Post by trollageddon on Apr 26, 2019 14:26:36 GMT -5
About a decade or so ago international attention came onto America to question it's role as "World Police." I don't necessarily subscribe to some of the criticisms that were made of this doctrine, but can at least agree with an interest in educating people on the roles that the community sees for them to curtail activism.
When I deal with staff I feel like they're out to lunch half of the time. My point being I'd say overall existing staff is pretty good, in the follow the Noted Liar's departure, but I still experience a fair amount of disconnect with them when I feel as though they're trying to parent a situation in or out of game.
To be completely clear with any staff reading this, I do not look up to you in any way, any more than I look up to the guy who is managing the local McDonald's where I eat. I don't really expect the McDonald's management to talk up to me, but I certainly don't feel any need to call them "Sir" or anything. I wanted to start a dialog with players here because I didn't want to make this into a post where I browbeat people into my point of view.
Administrators: To me this is the core staff role, the role that we'd miss the first if the staff stopped doing it. If nobody processed new applications into the game, the game would empty out pretty quickly due to character attrition. This was a surprise from my examination of the issue, to realize that the very core of what the staff do is administration, nothing more nothing less. Does anyone feel that I've gotten this one wrong?
Content Creation: Whether this should be a player activity or a staff activity seems very much up to debate. As far as my two cents, I feel that there are so many bored players that I question why players aren't better encouraged to design new rooms/zones/NPCs & etc, over and above existing nascent efforts. But what do I know, really?
Plot Drivers: And yes I'll probably end up making a separate post about this one. Who should be driving plot? Should plot be driven primarily by players or staff? My opinion is that I'm a much bigger fan of player driven plots, but many people, even people I consider credible seem to disagree. I'll have a lot more to say about this in a separate post, but wanted to go ahead and get the can of worms opened.
Rule Enforcement: Here is where I think that the staff tend to actually screw up. In this thread many people bemoaned a staff tendency to hawk players who are merely out twinking, as though we're causing a problem. Then if you send in a ticket about a player who is actually being disruptive, and positively establish cheating, staff seem to take a lackadaisical attitude toward resolving it. It's almost as if they don't seem to understand that investigations should be complain driven. I'm overall a fan of staff but this is the one component here where I would absolutely say that they do a terrible job. I'd rather they just leave lone twinkers alone, if no one is complaining about them.
Subject Matter Experts: Current staff don't seem to have a depth of understanding about the game docs. There, I said it. Probably the existing staff are younger in terms of game experience, and therefore game familiarity, than long time players. I think some posters here have based upon malice what is better attributed to ineptitude. One consolation I might mention, is that perhaps staff should consider that if they're interacting with a player who seems to have more knowledge of a particular game topic than they do, to make a particular effort to understand the player's perspective. I might also add that I wish staff understood that they are enforcing the actual docs and the traditional game canon, not their own particular interpretation of those items. Rules are actually really rules.
Dungeon Masters: I'll actually give staff credit here, that this is a role that I think that they tend to shine in. If you have an issue in the game and you wish up, if your request is logical, generally you will get the help that you need. I tend to find some staff to be sarcastic to a level of unmanliness, but if you ignore those particular jokers service is usually pretty good. Obviously, rulings may go against you fifty percent of the time, but you'd have the same experience with a paid dungeon master at a professional level tabletop gaming tournament.
Friends, Life Coaches: I tend to have fairly friendly relationships with the staff that I work with. It does bear repeating that I don't really look up to any existing staff, and so in some cases I find them giving me advice when really I was more just asking them to load an item for me, or something.
Game Owners and Custodians: This I think will be the most difficult point to prove, because in real life wars are fought over succession issues. Suffice it to say that the game was founded by a group of nerds at University in the 1990's, using a pirated code base and pirated copyright from Dark Sun. Although legal avenues to utilize both have long existing, staff have neglected to take this step. Some of the people originally involved in the game are gone. Despite this considerable effort has been made by staff to suppress people from booting private copies of the codebase, and some staff members have stolen content from rival games. In most cases these efforts have been extrajudicial, or alien to the value systems that small gaming communities have. When dealing with staff my assumption is that I shall be playing for at least another twenty years, and that none of current staff will still be actively staffing for more than an additional decade. My point being, is that I don't feel that they own the cannon, the characters, the storyline, the codebase or anything other than the server. They own one instance of Armageddon, nothing more. I was here before most of them and shall be around long after most of them depart. I tend to view them as either nannies or substitute teachers. This tends to make me disinterested in their particular interpretation of things. If somebody else were to publish a better game, I'd jump ship tonight.
Role Play Coaching: My feelings on this are mixed, as will be I suppose the feelings of respondents here. The staff that actually take the time to get to know me and my characters, I absolutely love their feedback on my role playing. Since most staff don't really do this, I'd rather that they leave it alone unless somebody complains. Substitute teachers are effectively nannies in my humble opinion.
Refereeing: Refereeing is one of the roles that to me seems to be the most obviously indicated of staff mandates, but it is the particular duty that staff seem most likely to shirk or to undertake with the most indifference. Staff just seem to hate to break up player fights. Why is this? Hokey is less complicated, but staff spend a lot of time breaking up fights in hokey. Boxing is much much less complicated but has one referee for every two guys playing, same with chess...
..but for some reason staff seem to think that all players are supposed to get along? To me that seems pathological.
Thank you for reading. I'd really appreciate some feedback, since I don't think my particular scorecard is necessarily the final word on the matter.
When I deal with staff I feel like they're out to lunch half of the time. My point being I'd say overall existing staff is pretty good, in the follow the Noted Liar's departure, but I still experience a fair amount of disconnect with them when I feel as though they're trying to parent a situation in or out of game.
To be completely clear with any staff reading this, I do not look up to you in any way, any more than I look up to the guy who is managing the local McDonald's where I eat. I don't really expect the McDonald's management to talk up to me, but I certainly don't feel any need to call them "Sir" or anything. I wanted to start a dialog with players here because I didn't want to make this into a post where I browbeat people into my point of view.
Administrators: To me this is the core staff role, the role that we'd miss the first if the staff stopped doing it. If nobody processed new applications into the game, the game would empty out pretty quickly due to character attrition. This was a surprise from my examination of the issue, to realize that the very core of what the staff do is administration, nothing more nothing less. Does anyone feel that I've gotten this one wrong?
Content Creation: Whether this should be a player activity or a staff activity seems very much up to debate. As far as my two cents, I feel that there are so many bored players that I question why players aren't better encouraged to design new rooms/zones/NPCs & etc, over and above existing nascent efforts. But what do I know, really?
Plot Drivers: And yes I'll probably end up making a separate post about this one. Who should be driving plot? Should plot be driven primarily by players or staff? My opinion is that I'm a much bigger fan of player driven plots, but many people, even people I consider credible seem to disagree. I'll have a lot more to say about this in a separate post, but wanted to go ahead and get the can of worms opened.
Rule Enforcement: Here is where I think that the staff tend to actually screw up. In this thread many people bemoaned a staff tendency to hawk players who are merely out twinking, as though we're causing a problem. Then if you send in a ticket about a player who is actually being disruptive, and positively establish cheating, staff seem to take a lackadaisical attitude toward resolving it. It's almost as if they don't seem to understand that investigations should be complain driven. I'm overall a fan of staff but this is the one component here where I would absolutely say that they do a terrible job. I'd rather they just leave lone twinkers alone, if no one is complaining about them.
Subject Matter Experts: Current staff don't seem to have a depth of understanding about the game docs. There, I said it. Probably the existing staff are younger in terms of game experience, and therefore game familiarity, than long time players. I think some posters here have based upon malice what is better attributed to ineptitude. One consolation I might mention, is that perhaps staff should consider that if they're interacting with a player who seems to have more knowledge of a particular game topic than they do, to make a particular effort to understand the player's perspective. I might also add that I wish staff understood that they are enforcing the actual docs and the traditional game canon, not their own particular interpretation of those items. Rules are actually really rules.
Dungeon Masters: I'll actually give staff credit here, that this is a role that I think that they tend to shine in. If you have an issue in the game and you wish up, if your request is logical, generally you will get the help that you need. I tend to find some staff to be sarcastic to a level of unmanliness, but if you ignore those particular jokers service is usually pretty good. Obviously, rulings may go against you fifty percent of the time, but you'd have the same experience with a paid dungeon master at a professional level tabletop gaming tournament.
Friends, Life Coaches: I tend to have fairly friendly relationships with the staff that I work with. It does bear repeating that I don't really look up to any existing staff, and so in some cases I find them giving me advice when really I was more just asking them to load an item for me, or something.
Game Owners and Custodians: This I think will be the most difficult point to prove, because in real life wars are fought over succession issues. Suffice it to say that the game was founded by a group of nerds at University in the 1990's, using a pirated code base and pirated copyright from Dark Sun. Although legal avenues to utilize both have long existing, staff have neglected to take this step. Some of the people originally involved in the game are gone. Despite this considerable effort has been made by staff to suppress people from booting private copies of the codebase, and some staff members have stolen content from rival games. In most cases these efforts have been extrajudicial, or alien to the value systems that small gaming communities have. When dealing with staff my assumption is that I shall be playing for at least another twenty years, and that none of current staff will still be actively staffing for more than an additional decade. My point being, is that I don't feel that they own the cannon, the characters, the storyline, the codebase or anything other than the server. They own one instance of Armageddon, nothing more. I was here before most of them and shall be around long after most of them depart. I tend to view them as either nannies or substitute teachers. This tends to make me disinterested in their particular interpretation of things. If somebody else were to publish a better game, I'd jump ship tonight.
Role Play Coaching: My feelings on this are mixed, as will be I suppose the feelings of respondents here. The staff that actually take the time to get to know me and my characters, I absolutely love their feedback on my role playing. Since most staff don't really do this, I'd rather that they leave it alone unless somebody complains. Substitute teachers are effectively nannies in my humble opinion.
Refereeing: Refereeing is one of the roles that to me seems to be the most obviously indicated of staff mandates, but it is the particular duty that staff seem most likely to shirk or to undertake with the most indifference. Staff just seem to hate to break up player fights. Why is this? Hokey is less complicated, but staff spend a lot of time breaking up fights in hokey. Boxing is much much less complicated but has one referee for every two guys playing, same with chess...
..but for some reason staff seem to think that all players are supposed to get along? To me that seems pathological.
Thank you for reading. I'd really appreciate some feedback, since I don't think my particular scorecard is necessarily the final word on the matter.
