Apologies in advance for addressing parts of your reply in a different order from the one in which they were written. I’m doing that just to frame my thoughts more clearly.
Actually, up until this reply I’m writing now, I haven’t accused you of being uncivil. The closest I came to that was when I said that I’m glad you got flagged for perpetuating the trope about “people getting banned for speaking the truth constructively”.
I’ve never seen anyone get banned just for criticizing Funcom. Hell, I haven’t even seen bans for several people who have written some seriously toxic stuff. The only forum bans I’ve ever seen were dealt out to people who kept insisting on breaking the forum rules egregiously and repeatedly.
Yes, and I acknowledged that there’s flagging abuse. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a serious mistake to have “regulars”, myself included, have the power to hide the post with just one flag. It takes multiple flags from non-regulars to hide a post and I think that this is how it should be for everyone.
Again, none of that means that people are getting banned for criticizing Funcom, or that topics and posts are getting removed to “protect the devs’ fragile egos” or any of that FUD people keep repeating here.
Not at all. I never said that it’s too much to ask, although I might disagree on where that balance actually lies. As a matter of fact, I saw you post a coherent, well-worded, calm and polite critique in a different topic. And I agree with it. There are tons of problems that need to be fixed. There are balancing decisions by Funcom that I disagree with wholeheartedly. There are features that have been poorly thought out and implement haphazardly, and I would love to see them improved.
None of that is the problem I’ve been talking about in this thread and some others. People are welcome to disagree with Funcom and with each other, to discuss and criticize, to offer feedback, or even to vent their frustrations. But they can do it just as well without crossing certain lines that degrade the experience for everyone on these forums.
And I’m not even going to ask whether you think that’s all that much to ask, because I know the answer. Making these points has earned me all sorts of name-calling, from “white knight” to “wannabe Chosen of Asura” to my personal favorite: “fanboy getting orgasms from new style sets”. You can’t make this stuff up.
See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That’s the mildest name I’ve been called, but it’s still name-calling. And what for? Here’s some of the “white knighting” I’ve done recently:
- I’ve argued against a guy who accused me of “propping up status quo” because I dare explain to people how to properly report server rule infractions. Never mind that I almost always caution those same people that they shouldn’t expect a quick response or any transparency about the outcome. Never mind that I’ve often said that using the forums for that (and for bug reports, while we’re at it) is a bad way to do things.
- I said it’s unreasonable to criticize Funcom for replying that a bug has already been reported and they’re aware of it. And I said it’s even more unreasonable to compare Conan Exiles to Visual Studio. One is a game that isn’t even all that popular, the other is a whole freaking toolchain that is used to build a crapton of software out there. I mean, come on, is that really so controversial?
- Someone claimed that all the effort that went into Siptah and the upcoming economy patch is just a hobby and doesn’t take up a lot of development time, and I asked them to provide their reasoning about that claim.
- I said that Funcom was right to ban people who decided to cheese the Maelstrom after they were told that cheesing the Maelstrom will screw up the server performance for everyone and even crash it. I’ve literally seen people say “don’t care, gonna do it anyway”. Apparently, it’s white knighting to think that knowingly choosing to ruin everyone’s experience on a server should have consequences.
But none of that is the worst, apparently. My crowning achievement as a white knight is that I argue with people about name calling on forums. That, more than anything else, makes me a white knight, because I use words like “ad hominem” and point out that you can argue without crapping on other people. 
And the funny thing is that I’m quite critical of Funcom, too. When they announced the follower cap, I was one of the most vocal critics of it. When they introduced momentum-based movement, I kept complaining about how controlling your character feels like trying to steer a dead ox. I have been complaining about the slot machine gameplay of Conan Exiles for months.
But these forums have gone the way of real-life politics: you can’t have a nuanced opinion. You’re either for or against. You’re either a “wannabe Chosen of Asura” or a “Funcom-basher”. If you don’t like what Funcom did with one thing, you should call the devs incompetent and say that the upcoming changes are trash and garbage and sh*t.
At any rate, I’m done with this particular line of discussion in this particular topic. By now, my point should be clear to anyone who has the patience to read what I wrote.
Try toning the insults down a bit and you might be surprised by the results.
