a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships


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Barkeep

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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 19:09

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

And I think everyone's gotten their word in on the issue of race, so instead of splitting this thread or locking it, let's refocus our attention on dev/player relations.

I'm also not going to remove any posts thus far. Let's let it all hang out in the open in this thread, shall we? If any other mod disagrees, feel free to overrule me on this.

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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 19:14

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

A moderator pushing a thread back on topic? OVERMODERATION! HELP HELP I'M BEING REPRESSED!

It'd be interesting to hear what some of the more neutral parties on the tavern have to say on the subject, as most of the posters in this thread have lets say... taken part in the drama this thread is trying to discuss.

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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 19:41

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

dowan wrote:It'd be interesting to hear what some of the more neutral parties on the tavern have to say on the subject, as most of the posters in this thread have lets say... taken part in the drama this thread is trying to discuss.


I've been playing DCSS for years and lurked on this forum for years. I've posted rarely because I don't think it's a very good forum. I'm much more active on Reddit, and thankfully the devs are active over there, too.

Frankly: the players don't deserve the devs. Every interaction I've had with the developers has been helpful, patient, and always a positive experience. Even during bug reports which turned out not to be bugs, they explained it and helped me out rather than saying "learn game, get gud." They put a ton of work into this game and every version, every change, every thing that's done is met with complaints and pushback. (Thoughtful criticism and complaints are not the same thing.)

This forum is full of sarcasm, snide remarks, and harsh criticism. There are individuals who seem to go out of their way to be unpleasant. From the outside looking in, drama like in this thread and others makes it hard to take this forum seriously. Many of you have been in the thick of it for years and accepted it as commonplace, but honestly it's one of the worst forums I've registered an account with. I don't know if moderation / tone policing can fix anything, nor do I know what the solution is. But with the sheer amount of negativity here I just talk about DCSS elsewhere.

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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 20:05

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

Wow, that's surprising. In my experience this is really one of the better game forums. Of course, most game forums don't have much in the way of dev interaction either.

Well I'm sorry if I've contributed to that experience, but I think it's unfair to say that all the criticism is just complaining without contributing any thought. I agree it can get overly harsh at times, and being "in the thick of it" has perhaps made me a bit numb to it.

Do you find the entire tavern that way, or just the game design sections?
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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 20:15

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

Ops sorry, I hadn't seen the mod intervention. I spoilered the other stuff. It is true that the devs tend to show much more civility than many posters. It also is true that, IMHO, most incivility is pushed hard forwards by a little number of users, on the assumption that it's funny or cool, and it usually is neither. But it is enough to set a trend. I mean, the sense of humour is kinda screwed. It's the assumption that "it's OK because that's how we do it here". In general, an articulate criticism that doesn't attempt to show itself immediately first as a slap in someone's face and then as a pissing contest to show you're right and you were totally legitimate in your slapping that guy would be what's needed.


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BTW, the Germans stopped calling the pillow Küssen for religious reasons. Now they call it Kissen, because Küssen, also meaning "to kiss", was too lewd for the XVIII century. Which may sound ridiculous, but it's how the word gender got the meaning we are hammered with today in English. "Gender" used to mean "all of men/all of women". Sex meant gender: you didn't have a gender, you had a sex, and you belonged to a gender. But then people for some reason began saying "I have sex" for "I copulate" and sex became a dirty word (1930 give or take), so they had to pull out an alternative, which is gender, in the beginning used as a humorous replacement for an individual's sex. Then gender studies began using the two words at the same time, and so we reach today's situation.

So, does changing words change actions? No idea, but it tends to have domino effects in language. If language change causes mentality change, then you can expect directed changes with an intended effect to also have a lot of unintended effects, whatever they may be. AFAIK, however, it is changes in society or mentality that cause changes in language, not the other way around, like refusing loanwords from a language with whose users you are at war with, rather than the opposite. And, about words that aren't supposed to be used, "Arga" is the first word I know of whose use was forbidden for secular reasons. It was such a nasty insult for the Lombards, in 643 AD they actually made a law regulating how to excuse yourself if you yelled it at someone (you could say "I didn't mean it" and pay a fine, or say "I totally meant that" and go for a duel).
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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 20:25

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

Spoiler: show
"Sex" is a dirty word? That's a new one. English is also not my first language (its Russian), but I mean we see this word in mass-media every day. How is it dirty?
Last edited by archaeo on Thursday, 6th October 2016, 20:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 21:19

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

This thread turned into a discussion about racism in America and the mod response is to ask people not to do that?

This thread started as a serious topic split off a thread that was itself a serious topic split. How much off topic leeway do you intend to grant? The previous threads are all trashfires with nothing of value and now this one is too, due to some desire to not delete posts.

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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 21:20

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

stickyfingers wrote:This is how the Germans talk. Didn't you know that in German every phrase sounds like a declaration of war?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41lZmGcRWHU
I showed this to the kids right away, and we had a blast: "NILPFERD!!!", "KUGELSCHREIBER!!!", "SCHMETTERLING!!!" :lol:

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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 21:52

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

hermbot wrote:I've been playing DCSS for years and lurked on this forum for years. I've posted rarely because I don't think it's a very good forum. I'm much more active on Reddit, and thankfully the devs are active over there, too.
I am active here and on reddit, and a bit (almost only reading) on SA. I think there are some crucial differences between these places:
  • Tavern has acquired its own mode: elsewhere, players will often complain about removals, and ask why they happened, or want them reverted, or inquire why nobody thought about improving that thing instead of removing it. Tavern, by contrast, has something of a Remove! culture. In a sense, this is good, because removal should always be an option and it's good to think about it. In other ways this is also bad, because permant Remove! interjections will harm discussion between people who want to talk about improving something by changing or --gasp-- adding stuff.
  • On reddit, there is much less traffic and way shorter history. On tavern, many people know each other for years, with all the bad consequences that entails. I believe that if one were to analysis tavern traffic closely (especially thanks), one could observe well-defined factions.
Myself, I follow all these places in the hope of finding some design ideas that would otherwise go unnoticed. In my opinion, the level of discussion about design is highest on this forum; probably because there are so many people around who are very knowledgeable, and have internalised the design principles.

The snarkiness is indeed off-putting. I am not sure if more moderation can help with this -- in my experience, the mods spend a lot of time and effort, and they have to deal with the folks that frequent this place, a number of which aren't easy to deal with. (I am certainly one of them.) There's also quite a bit of self-amplification, but that's inevitable as well -- the most funny bit (to me) is the tavern's obsession with food. It's one of many deficient systems in Crawl, but if you read this place, then you might be led to believe that food is the enemy! :)
Last edited by dpeg on Friday, 7th October 2016, 00:04, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 21:58

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

dpeg wrote:the most funny bit (to me) is the tavern's obsession with food. It's one of many deficient systems in Crawl, but if you read this place, then you might be led to believe that food is the enemy! :)


that's because I may choose to worship Chei or just ignore luring, stairdancing etc. but no matter what I do I must butcher corpses and eat them if I don't want to starve later (fortunately playing offline I can ignore it too as I can enter wizard mode if needed).
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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 22:01

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

VeryAngryFelid: You also have to rest up HP and MP all the time, which is a horrible mechanic. I could entirely imagine a discussion place where players complain loudly and rightly about "STILL MASHING THE 5-KEY! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!". Sure, the food system is an interface toll. But it is by far not the only one and, in my opinion, not the worst. It is completely alright if you think food is the worst subsystem in Crawl. I hope it's also alright that I consider tavern's obsession with food to be a bit funny.

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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 22:49

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

tavern complains about resting just as often as it complains about food, provided that you ignore archaeo georg, who complains about food 10000 times per day adn should not have been counted.
dpeg wrote:Tavern has acquired its own mode: elsewhere, players will often complain about removals, and ask why they happened, or want them removed, or inquire why nobody thought about improving that thing instead of removing it. Tavern, by contrast, has something of a Remove! culture. In a sense, this is good, because removal should always be an option and it's good to think about it. In other ways this is also bad, because permant Remove! interjections will harm discussion between people who want to talk about improving something by changing or --gasp-- adding stuff.
It goes both ways. Every time someone suggests to remove a feature, someone suggests revising it instead (usually without offering a viable revision, or even a starting point for a viable revision, themselves), or even adding completely new features instead. It's just something that'll happen anywhere that brainstorming is allowed, I think.
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Post Thursday, 6th October 2016, 23:03

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

chequers wrote:This thread turned into a discussion about racism in America and the mod response is to ask people not to do that?

This thread started as a serious topic split off a thread that was itself a serious topic split. How much off topic leeway do you intend to grant? The previous threads are all trashfires with nothing of value and now this one is too, due to some desire to not delete posts.

If by "mod response" you mean "archaeo's off-the-cuff plan for handling this fiery thread," then sure, yes, that's what happened.

I responded to your report before I saw this message, so I'll reset it and ask someone else to step in.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 00:11

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

To add another "lurker" perspective:

I only occasionally visit the forums so my perspective may well be off, but I'd be interested to see how more frequent posters feel about this. I somewhat agree with hermbot that the forums feel like they skew towards the negative and "snarky", but even more than that it often feels strangely insular and impenetrable to the "outsider". I can only liken it to being a guest to dinner with a slightly dysfunctional family; one can kind of sense a tension in the air, but it's very difficult to disentangle or understand where it comes from.

Any forum will of course develop its own inside jokes and references, which also seem prevalent here, but much of it also seems tinged with personal "grudges", for lack of a better term. I get the feeling that many posts by frequent or "established" members are steeped kind of interpersonal conflict or shared history. It's not merely that the tone is "negative", but also that it feels laden with sub-text and innuendo which are not exactly conducive to a good forum atmosphere, especially for newer or less frequent posters.

I may of course be way off-base with all this, but it's the closest I can get to describing the tone and "feel" of the forum.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 00:42

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

hermbot wrote:but honestly it's one of the worst forums I've registered an account with.


I agree with this to the point where I almost wrote the exact same thing in a previous thread, but then just closed the window and walked away (and then the thread got locked). But it seems that here the question is being genuinely asked by at least some people, so hermbot's quote captures how I feel about tavern as well (even though I'm not quite a lurker). I do most of my talking about crawl in a separate community that is much, much more pleasant to be in.
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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 04:32

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

dpeg wrote:There's also quite a bit of self-amplification, but that's inevitable as well -- the most funny bit (to me) is the tavern's obsession with food. It's one of many deficient systems in Crawl, but if you read this place, then you might be led to believe that food is the enemy! :)


Actually, food is the enemy. You should try a few rounds of hellcrawl.
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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 06:19

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

Dioneo wrote:it feels laden with sub-text and innuendo which are not exactly conducive to a good forum atmosphere, especially for newer or less frequent posters

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 06:27

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

Popcorn worthy thread of the month right here!

Anyway, i didn't like the tone of the tavern when i first arrived here either. But then you learn how to manage it. See the key is, don't actually read any of the responses to your posts/threads.

They're all pretty much gonna be guys letting loose whatever negativity or inner demons or axes they had to grind against the devs, the game, or other people's playstyles, using whatever content you posted as a flimsy pretext to do so. That, or theyre gonna disagree with you as harshly as possible and hijack your thread to be about something else just because they can. So just scroll past them, and then repost your original post but slightly re-worded, or post a meme, or a gif.

That's how you get the most of this forum. It's actually really good once you learn to not read anything the other posters write.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 07:10

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

Dioneo wrote:To add another "lurker" perspective:

I only occasionally visit the forums so my perspective may well be off, but I'd be interested to see how more frequent posters feel about this. I somewhat agree with hermbot that the forums feel like they skew towards the negative and "snarky", but even more than that it often feels strangely insular and impenetrable to the "outsider". I can only liken it to being a guest to dinner with a slightly dysfunctional family; one can kind of sense a tension in the air, but it's very difficult to disentangle or understand where it comes from.

Any forum will of course develop its own inside jokes and references, which also seem prevalent here, but much of it also seems tinged with personal "grudges", for lack of a better term. I get the feeling that many posts by frequent or "established" members are steeped kind of interpersonal conflict or shared history. It's not merely that the tone is "negative", but also that it feels laden with sub-text and innuendo which are not exactly conducive to a good forum atmosphere, especially for newer or less frequent posters.

I may of course be way off-base with all this, but it's the closest I can get to describing the tone and "feel" of the forum.


It's true. It gets worse when multiple accounts start spinning around, or people refer to themselves in third person using a name different from their username. Occasionally useful information was given to new members or new players in a form that apparently was deliberately impossible to understand for them, although this trend seems to have subsided.
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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 11:04

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

Shtopit wrote:Occasionally useful information was given to new members or new players in a form that apparently was deliberately impossible to understand for them, although this trend seems to have subsided.

This is how I feel about duvessa posts.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 13:22

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

I'd like to comment on the innuendo and dysfunctional family feeling, because that's a really good point, and I am sure as hell guilty of it.

I came to this forum and tried to fit in with the culture at first, and like others said, I noticed certain posters had certain patterns that I found quite off-putting. However, in my well intentioned quest for a better tavern, I got jaded and pessimistic, it just seems like that stuff is what the tavern liked best. So I started aping it, at first to call attention to how bad I felt it was, but after a while it just started happening without me even meaning it to. Snark and sarcasm became my default method of communication, not in an effort to drive off new people, but because of how I went about trying to highlight what I felt was a problem. But I'm sure when people read some of the stuff I post, it's obvious that there's some weird subtext and some point I'm trying to prove, while we're talking about something else entirely.

I'm realizing that I probably caused a lot more harm than good with that, and we all have bad days and some of us choose to lash out at the things that annoy us when we're in moods like that... Just talking about it does cause people to think about it and reflect on themselves. But I suppose I didn't realize people found it quite so unfriendly here, which is a bit sad to me, because even with all the dumb little feuds we have here, it really is a good bunch of people.

On the subject of the value of the comments at the tavern, I think perhaps the negativity has caused some people to be blind to all the helpful stuff. The tavern is where I go to talk about crawl because there's just a lot less misinformation flying around here. People who really know what they're talking about with crawl seem to hang out here. If I go somewhere else to talk about crawl most of what I say is "Well that's not really how it works" and "That stopped being true back in 0.15", things like that. There may be a more friendly atmosphere, but I don't find it to be a terribly informative atmosphere. Of course, other places can get quite unfriendly too. And I know lethe is exaggerating a bit, because I see him respond to comments in his own threads, but I hope people don't seriously think just posting OPs and ignoring comments is a good way to discuss things.

Maybe moderation is needed to bring this about, but the current structure isn't going to work for that, I don't think. I just don't see how mods who are also pretty regular members of the community can effectively be both if they're going to try to moderate the tone of the tavern rather than outright rule breaking. If someone who is a mod has someone agree with them in a very caustic way, and then someone else disagrees in a caustic way, how does it look if only the disagree-er is the one who gets moderated? Even if it was objectively fair, it won't feel that way. But, maybe I'm wrong, maybe that's just me. Hell, maybe some people (maybe including myself) have to be smacked with the banhammer until we get in line.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 13:27

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

lethediver wrote:It's actually really good once you learn to not read anything the other posters write.


Maybe, but I think you're illustrating part of the problem. One of the unpleasant quirks of this forum is that in addition to the super-long history for some members, there's a continual string of new accounts of posters with extremely strong but bizarre opinions that are also fairly uninformed, who are also basically unwilling to listen to anyone else. But the weird dysfunction of the tavern seems to lead to these being the main category of new posters that actually stick around, because these people usually have extremely thick skins as well, thus creating a cycle of dysfunction. Tavern is pretty hostile to most other sorts of new members.

Btw my negativity isn't directed towards the mods; my hat is off to them for attempting what seems to me like a nightmarishly hard task.

Edit: per later mod request, please don't respond to the following in this thread, which I should have just deleted in the first place before posting anyways. (Honestly I sometimes just assume that half of these sorts of new posters are alts of some long-time member stirring the pot, because they often seem perfectly designed to provoke maximal dysfunctional response from other long-time members. I am not sure how paranoid I'm being but I would like to see a policy banning multiple active sockpuppets on this forum.)
Last edited by advil on Friday, 7th October 2016, 18:49, edited 2 times in total.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 13:37

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

You mean there's no policy like that already? Brb, heading to the account registration page!

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 14:06

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

I don't think there's a big proliferation of sock puppet accounts, but I could be wrong. It has happened on occasion, so I suppose if there's been occasions we noticed there's got to be a few that we didn't.

I think advil does make a good point there, and you might be right that the tavern self selects for sarcastic hard headed people. Is it really hostile to new members though? Usually people asking for advice for a specific character tend to get pretty good advice. Uninformed people asking for a big change to the game without understanding it probably don't feel as well treated, but most people tend to at least be gentle when they tell them they really don't know what they're talking about.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 14:13

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

advil wrote:(Honestly I sometimes just assume that half of these sorts of new posters are alts of some long-time member stirring the pot, because they often seem perfectly designed to provoke maximal dysfunctional response from other long-time members. I am not sure how paranoid I'm being but I would like to see a policy banning multiple active sockpuppets on this forum.)


Ok, I changed my signature, maybe it will help a bit.
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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 16:46

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

I guess one thing I'd say is it's all well and good for people who don't post anything to have opinions about what they read, but when they start talking about banning people like that's going to make them post more or better, you know, probably best to collect some evidence of that first.

There's a channel on tavern you can communicate over where you'll get replies/engagement from people who're on a certain wavelength and generally know what they're talking about. If you stray much from that channel, well, results vary. You know, maybe it's more fun or pleasant for some people to read long, earnest posts with point by point arguments and so on, but that's just not where the conversation is on tavern in my opinion and that's basically fine with me. It's good, to my mind, that there's a place with a kind of short hand/way of talking about things where you're not constantly bogged down explaining this and that and writing five paragraph essays about video games.
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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 16:58

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

goodcoolguy wrote:I guess one thing I'd say is it's all well and good for people who don't post anything to have opinions about what they read, but when they start talking about banning people like that's going to make them post more or better, you know, probably best to collect some evidence of that first.


Notice the difference between "people" and "(undeclared) accounts in addition to the first one".
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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 17:02

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

Good example of the results of using a lot of words.
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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 17:04

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

Can we not have a sockpuppet witch hunt? The mods have tools to deal with these things, and I doubt very much that someone is operating a super dastardly scheme to fool even the mods in order to have a slight edge in arguments about video games. To my knowledge, no one is operating two accounts at once; we've got a few users who are using new handles, but none of them are going to great lengths to hide who they were before.

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Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 17:19

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

I simply think that it would be nice if twin accounts signalled what account(s) they have as twin(s), it would remove confusion.

Besides, it's not a problem of grand schemes. People making fake accounts for a single session trolling aren't a novelty.
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Barkeep

Posts: 1788

Joined: Saturday, 29th June 2013, 16:52

Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 17:28

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

There aren't "twin" accounts. There are people like VeryAngryFelid who have new accounts, all of whom are known to the devs, and none of whom have used their new accounts to start any trouble. I can count the number of people who have done this on one hand.

The Tavern has actual, real problems. Sockpuppetry is not one of those problems.

Temple Termagant

Posts: 12

Joined: Sunday, 13th March 2016, 03:52

Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 18:16

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

dowan wrote:Wow, that's surprising. In my experience this is really one of the better game forums.

A) I think of the DCSS discussions on the web (not IRC or listservs), this place has by far the most informed discussions. The others I've come across are mostly new players giving bad advice to other new players. There are a so many mechanics that I didn't even know existed in the game.

B) I think the culture of this board is...hostile? Ugly? You can practically watch the few new members who aren't quickly driven away resort to wrapping themselves in it.

How you balance those factors is going to determine how you feel about this place. I spent enough of my life on BBSes and message boards that it doesn't bother me all that much, but there's a reason I delete almost every message I write before I hit submit. It's not worth the effort. I've been reading off and on for about a year and a half.

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dowan, scorpionwarrior
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Barkeep

Posts: 4435

Joined: Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 12:28

Post Friday, 7th October 2016, 19:26

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

archaeo wrote:
chequers wrote:This thread turned into a discussion about racism in America and the mod response is to ask people not to do that?

This thread started as a serious topic split off a thread that was itself a serious topic split. How much off topic leeway do you intend to grant? The previous threads are all trashfires with nothing of value and now this one is too, due to some desire to not delete posts.

If by "mod response" you mean "archaeo's off-the-cuff plan for handling this fiery thread," then sure, yes, that's what happened.

I responded to your report before I saw this message, so I'll reset it and ask someone else to step in.

I'll step in here for a moment: hey all, don't make this thread a discussion about racism in America. Tavern's not where you're gonna go to get woke.

My unprofessional opinion is that this thread is not entirely a trashfire, so I'm not super keen on closing it. Separating the wheat from the chaff of a thread like this is trickier than it might seem

While I'm not around nearly as much as I used to be, I'll say that the general tone of Tavern is not wildly different than what I would hope for. I think people tend to be terse and offputting in their advice to newcomers, and that there's lots of insider knowledge. But I think it's kind of okay because this is a forum about a huge, complicated roguelike. They're offputting to newcomers, too. Good culture isn't about pleasing everyone in the world, it's about deciding what we are and what we aren't. I think duvessa and dpeg, for example, are both absolutely net positive contributors (and I think both have become more so in recent times) despite the fact that I sometimes cringe a little at some of their posts.
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.

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archaeo

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 16

Joined: Wednesday, 11th November 2015, 07:00

Post Tuesday, 11th October 2016, 13:16

Re: a(n actual) conversation about dev/player relationships

I think the main issue is the general sense of elitism in the roguelike community as a whole (this is not isolated to Crawl).

From the start, roguelikes have been designed with very high difficulty in mind. This naturally results in a small group of players with much better skill than the vast majority of the gaming audience. Due to the large investment in time and effort needed to play well, it's not easy for a skilled player to resist the temptation to put down newcomers when they make mistakes.

Crawl can be just as difficult as other traditional roguelikes out there, but it's designed to be as fair to the player as possible while still sticking to the basic principles of a roguelike. This makes it a lot attractive to beginners than most other roguelikes, which means that there will be lots of newbies making mistakes that, while blindingly obvious to experts, may not be to most players. It's important to realize that we were all beginners at one point and as tempting as it may be to put down players for silly mistakes, that there's ultimately a person at the other end of the conservation that deserves to be treated nicely.

I'm saying this as a beginner myself who has never actually won a game and only managed to get to my first runes a few days ago. My experience with this forum has been positive but I still can't shake that feeling of elitism. I've been able to get some good advice and have received constructive feedback and friendly responses as long as I approach the community nicely and demonstrate a desire to improve (hint to newcomers :) ). However, the tone of posts I often encounter here can be intimidating and has tended to be colder than most other communities I've participated in.

I realize that this is a very hard issue to address so I don't expect sweeping changes right off the bat, but perhaps better community moderation and reminders throughout the forums that we need to be nice to others would be a good way to begin addressing this issue.

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