Tone Moderation

[AbbyRead]

I was recently on a long rant on Discord thinking I was helping. I thought it was important to keep discussion open about a topic when it sounded like an opinion was being invalidated and forcefully shut down by a moderator. I argued my case with the few other non-moderator participants willing to discuss, and we all seemed to have a decent enough time. No one was at each other's throats. We're all pretty damn opinionated, and that's fine. It never went to personal attacks, and even when it seemed like any of us might be getting upset, we assured each other we weren't. Okie dokie, sounds good.

And then I just kept talking. Most of it was the same angle I've always had. The game is flawed, and here's how. It's critical; I get that. But the way I've always seen it is that I'm not aiming to shit on anyone's work; I'm just on there to gush about the game and the dreams I have for it. Some of those dreams directly conflict with other people's ideas of what is good for the game. But overall, I'm just very adamant about my opinion. I've gotten invalidation about things like saying the early game was a slog and things take too long. Stuff like, "Well no one else has said that." "Nobody else seems to have a problem with it." So then I feel like I have to get defensive; otherwise my opinion is just unimportant. Like I have to argue why I should even be heard from the get-go.

I don't think it's all intentional. I think everyone just gets defensive when goals conflict. But I still like to give feedback, even or especially critical feedback. It's important. I'm not coming onto these places to just show cat pictures and blow smoke up people's asses. I'll do that too, but that's not what I'm here or there for. I'm mainly on here because I feel like I share the same interest in talking about the game. Or at least I used to. I don't know anymore. I can't tell how much of it's because I have a mental condition that blows things out of proportion or if there's just genuinely a fundamental difference to what I see as important for both the game and the areas we're supposed to be discussing it on. I just really don't fucking know. It's been days since the incident, and I'm still not over it. Getting blindsided by a prerecorded response that tells me and others like me we basically shouldn't discuss things at length if they're going to be critical on there. Go to the forums.

The forums are a ghost town. There are still pinned topics from FlowerChild that make it seem at first glance like he's still the developer. There's a lot of old content that's outdated and incompatible, and it's a better bet to just go to the GitHub repos for up-to-date content. People talk on the discord. Sure, I'll post this topic here, and maybe I'll get one or two responses maybe, but who knows. Some posts don't get any responses for weeks, and I just end up seeing my stupid screen name as the last one posting in a whole category. So yeah, I'll go on here and bitch into the void. Fuck it. What've I got to lose. I already want to bail on everything for like the third time. Borderline Personality Disorder is a fucking mess to live with. I feel like the purpose in my life has dropped out because the thing I've been working at for weeks (coding addons) no longer has potential for any feedback because I've fucking decided I can't have friends in large groups. It just doesn't work out. Mic drop, I'm fucking done.

[AbbyRead]

At the time I reacted to the canned response with indignant hostility, but I realized quickly that I was just lashing out because I felt hurt. Like I did something wrong that nobody even warned me not to do. I’m not great at handling criticism when it’s unexpected, and not having any of my arguments actually addressed in any way made it seem like everything I said (and yeah, it was a lot) was entirely unnecessary and unwanted.

But I know that I react poorly, and I knew that I reacted poorly at the time. So I apologized and tried to validate the stance of the mods. See both sides, and understand we’re all people, and we all have feelings. But I think I loaded all the expectations and criticism for the day's events onto me, and in retrospect, I don’t think I’m the only person who could have handled things better.

We all want things to be easy and fun and comforting, but if there isn’t conflict, there isn’t growth. It’s not about sensitivity and needing to suck it up. I think that’s bullshit. Sensitivity is an indicator that you care deeply about something. Sensitivity is a good thing. I’m not telling anyone they are wrong to have feelings. Especially not the developers on this mod. What I’m saying is that tone control is a form of walking on eggshells. I don’t want that for people that have to deal with me, and I don’t want that for the btw community at large. We have to be willing to work through our triggers and treat scuffles on a case by case basis, context included. It’s either that or we add to the rules list because that’s the easy way out.

I don’t think telling people to be mindful of their tone is helpful. I think it’s a power play and makes for less genuine conversation. And a less friendly atmosphere overall. Despite that being the thing trying to be avoided by tone control. Confrontation cannot be avoided by good will and happy feelings. It will sneak up on you regardless. Too many topic taboos and too much conversation snuffing is a breach of trust in the community, and will lead to ruin. I don’t want to see this community go up in flames and fracture, but I also at this point don’t know that I can be a part of it either. I’m too volatile or it’s too volatile, and I don’t think either is handling their shit well.

[rockoutwill]

I can't contribute much to what you're saying or how you're feeling, because I've been guilty of shutting people down for basically the same reason of "no one else thinks this so you're wrong"

But I can relate to the lack of motivation to work on an add-on because it seems like no one cares.

I also would like to say, I think more people read the forums than what is let on, it's just not as noticable anymore.

You did make an excellent point with it being almost like a museum of sorts to FC cause of the lack of activity, I almost wonder if we should archive a bunch of his posts and try to reinvigorate the forums, or if that's just a waste.

Really I'm just responding to say I'm sorry you had a terrible experience, hopefully you stick around and we can work on resolving this, the BTW community should be a safe fun place for those of us who feel passionate about the mod

[Epsilon]

I've not watched the Discord for a while, so I'm going purely of what you describe here.
Also, I want to mention that I've tried to get into creating my own variant for BTW CE, but have not found the time to do so. I have however already received support/advice and offers of support once I get around to finally do it.

One sentiment that got across to me, is that you would like the early game to be quicker / less of a grind. Assuming I got that right, you're not alone, there already are several CE add-ons that go in that direction. However, every mod author has his own preferences and angle, and CE tries to more or less stay true to the original FC vision; and that - by common belief - includes a "soulslike" experience of punishment, learning and the joy of triumph finally having overcome an obstacle.

Now for a bit of speculation: I guess complaining that you don't line the early game because things take so long if fair, that's your opinion. Question is what do you do after that complaint?
- Pushing "the developers" towards changing the mod (CE that is)?
--: Likely a bad idea.
- Gathering support of other people that have similar feelings and then approaching the developers about the issue and asking if they could think about changes? And only once they ask, hand over your proposed changes.
--: Similar to the above, but "the nice way" of doing it
- Ask how to get into modding and make your own add-on implementing what you wish to be changed.
--: That is quite some work, I understand that. But it is for sure THE best way to handle things. And I can assure you there are people willing to help you set up things and get into modding the game.

I generally agree with you that discussion is important. And in that, especially confronting positions are what advance things way more than just constant affirmation. However, I would like to ask you to change perspective for a moment. Imagine you used a substantial amount of your free time - besides work, studies, family, hobbies - to create something you're really proud of. Then someone comes around and criticizes your creation. No matter if that criticism is justified or not, it's gonna feel bad. Now imagine that critique was presented in an even slightly rude manner, or a manner that can be interpreted as rude if caught off guard (not accusing you of having done that. I was not there). That's gonna feel even worse.
Let's now look at another scenario. Again, you created something you're proud of. But this time you're already used to people complaining about it, and your way of dealing with it is to mostly ignore them or politely telling them to "fuck off". Now imagine someone comes around and does not let go of crying for change (again, not implying you have done so). How would you deal with that?
(A reminder that we're talking about creators that use their free time for this, not corporations; they're a whole different beast)

Now that we've that though experiment done, I hope that you might better understand what happened. And reflecting about it will maybe help you get over it and channel that power into a future project.

I'm passionate about BTW too, btw. I also was never fully happy with BTW, but then I was never with any game that I poured a substantial amount of time in. There're also things I would have done differently about CE and the various mods for it; but I'm not the developer of any of that! I have the free choice to play it or not to; I can also engage with the community and chat about my opinions; one day I will get around to make my own mod :D "and all my dreams will become true be crushed by reality" ;)

[dawnraider]

So to clarify on things, the intention was not to moderate tone or anything like that. The issue is that that kind of discussion had grown to dominate on the discord, pushing other discussion out, and pushing other people out. Criticism is fine (welcome, even), the entire discord turning into nothing but criticism is a problem, and we were getting there.

The only thing we were doing was requesting that that specific kind of discussion be moved here, for a couple reasons:
1) I believe the forums provide a better place for longer form analysis of gameplay and the dynamics and incentives therein.
2) The forums and particular threads are opt-in, not opt-out. For people who do not want to participate in those discussions, on the forums they can choose to avoid those threads. On discord you can't really do much about it except at best ignore the channel for a while.
3) It gives more people a chance to contribute to the discussion. The discord isn't crazy, but it does move quickly enough, especially during involved discussions, that it makes it difficult for people who aren't online at that exact moment to engage with the conversation.
4) You're absolutely right that these forums are a ghost town, and I would hope that moving some gameplay discussion over here would help to reinvigorate things a bit.

Also keep in mind that Zhil's message was not directed specifically at you. That had been something we were discussing for a while.

Posting Zhil's message here for posterity, since people reading this likely missed it:

Spoiler

Show

Offering criticism about the mod is okay, but there are some consequences to that:
1) We can only have these long conversations about balance if they were preceded and followed by plenty of support for the development of the mod by contributors. People (especially Dawn) are putting a lot of free time into making these things and that's not a given and the minute we critique more than we cheer is when it starts becoming less fun to work on the project. We are past that point now. There needs to be more cheering and less negativity, bikeshedding and critique on small minutiae (everyone is going to dislike at least one thing about the mod and if we all say, chat is just nothing but that).

2) The forum is opt-in: everyone can choose what thread to click in what category and when. The Discord is not. Every message you write is forced to be read by people (or at the very least scroll by). Negativity about the state of the mod can feel fatiguing for players, because they came here to talk with other players about what they like, not to talk to people about what they don't like about the mod. I encourage everyone to takes these longer conversations to the forums for that reason, to keep chat lighter.

3) The CE version of the mod has a clear design goal that was discussed with the community, and what the community clearly wanted was for CE to stick as close to FlowerChild's vision as possible. This means being extremely delicate with any changes to balance. For every 100 ideas discussed, only 1 is likely to actually make it into the mod and it won't be in the form you envisioned. That is just the way things are going to be. This also means that when Dawn says an idea is not likely to be included, you just to accept that and either move on or make an addon to showcase your idea is something players should play with. When that addon is out though, I implore you not to see this chat as a place to constantly try and recruit players. Give people room to play regular BTW first.