User blog comment:Moriganise/Let's Take It Easy On Free Players/@comment-7513024-20131008023751

I'd have to respectfully disagree with this post. I have no issue with people offering feedback, but I firmly believe that non-constructive feedback distracts people from actually discussing what is important. If people are just complaining rudely about things then nothing will get done because of two reasons that I will elaborate on more. Firstly, when people complain and don't offer alternatives it's a ridiculous expectation that the developers should magically know what they want or need. It's a difficult problem because I think most of the time complainers don't know what they themselves want or need. This is a problem because the developers are just scrambling in the dark and experimenting to please these complainers and the amount of experimentation will drive everyone else who had no problems with the game crazy. On top of that, it probably doesn't make the complainers happy either and the devvelopers may end up worse off than they used to be because they try to deal with complaints. Secondly, a LOT of these people are VERY RUDE. I could not accept the way they spoke about cash players even when I play free because it is just terribly rude. When someone calls another person "a fucking whale" or something along those lines without any provocation whatsoever, you can't expect other people to condone this behaviour, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone who is verbally abused like this to stay calm and offer to help them or give advice. Until people learn to be polite and think through what they want from Zynga, the game, and other players, they will not be contributing to any discussion in any meaningful way.

I also don't believe player feedback is 100% useful, since I know of people who have been asking for tower after tower because it's easy to get a 5* in towers. But the moment that happened, lots of people started getting burned out. I think getting Hazy Moon Delight after Wondrous World of Weaponry is a wonderful example of that. I know lots of serious free players who are getting exhausted and burnt out because Zynga decided to do two "free player friendly" events in a row. And this wasn't even because they asked for it. Rather, other people were complaining about events being too hard, and they got EG and tower, and now most of my guildmates are talking about taking breaks from the game because the balance and the rhythmn got ruined by these requests from other people. Do new free players have the right to ruin the game for older, established, free players who also struggled to get to where they are because they are frustrated at the game? I don't think so. And honestly, if a game is making a person so frustrated, it isn't a game anymore because it is no longer fun for that person. He or she should recognise that and learn to manage his or her expectations. I have no qualms about calling out childish behavior because I believe it is beneficial for the childish person in the longer term anyway.

All of that being said, I do think there are lots of very helpful people on wiki. I consider myself pretty helpful, all things considered, and I'd help someone out if I had the time to spare. I myself have benefitted from the wealth of knowledge here. Knowledge that complaining does NOT contribute to. I didn't even have to ask people for advice because so much information is available in the event guides and other things. If someone does not take the initiative to look around before asking and cluttering threads up, honestly, that person also should be called out for it. It's very frustrating. Think of it this way. You're a teacher to a class that doesn't pay attention when you teach them a concept for the first time. After that, they to you individually one by one to ask about it, making you teach it 40 times more than you needed to if they had been on the ball in the first place. It's very very frustrating. And most of the comments that ask for help are of this nature in the sense that they are by distracted or lazy people who can't be bothered to explore the wiki and read the guides that people who came before them have benefitted from. Like asking about tower GG defence and whether or not they can beat the GG with their team when the GG defence is on the very same page they are commenting on, and they can just go find out about their team's stats by typing the name of their daemon into the search bar on wiki. It's sad but true that even a very patient and helpful person only has so much to give before snapping.