Go into any Civilization thread after 4 and just comment:
AI
Sit back and enjoy. ;-)
Remember when the forum was filled with joke Elder Scrolls threads?
Saying you need a “moderately thick skin” just means that if you are going to post an opinion, you need to be ok with people disagreeing with you and saying so, often in a direct manner. If that kind of thing upsets you, then posting on internet forums may not be your thing. You also need to be ok with posting something and not getting any kind of response at all.
What does that even mean? Would you say that having a conversation at the dinner table or over the phone requires a moderately thick skin? Why would the internet be any different? Some basic decency or at least decorum might be in order.
My concern with this approach is… asking if there will be female characters in a game, a complaint. Hey are there minorities… oh another complaint. Is there anyway there can be non-bikini armor… oh that’s a complaint too. The only certain people who can comment approach, those who didn’t play out, those who are too “loud” with their opinion, out, if you didn’t kick-start…where would that list actually end?
I personally have never seen someone go into a topic and say hey I really like this game, I got to this level and am wondering did everyone choose this… and suddenly everyone starts again.
It’s more like, hey I got to this level, really wondering what your party mix looks like and oh yeah, I just don’t understand why everyone hates this game which is…an invitation for additional discussion.
Sea of Thieves seems mostly fine, and there a dozen or so post in there making fun of people who don’t like the game. It’s not enough to enjoy the game, there are actual long topics make fun of people who don’t like it, and there isn’t really a pile on there.
Where was I advocating that people not be friendly? This place seems pretty friendly to me. There are a few contrarians who can sometimes be a bit brusque, but most people don’t come across that way. I get that in any social setting, really. Some people are engaging and some can be more difficult.
What I am saying is that if you become unhappy when people disagree with your stated opinion, maybe posting on the internet isn’t something that will make you happy.
I think that may not be a completely fair assessment of the issues this thread hopes to explore, in short. It’s difficult to say that your statement here is unreasonable, but I also don’t think it encapsulates the negative experiences some folks may have had here (or, if it helps to expand the searchlight, on the internet in general).
That’s not the way I look at it, personally. First, I can’t see asking for clarifying answers is a complaint. If you want to known if there’s a playable woman, or different outfits or whatever, seems kind of outrageous to call that a complaint. Now if you’re going to tell me this totally happens I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that I think it’s fair to push back. I think most folk around here would back you up.
And I’m not trying to say complaints have no place here, or that we need to be all sunshine in our posting. But I think it’s fair to be mindful that there’s generally only one thread per game (or movie, book, whatever) and continuing to harp on some aspect you don’t like over and over. There are probably, as you point out, people playing the game who want to discuss strategy, or ask questions. If you have a complaint, sure go ahead and say your piece, but be prepared to move on if the discussion does. The No Man’s Sky thread is a good example - I didn’t play it, but I was following because it looked fun, but it did kind of devolve into complaints about unkept promises by the devs and such. That kind of thing can be frustrating if you just want to talk about the game with other folks playing along.
In a way both of those games illustrate just how dangerous procedural generation can be to a game whose players expect authorship and engagement. MEA had to abandon its early focus on PG and suffered for it greatly, NMS went all-in and found themselves with a complex and impressive system that lacked a game, or even a point.
I know I’m engaged in a derail here, but those are part of the QT3 package.
But that’s part of the fun.
I remember the first time I realized that there was literally NOTHING so over the top that I could post it on Qt3 without someone thinking I was completely in earnest. At that moment a vast highway of fun spread out before me, rolling on forever into the future. And I’m still ridin’.
So why do we need thick skin around here? Are you saying some people are so fragile that they need thick skin in order to be disagreed with?
Do you disagree with that?
I guess they’re out there, but I’m not really sure how they get through any human interaction, not just hanging out around here.
Growing a thicker skin is a common demand placed on women and minorities.
Sadly, I think we need thick skin everywhere in life. Part of it is to protect your emotions from what you perceive to be the rejection of others, which can hit some folks very hard, especially if they weren’t raised in a boisterous home (use your own skin-thickening adjective if you’d like) and lack the ability to painlessly engage in give-and-take conversations. I call that part “learning that it’s not all about you, other people get to think stuff too and that’s ok.”
The other part of it is so you don’t over-react to negativity. I call that “learning that it’s not necessarily personal or a total rejection of you as a person, so no need to break out the flamethrower.” Both are needed to function well in a semi-anonymized environment.
Neither am I sure! And yet, here they are.
Actually, I think fewer of them are genuinely fragile and more simply enjoy the feeling that they’re on a moral high ground fighting for important issues. That people think hobby message boards are an important place to fight that good fight would seem to me to indicate they don’t have a place in real life to do it, or where they dare to do it, or where people would listen to them.
Console partisans seem to have an especially tough time with this aspect when it comes to online interactions.
Hey, man, it does what Nintendon’t.
All right, let’s see if we can understand each other here, because I don’t think you’re wrong. I would phrase what you describe in your post as just being a moderately healthy adult - recognizing that things don’t always go your way, and not to take things quite so personally. If you call that “having a thick skin” well ok, I don’t think we’re so far apart in looking at this.
But I think Nesrie has a point, it can be really easy to fall back on crappy behavior and then throw the burden back on the affected person, maybe they just need thicker skin. Maybe so, but it’s also fair to ask for trying to understand each other’s point of view.
See, I honestly don’t see anything I’m suggesting as all that controversial, and probably not all that hard. But then I’m reminded of that comment Douglas Adams made about how a guy got nailed to a tree a couple thousand years ago for suggesting maybe we could all be a little nicer.
(Note: not comparing myself to Jesus Christ here, just in case that wasn’t clear)
Do you have any idea how this comes off? The kind of judgment you’re making on giant assumptions like you are?
If you don’t want to welcome people, why are you in this topic?