel the rumors?

Personally, I wouldn't care because it's not my problem. But to answer the actual question: Everything I'm doing here is an attempt to clean these things out, including dispelling the rumours. Which, btw., is the hardest part because many people don't speak up at all or only when they've had too much.


But restructuring the boards and re-opening them with new guidelines in place AND posting about that on the announcements will do a lot to restore confidence among those silent forum-rejecters.

[Anaris]

Uh, this topic started with such a quote?

That quote appears to be from one of those players who have gotten the impression that people have been actually running realms through the forum, or that you need to post on the forum frequently to be allowed to participate in certain in-game groups.

That is a problem that is, so far as I have ever been able to tell, entirely illusory. Yes, if people are getting that impression, then it's problematic, but since nothing of that kind is happening now, or has happened in the past, I really don't see what we're supposed to do to change it by changing the forum.

It seems to me that that's exactly the kind of problem that needs to be changed by presenting the reality more clearly to the people who are experiencing it. But if they just silently go away without letting anyone know they feel that way, then there's really not much we can do. Just like we can't do anything about the people who leave because Tom is actively changing the game specifically to prevent them or their group from getting ahead. It's not a real problem, and if they don't tell anyone they're feeling that way, we have no way of knowing that they, specifically, need to be reassured that it's not happening.

But restructuring the boards and re-opening them with new guidelines in place AND posting about that on the announcements will do a lot to restore confidence among those silent forum-rejecters.

Tom, this is the most positive thing I think I've seen you say in this thread, and the first clear indication I've gotten from you that you really do plan to reopen the Locals in some form. Thank you.

And for what it's worth, I completely agree.