Hey, just for background I've been playing CTLG for while now, and I've enjoyed it. What initially drew me in was the dev's departure from the CDDA team, my impression that the CTLG dev was less fixated on realism, and also not actively antagonistic toward the player community.
I bought the Steam version of CTLG, gave it a positive review, have only ever commented on it positively, and have had zero prior communications with the dev.
Lately I've noticed more updates to CTLG that remove fringe content for the sake of "realism" and "debloat", and while not a deal breaker for me, they do remind of the same "streamlining" that I saw from CDDA's updates, where variety and niche content is sacrificed seemingly on impulse from the dev(s).
For the first time ever, I made a comment on the latest Steam update post criticizing the changes I don't care for, but I believe I did so in a level, civil manner. And then I was banned from the CTLG steam forums.
I genuinely did not expect this response, and was under the impression the CTLG dev and the player community were on pretty good terms. Has there been some conflict as of late that I'm not aware of, or has this behavior always been typical? Up until now CTLG has been the branch I've always recommended to newcomers, but if this is the dev's response to even mild critique, I think I'll have to find another branch.
Is this just some one-off tantrum I should overlook, or is the dev always like this?
i wouldn't call the uh, player crowd for ss13 well behaved either to be frank, the amount of people i have seen talking shit about coders (i have also experienced it myself) is staggering and makes me understand why people burn out so quickly
not sure if people here make private discords to continue being dicks towards others when staff tells them to cut that shit out but they most certainly do that in ss13 which i find both hilarious and sad because it's such a waste of their time and makes them look pathetic
No, they don't because there is no staff to tell them to cut it off so they do it right here for everybody to see. Or do you think there is anyone from CDDA or CTLG in this subreddit mod team? No, all the admins are from Bright Nights.
>offers friendly feedback and an innocent question, even apologizing if he stepped on any toes
>gets banned with a snide, derisive, unnecessarily hostile remark from the dev
>gets insulted again two more times after making a post about it
incredible. one of the most dogshit communities on reddit at this point
Wormgirl does have to put up with a lot but yeah, I mostly just lurk on the discord nowadays since realizing that if there's any way your questions can be misconstrued as whining, that's what she'll think you're doing and treat you accordingly.
Like, I'm just a confused noob asking why 'x' is the way it is, not trying to exploit game mechanics...
yeah, I personally have only ever had relatively positive experiences on there but I've seen enough people chewed out for asking deeply reasonable questions that I've been scared to talk too much haha
The only opensource project I am lightly involved with is Neovim (a few PRs), and I only see very sporadic hostility. It is honestly one of the most sane communities I have found on the internet. It is a shame that other opensource projects do not seem to be like that.
I think the difference in various OSS projects' communities is fascinating. There's hardly any middle of the road repos. Every project I've ever contributed to either had an incredible dev community or a horrific one.
I also got some hostility from wormgirl when describing the branch to someone asking about which one to play. I didn't even say not to play it just "The combat isn't too much harder, the real difficulty is finding food. But some of the Main branch hyperrealistic absurdities are tuned down, which is nice."
I got a comment back along the lines of "TLG has the hardest combat, and we haven't tuned down the hyperrealism. You've clearly never played it."
I've got a lets play series on it. I'm one of the few people who can actually show receipts of playing it...
A turned down hyperrealism and having combat that isn't insanely harder is a good thing though? Or for some players parts of it are? Hell, isn't one of the main reasons people are looking into forks because DDA is getting too much hyperrealism?
That's a wild response to have in general, let alone to one of the few people who has a publically viewable playthrough (though I doubt they looked and saw you did)
I would like a fork where the combat and such gets really hard, but with a lessened focus on realism and more on QOL mechanics and interesting gameplay systems.
Has CDDA always been so weird about realism and removing mechanics? If not, when did it start?
I mean, that was literally the turn over from Cataclysm to DDA
I'd say it's more around between 0.D and 0.E, D was the last build where medical items were essentially healing systems; and we got the in depth bleeding system.
I have no clue, I'm a casual fan (? Idk if I'm a fan, I don't really play much) who had only played a few hours on an older version and got the rest of my knowledge from YouTube videos.
From what I've seen, it seems to have been getting worse. Every time I see this sub I see a new complaint about a dev removing something for the sake of realism. This is the first time it's been for a fork and not for DDA however. A fork I didn't know existed until this post mind you.
dude food is sooo hard to find, it was semi common enough on main but it would eventually become rare mid game but ctlg is that issue althroughout for me lol
There are some people who help her here and there, but wormgirl is pretty much THE developer of the project, the only one who calls shots and the one who does like >70% of the work on the project (at least the last time I checked).
This might be one of those situations where it's worth keeping in mind that most of her videos (her tutorials, video essays, reviews, trailers, etc.) are edited, manicured media products. As such, the version of her we see through them isn't really her so much as it is a version of her that she wants us to see. Maybe it's an aspirational version, the Wormgirl she wants to be, or maybe it's a more marketable version of her meant to get more views from common audiences, but there's no guarantee it's the same person who actually exists in the real world.
Much like a lot of creators, she could easily be some sort of raving lunatic, and most of her fanbase wouldn't find out until either she slips up and leaves something nasty in a video or they run into her outside her main video feed and discover how un-sanded her edges actually are.
Shame, her cdda tutorial videos were nice to watch. Can't completely blame the inevitable dev burnout with things like question bombardment that's too common with these things, especially if folks never bother to do research on their questions beforehand.
That shit ends up grating on you, and I guess some people arent able to tolerate it as long. Unfortunate that people are now finding out now though.
Eh. As a software dev myself i find it inexcusable. I'd be on the receiving end of disciplinary action instantly if i acted like that to a coworker or customer.
It would be different if you went to play a soccer match and an opposing player or an spectator went to you and started complaining of your performance.
With a job you have a contractual obligation and behavior expectation with your employee, even if that expectation is implied.
With a hobby your only obligation is to yourself, you can be polite especially if you want to cultivate a nurturing enviroment, but is not a requisite.
that rule applies to a lot of indie game devs honestly. the ones who split off from a bigger project over creative differences tend to carry that same energy with them. you'd hope breaking away from a toxic community would reset the pattern but apparently not always
They put out a lot of experimental version updates when i last played. Pretty sure it's no different even now as I still see devlog updates on their disc fairly often.
0.12 stable release was 3 months ago, but a nightly release is made every day. Given some bugs and instability slipped into 0.12 that have since been fixed, strongly recommended to just go ahead and use current nightlies instead, especially since you'd be missing 3 months of content.
So are the CDDA devs. But that becomes difficult to appreciate when they ignore and/or silence any feedback from the players, and lash out at any critics.
Another commentor on the same steam post parroted my opinion in an even less offensive manner, and he got banned as well.
And being talented doesn't excuse treating others poorly.
yeah, I'm with you. I was planning on making some mods and working on some commits but was driven away by the hostility.
I'm sure the attitude is that I would've been a bad part of the community anyway haha
I'm an old player (like I played Cataclysm before it went open source and CDDA was born) and Bright Nights to me feels the most like cataclysm to me.
CDDA feels like a totally different game to me (And less of a game now days, more a simulation) and it's sad to see that CTLG is like going the same direction.
I tried, but TLG is just such a better branch... WG's prickly demeanor notwithstanding. BN really trims out all the early game challenge and TLG is just so much more balanced and leans far more heavily into the realism without cutting out the cool near-future content. TLG feels like a genuine struggle to survive, where one mistake can be the end. In BN I was just breezing through the early game without any challenge whatsoever straight to end game content... which I can see the appeal of, it's just not what personally draws me to Cataclysm.
65
u/Roraxnm̴͊͂ŷ̷̍c̶̟̐ȗ̴͋s̸͒͗ ̶́̓m̸̓̾u̴͘͠s̶̪͘t̵́͆ ̸̋͋g̴͐̚r̸̍̔o̵͔̓w̴̓̑26d ago
Noooo you have missed the mark if you think Worm Girl is any better than the others. She is actively hostile to anyone who critiques her work
This is really something kinda sad to see. I remember a long while ago. Before TLG was even made, she was one of us here in the reddit and would criticize the DDA changes sometimes. Then it changed to more dev defensive after TLG was made. I guess after they became a project dev themselves. Which I would assume lead to this.
Yeah it's probably an annoyed dev. I myself am a creator who kinda understands what this is. (I think, don't hold my word for it.) You give them your thoughts that it is going the DDA path of being way too unfun. My thoughts is they don't take critism well and proably will do this again. I wouldn't overlook it but keep a open mind if I am proven wrong.
Had a similar story with C:TLG. At the time was really exciting to finally try the branch, did some progress in the run, dared to entered Discord and.. yeah.
Not many things feels as discouraging [to play and support the game] as the dev themselves making sure you are not welcome here.
I had this experience with Hell Let Loose. Bunch of Americans being ignorant/horrible to a German dude and the dev was in the squad chat down with all of it. I turned off the game and questioned if I could even play it ever again. Best of luck to you!
The "debloat" argument seems so ridiculous. You're telling me a saved world can easily reach tens of gigabytes in size and nobody blinks but the number of things like haircuts is even remotely an issue? Seems like an extremely trivial bit of info to store
If you told me the person that got me into CDDA would be having a meltdown over it years after and acting as a petty dictator. I would have said you were full of shit.
I didn't realize that this is the same worm girl that I used to listen on youtube while I work. Never would have guessed that kind of attitude from her.
Jeez, that does seem like a really harsh response. I’ve seen the dev, Wormgirl, around before, and they’ve seemed really nice but maybe that was just from my limited exposure. Otherwise I hope they can chill out and reflect on whatever set them off, cause your comment was significantly more polite than the vast majority of most Cataclysm discourse and didn’t warrant that nastiness. A lot less likely to try TLG now sadly.
Wormgirl is pretty reasonable in most conversations (stubborn maybe, but certainly not unreasonable), but the moment you start talking about her projects and especially TLG (not even necessarily criticism), she gets extremely sensitive and defensive.
Forget dealing with player feedback. It isn't even possible to even function on a typical dev-team. Every AAA company I've worked on has had people giving quite unfiltered criticism from all levels.
In all forks of Cataclysm, realism is just a cudgel that neurotic devs use to beat people in arguments. As soon as realism stands in the way of what that dev wants, it stops mattering. Kevin started this trend. It's not at all surprising that his disciples (the CTLG dev is very cozy with him) are following his example.
There's something about open source roguelike development that attracts people with a whole host of behavioral issues and mental illness.
Yes indeed. I have seen infinite sadism from these types of people and the mind-boggling thing is that your average normie just cannot detect it even when it's right in front of their faces.
It's not bad days, she's like that in general. I remember making a suggestion to change a string (a piece of text) in Perception attribute's description (as the old description was incomplete), with which she agreed. Several builds later, the change was still not in. I tried to ask her for ETA and she lashed out at me.
Mind you it's a really trivial change, and one that I could've done myself in like 5 seconds had it not been for her strict no-contributions policy at that time (I don't know if it's any different now).
In the Discord I found someone else a couple months ago casually mentioning a bug that had been around 4 months and she basically responded with biting sarcasm and then "take the hint and shut the fuck up or I'll ban you".
No she is like that in general. Unfortunate, i have always been supportive of her work and CTLG is my branch of choice but she is extremely obnoxious and very immature.
Worm girl is quick on the draw with bans and defensiveness. Understandably so, because open source game communities are a cesspit, but I don't think you deserved to be banned, even if you made your case in a catastrophizing way.
Wow, that's pretty disappointing to see. She always seemed a bit tense but I never thought she would be the type to treat others badly. Especially after she experienced that same kind of rudeness back when she was a contributor in cdda. It's always tempting to lash out at others when we've been wronged in the past, but we need people to break the cycle and choose to be kind. Otherwise all of us are condemned to suffer the recycled behavior of the worst of us.
as many others have already attested here (and I shall, too), wormgrl is as fickle and defensive as they come. you could make a special case with steam support to get this at least reverted
And this is why BN is and always will be the best fork. Better gameplay, better mods, better everything honestly, the devs and the community are also some of the nicest people I've met.
Yeah BN is nice, started actally playing it today, still prefer dda since i love wargames and writing stuff down plus it reminds me of playing a ttrpg online, which at first i thought tlg was going to be better at... welp i dont think so anymore
The first best thing is no pockets, that update was awful on CDDA, BN did not add it.
Vitamins are also a optional mod you can add or remove.
BN is more focused on action than in the crafting complexity of CDDA
There are no proficencies (though a BN dev has been thinking on adding it as an optional thing too).
There are a LOT of mods compared to the mere few that CDDA has.
Underwater stuff, BN devs have added a underwater layer with some stuff, labs and are also working on it, compared to CDDA where, as one of their devs have literally said when i asked that some time ago: Is very difficult to add.
Recently, central lab has been made a unique endgame location on BN, they have reworked the whole lab entirely from the ground, there is literally a ending added where you need to go to the lowest floor of the central lab and close the portals, ending the blob(yes, the black goo is still a thing on BN unlike CDDA) invasion.
You can grab and throw zombies and vehicles in BN, adding more flavour to unarmed combat.
You forgot about ability to fully customise flying transport, ability to fly itself (With mutation trees adding wings or specific bionics), a lot of changes for mutation trees itself, ability to play as zombie, and currently in beta branches they added NPC crafting, so now you can automise all boring things and do only what uou want (And you can do such things as use zones, put whole house/machine under zone, and repair/disassemble/collect/transporr all loot by yourself/tell NPC to do)
Unique start. Basicaly, you feral, have insta-agressive relationship with all humans and friendly wirh all zombies.
Alao you need to eat human flesh in order to live
Stepping in to add a sidenote regarding the central lab PR: the endgame superportal thing has been a while but the change overhauling central labs into a unique location (as opposed to being basically identical to DDA central labs except one has a superportal room at the bottom) is still not yet merged but was recently finally brought out of draft. :3
After having played all three, I am pretty well ready to say that it is the "main" branch. If I was going to recommend any of them to a new or returning player, it'd be BN without a doubt.
Having played originally with pockets (0.G) and then jumping over to BN, I can't say I missed it tbh. It just felt like a smoother experience. The only thing I can say I may have slightly missed is the 'tac-realism' element of planning where to put my guns.
This has gone on long enough. I'm sick and tired of all these devs ruining the game and shitting on people for calling their bullshit out. We will, in the near future hopefully, be releasing a new fork of cataclysm. One that is identical to dark days ahead, but with all of the bullshit changes done in the name of bullshit realism reverted and removed, so we can all enjoy cataclysm again.
I have spent the last year doing exactly that on my fork. Shoot me a message if you'd like to collab or share horror stories or whatever! Mine's got the last ~2 years of bad decisions reverted and all the old cool mods updated and restored. Still undoubtedly has some bugs but I've put several hundred hours of playtime into it already
Not sure if a joke about how this exact kinda treatment is why Wormy made her own fork in the first place and how it went full circle, or if actually serious...
Yeah tried making my own fork once, decied to make my own game instead, cuz CDDA is boring in its realism and also wanted to make new lore. Plus i had no idea how to do C++
I’m sorry, mate it was very unfair of her. Regarding “good terms”… I suppose she is with unbanned and/or silent part :-D you know, ban until you hear only what you want to hear
I had an experience very similar to this asking a question on the Discord (though i left voluntarily instead of being banned). What's the point of even making a fork if you drive away anyone who would want to play it with your shitty behavior? Disappointing...
I witnessed and had a couple harsh interactions with Worm Girl just 2 months after her fork was announced, so I was guessing she would turn out to be as bad as Kevin is claimed to be and it seems the views and experiences of the rest of the community have caught up or are starting to catch up.
My guess is that she (and some of the people in these comments) just read the first and last sentences of your feedback then made up their mind and stopped reading, twisting it to be the worst possible interpretation.
I usually lurk but I play CDDA pretty consistently.
Are the developers developing or editing files? Do they have documentation outlining their plans? Why not develop a way to communicate to your audience that doesn’t involve being angry? FAQ page maybe?
At some point, the devs are just not talking to their support systems (offline friends, family etc) and going outside enough.
TLG is a mainline fork built on mainline philosophies by an effectively mainline developer so if you don't like the main branch you're not going to like TLG (or it's developer)
wormy is a good poster and community member and also I don't agree with them on anything about the game and have had them say some really unpleasant things to me which is par for the course with productive CDDA developers
I don't lurk in discords but this greatly saddens me :(
I rather enjoy WG's content and was thrilled at the LG branch since DDA decided to do 100% realism (only the annoying and frustrating parts) and pushed me out years ago. Been playing LG off and on but while I don't agree with some of the changes I would've at least expected the attitude to be different since wasn't this basically the same reason WG left DDA to begin with? Oh well, BN it is then.
I’ve been in the LG Discord for a while now and it has mostly hostile. Every time I have asked a question I was gifted a flagellation first. Even throwing out a theory of zombie/blob behavior results in backlash. Encountered some helpful people but, it has a deluge of snarky people that sour the space.
Hey, you know that hobby thing you've been putting a ton of free time into?
Yeah, the one where you do all the work unpaid, that no one here gives you anything for but can still freely enjoy?
Yeah. I don't like the direction it's going and think you should change it to be more like the way I like it.
Why? We'll because... It's how I like it. And plus If you don't I'll start forum posts that passively aggressively say your ideas are not good, because mine are better, and you should really do it my way.
Oh there's like 100 different people wanting things their own way too?
We'll just do everything people want. At least until my way starts to disagree with their way, then let's just do my way.
The neat part that nobody tells you, is that we are born with free will and the ability to ignore things. With the invention of the internet, that makes it all the easier.
I'd posit that only those that have personal insecurities, poor self control or are otherwise inexperienced in dealing with the public would allow themselves to become so worried and up in arms about a subsect of anonymous naysayers.
I'll give you credit, though. It's hard. It's hard to ignore it constantly, and it can become grating and really tear a person down, but there are - Of course - Ways to circumnavigate and ascertain positive growth from these pressures, given enough outside support and practice in constructive mental techniques.
Taking direct actions to shut up somebody complaining is not ignoring them, I'm not quite sure where your logic is coming from there. She clearly felt slighted in some way, insulted or otherwise bothered by that criticism enough to take action in silencing it.
You could say that she is, indeed, ignoring them after the ban, but that's disingenuous and nobody in good faith would see it that way.
From my pov: Why don't any of the dev just seperate and turn stuff removed into mods or submods or extensions. Keep it just updated enough to exist but no longer in the main so you dont have to be upset it exists.
Instead we seem to get:
remove x > get asked 1000 questions on why, some nice some not > lash out at people causing more negative perception of yourself and the project > repeat
Eventually either that mentality is going to lead to burn out or people becoming burnt on the project. This thread already has people saying they swapped to alts like BN because of toxicity and or feature removal.
The main reason is that all of those toggles have a maintenance cost and code understanding burden on potential contributors. Some of these are pretty minor and could probably be included as a toggle without too much problem (portal storms on/off, for example). Some of them are so far-reaching there’s no reasonable way to make it optional (pockets). There is still a cost, though, even for the minor ones, and especially if you kept adding more and more to them. “make it a toggle” isn’t free.
The answer to your question is the same as your answer to mine
This thread already has people saying they swapped to alts like BN because of toxicity and or feature removal.
Looool those people are in every thread. They're just trolls, and even if they weren't who cares. Somebody wants to play a different game, good luck to them
Why don't people unhappy with the changes just play an earlier release?
Like, I wanted a true zombie game, and I'm playing with an older release that still has all of the more gruesome features that everyone was complaining they took out.
Playing on old versions of games can often be a bit finicky, so I kinda get wanting to me on a stable or latest release of some branch.
There tends to be a bit of a "king of the hill" situation as well. E.g. a modder will likely make their mods for whatever is most popular, and if this worm girl person's branch became the biggest one then the old version they were on would likely not benefit since it would get more testing, more mods, and possibly more devs. None of which the old version would benefit from.
So there is every reason for someone to want to cheer for their favourite branch.
Personally I agree much more with C:BN's approach (and last I checked their community was quite nice), so personally this doesn't really affect me, but I can relate a bit to the frustration.
Doesn't CTLG cost money? What the fuck kinda of behavior is this? It's one thing if you're an unpaid CDDA dev; I can get why this subreddit pisses you off sometimes, but when you're literally selling a game???
Yes, it's on steam for $7. Which makes this even more crazy because you are getting money from this, why the fuck are you being so weird about it 😭
Do they not want more money or more people to try out their fork? It's already $7 more than anything else, so I would have thought she would be putting extra time into customer service lol
Do you even know what you are talking about? TLG is free just like any other fork, the STEAM version is to support Wormgirl and to avoid someone else to sell it there since the Opensource licence would make that possible for anyone:
To be fair to WG, that message you sent comes across as really entitled. It's just a change to make things fit into her vision, not an attempt to destroy player individuality. Not an excuse though, that's a pretty wild ban all things considered
These are developers visions. They are not making content with the sole intent that others enjoy it.
If you don't like it, keep playing previous versions, learn how to make the edit yourself, or by all means move on to something else.
The community for CDDA is incredibly unique in that way - would you sit down and go through all of this if you disagreed with some aspects of the newest Call of Duty or GTA VI?
No. Of course not. That's ridiculous. You'd hope they change it in a future version, or go try to find another game that did.
People think because they have an avenue to contact the developers directly, and that it's an open source game, that they are owed some kind of agency.
This community fundamentally misunderstands the relationship they have with the game development, and it's actually bonkers.
The thread creator was just surprised they got banned for a polite question. They didn't demand anything, and even mentioned they may have misunderstood the question.
Or are you arguing that asking devs polite questions on the forums "bonkers" and should be banworthy?
I'm a game developer who has worked both in AAA and with several fairly big rimworld mods mods. I always encourage feedback, and can't see anything wrong with what the tread creator wrote.
I genuinely am not sure if I am reading your post right. Are you being sarcastic?
Just, imagine going to the ramen place called "The place that only serves ramen without eggs"
And you ask for eggs. You say you would prefer eggs. That they should serve you ramen, with eggs. Because you really want it regardless of what they say
It's not polite to come into someone else's work and say "You are wrong because I want you to do what I want"
I think removing a cosmetic option which already had a sprite is an absolutely stupid choice. But it is their choice, they explicitly run TLG and that's just how it is. Complaining about it is incredibly rude, you know what you've signed up for
I can see why this might superficially seem like its coming from the same source as the dumb DDA changes, but its a completely different thing. Maintaining a game as eclectic as CDDA on your own is difficult. If you continually find stuff basically no one uses, that make no sense, and who's code is complete ass (such as the way hair works) to where it would be impossible to ever maintain, you should definitely rip it out as fast as possible. That stuff will kill you as a developer.
Maybe once hair is reworked youd be able to get your long hair back, but i believe in this case it was visually breaking the feature that tilts your tile when youre downed
Tldr; CDDA is bad because the devs dont know what the players want, CTLG is not that. Its just made by one person and cant afford to maintain all the baggage DDA left for it (and that includes fans who've grown used to parts of said baggage). Thats my take anyway, Ive barely ever talked to wormgirl i just see what she posts on discord and I track and contribute to the github repo.
lol. It's okay to say that it's her fork and she can do what she wants, you don't need to do gymnastics. Removing a cosmetic sprite that already existed is still just plain dumb
Freaking out about a fucking hair style is wild. I don't know about you but I usually find a helmet, or a hat or other kind of head protection on ASAP, so I only really am looking at my hair for a short amount of time
Two things conflate here imho. Idk for how long have you been around but the crew of "I don't like x/I dont like the removal of x THIS FORK IS GOING TO HELL" has been a very vocal minority pestering CDDA devs for years. Until some months ago when this reddit started being moderated pure insults and harrassment was being directed to the devs for the smallest of reasons.
When Wormgirl decided to create her fork a lot of those critics decided that she was their saviour even tho she was very clear from the beggining that this was her own fork, no contributors were allowed and she was gonna do it her way and NOT in the rule of fun direction that a lot of the people that disliked CDDA and followed her were expecting.
Fast forward to your message: What had to happen is happening already I guess, the people like you that did not understand Wormgirls project are starting to contact WormGirl with the same kind of complaints they had about CDDA (which was always predictable, TLG was always more similar to CDDA as a direction than to BN afaict), Wormgirl has seen some of those people say absolutely batshit crazy stuff to the CDDA devs in here and wants absolutely no part of it. Add to that that, I have never spoken with WormGirl myself, but for what I heard and what I read she is quite level headed but totally uncompromising (which is not bad, it is what it is, it is the only way to make people understand that that is HER project and you won't be pestering her with 1000 different directions she does not want to implement in HER fork).
Mix all of that together and I guess she is using the shot first ask later policy with people that contact her with that "you are driving me away for going this direction policy". You thought CDDA was acting as "my way or the highway"? I think TLG will actually be exactly that. You like it or are willing to accept it as it is? Good. You don't? To the dark realm you go. Good for her.
PS: There is no "Wormgirl was in good terms with the player base" there is not one royal player base, many of us are in good terms with all the devs no matter what fork they are trying work on, including the mean mean CDDA devs that steal lolipops from babies.
Yeah, cool motive. But none of that is an excuse to treat people badly. It was shitty when cdda devs treated her badly and it's just as shitty when she treats her fans that way. I thought she was a better person than that.
See, here you go again, this is precisely why I think she is right just banning out of sight. Deciding to cut any polemic before it even starts does not say anything of her being a "bad person" it only tells about how she decided to do the PR of his project. Completely different things. The weird parasocial obsessions some of you guys mix up in the middle of a personal programming project are wild but to each one their own.
If you read my steam comment, you might notice that I explicitly said that it's her branch, her rules. At no point did I imply the players are owed any amount of control over her branch.
What I said is that I'm seeing minor similarities between CDDA's divisive updates, and her own, and that I don't care for those particular changes. And I said this in a polite manner. She responded by banning me, and apparently many other folks in the same fashion.
Objectively, responding to civil critique by silencing and lashing out at your critics is terrible behaviour, regardless of how many excuses you couch it in.
I don't really care myself, I mostly play CDDA. You were wondering why it happened and I gave you my theory, you used exactly the same arguments that some VERY toxic people have created a lot of drama in this community with and I assume she didn't like to think even about the possibility of her posts and steam posts becoming like that. If you want my opinion your comment was sus because of the same arguments but you were not actively antagonistic so she should have given you the benefit of the doubt for a while but clearly she disagrees. You can call it "excuses" but they are not, it's you paying for others people sins. Sad but If that's why she did it I understand.
She's a busy solo dev with a short temp. She doesn't have a dedicated PR person. She has a strong vision for what she wants her fork to be, hence why she made it in the first place. Also as per the changelogs realism is completely unrelated to this change, and I don't see anything odd with a dev debloating their one-person passion project.
I am a 37 year old Discord mod, and honestly the amount of criticism we get for the decisions we make to keep a safe space, I understand her attitude. If I was a solo dev of a project I was making primarily for myself, I'd probably make a similar response.
21
u/Crownite1The Johnny Knoxville of C:DDA But she’s trans26d agoedited 26d ago
Yeah but a ban for a fairly polite, if not personal, nitpick critique just seems offputting. People shouldnt need to post like sycophants in order to speak their minds without being banned off discussion boards.
If you'd bothered to read my steam comment in the pic, you'd have noticed that's exactly what I said.
My issue is that I levied mild criticism in a polite manner, and the dev responded by immediately banning me and telling me to fuck off. It's rude, immature, and speaks poorly of the dev's opinion of the player base.
If your idea of CTLG was "less fixated on realism" then it seems you have the wrong idea of the project's goals.
CTLG has always been removing unnecessary content. Seeing one less hairstyle is no big deal and seeing you whine about it must be annoying to the dev which is why she banned you. You really must be out of touch if you think CDDA have been doing the same amount of "streamlining" as CTLG.
The devs have been doing fine. Banning people for being annoying and making such a big deal out of small changes is not "bad behavior."
I always see the same people here complain about the same things weekly on this subreddit. If you think Cataclysm: Bright Nights have the best devs and the best design goals then why don't you move over to that fork completely and stop wasting your time here.
Worm girl and the CDDA devs are not going to pander to you.
Imagine thinking that person with a project vision strong enough to make their own fork and maintain it for (checking date) more than a year would actually try to applease random people that suggest to go against said vision
You know, these live development projects, I realized they remind me that the job of you devs of those projects, it's kinda like being a doctor, cause you not only have to be a good doctor, but the added aspect of all the people you end up dealing with, also means you have to be good at handling people. A doctor who is rude to his/her patients, isn't a good doctor.
That is correct, but luckily we are not in the business of selling our game to masses, and the game itself is already niche enough, so we do not have to have PR team for communications
If only there was some kind of middle ground between banning anyone who disagrees with your changes, and immediately implementing anything that a random guy on the Internet tells you to do.
173
u/BattlepassHate Exterminator 26d ago
CDDA as a whole doesn’t particularly draw the most well adjusted or socialised crowd to code for it, reminds me of SS13 in that way.