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Keeping Things Neutral In The Soil of Verra
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
This is not actually a farming post (though we should probably put the farming stuff in here, maybe later if it gets no responses).
So, I'm removing the 'group lock'. My group will no longer 'be represented by one person per thread'.
A community has what we like to think of as a 'pH' level. It's not a measure of toxicity, but rather of 'acidity'. There are almost always two opposing group styles/expressions/viewpoints in a forum, that's the point of 'forum'.
The 'acid' half of the forum has become so much more vocal and fast-acting lately, that we're starting to worry that the 'basic' people will just be driven off or remain silent (without true evidence, obviously, since it's like predicting the weather). This happens a lot in game/forum situations. This isn't about cliques or bullying either. When a forum takes on either a 'too basic' or 'too acidic' general perspective, people of the other type consider interacting on it a waste of their time.
To tie this back into the game, this can happen there too, and if the game community itself doesn't have a healthy neutral balance, the game is in danger, at least a little bit. Acidic people, who want things to be 'interesting', will 'prove' their flows against the basic players, but an open world PvP game with as much real loss as Ashes has, has the potential to make acidic people feel rewarded more viscerally.
"When one gets tired of peace, you can always instantly and almost without risk, stir up war."
But it doesn't go the other way, generally.
Maybe all the 'basic' influences on the forums just had to focus their lives elsewhere for a bit. And if that's true, when they return, we'll put the lock back on, and go back to where we were, putting only the results of discussions in, through one person, or leaving 'contexts' to members of the group who those topics relate to the most.
As of now, though, forum activity seems to have shifted in a way that, in our 'basic' opinion, could use some more balance. Unfortunately this can't be free of bias. Acidic people don't tend to create echo chambers as easily, since they often have more conflict and disagree with each other.
But you can tell when they're 'getting bored of it', too. They start to make shorter, less sensible posts and shift to poking jokes at each other's expense, since it's the main way for them to continue being engaged other than repeating their own viewpoints at each other.
We didn't want there to be no record of why the shift happened, and we didn't want there to be no explanation. One thing that may cause a sudden re-lock is whenever the Split Body part of the Combat Revamp happens, since that might bring a lot of new opinions, but unfortunately my last data analysis indicates that people who want one type of combat vs another are moreso divided by 'what they think they can do with it', and 'which Archetypes they intend to play', so that might just result in 'dilution'.
This is also helpful as a whole because the group thinks on drastically different 'layers'. What is 'a weak argument and a waste of time' to one, is 'a point to engage on' for another, so hopefully it will spark more real discussion even if it doesn't improve the overall 'feeling'.
I'll post again if/whenever we 'engage the lock again'.
So, I'm removing the 'group lock'. My group will no longer 'be represented by one person per thread'.
A community has what we like to think of as a 'pH' level. It's not a measure of toxicity, but rather of 'acidity'. There are almost always two opposing group styles/expressions/viewpoints in a forum, that's the point of 'forum'.
The 'acid' half of the forum has become so much more vocal and fast-acting lately, that we're starting to worry that the 'basic' people will just be driven off or remain silent (without true evidence, obviously, since it's like predicting the weather). This happens a lot in game/forum situations. This isn't about cliques or bullying either. When a forum takes on either a 'too basic' or 'too acidic' general perspective, people of the other type consider interacting on it a waste of their time.
To tie this back into the game, this can happen there too, and if the game community itself doesn't have a healthy neutral balance, the game is in danger, at least a little bit. Acidic people, who want things to be 'interesting', will 'prove' their flows against the basic players, but an open world PvP game with as much real loss as Ashes has, has the potential to make acidic people feel rewarded more viscerally.
"When one gets tired of peace, you can always instantly and almost without risk, stir up war."
But it doesn't go the other way, generally.
Maybe all the 'basic' influences on the forums just had to focus their lives elsewhere for a bit. And if that's true, when they return, we'll put the lock back on, and go back to where we were, putting only the results of discussions in, through one person, or leaving 'contexts' to members of the group who those topics relate to the most.
As of now, though, forum activity seems to have shifted in a way that, in our 'basic' opinion, could use some more balance. Unfortunately this can't be free of bias. Acidic people don't tend to create echo chambers as easily, since they often have more conflict and disagree with each other.
But you can tell when they're 'getting bored of it', too. They start to make shorter, less sensible posts and shift to poking jokes at each other's expense, since it's the main way for them to continue being engaged other than repeating their own viewpoints at each other.
We didn't want there to be no record of why the shift happened, and we didn't want there to be no explanation. One thing that may cause a sudden re-lock is whenever the Split Body part of the Combat Revamp happens, since that might bring a lot of new opinions, but unfortunately my last data analysis indicates that people who want one type of combat vs another are moreso divided by 'what they think they can do with it', and 'which Archetypes they intend to play', so that might just result in 'dilution'.
This is also helpful as a whole because the group thinks on drastically different 'layers'. What is 'a weak argument and a waste of time' to one, is 'a point to engage on' for another, so hopefully it will spark more real discussion even if it doesn't improve the overall 'feeling'.
I'll post again if/whenever we 'engage the lock again'.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
0
Comments
I'm not sure what the 'group lock' is - what does that mean?
Obviously, we can easily discuss our opinions amongst ourselves and hash out any misunderstandings or disagreements on any topic, leading to a situation where it really doesn't take long before we are basically this 'united front' of people with very similar opinions on something. We get the benefit of talking things out where others can't see it.
So we engaged a limiter to prevent a bias in whatever data Intrepid collects from the forums. Limiter is now off.