What do we think about the new forum icons?

[OniDax]

14 hours ago, Littleman88 said:

A dislike option never leads to good discussion nor does it foster a positive atmosphere.  It just gives people room to essentially shout down someone's opinion without ever voicing why, which is useless and helps no one.

The problem is that often, opinions expressing disappointment or displeasure with something are buried or overlooked, especially when it comes to feedback. So, often, the only way for disappointment and displeasure to be seen by the devs is if people can use the upvote system to voice that, hence why people used the Confused and Sad emotes. Take for example the Focus rework dev workshop. Much of the feedback there asked for changes to the way Operator abilities worked because they were based on a very clunky Operator movement system. While DE gave the Operators a slide ability and let them have the momentum of the Warframes, they didn't change Void Dash and its link to Void Mode, which is a clunky ability for a lot of players. Expressing disappointment and displeasure through the upvote system, and then going into detail with their actual responses to the thread, informed DE that people had problems with what was presented. The expressions of being Sad or Confused were backed up by actual constructive feedback. The emotes were a sort of first indicator that players had issues, and at least makes DE aware of that. Without them, DE probably won't ever see that some people aren't satisfied (I think that's clear enough by how much constructive feedback was ignored when it came to their Focus changes).

Besides that, it's a bit too convenient that the website would undergo an icon change after a few DE posts received a lot of Sad and Confused emotes. Maybe it's a coincidence, but I doubt it. This change doesn't seem to me to be an attempt to foster "good discussion" (as if you can only have good discussion with a bunch of funny positive emotes; what a flawed notion), but instead an attempt to hide a very visible sign of dissatisfaction with a dev post.

2 hours ago, Littleman88 said:

And the forum is better for it.  Never said people would like it, just the psychology is there.  Dislikes don't contribute to a discussion.

And how do likes contribute to a discussion? Both likes and dislikes are basic visual displays of agreement or disagreement, of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. How does either, on its own, contribute to a discussion?

That's not the actual issue, nor the reason certain individuals don't want a dislike button. It's easy to just block a user if you want to hide their disagreeing or dissatisfied post. Then you can never see their expressions of disagreement or disappointment. And you can block as many people as you like who disagree with you. But you can't hide their sad or confused emotes that express disappointment or dislike for a post. So if you change that system, such that you can only display positive attitudes toward a thread/post, then you effectively hide a very clear numerical indicator of how many people like or have some issue (whether disappointment or confusion) with a thread/post. And by doing that, you hide just how many people disapprove.

The forum is not better for it. We're not better for the entire forum presenting the perception that everything DE puts up is universally liked by the community. That is not better at all. If the forums create that perception, then DE is much less likely to actually engage with and respond to negative sentiment and constructive feedback. That is not ok at all.

Edited October 7, 2017 by A-p-o-l-l-y-o-n

[Vox_Preliator]

While I wasn't a fan of the emoji designs, the new ones are flat and outright ugly to me, not to mention I feel there's a lot of overlap between "Upvote," "Like," and "Applause," while there is no longer a "Thanks," and I can't think of a situation where I'd use "Satisfied" over one of the first three.

As for "downvotes" I think they do add to a conversation, at least as much as if not more than likes do.  We've never had to worry about unpopular opinions being buried and hidden like what happens all too often on most Subreddits, because posts are sorted by time.  At the very least, it's better than every thread having a poll "Do you like my idea yes/no/LOLJOKEOPTIONIMSOFUNNY," or having the second post in any thread being some variation of "No" and acting like every upvote on that counts as a downvote to the first post.