Reorganization for Rome 2 subforum - why a subforum for criticsm is needed for Rome 2 IMHO

[alQamar]

Hello this goes out to all users who actively discuss in the Rome 2 General Discussion Forum.


It is quite obvious that the current idea to channel compaints and criticsm, either about CA as a company and their business behaviour, or most of all the game issues in more or less 2 threads is not pleasent and does not facilitate a structured and organized discussion and readablility for new or casual readers / followers of the threads.

In addition to the idea to keep the Rome 2 General Discussion thread more clean these threads were originally created with a good intention.

The current dissatisfying situation:
The recurring (negative) discussion about the game led to a lot amount of citizens which feel already bugged by the situation, complaints are spread all of the place and are recurring on a daily base in the Rome 2 General Discussion.
The same time citizens who want to discuss the game itself and game aspects and strategies feel understandably bugged by those never ending complaints, because their own valueable threads disappear / drop from the first few pages. As a consequence a lot of people already complain about the "complainers / haters", ridicilously even in their designated threads. I think this is an undesireable situation, while the solution cannot be to silence the people at all, which raise recurring issues and criticsm, just because CA did not manage to address the reason enough in their last 11 patches.


In the current situation moderators have a high amount of work to call people to order, cleaning (deleting or editing many posts) topics and closing topics, then pointing or merging to the topics above.


Because of these many actions (not questioning their need here) there is a valid and active discussion about the moderation and proposals why it is not reasonable to put most of all criticsm, complaints or problems raised into some unpractical single threads, due to the sheer amount of various topics and different issues discussed and merged there.


At current, it is not enough possible imho to get a structure into the complaints and criticsm and let people who are (still) interested to discussed unfixed issues have a reasonable debate on their matters. In addition of all because other people are felt disturbed or even upset by their discussions.


My proposal for a solution:
In order to minimize the moderation amount, to provide a better overview and to stop the channelling of various information and feedback I suggest to create a dedicated subforum for the Rome 2 complaints / (constructive) criticsm.

With this measure I think we could ensure a couple of things:

- having an own pool of pinned / stickied topics that are very important to discuss like siege AI,
- one pinned thread for the recent patch feedback perhaps
- ability to pin very actively discussed topics
- it is clear that the number of pinned topics should be limited and there are already too plenty in the General Discussion thread to make this happen
- we could finally stop to aggregate various feedback, without maintaining any order into the complaint thread or business complaint thread.
- discussion about moderation being not neutral could be ended
- it would please a good amount of readers and writers, currently being upset for recurring shifted complaint threads, putting their game discussion threads down to page +5 on a quite daily base.
- it could end the conflict of interests between fans of the game and those being unsatisfied batteling themselves offtopic in threads, thus reducing amount of moderation needed
- most of all giving a place for to let people know about the problems more at a glance and avoiding double posts.


We now could field the issue, moderator will have to move threads belonging to this new subforum, but basically we do the same for the technical support and multiplayer thread, aswell for seperating modding discussion, so for me this is not a valid reason against this.

I am aware the approach to create an own place for complaints sounds very weird at the first sight, but with a better order it does not even help to improve things in the General discussion but may lead to more quality and structured feedback, so even CA MIGHT benefit from it.

It is honestly not our fault we still love to discuss things not being patched after 11 patches and the state of the game is still not satisfying in many details, so please don't treat anyone who is still willingly to (constructively) discuss these matters till they got hopefully fixed, as whiners or haters.
We certainly aren't, but we are fans not agreeing with the standards of quality this game sets, we also paid for and we still have a (small) hope this game get fixed by the "long time" support CA once promised to offer for it.


related Rome 2 Moderation discussions:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-R-II-subforum
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...favor-of-Rome2

I hope you are open to this proposal and see the chances it gives for anyone to a ensure a peaceful together in the Rome 2 forums without merged mega threads of a 156 pages size or threads getting closed very easily in conjunction with pointing to discuss in these threads only.

Thank you very much for your time and understanding. I am very open to discuss details with the administration and moderators. I know there may be some resistance against that idea, as in the first place it does put some additional work, but I beg you to give it a chance for improving the whole situation.

[Ishan]

1) Reorganization implies that something was already organized. Which Rome 2 section, because of its posters, isn't.
2) Admins may give a dedicated sub-forum to just complaint about the game, if, you can prove that it will drag more site traffic on TWC. Next thing you know people would want one for just praising Rome
3) Complaining about CA's business policies\decisions has zero impact on CA's willingness to fix some issue with Rome 2 and doesn't benefits TWC, in fact we lose potential readers because of this.
4) We have already allowed people to discuss key features or problems they have with Rome 2, putting them in a different forum makes no difference how users themselves behave in them.
5) We have tech area to discuss any performance issues with the game patch after patch.

[alQamar]

Hello Ishan,

to 1) I think by the massive amount of moderation and the mentioned 3 threads (praise, business complaints, complaint thread), some call it bins, we can speak about some kind of organisation, at least the efforts of having it.

to 2) I do not see a relation between a subforum under Rome 2 general discussion for complaints and the need for more traffic. Creating a subforum does not cost money. It is a smaller matter of a database structure and some assigns for moderation and links.

So why do we create tech and support sections? In order to generate more traffic or to achieve a more structured discussion place? I really do not understand the given relation here.

Personally I do not think, there are enough reasons yet to creat a Rome 2 praise subforum. The praise thread is yet very much better to read compared to the complaint thread, as it is a thread containing several personal impressions instead of containing various former discussions being merged into one pot.

And moreover it is much shorter by the way. I am not saying the people praising Rome 2 do not deserve an own subforum, this would be silly, but from the feedback I've got from several people in case of complaints there is less uproar, compared to people praising, being "forced" to post in just one thread. This even cause the silly thread about if the TWC Rome 2 section is moderated in favor Rome 2 / CA. I still hope and think it is not.


to 3) I would agree if the discussion about CA's business decisions would be kept in a stickied thread within the complaints subforum and I agree they possibly would not consider to rethink their strategies, as they are doing their business.

I case of the "complaints" I think it would be very helpful to reorganize them as explained before in the OP. Instead of having a mixture of threads, just as an proposal, we could assign threads for different major issues.

e.g. battle engine behaviour, siege AI, naval battles and whatever we find very prominent.

At current those very important topics are either content of the Rome 2 complaint thread, or strayed around or buried within the general discussion forum, which is so much loaded no one might find them again, to keep up a discussion and it's progress.


to 4) That is right, but we may see it from another point of view. If we take the modding section for example:

Every meaningful mod has it's own thread and people discussing it very actively and most of all stay on the topic, most of all times. No one is bugged to search a mod for a long time nor bugged to post in a general topic or the general section of Rome 2, where most of them would be lost aswell.

We could have the same situation in the complaints subforum. People then would have threads as anchors without derailing any thread other with their thoughs (even I do), completely offtopic from the original post, right?

In this case I think the behaviour of users could get much better and if people keep posting their stuff in the appropriate threads, or moderators merge "wrongly posted" content from the general discussion into them, they could have a better quality.

Issues which are not meaninful for the community will automatically drop and age, or even be necroed as long there are new issues to discuss on the same topic, e.g. if a patch assigns this matter.
This all is very much more handy instead browsing the general section with it's hundreds of paged or using the forum search, which often enough does not reveal the proper data.

In this case a smaller and comprehensive subforum could help to solve the usual issues of a forum.

to 5) I am not only talking about the technical things. Often enough these patch threads are not even there in the tech section but placed and tolerated in the general discussion too.

I really want to solve the distinguished conflict we have in the General Section.
Rome 2 offers more than just people complaining about, while the complaints are very important to let the people and CA have an idea what's still to do.

Therefore I am putting all my eggs into the basket for idea of a subforum, not to create a place like rants and rave on totalwar.com where even very much reasonable threads are moved to, to keep the air clean and breathable. We can do it better than CA does it on its own site. I still hope for your support.


Generally this conflict of interest is the same for the multiplayer section and it is not that severe as TWC is not a multiplayer related forum, but more related to single player campaign and modding. However generally, if it would be a home for multiplayer a strict seperation between multiplayer campaign and multiplayer battles would be needed aswell. I can remember several people proposed or even claimed that wish, before Rome 2 was released. However the subforum design stayed very much the same as we had in Shogun 2, for the given reasons, perhaps. From my point of view I know that many multiplayer fans do not come to TWC because this needed seperation is not there and so the basis for good debates is missing.
Somewhen, if TW Arena will appear this design might be subject to change.

This said, just as another example why those conflicts of interest is a valid point from my point of view to propose this complaints subforum.

[Derpy Hooves]

A forum made just so that people can complain about a video game? I think it might be a bit early for April Fool's don't you think?
Having a forum for people to complain does not benefit this site, rather it could hurt this site. It would advertise that staff is catering to complainers and negative Nancys. CA would probably also back off from this site knowing that we are catering to that specific group.

[Butan]

I support this idea: better aim low and have a sub-forum for complaint (and praise too).

A forum made just so that people can complain about a video game? I think it might be a bit early for April Fool's don't you think?

The definition of a forum isnt necessarily a place where there is no complaints. This is just TWC's modus operandi.


Situation: messages in the general discussion encompasses the two ends of a debate : positive/negative or if you prefer, complaint/praise (neutral in the middle).

Problem: complaint/praise are not allowed out of specific threads, only neutral threads are.

Issue: complaint/praise mega-threads are full of merged different threads, because the users continue to complain/praise in the general discussion.

Proposition: give them a sub-forum so that they can have separate and comprehensible discussion of selective debatable points, instead of mega-threads devoid of any potential of discussion.

Having a forum for people to complain does not benefit this site, rather it could hurt this site. It would advertise that staff is catering to complainers and negative Nancys. CA would probably also back off from this site knowing that we are catering to that specific group.

Dealing with local high activity on a part of a forum by over-moderating is hurting this site.
CA has already quite backed off from this site despite that.



Key factor to keep a forum strong: keep its members.

TWC has largely succeeded in that, so much that on particular places there is a very high forum activity concentration which is hardly manageable for the moderation team.
A logical solution would be to create a sub-forum for the members to spread out.

[Huberto]

A forum made just so that people can complain about a video game? I think it might be a bit early for April Fool's don't you think?
Having a forum for people to complain does not benefit this site, rather it could hurt this site. It would advertise that staff is catering to complainers and negative Nancys. CA would probably also back off from this site knowing that we are catering to that specific group.

Staff is putting a much higher bar in place for criticism than for praise content, much of which is mindless. They might as well equalize the forum, since there are more TWR2 complainers anyway and always have been since release.

I would rather the subforum be named criticism instead of complaints though.

Criticism benefits the game, which benefits the site.

[StealthFox]

This is an unnecessary and will only lead to more division, continuing to split the community into two camps that leads to high tensions and a volatile atmosphere that leads to insults and other ToS violations. We want all people to be able to discuss the game in both positive and negative aspects. There are appropriate threads with topics for you to discuss these things, and other threads where certain topics would be off topic. For example, in a thread on the features of the Hannibal at the Gates DLC, you don't talk about how it is such a bad business practice to sell DLC content, as there is already a separate place where that can be discussed. Someone wanting to know what features the DLC has doesn't want to sift through endless posts about CA DLC business practice.

[Derpy Hooves]

Criticism benefits the game, which benefits the site.

This is very true, however, much of the so called criticism that I have seen looks more like whiny complaints

[alQamar]

Staff is putting a much higher bar in place for criticism than for praise content, much of which is mindless. They might as well equalize the forum, since there are more TWR2 complainers anyway and always have been since release.

I would rather the subforum be named criticism instead of complaints though.

Criticism benefits the game, which benefits the site.

good idea huberto I will edit the OP, asap.

[the man, the myth, the legend]

"Criticism benefits the game, which benefits the site."

I beg to differ. What good can it do? Give me your very short list. Criticism might be beneficial to totalwar.com but definitely not for TWC. I personally very rarely visit the Rome 2 forums because of all the negativity. We have a saying in business. that "if you do a good job a customer might tell one or two people, but if you do a bad job they'll tell ten." I'm all for a complainer's subforum, though.

[alQamar]

This is an unnecessary and will only lead to more division, continuing to split the community into two camps that leads to high tensions and a volatile atmosphere that leads to insults and other ToS violations. We want all people to be able to discuss the game in both positive and negative aspects. There are appropriate threads with topics for you to discuss these things, and other threads where certain topics would be off topic. For example, in a thread on the features of the Hannibal at the Gates DLC, you don't talk about how it is such a bad business practice to sell DLC content, as there is already a separate place where that can be discussed. Someone wanting to know what features the DLC has doesn't want to sift through endless posts about CA DLC business practice.

Hi Stealth while you are basically right, I do not think that the current situation does fulfill the needs I've placed as reason for a sub-forum. If we argument that way we could also put the support requests aswell as the technical discussion into the same general discussion (I don't like to use GC as this reminds me to much of Active Directory).

I already answered Ishan, that I personally do not find it neccessary to seperate or close the business complaints thread. I do not see the space in the general discussion to discuss and improve the game with a meaning of improvements, without getting disturbed by people that think everything is alright and nothing needs to be changed. This game turned into a holy grail for some.

This is one reason

Is there a thread or post which summarizes Rome II's complaints, problems and wishes?

you simply cannot put this thing (a summary) up in the general discussion today without initiating the same old wars. You know and the moderators aside you know the best how much the moderation team has to work in the Rome 2 forum to facilitate a reasonable discussion and how many threads being actually closed sooner or later, mostly sooner.

The goal is again to create a room for reasonable criticsm on Rome 2 in order to get this subpar game fixed by constructive feedback, once for all. I hope you could basically agree that the reserved threads are not useful and the general discussion thread became a battlefield instead of a forum, and this even PRIOR the release of Rome 2. Ishan even said there is no organisation because of the posters.
This is the subject I would love to see changed.

The seperation of the people happened already in the minds StealthFox, and if it is god's will CA will fix this with the next game, or not.
A seperation is very much needed to calm people down. I know there are a lot of people which turned away from the Rome 2 subforum, either because the criticsm destroying their discussions, or because the criticsm is stricly moderated, and people ineed misbehave because they need a home to express their ideas and intentions without getting insulted as haters.

If we all would be haters, we would not have the reason to put so much love into a game and franchise to make it better. That's at least my impression. As usual exceptions confirm the rule.

Could you please give me another reason why you basically think it is completely unnecessary to have subforum? Where is the difference in case to modders and the ones I've stated already? I am not telling people the ones that keep complaining or criticsm Rome 2 are the better citizens here, fairly not. I just feel some unequal situation if I compare myself with a modder which is allowed to have his own thread without quarrels in his own subforum, while people that are willing to post constructively criticsm being buried in the thousands of pages the general discussion has. The general discussion for Rome 2, in regard of the circumstances, is too general for this issue, to be honest.

in a thread on the features of the Hannibal at the Gates DLC, you don't talk about how it is such a bad business practice to sell DLC content

This said while we know extensive cleaning was needed and even some criticsm on the DLC were deleted. Errare humanum est.
If I imagine we would have a subforum the following scenario would be possible:

People being uncontent with the DLC could post their ideas why they dislike the DLC, the anticipation or even why they do not think this DLC is worth in one thread because the game is technically not capable to provide the needed atmosphere:

• Forum > Total War: Rome II > Total War: Rome II General Discussion > Total War: Rome II criticsm forum > Criticsm on the HaTG DLC thread

And then you could save the efforts moderating the "disruptive posts" and merge them in the appropriate thread.

"Criticism benefits the game, which benefits the site."

I beg to differ. What good can it do? Give me your very short list. Criticism might be beneficial to totalwar.com but definitely not for TWC. I personally very rarely visit the Rome 2 forums because of all the negativity. We have a saying in business. that "if you do a good job a customer might tell one or two people, but if you do a bad job they'll tell ten." I'm all for a complainer's subforum, though.

And your point is exactly why I want to change the overall situation why this request the topic is about. This is what I talked about in the OP, the conflict of interests being there in the general chat, we could resolve by this measure.

I would like to ensure people can come back to the Rome 2 subforums without getting faced and slapped by "negativity" just because they do see it different or they want to discuss more valuable stuff. Which is their right and which great and which is also the reason we are on TWC at all.

You and many others told us already you are tired of the negativity, so let us have our organized playground, while you can use and enjoy the general discussion thread again for what it is designed for. Again it is not our fault the game is still shady after more than 4 months.

Criticsm might be beneficial to totalwar.com

Very true, but the pronounce is on the "might be" and criticsm, mostly when it is catched up by many members is punished hard there. Even much harder than here, and way more unreasonable.
TWC is the last resort for many people being either blocked or banned on totalwar.com because the moderation found their postings damaging to the franchise and climate. Moderation is not allowed to be questioned there by ToS. So it is a obeye or die game. After all it is their forum and it is a platform for users connecting to each other, self-help, tech support and also a stage for advertising.

Criticsm is not desired on totalwar.com, most of all not if that could banish happy customers for the same reason you do want not visit the Rome 2 forums anymore. They need to keep their game and image in a good condition, and they do it more or less at all cost on totalwar.com.

I am sad to tell you this is a fact and I could find a some people which would sing the same song along with me mate.

[jamreal18]

Remember, the forum reflects the current state of the game.
Its better called criticim. Its reliable because those who will post in here are the ones who are experiencing the game.

[zzzms]

I support a criticism/complaints forum, keeps it all in one place and frees up the regular R2 forums for help and tips etc. It also makes it possible to see how many complaints people have and may shame CA into a) fixing things and b) bringing out a product that works in the future, altho' I suspect it won't make the slightest difference...

[alQamar]

I've edited the topics name and also some parts in my OP. Hope it covers your ideas now jamreal / Huberto. I also added a practical example in post #11 to a quote StealthFox gave in his post #7

[wangrin]

3) Complaining about CA's business policies\decisions has zero impact on CA's willingness to fix some issue with Rome 2 and doesn't benefits TWC, in fact we lose potential readers because of this.
4) We have already allowed people to discuss key features or problems they have with Rome 2, putting them in a different forum makes no difference how users themselves behave in them.

I'm really sorry, but even if it will not change CA decisions, I consider the decision to remove the possibility for peoples to voice their complaints and criticism as an unwise and unjust policy.
If you consider "loosing" readers due to "complaint, you will certainly loose reader due to "blind praise" thread as well as angering peoples now unable to voice their concerns.

If I would consider this behaviour as "normal" in totalwar.com, the official forum, I'm really surprise to find this "censor-like" behaviour here.

Critics and even complaints are part of the game life.
And autism isn't a solution.


If moderation consider that "criticisms and complaints" "polute" the forum, give a sub-forum to peoples instead of closing thread and force them to shut up.
If administration and moderation consider that allowing a sub-forum is too much, let them post on the main TW:R2 forum "as usual".

[alQamar]

And autism isn't a solution.

Thats a bit harsh wangrin.

[wangrin]

I rarely explain myself that harsh, but I'm quite anger I must said.
And English isn't my first language.
Autism means that people is withdrawing on oneself and unable to communicate and understand the others.

[Huberto]

3) Complaining about CA's business policies\decisions has zero impact on CA's willingness to fix some issue with Rome 2 and doesn't benefits TWC, in fact we lose potential readers because of this.

I've been hearing this a lot recently in the TWR2 GD forum. Seems like a pretty wild claim to me. Is there any evidence to support it?

[GussieFinkNottle]

I'd definitely be in favour of this, it would reduce the messiness of the Rome 2 general discussion forum and reduce the constant battles between users and the moderation staff. It would also create clear debate demarcation lines, so users wanting only a certain type of discussion could find it without ending up calling other users 'fanboys' or 'haters'. With fewer clashes, fewer infractions would be handed out and everyone could have a part of the forum that catered to their tastes. In this way probably more people would enjoy posting on the Rome 2 forums and antagonism and tension would decrease.

I can only see positive results to this measure, and fully support it.

I've been hearing this a lot recently in the TWR2 GD forum. Seems like a pretty wild claim to me. Is there any evidence to support it?

TWC is very unpopular on reddit thanks to the infighting, just read a bit down where it becomes a full-on anti-TWC rant: http://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/com...ver_donations/

Edit: I'd also like to endorse Wangrin's sentiments above (+rep)

[mishkin]

I've been hearing this a lot recently in the TWR2 GD forum. Seems like a pretty wild claim to me. Is there any evidence to support it?

Is there any evidence that the company heard (and act on the basis of) the complaints expressed in this forum?