When will I learn not to post in games forums?

Kara Spengler

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I always wind up getting warned for something with no way of replying to the moderator. Usually with no idea what I was even warned about, or if I can guess it is nothing a reasonable human being would complain about but likely someone did not like me having an opposite point of view so reported me. Today it was because I stuck up for what the game was doing it when the in thing was to bash a design decision and got called out as 'attacking another member' when my only post in the thread was to *gasp* reply to another post and did not mention the person I replied to at all except to mention the common theme (it was a poll so was explaining my minority position). Someone quoted my reply and I responded to that before getting the message .... so am expecting another action soon.

Then people must wonder why I was one of the top posters (or was it the top one) on the official forums and never posted there again when they changed the moderation policy to make forum stuff be tied to your actual SL account? It is things like this. You can not be a high profile poster and risk having forum actions affect things like your SL account.

For anyone wondering this was the guild wars 2 official forum. I was defending the decision to have a time gate to get the latest mount. While not ideal not everyone is a doitalltoday type gamer.
 

Khamon

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What is a time gate?
 

Kalel

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MMO gaming forums are the worst.. you should know better...
 

Clara D.

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Why not go for the full experience and post in gaming Reddits? :p

Maximum points for also being openly trans.
 
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Jolene Benoir

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Why not go for the full experience and post in gaming Reddits? :p

Maximum points for also being openly trans.
I post in only a few gaming ones...patientgamers, truegaming, ShouldIbuythisgame, GameDeals, gamingsuggestions, lowendgaming and once in a blue moon, Steam, and they are all some of the better reddits in terms of not being dickheads, but you couldn't pay me to touch some of the biggest ones that are poison.
 

Clara D.

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I post in only a few gaming ones...patientgamers, truegaming, ShouldIbuythisgame, GameDeals, gamingsuggestions, lowendgaming and once in a blue moon, Steam, and they are all some of the better reddits in terms of not being dickheads, but you couldn't pay me to touch some of the biggest ones that are poison.
The STO one is a bit more mature than some of the others.
 

Cristiano

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What is a time gate?
A time gate in this context means content that is gated behind having to wait - a quest that has steps that take 4 weeks to complete because each new part is unlocked weekly, for example. The worst examples of time gating are in mobile games, with the express purpose to get you to spend money to skip having to wait 24 hours for something to complete, for example. I don't know what about the mount in GW2 is specifically time gated, but I imagine it just takes awhile to complete all the steps needed to get it because there is an ongoing quest or story with parts released over time.
 
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Kara Spengler

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As expected I got another rap on the knuckles for my reply to the thread. :)
 

Kara Spengler

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What is a time gate?
Making people wait and *gasp* play the game before they could get a reward, in this case a mount.
 
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Kara Spengler

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Why not go for the full experience and post in gaming Reddits? :p

Maximum points for also being openly trans.
I have posted in them before on occasion. Actually I like them as the worst that can happen is a flame war. The mods are usually indifferent and even if not generally have no official pull with the game company.
 
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Dakota Tebaldi

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The STO one is a bit more mature than some of the others.
There IS relatively little gamebashing in the STO sub compared to other games' subs, it's true.
 

Kara Spengler

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A time gate in this context means content that is gated behind having to wait - a quest that has steps that take 4 weeks to complete because each new part is unlocked weekly, for example. The worst examples of time gating are in mobile games, with the express purpose to get you to spend money to skip having to wait 24 hours for something to complete, for example. I don't know what about the mount in GW2 is specifically time gated, but I imagine it just takes awhile to complete all the steps needed to get it because there is an ongoing quest or story with parts released over time.
Pretty much. I have not heard all the details yet but it involves some sort of a collection and depending on who you talk to is either 5 days (the horror! the horror!) or 5 weeks.

Actually what annoys me is the thing is also story gated before you can even start the collection (the last mount did not have either gate). I prefer to doing stories at my own pace, especially since the 2 steps I have left are managing to get REALLY high (hello vertigo) and doing an instance with flashing lights, in other words things I would usually just skip.
 

Cristiano

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I normally avoid official game forums like the plague. If I like a game, I will follow subreddits related to it, and maybe even post there, but official forums always tend to be a shitshow (especially for MMOs).
 
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Khamon

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Agree with Cris unless the devs really do post and read and listen and care. Silly Khamon. Who peed in your kool-aid?
 

Brenda Archer

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Pretty much. I have not heard all the details yet but it involves some sort of a collection and depending on who you talk to is either 5 days (the horror! the horror!) or 5 weeks.

Actually what annoys me is the thing is also story gated before you can even start the collection (the last mount did not have either gate). I prefer to doing stories at my own pace, especially since the 2 steps I have left are managing to get REALLY high (hello vertigo) and doing an instance with flashing lights, in other words things I would usually just skip.
That doesn’t sound like good design at all, flashing lights affect a lot of people.
 
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That sounds like pretty crappy moderation tbh, when I was a games mod we'd always quote and explain what someone had done wrong. You can't get users to behave better if they don't know what they did! If it's a "personal attack" then you could have some over-sensitive person reporting and a mod who didn't check. Which is crappy, because that used to be the most often category users hit when reporting posts. Few of them broke the rules enough for action on the accused, so you had to be really careful before you sent someone a warning. It might be worth sending a message to a senior mod asking if they can find out what you've done wrong. They should have some sort of record to look up.
 
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Kara Spengler

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That sounds like pretty crappy moderation tbh, when I was a games mod we'd always quote and explain what someone had done wrong. You can't get users to behave better if they don't know what they did! If it's a "personal attack" then you could have some over-sensitive person reporting and a mod who didn't check. Which is crappy, because that used to be the most often category users hit when reporting posts. Few of them broke the rules enough for action on the accused, so you had to be really careful before you sent someone a warning. It might be worth sending a message to a senior mod asking if they can find out what you've done wrong. They should have some sort of record to look up.
Yeah, I do not know who moderates it now. I used to be on good terms with the head mod but she has since left. Even though their standard message does not give you more of a clue than what thread it was in (good luck with any thread you posted to multiple times, especially since they are merge happy) I trusted her to know if she was calling me out for something I was doing something wrong. Given more than once I emailed letting her know I did not envy her position on something because I used to be a mod and was more than willing to cut her some slack I am guessing I built up some good will too. With whoever has the mod password now .... who knows. All it takes is someone to complain and a mod who does not actually read my post (which in the ones they were complaining about this week defending the company's decision) and it becomes a WTF moment.

As I said I used to be a mod. The first offense was something minor, like deleting a post. It worked up though a DM and an on-list message about the policy if they kept it up. One time I actually deleted an entire list. Someone had the bright idea to have multiple mods, even though only 2 of us did any work (me on the list, another person in real life meetings). Anyway, the rest used it as a glory title. The person who did absolutely nothing got to call herself Senior Moderator and she made sure everyone knew it, I think she even put it in her sig. Anyway, she had been bandying it about so long she forgot who actually did the work so when I called her out on something she took major offense and posted to the list about it (and continued to do the initial thing). I just calmly deleted the list and emailed the person who did the RL moderation to give her a heads up. Funnily enough, it had burnt out several moderators before me who could not deal with jerky users and I had a somewhat different reaction to that, plus was by far the longest serving mod for it.

Actually, nobody knows who the mods even are for the game forum. Everyone used to know but when she left things started to go downhill with no way to really contact anyone to let them know differently.
 
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Forum staff changes are yeah... been there :D It's one of those jobs that can attract the best and worst of people.
 

Kara Spengler

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Forum staff changes are yeah... been there :D It's one of those jobs that can attract the best and worst of people.
Definitely! The prior mod on that games forum left when the company has a massive RIF going on. The scuttlebutt is she voluntarily left so others could stay on.