Idle thoughts - Your 2 cents: As a game developer how do you steer your community?

I think everyone here are familiar with online game communities (around particular games). Some are positive and encouraging, some are sparse and half-forgotten, some are extremely competitive, some are... toxic.

In social media spaces, you can admin your group by carefully curating the people who are part of your group. Not just making and keeping rules, but adjusting your tone and interactivity with the members.

With a game however, once you've released it into the world it is out of your control. You can make 'official' forums, but it's not going to prevent raiding, griefing, and general misanthropy from occuring.

Some observations:
Relationship between 'player behaviour' and 'RNG/Skill balance' seems to be independant (ie. no correlation)
Relationship between 'player behaviour' and 'Skill' seems to be independant until you add 'rankings' into the mix.
In places where the relationship between 'player behaviour' and a 'PvP element' seems to correlate; 'player behaviour' ends up effecting any 'PvE element' as well.
Relationship between 'player behaviour' and 'hacking' seems to correlate when the community has toxic elements.

Could it ever be possible to design a game where you have some form of PvP which doesn't end up toxic?
The ONLY example I can think of would be the World Tetris Championships. That's PvE but competition is performed by going head-to-head.
I am sad to say that I cannot include online chess when I consider this.

Questions:
As a developer, have you regretted introducing a feature that ended up making the game less fun (because of the community)?
As a developer, have you made game design decisions in anticipation of what would happen otherwise? (You can include community backlash in your synopsis)

I think trying to steer any community that you have not created yourself is going to be toxic and not fruitful.  Even if it's around the work you've done, you have no ownership of an outside group.

If you want to avoid backlash then I suggest you listen closely to your community.  If it's a design decision that you think you must make, but you expect backlash then make that design decision as perfect as you can.  Give solid reasons for the decision, and show how it fits cleanly in with the rest of your game.

For mental health I'd suggest letting the controversial change simmer, and only then looking into the community discussions when more level-headed discussions are happening.

I don't - they steer me 😔
I never thought I would ever add gamepad support or steam achievements to a game before 🤔
it's very hard to say no to feature requests 😔