Can we all agree to not be like this?

[Alshain]

I don't have any KSP mods (yet) but from my experience with other games when somebody tells you your mod sucks it's usually because it doesn't do the one little thing that THEY want. It doesn't matter if it has 50,000 other wonderful features, they want something specific and for some reason they think insulting the developer is going to get it for them, even if they don't tell the developer what it is they want.

That said, sometimes don't come across in text the way they are intended. Obviously "Your mod sucks" is pretty easy to interpret but other times people sound rude unintentionally, sometimes because English isn't their native language and other times because people have difficulty speaking in text, so that is something you have to be aware of.

[Padishar]

snip

All good developers listen to feedback. You claiming that Blizzard (or any developer) doesn't read feedback is nonsense. They may ignore feedback that is non-constructive, abusive, unhelpful etc. but both the game examples you have given have been considerably improved over the years as a direct result of user feedback.

They certainly do not ignore feedback because they "are professional and confident that they are the best". All good developers know that they are not perfect and their products can always be improved. They also know that there are users who are smarter and/or better at game design than they are.

This thread is not about people saying bad things about mods. It is about the way those bad things are said...

Edited July 28, 2014 by KasperVld
removed some rule breaking content

[Aphobius]

This post does nothing to improve the terrible opinion of you that your first post in the thread gave me (and others, apparently).

All good developers listen to feedback. You claiming that Blizzard (or any developer) doesn't read feedback is nonsense. They may ignore feedback that is non-constructive, abusive, unhelpful etc. but both the game examples you have given have been considerably improved over the years as a direct result of user feedback.

They certainly do not ignore feedback because they "are professional and confident that they are the best". All good developers know that they are not perfect and their products can always be improved. They also know that there are users who are smarter and/or better at game design than they are.

This thread is not about people saying bad things about mods. It is about the way those bad things are said...

About the first part, that's my opinion, it's hard for me or you to prove who is right about that.

About the bold part, you should have read the last paragraph of my post.

[helldiver]

Ahaha, 5 pages. If everyone tells you that your mod sucks, maybe it really sucks. "Boohoohoo, but I did it for free", yeah, so what, do you want to be venerated by everyone because you've done some crap for free?

Sure I agree, people should have a tougher skin. But guess what?

As a former teacher, telling someone how bad their project stinks doesn't help them. If someone spent months working on a mod and it's terrible, the part I see that is valuable is that they had the time and dedication to at least try. This could be better if you instead did this. Or give them suggestions on how to improve it. Going all derisive and telling them how badly it sucks, doesn't help anyone. If anything it hurts the community since not all modders have a tough skin.

If you are a good developer, even if this sounds strange, you should never listen to feedback. Just an extreme example, think about Blizzard, do you think they even read the feedback? Yet, they have some of the best games ever made (WoW and Starcraft 2, they are like the only MMORPG and RTS that deserve being played, other games of that kind are not coming even close to this two). And look on their forums, people say all kind of crap about the new dungeons, about the future dungeons, about balance in Starcraft etc. Do Blizzard ever listen to them? No. Because they are professional and confident that they are the best, it's not like the people on the forum are smarter than them or better than them at game design or anything.

None of this is true. The best developers listen to feedback. The best artists listen to feedback. The worst games that have flopped on release... guess what? They didn't listen to feedback and stuck to "the vision". I know this first hand.

Blizzard has an entire team dedicated to community relations and feedback aggregation. They have community relations managers, run surveys, and have community involvement programs. I was part of a feedback program they had early on in the game. Believe it or not it's due to community feedback that a lot of changes that have occurred with the game have happened.

I think I'm pretty good at what I do, but even I listen feedback. The only way that I can get better, is by listening to what others think of my work.

Edited July 28, 2014 by KasperVld
removed some (quoted) rule breaking content

[Padishar]

You should have also read the last paragraph of my post.

Why? Your last paragraph was no more on-topic or realistic than the rest of your post.

But in any case, you misinterpreted even that single line. So you make mods and EVERYONE tells you that they suck and you think that "maybe some (all?) people just want to insult others"?

Now you are shifting the focus of your comment. Again, this isn't about users saying that a mod is bad (though without reasons, this is non-constructive), it is about users being needlessly abusive when doing so.

Edited July 28, 2014 by KasperVld
removed some rule breaking content

[Aphobius]

Sure I agree, people should have a tougher skin. But guess what?

As a former teacher, telling someone how bad their project stinks doesn't help them. If someone spent months working on a mod and it's terrible, the part I see that is valuable is that they had the time and dedication to at least try. This could be better if you instead did this. Or give them suggestions on how to improve it. Going all derisive and telling them how badly it sucks, doesn't help anyone. If anything it hurts the community since not all modders have a tough skin.

My personal opinion is that rude feedback helps people to acknowledge better what they are doing wrong, if you just say it nicely, they are like "lalala, whatever, i still think it might be better my way". Anyway, I don't argue this is good or everyone should be like this, so it doesn't matter.

All of you talk about how we all must be nice to each other and give constructive feedback etc. Ok, I don't disagree with you, maybe that would be nice. But you are just talking about how you would want things to be, while I'm talking about the things really are and they are not going to change, this is how people are and topics like this and things that you are saying are not going to change them.

EDIT:

None of this is true. The best developers listen to feedback. The best artists listen to feedback. The worst games that have flopped on release... guess what? They didn't listen to feedback and stuck to "the vision". I know this first hand.

Blizzard has an entire team dedicated to community relations and feedback aggregation. They have community relations managers, run surveys, and have community involvement programs. I was part of a feedback program they had early on in the game. Believe it or not it's due to community feedback that a lot of changes that have occurred with the game have happened.

I think I'm pretty good at what I do, but even I listen feedback. The only way that I can get better, is by listening to what others think of my work.

You are confusing things, when they ask people what they would like in the game (feedback program or what you were talking about), that's one thing, they just get a simple idea and they improve it by themselves. When they make surveys and things like that, that's something else. That's a little more than normal feedback.

What I was talking about is that they don't listen to people from the forum that make hundreds of threads "protoss OP omg, nerf" or "OMG zerg weak, make hydras tech 1". And even threads that seem good, I don't think they ever done something because people wrote something on the forum.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Aphobius

[Padishar]

My personal opinion is that rude feedback helps people to acknowledge better what they are doing wrong

Try giving me (or most other reasonable modders) rude feedback and see where you get... [hint: nowhere, except their ignore list]

You are entitled to your opinion and they are entitled to theirs. They are also entitled to completely ignore anything you say and, if you say it rudely, this is almost certainly what will happen...

[AlexinTokyo]

I am not a modder, nor am I a big user of mods (although I don't know how I'd survive in KSP without KER and KAC).

That said, it truly saddens me that the state of affairs on the internet has fallen so far that, "that's the way it is; get used to it," and, "man up or get out," are considered at all as acceptable responses to a story like this.

Yes, the ability to handle criticism is something that everyone needs. Yes, there will always be people who can only provide negative criticism or only provide it in a negative way.

That doesn't mean that we, as a community, should accept that behaviour. It doesn't mean that we should tacitly allow it to continue. Maybe other places and other communities do accept it (I'm looking at you, YouTube), but that doesn't mean we have to, or even that we should.

Instead, maybe this is a chance for the KSP community to stand up and say, "we're better than that," "we won't accept such a lack of basic courtesy." And maybe we should all believe that we'd be making the world a better place by saying it.

So to answer Gaiiden's original question - Can we all agree to not be like this? - Yes, we can. And we should.

[helldiver]

My personal opinion is that rude feedback helps people to acknowledge better what they are doing wrong, if you just say it nicely, they are like "lalala, whatever, i still think it might be better my way". Anyway, I don't argue this is good or everyone should be like this, so it doesn't matter.

Right, but that doesn't happen. Check this out. I used to be one of the overdraw artists on the "Character Overdraw" thread we had way back when on Polycount. Student artists would come in, post up their character and we'd critique it by putting big red lines all over their screenshots. Some of the students would say "but I like it like it is" even though it was obvious their character didn't follow proper anatomy, edge flow, or topology. Meanwhile you had students who would take the overdraws go back and fix their work.

The ones who would go back and fix their work improved. And you could see it, eventually landing them internships at studios. The ones that didn't do it, hardly improved, but eventually would go back in and make the changes.

None of us ever took a harsh tone towards anyone's work (although one of the anatomists did flat out tell someone "if you're not going to take the critiques, there is no use in posting your work here."). We constantly critiqued each other's work. Shared techniques, redraws, talked about new technologies, as well as new methods of doing old things better.

CGSociety works the same way. Both CGSociety and Polycount are industry artist forums where students, interns, industry artists, come to share their work, portfolios, project art dumps and so on.

All of you talk about how we all must be nice to each other and give constructive feedback etc. Ok, I don't disagree with you, maybe that would be nice. But you are just talking about how you would want things to be, while I'm talking about the things really are and they are not going to change, this is how people are and topics like this and things that you are saying are not going to change them.

Constructive criticism does not equal being nice. It means being helpful and ultimately improving your community. Because maybe through your constructive critique you'll have another awesome mod that you wouldn't have the time or motivation to do yourself.

[Aphobius]

Try giving me (or most other reasonable modders) rude feedback and see where you get... [hint: nowhere, except their ignore list]

You are entitled to your opinion and they are entitled to theirs. They are also entitled to completely ignore anything you say and, if you say it rudely, this is almost certainly what will happen...

When I've said that, I didn't meant to be rude to strangers on the internet or just strangers in general. As a funny fact, I'm a much nicer person on the internet =)). Because if I'm rude to strangers, as you say, they'll just ignore me.

But in real life, when my friends do something wrong, if I'm sure about it, I want to be sure they acknowledge what they did wrong and remove any doubt from their mind that it might have been good =)).

Ok, I don't have many friends. =)) =)) But the ones that I have respect me, rude as I am, because they know I try to help them and when I say something I don't say it without being well thought and without being able to explain it in the greatest detail.

I think in this way people can improve much more, than just all being like "Yeah, I think this would be better like this.", "Yes mate, you have a point, but I i still like it more like this", "Mkay, cool.".

[KasperVld]

This thread is out to lunch and will be back in 10 minutes

Okay 20 minutes. But it's back. Please keep in mind that discussions shouldn't be fought on personal traits but rather on arguments that are on-topic.

Edited July 28, 2014 by KasperVld

[Bloodlance]

Gamers ,

When we buy games from big houses like EA etc, we have zero patiance vs problems and bugs, BUT when we buy stuff from smaller companies etc, we always know that to get our candy we need to wait for the patches, and the biggest and most wonderfull thing is, we usually get our problems fixed faster by small gaming houses then we get from the big gaming houses.

Now about that modding thing, Big gaming houses usually do not want modding to be possible, WHY ? its due to replayablity and the fact that big gaming houses want us to play the game and then play the next game = more money for them in the long haul, PLUS DLCs on the side = even more money.

Modding is something that should viewed as gold and fluff for us players, its great thing to have in a game as a possiblity and it gives us all so so many more hours of enjoyment.

Now Modders usually get very little back from their mods and time spent, thus we the gamers should have respect for the modders (altho some modders might be a bit blunt vs us, but what ever, they do it for free and should be respected as they deserve that respect from us).

Now we get mods and the game in question gets patched, and sometimes mods dont work or are just forgotten. This is life. We deal with it, and some of us try to effect old modders to come back and mod for us to get that game back on track for full enjoyment.

=> When we want something to be added to a mod, the best and most effective way is to become a constant contributor to the mod thread, and give feedback and posts that X thing would be so nice to have in that mod, and give info, WHY it would be so nice. IF that fails, some modders go to an extent to mod their mod specially for you, and this is something special some modders have done for different communities i know from the gaming world.

Be part of the modders community, dont be a negative piece of the puzzle, this way, you just might get your nice thing added to the mod(s).

Sidenote : Modders always need help, if some of us can help them in any way possible, it makes the final puzzle better.

my 2c

Edited July 28, 2014 by KasperVld

[Fizwalker]

This is my view:

Bottom line up front: Mods are not an entitlement, but rather a privilege.

Even then, we users don't have to use every (or even all of a) mod that comes down the pike, we're free to choose those we like. If there is a mod that is enjoyable to use, but has a feature that is poorly executed or doesn't work well; getting irritated and posting "Your mod sucks! Fix this now!" isn't overly useful on several levels. Firstly, it isn't really conducive to getting the modder to help you, and nor does it identify your problem. Secondly, for someone who's new to KSP and has modded in the past, and is browsing the various current mods available, it might suggest that they stay away from sharing their work. (I suspect that those modders might test the waters before really making that decision, but it's a possibility) Alternately, someone who's learning how to mod might decide not to continue. Yes, they may be insecure and not confident in their work, but if people don't share it, or the older modders get tired of the abuse and leave, the end result can be the same.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't criticize mods. Far from it! My point is that when we do criticize a mod, lets keep it in such a way that it actually helps the modder in question improve his work, or help us get the mod working properly. It does the community no good if modders leave (even unskilled ones).

Fortunately, I think this community is one of the best I've seen. Most of the criticism I've seen has been very constructive. (Sometimes a little impatient, but that in its own way is a compliment on how good a mod is in that the users are 'jonesing' for them.)

[LaytheAerospace]

You've got to have seriously thick skin to be a public figure in gaming. Gamers are brutal, vicious people with no tolerance for deviation from their personal idea of perfection. It's not possible to please everyone, and you shouldn't try. You'll spend the effort and still get yelled at by a bunch of angry teenagers in the end, plus some additional hate for "selling out," which these days translates roughly to "made a decision I didn't agree with."

[Padishar]

You've got to have seriously thick skin to be a public figure in gaming.

I believe the point the OP was making is that you shouldn't have to...

Gamers are brutal, vicious people with no tolerance for deviation from their personal idea of perfection.

That really needs to be qualified with "Some". I am a gamer and I am none of the things you describe and the same is true of an awful lot of other gamers...

It's not possible to please everyone, and you shouldn't try.

This isn't about trying to please everyone. I expect most modders realise that is (almost always) impossible...

You'll spend the effort and still get yelled at by a bunch of angry teenagers in the end, plus some additional hate for "selling out," which these days translates roughly to "made a decision I didn't agree with."

If anyone receives any of this sort of abuse (because that's what it is) on this forum then the post(s) should be reported and the moderators will take action.

[Monkeh]

I adore anyone that makes things for a community for no reward at all, it's exceptional and I'm very grateful. This modding community is fantastic and they are revered in my mind and home for the champions they are.

NOW HURRY UP AND MAKE ME A FLYING BANANA OR I CALL YOUZ NOOBZ!

[Mipe]

As a developer, I respond to outrageous demands with a suggestion they develop a game suiting their criteria by themselves. For some reason I get called rude or something. Well, I can live with that.

[nli2work]

I adore anyone that makes things for a community for no reward at all, it's exceptional and I'm very grateful. This modding community is fantastic and they are revered in my mind and home for the champions they are.

NOW HURRY UP AND MAKE ME A FLYING BANANA OR I CALL YOUZ NOOBZ!

I tried, but 1.5km long space banana didn't work too well. You'll have to settle for a smaller one in the future.

[G'th]

IF you're getting upset over random idiots on the internet, no matter what it is you're doing or what they're saying, then that's just sad.

Its been common knowledge for years, hell, decades now that the internet is full of terrible people. Its one thing if people are directly harassing you, like going after your personal email or Facebook or what have you, but getting upset over comments on a mod is useless. As someone who has been in several modding scenes (among other similar scenes), I can honestly say that the comments section is not a place to take seriously.

[LaytheAerospace]

I believe the point the OP was making is that you shouldn't have to...

That would be nice, sure. I also shouldn't have to deal with people cutting me off in traffic when there's a mile of empty space behind me, but I do. The world is what it is.

Any public figure anywhere needs a thick skin. This isn't unique to gaming communities, though I'd argue that it's more important here than in some other spaces. Gamers tend to care very deeply, and when people who care this much get upset, they get really upset. Just look back to some of the responses the KSP community had to the Curse partnership. Or some of the particularly enthusiastic debates about the merits of MechJeb and whether or not people using it should be scorned.

That really needs to be qualified with "Some". I am a gamer and I am none of the things you describe and the same is true of an awful lot of other gamers...

No rational person would think I was speaking for every single gamer. I'm speaking in generalities about the nature of the community, and being hyperbolic to boot. It's not meant to be taken literally. You didn't really think I was making an assertion that every gamer in the world is a bad person, did you?

The truth is that the gaming community as a whole is a hostile place. Individual people and communities can obviously be different, but there is a very real problem. It's so ingrained in our culture that we invented our own word for people who intentionally try to ruin other peoples' experiences, 'griefer.' Gaming conventions are fraught with harassment (particularly of the sexual variety). New players are routinely victimized and given derogatory labels to highlight the fact that they aren't as good as the others yet.

Sure, not everybody is part of the problem. But the problem is real. Congratulations on not being part of it.

This isn't about trying to please everyone. I expect most modders realise that is (almost always) impossible...

Didn't say it was. I'm saying:

1: It's impossible to please everyone.

2: Gaming communities contain some number of extremely irrational people.

3: Extremely irrational people do extremely irrational things when displeased.

Thus, public figures in gaming are going to have to deal with irrational people at least occasionally, and it's probably going to be very unpleasant (the crazies don't come out in force to praise you). It's unfortunate, but it's not possible to force everyone to be nice. Crazies are going to be crazy.

If anyone receives any of this sort of abuse (because that's what it is) on this forum then the post(s) should be reported and the moderators will take action.

Of course. I never said the abuse should be tolerated. I just said it is inevitable.

[Pecan]

TL;DR (sorry, I got bored after the first few pages)

Is it too late to answer the question? I agree.

[lordlundar]

All one has to do is look at minecraft mods, and see how many are still mired at version 1.6.4, and then you feel a whole lot better about KSP's mod situation, heh

Well I do agree that the MC modding comunity is vitriolic at times (though it is getting better) this is not a good example. the change from 1.6.4 to 1.7 was one done to the base code that mods have been utilizing since the game's inception. This has resulted in mods nearly being rewritten from scratch and some of the more popular ones taking advantage of that fact to come out with brand new rebuilds of their mods. THAT's what's been causing the delay, not a toxic attitude.

[Snjo]

I adore anyone that makes things for a community for no reward at all, it's exceptional and I'm very grateful. This modding community is fantastic and they are revered in my mind and home for the champions they are.

NOW HURRY UP AND MAKE ME A FLYING BANANA OR I CALL YOUZ NOOBZ!

I can never resist a stupid idea!

Banana

[Padishar]

I can never resist a stupid idea!

Banana

http://i.imgur.com/8eNKn9v.png

Hehe, nice one. All it needs now is a range of textures with varying amounts of black/dark brown and it can ripen during flight...

Does it work with FAR?

[Snjo]

Hehe, nice one. All it needs now is a range of textures with varying amounts of black/dark brown and it can ripen during flight...

Does it work with FAR?

I don't know, but it goes great with ice cream