Nyr's Greatest Hits

Nyr
#118 - Oct 8, 2014

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What I'm saying is that it's not good to put as our primary goal, "don't alienate people that are currently not feeling the game for what could be a myriad of reasons, none of which are necessarily the full story that might be available from a staff perspective."

Nyr
#118 - Oct 8, 2014

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Ultimately, staff members (and at the highest level, the Producers) are the arbiters of these mistakes. A ground rule that would be nice (but isn't something anyone necessarily has to agree to, it being the Internet) would be to go into any disagreement with the understanding that staff do have the best interests of the game at heart and are working to make it better. Another good one (but also isn't something anyone has to agree to, see: the Internet) would be that maybe, just maybe, you're "wrong"--whoever you might be. However, one common ground rule that must be accepted by all parties is that the Producers are the final say on things. If you disagree with that in a formalized process, you've gone through every single avenue to handle something and the people at the highest level have told you (in consensus) that X is the case.

Nyr
#118 - Oct 8, 2014

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When players do those things (doing something that looks like a mistake), staff members have an expectation to go and deal with those things. This is not just an expectation in the sense that "it would be a great idea if staff did this but they certainly do not have to," it's something all staff are supposed to do. If they don't do it that's not a good thing. We know that. That is why we are expected to do it. This starts with communication from staff to the player, and it ends with an appropriate response as deemed by staff. This (the formalized process for communicating with a player that is doing something that is not what staff expect, even if it's an issue of encouragement towards RPing better) happens often enough that it may as well be something that is expected to happen every time. Players should not have adverse action (read: punishment, disciplinary action, whatever you want to call it) taken against their account or PC without being notified. Depending on what happened, the corrective action might happen prior to or at the same time as the e-mail. (Example: "We banned you on the discussion board earlier because you went off on a diatribe and flamed several players. We took a bit to e-mail you because we wanted to first deal with the crap you were putting up on the board and ensure you wouldn't be doing that anymore.") As a measure to deal with the "maybe, just maybe, staff is 'wrong'", we have actual review in place--STs report to admins, admins report to producers, and there is accountability between staff members.

When staff members do those things (doing something that looks like a mistake), players do not have that same expectation to attempt redress, appeal, or point out the problem. By that, I mean that a player doesn't have any onus on them to actually follow any guidelines or grievance airing process, even though those things actually do exist. Staff have a ton of rules and procedures for handling things. Players do not. Players have very few rules they must follow. Sharing IC info, multiplaying, botting, and GDB rules. Even when they violate those, they still have staff going through the above process.

Nyr
#118 - Oct 8, 2014

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Players can choose to just "be" jaded, do nothing about it, and make snide remarks wherever to whomever, and either get over it eventually or let it fester forever. That's fine, I suppose, but it doesn't get anything done and staff won't necessarily know that something might be up or could be clarified because we can't read minds (see above on humans and their abilities/limitations). Even if we see someone being snarky here and there on the boards, we don't go out of our way to talk to them until they've actually broken some rule, because people are complex and they may just be having a bad day rather than be a jaded veteran of the game.

Players can choose to do the previous and/or put in a staff complaint that is pretty much them venting about how x or y staffer is a piece of shit, etc without actually addressing anything solid (yeah, we've seen actual complaints like that before). That's not really appropriate, and usually the player isn't expecting to get a completely in-agreement response from the Producers that says "wow, we totally agree, x or y staffer IS a piece of shit! We've given them that title and banned them from the game!" They are complaining to complain, maybe just to say they "followed the process" to other people and then continue to be jaded about their "reasonable complaint" being "totally ignored" by the iron-fisted staff.

Players can also choose to put in a reasonable complaint--discussing something grounded in reality, with the expectation that they might actually not have all of the facts or might be wrong, probably even with a little bit of reasonable venting involved, and expect the Producers to investigate and provide a reasonable response. Reasonable complaints that result in something being changed, done, or corrected are usually more rare. Most fall between the extremes of crazy conspiracy land and completely reasonable.

Nyr
#118 - Oct 8, 2014

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As for staff, we've got these avenues out there, we're already "here" and open to talk to, and we have quite a few more players to be concerned with that are here and now and willing to engage in dialogue or play the game itself.