Quote Originally Posted by TCWNME View Post
I think a lead pipe will either hurt really bad or fix the problem indefinitely.

I do actually think there are too many promises and a lack of actual action, or actual results. There seems to be some kind of effort to interact with and inform the community, but most of this seems to be avoiding dealing with the bigger issues the players are concerned with.
I think that there is a lot to be gained by tackling the bigger problems more aggressively and then being more transparent about the results these actions achieve so that everyone can see something is being done.
The forum attitude is set from the top down, meaning from employees to the moderator staff, and then to the customers.

The main issue is that there has been, for a very long time, a culture of these forums being considered to be a "snakepit" full of angry, hissing, and primarily "wrong" customers by the employees. Much of that stemmed from being overly stressed, and thus overly emotional about various issues. Sure, some customers have asked for way too much and have been way too quick to call for "compensation", but not everyone.

I recall many times that I've made a statement and it's been blown way out of proportion and turned into something I never meant and would never even request. The most recent example of that was in regards to the building queue. What I asked for was twisted into me requesting everything to happen instantly. That is, frankly, just a flippant dismissal of what I had to say with a made-up extreme request that I never made.

If things are ever going to improve, that kind of behavior from the employees must stop. That's step one.

Step two is changing the attitude of the suggestions area. Moderators should police the area for people belittling other people's ideas, but beyond that, they shouldn't be so quick to clamp down on discussion because the suggestion has been made in the past. Sometimes a person may not describe what they're wanting real well, particularly if it's being made in a stressful situation. Sometimes people have good ideas, but express them with a lot of words. Sometimes it takes more than one time, or even two or three times, for the merits of a particular idea to be properly explained.

For example, the building queue discussion was made multiple times, and a reason something was done was because it was brought up multiple times. Despite the very poor choice of what to do (making it free would've reduced the incentive for construction-related bots), if people had just kept quiet, either willingly or forced to remain quiet (like the medal drop issue is currently), then it wouldn't have happened.

I think if those two things happened, then step three would happen naturally - customers making reasonable suggestions.

So, to summarize:

1) Employees need to stop thinking that customers are being overly-demanding and/or "complaining about everything" and/or "wanting something for nothing", and instead actually listen.

2) Moderation of the suggestions area needs to be modified to be more tolerant of discussion, with more policing of customers belittling others and being less restrictive in regards to not allowing discussion of topics that have been discussed in the past.

3) Customers take the responsibility for making reasonable suggestions and/or reasonable complaints.