Any change, at any time, in any era of an arpg…the community seems to be the best and worst thing about it.
Why the worst? People literally used slurs against me and other rude names and got a whole thread shut down because I suggested we unlock mastery or make it a toggleable option like all the other play-styles.
The developers then unlocked mastery, and then the fans as a whole (aka not everybody, but mostly everybody) really loved the new change. But just two weeks before that, “I was the dumbest most ignorant and uninformed ARPG player to ever exist in this timeline or any other” and other such nasty attitudes.
The developers are always locked into being afraid to change something for fear of having their heads ripped off by the fans, just like happened to me, except instead of a few dozen people against me, it would be thousands of people against them.
Every new idea in every arpg I have ever played gets called dumb and ignorant, until the developers do it and then suddenly it’s the best idea in the universe.
Any idea that dares to take flight will only crash back to the ground. The gravity of the negative masses is too strong.
But then the fans also make some amazing fan art, some amazing discord content, discussions, and all sorts of other things. It’s almost paradoxical until you remember that almost none of these two groups have any overlap.
Do we know, through any kind of objective data, that most people liked being able to respec masteries? No.
(IMO, I think most people liked or didn’t care, but that’s just a guess, I have no reliable data to back it.)
In the end, ARPG communities, like any other community, are made by a bunch of different people with different opinions. You’ll have the fanboys, who love everything the developers do and hate everything players suggest; you have the haters, who are pretty much the opposite; you have people who love the status quo and hate any kind of change; you have people who get bored unless a lot of stuff changes; and so on and so on.
In the end, the developers have to decide who they want to cater to, knowing their playerbase is very heterogeneous and everything they do will please some people and bother others.
Yeah, people tend to take a more myopic approach to evaluating the suggestions of their peers. For whatever reason, it’s threatening to have something comfortable change, even if it’s ultimately going to open your world a teensy bit more.
I mean, who doesn’t want their time respected?
Just try to let it wash over you. Kneejerk reactions aren’t the total sum of a person, even if when it happens it leaves the recipient feeling ran over. More specifically, don’t let people stop you from sharing your opinions. No matter how much effort you put into being exact, openminded and considerate, or inclusive, someone is bound to try and insult you.
Definitely can feel that way sometimes. Thankfully, those feelings don’t stop people from pushing through. We have our game after all. On the other side of all of that negativity are the people who don’t let it drag them down. Still affected mind you, to carying degrees I’m sure. None the less, still fighting to make dreams into reality, helping others along the way. Might not be the status quo, but there are enough people trying to make a difference. That change brings us some of the coolest stuff that has ever existed.
You never really see projecting used as a term to describe positive experiences. Interesting you would go as far as to lead with that statement in the first place. Everything else you said was so well constructed, I wish the tone wasn’t set with such a pointless thing. I can imagine most people would appreciate the ability to swap masteries as it’s just more control over your experience. It’s hard to picture a large group of people saying “No, I hate that. If someone wants to go from a level 100 Marksman to a Falconer they should be forced to start from scratch!”
Just the preference that I generally like playing characters from start to finish as close to the final result of the character as possible.
Switching masteries or even full respecs inside a mastery to do something entirely different doesn’t satisfy my needs as a gamer.
And if switching builds is too easy, it’s always one step towards what I really dislike in ARPGs - specs for different types of content that you switch between for reasons of optimisation.
Some people will love exactly that. So it’s all but objective.
