Why are the forums so rude?

coop500

Seriously, I don't mean this in a trolly/bait-y way but like legit, you can make the most innocent, wholesome post in existence and someone will STILL find a way to make you feel like crap about it. Why is that? Why are so many peeps just so angry and unfriendly?

Starlight_Whisper

It's a long term mystery. Reddit is a lot better. 😂 You will get hard voted down for being toxic there.

👀

Mojmir

I blame the coin shortage

Odovacar

Sadly its the reality of mostly all online interaction. Its always best to be kind and hear everyone out or offer constructive criticism if needed. Unfortunately, some people and their ego's become inflated while behind a keyboard.

Being kind and respectful goes so far. Also, disagreements happen but snooty bait-y comments will certainly derail the posters point and the entire thread like wildfire.

Flaaklypa

It isnt as bad as it could be. Props on zos for their moderators

Sanctum74

Nobody was angry or unfriendly in your thread, sometimes people just disagree and that’s normal and is why we have the forums so all sides of an issue can be discussed.

nukk3r

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

It's a long term mystery. Reddit is a lot better. 😂 You will get hard voted down for being toxic there.

👀

You get downvoted for neutral comments there. I quoted something from the official site there once and got like 10 downvotes, though it was the answer to the question.

Chaos2088

Some people think their opinion is like the law. Some don’t have people skills. Some of us just like to post memes.

VaranisArano

At its root, it's the same reason any people are notably ruder on the internet in general: we've got a degree of anonymity behind our forum avatars that just isn't true "in real life". Then add the general principle that "tone" is hard to put into text responses, and it's very easy for sarcasm/snark to come off harsher than people might intend.

Plus, every forum has its culture. If you want to talk about your love of ESO, you can do that on any forum about ESO, really. If you want to tell the Devs what you really think, good or bad (usually bad), you come here.

I'm one of those players. I joined in order to make a bug report after Support said they couldn't help me IIRC, it took Groupfinder getting reworked entirely to fix that bug. Came to report a bug to the Devs; stayed to talk about the game I love.

Goregrinder

Well the forums are full of humans, and humans are only unfriendly if you view them that way. I personally don't view interactions with other people as friendly or unfriendly anymore, now I view them as either useful or not useful.

Kiralyn2000

coop500 wrote: »

Seriously, I don't mean this in a trolly/bait-y way but like legit, you can make the most innocent, wholesome post in existence and someone will STILL find a way to make you feel like crap about it. Why is that? Why are so many peeps just so angry and unfriendly?

Pretty typical for game forums (heck, internet forums in general). At least ones with relatively large user populations.

Part of it is angry people, part of it is the lack of consequences (people will say things due to anonymity & safety that would get them punched in person), part of it is people who just like causing trouble to see the fireworks.

RedMuse

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

It's a long term mystery. Reddit is a lot better. 😂 You will get hard voted down for being toxic there.

👀

If you by toxic mean, "not 100% worshipful of everything ZOS does and mindlessly defending any decision they make," then yes. If the forum is overly negative then reddit have the problem that you can't voice any critique, no matter how factual and neutral it is worded without getting downvoted. In fact I think that's why the forum is so negative, because no critique at all can be voiced in the only other platform that has a significant number of ESO players, namely the subreddit. If reddit wasn't so mindlessly worshipful of ZOS I think this place might be a less negative in turn.

TequilaFire

Recent real life events have reminded me that you really never know who you are communicating with on the internet.
Kind of scary.

amm7sb14_ESO

Personally, I endured a lot of what basically amounted to cyber-bullying in my early days of online forums and such, so I have developed a quick trigger to fire back at perceived slights. So... while I try not to be, sometimes I can be a part of the problem rather than the solution.

/selftherapy

poodlemasterb16_ESO

You need to understand reddit _is_ the community. We discuss many things, but its reddit that knits us together. (that makes no sense at all)

TwinLamps

coop500 wrote: »

Seriously, I don't mean this in a trolly/bait-y way but like legit, you can make the most innocent, wholesome post in existence and someone will STILL find a way to make you feel like crap about it. Why is that? Why are so many peeps just so angry and unfriendly?

Its the internet.
People tend to be hostile cause they mistake hostility for dominance.
Also, we had fair share of questionable suggestions that zenimax tried to implement in one way or another, so lot of people here are very defensive, if a topic of discussion could lead into shift in the power they would not like to see in game.

SeaGtGruff

Goregrinder wrote: »

Well the forums are full of humans, and humans are only unfriendly if you view them that way. I personally don't view interactions with other people as friendly or unfriendly anymore, now I view them as either useful or not useful.

I have to disagree about "humans are only unfriendly if you view them that way." You can usually tell when someone is being unfriendly, and it isn't just a question of your perception of them. I could point to real-life news stories of random individuals attacking random victims on the street-- and caught on surveilance video doing it-- for who knows what reasons. It definitely wasn't a question of whether the victims viewed the aggressors as being unfriendly. I get what I think you were trying to say, and the best course of action in many cases might be to ignore the unfriendly behavior; but suggesting that unfriendliness is all in the mind of the person on the receiving end seems a bit like victim blaming.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Same reason that social media has ruined our society. People forget about being civilized when they can't see your face.

I liked your TelVar post for what its worth. I wont say the proposed solutions were perfect, but you certainly identified the problem (which is at least half the battle). It would be great if people would debate the merits, but of course, people would rather attack the premise to feel superior or something.

Sanctum74

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Goregrinder wrote: »

Well the forums are full of humans, and humans are only unfriendly if you view them that way. I personally don't view interactions with other people as friendly or unfriendly anymore, now I view them as either useful or not useful.

I have to disagree about "humans are only unfriendly if you view them that way." You can usually tell when someone is being unfriendly, and it isn't just a question of your perception of them. I could point to real-life news stories of random individuals attacking random victims on the street-- and caught on surveilance video doing it-- for who knows what reasons. It definitely wasn't a question of whether the victims viewed the aggressors as being unfriendly. I get what I think you were trying to say, and the best course of action in many cases might be to ignore the unfriendly behavior; but suggesting that unfriendliness is all in the mind of the person on the receiving end seems a bit like victim blaming.

There’s a big difference between attacking someone on the street versus calling people rude, angry, and unfriendly just because they disagree on a forum subject. The only victims here are the ones being called names because they disagree, not the op.

ThorianB

It's not really the users that are the problem here, even the ones i disagree with regularly

Mindcr0w

I am offended by this thread as I am every bit as much of a standoffish, pedantic, jerk irl as I am online.

spartaxoxo

I think that things on this forum are significantly nicer than most. The mods here are honestly really strict and will not explain to you the logic behind anything they viewed as toxic, only tell you that you can't say a thing. I still to this day don't understand some actions and never will, and I have BEEN A moderator for another international gaming corporation.

It's very frustrating to be on the bad side of, but the upside is people are definitely more careful of how they phrase things. They may be direct in their criticism, but they tend to avoid harassing language and the other kinds of negativity that can drag a forum down. The result is that many opinons are able to be shared here without harassment

Kory

Social and personal accountability is absent in the minds of many when your name is just coop500 and your picture is a wolf symbol(using original post user as example). Anonymous on approach to every discussion, what they say doesn't seem to have repercussions, and sometimes those people feel rewarded or correct when they see they have "likes" and "thumps up" regardless of relevance or necessity of they said.

By the way, I barely have a clue what I'm talking about, but that's just my take

wolfbone

these forums are a unhappy place.
coldharbour is a lovely holiday compared to here.

WiseSky

General Discussions is where the baddies are.

Try RolePlaying or housing or combat mechanics or other forums million times better.

GreenHere

TL;DR - The forums are full of people, and (some) people kinda suck.

I think a lot of it extends from the toxicity in the game, honestly.

I know that I personally am more on the sour & snarky end of the spectrum temperament-wise, but I do try to keep a lid on it and be respectful & constructive... most of the time... more or less. I'm here for some combination of learning things, helping folks, reading/participating in interesting conversations, and entertainment value. Sometimes I say the wrong thing, or word things poorly (or get way too wordy! fair warning), or just make an *** of myself. None of us are perfect, especially not me.

But that's me; an average-ish (I think) player who isn't great at the game but knows it fairly well and broadly, and has a pretty reasonable stance on things & approach to conversation. I generally get along with people well in-game, and in person. Mostly because I make an effort to keep myself in check and meet people in the middle and not be a **** and whatnot.

And I'd say a great majority of the ESO community is the same, or a lot better! Lots of wonderful folks playing this game, and milling around on the forums/Reddit/etc. Many of them don't even come with the attitude or baggage I do! ;p



BUT, have you met the other ones? The ones who make no effort at all to keep themselves in check and not treat strangers like garbage? Holy hell, some of the things I've heard from people in this game, haha.

I once got told... well, I can't repeat it here due to the code of conduct and all that, but... it involved farm animals and lewd acts that would probably make a sailor blush. IIRC it was because I was (unwittingly) harvesting materials in the overworld on some kid's harvesting route. He apparently owned that stretch of land, and I never even saw him til he started sending hate messages and shooting skills at me. I offended him greatly, and I'm pretty sure my transgressions are still not forgiven in his kingdom! lol

One time we got told in a dungeon, "i wish could set u all on fire irl" because we waited for a level 15 player to go through the quest dialogue for the first time. They asked politely, so we waited patiently. I usually queue with my friend(s), so vote-to-kicks just don't pass for stuff like that; but prince charming over there was trying furiously to boot the newbie. That 45 seconds this "lovely" player had to wait was absolutely RUINING their life, though! We got lots of nasty messages until he voluntarily left the dungeon... And after... (The new player wasn't comfortable voting to kick someone, if you're wondering why we didn't boot the jerk.)

Getting told to "kys" and receiving silly death threats and whatnot are something that I think any long-time PvPer can attest to. Lots of us just play in offline mode so these people can't /whisper us in the first place anymore. This happens a lot more if you're on builds that trigger folks, like Werewolf or something. Fun times.

Had someone threaten to reach through the internet and break my fingers on the keyboard once. It's one of my fondest ESO memories, tbh. In fairness, I was trolling this person by running the boss in circles around the arena and resetting his health when he got it to about 15%; but that was my own little bit of toxicity, so fair play I guess. The person in question was queued as the tank for the LFG group finder deal, but had no taunt (or dps, lol) and was generally being a ****** to my friend (the healer). My other friend and I were the damage dealers for the group, so we decided to have a bit of fun with the jerk. So we were all wrong in that scenario, honestly. Still, good times! haha

"Git gud, scrub" is a mantra for a lot of insensitive players that have no empathy or patience for newbies, or people with irl issues, or who just plain aren't that good at games. If you are (or are friends with) someone who doesn't do good dps, isn't great at dealing with mechanics, doesn't know the "right" way to do certain things, has a baby to keep an eye on, et cetera, you'll run into this brand of toxicity a lot. You see that on the forums a lot, too. "i dont struggle with tihs, so i dont no what u ppls problem is!" type messages are a pretty common sight. And the mentality is a bit contagious, too. It can be easy to think "wait, yeah, [thing] is super easy, what is OP talking about?!" and if you're not being polite it can easily come off like "git gud" or whatever. Even well-meaning folks can sound like this at times. I know I've been guilty of it to varying degrees on occasion. Most have, whether they know it or not.


And for all those sort of things listed above, you know what the weird thing is? Everyone in those situations usually thinks they are in the right. Especially the jerks, in my experience. Those same people take that attitude with them everywhere they go, and make little to no effort to filter it for others. Sure, they're the minority, but they really stick out, right? That's why the forums can seem so rude; people come here, and people kinda suck. Not all of them. Not even most of them. But enough to sour the soup, so to speak. "Try to focus on the good instead of the bad" is the advice I try to follow. Not always easy, though... especially if you're sorta wired for cynicism and negativity, like me.

That's one thing I kinda like about Reddit, and miss here. If you're a jerk, or offer bad info, or whatever... the community can downvote you into oblivion. It's not a perfect system, but it has its upsides.


Sorry for the wall of text. Thank you for coming to my TED talk!

linuxlady

Get off my lawn

Gilvoth

Flaaklypa wrote: »

It isnt as bad as it could be. Props on zos for their moderators

well said
Exactly

coop500

Sanctum74 wrote: »

Nobody was angry or unfriendly in your thread, sometimes people just disagree and that’s normal and is why we have the forums so all sides of an issue can be discussed.

The 'straw' that broke the khajiit's back was actually the non-combat activity one, so many kind of rude/passive aggressive comments on that one, I don't even want to look at any new responses now.

Neiska

Hi hi forums!

New around here! And honestly I don't think its all that bad in overall context. I mean, sure, you will see things you don't like or agree with, but I hope we would agree you see that anywhere in life. Personally, it takes more than someone's words on the internet to ruin my day, but that's just me.

Just remember, life is pretty dang short, so don't sweat the small stuff.

And people can only insult you, if you care about their opinion!

Best wishes! And everyone stay safe!

Thealteregoroman

Don't worry, the companions will fix the toxicity of the forums!