PCGamer article: "Paradox Interactive says player toxicity is driving developers away from its forums"

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LeandroB

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You heard it first, people! Its YOUR fault! LOL


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The Devs are great! Nothing is perfect and the Paradox Team is always improving their products makes us players lucky. Either help and be respectful or get out the way for those who are. I play several game and have for years and will continue. You all (Devs) keep up the awesome work and THANK YOU for all you do!
 
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I've always found these forums quite pleasant compared to most places. Admittedly I've mostly hung out in the Imperator and CK3 subforums where the players seem fairly appreciative of the efforts the Devs for those games have put in.

I can understand why EU4 players may be a bit unhappy over on their subforums though

But criticism, especially when it is warranted, isn't always a sign of toxicity.
 
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The thing that surprises me about Paradox is that they are assuming that the anger and toxicity in their forums is a new thing: it's not. People have been slowly getting angry for years (including myself), about Paradox's declining quality. Balance, stability, interesting features, AI, etc, have been thrown out in favor of adding a million buttons that don't work with preexisting game features. Most Paradox games suffer from extreme bloat with technical debt and balance issues preventing players from making real choices, essential for a strategy game.
 
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I will say, despite the justified nature of the forum dellers, the status quo is not working. We all know that Paradox is deprioritizing essential parts of their games and behaving like EA. Yet, instead of actually doing something, the people go psycho mode in the forums and complain until Paradox throws a bone and moves on. This isn't working. We complained like crazy over two really bad patches and we still got the worst DLC in Eu4 history.

We need to change our tactics. We need to organize and form groups to give constructive feedback and boycott Paradox until it changes. As the customers, we have immense power, we need to use it instead of just taking it out on the poor fellow in the customer support desk.
 
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I've been here for the long haul. Been around long enough to remember when Paradox used to make quality games like Victoria 2, Crusader Kings 2, Sengoku, and others. You'll notice you'll never see much 'toxicity', as this article calls it, in the forums over there. That's because those games are fun, challenging, and offers near endless replayability.

Both of the updates to Stellaris and EU4 have been absolutely dreadful. EU4 is so bad that the "Continue Game" button on the front page of the game actually corrupts your save so that you can no longer continue your game. That's how bad it is. The honest question is what does Paradox expect? You heap craploads of dung on your players, do you expect for them to open their mouths and ask for more?

The truth is that shit's changed. Quality has gone downhill. Game difficulty has been utterly crushed in favor of installing as many 'I win' buttons as possible for the player. Paradox used to do polls for what the players wanted a long time ago and they would actually act on them. Doing what their fans want. What an amazing concept. A famous poll done by Johan in the early 2010's got EUIII, a game that was thought of as declining, one last DLC for the road. Divine Wind. Everyone loved it and praised Paradox for it. It was good times.

Once Paradox goes back to listening to their own playerbase you'll start to see things change. Right now we get things like this from the Stellaris update:

We do recognize that putting limitations on the previously endless growth can feel bad, and that the large number of sudden changes can be shocking. Internally, we’ve been playing with the system for months, and know that while it will take a transition period to get used to some of the changes, we believe that these changes are better for improving the long-term playing experience.

That said, months of internal testing pales in comparison to a week of live play, and the feedback we’ve received from you have been integral for us to continue to improve the playing experience and has led to some adjustments we want to make. Balancing complex systems are an ongoing process so we encourage you to continue feedbacking here on the forums as we move forward.

As you can see, they clearly know better than the rest of us. So we better just accept what the update has in store, buy the merchandise, and not complain. This PR Statement reads like a parent talking down to their child. I'm not the only one who sees through this sort of nonsense right? Or am I off base here?
 
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I think the relationship between Paradox and its playerbase is like a marriage, which has become problematic in the last years. Like in all relationships, the lack of trust is a major factor.

Back in the day when Paradox released bug-ridden releases pre-2012, the playerbase was more benevolent. Why? Because there was a feeling of trust that the developers would make things right, would polish the game after some months and it would be more playable. Victoria 2 - maybe the jewel of Paradox - started as a game which was de facto unplayable after 1890 or so. However, the outcry wasn't that loud, because everyone saw the magnificent potential in it. There was trust that Paradox would get things right.

When Paradox changed QA-politics after HOI3 and cancelled the release of some games, there was a promise made: better quality control. The first result was CKII, which was one of the most polished Paradox games ever released. In the same days, the new DLC policy was introduced. It worked smoothely, because it worked, back then (maybe with the exception of ROI, but hey, after all, it can be considered a success story). The playerbase willingly excepted problems, paying Paradox (sometimes in advance) because there was a huge interest to make Paradox and its games succeed.

However, the feeling has changed massively. There were Stellaris updates which destroyed core mechanics or the AI. There were EUIV updates with mechanics no one wanted, destroying balancing and ending with ridiculous game results. There was a whole patch which broke MP. So what happened to the quality assurance? What happened to the money invested into a game company once loved by its fans?

Someone has to remember that hate is not the opposite of love. Love and hate are two human emotions very much connected. A lover hates an ex-lover, because he or she meant so much to one. Toxicity is not only the result because of "whining" or an "attitude". Hate, despair and anger are very much attached to loss. Paradox won't get so much emotion, if the players weren't so much attached to the products Johan et allii created. One who loved Pdox back than may hate Pdox today for the very same reasons. Because they have become an important part for some peoples' life.

That may be good or bad. But I think both sides should consider that relationships are always made by trust and always broken by mistrust. This is a very strong conditio humana. Nothing new under the sun.
 
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I understand Wester's point of view, along with the others. It's usually tone that makes a post feel hostile, not the actual feedback. If people could just keep a cool head and calmly explain their beef and ways to improve things, we wouldn't have to bother with any of this. This is a discussion no one is going to win as part of the community isn't getting the answer it wants and developers still feel anything they post is taken the wrong way or not good enough.

I'd say there's room for improvement everywhere. As a community, we should follow some easy guidelines to make life easier for everyone around:
- No personal attacks. Any feedback we give needs to constructive and based on behaviour or results and not on the person, regardless of what you assume they did wrong.
- No cursing, insults or cynism. It doesn't add anything to the message itself; in fact, your message will just get lost due to tone.
- Failure is never on 1 person. Don't pinpoint 1 person and focus on the big picture.


From PDX/S' side I'd suggest this:
- Community managers aren't just there to inform the community and pursue marketing goals. They are also there to protect the dev team. Perhaps it's time more communication goes through them and not directly from developer to community. It's a great thing to have if things go well, but hostile reactions to some messages lately is sadly why we can't have nice things.
- If you apologise as a company, do it as a team and not as individuals and don't remove those later. We're not idiots.
- Tell us what you want feedback on. I'm sure there's a lot of comments that can't be used in any way. If you want to engage in a positive manner, set the tone and tell us what you need to hear.

There was a big discussion between Johan and the community after the launch of Imperator : Rome which sadly never fully recovered from a shaky launch. I still think most people that play PDS games are willing to pay as long as the quality is good. I rather pay €60- for a good base game than €40- for a rushed one. Same holds true for DLC. Please reconsider budgeting choices and perhaps hire more people if the current teams can't handle the time pressure and quality standards we hope for. And please pay those people a decent wage so they don't have to leave for better paying companies.
 
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I've always found these forums quite pleasant compared to most places. Admittedly I've mostly hung out in the Imperator and CK3 subforums where the players seem fairly appreciative of the efforts the Devs for those games have put in.

I can understand why EU4 players may be a bit unhappy over on their subforums though

But criticism, especially when it is warranted, isn't always a sign of toxicity.
I can assure you (as someone that moderates those two subforums) that its absolutely not the case, certainly not when news comes out that the community deems not good enough.
I can't comment on Eu4, not really played it since 1.0 - i couldnt give up my beloved eu3!

The big thing from my point as a volunteer and the very limited interaction i've had with devs is that its about tone and intent. You can control what you say and why you say it. There is a lot of stuff that the average forum user doesnt see that is intended to hurt, or deliberately worded in negative ways. That (imo) is why these things have been coming out across all subforums. Its demoralising and painful on a personal level when you care about what you do.
The thing that surprises me about Paradox is that they are assuming that the anger and toxicity in their forums is a new thing: it's not. People have been slowly getting angry for years (including myself), about Paradox's declining quality. Balance, stability, interesting features, AI, etc, have been thrown out in favor of adding a million buttons that don't work with preexisting game features. Most Paradox games suffer from extreme bloat with technical debt and balance issues preventing players from making real choices, essential for a strategy game.

I think, as others have said here, that the world is different compared to 10 years ago. Constant "smaller" size dlc, more frequent patches etc create higher expectations. The increased complexity of the games as well, means its not as easy for a mod to quickly change a text file to fix an event anymore.
 
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Prevent game breaking bugs from being in the launch version of DLCs and 90% of the toxicity will magically evaporate.

That being said, people can be really cruel online. There’s a fine line between complaining and personal attacks that have happened too much lately.
 
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I think, as others have said here, that the world is different compared to 10 years ago. Constant "smaller" size dlc, more frequent patches etc create higher expectations. The increased complexity of the games as well, means its not as easy for a mod to quickly change a text file to fix an event anymore.
I will just point out that EU 4 went to slow down their patch and DLC release to one per year since Emperor precisely to increase quality, and the exact opposite happened sadly. As for the complexity part, the call to stop making new features and instead rework existing ones so they play nicer together is a constant that we sadly know doesn't make a selling pitch for a DLC
 
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I think, as others have said here, that the world is different compared to 10 years ago. Constant "smaller" size dlc, more frequent patches etc create higher expectations. The increased complexity of the games as well, means its not as easy for a mod to quickly change a text file to fix an event anymore.

THis is just wrong. Smaller updated haven't changed expectations at all. We expect a playable if somewhat slightly buggy launch. We have since HoI1. It has gotten a lot worse. Paradox has had to repeatedly apologise for releases promising change, without that change coming and with the the quality deteriorating.
 
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This is bad PR for Paradox itself, yeah, the EU4/HOI4 community is very vocal about everything and sometimes is just too much, but there is a reason why people is like that. People is tired of seeing the same things happening time after time....

If you cannot deliver "big and flawless" DLC/games do not overhype your products (seriously, Imperator is a great example of this...i preordered the game at day one trusting the hype-machine) and if you are struggling with quality just hire more QA and release smaller -and more controllable- DLC . Or just copy what the Crusader Kings team has been doing since at least Jade Dragon and i have been critical of them from time to time but they are amazingly competent at their work.

Holy Fury (CK2) is a perfect example of an almost flawless and big DLC and should become the golden standard of how Paradox should release their products.

Playing the victim only hurts the Devs, the same happened when Imperator launched and was a shameful display of lack of awareness from the Paradox side of things, in the case of EU4 you have Imperator launch, the Nakama incident and now Leviathan...there is a trend and an attitude that has not changed towards the consumers and this is not a non-profit-organization...there should be a good relation between the company and the people that buys their products.
 
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If you cannot deliver "big and flawless" DLC/games do not overhype your products (seriously, Imperator is a great example of this...i preordered the game at day one trusting the hype-machine) and if you are struggling with quality just hire more QA and release smaller -and more controllable- DLC . Or just copy what the Crusader Kings team has been doing since at least Jade Dragon and i have been critical of them from time to time but they are amazingly competent at their work.

I remember how big the launch hype was for Imperator back then when Paradox did the big multiplayer streams against each other at their office. Back in those days I worked at a public school district doing IT and I had a *LOT* of time to sit around and watch streams. So I watched nearly every one. They were having a lot of fun and there were many great moments like when Johan and one of the English developers had a huge naval battle that allowed Carthage to win the first Punic war. It was hilarious times.

But even back then I remember watching those games and thinking to myself:

"God. I want to like this game. But aside from all the fun in multiplayer, this game looks so easy to beat if I'm facing the AI. Look at how easy all of these Paradox employees dominated all of the AI nations all around them. Is this really going to be a fun game? Will I face any challenges at all?"

Sure enough, once Imperator comes out the game is criticized for exactly that. It just came off as an empty map painter. There were only three types of nations. Kingdom. Republic. And tribal. That's it. And even Rome, the star of the period, barely had anything to differentiate it from other nations on the map. I was incredibly salty when the second consul, the co ruler of Rome, came out of the gate without any special features attached to him. One of the best things about the early Roman Republic is that they were unique for having two equally elected consuls. Yet the second consul was subservient to the first and did pretty much nothing. It was so uninspiring and so boring. And the rest of the game wasn't much better.

It's not like Imperator didn't have the players. The game was the most played game out of all of their titles on that first week. The game wasn't completely bug free, but it was decent. But it's clear what happened after that. People picked up the game, got bored of playing it after a week or two, and then dropped it and never played it again. People were mad because the game was a vanilla map painter. I don't blame them. To this day, even with all the improvements made to the game, it's still a less played game than Victoria 2. That's the legacy of Rome Imperator. A horrible launch that the game just couldn't recover from. And, I'm sure, a tremendous financial loss by Paradox. There was a lot of effort made to save this game and the effort by those Devs cannot be understated. But it's simple economics and human behavior. Blow the launch and you blow the community. Once a game has been shelved in someone's mind, they aren't likely to return to it.

If I was Paradox, besides listening to their fans, I would spend some time and study the design of their own past games and the whys of what made them so successful over the long term. A game doesn't have to come out and be perfect. But certain things are more important for a successful game to have than others. First and foremost an identity. Second of which being difficulty and good AI. Third of which being checks and balances that didn't allow the player to do anything they wanted and punished them for bad decisions or over aggression. Their old games have these important ingredients. Their newer games do not or have heavily dialed them back in the hunt for the ever elusive 'casual' gamer and the $$$ that comes with them.
 
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I think the relationship between Paradox and its playerbase is like a marriage, which has become problematic in the last years. Like in all relationships, the lack of trust is a major factor.

Back in the day when Paradox released bug-ridden releases pre-2012, the playerbase was more benevolent. Why? Because there was a feeling of trust that the developers would make things right, would polish the game after some months and it would be more playable. Victoria 2 - maybe the jewel of Paradox - started as a game which was de facto unplayable after 1890 or so. However, the outcry wasn't that loud, because everyone saw the magnificent potential in it. There was trust that Paradox would get things right.

When Paradox changed QA-politics after HOI3 and cancelled the release of some games, there was a promise made: better quality control. The first result was CKII, which was one of the most polished Paradox games ever released. In the same days, the new DLC policy was introduced. It worked smoothely, because it worked, back then (maybe with the exception of ROI, but hey, after all, it can be considered a success story). The playerbase willingly excepted problems, paying Paradox (sometimes in advance) because there was a huge interest to make Paradox and its games succeed.

However, the feeling has changed massively. There were Stellaris updates which destroyed core mechanics or the AI. There were EUIV updates with mechanics no one wanted, destroying balancing and ending with ridiculous game results. There was a whole patch which broke MP. So what happened to the quality assurance? What happened to the money invested into a game company once loved by its fans?

Someone has to remember that hate is not the opposite of love. Love and hate are two human emotions very much connected. A lover hates an ex-lover, because he or she meant so much to one. Toxicity is not only the result because of "whining" or an "attitude". Hate, despair and anger are very much attached to loss. Paradox won't get so much emotion, if the players weren't so much attached to the products Johan et allii created. One who loved Pdox back than may hate Pdox today for the very same reasons. Because they have become an important part for some peoples' life.

That may be good or bad. But I think both sides should consider that relationships are always made by trust and always broken by mistrust. This is a very strong conditio humana. Nothing new under the sun.
I think this might be the single most accurate post on this issue. Even I, a blatant dev apologist have felt frustration at some of the recent patches that just don't feel like they had proper QA done. And the reason I'm frustrated is BECAUSE I love Paradox and their games.

I actually think a huge part of the problem is the nature of bug reports and suggestions at the moment. Which is to say, posting in the forums and hoping for the best. There's no reasonable way to winnow down issues or suggestions that have already been submitted, other than manually searching for them (which most won't do), and there's no bug/suggestion database accessible to let us know that THEY know about the issue or suggestion. This inevitably ends up with 48 pages of threads, with no particular prioritization, so the most asinine is treated as equally as the most crucial. How would the devs and QA know about the horrific bugs or good ideas, when they have to dig through 20 pages of misinformed people, toxic posts, the same bug repeatedly, or often all of the above, to get to the ONE thread that has an actual critical engine bug? There was a bug reported over two years ago that just got fixed now, and I'm convinced it was because they honestly hadn't seen it. Until a dev posted, patch after patch went by without the five minute fix, but as soon as one did, the next patch it was fixed. I think it's a case of good intent, good people, but bad systems.

The thread voting system has helped, as has the new occasional thread tags marking things as duplicates, but something more is honestly needed. They REALLY need something like Dwarf Fortress' Mantis bug tracker (https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/) so that we can point to it and say "this has already been reported, see? Don't make new threads about this." Also, let players do some open betas of the free-LC content, so that by the time you ACTUALLY release it, it's been vetted properly and feedback considered. And if they complain, it's explicitly a beta, they shouldn't expect it to be release-ready yet. As a bonus, they could allocate more of their QA staff to the paid-DLC side if they get enough volunteers (which they would). As it stands, it feels like each patch has been an open beta, but the problem with that is that the fanbase's mindset is not set in "open beta participant" mode, because we were told it's a full release. Cue justifiable frustration (if rather unjustifiably acted upon by some).
 
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I'm going to take the opportunity here to try and answer the whole "Paradox is putting the blame on their players for toxicity" thing that has been making the rounds in the community since that article from PC Gamer and some other coverage following the latest HOI dev diaries, as well as the Leviathan release.

First, and I think this has been raised by everyone who made that point before: we welcome feedback and people being critical of your games, business, and/or actions. I don't believe we've ever silenced, banned, or stopped working with someone because they were critical of us. It's not always easy, and sometimes it stings more than others. If you spent weeks (or months) working on something and it doesn't get a good reception in the community, regardless of who's right or wrong, it can really suck. We're all humans with feelings and emotions after all. But it doesn't change the fact that yes, you're welcome to be critical of us, here or elsewhere.

That being said, we have observed in recent times that some of our developers feel less eager and enthusiastic about interacting on the forums with the community. This is what was raised by @Archangel85 in the latest HOI Dev Diary, which has been picked up in the article linked above. It's also a conversation we've had internally in the last couple of months. It's a complex topic, and I personally don't believe that it's as simple as the "us vs. them" situation that it's sometimes been summarized to. Neither is it as simple as "our fanbase are toxic assholes" or "our developers are snowflakes who can't handle feedback". These certainly make for catchy headlines and good memes on Reddit, but let's try to be constructive here. There are several things into play:
  • It's a vicious circle. I think the biggest value of these forums is the presence of developers active on them, to chat with the community, listen to feedback, get inspiration, answer questions, etc. I also believe that's one of the key reasons lots of you guys are active here. If devs are less present here, the forums lose some of their value, and the community rightfully gets frustrated, and maybe they're less constructive and chill, then the devs feel even less eager to be present here, etc. Until we break the cycle, it pretty much continues this way with everyone being frustrated in the process.
  • It's about balance. It's fine to be critical and share constructive feedback, but if it's done with a constant negative, snarky or dismissive tone, it gets exhausting to read through it. it's the same when it comes to wild speculations and crazy conspiracy theories, or straight-up disbelief of any explanation or answer we can provide. When it eventually leads to harassment or straight-up attacks towards our staff or the community, it's absolutely unacceptable. Does this mean that all critics should be shared with a big smile and coated in honey and three layers of praise and compliments? Of course not. Does it mean people shouldn't get annoyed when we release something that doesn't match their expectations? Certainly not. Should we have less tolerance for people being overly or constantly negative and assuming by default that we're dishonest? Maybe? It's not easy to draw where the line between being critical and being toxic is, and at the end of the day, this balance, we need to find it together.
  • The standards have changed. Our company is not the same as it was 15, or even 5 years ago. We're bigger, more profitable, publicly-traded, etc. Your expectations for us are not the same as they were when we were just a small scruffy Swedish studio, which is absolutely normal and fair. Our industry has also changed quite a lot, and the internet landscape and the way online conversations are handled too. You don't manage moderation the same way on Twitter, Discord, or on our good old forums. In that regard, the forums are a bit 'old school'. It is something we want to keep, but that might also need some adjustments to fit in our larger online community and ecosystem. If you're a dev who's used to how we moderate other platforms like our official Discord servers for example (where we have much stricter moderation rules because it's a platform that requires it due to its faster and more intense pace), it can be confusing to see conversations and feedback in the forums being more intense than what you're used to. Once again, there is a balance to be found there.
I think overall, we all want the same thing: forums with more active (and happy) developers, and great and constructive conversations between them and you, our most dedicated players. So, what are we planning to do?
  • Ownership of the forums has changed internally to be under the direct responsibility of the Community team. That probably sounds like vague corporate lingo bullcrap, what it actually means is that it's going to more peoples' responsibility (specifically Community Developers/Managers) to spend time on the forums, care for the platform, and ensure it gets the attention and content it deserves.
  • The role of the forums among our other community platforms has been formalized. Back in the days, the Paradox forums were the one core central platform for all Paradox games. But now the internet has evolved, our portfolio has changed, and while the forums remain super relevant for some of our games (namely and mainly the core PDS grand strategy titles), they're not always the best place for some other titles and communities. If you look at Cities Skylines, Prison Architect, or World of Darkness games for example, for various reasons the communities for these are more active and present in other platforms than the Paradox Forums, which often lead to these sections being rather deserted and inactive. Rather than forcing their presence there, we'd rather focus our energy and time on where these communities already are. This will most likely lead to some Paradox games not having a dedicated section on the forums in the future (but don't worry, all PDS titles will. It also means we'll be focusing our efforts on making the forums good for the community already living there (that's you!), rather than attempting to make it the perfect place for every title & community in our portfolio.
  • We're going to do some adjustments to moderation. I'm being super careful with this point, and please don't go widely speculating about what this means just yet. It's still very early in this conversation, and we need to discuss with the moderation team, and people directly involved with the forums (including you). Generally, my hope is to strike that perfect balance to make the forums a bit more aligned with our community guidelines on other platforms, without losing their identity and uniqueness. It's that sweet spot where you feel empowered and allowed to be critical, and frustrated about things, but our developers still feel like they're welcomed here.
  • Finally, we'll work to support more developers' presence here. The hope is to "break the wheel" of the vicious circle I've presented above if you will. We'll rely on the actions above, but also plan more dedicated activities there beyond dev diaries and the usual conversations (if you have ideas, suggestions, or expectations, let me know!)
Funnily enough, all of the above was already discussed a couple of weeks ago and isn't a reaction to the latest events. I guess the latest rightful complains and issues just showed us that we were right to identify that we needed to focus on this, and definitely helps to put it on a higher level of priority.

Damn, I wrote a big ol' wall of text. That felt weirdly good and brought back some memories from my days moderating old phpBB forums myself. Hope it provides you all with some perspective and reassurance for the future. At the very least, I hope it shows that we care and are working on improving things even if that's not always obvious or visible. Happy to answer questions and discuss this more, I happen to have a pretty open day for once!
 
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@konbendith :


I'm not sure what some of the points you bring mean. I think a simple and shorter message would have sufficed:
- Please just take away the idea that Paradox thinks the entire community is toxic in nature. Just say only people that stoop to personal attacks provide a bad atmosphere. Take this away and most anger will probably go away.
- Feel free to take sanctions against the people that do. No one will blame you for it.
- What do you mean with "standards are different" in this case? If it's about the quality of work the dev team does, no one will agree. If you mean regarding community management, by all means enforce your rules.

If you feel like breaking that vicious circle, I'd still suggest to have more communications through community experts instead directly to developers if you feel that protects developers better. Respond as a group and not as an individual.


edit: I'd leave this part out. You just invite people to provide tons of examples that either are or seem like contrary examples.
I don't believe we've ever silenced, banned, or stopped working with someone because they were critical of us.
 
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It's a vicious circle. I think the biggest value of these forums is the presence of developers active on them, to chat with the community, listen to feedback, get inspiration, answer questions, etc. I also believe that's one of the key reasons lots of you guys are active here. If devs are less present here, the forums lose some of their value, and the community rightfully gets frustrated, and maybe they're less constructive and chill, then the devs feel even less eager to be present here, etc. Until we break the cycle, it pretty much continues this way with everyone being frustrated in the process.
It's not just about dev presence, it's also about how much impact the feedback has on the end product. If people see the same bugs go unfixed from patch to patch or constant broken releases, they're going to be more frustrated and thus hostile towards the people they do interact with, even if those devs or community managers aren't the ones deciding to launch a blatantly unfinished game.
 
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I'm not sure what some of the points you bring mean. I think a simple and shorter message would have sufficed:
- Please just take away the idea that Paradox thinks the entire community is toxic in nature. Just say only people that stoop to personal attacks provide a bad atmosphere.
- Feel free to take sanctions against the people that do. No one will blame you for it.
- What do you mean with "standards are different" in this case? If it's about the quality of work the dev team does, no one will agree. If you mean regarding community management, by all means enforce your rules.

If you feel like breaking that vicious circle, I'd still suggest to have more communications through community experts instead directly to developers if you feel that protects developers better. Respond as a group and not as an individual.

My inability to do short messages is why I'm normally not allowed on the forums! :p

We absolutely do not think that our whole community is toxic in nature, and I don't believe we've ever said that. It would be a pretty shitty job to have if we hated our players, tbh. You can quote me on that.

When I talk about the standards changing, I actually refer to both. I do think the quality standards we need to abide by for our products are absolutely different from 10 years ago, simply because people rightfully expect more from a 600+ people company than they used to from a 5-10 people development team. I also think the standards of conversation and moderation on the internet have vastly evolved in the past decade, and we need to adapt to that too.

And I absolutely agree, all communication cannot come from the developers, and we need more community experts present here, even if we also want to remain the kind of company that has the developers directly involved with the community!

It's not just about dev presence, it's also about how much impact the feedback has on the end product. If people see the same bugs go unfixed from patch to patch or constant broken releases, they're going to be more frustrated and thus hostile towards the people they do interact with, even if those devs or community managers aren't the ones deciding to launch a blatantly unfinished game.

It's, of course, a larger topic, and the question of how we ensure that the feedback shared on the forums is properly addressed also goes slightly beyond my role (but we do have some work being done on the forums to help QA teams gather feedback from the forum more efficiently, for example). Ultimately, ensuring all of our games, studios, and products ship with the same level of quality and have the same level of support is a company-wide effort. People care and are working intensely on it, I can guarantee that. We're far from hitting the mark everywhere there, I'm not going to argue against this, it's also probably going to take some time until we perfectly do. In the meantime, doesn't prevent us to do our best to improve the quality of the conversation tho!
 
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