Lets talk together about Staff & Player relationship !

[Fabiojouyt]

@Shinohara  por decir tontito mutean , un moderador llamado flare nose que se quiere hacer el piola deberian regular sus comportamiento , que asco el abuso de poder

[Ishan2020]

Hello Keita and everyone,

As everyone knows people get banned for “investigation”

But I think shouldn’t the investigation done before the ban?

Sometimes the mods don’t even have solid proof 

The Staff is really kind to everyone but few mistakes makes them bad?

This is fan made game no point in targeting any staff yeah even Q8 :v

Thanks this is what I think,sorry my English isn’t that good sorry for that

Regards,

IshanOMG/Ishan2020.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Ishan2020

[Mcschitter]

8 hours ago, Shinohara said:

 

Hi there @McSchitter

 

I will address each one of your points separately, like you did, so it's easier for both of us.

 

1. Suggestions are something that are pretty much DEV-only things and absolutely not to GM. I would like to say Administration in general, but the knowledge of what's possible on PRO and what not, as well as the really detailed and complete to-do list of PRO (where those include adding non-existing features on client or server) is known only by DEVs.
   Yes, you can find a public to-do list of DEVs, but that serves more as a list of things the DEVs works now and will work in the future, however, none of us is able to know exactly what needs to be done in order to implement something.
   For example, to implement simple pokemon moves/ability in the game, but as well MEGAs, that you would think it's hard but not that much, took A LOT of work from DEVs exactly cause there is a lot of background work that needs to be done and that is not visible to anyone except DEVs.
   What players, and 99% of the staff, sees is pretty much the aesthetic part of the final result, however that part is probably less than 30% of the whole effective work that as required to reach that result.
   
   DEVs actually check the Suggestion Area more than you can expect; they actually do it really frequently.
   What is lacking is definitely answers on those topics, not for all of them (see a lot replied by walros) but many of them for sure. A lot of threads are unreplied cause people just repeat the same request someone did like 2 months before and that had already received a reply. I don't think it's really good to leave people with no answers even in those cases, but I think that's something more fit for the Community Coordinator team (it's not one of their duties at the moment, so they did no mistake) and I will check with them about it in the following days so even people that suggested things that were already suggested and got an answer before can actually get informed about it.
   
   However, giving how many people repeat the same suggestions, I think it's not entirely staff fault but as well players one for not doing a small research before even making their post.
   As for the things that didn't get an answer at all, we will clearly discuss it as well in order to have a sort of comfortable system both for the DEVs and players.
    

   ---

    

2. I think the first point cover this as well.
    

   ---

   
    
3. I think you are wrong regarding this. Q & A (question and answer) is something where someone (acting as interviewer) ask things and you answer to them.
   In a normal video you should prepare questions in advance, as you need to record it.
   However, during a live stream, you should focus on reading chat and effectively answers the questions that are asked to you in live.
   
   I am not saying that we cannot make actually a Q&A in a video-format by preparing the questions in advance; what I am saying is that the format you have in mind is a Q&A but with a format that is not one for a livestream but rather a video.
   Could we do one in a video-format but in live? Yes, why not, but I don't think there was any error committed until now if the questions answered were the one made in the live chat. I think the important is having users asking questions (whatever passes on their mind) and staff answering them, and that's actually what's been done.
   
   Good to point out that one of the first Q&A was organized by me in terms of questions, where I had prepared the questions before the  effective live and then Walross read the answers and added his part (obviously). However users (major part) were quite annoyed by the fact we were not answering chat one but focussing mainly on the one we had prepared in advance. 
   But yeah, there are no limits regarding that, so preparing questions in advance and making a thread about it is not something we are against.
    

   ---

    

4. Staff Related Questions regarding criticism
   I do actually totally disagree here, as it's exactly my role the one to handle the staff members in terms of how they feel inside a staff and if they have to voice out something.
   I always did my part and many, many, many people always came to me to talk and vent about something and we were able to find a solution together, or unfortunately there was no solution possible but at least that person had someone to rely on and talk with.
   
   Obviously, there are also people that just close themselves within their groups. I had a small groups of 3 people within staff that rather than voicing out their problems and come to talk to me (or as well Red, or any Dev) just started trash-talking a lot of staff members in a small private group, ad that's just wrong.
   
   Remember that what you have talked about is always a double-path/way/route thing. I can stretch out my hand toward someone in the best and kindest of the way, but if that person will refuse to take that and won't explain me why (despite me worrying and asking) then there is nothing that me, or anyone else, can do about it as I cannot force someone.
   
   However, I got to say that a lot of people come to talk to me or I even go to them before they do (when I notice something is strange).
   Except rare cases as the one described above, I think people voice their opinions really well. But again, if people refuse to do that with anyone from the management team or admin team (I am probably the most fit as that's exactly my role, but if they go to their leader or anotehr admin I am really fine anyway as long as it helps in solving the issue) then there is not much we can do as that's a double-path/way/route thing as explained above.
   
   Just to clarify, I also bump a post about it within the staff team sometimes that talks exactly about it (contacting proper people if you have a issue/concern or similar, as together we can find a solution or at least do our best to try it).
   
    

 

If you want to ask anything else, please feel free to do so and I will do my best, as you know, to help with that.
I don't mind if you do it here or in DM as we did before, whatever it's more comfortable for you.

- Keita
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think I see the problem in what I am saying here so let me try again on probably the most important point here but is a little more off topic to the overall thread I suppose so we can take it to PMs if preferred.

 

I think just about every point here you bring up is at least mostly valid if not correct so I will not argue semantics of whose right or wrong. I think all these things boil down to the same problem. The Devs do not play their own game.

 

Maybe Wally and frens do read the suggestions from time to time. Like the time Cames added Clamperl's item code because of course he did, dudes a homie lol. However, as I mentioned in my example from bullet point (2.), even after referring Wally to the information in a suggestion thread it was clear there was still the disconnect about the issue at hand. He wanted guild members to still be able to queue into each other and because of his lacking gameplay knowledge he naturally cannot understand the struggles that are caused by the current system. It is not like this is brand new news to anyone either its been a gradually deteriorating situation since the inception of the q/g system. I got to give Wally credit where credit is due, he finally compromised and understood the situation after a while of trying our hardest to stress the importance of this and we found a happy medium for everyone involved. THIS is what we need, someone who can help keep Devs who cannot play their own game actually informed about these important things and issues being caused. It is like having an informant on the streets keeping you educated on what is going on and having this information is key for decision making.

 

In my mind I would hope we kind of already have this kind of helpful information being transmitted on the PvP side by the council and this should extend to other areas as well (PMs are always open I literally go out of my way to try and help this game including being a huge donating whale when I still had tons of hope, think I am invested in seeing this game get better). Having someone who literally just makes it their job to keep a finger on the pulse of the community and understanding what is going on I think is just too crucial at this point. Maybe testers but I do think this is a job all on its own. 

 

Bit of a side addition here as well, but having someone like this who is capable of communicating might also be helpful in being able to make it their job as well to promote and help educate the community about decisions made by Wally, Spawn Editors, etc. They get a ton of sh*t that sometimes is undeserved just because of who they are and not the content of the change they are making like a certain change to hunting lol (once again not trying to say I am a communicator but I also am not saying I am not *wink wink*). You want someone who is clearly trying to be on both sides meaning that someone who the community obviously knows can be critical of what staff is doing but also understand their side and why something is being done. The upside is they can deal with the PR disasters created when things like mega metagross gets banned prematurely or hunting changes people do not understand are made instead of making it something that Wally has to deal with when his strengths lay less so in the communication side (think it is fair to say this).

 

Lastly, to get back on track here after advertising myself shamelessly :harold: , I think the wording I used for the QA stream was off. In similar fashion to the above, I think it is correct to do live question and answer format taking in fresh questions and what not. The issue at hand is that some really good questions frequently are unanswerable because Wally is not really up to date on the information regarding the topic as I said above. In this live format, that is problematic because he might make a conclusion on the spot that is horribly wrong about what is being asked and it is because there is no prior prep work being done. This is an area that I think definitely could use improvement.

 

Overall, this is not really as on topic anymore with the point of your thread so I do not want to dwell to much more deeply into this to let you focus on others here but these are my thoughts with regards to your reply and my shameless advertising lol.

[Firenze5621]

The mods are too fast to ban players and take centuries to answer in appeal.Why so?

Due to this waiting,the player gets frustrated and stops to even appeal further.

I clearly know that mods can take a while or something but if they take too much time then what about our acc and stuff.

Due to this(What I am thinking)the solution which could be given in weeks could go till months and so on.

[Smokincatcher]

Hi, as my concerned i think all kind of staff mostly do great job, not any problem with moderators we see them often ingame, its cool they take time to talk with us, but i guess problem is above, cause sometimes they help players with tips, but for some questions they just cant answer cause they seem not knowing whats happening above them. 

For example event forms odds, ok we know now that eaty or whoever decide this dont want us to know anymore, but moderators cant even tell us the reason why, in this situation there will be people complaining ofc, exactly like the bot reborn rework, you put this 1 st without warning people they will not get benefits anymore to use their favorite helpful hunting tool, 2nd when we ask good explanations we mostly get " we are right you dont" with some words like idiot etc, brings some people to misunderstanding, frustration, and ofc even more anger and there is ways to be more diplomatic with people like some staff does pretty good to me. 

Since we talked about felix i dont blame him for everything, he asked our feedbacks about the bot thing and we all acted like he was responsible of everything, but we dont even know if he decided this in the 1st place, there you could make some improvment too, sometimes people just need a bit more transparency, like again an example you guys told us heracross is now higher tiers in historical site, but didnt see an explanation on the fact it seemed nerfed now, look like excas now works like rarity in wild so common more common rare even more rare, for something u have to pay and look like less worthy since you catch mostly trash like usually,  it will not make beginners attracted by excas  

With this it looks like you dont want to give explanations on some stuff, but you are very transparent on most other stuff, and it makes us even more wondering ourselves why.

So as u can see a lack of explanations can sometimes easily explain some troubles we could meet between staff and players, tho im glad eaty you admit you can make some mistakes, everyone does, the worst being from decide stuff and let your staff deal with it i guess.

Thanks for reading me.   #makebotreborngreatagain

 

Edited June 25, 2021 by smokincatcher

[8294ayush]

My small question :-

1= why mod take too much time to reply permanent ban application...

2=I know they have to many applications but then also it takes 25 days like something...

3= And mod talk too rudely like they show they have power to do anything...

 

I am not blaming anyone....i just saw many times ...

Thank you for making this thread...

[Shadowdanny]

DISCLAIMER

 

• I am not making this thread to hate/slander any staff in PRO, so please do not take this the wrong way
• Please do not feel bad if you are the staff, that you know I am talking about. Its all for the well being of the game

 

 

 

 

Alright, I am writing this thread, for obviously Player-Staff-Relationship!!... and well... things aren't looking too good for PRO at the moment.

Player-Staff-Relationship?: Ok lets start off saying the PSR is not good in this game. I am not saying its terrible, but its not just good to put it nicely. Lets start off the with the facts, shall we? 

1. Why does it take so much time for the staffs to reply our appeals? Ok... so this is a major problem I hate in PRO and it is the fact that when a staff mute/bans you and you make an appeal, you are pretty much guaranteed not to get answered in a week or so. I always assumed that before a staff mute/bans a player, they would have made a report stating why they banned the player and their infraction/punishment. But no, this does not seem to be the case, as sometimes when you asked a staff what did you do, they say you-know-what-you-did ( I don't know, thats why I am asking). This is a big problem as if a player does not get some type of reply, they get frustrated, angry and most importantly, sad. I know the staffs volunteered for this work and don't get payed, but show some dedication at least. If you mute/ban someone, get your facts ready because you know the person is going to appeal and this will make the appeal go smoother and more organized if you already have the facts. 

2. Why do MODS not talk much in general chat in PRO?: Maybe some people are happy about this, because it gives them a little more freedom to talk, but.... I hardly see any MODS in general PRO chat. I know they are there, because how else would they know when you did something wrong, to mute/ban you, if nobody reported you. Its a volunteer work and all that.... but honestly that saying 'Its a Volunteer work, we have other things to do' is sounding less than a reason and more of an excuse. I just feel if MODS talked a little more in general chat, and interacted with us a bit more, then I feel the community would be much nicer.

3. The Excuse: This is just a straight-up thing I also hate in PRO and its the fact that, If we make a complain like 'Why do they take so much time to answer appeals'  Your immediate answer is, 'This is a volunteer work, we have other things to deal with.' Yes, it is a volunteer work that you *signed* up for, meaning they were certain requirements to be met when you applied. Just because you volunteered for this does not mean because you don't get paid, you show little-to-no dedication to what you applied for. I just feel that the staffs should be more honest, like: I was busy with other appeals, sorry to have not replied to you soon enough. If Staffs can say this, it gives the players assurity that they care, and next time they do make appeals, the players would be more understanding if the Staffs don't reply them on time.

4. Staffs are unkind?: This is does not even apply to majority of staff, just 1 and maybe 2 people. Most staffs love to make their power shown, by taunting us, jabbing us, calling us idiots, acting so unprofessional and sometimes even swearing. If this is not bad enough, if you jab them back, rest assured your account will be Special banned next day. Thats just how I see 1 or 2 staffs act... anyway, I just feel that a little bit patience will not hurt anyone. We all are growing up, and majority of the staffs think that PRO is a 18+ game and everyone should be mature and not do anything wrong... Im just going to let you guys figure this whole mess out.

5. Oh did we think we were done?: Oh no, ANOTHER thing staffs do I feel is kind of unfair to players, is that whether or not you got falsely banned or not, you are immediately blacklisted as someone the staffs should instantly ban if you even step a toe out of line. But Im like... WHAT IS THIS? Sometimes you see trolls insulting players, calling them names I don't even know the meaning... but if I say ST U ( I would let you figure out what the other word is supposed to be), they totally ignore the guy who has been calling us names and all that and they turn their attention to me and ban me... This just shows they don't act even 1% professional and they do what they want based on their emotions. How do I know they don't punish this other player? BECAUSE, he will still come back the next day and start all over... and me probably being muted or banned for swearing, is just thinking to myself look at these clowns. 

6. I might make a 2 page essay at this point: Look, the staffs do not have major problems, just 3-4 problems that most staff do all the time, however this would not be fair, without bashing the players would it. So to all PRO players listening please:

Try not to judge all staffs based on your experience with just 1 of these many staffs.
Try to be understanding that they did actually volunteer for this and not to be so entitled that they should answer you first 
And lastly, read the rules before playing the game so that even if you do not like a staff, do not break the rules and you won't bother each other   

PS: I just wanted to say this thread is not to bash on any staff, heck we got staffs like: Keita, Cames, Monteria, Tinvinn, the homies you know , and we got other staff (s).... 

#Soloisnothanbutanantis

Edited June 25, 2021 by ShadowDanny

[Yellow]

I've noticed a couple recurring questions with no answer regarding ban processes. I'm sure Keita will also reply later, and to the other questions also, but as a GM who has left relatively recently, I'd like to shed some light on these ones.

 

4 hours ago, Ishan2020 said:

Hello Keita and everyone,

As everyone knows people get banned for “investigation”

But I think shouldn’t the investigation done before the ban?

Sometimes the mods don’t even have solid proof 

The Staff is really kind to everyone but few mistakes makes them bad?

This is fan made game no point in targeting any staff yeah even Q8 :v

Thanks this is what I think,sorry my English isn’t that good sorry for that

Regards,

IshanOMG/Ishan2020.

 

Hi @Ishan2020

 

There are typically 3 "kinds" of ban reason - Attempted, Successful and Investigation. Attempted and Successful ban reasons have enough supporting evidence for Moderation to make a call without any dependency on further investigation from the player. 

 

The Investigation ban reason is usually given for 1 of 2 reasons (or both in some cases):

 

1. To remove an immediate threat from the account/game.

A TMOD example of this is if an account is suspected to have been hacked, it will be banned immediately for investigation and to create a line of contact with account owner (if they weren't already aware of the risk) to ensure they reset the password before continuing to play. This also protects the account from any more damage, if there was any, and the risk of irreversible damage.
 

2. Not all evidence/details can be found without speaking to the player directly. This means the investigation/evidence at the time of banning is not complete.

In some cases, you will need to speak to the player directly to confirm aspects of the story. This is especially common in Rank Boosting and Scams, so I'll give examples of those.

 

To give a couple examples in relation to Rank Boosting - if an account is shared and it is unclear if the infraction was made by the account owner or another player whilst using the account, or multiple players play from the same internet connection, etc. This may also happen in Boosting where a player chooses to accept a battle from a player on the same IP (not against the rules but recommended against because it will be investigated), a guildie, or seems to be boosting/boosted by a specific player - given the data Staff use to investigate, it is very hard to concretely determine the intent of these matchups, and often has to be clarified verbally with all involved players.

 

An example of where this would happen in a Scam case, quite often players don't agree all aspects of the trade agreement upfront (this is why there was new trade rules added, and existing trade rules were given extra details). An extremely common example is when the duration of a lend hasn't been specified, from the reported evidence, it's clear that both players understand that it is a lend, but maybe the lendee has now had it for 2 weeks and the lender feels that is excessive and they want it back. The lendee will be banned for investigation, to determine whether they were just keeping the Pokemon for an extended amount of time, were too busy to return it, just plainly forgot etc, or if their intention was to steal and keep the Pokemon for good - this would not be possible without a line of communication to the player.

 

---

 

2 hours ago, 8294ayush said:

My small question :-

1= why mod take too much time to reply permanent ban application...

2=I know they have to many applications but then also it takes 25 days like something...

3= And mod talk too rudely like they show they have power to do anything...

 

I am not blaming anyone....i just saw many times ...

Thank you for making this thread...

Hi @8294ayush

 

For your questions 1 and 2 - firstly, I apologise if you have ever felt that your appeal process has taken longer than necessary, especially if it was as excessive as 25 days. 

 

There are a lot of reasons for this, but there are 3 big ones that I will share with you.

 

The first being that the ban issued was an Investigation ban - more detail on this is in my response to Ishan2020 above - but in short, if there is adequate evidence to suggest an immediate risk to an account or the game, the bulk of the investigation will take place after the ban, since in a high risk case the priority is to reduce the amount of damage and to prevent as much irreversible damage as possible.

Depending on the case, the amount of time this takes varies - I have personally worked on Account Hack or RMT cases that have taken over a week (where a huge number of accounts were involved), meaning that all of my other work backs up too in the meantime. Which leads me onto the second reason: that there is something higher priority going on, again, this happens in cases where there is an immediate risk or threat to an account or the game. Staff workloads aren't publicly available for the community to see, but to put it clearly, if I am made aware that there is a mass account hack happening, I will drop everything I am working on to remove any immediate risks, then I will pick up my normal workload again after.

Quite simply, sometimes there is just something more important and demands the time and attention, and I wish there was enough time or number of hands to prevent it having a huge knock on effect, which leads me onto my third reason: is that sometimes there just isn't enough hours in the day, or enough staff members to do the job. Prior to Jhizen joining the team, and Qeight returning, for a good deal of time the GM team consisted of just me and Senrosia. I'm sure you may roll your eyes when you read this, but this reason is given often because it's true: all staff members volunteer, they're not paid, staff do this outside of real life commitments, and real life will come first. Despite knowingly signing up for this work, the amount can be too much for the size of the Moderation team.

I'll use myself as an example here to explain more clearly. Outside of PRO, I work a full-time job. There are some days I would only have had 1-2 hours available to spend on PRO, so I would spend this time doing the higher priority things first, which means that the number of cases I had but also the amount of time since I had last dealt with a particular case both increase, at one point I had 120+ active (by active I mean current and waiting on reply) cases - even if I had given each 10 minutes a day (which often isn't enough), that was a minimum of 20 hours worth of work, and it's not like once you've spent those 10 minutes that it's done for good and off your plate, the player replies, you investigate their reply, etc, it's a cycle until the case is closed, and if I only have 1-2 hours each day from Monday-Friday, that's an impossible workload to manage that is fair to everyone, and that's just appeals alone. Now I understand this is an extreme example, coming from a former GM who at the time was part of a team of two people - but the reality I want to share is that if the staff member has the time, they will give you the time, if they don't, they won't have it to give.

 

The only real fix for these problems is to have more staff members, but this is not as easy as it sounds. You must find people who are skilled, willing and are doing it for the right reasons. The right reasons are important because being staff is stressful, and if you aren't motivated by the right things, you won't last more than a couple months. The number of good applications that fit this criteria is low. You must then train these individuals, and during this period this is often where Staff will find that maybe the Apprentice isn't suitable, or maybe the Apprentice decides that this isn't actually for them. 

 

It is a known problem, however I would like to point out that the number of appeals that go more than a couple days without response are low, and it's usually GM/Admin cases that take the longest since those groups also have the most diverse roles with the most work to do, but are also the smallest teams because of the criteria to be promoted into one of these roles. I understand the frustration, but for the times response rates are an issue, there isn't a simple or quick fix.

 

For question 3, again I apologise if you feel that this has happened to you. If you feel that a member of Moderation is being rude or unfair to you in your appeal, you can make a Complaint, where a Team Lead or Admin will review the behaviour of the mod and act accordingly. There is a line between being firm in order to find out the facts in a clear and concise way, and being rude. You absolutely shouldn't have to put up with the latter, even if you have broken the rules.

 

I hope that this helps both of you and others with the same questions, but if it is unclear, or you have further questions you are more than welcome to ask.

Edit: @ShadowDanny - I have just seen you have mentioned a couple of the points I have addressed above. I hope that this also helps you too, same goes for you if you have any questions you want to ask.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Ehkoe

[Shadowdanny]

6 minutes ago, Ehkoe said:

I've noticed a couple recurring questions with no answer regarding ban processes. I'm sure Keita will also reply later, and to the other questions also, but as a GM who has left relatively recently, I'd like to shed some light on these ones.

 

 

Hi @Ishan2020

 

There are typically 3 "kinds" of ban reason - Attempted, Successful and Investigation. Attempted and Successful ban reasons have enough supporting evidence for Moderation to make a call without any dependency on further investigation from the player. 

 

The Investigation ban reason is usually given for 1 of 2 reasons (or both in some cases):

 

1. To remove an immediate threat from the account/game.

A TMOD example of this is if an account is suspected to have been hacked, it will be banned immediately for investigation and to create a line of contact with account owner (if they weren't already aware of the risk) to ensure they reset the password before continuing to play. This also protects the account from any more damage, if there was any, and the risk of irreversible damage.
 

2. Not all evidence/details can be found without speaking to the player directly. This means the investigation/evidence at the time of banning is not complete.

In some cases, you will need to speak to the player directly to confirm aspects of the story. This is especially common in Rank Boosting and Scams, so I'll give examples of those.

 

To give a couple examples in relation to Rank Boosting - if an account is shared and it is unclear if the infraction was made by the account owner or another player whilst using the account, or multiple players play from the same internet connection, etc. This may also happen in Boosting where a player chooses to accept a battle from a player on the same IP (not against the rules but recommended against because it will be investigated), a guildie, or seems to be boosting/boosted by a specific player - given the data Staff use to investigate, it is very hard to concretely determine the intent of these matchups, and often has to be clarified verbally with all involved players.

 

An example of where this would happen in a Scam case, quite often players don't agree all aspects of the trade agreement upfront (this is why there was new trade rules added, and existing trade rules were given extra details). An extremely common example is when the duration of a lend hasn't been specified, from the reported evidence, it's clear that both players understand that it is a lend, but maybe the lendee has now had it for 2 weeks and the lender feels that is excessive and they want it back. The lendee will be banned for investigation, to determine whether they were just keeping the Pokemon for an extended amount of time, were too busy to return it, just plainly forgot etc, or if their intention was to steal and keep the Pokemon for good - this would not be possible without a line of communication to the player.

 

---

 

Hi @8294ayush

 

For your questions 1 and 2 - firstly, I apologise if you have ever felt that your appeal process has taken longer than necessary, especially if it was as excessive as 25 days. 

 

There are a lot of reasons for this, but there are 3 big ones that I will share with you.

 

The first being that the ban issued was an Investigation ban - more detail on this is in my response to Ishan2020 above - but in short, if there is adequate evidence to suggest an immediate risk to an account or the game, the bulk of the investigation will take place after the ban, since in a high risk case the priority is to reduce the amount of damage and to prevent as much irreversible damage as possible.

Depending on the case, the amount of time this takes varies - I have personally worked on Account Hack or RMT cases that have taken over a week (where a huge number of accounts were involved), meaning that all of my other work backs up too in the meantime. Which leads me onto the second reason: that there is something higher priority going on, again, this happens in cases where there is an immediate risk or threat to an account or the game. Staff workloads aren't publicly available for the community to see, but to put it clearly, if I am made aware that there is a mass account hack happening, I will drop everything I am working on to remove any immediate risks, then I will pick up my normal workload again after.

Quite simply, sometimes there is just something more important and demands the time and attention, and I wish there was enough time or number of hands to prevent it having a huge knock on effect, which leads me onto my third reason: is that sometimes there just isn't enough hours in the day, or enough staff members to do the job. Prior to Jhizen joining the team, and Qeight returning, for a good deal of time the GM team consisted of just me and Senrosia. I'm sure you may roll your eyes when you read this, but this reason is given often because it's true: all staff members volunteer, they're not paid, staff do this outside of real life commitments, and real life will come first. Despite knowingly signing up for this work, the amount can be too much for the size of the Moderation team.

I'll use myself as an example here to explain more clearly. Outside of PRO, I work a full-time job. There are some days I would only have had 1-2 hours available to spend on PRO, so I would spend this time doing the higher priority things first, which means that the number of cases I had but also the amount of time since I had last dealt with a particular case both increase, at one point I had 120+ active (by active I mean current and waiting on reply) cases - even if I had given each 10 minutes a day (which often isn't enough), that was a minimum of 20 hours worth of work, and it's not like once you've spent those 10 minutes that it's done for good and off your plate, the player replies, you investigate their reply, etc, it's a cycle until the case is closed, and if I only have 1-2 hours each day from Monday-Friday, that's an impossible workload to manage that is fair to everyone, and that's just appeals alone. Now I understand this is an extreme example, coming from a former GM who at the time was part of a team of two people - but the reality I want to share is that if the staff member has the time, they will give you the time, if they don't, they won't have it to give.

 

The only real fix for these problems is to have more staff members, but this is not as easy as it sounds. You must find people who are skilled, willing and are doing it for the right reasons. The right reasons are important because being staff is stressful, and if you aren't motivated by the right things, you won't last more than a couple months. The number of good applications that fit this criteria is low. You must then train these individuals, and during this period this is often where Staff will find that maybe the Apprentice isn't suitable, or maybe the Apprentice decides that this isn't actually for them. 

 

It is a known problem, however I would like to point out that the number of appeals that go more than a couple days without response are low, and it's usually GM/Admin cases that take the longest since those groups also have the most diverse roles with the most work to do, but are also the smallest teams because of the criteria to be promoted into one of these roles. I understand the frustration, but for the times response rates are an issue, there isn't a simple or quick fix.

 

For question 3, again I apologise if you feel that this has happened to you. If you feel that a member of Moderation is being rude or unfair to you in your appeal, you can make a Complaint, where a Team Lead or Admin will review the behaviour of the mod and act accordingly. There is a line between being firm in order to find out the facts in a clear and concise way, and being rude. You absolutely shouldn't have to put up with the latter, even if you have broken the rules.

 

I hope that this helps both of you and others with the same questions, but if it is unclear, or you have further questions you are more than welcome to ask.

Edit: @ShadowDanny - I have just seen you have mentioned a couple of the points I have addressed above. I hope that this also helps you too, same goes for you if you have any questions you want to ask.

Thank you for clearing that up, this is the type of transparency that I want to see, that staffs don't do often

[Eaty]

10 hours ago, teerav said:

 

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.

 

It's incredibly easy to comment on or judge something from the outside that's why I want to give you some insight.
As far as the moderation is concerned, I'm hardly involved at all. There have been several situations in which I have clashed with moderators or GMs, but it had absolutely nothing to do with a dictatorship. It was more often about rules that are technically not possible. One of them, for example, was to permanently remove players from the game and forbid to create new accounts, which cannot be done with our tools, and I was absolutely against banning someone who had played on a new account without breaking rules. Of course, the other side also had good reasons to hold on to it, but it was impossible. Even companies such as Blizzard cannot prevent that. To say that situations like this make me a dictator while having no idea is beyond presumptuous.

 

There have been situations in which smaller groups within Discord were formed that only shit-talked staffs and primarily me. However, this was only made public after they left the team. There were accusations such as "You don't give a fuck about moderation staffs cause you unbanned GoldenPikachu", although I would like to mention that this never happened. GoldenPikachu, like many others, only had the permission to create a new account, as we can't really prevent him from doing so.

 

As for the PvP Council, I would like to speak about this once more.
I made a lot of mistakes there that I wouldn't make again. However, it was originally not intended as a PvP Council, which I also wrote publicly. It should serve as a discussion platform. That many of those involved were outraged that they could not decide/vote for PvP bans on their own is a mystery to me to this day. I don't want to shirk my responsibility here either, some decisions should have been made earlier.
Now Joro is in control of it and I am sure that there are only few who are dissatisfied with it.

 

Well, the argument that players can't give constructive criticism because their English isn't good enough is an incredibly weak argument. There are always ways to express constructive criticism. May it be with the help of friends or staffs who speak the same language. The only reason not being able to express constructive criticism is that you don't have any. And should someone not being able to express constructive criticism because he, she or diverse was too frustrated in that situation, then it's still possible once calmed down.
As mentioned earlier, both Prehax and other staffs have made mistakes in the past and have been confronted for them. This is currently being done by Keita. Should new cases arise, the forum can be used to forward them.

 

As for the mentioned scripter situation, all I can say is that there could only be two possible reasons why this could have happened.
The most likely is that the implementation required new features that were not implemented for various reasons and the other is that there wasn't a good reward system.
Everything else is usually waved through. If there were other reasons, I am open to listen to and comment on them.
I would say that scripters and I work very closely together, as they are often very dependent on dev changes.

 

Honestly, why should I keep scripters from adding more content to the game?