Agree with article... Social media has given way to out-of-control, in-your-face pessimism and empowered narcissism. Tact is gone. Empathy is gone. We live in an age where everyone has [i]strong and unfiltered [/i]opinions about everything. Condescension, bias, and stubbornness are the norms. No one wants to be attacked. Certainly no one wants it on a constant basis. As a general psychology rule, it takes 8 positive affirmations to combat 1 negative criticism. That's just for balance. As an example, when dealing with employees, I always strive to give praise when it's due, but especially so, given that it helps those moments where criticism is necessary. Constant negativity gets tuned out. Constant criticism fosters resentment. People need to feel valued and appreciated for what they accomplish. Otherwise, they wilt. Imagine what it's like to be the target of unending, unyielding criticism, justified or not. At some point, you just want to get out of that situation. At some point, it's just not worth the constant bruises. At some point, you just want to sever/mute/ignore those poisonous relationships. [b]It takes two-sides to have a constructive dialog. Granted, Bungie hasn't done their part well. But, we as a community aren't doing it well either.[/b]

So disappointing to see the kind of rubbish game developers have to put up with. There is absolutely no excuse for sending people such nasty, insulting, offensive comments or resorting to death threats or stalking. If you don't like a game, provide constructive feedback on what you think should be improved, or give suggestions. Simply saying things like "Game X is bad/sucks/dead" etc does not help the developers when it comes to improving a game. Nor does threatening them or being nasty. It's a shame to see that people who are good developers are considering leaving or have left the industry because of this kind of behaviour. I honestly can't blame them for doing so - how many people would want to work in a role where they have to endure that kind of rubbish day in, day out? If you want to see great games being released, then one of the key ingredients for that to happen is to have great, talented developers in the gaming industry. Driving developers away from the industry with this kind of behaviour ultimately makes things worse, not better. If we want to have great games coming out, then one way we can help is by treating developers with respect and decency, not as if they're our personal punching bags who deserve having toxic vitriol constantly thrown at them.

Any attempt to justify death threats, ect, over a game is worthless. Saying it's part of the culture is also worthless. I've been gaming since pong, across every platform since the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. I've spent thousands on gaming in my lifetime. NOT ONCE would I EVER have considered this kind of behavior. What's wrong with you guys? Be it Bungie, or Hello Games, or any of these studios. It's an entertainment medium. Yes, it matters to fans greatly. But it's no excuse to act like trash. We should demand better of ourselves if we want to be heard. These are real people in these studios. They have wives, kids, and these days, who's to know what's real or fake regards a threat. Do unto others people. In fact, do better.

I agree with the spirit of the article, but let’s be honest - it’s not that simple. We can appeal to ourselves to be better people and take the high ground, and maybe we should, but at what point do we finally have to look Bungie in the eye and say, “Enough!” I didn’t have a problem with Bungie the company so much until December rolled around. That’s when it became clear to me their problems are institutional, not individuals gone rogue. XP rigging [i]IS[/i] their bag, baby. Lying about it [i]IS[/i] their response to being caught. I don’t know what kind of nice dialogue you can have with an adult who will lie to your face. For me, it’s time to be blunt. Nice doesn’t work with Bungie, they have to feel the coals of hellfire on their feet to react. Sols made a response to another forum goer about customers getting into the face of employees in real life... suggesting (I think) it wouldn’t be allowed. Yes, it does. I’ve had plenty of parents lose it, call me every name in the book, and physically threaten me. Let me make this clear - [i]I have to be the adult in the room and maintain my composure and I can never, EVER respond in kind![/i] Police, firemen, soldiers, ministers, doctors... shall I go on? DeeJ did so early on, and it helped set the tone for the service. Look, I’m not trying to be disrespectful to anyone, but I’m not about to let Bungie be painted as victims here, because that’s just not truth. Bungie didn’t alter a GUI to hide actual XP throttling because we were mean to them. They didn’t double XP requirements for engrams because we sent hate mail. They did it purposefully to milk as much money out of the customers as they could. [i]That’s[/i] adversarial. [i]That[/i] has to be confronted head-on.

Aww boo hoo 0.1% of kids on this game are being mean to me on the internet. Wow these game devs should just quit if they are really going to cry over some tweets from some kids trolling. Grow a -blam!-ing sack ya pussies.

I want dialog added to shax's comments when you see him in towered... "Oh shoot.. Here he/she comes again... Uh, look, I know you want your sword back, it's just been misplaced after the red war and everything that happened. I promise I'll get it back to you...soon..."

I'm just going to say this: from what I can tell, Warframe doesn't have this problem. Happy players makes for a happy community and better back and forths between the Dev's and the community. Bungie hasn't even tried to engage the community on the same level as Warframe does on a regular basis. Sure, they have their feelers out there (Cosmo, Deej, Dmg04, etc.) but they take the input we give them and it goes in one ear and out the other. And nothing can make this more clear than the communities cries during D1, particularly in Y2 and Y3 to separate PVE from PVP. In spite of the cries, Bungie failed to identify this as a key issue and they actually AMPED UP the problem in D2. Classic example of ignoring your communities concerns. All of this did not happen in a vacuum. This happened because Bungie has tuned players out, hid behind their community managers, and largely ignored a lot of GOOD feedback. When Bungie came out and made the bogus argument that elemental primaries were eliminated because they felt that elemental primaries limited diversity, several players had different suggestions on how they could be returned and returned in such a way that would actually improve diversity and give the players a degree of customization. Did that ever happen? No. Elemental primaries only returned as EXOTIC weapons when D1 already had a foot out the door. It was really the exact opposite of what most players wanted, and those that suggested this were misguided in thinking that elemental burn alone was enough to make these weapons exotic and worthwhile. It wasn't. If Bungie wants to improve things on this forum, it starts them stopping from telling us "We're listening." Instead of telling us "We're listening" - SHOW us that they're listening with the actions they take. Show us that they're willing to subrogate their own ideas and judgment for that of the community that puts endless manhours into the game and who understands better how tweaking this or that will effect the overall game. Stop telling us Bungie knows better than we do when they don't even play their own game. They DO need to continue communicating with the community. But the phrase "we're listening" needs to be replaced with "We're sorry, we made some mistakes. These are the mistakes we made: A.... B.... C..... And this is tentatively the plan to fix them: 1.... 2...3.... Please debate what you think of the plan moving forward. Please also realize the plan is tentative and subject to change based on the debates we see go on in the community." I'll end with this: I think it is absolutely [u]CRITICAL[/u] that we hear from Bungies own mouth what mistakes they made because unless they can identify the mistakes they made themselves, they can't really address them with real, substantive solutions. I think it is absolutely [u]IMPERATIVE[/u] that Bungie float ideas to "fix things" to the community and let us vet those ideas before they take any action to implement them. Sure, fixes will come slower, but they're more likely to get a fix that will please most of the community, rather than simply giving us a fix that BUNGIE thinks is best for the game.

Shit talking and threats, etc. have always been at the core of competitive games, though. Like how people talk shit on campers or prone/crouch warriors in Call of Duty, and like to make empty threats over the microphone about how they're going to DDoS or find you and -blam!- your mom, or something. I'd argue it's part of gaming culture, even. Lately people are just getting sensitive to it. I'm not sure what it is that's making people more sensitive, maybe it's the living in uncertainty of whether we're on the brink of societal collapse that makes them feel more vulnerable as a person, as opposed to how reckless and unbound people were when I was a kid. Or maybe it's just part of getting older; existentialism can be a bitch. Do I condone death threats and stuff? No, not really. Have I made them? Yes, admittedly. It's part of the gaming culture. The question comes down to whether a person actually has genuine intent, or just feels like they need to express themselves strongly and unmistakably as downright displeased and personally offended. It's hard to misconstrue these sorts of threats and ridicules as anything other than the contempt it is, so people use it because it's the only tool that seems to actually be HEARD by the people they're speaking to. And that reaction is exactly what makes people feel the method actually has some use. Some things go too far but that's the nature of Feedback when it isn't listened to. People used to come here eager to share new ideas on how to fix the game, but over time we've seen them get ignored and abused by other forumgoers time and time again. Eventually, people get tired of being ignored and abused and they lash out vindictively. If you want to blame anything, blame the progressive deafening of Bungie's ears to collective player feedback. People wouldn't be getting mad if they felt they were not only being heard, but actually seeing Bungie genuinely attempt some of these ideas as opposed to skipping over them and assuming they know what's best. That is the fundamental problem with Bungie, they don't really use Feedback, they just look at it. And that's the problem. Bungie isn't trying to make us feel like we're heard through their actions, they're just concerned with making it look like we're heard. And that's why they get attacked over petty shit, because people have been feeding into this hamster wheel of a game AND a feedback system for YEARS, for what? To be ignored time and time again, and to watch the game delve further into an actual shit show.

If you make any form of art your going to receive criticisms. If you try to sing and it turns out you're tone deaf you're going to get booed and in the old days tomato's thrown at you. It's human nature! Now thanks to the internet instead of tomatoes you get nasty tweets hurled at you. When you put yourself in the publics eye you need to be prepared for this. And it's not a new thing just look at how many actors through out the ages have gotten tons of hate mail from "Fans" when they did something they didn't like. When you're a public figure you have to realize your decisions both positive and negative are going to come under scrutiny.

Or you know, make a good sequel that justifies the $120 it cost, destiny 2 is more like destiny 0.5, half the fun, half the features, half the team size in crucible, half the exotics they used to be, half the grenades, half the skill tree choices, half the weapons, half the rolls etc... the list goes on... but less than half the fun of destiny 1

Interesting read, and quite true. Sensible comments from gamers are hard to find these days, where some people may think swearing on social media to someone from the production companies have no problems at all. Everyone should have a good think on the question: If you are the developers, working hard while need to keep the business rolling and getting trashed by random consumers daily, what will you feel? As a human being with common sense, no body should be rude to anyone, respectful and constructive comments should be the way where any gaming communities aim for.