So am I just supposed to hate the game?

Haters gonna hate and people on internet forums gonna argue. It's the circle of life.

How right anyone is at a given point depends on the person, the situation, and mood.

I find the occasional hate thread encouraging, actually. Those threads illustrate strong feelings about the game instead of meh responses. That this game can still generate strong reactions positive or negative points to an active and engaged player base (at least on the forums). If game changes updates or releases of content dropped to a resounding chorus of crickets, I would be more concerned for the health of CoH. Those threads are a fairly healthly way to vent without degrading the forums overall. So thumbs up for spleen, bile and vitriol venting. (hmm. Spleen, Bile and Vitriol. good name for a redside law firm?)

Eh, I hit that point with another nameless MMO. I hit that point where they changed way to many things from the core game, and I hated it. I haven't been here long enough to experience a change large enough to trigger that response in me yet. Now...if City of Heroes were to suddenly, say, take out the slotting and enhancing system and give you a choice to add some little effect as opposed to enhancing them out, then I might flip my wig.

actually, at present, people seem a bit happier with issue 22, seems to hit a good number of people(though obviously not everyone)'s wish lists. There has been an undercurrent of negativity as long as the forum existed, and it rises and falls. i find happiness is a full ignore list. and staying away from the forums, outside of a quick sewage dive for pertinent info, is a good way to not have the light stolen from your eyes.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

There will always be negativity on the forums. On any forums, anywhere. It could be a Carebear forum, and people would be complaining that Hugs-a-lot has to much brown on him or something like that.

I often feel like the OP, so he is definitely not alone.

A few months ago, I believe we were at the most negativity I'd seen on the fora since the dark days of late i4/i5, when the Global Defense Cut, then ED, were hovering over us. For those who were not around then, imagine if every thread were like the story-criticism threads that exist now, only dealing with mechanics.

As for why there's so much overblown and undeserved trashing of design decisions (like how things should be priced or what kinds of new features should be added) or dev competence (seen mainly in criticism of story, these days), I believe two causes exist.

First, many players are both fairly intelligent and enjoy minute observation of things. Those are exactly the sorts of people who are most likely to notice flaws of any kind. More importantly for why it generates negativity, those are also the sorts of people who tend to believe they can do things better than anyone else. This tends to generate a lot of unduly negative opinions. It's difficult for someone who's more or less just as capable and intelligent as a dev (I'm thinking mainly of story stuff here) to accept that that developer might do things in a different, but just as legitimate, way. For smart people, objective observation easily gets confused with personal opinion. The fact that the Broadcast Yourself age has given geekdom a strong support structure, including easily-linked lists of everything imaginable, for any opinion anyone wants to render, doesn't help matters here. (Here, I'm thinking of the fact that many story arguments seem to boil down to "I saw this opinion on tvtropes, where anyone can read and adopt it, so why didn't those lazy devs?")

This brings me to the second point. In the Broadcast Yourself age (note my choice of term here), it has somehow become accepted that everyone's opinion must not only be voiced, but voiced as loudly and stridently as possible. As you've seen in this thread alone, this is often justified by some variation on, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," or, more precisely, "We only get what we want because we complained for it." (In my experience, neither is true, and a squeaky wheel often gets the entire cart junked rather than getting grease for itself, but that's another issue.) That both encourages people to be critical and gives them a sense of justification for doing so. As for why criticism tends to be so unduly hostile, I believe there's a deep-seated concern among some players that if they don't call decisions incompetent, claim they're being ignored, or blame everything on the Conspiracy of The Suits, that their opinions will be ignored. I think this operates at almost a subconscious level. The poster thinks, "I don't like [X feature], but if I only say 'I don't like it' in a beta thread, they'll just ignore me. I'd better post it everywhere I can and say '[X feature] is the worst thing ever.' Then the feedback will count for me." I also think that we habitues of this forum tend to labor under the delusion that its primary purpose is to give feedback for development and to influence the game's direction, while the OCR folks have been pretty clear over the years that it is meant more as a place for fans to recognize that there are other fans out there and to encourage each other in their fanishness.

So, all in all, I guess I don't have any answers on how anyone should feel, but those are my theories on why the fora read the way they do. Thanks for reading, those who got this far.

Durakken I deleted my post (oddly enough, because I thought it rang too cynical on a reread--yes, cynical about cynics! ), but now I'm glad that you caught it. I liked reading your thoughts. I really don't know what to think sometimes. There are some people that I'm starting to skip over their posts, because they so unfairly bludgeon the devs (and sometimes players) without really bothering to offer any constructive feedback. When asked about that--yes, I asked, on two occasions--I got back that it wasn't their job to tell the writers how to write well. Well, true, true, I can't argue with that! But...I never came to understand whether they were more interested in higher quality stories, or were simply getting their rocks off by trashing other peoples work. I have simply chosen not to give their posts much thought, not because I'm close-minded, but because there's not enough time in the day to try to figure out exactly what would satisfy these people (when there are other people offering actual constructive feedback).

Captain-Electric
I want to punch myself sometimes for the way I write on forums. Missing words, run on sentences, jumping around, and a lot missing because it is moderated free flow thought and often i'm not in the best typing environment or I'm half asleep or in pain or doing something else. I guess it's interesting as a look into how my brain works though...

But, anyways, I just wanted to point out that a famous author or philosopher... i forget who once said that the only way you know what you think is to write it down and see. I tend to like that idea, because writing to express an idea usually allows one to work through the problem and then be able to read it back to see where their thoughts lead and how... also a tactic for getting closure or over something... write a letter then just delete it... so my opinion is that if you have something to say, say it... people are going to be who they are regardless and whoever you are will eventually shine through so there is no sense in hiding it because people will hate or love you fanatically either way I find.

I don't know how much of it is hate, or how much of it is, please fix xyz.

I've been playing since the 1 year anniversary of this game, and I still play. Not as much, but that is because of RL and I prefer not to solo anymore.

Are there things about the game that I don't like? Yeah, but that is true about any game. Nothing is perfect. I just prefer to sit back and enjoy what I do, which for me is the simple game I started playing.