Are we an annoying community?
So lately we’ve seen an influx in people complaining for one reason or another over the state of Halo Infinite, and it’s become something that happens rather regularly. Many have taken to the fourms, reddit, YouTube, etc… to voice their concerns and opinions on how they feel about the game.
Because of the large amount of people raising concerns they have over the games, there has been a certain ‘counter culture’ that has developed to spite those they believe are “whining.” In essence, the more people who complain and show passion for things they want changed or fixed, the more this sort of ‘counter movement’ will step in and say how annoying our community has become.
They say things such as “This effing community has gone to poop, everyone just complains like entitled jerks. We’re turning into the Staf Wars community.” Naturally the influx of people who believe in this has grown significantly as well. They find it annoying merely because others have taken to voicing their complaints ‘very’ vocally. In essence, they are saying “shut up and deal with it you whinny little child. How dare you complain about something I don’t care about?”
So my question is, is it right to call those in our community with deep concern and a vocal opinion annoying? I would say yes and no, with a twist of adding the ‘counter’ people in the equation as well.
Every community I have seen all have those who complain quite heavily, and usually it gets to the point where that’s all you’ll see on their forums and such. It can become a slog when everything you see on a particular fandom drains you mentally because of its negativity. In most cases the people who have been complaining are doing so to explain how they were robbed of a experience they enjoyed, usually after an exchanging of hands (star wars, and halo to name a few) This can become annoying when people are constantly posting up unhelpful criticisms or snide comments with very little variety. There isn’t much room for discussion with a passionate mob of people though, so helpful criticism doesn’t usually progress from this. (ie. “343 has ruined halo! It suck big ones!!!”)
And as I mentioned before, the counter culture rises to meet them. Those who might not see a problem with the new experience, or those who do not understand the complaints will potentially find all the whining infuriating. They may even try to downplay the struggle of those who raise their concerns. Likewise as before, they’ve made up their mind and are unwilling to discuss the issues at hand.
Are either right or wrong to do what they do? Nope, it sucks when things change for any reason, or lack there of. And it also sucks when a community is going through a rough time and all we’re seeing is complaining. In essence, we all want things to just be calm and fun again.
This perhaps is purly conjecture, and more study would be needed to get a full response… but I believe that what we are going through is nothing outside of the ordinary for the human experience. When something changes in life or a game: a more conservative community will stand to request it be altered or removed in favorof how things used to be. When that happens others may not agree and voice their concerns against them as well because it causes unrest. Everything is completely normal in this case as every community goes through it.
What should we do about it?
Let’s just be chill and civil. Let’s understand that people are going to complain when things change. Lets also make sure that our complaints are carful and concise. That means no hate from anyone, just everyone making sure they’re voices are out there. Mega Threads are really helpful for this as it shows a progressing discussion.
What can 343 do?
Be more interactive and genuinely understanding with us. This means they need to look at everyones concerns in both an objective manner, and approach it with regards to everyones feelings. If they take something away from a minority, they need to remember that it hurts them deeply. Maybe consider throwing them a bone 343?
In conclusion, I think this is all normal for us to go through. People are going to complain when things change, and they need to make sure that they don’t get to rowdy about it.
TLDR : Complaining about complaining isn’t solving anything, but it’s normal for a community to experience when hard news hits. We need to just make sure that we don’t hate on anyone or anything. Let’s talk things out and understand where people are coming from.