Games Feedback Thread (for the forum not games in general)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Games Feedback Thread (for the forum not games in general)

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

^{Atelier gifs will come with all of my mod-related threads}

Hello! The State of Games thread used to be a subforum tradition, back in the day, and we're reviving it here and now! This is a general, QCS-style thread for talking about the Games subforum. Please feel free to voice any suggestions or concerns you have, even if they don't fit into the topics we lay out. It won't be moderated as heavily as a true QCS thread, but please try to stay on-topic. Here's some suggested topics:

We currently have one long-standing mod (VideoGames), one relatively newer one (Relax or DIE), and two brand-new mods (Cheetah7071 and ShallNoiseUpon). While any large complaints you have should probably go to QCS or be PMed to an admin, this is a good place to voice small complaints about any of us.
Are there any threads you believe are being underserved by the current crop of mods and IKs? Games is a forum where people can't really read and understand most threads. So persistent issues which don't rise to the level of reports can completely pass us by if they happen in threads for games we don't play.
Are there any behaviors which you think should be against the rules, but currently aren't?
Do you have any fun ideas for Games forum activities which require buttons to accomplish? Or ideas for threads which sound fun but like an awful lot of effort to write up and maintain? Post them here!
Feel free to bring anything up about the mobile or retro games subforums as well, it has the same mods.
The MMO subforum is temporarily under our watch as well after its previous mod resigned. Concerns about that subforum can be raised here in the meantime. In the future, we will make a thread in MMO HMO to discuss its future (does it need to remain separate from Games, etc), so hold any opinions on that for now.
Games has a very megathread-heavy posting culture, with 6 full pages of active threads. Do you find this makes it hard to find threads you're interested in? Does this kind of culture prevent you from post non-mega threads?

I know some drama's happening on the site right now, but please don't bring up broader issues than Games (and the subforums with the same moderators) in this thread.

cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Oct 20, 2020

# ¿ Oct 19, 2020 21:44

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 13:31

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I hope you all at least enjoyed my atelier gif

# ¿ Oct 20, 2020 03:15

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

For what it's worth, even if we made a subforum of Games where megathreads are banned (while leaving Games proper alone, of course), it wouldn't become "GBS for games" because the posting rules would be the same as they are here, just with smaller topics and the assumption that most threads will die off after a few pages and that's okay.

Not saying that that's where we're going but just that the rules and posting style wouldn't have to change.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2020 03:33

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Aceofblue posted:

I don't post much in Games, so people probably wouldn't ever recognize my name or posting history or whatnot so I feel I have less of a voice here, but I read threads here every day and half of my bookmarks are for the games I'm currently playing, have played, or want to play.

I honestly like the way things are with regard to game-specific megathreads. I think that sometimes some of the OPs could use a little more updating (depending on the game and its needs, obviously!), and/or maybe games that see a lot of updates or have a very long span between significant updates should be closed and restarted more frequently so that new players or returning players don't have to dig through pages and pages of unrelevant content if they want to grow up their own base of knowledge before asking current questions. The threads with hundreds of pages can be really intimidating, especially if they are from multiple patches/updates/releases.

I don't think we need any like, structured forums games or activities. A comedy 6er thread every once in a while can be fun but most things I've seen to ~ liven things up ~ just tend to come across as hammy or as trying too hard.

I like the rules thread. It is funny. I definitely greatly appreciate the blanket statement of:

While there can be uh.. strong opinions.. presented in Games, I don't feel that a lot of things that are tolerated elsewhere on the forums are tolerated here. That being said I would really, really like to see phrases like "gone full [r-slur]" be nipped in the bud. A quick search of just the games forum shows that some (unquoted) instances of that particular word are given probations but others not (and I understand that a lot of that is due to people reporting it and that the mods can't be everywhere at once), as recently as 10/19/2020. But we can definitely do better.

Can you please report those posts I will absolutely probate them, but I can't do it if I don't see them!

# ¿ Oct 20, 2020 06:57

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Aceofblue posted:

Of course! I hm, don't want to be that person going in to other threads that I don't involve myself in and being like "tsk tsk what is going on here" but I'll go through and report the things I saw tonight while writing my post.

I might let the ones that are too old slide but anything recent is fair game

And just moving forward, since this was happening enough you wanted to bring it up here, if you see it, report it. A lack of mod activity isn't necessarily an endorsement, oftentimes it's just because we didn't see it. Games is huge--between the main forum and the three subforums we manage, there's around ten pages of active threads. And most of those are unreadable to anybody who doesn't play the game in question. So there's a huge proportion of posts that we won't see unless they're brought to our attention. That's the impetus behind the bullet point asking if there's any threads that are being underserved--most threads get no mod eyes unless a report happens, just because there's too drat many threads.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2020 07:07

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Rexicon1 posted:

Call it DOTA 3

the spookiest halloween name of all

# ¿ Oct 20, 2020 21:05

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

The new subforum name wasn't due to new mods. It's an October thing--renaming subforums to spooky names for the Halloween season. Take a look at the forum index and you'll see a bunch of them. And what's spookier than DOTA?

# ¿ Oct 20, 2020 22:48

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

If you want static compiled information this website is probably not your best bet. The advantage we offer over things like wikis or whatever when it comes to video game information is that it's a place for live conversations

That's not to say that I don't sometimes feel the same annoyance at an out-of-date OP but the source of that problem is that good OPs are a pain in the rear end to write and to update, and often want updating for years--plausibly far longer than the person who wrote it cares about the thread.

Ultimately I'm not sure there's anything we can really do about it, and even if there was, I don't really see a big use case for these elaborate OPs compared to other more specialized website. I'm open to being convinced on either of those points though! This is just my opinion, and this is explicitly a place where you can suggest changes to the status quo of the forum.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2020 06:13

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

TOOT BOOT posted:

I'm curious how many people actually read pages 1-999 when a thread is 1000 pages long. Are those posts serving a purpose that wouldn't be served equally well in the archives?

Probably not, but are they hurting anyone?

This one does have an actual solution, if it's really a problem: lock and replace threads after either a certain amount of time or a certain number of posts. Personally I don't think it's really a problem that needs solving, but again, this is a place for suggestions, and I'm open to being convinced.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2020 06:21

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Phigs posted:

I've got a couple complaints without solutions for ya.

Games is not a forum that's good for sifting through for new poo poo because of all the megathreads. The only times I find new stuff in games is because I hear about a game from somewhere else on the forum/internet and then go looking for it. And I guess now because things are changing and I wondered what new stickies we'd get. Some way of being able to actually catch the new stuff would be nice. Like a way to filter out old threads or a list of new/trending threads or whatever.

I believe adding threads to an ignore list is on the global site to-do list, but it's fairly far down compared to other things.

ultrafilter posted:

There is something to be said for starting new threads when a game is released or when there are major updates. I'm not sure how strongly I feel about it, but it's worth discussing.

This is already done for some game--ffxiv gets a new thread each expansion, for example. More broadly, we don't really want to dictate circumstances where people have to start a new thread but you can feel free to :justpost:

when a major content update comes out. This is one of the rare circumstances where I'd say a big effortful OP should probably exist, because the new thread should offer something the old thread didn't--otherwise, why migrate? But if you do make a new thread and people do seem to be migrating, go ahead and contact a mod via PM or report and we can lock the old one to minimize confusion.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2020 22:55

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

That is a really cool idea, and could probably stand to be brought up in the QCS thread for technical suggestions.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2020 23:01

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

some bust on that guy posted:

What about a subforum for non-megathreads? I love SA, love games, but I'm never in Games because the mega threads are very overwhelming. I think this is the best community on the internet that talks about video games but god, I hate megathreads. Everything I bookmarked here has like 1000 unread posts. I want to see gaming news discussed without having to dig through a 5000 post mega thread for it.

That sort of already exists in the Imp Zone. They have a very different posting culture over there than here in Games though. Were you unaware of it, or were you specifically hoping for Games-style posting in smaller threads?

# ¿ Oct 25, 2020 08:26

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Zigmidge posted:

Talk is cheap. Games needs less talking and more content but I don't know how mods make that happen.

What exactly does this mean? Forums are for talking, almost by definition, and I'm a little confused what you picture as your desired state, even setting aside getting there.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2020 23:26

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Radio Free Kobold posted:

why did you rename the MMO forum

bring back PISS

It was renamed to PISS before I was a mod but the decision to change it back was just an admin thinking that PISS was a temporary change and reverting it as the joke had played its course

Commas in a subforum name are also kind of annoying in the subforum list because it makes it hard to tell how many subforums there are at a glance

# ¿ Oct 28, 2020 22:44

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

There is a thread for recommending a game, right here.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2020 00:11

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I skimmed the thread and I saw a long discussion of people mostly engaging with you not sure what more you want

To your post here I have only to say:

lol

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 21:12

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

it's games but when you like a post you emptyquote it or say lol instead of just appreciating it in silence

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 00:46

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I imagine you'll probably want to have different standards for "found" griefing and "home grown" griefing. Stories of what other people have done can be funny and entertaining even if they're extremely unpleasant for all participants. But that same story may be crossing the line if it's someone bragging about their own actions.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2021 02:36

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

the switch thread is full of people who don't share anything in common other than owning a switch so I don't think it's surprising there's a lot of arguing

# ¿ Jun 15, 2021 21:44

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Workaday Wizard posted:

Do they still yell ORB every five seconds?

no because there's no crowd to yell, cause there's covid

# ¿ Jul 5, 2021 08:30

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Threadbans are absolutely a fine tool in general for people who make low level annoying posts constantly even if none of them are individually egregious. I don't know the specifics of this situation so maybe this was a bad threadban but if anything, getting slapped for being constantly annoying but never over the line should be more common. It's just really hard to diagnose in threads where you aren't a regular

# ¿ Sep 8, 2021 17:25

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

InventorOfTrees posted:

I leave the forums for a few months and come back and it's the same games forums superstar posters still trying to cause drama in any way possible. Yall need a hobby.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2021 19:37

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

ultrafilter posted:

Half of the content of this thread is blizzwatch drama or whatever the hell's going on here. I care about the forum in general, but I don't follow that thread, and I don't understand why it's been allowed to fully take over this more general thread. Is there really value in the current discussion?

It's QCS for games so topics are going to come in waves. Just don't read it for a few days if you really don't want to. I guarantee there will not be any spicy new feedback you'll be sorry you missed.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2021 22:07

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Since CCCC is for chat threads that no longer belong in their original forums, it has some kind of weird rules. One of those is "Don't invade other CCCC threads". Basically, drive-by threadshitting is against forum rules even if slurs aren't, and a non-regular swooping into the thread to annoy its posters should be probatable by that rule.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2021 22:11

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Stux posted:

anyone else notice that over half of this once quiet thread is now this insane protracted meltdown. youre not going to agree with anyone here and no one is going to agree with you. u have your thread and an ik, see you later. bye bye, Bye

still better than qcs

# ¿ Sep 10, 2021 23:46

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Moola posted:

this is all your fault

you will be sorry for your words and deeds

I think she already is, hence the apology

# ¿ Sep 11, 2021 00:03

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Harrow please go wild with power and probe the last page of posts. You can hit me too I don't mind

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Sep 12, 2021 02:22

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Speaking as someone who has been stuxed a good dozen times in the past, it's very funny when people get insanely riled up over him hating breath of the wild or whatever

The actual bits he does range between unfunny and tedious though and should probably be hit by more than sixers. Though on the other hand, the edits that went into his rap sheet when he did his nightly stadia thread post were very funny.

There is no need to actually ban stux because people (including me, sometimes) lose their mind that he likes different video games than them

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 21:05

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

brand engager posted:

Remember when problematic meant like sex ciminals and poo poo, before people used it to describe someone who posted a big picture of the joker or whatever

well, it was a very big picture

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 21:19

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

dreffen posted:

You are, and it's appreciated that you're weighing in, and I get it feeling weird.

But, like, why aren't they weighing in? This all comes back around to my comments about mod and admin inaction - this isn't a paying job, so if someone isn't going to step up, why bother even being in that position at all? Let someone do it who will actually do it.

Nobody actually wants to be a mod is the problem. It's really hard to find them because everyone says no

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 21:54

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I can say from experience that the stressful part of being a mod isn't stux, it's stuff like this thread lol

Still better than qcs though

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 22:10

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

FAUXTON posted:

what if the mod forums were just made public and read-only

just pages and pages of very serious debate over how many big jokers it takes to earn a probe longer than 6 hours lol

The hard part is that it's not just the quantity of big jokers, but the size and jpg-ness that matter. I have it on good authority that stux would be on a week probe right now if he had passed the joker through another jpg quality downgrade

cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Sep 13, 2021

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 22:11

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

the forums aren't dying, that was a lie lowtax made up to get more cookie money

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 22:29

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

interesting how the stux discussion, when challenged, becomes the same blizzwatch slapfight that should have ended pages ago

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 22:41

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

no keep this one I put a cute atelier gif in the op

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 23:54

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Mordiceius posted:

From the way people have been discussing the issue, it feels like any thread Stux posts in quickly devolves into Stux-chat and that�s one of the problems?

it doesn't happen in games chat thread

# ¿ Sep 13, 2021 23:59

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Saxophone posted:

Hi please don't attempt to harass me.

I legitimately don't know where to report this, but it's as a result of this thread so yeah.

in theory, PMs are the admin's domain to handle because they aren't part of any specific subforum. But also they aren't very good at it because only Jeff can verify the contents of PMs and he really doesn't want to

but in practice I'm not sure how much the admins actually do. At least astral coded it so you don't have to see PMs from ignored users. Sorry they're bothering you, hope they stop.

cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Sep 14, 2021

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 00:11

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Looper posted:

i think mods should think and worry about individual decisions

why would you wish this on them

# ¿ Sep 15, 2021 18:57

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I don't think that's it I think Games is actually just mostly good and doesn't generate many complaints

nobody besides maybe you is keeping a spreadsheet of what only got a sixer in the past and going "oh I guess I won't tap the report button this time"

# ¿ Sep 15, 2021 20:05

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 13:31

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Please probate Stux with this image:

# ¿ Sep 15, 2021 21:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Games Feedback Thread (for the forum not games in general)

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