Let me stop you right there. We take our share of criticism about our work, our results, how we go about doing things and so on. No one has a problem with being criticised or taking on board negative feedback. No one has ever got kicked or banned for just giving negative feedback, and no one ever will.
Sorry, but in my experience it is just straight-up not true that (all of) the developers are capable of handling criticism in any capacity, or able to respond appropriately when someone delivers them even a slight ego hit.
On October 19th 2017, someone highlighted me on the Discord saying "wow, I had no idea that eezstreet had made this mod" (in reference to JKG). Mace responded by saying "eezstreet didn't make that mod" and I responded by calling him ignorant and linked all of the commits that I made to the project. He said that I was simply "rewriting Boba Fett's code." and then kicked me, and then when I rejoined, he kicked me again. Several of my messages were deleted as well. This continued over 20 times (I lost count, to be honest). I protested this and a bunch of people spammed the server with "#freezstreet" Eventually this culminated with him demanding that I remove all of the content that he made from Jedi Knight Galaxies (going so far as to list every PK3 in the mod that had his content). I then told another developer (Subaru, I think?) about the situation, and they removed the ability for Mace to kick people temporarily so that I could join the server.
This is not harassment on my part - he made a claim and I defended myself. If anything, this is harassment on his part. Yes, I called him ignorant, but he was accusing me of plagiarizing JKG,
which is demonstrably false, and therefore I can consider it accurate that he is ignorant of the situation. See
this thread and
this thread - these are all things that have been developed by myself, Darth Futuza, and NubSmoo for the most part.
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
Mace posted in the JKCommunity on July 11th, 2017, complaining about how the PVS visibility system in JA was causing him issues at the time. PVS is a system where only entities that are in the same room as the player (or visible by means of an open door) are networked and visible. He said that the system was "stupid and outdated" among other things, and I commented that the system is perfectly designed for interior levels, and is in fact used by engines such as Unreal 4 because it's ideal for these kind of restricted environments. His response was to mock me and call me a "master level designer" sarcastically.
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
For several weeks afterwards, he kept posting pictures of what he perceived to be PVS errors in maps, highlighting me in the process. It got bad enough that he was dragging fights out into other channels. I had been in an argument with Mace on the forums (see
this thread) regarding the technical details of JA's PVS optimization system on the forums, and he kicked me from the Discord, without either of us saying a word to each other. Admittedly it was a rather dumb argument, and I shouldn't have wasted time on it, but there's some background to the argument which I think is particularly key.
On another occasion, in January of 2018, a new player stumbled into the JKCommunity Discord, and was asking me what people were playing. I think this exchange speaks for itself.
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2 (redsaurus deleted a comment here, saying that I was "bitter")
Screenshot 3
Screenshot 4
Screenshot 5
Screenshot 6
He stopped talking after this point after realizing that I wasn't responding to him. I warned Wolfeye, the head administrator at the time, to keep an eye on his behavior. Wolfeye approached him and he left the server. The following screenshots are mod reactions, in the private administrator chat.
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3 ("he" in this screenshot refers to another user, Eis')
Screenshot 4
Screenshot 5
Now I'll admit that my hands aren't entirely clean here, and I've done some pretty unsavory stuff in the past, but to say that developers only respond harshly when they've been poked at with a stick for ages is not the truth at all. Sometimes they're just looking for a fight. There's ten pages worth of people talking about how they want to see classic DOTF get added. The consensus here seems to be that classic DOTF should get added back. My question is, why not add it? If the understanding is that the old map is unsupported and not worth including (in your opinion), then why not just add a section to the launcher for old versions of maps? Then people can play
mb2old_whatever maps, and it's completely optional content. Win-win. I daresay that there's lower quality content that's included with the game (like um_ packs for e.g.) already, not sure why a map with broken textures is necessarily out of the norm.
I completely agree with this stuff though:
Personal attacks are not negative feedback. Threats are not negative feedback. Name calling is not negative feedback. Repeating the same genuine negative feedback every day for 6 months is not negative feedback. These are all harassment and you bet your ass you'll get a ban for persistently doing it. It's easy to know the difference. If you are talking solely about the work and methodology in producing it then it is feedback. If you are negatively talking about the developer who did it then it is probably harassment.
Feedback - good and bad is encouraged. Certain members of the community need to learn that once they have given their feedback constantly reminding developers of that feedback isn't useful. And escalating from criticism to harassment in some effort to sway a person is certainly not useful. No ones going to be bullied into doing anything they weren't going to do.
I think if you (not you specifically, just people in general) are giving people feedback which isn't constructive, then you shouldn't be giving it, easy as that. If you can't say "well, I would rather do it this way..." then don't say it at all. I think that was the point that I was trying (but failing) to communicate in the second part of that point.