Disclaimer: I know this will most likely be ignored, I'd be naive if I thought this would change anything. But I think this is something that must be said.
Hey, everyone.
So there was a thread that was...interesting to say the least.
We have a problem. Our image as a sub-community is very muddled, to put it lightly.
Before I begin, I think we need to offer an apology to the dev team, particularly TheDink, over what happened in that thread. She did not deserve that negative attention and it may not be our fault solely, but it happened in our forums so we have some responsibility to take on that front.
I will ask that we keep this a healthy discussion between members in this community (the whole community, not just our own). Any comments that don’t serve that purpose from members of this forum or of the Marvel Heroes community as a whole, I desperately ask that we do not give those comments the time of day. Report and move on.
Now, with that out of the way, we here in the Jean forums are very passionate, and no that is not a bad thing. Far, FAR from it. In fact, it is a good thing. Cause without that passion we wouldn’t have devs working on this game whose passion probably exceeds our own with how much work and effort they put into the game as a whole. They love the game they created as much as we do. If not more so.
If yesterday’s fiasco taught me anything it’s that we are not very well liked among other members of this community (Before you click the that back button hear me out). But one thing that was said really hit me in a wrong way:
I know that kind of blatant stereotyping is enough to send a lot of you into a frenzy, but before you do, I ask you lower pitch forks. It’s a very dehumanizing comment, like we’re nothing more than an always angry school of toddlers who kick and scream for their bottles. It hit me the wrong way because it’s mostly untrue. I’d say we’ve been as patient as anyone else in specific Hero forums. Which, to be fair, is not saying much. We all have pretty big moments of impatience and frustration, especially when it comes to our favorite heroes (In any forum).
It's unfair, really. It’s unfair that we can’t have a dev come in and post anything in our forums because it attracts the people who only want to just point and laugh at us. We have just as much say in what hero gets worked on as those people do, absolutely zero. I wouldn’t be surprised if from now on active dev members just steer clear from us cause of the negative reaction from the rest of the community that we attract. I don’t know about any of you, but I think that kind of stigma is ostracizing. To not be able to talk to the guys that are handling the game and hero we love spells hell for anyone because dev talks are rare and far between in most game communities.
The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not fair that we’re pushed away from the community because of the type of hero we like or because of how we tend to act when the same attitudes are rampant across the entire forum, not just here. But the fact of the matter is, we deserve just as much communication with the devs as the rest of you, no matter who “deserves” x feature more than x hero. Because, technically speaking, we all have zero say on who or what gets priority. If the devs want to work on Jean again, they’ll just do it. If they want to work on Nightcrawler or Storm, they’d just do it.
They know our complaints; they know a lot of us aren’t happy with a good chunk of the roster. But we really, desperately, need to cut the Us versus Them mentality when it comes to our heroes and other members of the community and that goes for us here in the Jean forums as well. We love our Jean as much as others love their Colossus or their Luke Cage, and the devs love them just as much. Possibly even more so.
So let’s try to work for a better, more unified Marvel Heroes community, cause while the devs have the power to choose who gets worked on, we have the power to help shape how our heroes are molded.