negativity effects

Elad13

I was just thinking about how and if negative comments effect a games life. So I looked at 2 games that lost their attraction within 60 days from purchase.
Titanfall. ...This game everyone I knew was excited about it....However in a short while I lost interest in the game and so did my friends...there were no forums I read to come to the fact I just found it boring...and actually I started playing TESO.
Then TESO started to be boring but for this game I actually read forums. Now Destiny looks like it will take away TESO in my interest.
My question is do negative forums really effect a game? Or is it more the content and a populous feeling of disappointment that effects it?
I would never tell someone not to buy or try TESO...bUT the game really suffers to draw you into the world and falls very short in giving you a rewarding experience. Titanfall had the same aspect except it was so small the clarity of boring came much quicker.
In comparison Destiny beta showed higher level items and awards that I can see people excited to get. And you hear talk of wanting that 328 damage gun....or armor. I never heard that in TESO....people searching and wanting some awesome item. If you read forums for all 3 you notice a trend...Titanfall and TESO all started with excitement and quickly turned to negitive. ..TESO had many more negative threads after beta about things never fixed and after the first week when people hit vet...it just got more and more. Is it the negative comments that effect the game? Or is it the game fueling so many negative comments?

Thoughts on how forums can actually hurt the game or improve it?

twev

Since most players don't read the forums, I'd venture that the only people the forums affect are forum readers.

starlizard70ub17_ESO

I found a trend in many game forums, no matter what game it is, 60 - 70% of the posts are negative. People like to complain. And the most of the people who like any given game, are actually playing the game instead of sitting on the forums. That's why most forum have a negative lean towards them.

Elad13

I actually started reading the forums because my red gaurd dw templar was struggling on some missions....in short I went to the forums to figure out why some things were abnormal. I can see some reviewer turning to these forums and then voicing opinions based on the flood of complaints...and since it's pc based I think pc users goto forums much more then console players. It also stands that if the game was fun the forums stay pretty dead.

nerevarine1138

Elad13 wrote: »

I actually started reading the forums because my red gaurd dw templar was struggling on some missions....in short I went to the forums to figure out why some things were abnormal. I can see some reviewer turning to these forums and then voicing opinions based on the flood of complaints...and since it's pc based I think pc users goto forums much more then console players. It also stands that if the game was fun the forums stay pretty dead.

WoW is the single most popular MMO of all time. It has very active forums, despite it clearly being an enjoyable experience for millions of players.

rbenkepub19_ESO

You raise two separate points here.

First, no game appeals to 100% of the people who start it. You say that ESO fails to deliver, but I disagree, and so do many other people.

Second, someone who's looking for a new game may look at that game's forums to get a feel for what its players think of it. I know I have, many times. I'm sure that a game's forums do factor into peoples' decisions on whether to play a particular game. But I'm also sure that any experienced game player is aware that the most dissatisfied voices are the loudest, and that criticism on a game's forums has to be measured against the whole. Again, I know this, and take it into consideration, so I'm sure other people must, too.

If someone looks at ESO's forums, they see a mixture of good and bad attitudes about the game. If it was all bad, that fact would probably have a profound effect on whether someone decided to even try the game. But it's not all bad, or even mostly bad. The experienced player also probably realizes that forum activity can be a larger indication of a game's appeal that the forum's content. ESO's forum is very active, even now; more so than many other established MMO's. That fact wouldn't be lost on someone who was using the forum to gauge the game's appeal.

Has the negativity in this forum turned some people off? I'm sure it has. But I doubt it's been a major factor in whether the bulk of people choose to give ESO a try. The negativity is counterbalanced by obvious enthusiasm for the game and for future updates.

ers101284b14_ESO

Negativity on the forums? Maybe a little. Negativity everywhere else? Absolutely. I was on the steam forums and there where so many people on there saying they weren't going to buy it just because of negative reviews on Youtube and on sites, but then when they bought the game they actually enjoyed it. I even had one guy tell me the game sucked because Angry Joe said so. He never even played the game to find out himself. But if they don't want to play a game because of someone else's hate on it then they are losing out. Reviews can be good to get an idea of what a game is like but without playing it you will never actually know.

Kos

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Negativity on the forums? Maybe a little. Negativity everywhere else? Absolutely

This is true. Bad press can destroy products or people. I believe ESO will survive though and we will see more people join in future.

steveb16_ESO46

Elad13 wrote: »

My question is do negative forums really effect a game? Or is it more the content and a populous feeling of disappointment that effects it?

I don't think so. Over-promising and under-delivering is what hurts the most. I don't know about Titanfall or Wildstar but what excited me about ESO was the youtube and other videos. The podcasts etc.

What disappointed me wasn't any of these or the forums. It was playing the game and finding what a state it was in on release. It was witnessing the poor and usually negative quality of patches and then it was playing other things which were actually working.

Zenimax have no one to blame but themselves. You charge a premium price and then charge a sub then you had better hit the ground running and not look back.

They assumed this was 2004 and they could release ready or not and fix things at their leisure while we continually threw money at them.

It's not 2004. There's a ton of good games around. Paying customers are not all going to pay while they wait for things to be fixed and finished. And no -we don't care a stuff about the state WoW or whatever released in. That was a long ago then and this is now.

When you release in such a state and with glaring balance issues that were identified months before release then a not insignificant proportion of your customer base are going to stop paying and wait and see how things turn out.

It's easy to lose customers. It's real hard to win them back.

Obscure

You're problem, as you describe @Elad13, is not related to the negative but the positive. You once enjoyed Titanfall, a positive, then you found you enjoyed ESO, and now you find you are interested in Destiny. These are additive concepts, positive additions to your subjective experience.

Objectively, negative comments are the most fruitful comments. Positive comments, as self affirming as they may be, grant no insight into improvement. To stop by and say "your house looks great" is a positive thing to say, but no input on home improvement can be gleaned from that statement. Stop by and say "your yard looks dry, you should water it in the early morning to make it look better" is a negative thing to say, however insight is being provided to the home owners benefit.

Negative comments, though discouraging, are the source of expanding ones understanding, skill, and ability. Even Newton's laws of gravity were unchallenged until the negative comments of another mind showed up to improve upon them. If not for negative commentary such as that of Einstein, we would have no theory of general relativity, much less good game designs. It is because of such comments the design advances, moves forward, and becomes better than it once was. I'd say in the modern day we are greatly benefitted by the fact that anybody with a keyboard (virtual or otherwise) can toss in negative comments to criticize something in a way that perhaps was not thought of by those who conceived it. Access to that massive breath of information should be embraced rather than looked down upon, especially by those who cannot see the flaws being indicated.

Suffice it to say if all there is being said about any game is a bunch of fanboy "My game is perfect. My developers are infallible." bull *** then it's a game that is going absolutely nowhere. We don't get better by patting ourselves on the back, we get better by ***ing up. Just what it means to be human.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO

really? people don't like titanfall? But it looked like such a good game. I am not skilled enough to play it, but man, it just looked like so much fun.

For me personally, negative comments have, at times, drug down my opinion, though it is easily restored by good things happening in the game.

More likely it prevents people from playing to begin with or resubbing. There was a lot of hate for eso since before release because some game reviewers are idiots and relatively bitter about an mmo having the nerve to charge them. A lot of people who don't play the game or haven't tried it already formed a negative opinion because of these reviewers or trash talk on other game forums.

the above poster claiming that negative comments help... no. Constructive criticism helps, but complaining, insulting, being negative, that does nothing.

Also, it's quite possible Einstein stole the theory of relativity from another scientist who submitted a very similar idea to the patent office when he was working there (the patent was denied) So I mean, there's that.

Rodario

Affect.

Effect means lead to something. E.g. customer feedback might effect a change, which affects the enjoyability of the game.

Obscure

smeeprocketnub19_ESO wrote: »

the above poster claiming that negative comments help... no. Constructive criticism helps, but complaining, insulting, being negative, that does nothing.

Also, it's quite possible Einstein stole the theory of relativity from another scientist who submitted a very similar idea to the patent office when he was working there (the patent was denied) So I mean, there's that.

Insults are in the rawest form of criticism. They are designed to provoke confrontation, and confrontation either results in resolution or escalation. Rarely do insults have no effect, as if so they wouldn't be very insulting. If I were to seriously call you a "poo poo head" you'd likely have a laugh response than an anger response. If I were to call you a "worthless price of ***, and your mother is a ***!" then I fully anticipate an angered response, and where I come from in the real world, saying that means there's going to be a fight.

Likely everyone has seen or been in a fight on a school yard. Recall what happens? Others crowd around, people take sides, some just egg the fight on, but they are all anticipating a resolution. Who beats who? Who's going to be standing when it's all said and done? What's actually going on? Sternly opposed views are converging.

Granted in this analogy the actual contest isn't being resolved through conversation like it is here in the digital world, so in that manner it fails to capture how things happen here on the internet. Though essentially, the behavior is roughly the same. I could make an insult toward you or something you side with, you defend that position, and everyone gets to see what happens. The inevitable tends to happen and the administrators show up to break it up, but the folks that were there still know how it all went down, who they think is right and who they think was wrong. This can catch the attention of more rational people than those involved, and develop into a less offensive core idea that the irrational person looking to pick a fight lacked the ability to articulate.

Insult to confrontation, confrontation to escalation, escalation to resolution, resolution to ideas.

...and I'm glad you brought up the concept that Einstein may have stolen the idea of relativity while working as a patent clerk. General Relativity was actually solved by a mathematics professor (that got the idea after he attended one of Einstein's lectures on the subject) just before Einstein competed his equation. Legend has it Einstein was furious, but the mathematics professor let him have his General Relativity. I like to imagine Einstein losing his *** and just going off and the guy being like "whoa, chill bro. I got no beef with you."... something about modern slang being used by brilliant people I find hilarious... also when really old women curse out young children... hysterical. But I digress. Point is negative input can produce profound positive change, but positive input does very little to change anything other than how good you might feel about it. Had either just said "gee Newton, great job." and left it at that, we'd likely still have a flawed idea of gravity. The early-mid 1900's weren't very long ago.