A Legitimate Reason to Remove Clown Reaction

[hoot hoot]

After wading into the cesspool that is the Overwatch 2 forums and seeing in the past what went on in the Hogwarts Legacy forums, there's a legitimate reason to remove the clown reaction that perhaps wasn't brought up often.

It encourages trolling and posting ridiculous posts just to fish for clown reaction and get steam points. It is blatant and even openly admitted to on the Overwatch 2 forums, for example, and while I'm not sure productive posts are ever going to appear there, it would be nice if all these people fishing for points didn't have such an open and intrusive means to do so.

In essence, stop rewarding low-effort trolling.

We could ask for Steam users to stop rewarding such posts in the first place, but that's not going to happen any more than Steam users are going to stop buying hats in TF2 despite Valve outsourcing all development of cosmetics to the very community Valve sells them to.

A secondary reason, though one that I've seen mentioned, is it's just kind of a low-level form of bullying. It's a waste of points to do it, but just throwing a clown react onto a post or a comment is a an easy way for trolls to make a mark on any comment they want. This isn't behavior that should be encouraged or enabled by Steam.

EDIT: That or just remove the reward from the jester reaction. If it is, in essence, a "disagree" reaction, why reward the comment maker with points?

EDIT: OKay, okay, I see now that jester posts are fairly common here. Still think they (or perhaps all rewards points for awards) should just go away.

[nullable]

People will troll for rewards no matter how you try and torture the system to stop it. Don't kid yourself.

[rawWwRrr]

Asneeze eredeti hozzászólása:

there's a legitimate reason to remove the clown reaction that perhaps wasn't brought up often.

It encourages trolling and posting ridiculous posts just to fish for clown reaction and get steam points.

Not a new concept and it's already been addressed countless times before. And as been discussed before, if the Jester is removed, the focus will just naturally go to another one. Heck, I jokingly complained about the Fancy Pants award and got not one but two of them. Just ignore them, the awards and the award trolls. If we could get everyone else to do that, the trolls would move to their next target.

[Tanoomba]

Asneeze eredeti hozzászólása:

EDIT: That or just remove the reward from the jester reaction. If it is, in essence, a "disagree" reaction, why reward the comment maker with points?

It's not inherently a "disagree" reaction, that's just how people have chosen to use it and it caught on. The same thing could happen for a number of awards.

[hoot hoot]

I guess my thinking is just that there is one award that can easily be construed as negative or an insult and so removing that one reward removes the chance to insult. The rest of them are pretty hard to stretch into insults.

Why even include the jester? Regardless of original intent, it's now just used to belittle. Hard to see how one might belittle anyone using fancy pants, but in addition the fancy pants award is twice the price of the jester award and so would be abused less.

Maybe just raise the price of the jester award and remove the points reward from the recipient. Everyone wins.

This is pretty petty and low priority in relation to other things Steam could do. What I really want is for Steam to disincentivise fishing for points by making troll comments, so however they do that is fine by me. This just seemed like the most obvious route.

[Tanoomba]

Asneeze eredeti hozzászólása:

I guess my thinking is just that there is one award that can easily be construed as negative or an insult and so removing that one reward removes the chance to insult. The rest of them are pretty hard to stretch into insults.

Not if they start being used almost exclusively as insults.

Asneeze eredeti hozzászólása:

Hard to see how one might belittle anyone using fancy pants

How about "hilarious"? "Deep thinker"? Even "Wild" could be construed as sarcastic and malicious if people start using it that way en masse.

[Stellar Remnant]

Nice award bait thread. I gave you a Hot Take.

[Vakers]

Just remove awards and make points only earnable through purchasing on the store. Even if Jester was gone people would still make low effort crap to farm awards. They were a mistake.

[Tanoomba]

I'm not gonna lie, I see more threads complaining about bait threads than I do bait threads.

[Vakers]

Tanoomba eredeti hozzászólása:

I'm not gonna lie, I see more threads complaining about bait threads than I do bait threads.

They're quite prevalent on Off Topic and on game hubs. But even then, I think that's a lie. I see you on these forums a lot, I find it hard to believe you haven't noticed, for example, the amount of threads that are "complaining" about the Jester award while very obviously fishing for jesters.

[Vakers]

And it's not just threads. There's a lot of low effort trash in guides and reviews.

[Tanoomba]

Vakari eredeti hozzászólása:

They're quite prevalent on Off Topic and on game hubs. But even then, I think that's a lie. I see you on these forums a lot, I find it hard to believe you haven't noticed, for example, the amount of threads that are "complaining" about the Jester award while very obviously fishing for jesters.

I don't think they're as "obvious" as you think they are. After all, you've probably seen me post in many of those threads, taking the OP at their word, and explaining why I think the award system is fine.

Vakari eredeti hozzászólása:

And it's not just threads. There's a lot of low effort trash in guides and reviews.

I'm not going to say your experience isn't valid. I'm just going to say that, in my experience, whenever I wanted to find useful reviews or guides I was able to, easily.

[Vakers]

Tanoomba eredeti hozzászólása:

Vakari eredeti hozzászólása:

They're quite prevalent on Off Topic and on game hubs. But even then, I think that's a lie. I see you on these forums a lot, I find it hard to believe you haven't noticed, for example, the amount of threads that are "complaining" about the Jester award while very obviously fishing for jesters.

I don't think they're as "obvious" as you think they are. After all, you've probably seen me post in many of those threads, taking the OP at their word, and explaining why I think the award system is fine.

Indeed, and fish often believe that a worm isn't bait on a hook, it just happened to be there in the water.

Tanoomba eredeti hozzászólása:

I'm not going to say your experience isn't valid. I'm just going to say that, in my experience, whenever I wanted to find useful reviews or guides I was able to, easily.

Whether or not it's easy to filter out, doesn't change the fact that it's there.

[peppermint hollows]

Tanoomba eredeti hozzászólása:

Vakari eredeti hozzászólása:

They're quite prevalent on Off Topic and on game hubs. But even then, I think that's a lie. I see you on these forums a lot, I find it hard to believe you haven't noticed, for example, the amount of threads that are "complaining" about the Jester award while very obviously fishing for jesters.

I don't think they're as "obvious" as you think they are. After all, you've probably seen me post in many of those threads, taking the OP at their word, and explaining why I think the award system is fine.

There have been award fishing posts that are literally copy and pasted text from other award fishing posts. Just because you always engage with bait doesn't mean they aren't bait threads. Not everyone else is blind to the obvious award fishing posts, lol.

[Tanoomba]

Vakari eredeti hozzászólása:

Whether or not it's easy to filter out, doesn't change the fact that it's there.

I would argue that whether or not you can filter it out is a pretty huge and relevant factor.

[hoot hoot]

I really am not fishing. I have more points than I know what to do with and it’s got to the point where I don’t know why people are so desperate for points that they’d bait in the first place. You get so many for just buying a game.

I genuinely think the jester award is an idiotic and, at this point, purely malicious feature. Rewarding points at all for any reaction could go away and I’d be fine with it.

Despite what some comments here think, baiting/trolling posts and guides are absurdly common. That's really the crux of my issue here: stop rewarding troll posts. Users wont do it and will keep mindlessly rewarding them, so just remove the rewards. It was a silly idea to begin with and unless you have a Steam Deck or regularly check your own profile, there's basically nothing cool you can do with Steam points.