Posting on the game's official forums

Every time I try and forum on an 'official forum' of a computer game, the mods lock me down within a day or two.

Is there any point to official forums? They're kind of an oxymoron...

How's your 'official forum' life? LOL

MinorityReport said:

Every time I try and forum on an 'official forum' of a computer game, the mods lock me down within a day or two.

Is there any point to official forums? They're kind of an oxymoron…

How's your 'official forum' life? LOL

Click to expand...

Been a while, but I've never experienced any form of lockdown. I found them quite handy, but a place like this suits me better, it covers a lot of things and is, with a few exceptions, just as useful, sometimes even more so.

pibbur who is …

All I post on official game forums is about bugs, patches and DLC or other scam scandal. Other stuff like their general chatty doesn't really interest me.
So far noone banned me.

That would make sense...

Only once have I been "forceably removed". I shouldn't have advocated Daggerfall piracy on the Elder Scrolls site right before they offered it for free. It wasn't available any other way. Silly me.

Lol.

I had a basket full of threads locked today for claiming a computer game was 'rigged'.

Man, they hate that word so much, they want everyone to think their game is purely random…

Everyone knows computers can't do pure random yet… everyone knows all computer games are 'rigged' (they wouldn't function if they weren't…)

They just love the 'pretence'. Great for ego-boosting the 1% of hardcore enthusiasts, terrible for general discussion…

The only game forum I've posted on in the past 15 years has been Everquest. I've never encountered problems posting there, but I'm sure some people have.

Official forums started to decline around the same time as rpgs, as they became more corporate. Now there is no discussion involved most of the time, just another marketing tool.

Ain't that the truth!

MinorityReport said:

Lol.

I had a basket full of threads locked today for claiming a computer game was 'rigged'.

Man, they hate that word so much, they want everyone to think their game is purely random…

Everyone knows computers can't do pure random yet… everyone knows all computer games are 'rigged' (they wouldn't function if they weren't…)

They just love the 'pretence'. Great for ego-boosting the 1% of hardcore enthusiasts, terrible for general discussion…

Click to expand...

I've never been locked out, don't even remember getting a warning.

As for games being 'rigged', I find that 99% of the cases that's wrong, just how do they call it? conditional memory?
For example, take a game like Europa Universalis 4. I sometimes swear the game has it against me in combat as I consistently see the computer have higher rolls than mine… until I actually sat and recorded the rolls. Turned out that my mind simply noticed my low scores more than my high scores.
Yes, things are not totally random in a computer, but as far as dice rolls go, they really are for all practical purposes. Every time I see someone complain about a game being 'rigged' (regardless of the game) I invite the person to actually write down the rolls. Every time, the rolls are ok.

ManWhoJaped said:

Official forums started to decline around the same time as rpgs, as they became more corporate. Now there is no discussion involved most of the time, just another marketing tool.

Click to expand...

I only regularly follow Paradox forums as I love their games. They are really informative, from people discussing their games, to people helping others with problems, and also active communication from the devs about their upcoming games, DLCs, patches, etc.

LOL classic - you can tell this guy likes white-knighting on official forums...

You immediately combine the word 'rigged' with someone complaining about losing the game - a game can be rigged even when you're winning...

It's not about the randomness about the numbers that pop-up, it's about what happens with the numbers in specific situations - such as decreased chance to get a killing blow on low life, increased chance to get a big hit on full life - the wind-up and safety valves designers apply to their games to increase tension while reducing actual loss.

(And that's just dice rolls)

You associate the term 'rigged' with the word 'complaining' when in reality it's just someone trying to get to comment on and chat about the game coding. You don't have to be complaining to notice an aspect of the game is 'rigged', it could well be rigged in your favour - it's still rigged!

Thanks for the wonderful advert for Paradox, I'm sure they shit roses

If you don't understand how to conduct yourself on a forum where your interests are not the only interests, then there's a chance you'll get banned. When your personal point of view conflicts with the interests of those providing and moderating the forum, then there's a greater chance of getting banned when speaking out.

The chance increases depending on how hard it is for you to respect the interests of other people.

It's pretty simple, really.

I rarely post on official forums, because I don't really see the point. But I often read them - especially when trying to solve technical issues or to get some idea of the future of a product.

I find them most useful in that way, actually.

My experience is that you sort of have to go out of your way to get locked out or banned. Well, that, or you're just not very good with people - and it will just come naturally.

I've had a couple of warnings over the years - since I tend to care very little about whether I get banned or not, and I don't enjoy communicating if I feel I can't be honest about it. But I don't think I've ever been banned.

I've banned myself from a couple of places, though - like the QT3 forums and a few other places. Sometimes, I recognise that my opinions are not welcome at all and that people don't seem to enjoy my contribution - so I just leave. With QT3, I quickly discovered that I didn't fit in with the people in "power" - and I don't know why I even registered there.

I guess I just enjoy exchanging no matter what

There's a lot of common sense there! And yes, I try to stop myself from posting on the official forums too, it's normally me asking to have my account deleted rather than them banning me (had to do that on a number of sites recently).

When your personal point of view conflicts with the interests of those providing and moderating the forum, then there's a greater chance of getting banned when speaking out.

Click to expand...

Exactly... it's an oxymoron isn't it... conflicting views... forum...

No, it's not really an oxymoron. A forum is simply a place to discuss something. It's not necessarily an open forum where you can say whatever you want. The word may be associated with a "public forum" like in Rome or whatever, but it's not all it can be. Even if it was, I doubt you could say whatever you wanted in Rome, without the occasional consequence

But, if you know something about people, there's really no such thing as an open forum in the ideal sense of the words.

Not even here on the Watch, which is more or less the most open forum I know of. Even here, you will meet resistance if your opinion isn't popular or well-liked.

Essentially, the entire concept of an open forum is the oxymoron, if anything is.

It's a dream we keep waking up from.

Erm… hold on there horsey, you're expanding the concept to a far too wide a degree for it to be logical.

We're not talking about discussing 'anything'. We're talking about discussing the game in hand within the rules of the forum as set out by the various stickies on rules - and then being locked down because someone has 'opinion power' over you.

It's best, for these types of discussions, if you try to prevent yourself from getting too abject, I think it's pretty obvious when someone's just overstepping 'normality' boundaries with their posting or posting style.

MinorityReport said:

Erm… hold on there horsey, you're expanding the concept to a far too wide a degree for it to be logical.

We're not talking about discussing 'anything'. We're talking about discussing the game in hand within the rules of the forum as set out by the various stickies on rules - and then being locked down because someone has 'opinion power' over you.

It's best, for these types of discussions, if you try to prevent yourself from getting too abject, I think it's pretty obvious when someone's just overstepping 'normality' boundaries with their posting or posting style.

Click to expand...

No, I'm explaining to you what the word forum means if you look it up in a dictionary - which is all we have to go on. I'm not expanding anything.

If you don't want to accept that you're wrong about it being an oxymoron, that's ok. It's not of much concern to me

*sighs*

I know what a forum is dude...

Wait a minute guys....

*Grabs popcorn and fold-out chair*

Ok...

I wouldn't bother, I'm not taking it any further. Feel free to search the inner depths of Dart's deepest philosophical segways of upmost pedantry yourself if you like, my last post was pretty much a full stop LOL.

Been there way too many times

"This game sucks"
"No it doesn't, how can a game inhale air"
"you what?"
"The game doesn't suck as no game can inhale air"
*backs away*

LOL

wolfing said:

I only regularly follow Paradox forums as I love their games. They are really informative, from people discussing their games, to people helping others with problems, and also active communication from the devs about their upcoming games, DLCs, patches, etc.

Click to expand...

Paradox is more like "independent" company but they ban people like crazy, almost randomly but any slightest criticism = ban. They are worse than typical on this front. I like some of their games but I can't say they give people a fair say.