Ideas to lighten staff workload.

[stoicreader]

I was sitting at the request tool and noticed that requests are given a number, like a ticket at the deli. So I looked at the number of one ticket I picked and the number of the next ticket and I discovered the staff are churning out resolutions to hundreds of requests over just a few days.

That work load is immense... Its my belief that if staff has less work they will play with us more in game. How can we make it easier?

Discuss.

[stoicreader]

Maybe with the gift of level 3 Karma comes with minor staffing responsibilities? Approving character applications for zero karma accounts.

If staff noticed a PC squeezed out into the game world inappropriately they can then see who approved the character and strip the karma.

[ghanima]

Let's take a week off sending in complaints.

After that let's take a week off suggesting sending in complaints on the GDB if x, y, or z happens to you.

Rinse and repeat.

[stoicreader]

Instead of doing account reviews and approving karma to instead do karma algorithmically and thus saving staffing energy.

The real purpose of karma is to protect the IG world from newbies who don't understand how things work. (I'm new, but read everything about the game obsessively.)

Staff already punishes karma for bad behavior so this wouldn't add any extra work to the staff, only lighten it. Reseting or extending karmic algorithms would be the "set it and forget it" punishment so you won't be petitioned.

This would shift energy from "ask permission" to "ask forgiveness".

Many players, I would imagine, send character reports to pander to the staff and demonstrate good behavior to "win" karma. By getting rid of this motivation meaningless reports would be drastically reduced. Also saving staffing energy.

[stoicreader]

Approved level 3 karma players moderate the GDB, not the staff.

Delegate like you've done with helpers, who are GREAT for the game! I use helpers regularly and LOVE IT. <3

[chrisdcoulombe]

Character reports aren't for pandering to get Karma lol.  Its so your clan staff can know what is going on and have more fun playing with you.  By animating or creating situations that go toward your goal, or against it maybe, depending on your choices.   To put realistic challenges up for your character.  And to help with things you are trying to accomplish.

[stoicreader]

Character reports aren't for pandering to get Karma lol.  Its so your clan staff can know what is going on and have more fun playing with you.  By animating or creating situations that go toward your goal, or against it maybe, depending on your choices.   To put realistic challenges up for your character.  And to help with things you are trying to accomplish.

They aren't for building Karma, but if you ask how to build karma, character reports will always come up. I can wager that folks soley send in reports for karmic purposes.

I feel like I jump up and down waving my arms like the nerd on the basketball team who's wide open but no one passes the karma ball to. I think it's silly to waste staff time to look at my 95% solo play, and "gimmi gimme gimme I deserve this, I'm entitled to you're free game perks".

I've only seen staff animations once, and RP improved notably with folks around me. If staff were to pop in regularly and play with characters, because their time is freed up, the game would be really INCREDIBLE. <3

Abuses will self regulate in the backend with more staff animation time vs the front end with more staff administrative work.

[Riev]

We have like a dozen staff members, and an average of about 100 requests resolved per week. Thats 10 requests a week (if things were spread out, though we all know they aren't). They also are not, in any way, all reports and long-winded things to read and respond to, and in particularly heavy weeks, you get as many "join a clan forum" requests as you do character reports.

Don't assume staff have "too much workload" and thats why they can't interact with the game. Staff have busy lives, most of them live in the same time-zone/country so depending on the hours, they can't do anything anyways.

Plus red tape, saying that your staff can't animate for another clan without permission, which can take upwards of a week to get in the first place.

Staff are volunteers. If they were "too busy", they'd hire more staff, or reduce their workload. Its not on us, as players, to decide we're "overloading them" and cater to their needs. We are the customer.

[chrisdcoulombe]

I agree with that,  but I don't send in reports to get Karma.  If I am not in a leader role or if nothing major happens or I don't have a story to tell, I don't send in a report.

I don't think not sending in reports is a good way to free up staff time honestly, pretty sure they like getting reports.   Reports allow for the animations to be more realistic.

I agree it is fun with staff come to play with us and they do pretty often if you are in the right places at the right time. 

I think I like the idea of someone or a select few high Karma players regulating the Gdb the most. Its not invasive like if they were approving apps.

[stoicreader]

We have like a dozen staff members, and an average of about 100 requests resolved per week.

ID 75758         2017-06-08
ID 81388         2018-04-03

Difference = 5630 over a period of 10 months. = 563 a month or 18ish a day.

This may not include administrative work for
ingame bug reports
new PC applications
GDB monitoring
Email correspondence
website
marketing

That's just in addition to...

[Riev]

I'ma just check my math here real quick...

18 a day, times 7 days a week... thats 120 a week. So. About 100 requests resolved a week, over 12-13 staff.

And you don't know WHAT those entail, and how long they take any particular staffer. 18 a day shared over 12 staff is one request a day. For a volunteer force, thats nothing.


But even regardless of all that, the answer is not "stop sending requests". It might be "more staff". It might be "shifted workloads". But I cannot accept that the way to "get more staff to animate" is to stop sending in requests. They volunteered for their position, the onus is on them to complete the work assigned. IT SUCKS that they have homework to do for a game, but thats what being staff is.

[Lizzie]

A lot of those requests are duplicate bug reports sent by more than one player about the exact same thing. It only has to ACTUALLY be addressed once, and then they close out all 20 reports.

A lot of it is join a clan/leave a clan, which takes all of three seconds by the clan staffer. If one clan staffer has 20 requests in a single day of this type, it means another clan staffer doesn't (since you're looking at averages, which are pointless in this discussion).

In addition, there are probably hundreds of requests that were never closed out. I can count several on my account alone, that no one ever closed, even though they were resolved YEARS ago. That means no one is resolving these requests, which makes it look like there are more requests than there really are that need to be resolved.

We can play more with averages: My first recorded request on this account was August, 2006. The request number was 1293.
My latest request was submitted 2 days ago, April 26, and the request number is 81822. It's not resolved yet since it's a character report and those usually stay open for a week (sometimes longer).

81822-1293=81529 requests since August 2006. That's 81,529 requests, in 138 months. 81,529/138=591 (give or take) requests per month. Average 30 days in a month, so that's 19 requests per day, divided among 12 staffers. That means each staffer has to handle, on average, ONE AND A HALF requests per day.

I'm not seeing a problem here at all, using that logic (the logic that dictate numbers are the only criteria into what constitutes "staff are working too hard.")

[deskoft]

Doesn't staff like discuss every single report though?

[Malken]

Doesn't staff like discuss every single report though?

No.

(Your request has been resolved, please do not reply to this. )

[stoicreader]

This is neat information. So as players, what can we do to make staff lives easier so that they play so that they play with us more?

I love seeing peoples concepts come to life when they think a staff is watching.

[Eyeball]

Automate "leaving a clan forum" requests.

[boog]

This is neat information. So as players, what can we do to make staff lives easier so that they play so that they play with us more?

I love seeing peoples concepts come to life when they think a staff is watching.

People should always be playing like staff is watching.

[seidhr]

All the meta-data you could ever dream of to make (likely inaccurate!) inferences about requests and how they are, or are not, time-consuming is available for public viewing at:

http://www.armageddon.org/updates/

Note that you can scroll from week to week, to see which staffers are resolving the most stuff, how long certain request types usually take to resolve, etc.