The Negativity Trend and Forum Rules

Hi All,

Over the years, there have been plenty of changes to our little universe. Some popular, some not so popular…The old adage of ‘You can’t please 100% of the people 100% of the time” certainly rings true. However, an unfortunate negative trend has emerged, particularly over the last few months. This trend seems to be centred within a small group of people and consists of mainly excessive whining, complaining, rudeness, and overall negativity about Arkadia and MindArk.

Now, we all can get frustrated with EU at times, we may not always agree with the decisions of MA (and the infamous Balancing Team!) or the Planet Partners, but we are all in favour of EU succeeding and we all want to see good feedback given to the people who can make a difference in our little Universe. One thing we all need to consider though is that EU is a business and in order to keep the server hamsters fed and watered and our universe expanding in content and systems (both new and returning) the system needs to provide for some of the money flowing around it to be syphoned off to account for these vital provisions. Other games use a subscription based system, we use something different.

The correct and acceptable way to communicate your feedback (be it positive or negative) is by providing constructive criticism in the appropriate manner (i.e submitting support cases, posting in the Suggestions/Wishlist and Bug Reports forums etc.). Posting logs of your exploits and providing figures and factual evidence is an excellent way of showing not only other players, but the developers themselves, how the system is working for you. Posting your well thought out opinions of new content and/or system balancing as well as suggestions for new things you’d like to see, are all welcome and encouraged.

However, incessant and immature whining, flaming or just general trolling all over the forum is NOT the appropriate way to express your dislike or dissatisfaction with the way the universe or planets are being developed. Posting “Loot Sucks” threads without any actual evidence is neither welcome nor remotely helpful and as such, will be moderated in accordance with the Forum Rules (which will be getting reviewed and updated soon!). Posting these types of threads/posts in the New Player Area is particularly unhelpful especially when those same people are among the ones whining that we need more players as well! Doing so will in future result in infractions being issued along with the associated consequences (more to come on this).

As a result of recent discussions between Arkadia Studios staff and the PAF Admin/Moderation team, a new rule has been instituted in Section 3 of the Forum Rules:

Now, before people start howling about free speech being suppressed and the Admins/Mods going mad with power, please take the time to read, think and then consider this…

The PAF Admins and Moderators are all volunteers; some of us work fulltime jobs whilst others are in fulltime study; We all give our time here because we want to. None of us are paid, none of us get any recompense for the time we put in here, but we do all work very hard to keep the forum running smoothly and the atmosphere civil. It’s a thankless job by all accounts and most of the work we do you will never even notice. You the members can help us in our efforts to keep PAF civilised, informative and interesting by not only adhering to the Forum Rules yourselves, but also by reporting posts that are disruptive, inappropriate or insulting and that may be in violation of those rules.

We will soon be instituting a new system to make the Mods job a bit easier and the administration of the forum fairer to all and as part of this, the forum community will have a chance to participate in a review of the Forum Rules (something we have been planning for a while).

Thankyou in advance for your cooperation and thank you all for making PAF the fantastic Entropia Universe community it has become in the last 2+ years.