Orihara

Technically, they will be limiting themselves without effecting other ppl's progress. But you do you.

So if you divide it by IV/Tier, based on the average like in the post says, and average of 200 bidoofs, if that qualifies you as, what the average contribution % is, even if the quest itself fails because not many people participated. What happens is, you still dont get a reward because the quest itself failed, but you get to participate on the next wq because you quailified as a valuable contributor. So it compensates you with another wq with another reward, and punishes those that dont participate to wait out another rotation, increasing your chances to finish another wq without relying on literally everyone.

Actually, it kinda can, with a tad more complex method rather than outright rewarding everyone. First gotta look at which problem played crucial role in the fail. One being redundant rewards for way too much effort which primarily discouraged players to participate in it. So, if you break wq's into tiers and add the contribution % into count. A system that goes up a tier per wq and reward with it will both encourage players to participate and remove those that doesnt participate from the equation all together. To simplify, Player A contributed 0% IV whereas players B has contributed 2-3%. Player B gets to participate in the next wq, which is tier 7 and Player A gets to wait for the next rotation.

Well, before this topic turns more and more into a pissing contest. It is evident that miscommunication is the key culprit to this whole charade. So i think a middle ground needs to be established from both staff and player alike if both parties wish to improve this situation. To staff ; Unfortunately how good a group of people see themselves, it is the same groups fault for being incapable of showing it to others as well, so i believe improving player-staff interaction (ingame, discord) is necessary to start a healthy conversation, and while this thread does seem a good way to start putting everything on the table, that effort needs to continue even after this thread has ran its course. Listen to your players, improve the things they deem you are lacking, if they are things you cannot improve, explain why in simple english, coz no one is gonna read pages of wall of text in the long run, meaning no one will come back to this thread and read everything just to get a clear picture on things, as much as we want players to do that, the reality is they wont. To players ; There is one fundamental thing that everyone here needs to understand. And i know you all heard this thousands of time but never understood what it means. This is a free-to-play game and staff does not get paid. Meaning they work on the game, moderate the game out of their own free will and dedication. Not for their own sake or just to be able to recieve a legendary pokemon in x amount of months just to show off, because at the end each and every staff wants the game to enjoyed by all. Granted, sometimes behaviours and actions of individuals might seem contrary to that, which is where a player needs to put themselves in staff's shoes and realize the mental toll dealing with every single one of you everyday for months and for some, years. As for how to improve on players end, self-moderate the game. The less toxicity, rulebreak there is to deal with for staff, reduce the stress for both yourselves and staff. Understand the rules, they were made to ensure players that wish to enjoy the game will not be subject to intolerable behaviour or benefit those that would cheat their way into shadowing your hard work put into the game. Be casual with them, half these shitheads are fun to hang out with (except felix ofc, boring guy that one). As for Wally, i'm still salty about you making me run all over seafoam island for telling me my boss is there. lowblow fam

Just to inform with my limited knowledge, i'm not qualified to be able to discuss such matters as a method of "reward"

Thats why you should always SS your conversation if it toxic in nature. Under fairuse agreement, which is the legal greyarea how pokemon mmos are made and stay alive. Staff/owners are not allowed to pocket the donations for themselves, unless they want a lawsuit. Or someone in staff is jeff bezos rich and doesnt mind throwing money away. İsnt that basicaly the yearly PRO awards made by the community? The literal dream of every moderation staff regardless of game, is having a self-moderating community with reports etc. To put into perspective, lets say an epidemic of trolls took over PRO, staff alone can clean it up in lets say 3 months tops, with a self-moderating community it'll take 3 weeks.

I'm not really one to take sides since i believe both parties are wrong with their approach. However, i dont think false information is necessarily the way to go with things. First of all lets take a look at what teerav says "Classic PRO GM attitude" While that post is about Spawns. Being a GM has hardly have to do anything with it, in that regard thats hardly a valid criticism to be taken into context. As for felix, his attitude is wrong and he knows that, hence why he was issued a warning from Keita. Staff have their own policies to follow on behavior, rulebreak etc, i know because i made them. Just because his behaviour is not acceptable doesnt mean staff will ignore those policies and out-right kick him. And yes, Moderation and Spawn editing has nothing to do with eachother, the only common ground they have is felix having both roles. As for general feedback, attacking someone personally is not a valid feedback, nor will it pressure someone into reverting or adjusting changes, it will only backfire because in itself, it is a rulebreak to harass a staff member excessively, now if we take into consideration that barely anyone has recieved a punishment despite calling quite despicable things, it disproves the so called "abusive attitude" being angry does not absolve anyone from following rules. period. Staff or player alike.

Indeed, this staff era is far better than all those came before, including mine. However, to suggest that old staff (i'm assuming you're speaking of us) has played the mash the button faster game is utterly disrespectful. We had over 4k active users with 1600 server player slots. Mind you, this was waay before rules, punishment policies and staff rules were a thing. Now, multiply that by the multitude of bans, RMT's, Item dupes, NPC's that gave you 10m everytime you interacted with etc etc. We played the "mash the button" because the game was in utter chaos. If we havent played the button game, PRO's economy would be non-existant, the game would advertised under "avoid at all costs" bc of overrun toxicity, cheating and whatever you can think of.

Some of more sensitive information was disclosed between you and me in DM's but i'll add a few more for transparency sake. Feel free to edit them if they are deemed sensitive. Unforunately yes, power abuse was a thing, but every effort was made by me and other GM's to ensure it didnt become a casual thing, which ended up GM's policing staff as well as players. Hence "tyrannical" stigma was applied. This is a decision that was made solely by me. To the point of even "joking" about a rulebreak would result with appropriate punishment, difference is that at the time we had 1600 server slots for 4k active players due to a youtuber with a huge audiance discovering and advertising the game on their channel. Unfortunately many of the said players did not wish to "enjoy" the game but rather be toxic to the community at large and annoy everyone, including the youtuber that brought them in. So me and other admins decided that it was better to "trim down" the playerbase down by removing those that present toxic behaviour and barely play the game, which honestly didnt effect us in the long run one bit and by the end of april 2016 every chat (ingame forum) was operating exactly the way we intended them to. Unfortunately regular players were also on the recieving end of this crusade hence why we were more leniant in appeals rather than outright get rid of everyone. As we talked about it in DM's, those were not the policies that was enforced while i was active. I'll clarify the "job" part as it seems that it was misunderstood. By job i mean personality is not one the key points in an application, just traits one might find interesting on a sheet. I personally detested that practice, hence our recruitment policy was (for moderation team only) is by scouting, this also allowes staff to be more active ingame as well as forums since it would yield more potential recruits, rather than basing them by application. However, we also had workshops for those that wished to apply but werent scouted out and were asked questions on wether they would fit our staff goals, dynamic and efficiency. Sorry for not expanding on the criteria. What i tried to ask was, if a suggestion was made, lets say ingame chat, does staff interact with said player to improve on the suggestion or relay the said suggestion directly to admins or direct the player to suggestions. Hmm, unfortunately i've heard different stories (with evidence) that those requests were denied on multiple occasions. Does it depend on the context of said ban (severity 4-5) or does it have to meet a certain criteria to be able to grant a second opinion to it.

Use discord with friends/guild

While that may be what u'd expect in a more common-sense reality, player perspective is different in every single game in existance, staff is viewed as a collective, meaning what one does defines everyone else atleast on a basis. For example ; Oh this staff said this to this person, its extremely rude and should be removed, staff doesnt get removed, oh he didnt get removed then all staff must think the same thing and boom, you have a nice little stigma on your hands for god knows how many months to clean up. And in all honesty, these behaviours from both sides does not help the situation one bit, rather damages it further. Now the problem with the "mightier-than-thou" did indeed happen at one point and unfortunately it stuck, even though the people that acted that way are gone now. Which is in itself idiotic to blame people for something that they are not responsible for but it is what it is, the question everyone should ask themselves is quite simple, what do you want. Do you wish to improve the quality of the game? Do you wish to improve relations between staff and players? While many would say yes, barely a handful of people try to behave in a way that would enable such a thing. As such, the solution is really easy, if you wish to be a part of a solution, stop being the problem. (you = generalization)

You should see some of our private discords with staff, we rip them apart on every chance xD But no, that would do more harm than good

Lets keep this respectful, everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Wether they are caused by misinformation or personal experiences.

Sure, you can send them to me privately on discord, there is no rule that says you cant send them privately and i'll let u know if they are actually abuse or not.

If most people thought the earth was flat, would it be flat?

First of all, i'd like to disclose that this miscommunication or non-communication between staff and players have gone long enough, and most of you know when that started and with whom. Going back from there, the 2016 era had barely any issues with players. One of PRO's key selling points back then was and i quote "Staff are friendly, rules are fair and strict, no favoritism" this has change dramaticaly over the years, and not in a good way i'm afraid. I have yet to see App's or more than 60% of the remaining staff interacting with the community, casually talking or just having fun with players on a daily basis. One of the key requirements for passing App was to be able to interact with the community. What sort of procedure does app and staff follow these days on player interaction? From the original PP that was created by myself and few other staff, rules are not being enforced strict enough or have been enforced in a more discretional way, does PP still intend as a deterrant for toxic people? If so does the goal "keep the game fair for players" still apply as a driving factor on adapting PP to situations. What are the criterea's for a suggestion to reach staff? A: just forums B: some good bits here and there - Unfortunately i dont see many back and forth dialogs in suggestions between player and staff to help them improve their suggestions. is it? from what i can tell only content team is somewhat organized, but even within content everyone is responsible for their own things rather than working as a collective, based on dialogs with other CS's. I think its more healthy to ask what is "abuse" at this point. Because while some of the things that can be seen as abuse on a regular basis it seems like its completely fine on a staff point of view. As for a question of my own, how does recruitment policy works? Are there any ideas to let go of the "fill the forum" application and actually communicating with the person that might become your team mate for understanding people better. This is a fanmade game, not a job. EDIT: In the past, we had a policy to allow players to ask someone else handle the appeal if a player was not satisfied with the answer provided, is this still a common practice in how appeals are being handled this time around?

This is indeed a valid criticism. However, one needs to understand and respect the fundamental difference between a staff member and a player, which is a player can ignore most of the annoying stuff but a staff member NEEDS to pay attention to it for the sole purpose of enacting their duty, which is enforcing rules. Problem with the alienation you speak of has been an issue for quite a while, however the reason behind it does not lay with staff alone. If the community at large harbors hostile or negative behaviour towards staff, then u shouldnt expect them to greet you with open arms and roses, they are still human. Things always get heated when drastic changes are made that effect the gameplay of players until the dust settles, whether the change remains or get adjusted, which comes down to feedback and how its constructed. Bottom line is, there needs to be a level of respect between players and staff. A staff needs to respect a players time and effort they put into the game that they're trying to improve and a player needs to respect a staffs time and effort put into making the game and the community as enjoyable and fair as possible (toxicity etc etc) only difference is, staff are REQUIRED to respect that. As for the whole changes and other stuff. If there was a change made and everyone riots 10 minutes after the announcement is made, that feedback has of little value because the said changes have not been tested, so your feedback is based on what you read, not what you experience, if said experience is effecting your gameplay negatively then that feedback gains value, because at the end of the day a its the developer and content teams job to make the game as enjoyable as possible. Then again, one must keep in mind that if a large majority wants a certain change, it may not be in the best interest in the games long term goals or path, many events that like that have taken place. Hope this answer would atleast satisfy a few people but unfortunately my knowledge is extremely limited with internal stuff to be able to say more.

Silver server ofcourse

I disagree, get him outta here

As one of the few people that ever had access to Content Decision and had a say in it, every decision that was ever made about introducing new coin shop items aside from cosmetics go thought a lengthy discussion to have it polished, fair usage and long term effects to make them as fair as possible for those that buy it themselves or via trade. So the chances of p2w is astronomically unlikely. The earliest assumption of p2w were the MS only areas and MS only spawns, which was debunked due to those mons being available on different regions, that they were hidden under MS solely bc we didnt have enough map/spawn space to put them in, that is no longer the case and does not give any player any advantage over beating the region, since most commonly used mons are gengar and gyarados to clear almost every region. Or locking you out of storyline completion for not being able to access MS only areas. Examplary "p2w" scenarios would be having an MS-area where all spawns are legendary and, perfect IV, nature, ability mons that are highly requested in the meta and are untradable. So i'd HIGHLY advice players that think PRO is p2w to do some research, or play games that are actually pay2win to be able to tell the difference. Sincerely, Deathwing.

So i dont even know when was the last time i did the annoying quest but, after i talked with watson (something to do with eumi island) my entire subway quest reset itself

1- I've seen it happen multiple times on Ark discords, someone gets a hold of a perm invite link, sends a bot in and boom, entire chat history of exceptional role view privilages are downloaded as txt file. EDIT: The bot doesnt require a permission to view anything, lets say there is a dmod chat, which dmod and staff can view, those are general roles. But a role named "lol" is created and can see dmod, thats an exceptional role, discord bots can breach that and get access to your entire chat history of that specific channel. 2-I mean yeah, just was a general assumption as to why that might've been the case

1- Too many "exceptional roles" creates a security breach, someone can just send in a bot and get all the conversation history of those channels that have exceptional role access, so creating seperate discord server is not really an issue. 2- If i were to guess, it'd be pvp council does not really fall under the same category as your usual staff, therefor dont really need to be the "shining examples" of the community but rather PvP skills. Other reason could be most pvpers are rather toxic so an exception is to be made to favor quality pvpers and sacrifice behaviour for it, rather than risking low tier pvp quality for the sake of behaviour.

Also something i've been wondering, will the players from PRO who've decided to continue their journey in the new game will recieve some sort of compensation for the time they've spent in here?