Plain and simple, this forum needs more and better moderation. We have name calling, four threads regarding the same topic, off topic posts in most threads etc. It often takes days until a moderator steps in and closes or at least intervenes.
If HHG is really interested in a working forum, they need to put more effort into it. Usually a forum is the best place to get information, strategies or some lore. But in this forum you don’t get information other than the monthly updates and there is barely any helpful thread. This scares new guys who search for help and many who would help or helped before more or less quit the forum, because they could not stand this lawless place anymore.
PS.: Please, pin helpful threads like for example Benched item guide, or the guide which explains the in-game status effects.
What’s frustrating to me is that people don’t use the flag system. There is a process in place for users to report comments as off-topic or inappropriate. I do so often because it contributes to a better forum experience for everyone. But when nobody else is taking the time to flag bad comments, the whole forum environment suffers.
I flag every individual topic/reply that I feel does not follow the rules of the forum. Whether that’s because it’s off-topic or because it’s abusive/inappropriate.
I agree however that the state of the forums is abysmal. The lack of moderation is incredibly frustrating and demonstrates an irritating laziness on behalf of the devs. This is an official discussion resource of HHG and it frequently devolves into a dumpster-fire of bickering and hate. If HHG can’t keep their own official forum moderated (and no, that isn’t satisfied by Muninn showing up once a week to lock a thread), then there needs to be effective community moderation tools.
I’d love to see some of the more responsible forum-goers promoted to some level of player-moderator. I don’t know why HHG has chosen to manually lock players out of the 3rd Trust Level tier on this platform. Allowing certain active and mature users to flag/hide posts with more weight would be tremendously helpful, even if those players needed to be hand-picked instead of automatically earning the ‘regular’ badge.
Community mods are common in many forums and often do good work. If you are not willing or able to do the work on your own, it is the easiest and in my opinion best way.
You do not have to give them all rights. The right to close threads and delete posts would be enough. If someone gets to offensive in any way they could pass that on to a HHG mod to take further action.
Do note that the flag system is the best way to point out something you feel isn’t appropriate for the forum. In this way, every community member has the ability to act as a moderator. We get to the forum posts as quickly as we can, but we do have duties outside moderating the forum.
I’ll bring up the idea of community mods, but I can’t promise it will happen. The forum traffic level does not currently warrant expanding the team, whether through HHG staff, or community volunteers, but I’ll broach the subject with the rest of the team.
@Muninn Thanks for the response! I always appreciate the acknowledgement that our concerns are being heard.
That is precisely my point Obviously you guys are very busy and moderating the forums is not a terribly high priority item. You do however have many people able and willing to help out in whatever capacity they can to help the situation (for free!).
Please consider that this could be a chicken/egg situation. It’s not an unreasonable possibility that forum traffic is low as a result of the lack of moderation leading to a toxic and unhelpful environment, pushing potential new users away.
Eating dinner saved me from writing your text myself
You took the words out of my mouth.
The better the forum is, the more people will join it. If you know you get help here, you are more likely to visit.
And if you of course make this your primary platform timeshare information. Many forums have kind of a bulletin to let players know if there is some problem with the game. I would like to see that here too. I know it is shared at discord. But it gets lost there fast and the casual players are more likely to look in the forum than discord.
from experience being a mod on a big forum a while back, i can say that if you want to get any staff attention, its to report/flag it. There is only so much we as the formites can do and the best thing to do is to just flag it and get staff attention. I know not many people know who the staff is and tagging someone can be tricky if you spell the name wrong.
This is a single game forum, so i dont expect volunteers to be here. But staff does get busy with the game stuff and personal lives. so they cant be here babysitting 24/7. I dont see much traffic coming into the forums that would say like yeah, have them get some volunteers to help along with staff.
If you have a toxic player, id say to just flag it and screen shot (maybe as evidence) and to not get involved in escalating things further.
We recommend flags, not tags. Flags go to a communal inbox so anybody who is a staff member can act. Tags aren’t recommended, as they bulk up posts and are mostly used to get official word on things we’re not able to discuss at that time, which just ends in broken hearts
Obviously you guys are very busy and moderating the forums is not a terribly high priority item. You do however have many people able and willing to help out in whatever capacity they can to help the situation (for free!).
