Agree with OP, the players and people around Elite (I don't even want to call it community anymore since it clearly isn't) has turned into a steaming toxic pile of bile that I'm ashamed to be a part of. At one point it was one of the few games I'd happily identify myself with given some of the amazing conversations being had about how artificial gravity could be made to work on a ship with decks, what materials and construction methods could make X ship and Y station, city domes, planet colonisation. You name it, back in the day the discussions were vibrant and these days it feels like every other thread is "check out how awesome I am" or "whats the latest exploit". Sure some of the "see how awesome I am" threads these days are actually good but many are cringeworthy as hell.
Anyway, I digress... It actually irritates me that between the [insert insult here] there are still some really awesome people here as well as a few new ones who actually engage in discussion rather than eternally projecting their propaganda. I'm irritated because if it weren't for those I'd be able to leave properly and occasionally flick through the patch notes etc without feeling like i'm missing too many things. Instead there's the occasional epic tale/event like Distant Worlds or amazing OC like the ToCoSo concepts or the Isononas flight assist off series etc etc
I urge everyone to look back at your posting history, when was the last time you:
-Admitted you were wrong
-Provided good solid advice to someone without sarcasm/git-gud etc
-Created and posted original content
-Recognised and discussed 2 sides of an arguement in one post
-Put a concept across as an idea or something to tweak/build on instead of "This way is the best way, do it exactly like this or the game dies"
Sure sometimes discussing the latest exploit is something we need to do. Sometimes discussing what's broken or not yet finished is something we need to do. It's all part of it, but as the OP quite rightly says some people are going about this in a way which is just the epitome of being an [insult here].
Personally I now have a ridiculous number of people on my ignore list because I don't feel it's worth my time even trying to engage them in conversation since I know they'll just ignore any points I make in order to continue saying exactly what they want to say. Discussion involves give and take yet I can easily name anywhere between 50 and 100 people who I can look through their post history and find they've never changed an opinion or discussed something properly without resorting to either personal attacks or repeating the same comment over and over again. Nobody is that smart that everything they think/say is correct and perfect yet everyone seems to think that not sticking to an arguement point is somehow "a crime punishable by death"
. I don't know, maybe I missed the memo and we are all scoring internet points or something on a win-loss ratio?
Edit: Another thing that bothers me here is the endless -for-tat on things like PvE/PvP, Open/Solo/Group etc. Again internet points it would seem. I don't expect everyone to get along at all times but these entire arguments could probably be summed up in 20 bullet points of Pros and Cons instead of a 30,000 post megathread of insult trading.
