Lets talk together about Staff & Player relationship !

[666g0d999]

3 minutes ago, DRDoctor said:

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.

I never said you are staff, but you are acting like they are angels and anything they say and do should be accepted, because this is a free game.

 

You tell me to go somewhere else. lol Ironic how you aren't staff, but still acting high and mighty. Of course you couldn't care less if this game died, because you never really cared. People like you are totally useless to the community.

Edited June 25, 2021 by 666G0D999

[Drdoctor]

1 minute ago, makeitwitchu said:

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. 

See I guess we can agree on some things but, we can disagree on others. These are not paid professionals they run a server for fun and to pay for server costs that's what donations are for. To compare others like that is also wrong. Have a great one, btw I'm not staff I just see inconsiderate comparisons being made which shouldn't 

[Drdoctor]

6 minutes ago, 666G0D999 said:

I never said you are staff, but you are acting like they are angels and anything they say and do should be accepted, because this is a free game.

 

You tell me to go somewhere else. lol Ironic how you aren't staff, but still acting high and mighty. Of course you couldn't care less if this game died, because you never really cared. People like you are totally useless to the community.

You can say what you want, opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one but you don't need to show it around 24/7 and looking at this, just makes me think your opinion as I said doesn't matter to me. As I said I could care less for it didn't reply or ask for it. Me and the other person can agree to disagree stop tagging me have a great one.

Edited June 25, 2021 by DRDoctor

[Makeitwitchu]

22 minutes ago, DRDoctor said:

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. 

I think you misread my post and got hung up on the "Trump" bit. I'll elaborate: the Trump reference was made in reference to what I consider the problematic attitude of "if someone acts like an [inappropriate term], they are just being honest," a common defence used by Trump voters during his campaign. Unlike other politicians, who spoke politely and did not make offensive remarks, Trump's voters argued he was different because he spoke his mind. Again, acting like an [inappropriate term] was confused with sincerity. In saying "Trump anyone?" I did not say qeight = Trump, that would be reductive and stupid, I was just trying to draw a real world analogy between the defence of qeight's dismissive comments as "just being honest" and the defence of Trump's rhetoric because hey it's nice to draw real world analogies sometimes. I apologise if that was not clear. 

This might come as a surprise to you, but I'm also far from mad nor is this personal. I really do not have any beef with qeight, I didn't even know of his existence until very recently as I am not incredibly involved with PRO's inner workings nor do I care to be. For all I knew, Prehax was just a funny npc in a Munchlax costume. 

Either way, you seem very set in your ways so I will stop trying to reason with you. I am just asking you try to think outside of the literal print for a change. Just because someone says something is one thing, does not mean that it matches reality. Yes, you are right, it does state they are hobbyists. So what? Everything else about the game, from the way the staff is run to the announcements they make is modelled after a game company, so why shouldn't their interactions with their playerbase not be either?

I hope this clears some things up for you. I'm not "bashing" anyone, if anything, you are the one getting unnecessarily aggressive and personal. 

[Orihara]

24 minutes ago, idkup said:

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.

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)

Edited June 25, 2021 by Orihara

[Drdoctor]

10 minutes ago, makeitwitchu said:

I think you misread my post and got hung up on the "Trump" bit. I'll elaborate: the Trump reference was made in reference to what I consider the problematic attitude of "if someone acts like an [inappropriate term], they are just being honest," a common defence used by Trump voters during his campaign. Unlike other politicians, who spoke politely and did not make offensive remarks, Trump's voters argued he was different because he spoke his mind. Again, acting like an [inappropriate term] was confused with sincerity. In saying "Trump anyone?" I did not say qeight = Trump, that would be reductive and stupid, I was just trying to draw a real world analogy between the defence of qeight's dismissive comments as "just being honest" and the defence of Trump's rhetoric because hey it's nice to draw real world analogies sometimes. I apologise if that was not clear. 

This might come as a surprise to you, but I'm also far from mad nor is this personal. I really do not have any beef with qeight, I didn't even know of his existence until very recently as I am not incredibly involved with PRO's inner workings nor do I care to be. For all I knew, Prehax was just a funny npc in a Munchlax costume. 

Either way, you seem very set in your ways so I will stop trying to reason with you. I am just asking you try to think outside of the literal print for a change. Just because someone says something is one thing, does not mean that it matches reality. Yes, you are right, it does state they are hobbyists. So what? Everything else about the game, from the way the staff is run to the announcements they make is modelled after a game company, so why shouldn't their interactions with their playerbase not be either?

I hope this clears some things up for you. I'm not "bashing" anyone, if anything, you are the one getting unnecessarily aggressive and personal. 

If my last reply didn't get to you, I also said, Have a great one, btw I'm not staff I just see inconsiderate comparisons being made which shouldn't. Which means I probably took it the wrong way, also yes we can agree to disagree and come to a common ground. I don't hate nor hold an opinion against you or another person. Just all the nonsensical bashing is getting old in the thread. And i too can come off like a jack [butt]. 

 

And all I was trying to get across is, everyone is human. They made this game out of their love for the game. Somethings can get misconstrued. They aren't a game company. So focusing on those subjects is wrong and I do agree that "respect is a 2 way street." And I can come to a conclusion within a civil manor

Edited June 25, 2021 by DRDoctor

[Eaty]

Heyho, I'd like to pick up on a couple of points that will most likely need a more detailed answer and will receive that from Keita later on.

 

I think it's a shame what is made of such an opportunity. Many players have expressed that they feel misunderstood and ignored in the past. Because of that, Keita has created the opportunity to publicly address one's own opinions, ideas and problems. Instead of taking advantage of this opportunity that many have asked for, it is used to insult and corner others.

 

Prehax and many other staffs - I count myself among them - have made mistakes in the past. But to see that players that have been handled with soft gloves complain about staff abuse is quite disappointing. 
There were players with more than ten infractions handled by several staffs that called him out for staff abuse while they should have been banned way earlier according to our punishment policy, along with a candidate that used third-party software and got a second chance because of his long playtime.
Of course you are free to complain about Prehax and other staffs, but then please do it properly. Name points, express constructive criticism and make suggestions for improvements. A fundamentally aggressive attitude will not get us any further. This counts to both staffs and players. 

 

Furthermore, I would like to shed some light on the "ignored" suggestions. We read all of the suggestions posted in the forum. It's just insanely time consuming to answer every thread. Once we plan to implement a suggestion we will add it to the dev to-do list.

 

There are weeks when I work on PRO for over 12 hours a day. The players often do not notice a lot of this, as it is often about changes that are not visible to the end user but are necessary.
PRO was at a point for a very long time where you could no longer work with the code. This applies to both client and server code. That was because the top priority was to do something that the players can see without considering the further negative effects it would have.
 

You should all keep in mind how much happened over the past two years.

Don't just hold onto the negative. There will be more progress that we can all look forward to.

 

 

[Teerav]

Wow, 10 pages already. I apologize, I simply do not have the time to read everything so if I repeat something others have already said, then at least its known they are not alone in their thoughts or opinions.

 

The time it takes for players to get an appeal started / replied to is too long.

Spoiler

 

Over the course of years, I have players come to me venting about waiting for over a week for a reply to their appeal. And I see this complaint often across different sub-communities within PRO. This is ridiculous. Theoretically, bans should only happen when there is significant evidence and staff should be prepared with an opening response at the time they ban someone. I understand it is staff policy to have Moderators or GMs who issue the bans deal with those cases. This is reasonable in the sense that the issuer has the best understanding of the case. Additionally, some bans can only be made due to access to sensitive information. I also understand each case can be unique and requires specific attention. However, there are many common cases that are simple.

 

I propose for staff to change their policy to allow the moderation team to hand off cases. If the Moderator or GM is so busy that appeals are taking over three days to get a response, there needs to be a lead within the moderation team that communications the charges against the player and hands the case off to someone else. A great example is if a player created multiple accounts (perhaps because they wanted to start the game with an epic starter). A year passed and a savvy GM finally found it. This is a simple case that can be handed off to a moderator that can take over the case without needing access to the sensitive information that was needed to charge the ban.

 

 

Staff need to be held to a higher standard and trained how to communicate with the community.

Spoiler

 

The community is the customer. When staff are communicating on official channels of PRO as a member of staff, they need to be acting as PRO wishes to be seen. Imagine you run a restaurant and a customer tells the cook that the food is not cooked to how they like it and they were rude about it. Would you be proud of your cook for saying, "I have put way too much work and hours cooking this food to be disrespected by anyone, staff or customer alike" loud enough for the rest of the customers in the restaurant to hear? I highly doubt those words will help the situation in any way. If I owned that restaurant, I would be embarrassed with how that staff member spoke to my customer. Even if the food was cooked well, the situation should have been handled better. And if that cook fails to see how their actions hurt the restaurant, they are not worth keeping around.

 

It should go without mentioning, this extends to Discord. It happens most on Discord. I have seen staff members joke and laugh after they block or ban people. This tells the rest of the community that moderators get a amusement out of banning people. This is not the sign of a healthy community.

 

You should be extra sensitive with this topic for members of staff that are higher-up and have constant communication with the community. If one of them is not disciplined and gets away with poor communication with the community, it will teach the rest of staff that behavior is okay. And when they are ultimately punished when the "higher-up" wasn't, you are going to have more problems than player-staff relations issues. 

 

 

And for f***'s sake, get some consistency in your rules across platforms. 

Spoiler

"Rules for thee but not for me." I see staff using saying f*** in their posts to the community. Even if using in an example, you are still saying it! You cannot swear in game. You cannot swear in forums, except staff can if they want. You can swear in Discord but only some things are allowed. It is so difficult to navigate PRO platforms when each one has a different set of rules. (I proved this point with your multiple Discords by advertising because half of them didn't have a rule against it. Which you retroactively enforced, by the way.) There needs to be more consistency across PRO platforms. I would not be surprised if a player has been muted in game because of swearing, then appealing with the excuse saying that they thought it was okay because they can swear in Discord. And the freedom to swear in Discord has most likely built bad habits for the staff that are now swearing on the forums.

 

 

I specifically avoided using names or references because these are general issues that have plagued player-staff relations for a very long time. I would be shocked if Admins were not aware of these issues and do not have any sort of references or knowledge about them. That would be truly a disappointment, because as far as I know, Admins are ultimately responsible for fixing them. Its sad to see an entire thread needing to be created in a manner like this, but when you allow staff to treat the community so poorly, you should not be caught off guard by the magnitude of complaints being made.

Edited June 25, 2021 by teerav

[Kynaros]

This just demonstrates the lack of preparation that this team has to command a game.
Unsurprisingly, the team shows that it has several favorite players, those who always go above and beyond the rules, and the team invents some reason not to punish. (happened several times during monthly tournaments, for example)
As if favoritism were not enough, they use personal taste to punish a certain player, things that do not happen in the game are considered for application of the sanction, they do not accept bans with professionalism as they should.
Finally, the team rarely observes players' opinions, it takes sacrifice and a lot of clamor for something to be reciprocated.
There is a certain team member who is at the height of this unpreparedness, and even superiors bow their heads at his ridiculous decisions.

forgive my poor english.

[Teerav]

6 minutes ago, Eaty said:

Heyho, I'd like to pick up on a couple of points that will most likely need a more detailed answer and will receive that from Keita later on.

 

I think it's a shame what is made of such an opportunity. Many players have expressed that they feel misunderstood and ignored in the past. Because of that, Keita has created the opportunity to publicly address one's own opinions, ideas and problems. Instead of taking advantage of this opportunity that many have asked for, it is used to insult and corner others.

 

Prehax and many other staffs - I count myself among them - have made mistakes in the past. But to see that players that have been handled with soft gloves complain about staff abuse is quite disappointing. 
There were players with more than ten infractions handled by several staffs that called him out for staff abuse while they should have been banned way earlier according to our punishment policy, along with a candidate that used third-party software and got a second chance because of his long playtime.
Of course you are free to complain about Prehax and other staffs, but then please do it properly. Name points, expresse constructive criticism and make suggestions for improvements. A fundamentally aggressive attitude will not get us any further. This counts to both staffs and players. 

 

Furthermore, I would like to shed some light on the "ignored" suggestions. We read all of the suggestions posted in the forum. It's just insanely time consuming to answer every thread. Once we plan to implement a suggestion we will add it to the dev to-do list.

 

There are weeks when I work on PRO for over 12 hours a day. The players often do not notice a lot of this, as it is often about changes that are not visible to the end user but are necessary.
PRO was at a point for a very long time where you could no longer work with the code. This applies to both client and server code. That was because the top priority was to do something that the players can see without considering the further negative effects it would have.
 

You should all keep in mind how much happened over the past two years.

Don't just hold onto the negative. There will be more progress that we can all look forward to.

 

 

 

This post really only highlights some more issues. It is very common knowledge that you run staff with complete dictatorship, therefore you have the absolute power to improve the player-staff relationship from the top-down.

 

Since you mentioned Prehax, I have to imagine that a big reason as to why this thread is necessary is because of a post he made literally five days ago that essentially started off by telling everyone to f--- off. Not literally, but that is how it came off. If you have been reading other's comments, I am not alone in that opinion. I am not sure if "five days" is far enough back to look past.

 

I am extremely disturbed with how you and other members of staff treat insults and non-constructive criticism. Firstly, English is not everyone's first language. Secondly, when someone is upset, being reasonable or responding constructively is difficult. You must take this into consideration when you read someone's complaint. Take a moment and try to view it through their eyes and formulate their frustration. Your quote and Prehax's language from the post linked above gives me the impression that staff immediately dismisses complaints if they are insulting or rude. I believe you will struggle to grow or improve if you constantly dismiss complaints from players too frustrated (or not well-spoken enough) to formulate constructive criticism. 

 

When you say that you spend weeks of 12 hour days on things we do not see, this is concerning. When I was a member of staff, team leads were afraid or unwilling to approve ideas or suggestions because they would also need to be approved by you first. I hear stories of content scripters having passion to code new things, only to be dismissed by you. You need to learn how to distribute work and responsibility. You also need to learn how to trust others. The PvP Council is a great example of you failing to trusting your team. Hopefully you've learned from that experience. And hopefully you learn from this thread as well.