Voted yes, but with one reservation: The actual game must also be at least OK to play and work tolerably well. So, of course any game's developers must know their work if the game is to be a success. Also, the player community's role is self-evidently greater in MMOs than in single-player titles. So my vote pertains only to MMOs.

Still, the community does have a big impact. After all, the forums, Youtube streamers etc. are parts of a game's public image and thus affect sales and subscription rates (which ultimately decide if the game is a failure or not).

I can testify first-hand that this effect is real. Namely, I kept putting off buying ESO for a year or two after I had read this forum while researching the game. It looked like the game had nothing but problems. In fact, I wondered why the people writing on the forum even played ESO if it's truly as lousy as they made it out to be. The latter thought luckily made me think again. I realized how small most of the problems were, of which were made such a big fuss. It's a good thing I then decided to buy the game and test it out. I've had a few hundred hours of gameplay this far and loved most of it. Even the multiplayer aspects of it, even though I originally bought ESO for soloing as a fix for my single-player TES cravings. Turns out the in-game community is a more positive and friendlier bunch in average than the forum crowd.

So yes, the image the community projects of the game does have an impact. The true scale of that impact is the only unclear thing.

RedMuse wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks this is a not only weird but false binary?

Entirely; it's possible to have a decently good community but still have other things go wrong, just as a community can go bad and other things go wrong.
My vote however goes to the second as without responsive attention to feedback from and open lines of communication a Dev team will destroy a games community as well.

I think it's a two-way street.

Of course the game not working is on the devs.

But to be honest, if the community's constantly negative, casual players (and maybe even some end game players) might not want to play the game, and there's no game without players.

And in my opinion you can't really have one without the other

I didn't vote because I think it is much more nuanced than the two options presented in the poll.

Alurria wrote: »

It absolutely falls on both, but coming to the forums and seeing so much negativity can have a detrimental impact on any game. Imagine you come to these forums to do some research before investing in playing ESO you are immediately hit with anyone of numerous complaint theads. If I were a prospective customer I would think twice before wanting to play.

This world has been created for us to play in, there are many activities to keep us busy. Positive suggestions are great, but the constant same threads are influencing people to think this game is not so good. Fortunately for me I have played on and off since 2013 and will continue to do so unless they completely break my chosen class. There is always another game out there willing to take my money. But this forum really needs to be cleaned up imho from all the negativity, and that squarely sets on the community.

Tesman85 wrote: »

Voted yes, but with one reservation: The actual game must also be at least OK to play and work tolerably well. So, of course any game's developers must know their work if the game is to be a success. Also, the player community's role is self-evidently greater in MMOs than in single-player titles. So my vote pertains only to MMOs.

Still, the community does have a big impact. After all, the forums, Youtube streamers etc. are parts of a game's public image and thus affect sales and subscription rates (which ultimately decide if the game is a failure or not).

I can testify first-hand that this effect is real. Namely, I kept putting off buying ESO for a year or two after I had read this forum while researching the game. It looked like the game had nothing but problems. In fact, I wondered why the people writing on the forum even played ESO if it's truly as lousy as they made it out to be. The latter thought luckily made me think again. I realized how small most of the problems were, of which were made such a big fuss. It's a good thing I then decided to buy the game and test it out. I've had a few hundred hours of gameplay this far and loved most of it. Even the multiplayer aspects of it, even though I originally bought ESO for soloing as a fix for my single-player TES cravings. Turns out the in-game community is a more positive and friendlier bunch in average than the forum crowd.

So yes, the image the community projects of the game does have an impact. The true scale of that impact is the only unclear thing.

See, as someone with my own mind, and knowing how people online are, I'm not going to do something just because 1000 internet people said something. I can decide to accept or reject what someone has written online, and will do so based on how well-reasoned the response was communicated. People had a lot of valid complaints when ESO first launched, and I bought into it aware of what I was going into. I want that information out there. Bad publicity might hurt the game, but if its valid criticism, it needs to be said. In a world where no one is allowed to express their thoughts, you just end up with no accountability, and a lot of people feeling pissed-off and deceived.

As to responsibility? The company has tools at their disposal for managing their community, and if too much negative stuff is out there, they will manage it. For example, the forums have changed - the moderators are highly vigilant and swift to stamp out rudeness and disrespect (and arguably too much negative press). There is a HELL of a lot of complaining here, but there's far far less passive-aggressiveness, insult-slinging, flaming etc.

There needs to be room for people to talk, is the thing. There's already a sort of knee-jerk call to immediately shut down anything which might be construed as negative, as if our egos are so fragile that we can't handle the idea of someone criticising something that we put our time into. On a discussion forum about a game "maybe you should just leave" is never an interesting response.

Unconstructiveness, or worse, toxicity are different things entirely. Its a difficult one, though - by and large, the traditional hardcore MMO crowd are demanding, angry and intolerant. Not only do they lay claim to how the game must be developed, they cannot fathom, and ridicule people with other values. And then there's people who just want an opportunity to grief, harass or make others unhappy that come along with the whole online package. Yes we can try to convince the dozen or so people that might read such a thread to be excellent to one-another, but what can we, as a community do about things that are performed by individuals, but a part of internet culture? The tools that we have to manage that are limited to "ignore", or impotently "report". So how can we be responsible for that?

it's crazy to me that this is so evenly split. MMORPG absolutely needs a good community to succeed in the long term.

This is a ridiculous question.

It's not the responsibility of the consumer to make a product good.....

Like what? How can people think this way? Are we masochists?

If it's a multiplayer game then yes, the players need to be Adults concerning our interaction with each other.

The game actually has a lot more friendly, positive players than other MMO games that this one has heard about. Just the other day this one was struggling with a public dungeon and another player offered to team up and helped out. People give advice in the chats for new players, being friendly etc.

Yes, ZOS and Microsoft have the bulk of the responsibility in making sure this game functions well, deliver high quality content and being transparent with communications, but it’s also up to the players to be good citizens. It’s a two-way thing.

EttinTheBreton wrote: »

I always get disheartened when I check the forums here and see so much negativity. To me I believe playing any game is a privilege. This one is saddened to see so much hate thrown at the people that are making this game for us to play.

It feels nice to be coming back to the game after many years. See y'all in Tamriel

and thats thing on the devs side
why there is so much negativity? maybe we should take a look at game management to look what is causing this negativy among players
why to put all negative players all together to be a bad players community? negativity on so big scale you see on forums isn't from nothing, from nowhere, it is to big to be just this miniority to hate eveyrthing in internet for sake of downvoting

maybe take a look at these negative feedbacks and check about which so many players are wrting negatively abouth this game, why instead isntantly putting all of them in bag as "worse community", not everyone in game and so not that very much must enjoy this game while liking it because of how it is menaged

Devs are solely responsible for balance. But a multiplayer game is also social. The community makes a big difference in whether someone stays or goes. There's a lot of people that don't even care about balance. They just want the game to be fun. And a big part of that fun is their social experiences with others.