The forum has become a very negative place recently. It seems every single decision is jumped on immediately with a big over reactions, anger and often misinformation. To clarify, I’m not necessarily saying I personally agree or disagree, but the reactions are often over the top and spread negativity.
eg the recent buffs -yes there’s more deserving heroes but there are reasons these are buffed as they are supposed to be new event heroes and some were under par, others you can have a more cynical view of… but even still, the amount of name calling, threats and anger seems incredible and we have people trying to make it worse by saying it was done silently or underhandedly when actually it’s the same as it’s been previously. It’s a buff of 4 heroes that while recent aren’t in the “meta”
I’m aware for many it’s a case of the straw that breaks the camels back, where it’s just one last thing that sends people over their personal edge (for which I feel for those people) however if you came on this forum recently you could conclude everyone hates the game. Whereas in game, a very small number I know actually have complained recently which shows the active forum members arent a representative sample of the player base overall.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m not worried about the future of the game with the speed it’s changing etc but I do beleive the constant negativity is creating a siloed view of the game where reading the forum actually encourages a negative view of things -when I talk to others not on the forum the same anger and concern just isn’t there.
The point of this thread then is to provide a discussion for
Considering the reasons for negativity
The impact this is causing on the forum and members
How to ensure it doesn’t take enjoyment out of the game, because it is “entertainment” after all
I’m aware this is likely to be controversial and the intent is not to continue arguments and blame games from other threads but is to see if others feel the same as me regarding the excessive negativity and whether there is anything that can be done constructively about it
It’s standard practice in business that a complainer will tell 10 people whereas someone who gets good service will tell 1 or 2 tops about it.
Most people only bother to complete a survey if they have a rant they want to get off there chest.
So it’s not a surprise that whenever something happens that might annoy a section the majority of the voices we hear are the ones complaining about it.
Same thing in Telluria Nerf…same thing in hamgate.
Most players just plod on and don’t give it much thought but there’s always a noisy minority.
I agree with this, it can become very dispiriting seeing every announcement mocked, derided, called a money grab etc.
Life is stressful, this is an escape. At times you’d think SG had announced they were going to slaughter everyone’s first born. An example is the thread title for the complaints about magic tower
Yes, by all means disagree, explain your decision but the world is not ending. This is meant to be fun, if it stops being fun stop, find a new pastime. It’s not helped either by people who have openly stated they no longer play the game because of how they dislike it/SG/ other games are better etc coming on repeatedly and complaining. Fine, we get it you don’t like it and have a new game. Good luck in the future but why come back weekly giving out.
There have been doomsayers since the beginning of the game saying the game is about to close and masses are stopping playing. If the game closes it closes (would be willing to bet it won’t be as soon as just after next Zynga payout as claimed by some though) Lets enjoy it while it’s here.
I recall I tried to get some reason on a Facebook group last year (before I left it)
People were in hard lockdowns, family members very ill and I tried to reason that this is only a game and an escape for some from a very hard time.
The response was that since the complainer had no elderly relatives and they were young and healthy they didn’t care about that. They just cared about whatever thing in the game annoyed them to have an explosion of a rant.
That was me done with it. Some people can’t see past there own noses and if a game gets you that wound up then please for your own mental health and sanity just put it down and take a deep breath. There’s a lot of self-entitlement in the world at times. It saddens me tbh.
When the updates are nice like auto dead leader demotion, everyone gets happy. Same for other QOL improvements that we had over time. Now buffing already strong heroes (not like they doesn’t deserve it) while ignoring 13948 other suggestions for years and expected playerbase to stay quiet is kinda strange. I strongly believe the negativity is result of Zynga’s actions. Otherwise we would be celebrating the updates. Now we have to accept and agree on everything just because complaining is spreading negativity? I dunno.
I hate the idea of blaming and finding reasons to blame players (covid19 isolation and others) for Zynga’s greedy moves.
Unfortunately, SG deserves all the bad faith feedback because feedback is completely ignored. Beta testers try, but they don’t take any of their suggestions. I admit I’m guilty of this, expecting the worst. Rarely and I wrong, looks at Magic Tower. That event was a disaster, PR wise. Sure, maybe they made a bundle of money, but war it worth it? This is a business and we are paying costumers. All the criticism is completely warranted.
You can put me in the “What do you expect” group. The way Zynga pretty much ignores the Quality of Life for its end users while pushing events down our throat, or the “randomness” of the boards which seems to have been severely skewed towards the house (in more than just a random way), or the lack of 4* Ascension Mats… To cycle back to the topic, all new hero buffs (and new costumes for event heroes does) is increase the power creep, and makes the readily available S1 heroes (and players whose roster relies on them) fall further behind. Long story short, if you ignore your customer base, then they have every right to express their opinion - positive or negative, when the company makes a move - especially when that move doesn’t address basic issues that - as others have noted - have been complained about for ages…
I agree on this, I’m not intending people should not criticize or comment. It’s those who get so angry and over react that it is both a problem for them and a problem for the community.
The below also shows the issue however - boards appear to genuinely be random but everyone complaining about it without proof makes it somehow a legitimate thing to complain about / beleive even though it’s very likely not true
I agree I don’t think the forum is representative of the player base. In some ways this is to be expected, players taking the game “seriously” will look into things like the forum, player guides, YouTube etc whereas the more “casual” players will play the game and not invest extra time to it beyond that (obviously there are exceptions)
In my alliance, I believe I’m the only one who uses the forum. We’re a middling alliance (7-8* titans) the core of which have been together 3 years or so. Very few of the big forum issues have even been brought up in our chat, most passing by unnoticed. And where they are raised, they often fall in line with SGG - e.g. there was a general agreement with the Telly nerf and didn’t care about the magic tower flags, as they didn’t even use all 50 free ones (due to curses, roster depth and/or time commitment).
This is exactly my experience and I suspect most others. While it’s not entirely surprising it is useful to remember this context as this is the context (ie the full player base) game decisions are based
That is what I would call the average player. It’s just a way to chill and escape for a bit. Don’t get stressed about much and just play it at the pace they want. My old alliance was similar…no one even knew a thing about the Telluria thing until I mentioned it was happening. They just shrugged and carried on
To answer the thread header question: No. The forum is only a portion of the whole player base. Those here are likely to be a bit more serious about the game, and could probably be described as being passionate about it to some degree. And passion can become twisted at times.
As for the discussion points…
It’s the internet. I personally tend to assume a lot of user interactive things on the internet to be quite negative, even on things which start out positive. It’s all too common from what I come across, and a decent discussion is rare to see. Anonymity plays a part to allow the negativity of some people be communicated in a raw manner which they not exhibit during ‘real’ life situations.
Now, some of the negativity is related to actual issues with the game experience. A negative experience is more widely shared as Cheds points out. How an individual handles their dissatisfaction is the issue. Whether their dissatisfaction can be realistically resolved is unknown to us.
Impact on the forum? I would guess it means more work for the mods, especially if the negativity spreads from just a rant to an argument between users.
As for enjoyment… I see the forums and the game as separate things. Suppose the forums are so bad to the extent it drives me away, I’d still play the game unless that drives me away!
I mean, these are three pretty good examples of irrational complaining. Like, I agree with your general premise that Zynga prioritizes revenue over QOL, but…
“Pushing events down own throats” is a ridiculous complaint. If you don’t like them, don’t play them! You don’t have to pull in every event, you don’t have to even attempt to play through them if it doesn’t feel worth it to you.
Skewed boards? Come on man. At least attempt to bring some evidence if you’re going to make a claim like that.
Lack of 4* mats? There are more available than ever before. Yeah, you have to pay for some of them; that’s the nature of any P2W mobile game. If you don’t like it, then P2W mobile games aren’t for you, and that’s a perfectly reasonable position to take. But it’s not reasonable to expect a game developer to make a game which doesn’t incentivize spending. And to reiterate, there are more opportunities to get them than at any point in the game’s history, including more opportunities to get them for free than at any point in the game’s history.
In a fan forum you will always get the most passionate players. A change which ‘ruins’ the game means a lot to them. That is why people don’t stay balances in their responses. I’m afraid expecting anything else form the internet is to ignore everything we know about the internet. Pretty sure it is like this on every other fan forum. Whether it is indoor bowls to heavy metal. Or even a game on your phone.
Personally I just ty to read the useful bits which keep me in the loop of what is going on in the game and not worry about the negativity
One of the problems with relentless negativity is that it tends to obscure genuine concerns. If every single change is greeted with chorus of “Greedy devs! Last time I spend a penny on this game! This is the death knell of all non-whales!”, then they’re just going to shrug at all negative feedback and go “they’re always complaining, they just keep playing and paying, don’t worry about it”. But some things should be worried about. If only we could all agree what those things were… (I’ve expressed some misgivings about the pace of new event/hero introductions, for example, whilst the dupe wastage problem, plus a sad (but by no means absolute) shortage of QOL progress, not to mention the mere existence of the lamentable - but hilarious - Salmon Loki, would probably get a reasonable amount of traction if they were not drowned out by the white noise.)
True that. It does somewhat amuse me when someone comes on here and tells you about this fabulous new game they play that does everything better than E&P and (this is the important bit) is not just after your money. Give them a few months and the pitchforks will be out for that one too, guaranteed.
I think the negativity represents the player base, but the calls that it’s going to cause everyone to leave are vastly overstated. Most of these things get me at least thinking it’s a bad idea. But I can’t say it truly affects me. One day I may just say “well it’s just not worth it anymore”.
Forum negativity used to be a concern for me but have chosen to drop it, bcoz it grabs a lot of energy if I engage with it & it is simply not worth it !
However, since this post / thread is active, I felt like sharing my experience, the way I see it in the E&P space = this forum & game connected terminals outside like - Facebook & youTubers (influencers via fans) = all play a collective role in driving this forum’s sentiments…
While this game is mainly to have FuN, I find there are many different interests / agendas at play here, wherein negativity is used as a TOOL regularly.
Example: I recently told a YouTuber that I found his constant repetition of words : power creep, money grab = negativity which few fans blindly adopt as their PoV too… despite the same person constantly summoning a lot to build a big roster = actions contradicts his PoV / words about SG…!
&
Yes, the same person also all the time promotes another copy-cat cousin version game as being better than E&P…!
I also, wonder, why don’t these people leave if it is such a torture / suffering ?! Answer is not so difficult to guess!
While this forum is for all aspects / angles / perspectives of discussions w.r.t to E&P, a constructive discussion has lot of FuN & learning = translates into a good playing experience = QoL created by players…!
While players totally deserve QoL improvements from SG, they also owe it themselves = to provide the playing QoL to themselves & co-players …. What Say?!
I would like to share that indeed the forum atmosphere does not represent my alliance as well.
Furthermore, with some of the criticism I could agree if it wasn’t so exaggerated. I would say that exaggeration is a bad strategy for convincing anybody. Somebody who already agrees with you might like your exaggeration, but convincing means, hmm, convincing somebody with a different opinion. Exaggerating makes the target focus on your mistaken extreme statements instead of on your correct core ideas.
SG doesn’t deserve ALL the ■■■■■■■■ and moaning, but they deserve a lot of it. Take the latest buffs announced. It’s painfully obvious that Villains didn’t do great “money-wise” for SG this month. It’s because Magic Tower came this month too (but I digress)…anyways, they saw that and said hey, let’s make a couple of those heroes more desirable to push people into pulling more. That’s fine, I get it and they did need a little help to be on par to be honest. But what’s crappy is they took it too far and buffed two circus heroes that were already at top level and pushed them over the top. Why? That to me is where they deserve some scolding and some “WTF” posts. I mean…c’mon man!
