PeregrineFalcon

Welcome back!

Thanks, I do try. 😁 And yes, I do know that CPO is Navy, being former navy myself. But when I saw the Air Force pic I had to poke fun, Chief.

Chair Force?!? I thought you were real military. 🤣

Look at any of the feedback threads over 2 years old. EDIT: Also, take a look at the feedback thread for the team diversity game mechanic. Or whatever it's called.

Yeah, I get that. But you can't start a thread titled "Please give us feedback on the new set" and then delete posts and hand out warning points when the feedback is "I don't like this power in this set and here's why." And that did happen. And not just to me. No, I understand that. We're just discussing this topic. By the way, I have to ask. What does that microphone looking response mean? I keep getting them on my posts all the time too.

Ok, now I'd like to ask a question about the appeals process. In the past I was told contradictory things by different GMs. I was told to appeal via Discord, and I was told to appeal via PM. In both cases when I did appeal there was no response. So if I appeal via support ticket can you assure us that someone will respond and that an appeal will actually be considered by someone other than the GM who handed out the sanction in the first place?

I agree completely. However, as I've had to point out to many people on this forum, I am not responsible for the "tone of voice" that you hear in your head when you read my posts. If my posts sounds, to you, as if R. Lee Ermey is barking at you like a drill instructor, that is not my fault. I can't count the number of times in which peoples' response to my posts essentially boiled down to "I don't believe what you're saying only because I don't like the 'tone of voice' of your post." You know, Wikipedia, for all of its faults, does have a great rule which covers this situation. "Assume Good Faith." Most of the situations on this forum which end up requiring moderation wouldn't occur if people didn't just automatically assume that the person disagreeing with them was being malicious.

Until the insults start, this is what is commonly known as "a discussion." Just because a lot of people now days aren't used to having their statements challenged doesn't change the fact that, in a discussion, people are allowed to disagree with them. I've literally had to link to a moderator's post saying that we're allowed to disagree with suggestions in order to convince people that people disagreeing with them aren't breaking the forum rules. And this is getting very close to another issue that's endemic to the internet now days that I don't really want to bring up because it will likely trigger a fire storm that will get this thread locked as well.

Yes. As I said, I haven't had an issue with your moderation and most of the issues that I've had with moderation predate you. Right. So in the example I gave the post likely wasn't moderated because it wasn't directed at a specific person. However, in the post that you recently warned someone about in this thread that insult was also not directed at a specific person. But one resulted in nothing, despite being reported, while the other resulted in you warning the poster (and possibly taking action if he doesn't edit his post). So like I said, selective enforcement. By the way, thank you for making this thread and for discussing this issue with us.

Almost any word that's clearly used as a pejorative in the context of the sentence is an insult. And neckbeard isn't a new term. It's been used as an insult online for over 20 years. Also, even Wikipedia agrees that it's an insult. I'm bringing this up not because I want action applied retroactively, but because I want to prove that selective enforcement has been a thing on this forum to people who continue to refuse to believe it. Thank you for confirming that.

This is a perfect example of the selective enforcement issue that I, and others, have been complaining about. There are several posts that I've reported where someone referred to people who don't share their taste in movies as "neckbeards." A term that is also insulting. And yet those posts are still there, completely unmoderated. So why is it that it's ok to insult some groups of people but not others?

Agreed. And I guess that a TL;DR version of my last post is that: I don't care how strict or how lax the rules are. Just as long as they're 1) Specific, and; 2) Applied equally to everyone. As I'm sure you've noticed I don't believe that #2 has ever happened and that is the source of about 99% of my issues with the moderation on this forum.

There are other options that allow you to keep your pets alive while also not using just the more defensive secondaries. Of those options my favorite is to team up with a Tank or a Brute and let them draw aggro before ordering my NPC minions to attack.

It's not a design flaw, it was done on purpose. You can take a secondary like /dark or /poison that includes powers that do damage and increase your damage output, or you can take /Son or /FF, which focus more on defense.

So here's the problem. If the devs take any steps to make MMs minions more durable, a subject that was very popular last year, it essentially ruins the /Sonic and /FF secondaries. Making the upgrades faster, or making them automatic or passives, has much the same effect. Sure, it doesn't keep them alive longer, it just makes replacing them quick and painless. Either of those two things changes the MM game play loop and increases the MMs DPS. If you don't want to be constantly resummoning and/or upgrading your minions then take action to keep them from dying. Place them in a spot that makes them less vulnerable to the enemy, give them inspirations, heal them, take the /Sonic or FF secondaries to make them tougher, team up with a tank, etc. There are a lot of ways you can make your minions more durable, and prevent from having to constantly resummon and upgrade them, other than just asking the devs to buff them.

Ok, so first of all, for what it's worth, I'm not unhappy with your moderation. Since this forum started the moderation has vacillated between "draconian snowflake protection program" and fairly reasonable. There were instances where people making perfectly reasonable requests that a certain troll be stopped were ignored while people who pushed back and called the troll a troll were suspended. Members of the DDL would routinely and blatantly insult some forum posters, while those of us who "returned fire" as it were saw our posts deleted, and watched during our temp bans while the DDL continued to post, clearly and obviously immune from any repercussions. This situation was the source of the accusations of toxic positivity. Worse was what happened in feedback threads started by the devs asking for feedback. Negative feedback received wave after wave of attacks by the DDL and, once we were finally baited into responding, we would again be temp banned, and our posts deleted, while the DDL would continue to assault other posters unabated. Since the mods were continuing to break in favor of those screaming ". . .leave the poor devs alone. . ." it appeared to many of us that this was what the devs/Homecoming administration wanted. I won't even go into how a developer lied to me, claiming that no one had disagreed with a change that had been added to the game and, as proof, offered a link to a thread that had already been heavily edited to remove all of the push back against said change. And I also see no to reason to go into my temp ban that was a result of my recommending to another poster that he seek professional medical help except to say that that one in particular still burns me up whenever I think about it. I think the worst part of it all is the blatant gaslighting that's happened over the last year or two since moderation has calmed down and become fairly reasonable. The claims from the usual suspects, themselves mostly former members of the DDL, that none of this ever happened and that I'm completely exaggerating how bad it was is just aggravating. But that's forum posters themselves, not moderators. But, as I said, that all happened before you became a moderator. Since you've been a mod I can't really remember having any major issues with the moderation here. And I'm not saying that because you've never sanctioned me, because in fact you have. My last warning point in September was from you, and I don't remember exactly why, but I do recall thinking at the time "yeah ok, I probably shouldn't have posted that." I will say though, that in that recently locked thread I was able to screenshot a post that was deleted that clearly didn't break any rules. I'm not going to ask what happened. I'll just point out that when things like that happen it makes us wonder if the snowflake protection program is about to be reactivated.

Nope. You saw it too, didn't you? I hope you got screenshots as I did. It seems really weird to me that the moderators are deleting posts that aren't insulting anyone and don't break the rules in anyway. And I wonder if they even realize that by doing that they're literally proving my point for me.

Captain America Four is Officially a Flop

No it isn't. That link was posted in an effort to insult those of us who are insisting that toxic positivity is or was a problem in this community. This was posted in order to frame us as immature, angry, children who are screaming at the devs, when the truth is that we're adults who are simply and calmly discussing this situation. You just don't like what we have to say, and rather than discuss the points you're attacking the character of the people on the other side of the argument. That's the Ad Hominem logical fallacy. Don't worry though. The moderators are quietly helping you out by deleting certain posts in this thread that don't actually violate the rules. So hey, at least they're on your side.

I agree with you. The only reason that I disagree with your suggestion is because, as I said before, I believe that it would be a lot of coding work for the devs and ultimately it would not make a damn bit of difference. I hope you can understand why I think that if the devs are going to spend that much time coding that it should be for something that does make a big difference.

No, I don't think the CoC is too restrictive. I think the selective enforcement of it, which was far more blatant a few years ago when the forum was still new, has left quite an impression on me. And I think that selective enforcement is what allowed the toxic positivity to be such a big problem back then. But, as I said in a different post, most of those folks have calmed down so it's not much of an issue anymore.

Oh it exists alright, and you know it does. And you know that I, of all people on this forum, can bring receipts. And you also know how long I'll be banned from the forum if I do. But, as I said, it's died down quite a bit in recent years.

It's part of the challenge of playing a Mastermind. It's also why my two favorite MMs are /FF, so that I'm not having to constantly resummon my minions. Personally I think it's a good thing that the various ATs are so different, there's an AT out there for everyone.

"Toxic Negativity" is a relatively new term. It means constant negativity which can end up driving people away from the forums and the game. "Toxic Positivity" was a term that was coined later to push back against that, and it basically means what you'd think it means. Constant positivity which can end up driving people away from the forums and the game. Yes, I'm sure most of you already knew this but, based on some of the posts I've read in this thread so far, clearly some of you do not. I've been on forums, and subreddits, where players attacked other players for having the unmitigated gall to post a bug report. Wherever there's a group of players who constantly attack anyone who has anything negative to say about the game, even when it's valid criticism, that's toxic positivity. The kind of over the top, constant defense of the devs and the game, even when it's clearly unwarranted, and especially when that poster never criticizes the game or the devs, ever. That kind of crazy, and obviously disingenuous, behavior aggravates people and drives them away. That's why it's "toxic", because it poisons your community. And no, toxic positivity is not disagreeing with suggestions that are hot garbage "I think the devs should give everyone a free nuke that recharges every 15 seconds!", it is being attacked by a dozen posters when you post "I'd like to see the devs fix this bug" or "I was on the test server, and here's why I don't like this change. . ." When it happens all the time and it's always the same group of people that's when it drives people away from your community, and that's when it's toxic. And yes, that used to happen a LOT on this forum. Fortunately, most of those folks have calmed down quite a bit, so I wouldn't say it's much of an issue here anymore.

Well, I got lucky. I expected to spend nearly an hour searching for it, especially since I couldn't remember who said it or when. Here's a weird coincidence. When I posted yesterday that the devs had already said that, it was four years to the day after he'd said it.