If I could try to mediate a little...
(I've got some experience with conflict resolution... thanks in no small part to participating in a great deal of conflicts.)
To drvoke, and others who are obviously upset at j0nas's tone and what he has said about Toady, I would have to say this:
Try to stop looking at what j0nas is saying as a statement that can be measured as being either a true or false statement, and instead as a strategy, or a tactic as part of a strategy. j0nas has actually pretty explicitly stated what his/her goal is, and what his/her tactics are:
I can't say I really care whether or not my opinion suits you, but the only way I can influence Toady to do things that would, in my opinion, improve the game immensely, is for me to post my thoughts here in the hopes that they will be heard by the developers, and that other posters might agree with me. To reply to that by insulting us, putting words in our collective mouths and telling us 'stop playing DF and go play with the immature kids instead lolz' seems like the very definition of irony.
Setting aside the harshness of tone, j0nas is lobbying for improvements in this game. A game that j0nas obviously does love, because if j0nas did not, and had this many complaints and was so frustrated, then j0nas already
would have just abandoned the game and played something else by now.
Setting aside the harshness of tone, j0nas is right - he/she doesn't really have many other options for venting his/her frustrations.
Put simply, j0nas is frustrated with the game as it is in its current state, and worries that there will not be improvements made, and that his/her opinion on this doesn't matter. Your response to this worry that his/her opinion doesn't matter is to say that, in fact, his/her opinion is invalid, and as such, doesn't matter. I hope you can see how this doesn't exactly make a very effective means of convincing j0nas that he/she shouldn't voice the concerns he/she has...
Many of the things j0nas has said have been ad hominem attacks. To reprove j0nas for these things, and try to guide j0nas away from these tactics in the future is not wrong, but remember that while ad hominem attacks are a logical fallacy, so too is declaring that just because someone who has made a logical fallacy in their argument must obviously be wrong about everything else they are saying, as well.
If you want to calm the rhetoric down, the first thing you have to do is to try to find what the root concern they are voicing comes from, and try to convince them that they are, in fact, being listened to, and that their opinions are valid, but that it is merely their tactics that are incorrect.
To j0nas and madciol and the less vocal people who share some of their frustrations:
You, too, should stop and evaluate your argument from a less in-the-heat-of-things emotional standpoint, and from a more aloof, strategic standpoint, and re-evaluate what your true goals are, and what the most efficient ways of achieving those goals are.
You cannot change someone's emotionally charged desire to defend something they love with an emotionally charged attack upon that thing. It only turns you into some sort of dehumanized enemy other or monster or "over-entitled jerkass fanboy" that has come from nowhere to destroy that thing they love when looked at from their point of view.
If someone is still able to be excited about the game, and what its future iterations will be, and look forward to some of the new toys in the game, like honeybees or pottery, then they aren't going to look upon these things being added into the game as a bad thing, or as a waste while Toady is ignoring "The Real Problems". To them, those problems aren't so bad, and the honeybees really are that good. Dismissing them in disgust for thinking so is no better than their dissmissing you in disgust for your grievances, and equally as frustrating.
Trying to work out your frustrations by "convincing" an indefatiguable supply of opponents on the Internet that their emotional biases are invalid, while your emotional biases are valid is pretty much the most counter-productive means of reducing your stress ever devised.
You should instead be working to talk about why your claims are legitimate, and build sympathy even among those people who do not believe that many of the bugs are that bad so that the fans of the game will grudgingly agree that they can sit tight with what enjoyable new features they already have, and let work continue on repairing the broken aspects of the game, rather than adding new things on.
To start with, perhaps you really
should go and try to get together a donation drive that lets people state what aspects of the game they want to see most improved. It would not only give you a literal means of putting your money where your mouth is, but would give Toady a good indication of where the balance of player concerns are leaning. It would let you have that voice that you want to be heard have a means of getting heard.
OK, now that that's settled, you can all dismiss me a "hippy hug-the-world elf" or something, and go back to tearing each other's throats out. Have fun!
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Topic: Before there can be war, there will be... Bugfixes! (Read 17238 times)