Lets talk together about Staff & Player relationship !

[Makeitwitchu]

3 hours ago, idkup said:

just rename this topic to prehax hate thread already

 

y'all ask for more communication from staff, he communicates his opinions and doesn't veil them behind diplomatic language - is this not the transparency people ask for? his dismissiveness of opinions he doesnt agree with is the primary issue between staff and players? please. not everyone is good at putting on a fake smile and lying to your face that they'll "think about it."

 

makes perfect sense why others avoid interacting with this community like the plague.

 

good riddance.

I really despise this rhetoric of "assholes are just honest people" (Trump anyone?), it confuses arrogance with sincerity. If you are going to establish a hierarchical relationship between players and staff, if you are going to operate on secrecy and a rigid structure of roles, if you are, in short, going to act like a professional game dev team, diplomatic language is not a courtesy, but a basic sign of respect to your playerbase. It should be expected of staff to respond to whatever question or suggestion, no matter how stupid it may be, in a polite manner. This is the case in any profession. Refusing to do so is not some sign of "extreme honesty," it is lazy and causes a rift that can be easily avoided. I am not saying staff need to do players' bidding or oblige every request, that would be stupid. Hell, even a suggestion can be utterly useless if it clashes with the design philosophy of the game. Fine. But you have to understand that the people you talk to are the same people that have invested a lot of time in playing and caring about your game and they deserve, if nothing else, not to be dismissed rudely. Perhaps PRO needs to recruit a PR member to smooth these things out moving forward, I am not sure, but I always felt the communication side of things was off and this could have been easily prevented by communicating the right things at the right time. 

Nevertheless, as you mentioned in your other post, I agree that this thread is being derailed. It shouldn't be a witch hunt. The dismissiveness of Qeight's language is a symptom of a wider problem in player - staff relationships i.e. the fact that he is not good at "putting on a fake smile and lying to your face that he'll think about it" is not the main issue, the main issue is that pretending they'll think about a suggestion seems to be the norm as opposed to actually thinking about it. 

 

Edited June 24, 2021 by makeitwitchu

[Drdoctor]

9 minutes ago, makeitwitchu said:

I really despise this rhetoric of "assholes are just honest people" (Trump anyone?), it confuses arrogance with sincerity. If you are going to establish a hierarchical relationship between players and staff, if you are going to operate on secrecy and a rigid structure of roles, if you are, in short, going to act like a professional game dev team, diplomatic language is not a courtesy, but a basic sign of respect to your playerbase. It should be expected of staff to respond to whatever question or suggestion, no matter how stupid it may be, in a polite manner. This is the case in any profession. Refusing to do so is not some sign of "extreme honesty," it is lazy and causes a rift that can be easily avoided. I am not saying staff need to do players' bidding or oblige every request, that would be stupid. Hell, even a suggestion can be utterly useless if it clashes with the design philosophy of the game. Fine. But you have to understand that the people you talk to are the same people that have invested a lot of time in playing and caring about your game and they deserve, if nothing else, not to be dismissed rudely. Perhaps PRO needs to recruit a PR member to smooth these things out moving forward, I am not sure, but I always felt the communication side of things was off and this could have been easily prevented by communicating the right things at the right time. 

Nevertheless, as you mentioned in your other post, I agree that this thread is being derailed. It shouldn't be a witch hunt. The dismissiveness of Qeight's language is a symptom of a wider problem in player - staff relationships i.e. the fact that he is not good at "putting on a fake smile and lying to your face that he'll think about it" is not the main issue, the main issue is that pretending they'll think about a suggestion seems to be the norm as opposed to actually thinking about it. 

 

That's where you're wrong though, Pro Staff and developers literally say in their rules and front page *This is a game developed out of our hobbies and love for pokemon a fan made game* none of them are professional developers or a game company this is a 3rd party pokemon game ran by hobbists that the community doesn't realize. There is no fuckkng democracy here its rather get over it and leave or stfu. I'm tired of people acting high and mighty when it's literally on their front page. If you support them through donations cool but none of them claimed to be professional game developers or not. 

 

Don't compare them to Trump, they literally made the game out of enjoyment of the game. Not to be harassed by people like you.

 

And I say this with respect to the pro staff. 

Edited June 24, 2021 by DRDoctor

[Shinohara]

8 hours ago, MaitrePoulpe said:

It looks like sometimes, a certain staff member feels obliged to insult or to reply in a condescending way to players. Without targetting him/her, I would like to know why you hired him/her again and why he/she isn't fired.

 

Although we talked already in private and asked me to feel free to not answer in here, I will just do it anyway for the sake of transparency.

 

It is obvious that even staff have to follow rules and we in fact have our own staff rules and staff punishment policy.

Said staff member has been talked to, from me personally, regarding the way he address some people. However, it is correct to point out that fault is not entirely on him but there are a lot of things that are unseen from the normal player.

 

I will make you some example about what I mean being black or white.

1. Example one.
   Few months ago there was a really big group of Real Money Traders that in total were actually selling (obviously not from a single account but many) around 900.000.000 Pokedollars (900 millions).
   Said staff member found it and banned all of them, both the seller and the buyer exactly as it is correct to be since Real Money Trading is a really serious infraction that can potentially destroy the game economy.
   This group was from a single specific country and a few of the banned went to complain to a PRO Youtuber they were following saying they were unjustly banned and the staff member was racist.
   This Youtuber started publicly accusing the staff member of racism and banning innocents, which has lead the story to get bigger and bigger until this person and staff (admins) started to receive threats from many users supporting that youtuber and thinking what said was true.
   
   Now, unfortunately, we cannot address these things publicly cause it's sort of unprofessional to call out people in front of everyone.
   However, the staff member called "idiot" or "stupid" (I don't remember which one of them) that person who did their best to put people against the staff who issued the punishment.
   Was it correct to call them stupid/idiot? Honestly not correct and not even worth the staff member time.
   However, we are humans and therefore get tilted as well when we experience such things. Does it justify any disrespect? Absolutely not, but that's exactly to say that things are never just black or white and there are many things that cannot be seen by a lot of users but users just assume that the staff his doing everything alone and starting it.
   
   
    
2. Example two.
   We have a user who was able to reach the total amount of mutes necessary to get permanently banned. This number is exactly 8.
   In short, this user, a pvp player, was being toxic against opponents every time he had the chance to (mocking them or their skill after beating them, insulting them after this user was losing, etc)
   Every mute the user was receiving he was making an appeal, where he was promising to not be toxic anymore and follow rules/respect other players.
   However, after not even a month it was back to the start with the user being toxic again.
   Time passes and mute by mute the user reaches his 8 mute and then the permanent ban as the limit was reached and crossed.
   User at that point appeal, as he was permanently banned, and ask for a final chance. The staff member believes him and his words and decides to give him a last chance, however giving him a long mute despite the unban (this is how policy works after you get out from a permanent ban, having reached the limit, for toxicity).
   The user really happy accept it, a mute of 250 days aimed at making him reform and chill.
   
   The 250 days of mute passes, the user played without any problem until then. However, after the mute ends, not even a month later the user was back again being toxic, insulting after losing and mocking players after winning. This lasted for months, he continued doing it for months until we checked chat log and people started reporting him.
   At that point, the staff members decide to issue the last permanent ban as it was clear that the user could not get reformed.
   In that way we lost a PRO veteran player, and it sucks but at the same time we cannot give a special treatment to people only cause they are old players.
   
   We had initially thought about having him playing with a permanent mute, however the limit was already reached and honestly it would have been unfair toward all the players (new and old) that this user had insulted and mocked until now.
   Lets be clear, there are players that know they are toxic and therefore ask us (before getting punished) to kindly mute them so they are chill and can play without any concern. In fact, we appreciate that, as player realize they can't control themselves and want to play without causing problems.
   
   Anyway, after that person was banned, he started to try to put an entire community (the community of his country) against staff, even going as far as saying that if he will find that staff member he will stab him with a knife and kill him.
   In that way we got a big community from a country against us for something that staff had no fault with.
   
    
3. Example three, and last one.
   Long story short, during Summer Tournament 2019 the user winning the gold tournament had cheated the whole tournament by making someone else playing for him. Host were me and that staff member.
   That staff member realized something was wrong and pushed for a investigation which has lead to the user being called racist by that person and spreading the fact he was racist for doing that check. (user was trying to defend himself and play the racist card to block the investigation)
   Also, that person had a relative within the staff team that also pushed and promoted the "you are racist" card. (this is explained better later).
   
   Unfortunately, time passes and we cannot find anything solid about it  (we ban only after solid evidences) so we just close the investigation.
   Few months later, this group of people have a discussion and stop being friends so they start to report each other. It was then that we found evidences about it, as they literally reported the whole tournament situation where, sadly, the staff member (the relative mentioned above) also helped in cheating the tournament and hiding it.
   
   Needless to say, the staff member was kicked and the user got their first prize removed.
   However staff got once again a big amount of people hating staff and that staff member despite nothing wrong was done on our end, but people just blindly believed their friend.
    

 

I myself banned a user from the game (RMT iirc) and the user pretended to be unbanned while insulting me (not sayin ban was wrong but just threatening me to be unbanned).

After I didn't unban, this user started cutting his veins and send me photos and video of it to try to accuse me and actually lead me to problems in-real-life and as well spreading the fact I was transphobic banning a trans player (where obviously gender and similar had nothing to do with the ban).

---

 

 

Quote

why you hired him/her again and why he/she isn't fired.

 

As for why this person is not "fired", the reason is simply that we have a staff punishment policy, exactly like players that is divided in steps.
What the staff member did was not enough to warrant a removal, but definitely a good and stern talk as it happened.

What we instant remove from staff are things like:

• Power Abuse (that the staff member you mention actually never did). Some example of power abuse, just for pure transparency:
  • Logging your staff account to kick opponent you are in pvp battle with your player. This was performed by Rise/Astro (as many know) that got permanently excluded from PRO (staff + player ban), and therefore he was immediately permanently banned as soon as we found.
  • Selling unban in change of irl money. 
  • Spawning items for people 
  • Banning people out of fun or without any reason (this, contrary to what some people say, was actually never performed by the staff member mentioned).
• Lot of drama that can greatly damage the game

Needless to say, we do not support any disrespectful/offensive behaviour and if disrespectful behaviour will continues (however I like to believe there won't as that staff member is mature) further actions will be taken to fix that in a way or another.

 

 

As for why this staff member was hired, the answer is simply that he's simply one of the best staff member PRO ever had. He provide a lot of work for the game, with a great quality, has a really high activity and has the aim to actually improve the game.
As for attitude, I think that there's a need of learning how to control himself cause even if we (humans) might say something that is totally correct, it's really important to consider the way we do that. (as i told him)
However, for what regard staff duties themselves, I think he's actually the example to follow and a new moderation staff should be aim to be like.
 

Many recently started accusing him of not caring about the game just from due to the language used (which yes, needs to be controlled by him), however he did a lot for the community itself.

It's even just worth to mention that years ago you just needed 4 mutes to be permanently banned forever, however he thought it was too harsh for community and therefore improved it from 4 to 8, giving it this way 4 additional chances to players to reform themselves and follow rules.

Or the whole hoenn update where the pokemon are not encountered while surfing, which is a benefit since hoenn (the whole surfing part) is honesly as painful as a kick in the ball due to the many spawns and the super larger big water maps.

 

---

 

I hope I was able to be clear enough (I mean, I was with you as we talked in PM and you even told me to feel free to not reply here, however I wanted to do it anyway for the sake of transparency).
Also hope people won't jump on the "you are defending!" but also understand both the negative and positive things said.

[Makeitwitchu]

1 minute ago, DRDoctor said:

That's where you're wrong though, Pro Staff and developers literally say in their rules and front page *This is a game developed out of our hobbies and love for pokemon a fan made game* none of them are professional developers or a game company this is a 3rd party pokemon game ran by hobbists that the community doesn't realize. There is no fuckkng democracy here its rather get over it and leave or stfu. I'm tired of people acting high and mighty when it's literally on their front page. If you support them through donations cool but none of them claimed to be professional game developers or not. 

That is such a flawed way of thinking though. For one, what is claimed and what is conveyed is not always the same. The rhetoric, the structure, the donation system is all set up to mimic a game company, you can't just ignore that because of one line of text. Being self-proclaimed hobbyist should not excuse you from being held accountable. If you want to submissively bow your head and not try to enact positive change, that is fine, but do not attack those who do because of your own unwillingness to think critically. 

[Drdoctor]

11 minutes ago, makeitwitchu said:

That is such a flawed way of thinking though. For one, what is claimed and what is conveyed is not always the same. The rhetoric, the structure, the donation system is all set up to mimic a game company, you can't just ignore that because of one line of text. Being self-proclaimed hobbyist should not excuse you from being held accountable. If you want to submissively bow your head and not try to enact positive change, that is fine, but do not attack those who do because of your own unwillingness to think critically. 

You're literally comparing them to Trump and that alone is slander enough. You claim them to be a game company which they literally announced their not. YES THEY HAVE A DONATION SYS. You know who else does? Every Garry's Mod server every 3rd party fan made server for every game. It's not to mock a game company standard. It's to help support and pay for a server. Do you know the costs to host a server? Or to host a private server with an 1800 player cap. You literally start with comparing them to Trump because you're mad someone typed negatively to you on the internet. Guess what if wally or who ever decided to pull the plug on the server it's gone. That's how it works there is nothing you can do about it because Nintendo owns the pokemon Ip not wally not you not q8. They are hosting a 3rd party server for our enjoyment so they can code and have fun with their hobby. Now pipe down and shut up,

 

Fall in line bow down? No not at all this is supposed to be a discussion on player staff relations. I'm sticking up a bit because all it's been is bashing them with insults for almost no reason. It started because the spawn change. And derailed into a new thread like this after the constant spam and harassment in multiple guild discords of propaganda and hate threads. 

Edited June 25, 2021 by DRDoctor

[Idkup]

7 minutes ago, makeitwitchu said:

That is such a flawed way of thinking though. For one, what is claimed and what is conveyed is not always the same. The rhetoric, the structure, the donation system is all set up to mimic a game company, you can't just ignore that because of one line of text. Being self-proclaimed hobbyist should not excuse you from being held accountable. If you want to submissively bow your head and not try to enact positive change, that is fine, but do not attack those who do because of your own unwillingness to think critically. 

you forget there are people on both sides of the screen. the people complaining about prehax have said much worse to others. i get you want to stick it to "the man" but that doesn't exist in this situation. staff have zero incentive or requirement to hold themselves to a higher standard when speaking casually.  people simultaneously treat staff with ridiculous deference while complaining about staff egos they inflate themselves.

 

id say that players should treat staff like other players but frankly a not insignificant amount of this community treats other people terribly, so i guess ill just say that everyone should be respectful but not deferential to each other, regardless of whether or not that person is staff. would go a long way towards bridging that gap.

[666g0d999]

31 minutes ago, DRDoctor said:

That's where you're wrong though, Pro Staff and developers literally say in their rules and front page *This is a game developed out of our hobbies and love for pokemon a fan made game* none of them are professional developers or a game company this is a 3rd party pokemon game ran by hobbists that the community doesn't realize. There is no fuckkng democracy here its rather get over it and leave or stfu. I'm tired of people acting high and mighty when it's literally on their front page. If you support them through donations cool but none of them claimed to be professional game developers or not. 

 

Don't compare them to Trump, they literally made the game out of enjoyment of the game. Not to be harassed by people like you.

 

And I say this with respect to the pro staff. 

The only one acting high mighty is you. This moronic excuse of the game is free, doesn't mean you can treat people like crap. I'm not even mad about that, but acting like your crap doesn't stink, while banning others for acting the same is just contra-productive.

Nobody is being harassed. lmao People ask for justice. Sure, the staff can say f off, but that will only lead to the game dying. Is that really what you want? People like you make me sick to my stomach.

 

Another thing I noticed while playing for years, is that staff is never someone who is actually helping the community. I see certain individuals online almost everyday. They answer the most mundane questions with respect (like where is Bill's book), but these people somehow never become mods. It's always some no name I never seen online. Kinda weird if you ask me. (I'm not talking about CC's or devs)

Edited June 25, 2021 by 666G0D999

[Shinohara]

8 hours ago, Yue said:

Has a Staff ever reinvestigated their given punishment after putting an end to the appeals ? Just wondering if such thing as amnesty did happen or not.

 

Yes, we do that quite frequently actually, some cause we just go back looking our bans and some other thanks to the after-appeal complaint we receive.

A reason for appeal taking some time is also the fact of taking the best decision and being sure of it, most of the time even checking with our colleagues.

However, we do go back to our bans and even removed some of them if we find them a bit too harsh or similar.

 

 

 

[Drdoctor]

8 minutes ago, 666G0D999 said:

The only one acting high mighty is you. This moronic excuse of the game is free, doesn't mean you can treat people like crap. I'm not even made about that, but acting like your crap doesn't stink, while banning others for acting the same is just contra-productive.

Nobody is being harassed. lmao People ask for justice. Sure, the staff can say f off, but that will only lead to the game dying. Is that really what you want? People like you make me sick to my stomach.

You're literally commenting to me when I'm not even staff, I'm acting this way because you retards are acting entitled to a 3rd party private server. Developed by hobists Go ask for justice to someone else. You dont like my opinion go ask someone else who cares. I'm surprised they even tried to make a thread to appeal to you people. Also I could care less if the server died. I don't play that much anymore anyways its called I have a life and go out side.

 

Ans yes he did slander and say negative stuff about staff if you actually read the full comment I replied too. He compared them to Trump which I stated in my 2nd comment back to him as being just as bad.

Edited June 25, 2021 by DRDoctor

[Makeitwitchu]

3 minutes ago, idkup said:

you forget there are people on both sides of the screen. the people complaining about prehax have said much worse to others. i get you want to stick it to "the man" but that doesn't exist in this situation. staff have zero incentive or requirement to hold themselves to a higher standard when speaking casually.  people simultaneously treat staff with ridiculous deference while complaining about staff egos they inflate themselves.

 

id say that players should treat staff like other players but frankly a not insignificant amount of this community treats other people terribly, so i guess ill just say that everyone should be respectful but not deferential to each other, regardless of whether or not that person is staff. would go a long way towards bridging that gap.

Oh no, I fully agree with you when it comes to the two-way street thing. Respect needs to be earned by both parties and that is sadly not always the case for both sides. The downside of being staff is that your actions are highly public and, generally, held to a certain standard, whether that is correct or not is not for me to decide. I am not saying "the man" exists here, but I do think for any of this dialogue to be productive the fact that there is a power imbalance between both parties needs to be acknowledged and as with all power this comes with responsibility. In these scenarios, I'd argue it is the responsibility to be the bigger person or to lead by example. 

I think the post Keita made above contextualising is a great start and highlights how some of the comments made were a lapse of judgement, which is completely understandable. I don't expect a staff member to be the perfect human, to never get frustrated or be emotional. It happens. It should not be normalised, however. In my opinion at least.