Improving Armageddon

[frankjacoby]

I have seen changes in how staff handles things recently and though I have a lot of disagreements with the way things are run, I can see some positive things on the horizon.  With that being said, I would like to propose something that may be of interest and could possibly help with the way that players view the game in general.

1.  A new class of staff member that does the following ONLY:
     a. Follow all email reports from indie to clans
     b. Animate superiors and other NPCs as needed to provide RP opportunities to otherse
     c. Creates plots on the fly to keep the game interesting
     d. Animates animals outside the gates to spice things up
2.  Snoops on players to see what is going on and echoes or generally provides realistic obstacles to their RP and life
3.  Follows indie crafters and work with them to provide advice IG
4.  Creates little clans, illegal or otherwise and IG recruits people to provide them with options.
5.  My personal favorite, create chaos to make things more exciting, like an adventurer guild to hunt buff monsters
6.  Holds scavenger hunts and riddles and games of chance to keep things interesting

7.  Last but not least, gets together 1 on 1 with players and consolidates their wishes and wants and act as a liaison to senior staff to communicate ideas and complaints.

Just my $0.02 and I would appreciate staying on topic and no flames or negativity needed

[Brytta Léofa]

Staff should seriously spend 50% of their time working to eliminate staff toil - so that they can spend 75% of their time doing what you describe.

[Riev]

I've genuinely suggested that staff separate themselves into what they're good at and interested in doing. Some staff are better customer service, others are better "big picture" thinkers. Forcing people with horrible customer service to answer my requests makes for a terrible experience for everyone. Putting people "in charge" simply because they're active (promotion by attrition) is also not a meritable way to determine who will be successful.

I'd rather there be classes of staff, from "World Response/Animation" to "Personal Storytelling" to "World Storytelling" to "Game Changes and Code Changes" etc.

Maybe keep how things are now, ish, but have certain staff take on particular foci.

[frankjacoby]

Staff should seriously spend 50% of their time working to eliminate staff toil - so that they can spend 75% of their time doing what you describe.

If you don't attract and retain players, there is noone to service, I am advocating having someone new or old step in to fill this role.

[deskoft]

I think that staff right now are really amazing generally. Sans this or that, I think that the current staff show a lot of passion for the game and I, as a player, appreciate that. I think that staff's workload is indeed huge. There's no work around this in a game where we depend on staff for a lot of procedures. I think that us as players can begin the change if we want to see our plots happen! We have to think as the staffer. I'm not saying this is your case. I'm just throwing blind thoughts.

1. Think as a staffer. You have your own PC and you animate your own NPCs. You probably have a lot of fun doing these things! There's the workload of being a staffer, and you might or might not like this. Maybe you spend your time monitoring your clannies from time to time when you're tired (?) or animate when you spot certain needs in the population. But the workload is also a demand. There's an indicator that might or might not pressure staffers: the request numbers they solve, the amount of new PCs they approve, and the amount of bugs they fix, and these statistics are visible in the website.

So what? It's likely that staff might or might not have the time to give a personalized attention to each and every one of us unless we tell them, I WANT THIS, I AM PLANNING THIS. It's also impossible, I think, for staffers to give 1-on-1's to everyone. They can, HOWEVER, mediate to see your goals accomplished (or not), based on conversations. Character Reports are the shit! Which leads us to...

2. Think as a staffer (v2). Not everyone can win. That is not representative of Zalanthas. Depends on your definition of win, though! I find victory in GOOD roleplay and GOOD stories. Even if my PCs are having a bad time about it. So I think going in with the mindset of presenting your thoughts to staff and being ready to lose, win, or grind is fantastic.

3. Think as a staffer. You want the greater good of the community. If your plot is personal, it's okay, they can enable it... but they want also the whole community to engage and, I think, maybe they will consider goals that encompass a lot of roleplay for a lot of persons a much more enticing proposal. This doesn't mean your encompassing proposal will win either. It means your encompassing proposal might (correct me if I'm wrong), have more attention from staff rather than the 500th idea they get from an individual player to make a new kind of food that you will share with yourself and your virtual PC mate.

I can likely give more thoughts.

I do think staff could consider how to maximize time and, maybe, open a few more staffing roles to lessen workload!

[Riev]

Which part of that response, Deskoft, is targeted to which part of the OP?

[deskoft]

I have seen changes in how staff handles things recently and though I have a lot of disagreements with the way things are run, I can see some positive things on the horizon.

I think that staff right now are really amazing generally. Sans this or that, I think that the current staff show a lot of passion for the game and I, as a player, appreciate that. I think that staff's workload is indeed huge. There's no work around this in a game where we depend on staff for a lot of procedures. I think that us as players can begin the change if we want to see our plots happen! We have to think as the staffer. I'm not saying this is your case. I'm just throwing blind thoughts.

2.  Snoops on players to see what is going on and echoes or generally provides realistic obstacles to their RP and life
3.  Follows indie crafters and work with them to provide advice IG
4.  Creates little clans, illegal or otherwise and IG recruits people to provide them with options.
5.  My personal favorite, create chaos to make things more exciting, like an adventurer guild to hunt buff monsters
6.  Holds scavenger hunts and riddles and games of chance to keep things interesting

7.  Last but not least, gets together 1 on 1 with players and consolidates their wishes and wants and act as a liaison to senior staff to communicate ideas and complaints.

1. Think as a staffer. You have your own PC and you animate your own NPCs. You probably have a lot of fun doing these things! There's the workload of being a staffer, and you might or might not like this. Maybe you spend your time monitoring your clannies from time to time when you're tired (?) or animate when you spot certain needs in the population. But the workload is also a demand. There's an indicator that might or might not pressure staffers: the request numbers they solve, the amount of new PCs they approve, and the amount of bugs they fix, and these statistics are visible in the website.

So what? It's likely that staff might or might not have the time to give a personalized attention to each and every one of us unless we tell them, I WANT THIS, I AM PLANNING THIS. It's also impossible, I think, for staffers to give 1-on-1's to everyone. They can, HOWEVER, mediate to see your goals accomplished (or not), based on conversations. Character Reports are the shit! Which leads us to...

2. Think as a staffer (v2). Not everyone can win. That is not representative of Zalanthas. Depends on your definition of win, though! I find victory in GOOD roleplay and GOOD stories. Even if my PCs are having a bad time about it. So I think going in with the mindset of presenting your thoughts to staff and being ready to lose, win, or grind is fantastic.

3. Think as a staffer. You want the greater good of the community. If your plot is personal, it's okay, they can enable it... but they want also the whole community to engage and, I think, maybe they will consider goals that encompass a lot of roleplay for a lot of persons a much more enticing proposal. This doesn't mean your encompassing proposal will win either. It means your encompassing proposal might (correct me if I'm wrong), have more attention from staff rather than the 500th idea they get from an individual player to make a new kind of food that you will share with yourself and your virtual PC mate.

I can likely give more thoughts.

1.  A new class of staff member that does the following ONLY:
     a. Follow all email reports from indie to clans
     b. Animate superiors and other NPCs as needed to provide RP opportunities to otherse
     c. Creates plots on the fly to keep the game interesting
     d. Animates animals outside the gates to spice things up

I do think staff could consider how to maximize time and, maybe, open a few more staffing roles to lessen workload!

[Riev]

Reposting didn't help my understanding, much the same as talking louder doesn't make your point clearer.

The point of the post is "Have differing delineated roles for staffers to be in charge of different areas".

I don't understand the "Think like a staffer" referring to their workload, or sending in requests, or presenting your thoughts to staff instead of trying to "win".

[deskoft]

You asked me what parts of my post had referred to the post. I quoted them in lines. Next time maybe tell me you don't think I'm referring the topic at all instead of asking me which parts were addressing which; I addressed your inquiry. But regarding your lack of understanding of how it refers, I'll try to delinate it in two lines:

The point of the post is "Have differing delineated roles for staffers to be in charge of different areas".

Answer: "I do think staff could consider how to maximize time and, maybe, open a few more staffing roles to lessen workload!" however I think we can contribute to help them do certain things listed in the topic starting from our roles as players, such as...!

...

Just my opinion, yeah?

[Veselka]

I really don't rely on Staff to have fun with this game. I enjoy interacting with them, and the NPCs they inhabit, when that happens. But leaning on Staff to have fun, or to move plots forward, or to 'get the shiny thing' or the promotion, has typically ended up messy and frustrating. I don't fault Staff for this, I fault the mindset.

This game world is inhabited, first and foremost, by players, and by the PC's they inhabit. While it may be Staff's sandbox, we're the toddlers building castles made of sand. Relying on things like Boss NPC animations to have fun, or building projects to have fun, or Staff Scheduling to have fun, tends to actually suck the fun out of the room.

I understand the frustrations of players who do have this mindset. I sometimes have this mindset myself. I think including Staff on the fun you are having is the best way to approach this game.

[Riev]

<snip>
Don't troll. - Delirium

There are certainly some topics that Frank brings up that I don't agree with, like scavenger hunts and riddles and such... those work much better on less RP-themed MUDs. But the idea that there is a staff role for "Coming up with shit" means at least we know who to send our ideas to.

[sleepyhead]

See, your agreement was buried between like 20 lines of performing textual fellatio to the staffers.

I don't think we have to make jabs like that. It seems inappropriate. I don't think everyone who has a really pro-staff position is sucking up or whatever. People just disagree and that's okay.

[Veselka]

See, your agreement was buried between like 20 lines of performing textual fellatio to the staffers. It was hard to see if you were agreeing, disagreeing, or just ranting about your own thing.

There are certainly some topics that Frank brings up that I don't agree with, like scavenger hunts and riddles and such... those work much better on less RP-themed MUDs. But the idea that there is a staff role for "Coming up with shit" means at least we know who to send our ideas to.

I would argue that this is the role of a Storyteller.

That the Storyteller is assigned with different responsibilities of a more TPS-Style-Report nature I think is a deficiency of the system. At the end of the day, Storytellers should be doing just that -- Telling Stories. If their title were more appropriate to their roles, it seems it would be "Jr./Sr. Manager, Storytelling Division".

I fear that the efficiency of the Request Tool sometimes overshadows the messiness of a creative endeavor, the shared story, the narrative of characters within it. I would be pleased if Administrators were assigned more of the Administrative Duties, while the Storytellers were encouraged to pursue more creative uses of their time.

Writing Reports, and I imagine responding to them, takes up precious time, and I do think it is useful time spent to keep Staff informed of what is going on. I often find Weekly Reports to be sort of unnecessary to be honest, in Leadership Positions. I have to struggle for things to come up with to tell them, or the most important things I forget to include until later. Or something important happens right after my Report is closed, and I save it until next week's report. I would prefer the reports be weekly (if needed), and bi-monthly as a soft requirement. I think the reduction of reports received might free up more time for a Storyteller to tell stories, rather than catch up with last week's news.

[Delirium]

Riev, you're bordering on being needlessly aggressive. Be nice.

[Armaddict]

See, your agreement was buried between like 20 lines of performing textual fellatio to the staffers. It was hard to see if you were agreeing, disagreeing, or just ranting about your own thing.

There are certainly some topics that Frank brings up that I don't agree with, like scavenger hunts and riddles and such... those work much better on less RP-themed MUDs. But the idea that there is a staff role for "Coming up with shit" means at least we know who to send our ideas to.

I would argue that this is the role of a Storyteller.

That the Storyteller is assigned with different responsibilities of a more TPS-Style-Report nature I think is a deficiency of the system. At the end of the day, Storytellers should be doing just that -- Telling Stories. If their title were more appropriate to their roles, it seems it would be "Jr./Sr. Manager, Storytelling Division".

I fear that the efficiency of the Request Tool sometimes overshadows the messiness of a creative endeavor, the shared story, the narrative of characters within it. I would be pleased if Administrators were assigned more of the Administrative Duties, while the Storytellers were encouraged to pursue more creative uses of their time.

Writing Reports, and I imagine responding to them, takes up precious time, and I do think it is useful time spent to keep Staff informed of what is going on. I often find Weekly Reports to be sort of unnecessary to be honest, in Leadership Positions. I have to struggle for things to come up with to tell them, or the most important things I forget to include until later. Or something important happens right after my Report is closed, and I save it until next week's report. I would prefer the reports be weekly (if needed), and bi-monthly as a soft requirement. I think the reduction of reports received might free up more time for a Storyteller to tell stories, rather than catch up with last week's news.

Yuuup.  Request tool was needed, but at the same time I view it as overemphasized and perhaps overused.  Definitely what I think of the storyteller position as well, though.

[deskoft]

Hm, no, I don't see that! My agreement on one line was at the end of my statement. My counter-argument was what started my statement (saying I disagree, which others have spotted), and I expanded by saying that we can achieve many things by helping staff through a series of methods, much like Veselka said that he doesn't rely on staff for enjoyment on the game.

I'll make sure to foreplay a little bit before my textual fellatio (?).

[stoicreader]

I like the staff and SOME of the players. Staff seem nicer because they have a fiduciary duty to the game.

[Riev]

I like the staff and SOME of the players. Staff seem nicer because they have a fiduciary duty to the game.

I do not believe staff have ANY fiduciary duty to the game, outside of those who volunteer their funds as staff and the ones considered the game's "owners".

Is that not correct?

[Brokkr]

While one would hope that the standard of care would be the same, it would fail the test for fiduciary duty due to the lack of personal liability.