Is "the community" toxic?

I am a relative newcomer to flight simming. I bought MSFS upon launch, and have about 1000 hours in it so far (and love it), but I’m very aware that’s nothing compared to a lot of people on here.

Almost everyone seems to make a point of referencing the flight sim “community” in a positive way, but almost every thread I read seems to descend into squabbling almost immediately. Often it’s pretty much akin to a figurative bunch of cats in a sack fighting.

So, a noob question: Is this unique to MSFS, or has it always been this way?

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In my experience from other sims/games, the ‘community’ on most forums tend not to be particularly representative of the wider player base. Forums tend to attract the most opinionated, both positively and negatively, along with a few people who seen to enjoy arguing for the sake of it. It’s generally best to just ignore such noise, and use the forums your own way. You don’t have to participate in squabbles, and most of them are fairly pointless anyway.

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There is always going to be those type of people where ever you go in life. Especially online where you can hide behind your internet connection. Easy to lip someone off when you don’t have to face them.

Having said that there is more helpful people in life, than not. We are all pretty much here for the same reasons we like flight sims, some of us stay, some of us go.

The whole world is going through a tough time with all the BS out there right now. So I think its easy to lash out sometimes at a person you will never meet. Do yourself a favour don’t get caught up in the toxic posts and don’t take it personally. Just take a breathe and move on.

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My experience is that it is not worse here than on other game forums, like racing sim for example, or facebook for that matter :grimacing:

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Yes, I know exactly what you mean. For example, I was a big fan of the Division games, which certainly had their problems, and the MSFS forums remind me of the Division ones before things got fixed.

But the difference is that no-one kept going on about the Division “community” like it was some kind of unusually supportive brother/sisterhood, when it really doesn’t appear to be a lot of the time.

It doesn’t bother me in the slightest though, I just sort of found it interesting and wondered what longer established members of the community (no italics) thought.

It’s only one-tenth as corrosive as a typical gaming forum, Discord server or subreddit. The mods do a good job.

People have COVID fatigue too, and I’m sure that affects things.

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I would say no. “The Community” is not toxic. Just don’t get sucked into the distractions.

Have a blessed evening

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I am not a fan of the “toxic” moniker for anything. It gets thrown around far too soon and far too often. Everything we don’t like gets placated as toxic these days.

This forum seems to be more civil than other places I frequent on the internet. We will see if this holds up after the XBOX launch when we get an influx of an entirely different crowd. So far a lot of mature simmers have come here as an alternative to AVSIM. Some are quite narcissistic and elitist, but that is just how a part of the sim community is.

MS/Asobo just gives players a lot to grief about, which naturally causes some backlash. So far the mods and the community make the best of the situation in my eyes.

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Fair enough. Should have also said “toxic”.

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That’s a good observation, and mirrors my experience.

When it gets to be “too much” I just close my browser and grab my latest book…

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This place in particular is awesome overall as it’s a new breath of fresh air in flight sim forums.
With much more diverse age and styles of flight sim consumers. There is a much broader way of thinking that takes place here that one can appreciate compared to older forums.
Unfortunately there are some stale old decrepit tar pit fossil forum communities who are just bitter and hate change and evolution of technology…cough cough like Virtual Reality and the idea of a flight sim going to consoles…cough…XBox…cough…and younger simmers.:rofl:
You can have a great time with the flight sim community in general as long as you come in with an open mind that this particular genre consumer base can sometimes be…

Very obsessive
Overly emotional
Very Argumentative
Extremely Biased
Very Stubborn
Excessively Critical
Extremely Impatient

Other than those few🤣…things there are very friendly, knowledgably and helpful people when it comes to newcomers getting started into this wonderful hobby.
The one thing you will learn quickly…veteran experienced simmers will be more willing to help you as long as you are open to criticism and listen. If you are gonna debate about a topic please come in with thicker skin and actually know what you are talking about because someone will definitely call your bluff every time and “passionately educate you” on such matter.
While direct hurtful insults are one thing…there is no real reason to be offended over sim talk, after all its just “techy nerd babble” between fellow simmers.:beers:

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I don’t think the community is toxic. But certain members may behave like that sometimes. It can be heat of the moment stuff, with someone not acting their normal self. For everyone else, the forum provides ways of dealing with the unruly.

I’ve rarely seen some truly obnoxious things written, where things have got personal, but I chalk that up to someone who probably doesn’t have very good interpersonal skills in the real world.

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same as everything else in life - take what you like from it and leave the rest.

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Ha! Me too, join the club (re. interpersonal skills). Or community.

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Agreed – no different to other current GAME forums, but very different from the forums back in the days of FSX, when more of the post were from Simmers.

Times change … standards change - attitudes change - sometimes not always for the best.

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Well IMHO, a community should not be “Toxic” however I have seen better behaviour from my 3-4 year old Nephews in some threads, the idea of a community is to help each other…fed up with the constant attitutude of “negativity”…yet they have no solutions themselves. Also the speculation and rumours…also I find it laughable that many people are putting XBOX users down. (Before you ask been simming for 20 years, am a PC owner…not a console owner, not interested) but this is future and change…embrace it. Yes there are issues with MSFS, but I have had issues with every software I have bought…its part of life…but I wont lose sleep over it or “find it the most depressing day of my life.” So if your totally unhappy send a ticket to zendesk let them sort it out…if not happy go back to what you enjoyed instead of getting stressed.

Edit…however have seen some great tips from other users, and have learnt a lot…with certain specific threads.

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Re. XBox, it was interesting that on the recent dev questions, contrary to what many people have been claiming since day 1 about dumbing down, they said the optimisations that they’ve prepared will lead to a lot more complexity across the board and much better performance. So dumbing up, at least.

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We need to be careful not to misinterpret the things that people say or mean to say.

I don’t think that XBOX players are put down by most people around here, but recognized as a demographic with diverging goals and play styles. A console without HOTAS or keyboard is just not very conducive to IFR flying and interfacing with an airliner FMS.

There is a certain circle of simmers that is quite reclusive in their perceived superiority bubble, but overall the influx of console players is rightly considered as a good thing to happen. But it will bring some divergence along with the diversity, that is a given.

For the hardcore simmers, this sim has been a bit of a letdown in certain respects and I can respect that just as much as the joy of the people that have had nothing but positive play sessions with their sim - however rare that may be.

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But what did these hardcore simmers expect? I’m a noob, and even I know that every flight sim to date has been really unstable for the first year at least. It’s a work in progress.

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It’s the fact that the sim is so buggy and has been since day one. Also there are major flight model issues and avionics systems that are just wrong. Then they release these “UPDATES” world or sim, that break more than they fix. Then they release hot fixes that don’t actually fix stuff. It literally makes zero sense why the game was released so early. Also Asobo needs to focus on the basics and fix what they have before they try and add eye candy.

Same thing in all the treads. Same thing since day one. They don’t seem to operate in a logical world for some reason or care it seems.

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