Bitter but still paying...

The OP is complaining about people complaining....*looks around, then bashes face into desk repeatedly*

Major Prankster - through the 7 year history of this game it is only the hard fought and overhyped vocal groups that got things changed.

Your December 2004 joining to the game should give you some perspective, that it doesn't shows you are just here to complain that people are complaining.

My personal opinion is that the Incarnate trials as they currently are will drive more people away from the game long term than they cause to join. Farming is boring, even to those who like it - in time they often take long breaks away from the game. The altaholic who plays a lot of different characters often changing or adding on a whim is never going to be a free to play person.

2 slots? Are you crazy I would fill those in one afternoon!

So you if serious - don't find the sudden change from being against farming to being for farming - isn't a strange turn? I look at the hypocrisy that Positron showed in ranting against the AE farmers in light of the Devs approved farms and it makes me shake my head in wonder.

I remember the timers on wolves, the spawn timer on Hamidon, the cool down timers on TF's getting lesser awards if you farm them - now I see blatent INTENTIONAL farming encouragement. I mean they lock COSTUMES AND AURAS behind the farms! That is 2 of the most desired items in the game and they require a trip down to Old MacDonald to get them.

So yes, I am confused and completely ignoring this new "content" until the Devs wake up and realize they can either open the Incarnate advance to all content or have players quitting because they are tired of grinding limited content. I have seen already - in Help chat folks saying - why do that trial (Keyes) I want a speed BAF instead since its easiest and I can do 2 of those in place of one Keyes.

Look this is the issue the devs created for themselves. Farmers want to always cut the time down and so we have 4 minute Fire Farms. Yes, go from 1-20 in 4 minutes. Now they want to speed farm the BAF to get incarnate in 2-3 days.

These players don't stay long and to place this style into a game that didn't have it - is a mistake.

I also think people need to ask themselves whether they are upset about what other people think, or the fact that they care to share it. Speaking purely for myself, there's nothing I've said about the incarnate system I wouldn't have written in a game review, and I think the 65/100 or so we scored in reviews of Going Rogue was pretty much spot on. We do have wonderful developers, but that is not the same as a perfect game, or even necessarily a game I will want to stay in forever.

If I believed everything I've read in video game forums, every game would simultaneously be superior to its competitors and at the same time every change or failure to change would result in its anihilation. Frankly, the CoH boards are Disneyland compared to what carries on elsewhere. Unfortunately, sometimes the "complainers" are right, even if only partially so. (Check out the [edit: Competitor 1] and [edit: Competitor 2] boards for illustrative examples--places, I might add, that any of us would have been ripped on had we tried to say CoH did it better. Even though it did.)

Anyway, if we're going to talk about the psychology of habitual complainers it may be helpful to understand the psychology of the "true fan" as well. They are more or less cut from the same cloth in the sense that both believe they represent what is "right" and "good" about the game/brand/service. Neither is able to walk far from the chosen brand, and both are simultaneously an asset and a liability. I've read before that you can't make a completely successful brand without haters. Companies like Apple and Microsoft seem to have taken that ball and run with it.

In any case I think assuming either type is bitter or miserable in their real lives is a mistake. It might be true of a few people, but for a lot of others there is a disconnect between harshness of words and their actual feelings. And most games would probably do financially better from players who are emotionally engaged anyway. Its when players dissociate completely, negative or positive, that you have to really worry, because those people are much more difficult to win back.

[EDIT: Addendum--the other factor that keeps some people around tends to be the "sunk cost." This is why the game that rhymes with CoW is so hard to unseat and veterans awards, levels, guilds, and relationships are so attractive to resubscribers--the thought is 'I've already invested this much, I might as well invest more."]

Well, I think that on any forum devoted to a particular brand, people who are critical of that brand are going to face a degree of hostility. Sometimes a person who is just mildly displeased can be pushed into a much more confrontational mode. That's not to say every complaint has merits, but the CoX message boards are, to me at least, a very frightening place to post suggestions. Even people on the outskirts of the community want to be liked; finding out (or feeling like) they aren't part of the "core group" can be a hurtful shock to them.

But it is also more or less the case that you are likely to get a discussion started by posting something bombastic and confrontational than something mild. Any thread I've ever started that praised an element of the game was gone from the main page within a day. I bet if I put some effort behind it I (or anyone) could write something to keep the boards cracking for weeks. One time I off-handedly remarked in a sentence that I thought a certain powerset was overpowered, and got probably 15 replies from people telling me I was an idiot; that was the last time I was willing to broach that subject.

I tend not to share a whole lot of info about it, but for a brief time I was a gamemaster for a subscription based online MUD. It was a volunteer position that lasted a year for a game with about 7,000 subscribers or so, and probably anyone who works at a "real" MMO would think of me as a developer-newbie. Anyway, probably the biggest adjustment for me was learning that the developers (at least in this case) are just as conflicted, passionate, and divided in their opinions as players are. A well managed game keeps these discussions behind the curtains. But part of the reason player forum discussions can be helpful is that, contrary to what many players believe, the developers are usually not in agreement on the best course for the game; project managers make a lot of those decisions, with buy in from players and their own staffs.

[EDIT: One thing to add here, one major piece of advice to take home from the perspective of a former gamemaster: never, ever, ever type anything in a private chat you wouldn't want the world to see. I don't know if its true of CoX, but in games in general, online gamemasters can see what you type. You may think there are none around or they couldn't possibly be watching you, but in one year I saw enough dwarf-on-lizardperson action via /tells to write a... well, a very long book about the lives of dwarves and lizardpeople.]