This thread isn't the first of its kind and considering the overall state of forums no one successfully made users apply common sense rules like you're trying to do. Your goal is so respectable, but:

• There has always been some sort of childish debating tradition which will last forever as long as the old forums owls keep on bashing poor newcomers complaining about a few aspects of the game they can legitimately find displeasing.
• No need to mention also the forums "police", those players who feel more concerned about telling people how they should use forums than actually helping or answering the threads.
• And finally the forums trolls, who're, you know, just trolling for the sake of trolling.

*put my hand on your shoulder and nod*

Those 3 kind of people are the forums flea who eventually make every forumer believe that the only way to be really considered and heard in these forums is to be provocating. Many people here "play" at the edge of forums rules; don't be fooled because you've never seen my name, I am sort of a forum owl, I've started reading forums by the time equipments started binding when crafted.

Typical forums police example provided without even requesting :3.
Iz forumz joke i hope

I give you 2 pies for this. And don't worry, the pie is not a lie.

If you are trolled, remain calm.

I think this is a genuinely good read for all parties on the forum, myself included. I think perhaps tensions run high and people start lashing out at one another instead of generating discussion in threads because of personal opinions of other posters regardless of the contents of their posts. "A good discussion sheds light instead of generating heat". It's hard to keep that in mind when you start feeling slighted.

It's nice to read something like this and just be able to take a breath and feel like we can start talking about fixing things without tearing one another to shreds.

And post #8 is especially important for a lot of the threads lately. OOO is an umbrella company that still has to do what it's mother company dictates. As a business it still has deadlines and quotas to fulfill, but it doesn't change the fact that the people who are working there are genuinely nice people who care about putting out really cool content for others to enjoy. I am digging the new danger missions.

Thanks for an elucidating post.

EoS took over the forums

:<

You missed the part about how we're allowed to spam threads to cover up other people's opinions...

Aside from that, I generally disagree with this. You use many of the common arguments that point towards "OOO is right" and "The forums are just incredibly whiney and the rest of the game is entirely different in opinion."

A good example of this-

"They know way more about the game than you ever will, and if they don’t implement your suggestions or demands, it’s probably because your suggestions/demands won’t work. Also remember that you are just one of many, many players; your opinion does matter, but it is not the most important one ever."

You can say that all you want, but much of the time an opinion is held by a large number of players, and another large amount of the time, those many players will agree that one part of the game needs to be changed. Your argument is that you aren't entitled to your idea being counted upon- but if a majority of the players in the game hold an opinion, and want it changed, then why shouldn't that opinion be given some amount of thought?

And then you go on to answer that with-
"Do not assume that because you are on the forums, you are seeing the true opinions of all players. The forums make up maybe 5% of the total player population of Spiral Knights; it is NOT and never will be a representative sample of the playerbase. "

Which is to say that because of selection bias, we will never know what people think. When I play the game, I party with randoms. I talk to them "How about those shard bomb changes?" I ask around. And a lot of people care about them, because they had the item. They are the vocal ones, and they are the ones who were effected. What you say implies that the forums- the vocal ones- don't matter because there are others. That implies that our opinions don't matter, and it severely limits their virtue.

Another thing is that "the population" of the game, "the community" is constantly changing. Even on the forums, people are constantly swapping around and coming and going... and whenever someone is new, they don't have every item in the game- and much of the time, "How about those shard bombs?" goes something like "Whats a shard bomb???", because they haven't played for very long. That isn't to say that they're wrong, or aren't entitled to an opinion just as I am, but that is to say that their opinion is stronjly defined by the fact that they can't possibly make one. If you asked me my opinion on whether the darkfang shield is underpowered or overpowered compared to the owlite series, I would have nowhere to start, because I haven't used either. The forums have many people that DO have shard bombs, and thus DO have the ability to judge them. The shard bombs are just an example- I could have used shadow lairs, or danger missions, or any other update good or bad. New players can't say "I hate the shadow lairs!" because chances are, they're probably still fighting the snarbolax.

Finally, if people aren't willing to express their opinions, why should they be catered to? If 1/20 of the population expresses their opinions, then maybe they are the only ones that care enough to- and if 19/20 of the players in the game don't care enough about what goes on to say anything, then perhaps the 1/20 should be listened to. Perhaps they are the only ones with enough information to form an opinion, and even if everyone else disagrees entirely with them, shouldn't they hold any credibillity in what the devs think/do? If they all disagree with an update, perhaps the devs should look into it?

And then on this point:
"Do not assume that you know what counts as a ToS violation. Obey it to the best of your abilities, but note that the ToS can be amended at any time, and OOO ultimately has the power to define any and all terms within it. What counts as “personal attacks” or “spam” to you might be something very different to a moderator. "

"You don't know that it is spam"? What?

Gee, I'm not sure- is this spam, or a discussion on spiral knights? http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/62560
And then it isn't cleaned up. It is just sitting there. 'D'.

"Q: Who purports to think the ticket distribution method was fair?
A: Only those who got dozens or hundreds of tickets through it."

I disagree. I am one of the few who got only one 3-variant ticket and still thinks that the distribution method was fair. Think of it as a kind of promo; those who can afford it and want it will benefit, while those who can't afford it or don't care won't benefit. Fairness has nothing to do with it. If you wanted the tickets but didn't put in the effort to ragecraft, you were lazy.

It's not a sin to be rich.

P.S. I, too, am mainly a forum owl. I've been watching the forums for well over a year now. I've posted, but not often.

At the bottom of the page and below the posting text box is a link, "More information about formatting options." In case you can't find it, I'll put it here too: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/filter/tips
That link will tell you how to do all the fancy stuff that you see forum posters doing.

It's basically an unordered list (as opposed to a numbered list). The format is thus: < ul > < li >[list item1]< /li > < li >[list item2]< /li > < /ul >
< ul > indicates that you want to make a list
< li > indicates a list element
< /li > indicates that you're done with said list element
< /ul > indicates the end of your list
The result is a bullet list.

Does that help?

P.S. I put spaces in between the "<" & ">" because the forums would have translated them, e.g., in "< ul >," there should be no space between the "<" and the "u" or between the "l" and the ">."

"Do not assume that you know what counts as a ToS violation. Obey it to the best of your abilities, but note that the ToS can be amended at any time, and OOO ultimately has the power to define any and all terms within it. What counts as “personal attacks” or “spam” to you might be something very different to a moderator. "

There is going to be a lot of posterior pain about this.

"So, Fehzor. What I have gathered from your post is you believe OOO doesn't give enough attention to people's opinions on the forums? Is that a correct characterization of your feelings? I personally think that they do read and take these things into consideration, but I don't necessarily think that they need to acknowledge everything that is said here. What do you think the forums would gain if OOO took a more active role in responding to player feedback?"

My point to you is that you believe the opposite, and that your post is not without bias.

To answer your question though, 'What do you think the forums would gain if OOO took a more active role in responding to player feedback?', I think that OOO would come out looking better, and there would be less hard feelings about them, which would lead to more of the long time players supporting the devs. Look at The-Rawrcake - he argued for the new shard bombs on the testing forums, and only suggested a few fixes there. OOO completely disregarded his posts, and two weeks later he posted about how they ignored them on the arsenal forum. Now, many people aren't as verbal as him, and many more are.. but the point is that they asked for feedback, and then completely ignored it and continued on to do something that players did not like. Now there is a petition with 6 pages of comments going and they've still done nothing... you would think that OOO would at least post something on the issue explaining their actions in a bit more detail.

"What I have gathered from your post is you believe OOO doesn't give enough attention to people's opinions on the forums?"

I believe more that the forums are an indicator of what the player base believes. Not to say that every poster is like that, but that they show something, and that they should be considered at the least. If OOO wants to know the whole playerbase's opinion, they can just use the in game poll function- "Do you feel that the changes to RSS were carried out well?" and then see how many of their target audience- people with RSS that received a moderate number of UV tickets (as was intended) answered 'yes, I feel great!' But the forums should be a nice starting place at the least for that- "hmm, forum goers think X because Y, lets ask other players about it" may not have to go for every little thing asked or done, but when a large number of them agree on that, it should definitely come across to them. Like you said- "I don't necessarily think that they need to acknowledge everything that is said here." But I don't think that that should allow the devs to ignore some of the more important issues that keep arising.

What's the take on +1 posts, especially ones that don't contribute or add anything besides simply saying "+1" and nothing else?

And if they're allowed, can I start posting -1 posts?

So you think that the forums are just a tiny portion of the player base that sees things entirely differently than every other player in the game, and that the devs shouldn't even consider looking into the issues people on the forums bring up? Because as I said, the forums come up with many serious issues with the game, and the devs could at least ask the player base at large what they think of them just to see what comes of it.

Another thing that I dislike about this is that it merits lack of thought in posts- lets say that some kid who plays the game comes into the forums screaming something about pets in general. If I don't like his post that he sloppily put down without thinking, then weighting his argument equally to the other arguments regarding the issue that have been thought out with foresight by the forum regulars seems rather silly. If I craft a 78 two UV tickets worth of shard bombs, and go onto the forums saying "haha, I feel like I got compensated equally, yeah" then that doesn't provide any argument towards the fact that UV tickets were awarded unequally. Are you suggesting that the notions of people are all equal? In a sense they are, but I do believe that you should merit the actual thoughts and explanations of people a bit more than "The forums are small compared to the rest of the game. Therefore, the forums are entirely wrong about the game and don't show anything."

For all we know majority of the players in this game love the new shard bomb or love how they got compensated
Really...? So why I don't know of even one person that liked the new bombs aside from a few that posted on the forums? If majority of the forums agree on something (since it's one of the few ways of contacting the devs that the players have) they could at least make an in-game survey to confirm something.

It's not like if they need to change them to bring the old RSS back, they can coexist since one is completely different from the other (also on the testing subject, they tested what exactly; the amount of complaints per second that the new bombs could get or if it had enough bugs so that they could be sure it was annoying enough to launch?). Sure, they probably have the numbers on the new bombs but while one of the few communication channels between players and devs is full of complaints and I am still to meet a single knight that liked the update, I still believe that the overall player base disliked the last patch.

I saw no need to post it in the suggestions since people are discussing the coexistence as well as tweaks on the old bombs at the "Bring back the old RSS" thread.
That's the problem, aside from forums comments (minority here) the closest thing to liking the bomb that I've heard people say outside the forum is that the mechanics have potential, but without tweaks and bug fixes (especially on the disappearing shards) they are still bad, so unless the devs showed some numbers on the forums I would still believe that. All that I've heard is either what I stated earlier or that Nick is being biased in treating bombs differently (since bombs need to do AoE, then guns would need to do damage to a single monster and have long range, while swords do the mix so bye bye blitz, polaris, catalyzer, etc ; or bombs need to be charged and placed, guns need to shoot and swords slash, so welcome back old RSS) and still he doesn't say a word and is keeping quiet while the forum rages.

I'm not asking for them to show numbers nor I believe they will, I'm just saying it's one of the few ways of making me change my point of view (because as I said, nobody either in my friend list or guild have liked it). And, no I don't want anymore weapons removed from the game I'm just saying that his argument is biased because he's classifying things in completely unrelated categories, like "cars need to have motors to be cars, but bicicles need to be blue, if they are any other color then they are skates"; instead of putting something that can be compared like slash, shoots, charges and places or AoE, long range/only one target/weak damage, mix.

People are making two errors here, no need to call them out on just one.

1. Forums do not represent the majority.
2. Majority are not always right.

This is why companies that know what they're doing don't simply take surveys or polls to figure out what they want to do. Sure, they can use them as a tool but it's just one factor in an equation and not the deciding one. Fehzor gave the example of some kid that comes here complaining about something versus forum regulars. The entire point of the forums isn't to count everyone's vote equally or even pay attention to who is posting what. You read and weight things by the strength of the argument, not the poster. Quality over quantity. Companies that know what they're doing look for good ideas and good feedback in a forum, not simply what most people here want.

You're making an even worse assumption than the Forums being representative of the player base, and that it's what you see/hear is representative of a player base. Unless you know and talk to every player in the game, or at least a large enough random distribution of them, which I find highly unlikely, you can't make a legit claim on what is representative of the player base.

And no, just because the consumer isn't happy about something doesn't mean the product or producer is doing something wrong. Most of us here don't like the rising cost of Energy, and haven't for longer than this game has actually been live. I think by this point we can agree that Three Rings does not agree that the consumer is right about this, at least, and that they don't see a reason to change it or even respond.

No, that's my argument. Neither is representative, not one is more or less representative than the other. And no, we don't have to stick with them because that's "the only sources we have." We could instead, say, use logical arguments and based decision on the strengths of the position that back them, instead of how vocally they're backed by a portion of a player base that isn't even representative of the player base.

And no one has proved that the system is flawed or given proof of anything yet. People have given their opinions on it, no one has proven anything. The majority of those arguments hinges on the idea that higher CE costs are harmful to the game. I disagree, I imagine Three Rings does, no one has given good argument to suggest otherwise.

I'm not saying don't use good arguments or that there haven't been good arguments. I'm saying to stick to them, and leave out all this nonsense that the forums represent the player base.

I am so sorry about bringing the CE discussion in this thread about forum discussions as it's not the right place for it. I'd be happy to have that discussion with you if you want to start a new thread though.