people are tribal, territorial and can be petty and vindictive. The internet does nothing to assuage those tendencies - usually the opposite. Take a break if you need it, or stay positive and stay connected if you can. The only control you have is of yourself.
Block or ignore repeat offenders.
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I know youâre right.
Driving on any crowded interstate highway makes that abundantly clear.
As Iâve gotten older, Iâve learned to (mostly) control my frustrations with all the territoriality. I stay in the center or right lane, drive the speed limit, and do my best to ignore bad drivers. Every so often though I just have to bang my hand on the steering wheel and wonderâŠWHY?
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I agree. Itâs so easy for people to be rude, vindictive, negative when they are heading behind a screen with an anonymous pseudonym. The hard part is recognizing those people for who they are. Simple solution is to leave the forums, but then thatâs what those trolls want. They want to be heard and are happy to have the drama that goes with it. Best solution as others have stated is ignore them or block them or if deemed necessary have them flagged and reported to the mods.
Like the OP I have found more negativity over the last while, but instead of leaving the forums, because this is a great venue to discuss all the great flight sim topics, Iâve limited my readership to only those threads that interest me. When it comes to threads I do read, if there is a negative post, I skip it and move on. Itâs hard sometimes especially if youâve asked for advice and get spammed for not knowing the answer.
To the OP, what ever your decision is, do what is in your best interest to be happy and safe. Hope to see you in the skies. 
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Would this be considered a Freudian spell-check slip? 
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Phew ⊠It did leave a lasting impression 
That was the first flight sim forum I joined too.
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The really hard part I think is to avoid a terse response back and to avoid becoming embroiled in a really negative exchange of views. This does no one any favours as far as I can see. Some people here are really good at avoiding this but others just canât resist jumping in. Just like in real life some people have short fuses and over time we learn to recognise most of them. In real life I think most of us would avoid them. It might make sense to do the same here i.e. just ignore the negative comment.
Often itâs just best to move on to another thread. I think life is too short to be wasted on any unnecesary or pointless arguements in an anonymous forum. Just as it is in real life as well I think.
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Whilst there is always going to be an under current of negativity and some really annoying entitled behaviour, often along the lines of âI paid $10 for this product and the features I demanded last month are still not implementedâ, most of the time the content is reasonable and people genuinely try to help each other out.
For every post attacking some Dev or other over some assumed slight where they did not get an instant response to a complaint, there are half a dozen people jumping in trying to find solutions or a work around for whatever the problem is.
I would say the forums are 85% positive.
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The game is still broken in many ways after all these years. Things donât get fixed. Spending tons of time of my day trying to figure out why things still donât work has earned the game a new name for me⊠Microsoft Tech Support Simulator. We have to go somewhere for help and to get things off our chest. Sorry if it frustrates you. Hopefully it gets the attention of the people making the game. I think thatâs what people want to achieve. Many Xbox users still canât get their mouse to work. Thatâs just so basic and fundamental and they still donât have a solution. Itâs just stuff like that that brings people here. Weâre ignored. All they can say is install a vanilla copy of the game. Which I just did on my PC. Then I install all the world updates, all my planes and scenery bought from the Msfs store. And I lose all my honeycomb bindings, all my video settings, all my settings. I canât get the Sim to advance past a weird screen. I could go on and on. Itâs a frustrating Sim if youâre not into spending your day(s) doing tech support.
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As I said in my original post, many people have valid concerns about many aspects of the sim. Each of us have decisions to make every time we sit in front of a keyboard, or our flight controls.
You feel that the team responsible for creating the sim and fixing its problems are unresponsive. I get that. I also understand the psychology behind the need to keep repeating our concerns if we feel those concerns are not being addressed.
Sometimes it reminds me of the citizen who attends every city council meeting, and uses their time at the podium to continually browbeat their elected officials about the same thing, meeting after meeting. Fixing things takes time. I understand that people are frustrated when they donât feel that things are being fixed fast enough, or exactly as they wish.
I would argue that there are many people (myself included) for whom the sim experience has been very good. I donât have CTDâs. I get good performance out of a modest system (as long as I manage my expectations, and am willing to work within the system to make changes in my hardware/software tailored to the needs of the sim.) Is it perfect? No. Are there things that need to be fixed? Yes.
I prefer helping others resolve those issues that are resolvable. Constantly complaining about the same thing does nothing positive, except to make the echo chamber louder.
As I said, we all have decisions to make.
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Yes, I see this in other threads and all credit to you for this . Helping is definitely much more rewarding than constantly whinging as you so very obviously know.
I do think though that a lot of the frustration and constant harping etc etc is due to a perceived lack of real communication and acknowledgement of issues which people are experiencing. If this could somehow be improved then I think much of the negativity would be avoided. In my experience most people are very reasonable and understanding when the facts are put in front of them and when they think that they are genuinely being listened to.
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I guess the questions I would ask in response are:
- How many issues have the developers looked at?
- How many have they worked on?
- How many have they resolved?
Others ask:
- How many issues have the developers ignored?
- How many have they been unable to resolve?
- How many have they postponed in favor of âfluffâ?
All valid. When I really think about it, I have to agree that most of the members here are, if not relentlessly positive, at least reasonably logical with complaints and requests. Itâs really the repetition of negative comments - the banging on the window, if you will - that drove me to my own personal level of frustration. I donât want to single out any particular complaint. But you have to agree that some of them, while valid complaints, tend towards nitpicking.
I have to be careful not to disparage what I see as nitpicking, however.
Whatâs important to me are not the only things that matter. Others have the right to express their concerns about anything that bothers them. What breaks otherâs immersion may seem trivial to me. That doesnât make me (or them) objectively right, or wrong
And of course, the main difference between deciding whether to remain a part of this forum, and continuing to use the sim, is that one costs money, and the other doesnât. People get a bit antsy when they feel theyâve wasted money. I personally canât fathom thinking that the money Iâve spent on this software was wasted. But thatâs just me.
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When you solve someoneâs problem, I find it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling which makes it worthwhile.
I say to those people, âUntil itâs fixed, work with what youâve got.â
Remember when we had the loopback or turn-back bug when given an approach? Well, I managed to figure out a workaround which worked perfectly, and I posted it on here. You know, to help others. It only took a couple of mouse clicks.
But it just got ignored; theyâd all rather just keep on complaining.
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Try finding/sticking to a community fly in. I heard those are a great time.
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I plan to get started with those soon.
I suffer from a little OCD when it comes to mapping all the controls in my 2D virtual cockpit. I despise using a mouse to fly, and it takes time to map everything in SPAD - especially since I recently got a couple of Streamdecks.
Group flights are understandably limited to a class of aircraft (low and slowâŠhigh and fast) and I have yet to join one in a plane Iâve set up fully.
They do sound like fun. Some day soon⊠(as I click 'PayPal to confirm the purchase of the latest cool plane. 
)
Most of my flying these days is in groups flights. I still go solo a lot, usually at weekends in between other events but mid-week flying is usually a bit of helicopter practice whilst checking out some PG city I havenât visited yet and/or some new freeware helipad type stuff then a longer group flight.
Come and join us in some group sessions! DM me if you want a list of the ones I like.
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Unfortunately you are 100% in your assessment.
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I am truly amazed at how people everywhere have become so petty.
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That xkcd is one of my favourites and ever since it came out Iâve approached online discussions differently. Iâll say my piece and if someone comes back with good arguments that I can address then I probably will, but if responses get repetitive then Iâll just stop and leave.
That cartoon pretty much taught me that having the last word and winning the argument are not the same thing and Iâm happy to let someone else have the last word. Online discussions for me have been much more productive since I understood that.
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