@soul_starter: What this is, in its rawest form, is, well, shady. It's not the hill you want to die on because this isn't some shilling for the game. Saying that it's shaping up to be pay-to-win? Does that seem like something an EA employee would say? I mean really it's just more demagoguery. The idea of an "other." Siphons legitimacy from the "other" by associating them with a group you have already dehumanized. This thread could have literally been actual critical analysis of everything. That isn't what we got here.

@soul_starter: I'm not even kidding. People are *laughing* at you. 100% of the reasons have always been, on other mediums, that you like to think your avoidance behavior, and cognitive dissonance, isn't just on full display. It is. Your response to being repeatedly responded to, at length, is to avoid it, or make excuses as to why it's not valid. It's sad. You can stress whatever point you'd like. You are still going on at length, without saying a word, why self-deception and cognitive dissonance is more important than facts as they stand.

If you can't defend your trite nonsense, end the thread. You have discredited yourself enough. Anyone you attempt to engage past this point would likely cease taking you seriously if they saw this. It's that bad. It's a crude, electronic form of demagoguery. And this is a pretty pathetic hill to die on.

@soul_starter: Working for EA by methodically picking apart your utter garbage arguments and delusions of grandeur. Yes. Definitely.

@GameboyTroy:

@GameboyTroy: In and of itself, OP was not referring to anything *but* the EA forums.

The line of thought you are posing is a red-herring. A derailment.

OP claiming the game is getting panned is a blatant self-deception. OP did not start this thread panning microtransactions. If we're even going to get into that mess, it's barely even able to be used as an excuse to pretend a game is "getting hammered" on *any* medium. EA forums, YouTube, reddit, or otherwise. It does not matter. Fan outrage at microtransactions is nothing new. We just watched it explode in Shadow of War's face, with good reason. But even then, being extremely apprehensive at a preliminary glance at a system, be it one person, or a fanbase that is already suspicious of something, like EA's pitfalls of implementing microtransactions to such a fiercely guarded franchise, that does not constitute some kind of massive critical or fan panning of the game.

It amounts to more of the same. The same outrage you see when microtransactions are involved. No. It's not getting hammered.
Again, anyone can see the reaction. Angry Joe, etcetera, being pissed at what looks like something that has the potential to disrupt the game, that isn't some "getting hammered" phenomenon.

Shadow of War? Massive, seemingly endless rage at the microtransaction system.
How did that translate to fan and critical response? It didn't.
The response has been pretty fond.

Pretending that a vocal issue, by a plurality or minority, constitutes anything but being a "hot button issue," and that it's translating to a game being vilified, getting hammered, panned, or otherwise, is just, frankly, more self-deception.

@GameboyTroy: Let's go with that.

But uh, again, no, it's not "getting hammered." Unlike the cesspit known as this thread, people there can be unhappy about something without condescendingly referring to it as "filth." That's if we're even pretending the entirety of the forums are the unironic synonym of a fanboy, just in reverse. Aside from that one entertaining glance at it, in the most real form of it, if it even was true, this thread is still pretty unapologetically manipulative. Trying to tell people how to think by saying something is "filth" while dodging requests for links is literally impossible to misread. So even if OP was telling the truth, and if we're pretending your exact same mannerisms aren't patently able to be read like a colouring book, this thread is *still* a cesspool of obvious intent.

But given that, again, literally any human being that sees this thread, has the ability to see the EA forums, it's not even something that you can realistically be deceiving, manipulative, or shady about. You can certainly try, and people have, but it hasn't panned out, now has it?

We get it, you don't like the game. Congratulations. Articulating that doesn't constitute falsification of reality. Especially when this reality is public and available for *everyone* to see. If you see this thread, the odds are you have an internet connection or access to one, meaning you would have to be acting deliberately to tell yourself otherwise.

@swantn5 That's primarily because of the nature of this thread.

I'm not sure what you'd expect from the one thread that claims to have caught the forums at what is apparently the absolute pinnacle of "getting hammered" for Battlefront 2. That's a stretch. I really doubt there was a fever-pitch that OP just happened to catch in the midst of everything else.

Because, again, this thread is being posted everywhere now. Even people who loathe DICE think this is a joke. Entire Facebook groups have literally went back 5, 10, 15 pages on the forums looking for this based off of the time it was posted, and never was there even half a page filled with vilification.

You know exactly what I said. You read the same thing we all did.

I swear, this thread epitomizes why GameSpot is now known as "the hive."

Someone says something and everybody innately falls for it. No individual thought whatsoever.

The crate system is a joke and it's getting old to see it in every game released within the last 8 months, but come on. Think for yourselves.
The original header for this entire thread was utter nonsense. An outright fabrication. If you took that, as some kind of absolute word that is undeniably true, then you need to just play things for yourself.

The beta was clunky, the blasters felt like firearms, not blasters. A lot of things outright didn't work. But never, four or seven days ago, was it getting torn to shreds by a rabid fanbase. I would know. I was
on the forums from day one taking feedback into account.

I wasn't joking. This thread has been posted in probably a dozen places, and the response to this thread was almost universally the same, constant mocking at what GameSpot has apparently become.

It's news to me that GameSpot is some kind of hive of scum and villainy, but this does not make a good case for the community. This is a really shady echo-chamber. A really obvious attempt to create
an environment where people would congregate to bash something in specific. There are more than a few people here, in fact, mostly a plurality, that are contributing at least semi-meaningfully to this topic.

You protest AAA games? Great, that's a noble pursuit. The crates are a monstrosity. They *say* they're being changed in the final game. I am skeptical at best. The first game was barebones. Nothing to do. It was bland. Battlefront 2 is shaping up to be so much better, but with an obvious catch. There is a good chance they're going to go for pay-to-win. That's an actual topic. Making up a clickbaity title, claiming that the fan response was vilification, is just shady. It's bad. It's extremely bad conduct, for this community, for anyone with actual criticisms and reasons to not like it. The creator himself has valid points as to why it's bad, but he is also using his clickbait title to lure in and deliberately deter people. Let people think for themselves. Let them figure things out on their own. I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for the outside criticism we're getting now due to this specific thread. People are posting it on Twitter, Facebook, and they aren't doing it to praise us, as a community or as critics.

Ironically, this post has become a small meme now. Primarily because... well... the "it's getting hammered" thing is a fabrication.

It's become a thing people have pointed to as why we as a community on Gamespot are dwindling.

If you don't like it, good for you, but Jesus man. Making things up? Trying to manipulate people? *That* is what we're doing now?