Why do we ALWAYS react negatively to whatever's put out. Updates. New Content.
Is it our fault? Are we too sensitive?
Or are Frontier to blame?
Question 1: What in your opinion could we do better to not go on a raging bender whenever something new is unveiled?
Question 2: What in your opinion could Frontier do better to not having us go on a raging bender whenever something new is unvieled?
Thread rules, answer the questions and only the questions. Keep it civil. Calm and remember I'm as guilty as anyone else as going on the odd rage/delusion. No comments on anyone elses answers.
I think it's partly a perception on your part - it's true of internet forums in general.
1. The people who are reacting negatively stick in your mind more.
2. In general, there's a self-selection bias when it comes to reactions on forums, or generally in comments on anything anywhere. People who are pleased about something are far less likely to go out of their way to make a post about it. Whereas someone who has a beef, or wants to indulge a self-righteous rant or simply stir things up are by definition more likely to post.
3. There is a general attitude among a lot of consumers today that can be summarised with the phrase 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'. It basically comes down to a belief that the stick is much better than the carrot. Don't congratulate the developers too much or they may get complacent. Shout and scream and act as indignant and self-righteous as possible, make all the noise you can, to make sure those developers keep working to your satisfaction, tear apart anything they do, because criticism will make them improve everything. Don't let them rest, complain as much as you can, keep beating them to do what you want. It's curious that anyone thinks this is a good way of getting results from anyone.
Having said that, these forums aren't
that bad. There's a lot of threads which are simply requests for help or explanation. The complaint threads just naturally tend to stick in the mind more. They're certainly a lot better than some places I've seen. My god, you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I saw on forums for a certain space sim/spreadsheet simulator that's been popular for over a decade. There were deliberate attempts to game the system - pirates trying to make the developers change the rules to suit them, traders doing the same thing, simply to see if their exploit could be implemented. This wasn't done to improve the game generally - it was considered
part of the game to work on the forums to try and destroy the developers' intent merely to gain some exploitable advantage. As an example of sheer toxicity and cynical short-sightedness, I haven't seen anything to beat it. I'm sure there are players of that game who will try to do the same here, but that kind of attitude isn't anything like as omnipresent as it was there.
For all that people claim they do, I haven't noticed Frontier massively changing the game to suit whichever loud-mouthed minority is making the most noise in the forums at any given time. They have reams of behind-the-scenes data about who and how many are playing, doing what, when and for how long. They also have their own vision of the game and so far I'm pretty much happy with what they've done and I'm not going to pretend to know how to do it better than them. I'm not a game developer, so I don't know how they did it, but they've managed to make a game that has stopped me playing any other game for any significant length of time for the last six months. That has never happened to me before.
I think your problem is in saying 'us'. You're throwing all of 'us' together, when naturally someone somewhere is not going to be happy and will say so - but that doesn't mean they speak for everyone.
Honestly, I think the game being on another platform is a good thing. The arena looks fun, though I'm not likely to play it much (unless it can make me cold hard in game! Hah!)... but it's an addition to existing gameplay, not a replacement. It adds something without taking anything away. If I don't want to play it, there's already a huge game out there for me to swim around in. Complaining about it is just stupid - which is my opinion. Other people are welcome to disagree.
We aren't all one person. So in answer to your question - I don't think there's anything 'we' could do better, since 'we' don't exist as an entity that makes collective decisions. And I'm pretty certain Frontier know that too, and know that someone somewhere is going to have a hissy fit even if they announce they've made a 1:1 scale virtual galaxy where you can literally walk around in 3301, do any job and go anywhere, taste a chocolate ice cream when you virtually eat it and a free Oculus Rift and gaming rig for everyone on the planet. They're never going to please everybody.
And if there are people around from the aforementioned spreadsheet simulator game, they'll likely complain simply to try to achieve some goal of their own unrelated to improving the game.
