Censorship of Criticism at the main forum

[easytarget]

Starting what appears to be yesterday the main TW forum locks or deletes any thread or post critical of pretty much anything.

While it's of course w/in their right to do so, to suddenly do it w/ no explanation is a bit odd. Why now? If this was just supposed be a fanboi hoedown you would have thought the mods would have been doing this all along and not just out of the blue as if some magic date had been arrived at when we hit 11/21/2014 on the calendar.

I would have to assume this is at CA's direction, not like mods wake up one day and just decide at a company sponsored forum they are going to clamp down on anyone criticizing anything.

Go look for yourselves, as I type this there are half a dozen locked threads on the first page of the R2 forum. I've had multiple posts deleted w/ no explanation or comment.

If CA can't handle criticism just take down the forum, if you've grown weary of us telling you for the last year what a complete F up R2 was and you want to stop listening to your customers, yank the place down. No one put a gun to your head saying make a forum.

[hoom]

Meh, I abandoned the official forum back in Shogun1 days...

But there is a difference between legit constructive critique and just 'yah boo, CA sux'.
Few official forums anywhere on the net have much in the way of constructive critique let alone allowing the 'yah boo sux' stuff.

Edit: had a squizz and there is a necro, several valid issues that degraded into 'yah boo sux', a couple I'm not sure why closed but a bunch of others with criticisms but kept civil & left open

[easytarget]

Actually you can't know what you never saw. That's my problem with it. Like I said, their forum, they can do with it what they please.

I posted this mainly so if in the future someone googles anything along the lines of Total War forums censorship they'll get a hit that confirms there is some basis to believe criticism is throttled on occasion and most certainly posts are deleted w/o a trace all the time (this part I know for a fact as it has been done to me a number of times).

[Hooahguy]

So I guess its a good thing then that CA never comes onto these forums anymore?

[easytarget]

Haha, well, I suppose, because apparently if they did it would just be to ask you to silence people.

[Crandar]

From time to time, when they plan to release something big, the moderators tend to go in purge-every-8er streak.
However, the situation is much better than the first days, when they literally banned you for anything negative against the Honourable Creative of Assembly.
These were crazy times, indeed!
They stopped when a journalist mentioned the censorship together with the camel cataphracts and a Galatian unit, which were sold as a DLC, despite being promoted as being part of the main game, during the Great Marketing Era.

So I guess its a good thing then that CA never comes onto these forums anymore?

Whyy did they leave?

[Hooahguy]

Whyy did they leave?

If I had to guess, they deemed us not important enough to make an effort to interact with us anymore. Trish from CA used to be in regular contact with us but then she left so that leaves nobody. Jack Lusted comes on here every now and then but it seems that its just to observe, not to interact.

[hoom]

.org used to be the main non-official TW forum.
Back in the day if you wanted serious gameplay tips, discussion of balance/game mechanics etc here was the place.
CA would post & directly interact here, referenced .org in Credits.

But with Rome1 & the proliferation of mods, twcenter seems to have become more the main non-official center.

Also there are only so many forums that you can spend active time at, people are going to go to non-official ones a lot less when they're being spat at by most posters due to a lot of broken stuff & balance issues in the Rome1 & subsequent titles.

[easytarget]

Censorship just means you throw the good out along with the bad (as you perceive it, which is part of the problem also). There are many occasions where people show up including myself to point out possible bugs in the game, that's a loss for them more than it is to me if in taking this heavy handed approach they cause people to simply stop posting altogether.

When you couple this with a head firmly planted up your bum attitude about not issuing NDA's and doing proper beta testing and what I see is a very insular development studio that doesn't learn from mistakes or implement processes to remove them.

Censoring is basically the behavior of a four year old taking their ball and going home.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Censoring is basically the behavior of a four year old taking their ball and going home.

I feel bad for those who stoically wait out the bug-squashing, the numerous (too numerous) patches, the DLC-only rip-offs, and the sometimes holier-than-thou attitude from the devs and producers. You folks have the patience of Job...or just love all the aggravation...

Me? I've long since cashed in my season ticket and taken my 50 yard-line seat and gone home.....probably for good

[Crandar]

If I had to guess, they deemed us not important enough to make an effort to interact with us anymore. Trish from CA used to be in regular contact with us but then she left so that leaves nobody. Jack Lusted comes on here every now and then but it seems that its just to observe, not to interact.

Τhat's pretty shocking, if you ask me, old cheese, so in case you are in a mood for some leaked information:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...post2053623635

[easytarget]

I can confirm they are still busily deleting posts. Best solution they've found to criticism is deletion of the criticism rather than fixing what's brought up. Posts by CA apologists are left untouched.

[Myth]

I can confirm they are still busily deleting posts. Best solution they've found to criticism is deletion of the criticism rather than fixing what's brought up. Posts by CA apologists are left untouched.

Hello,

this is Special Agent Johnson with the Creative Assembly. You have been found an enemy of the state. Please come along quietly, you will be relocated to a FEMA camp to await a just trial. Please leave any personal posessions and criticism behind, everything will be provided for you at the camp.

[easytarget]

Well, since you said it so nicely and indicated everything I need will be provided how could I refuse, lead me away Mr Ocifer...

[easytarget]

Billy Ruffian is a difficult mod today, I've posted three times in a thread about some innocuous nonsense about how agent animations need to be turned off and each time I've had my responses deleted because I've each time made the point there are much bigger things that need fixing (not least of which being agent spam).

Billy, if you ever stop by here, this is for you:

[Crandar]

Billy Ruffian is a difficult mod today, I've posted three times in a thread about some innocuous nonsense about how agent animations need to be turned off and each time I've had my responses deleted because I've each time made the point there are much bigger things that need fixing (not least of which being agent spam).

Billy, if you ever stop by here, this is for you:

Yeah, Billy is one of my favourites, but the best one is doubtlessly AlJabberwock. He's a legend on those forums.

[easytarget]

Well, I'm following protocol and going above his head raising it to Will, Craig and Joey and BCC'ing dear ole Billy. I want to establish once and for all whether this current rash of mass message deletion efforts they have going on is at the behest of CA as I suspect it is. And I wanted to force them to explain why my comment in the thread in question was out of bounds.

[Crandar]

Well, I'm following protocol and going above his head raising it to Will, Craig and Joey and BCC'ing dear ole Billy. I want to establish once and for all whether this current rash of mass message deletion efforts they have going on is at the behest of CA as I suspect it is. And I wanted to force them to explain why my comment in the thread in question was out of bounds.

Oh, are you LegioXIII? I liked your thread, it was polite and mature, so I hope your complaints won't be fruitless, although I doubt that Will, Craig or Joey will care...

[easytarget]

Nope, I go by easytarget everywhere on the intertard, the nic dates back to early 80's when I ran a BBS (bit funny in hindsight because we were the internet and forums all rolled into one before the "internet" existed, we called it Fido-Net and ran it for free). I used it in quake clans too, interesting to think how long I've gone by that name at this point in the ether.

But I digress, this is the thread: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...ent-Animations. As you can see I'm not in it because Billy boy deleted my response three times, here's what I said, you be the judge how this comment warranted being deleted three times:

"CA please ignore the OP's request and instead focus on including improvements of greater importance in the next patch.

A prime example being properly regulating the number of agents spammed at the human player by the AI (as opposed to concerning yourself w/ whether they are animated or not)."

And no, I've gotten no response from them, not surprisingly.

[Crandar]

Yes, they never answer in PMs or VMs, even if the members want to praise them and not to complain. It's a legal matter, I think, although there's a disclaimer in their signature, they don't want to risk any sueing.

About the censorship, I don't know if you were active back then, but the situation was horrible during the first months after the release. The only job the moderators did was to move the threads into a Rants and Raves subforum, which was invisible to guests. I got my first permaban for explaining to a moderator why that constitues censorship, nice times!

The situation was improved, when a journalist wrote about this, so they relaxed a bit, in order to avoid any PR damage.

[easytarget]

Well, it's their clown show, so they can do with it what they please. They just make games after all, so not like this matters or anything. I'll leave it be and go about my day, as I've said previously, if the current crew running CA drive it off a cliff it's really of no particular consequence. I'll play their past games that I consider really quite good (i.e. Rome 1, MTW2 and S2) and all will be well.

[easytarget]

Followup, to their credit Will did respond, his view is it was still a legit removal as I stated that CA should ignore OP, I still of course don't see how that warrants post removal, it's just my opinion after all that CA should in fact ignore something as minor as agent animation when the larger issue of agent spam has been left w/o being addressed for an entire year. But whatever, arbitrary post removal is nothing new in the TW forum as we all know.

I wished Will GL and told him I hoped the Attila launch goes well and the vids showing the changes looked promising, and I do in fact hope they make a heck of a game this time out, I'm still however going to wait till after launch to purchase it.