I don’t get it. I really don’t. We’ve got a team working like crazy to pay attention to our every need and our every desire for this marvelous simulator. And left and right, all I can see are posts of flaming hatred toward both the Asobo team and fellow community members. Why the division? Why the hatred? And most importantly, why the lack of respect for a team demonstrating a higher level of dedication to their base than any previous sim we’ve seen before?
So the next question is… what can we do to fix this? How can we reshape the negative views around here to become more constructive and helpful? What can we as a community do to fix ourselves? To end hatred and division? Put a stop to rude or insulting comments like “are you blind?”
I have an odd theory that much of the complaining and constant negativity might be because of such frequent community communication with the development team. I’m not sure why this is such a strange phenomenon, but I almost feel like things run the most smoothly when a team is either 100% hidden from public view and doesn’t keep the public informed, or when a team is 100% transparent and keeps all processes public and tells the public absolutely everything. I can’t pin it down, but it almost seems like the “in-between” of these two situations creates weird conflict where people feel like they have a voice, but they won’t accept anything short of direct upper-level team communication as a confirmation that their voice is being heard.
Anyway, anyone have suggestions for how to sort this out?
I certainly support more civility and patience, commensurate with the fact that this is a $100± piece of software that is new and in the process of development. It isn’t a life or death thing, and I’m surprised by the vitriol. I know it’s fun to vent and the anonymity disconnects people. Not a new thing on the internet forum world, but still not pleasant for those who are here to have fun, learn and share from time to time.
Mark
EDIT: To actually answer your question in addition to agreeing with your goal, I don’t know how to improve it. It is going to be up to participants to try to keep perspective and pretend we are all in the same room together (hard to do these days I know )
Banning people is usually the most effective approach. It´s the tool that former forums developers invented many years ago to apply the so called “common sense”. The other one is the possibility to send complaints to customer service. That was invented by the sales departements decades ago. Rest is useless in my opinion.
The easiest way to cut out the negativity is for the developers to deliver either a proper flight simulation or a proper arcade experience. It’s obvious the hybrid we have now isn’t working for very many people.
They should start by splitting the program into two parts. An arcade game suitable for the XBOX crowd such as GTA 5, and a simulation to cater for the crowd who like in-depth PMDG, TOLIS, A2A etc.
Then people like me who prefer a specialised “experience” can indulge themselves to their heart’s content.
Instantly closing out purely complaining and rant type topics with no constructive feedback would be a good first step.
Another such topic should temporarily ban the user.
IMO the mods here are great but are too loose in terms of restrictions when dealing with people who just want to rant and nothing else.
Yes the sim does need negative feedback immensely to improve, but the majority of rant filled topics don’t contain any and should be instantly locked in my opinion.
Keeping the forums orderly is primarily the moderation team’s responsibility.
People who do not realize the complexity of this product and wrongly assume fixing issues is simple will always exist. There’s no way around it, just as people who are at their first rodeo and haven’t seen or don’t remember that ALL sims of comparable complexity had these or even worse issues at and close to launch.
Then there are many people who aren’t able to express criticism in an evenly remotely civil manner but have to attack the developers and address every issue with spite and rage. Those will always exist as well. This isn’t just related to flight simulators, but to all games. Unfortunately, you’ll always see people who think that a game is either incredibly fantastic or absolutely sh*t with zero room for middle ground. I chalk it mostly to poor education.
It’s the moderation team’s responsibility to identify them, warn them, and if they don’t comply, ban them, temporarily or permanently. So far, I haven’t seen enough of that, and perhaps it’s time to do a nice, through cleanup.
I agree… these guys have to be worn out at the pace they are going. We all want the updates and can be impatient. This impatience causes the devs to try to hurry things out. It takes time to address issues and then ‘test properly’. These guys are probably worn out and beat down by the communities lack of support. How about giving them a pat on the back instead of a kick in the a&*.
those that continue being negative or just repeatedly moaning for the sake of attention should be given forum timeouts or bans.
constructive feedback is always welcome and zendesk is for everyone to submit problems so they can be addressed but the way some are flooding a topic with complaint after complaint and deliberately trolling replies should be dealt with.
But are you also simultaneously asking them to put out frequent updates? That’s the issue General lack of understanding of how the development process works. Patience is needed…
@Jakenben123, I certainly agree with the sentiment of your original / top-level post. Personally I want to see the forums be a place the developers can go to quickly get a feel for current issues, with detailed / concise bug reports (in addition to ZenDesk). And also a place users can troubleshoot and learn as the product continues to evolve. Many of the non-constructive posts you are referring to only hinder those efforts. To answer your question, “How can we improve the state of discussion on these forums and avoid non-constructive negativity?”…
I think our Community Managers summed it up nicely in this post:
If you see posts that are very much non-constructive complaining, please hit the flag button, or send a note with a link to @moderators.
I have been amazed at the complexity Asobo/MS attempted to build into the base with MSFS. Anyone that goes back a couple versions remembers that you had no more automation in a 747 than you had in a 172. Sure all the switches and knobs were there but they didn’t do anything. To have operational glass cockpits and usable FMS across the board, right from the start was VERY ambitious.
Perspective is everything. I was expecting limited automation and steam gauges in the default aircraft. I was most definitely not disappointed. That fact that most of it even works is a bonus.
We ALL need to realize the scope of this project. This is a huge undertaking and they are trying to provide a product that can stand on its own without the need to buy $150 add-on aircraft if you don’t want to. That is a lot to offer. Gonna be some bumps. Patience and constructive input will get us there faster than fighting over personal preferences.
Incidentally, another important issue is that people pollute/clog the general discussion forum with complaints about specific bugs or issues.
This should not be allowed.
The Zendesk should be used to report specific bugs or issues to the developers and we have a Bugs & Issues forum to discuss them with other users.
The moderation team should move posts complaining about specific bugs or issues to the appropriate dedicated forum on sight, but this isn’t done nearly enough.
Yep just use the ignore function. You just want to ban everyone who doesn’t agree with you. Don’t see how that makes the state of the discussion any better. It has been getting a lot worse lately. You guys flag and ban way too much. Just discourages people from participating and ultimately to stop using the product.
Whether you like it or not a big portion of the complaining and posts you want banned, albeit sounds like ranting and complaining, is rooted is factual issues that exist within the program. Just because you may individually have no issues with the game doesn’t mean there aren’t others out there that do have issues that need to be addressed.
We should not need to. There are rules and they should be respected. The rules clearly state that unconstructive posts are not allowed, so they aren’t.
People who are not able to be constructive should not be able to participate in any discussion.
Banning someone from the forum does not prevent them from using the sim. It simply prevents them from being toxic on the forums, which should not be allowed to begin with.
This could have all been avoided if Asobo had been square with the community and apologized for releasing a massive buggy game. The FS community is filled with complainers. No shocker. However many feel cheated because they sold the sim through pictures and videos of a finished sim. Yes they said it was the beginning of a journey. But nobody thought it was gonna be this bad. Anyway at this point every patch will cause a problem. No way around that. So just deal with the negative comments and move on. We are here
The idea that Asobo has been less than open and straightforward with the community is simply false, just like the idea that MSFS is “massively buggy.”
The sim isn’t any more buggy than any other flight sim of comparable complexity at launch. As a matter of fact, it’s more polished despite being more complex and having a much larger scope than its predecessors.
Let´s try to put some clarity on this with plain words:
Best way to address errors is the Helpdesk. It has been said many times by developers. That way they are tracked and stored for analysis. Most games use this system as it´s proven to be the most effective.
Even if you still prefer the forum to do so, and you are lucky than the error is addressed cause somebody noted it down, then forum has a section for bugs. We don´t need to have bug reports populating all other sections.
We don´t need to have 10 posts reporting the same issue from 10 different users in different dates nor even new posts after each update saying that is still unsolved.
We don´t need posts saying that product is incomplete or that they cheated you. If you are not smart enough to know that no software product is final, then better read its terms and conditions in the store. In #11 it´s cleary written that product can get updates.
If you still think they cheated you write to customer service and ask for refund. Any other understanding of how product should be which is different to what developers put on the market it´s only in your imagination. If it´s not in their roadmap or planned they will never change that. And you won´t ever get a refund from a post in a forum.
If you want to propose a change you can use the section for proposals or participate in the meetings they create for community. Get in the threads for that purpose or enter the live streams and put there what you like.
I mean… most things are really a matter of common sense guys.
Thanks for pointing out that we can ignore members. That was easy!
Please, people. If you are having any kind of CTD’s:
Take the time and quickly fill out a Zendesk post. Three minutes could save everyone hours of frustration.
If you want to rant and rave about a CTD then say “exactly” what “you” did to cause the issue. Don’t just say: This is messed up. Of course, it is. Duh!
You as a user are clicking/typing in the program to get it to the point of a CTD. Please, give the exact things you did, every step you did, to cause the issue. With screen prints if possible.
The programmers are not mind-readers. You know that they are probably using different peripherals than you are (joystick/yoke/pedals/etc.) in development so sometimes they cannot duplicate it because you have a different piece of hardware than they do.
I do not see “anyone” posting “anything” about the hardware they are using. This is where I wish we had signatures so we could post our hardware in every post.
I said it once before and I will say it again: You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
And to top it off, you may have already had your joystick/yoke from before and I bet it cost a lot more than this sim did. Think about that for a second…
I am done now. Sorry for the reverse rant. Please put me under your ignore button now.
)
General lack of understanding of how the development process works. Patience is needed…