GM Team October/November Update

[Paleo 298]

 

GM Update Log - November

 

Director

After the departure of LadyRebecca, Harold took the reins of the team and restructured it entirely, removing the rank of manager and the different sub-teams, putting everybody in the same group, which improves companionship and productivity. Also, the team has experienced several internal changes during the last two months, starting November with a group almost entirely different from the one in October.

 

With the departure of Harold mid-November, Paleo became the new interim Director of the Game Team.

 

Current Team Roster

 

 

We are glad to announce that the next members of the team passed their trials this month, each of them showing clear dedication and drive to contribute to the Game Team:

 

Suxals

 

Cloakedsphere

 

_Stigwig

 

Sadly, we say goodbye to Kowaman and Ang. We thank them for their contribution towards the team and the community.

 

Trainers

With the restructuration of the GM Team, Managers were removed and replaced with Trainers. The Trainers are experienced GMs who are willing to teach other members of the team and interview possible Trials, we currently have four GM Trainers:

 

Z3m0s

 

MrMineLoveDude

 

Nate1450

 

Suxals:

 

Projects

Activity Checks

During the past two months, we have been doing several activity checks. Although they haven't been posted, they aided in knowing the activity of each nation before the transition to the next map.

 

Atlas (6.0)

A small portion of the team has been working on the new map aid in getting it ready before the release date, so this clarifies the lack of GMs on the server.

 

Rules

The rules are being revamped with the efforts of both the Game Team and Administration.  We’re working towards getting more concrete set of rules and fill into gaps or loopholes that may be present.

 

Warclaim/Coups

As 6.0 nears closer, it is important that all of the GMs are absolutely focused on it. For this reason, we will not be allowing any more warclaims to be pursued, except for ones that have already been started.

 

Recruitment

Due to 6.0, the rise of activity in the community will increase greatly and for such we will be looking for more trials in the coming weeks, so we encourage those of you who believe they’re a suitable candidate to submit an application, but don't feel discouraged if you don't get accepted, you could always apply again in the future. (The current applications will be reviewed, dont worry.)

[Suxals 529]

Yes!

[Ford 1996]

pro-tip: any gm is better than @Niccum

[Ford 1996]

47 minutes ago, Niccum said:

 

fixed that for ya

 

0

Upvote

 

fix'd

[Xarkly 17299]

Strongly opposed to someone who's never been a GM, to my knowledge, acting as Director.

 

Removal of sub-teams is a piss poor idea. Are you now expecting every GM to know coup rules back to front? Heists? Charters? Sub-teams were effective at what they did, any failures stemmed from leadership.

 

GM team seems to have taken a big step backwards, thoroughly unimpressed.

[Suxals 529]

4 minutes ago, Xarkly said:

Strongly opposed to someone who's never been a GM, to my knowledge, acting as Director.

 

Removal of sub-teams is a piss poor idea. Are you now expecting every GM to know coup rules back to front? Heists? Charters? Sub-teams were effective at what they did, any failures stemmed from leadership.

 

GM team seems to have taken a big step backwards, thoroughly unimpressed.

0

Upvote

 

Sub teams were removed 2 months ago and yes, every GM is expected to be prepared to handle every situation, and if they have doubts they can ask in our chats, the time of response is almost always immediate and the system is efficient.

[Xarkly 17299]

Just now, Suxals said:

Sub teams were removed 2 months ago and yes, every GM is expected to be prepared to handle every situation, and if they have doubts they can ask in our chats, the time of response is almost always immediate and the system is efficient.

0

Upvote

 

 

It's unrealistic to have every GM know every single rule for every single circumstance. It makes much more sense to have a handful of GMs be able to manage warclaims and coups while others can handle heists and charters. Its not efficient if GMs have to rely on asking in Discord chats for every second issue. Before the sub-teams had a purposed structure that satisfied its intention; removing them is pointless and gives no indication of how it improves 'productivity'.

[Harri 4815]

37 minutes ago, Xarkly said:

any failures stemmed from leadership.

0

Upvote

):

[Elfen_ 232]

Man, I am sad. My profile pic didn't show up in the screenshot. Like how does a picture miss being a picture!?!?

[Kaiser 2347]

9 hours ago, Xarkly said:

Are you now expecting every GM to know coup rules back to front? Heists? Charters? Sub-teams were effective at what they did, any failures stemmed from leadership.

 

 

'Grr now the GMs are gonna have to actually learn all the rules'

 

? ? ?

[Man of Respect 5471]

11 hours ago, Suxals said:

Sub teams were removed 2 months ago and yes, every GM is expected to be prepared to handle every situation, and if they have doubts they can ask in our chats, the time of response is almost always immediate and the system is efficient.

0

Upvote

 

 

11 hours ago, Xarkly said:

Strongly opposed to someone who's never been a GM, to my knowledge, acting as Director.

 

Removal of sub-teams is a piss poor idea. Are you now expecting every GM to know coup rules back to front? Heists? Charters? Sub-teams were effective at what they did, any failures stemmed from leadership.

 

GM team seems to have taken a big step backwards, thoroughly unimpressed.

2

Upvote

 

 

I'm sorry but I'll have to agree with Xarkly in his second paragraph. I'll be honest, but I don't trust half of the staff team with my possible heists, specially when the GM is apart of the playerbase in question or friends with the person being heisted in a page where all the staff can see...

 

I used to like Wrynn for my heists because I think he was an unbiased GM. He never leaked to anyone. But then there's the "If i'm biased show proof or you're wrong", then I go meh...

 

Although, I do hope that this will allow for more flexibility and versatility of the staff team as a whole, such as we, orcs, were neglected management in our own region to remove little unwanted subregions and have the current Rex as primary region owner

 

Or when orcs were denied to place defenses in a skirmish a few weeks after the also defending side side was allowed to place holes in the ground. This definitely needs a specific and definite rule that can't be bent by any means; after the warclaim is posted, you can't alter the terrain in any way.

 

We need someone to do heists or other things that involves trust issues. Dot.

[Thatpyrodude 2008]

Damn my boy conor going deep

[Jondead 260]

Nice to know exsacly who is on the team ^_^ I aprove.

[Rusty Derringer 1182]

Who's genius idea was it to give a trial trainer except a long time accomplished GM?

[Lark 2227]

2 hours ago, Harold said:

 

Howdy,

 

On the topic of the sub-team changes, I'll throw in my two cents because I feel like your criticism is unfounded. This change was made due to several key factors. First and foremost, the war team had four or so back to back leads who quit after the first week or so - and many of them did nothing in that time other than pass along the buck to a team, who had zero idea what as going on. That's not 'productivity'. You and I both know that GMs would tell the players to refer to an inactive team for their question if they asked one, to which they would never get a response back. This was true for all sub-teams, with many players expressing frustration on wait times to hear back from X team, such as the region team. The system didn't work - it was red tape and more red tape and caused player issues to go through a pipeline, many GMs felt like they couldn't do anything without the team lead saying yes or no (which then would get deferred to GM Management, then to GM Director, then back down the chain.) 

 

Secondly, specializing GMs caused problems inter-team. Some GMs would just join all the sub-teams, so they could have their say, but when that happens - why would you even have sub-teams? For those of you who don't know, back when we had sub-teams, GMs couldn't see all sub-team chats. Your issues or problems, were only discussed between the GM Managers and the GMs who had raised their hand and said they wanted to participate in that team. You know how you would see the same GMs at the warclaims every week or so, this is why. This put a lot of strain on the GM Managers, because realistically the sub-team lead would then go to a GM Manager if they had an issue or question, or just wanted to defer the responsibility in making the decision.

 

This leads onto the third point, which was that this system sort of chugged along, while the GM Management was active. GM Managers were seen as the untouchables, many didn't do quota and were wholly inactive. It was thought once you had made GM Management, you could just bunk off and do nothing. There was a full week when the GM Management chat wasn't used at all, during my Admin tenure. Within staff, if a chat isn't used - you, and your team, are inactive. That's how it works. This caused a huge problem for the sub-team system, as now all the responsibility and deferring that the sub-teams were doing (remember these are small volunteer groups of GMs) - now rest on the GM Director alone because the GM Management was inactive to the core. This created a bottleneck of requests, which would sometimes make it to the GM Director and sometimes not. This is why we got rid of GM Managers and replaced them with GM Trainers. These guys don't get a fancy title, don't get to skip quota - they just put their hand up to do more work, and help the rest of the team make decisions on their own. They also train the team in areas where they may need it, and the initial training is done by them too. These guys will actually answer questions in Discord, without thinking asking for help is a negative quality and help people understand things they don't know - unlike the GM Management before them, who failed a guy for asking too many questions in Discord. No joke, that happened. 

 

So yeah, I wholly disagree with you - the change has been a good one and that is surely shown through the renewed retention rate of GMs. With only two drops this month, i'd say that was a massive plus. The Game Moderation Team did, and I assume still feels, more empowered by these changes, and more like a team of equals instead of a bureaucratic mess of a system brought in by Tahmas - they don't need to go through an inactive sub-team lead to do anything anymore. This change was made to remove the red tape, bottle necks and other problems (such as gated communications) to increase response rate to player requests, fairness and overall responsibility within the team (taking strain off of the GM Director, who should trust their team to make decisions in their stead.) We went back to our roots as a GM Team, and I think it's paid off in dividends.

 

It's nice to see you're active again though Connor, and you should reapply so you can see these changes in action for yourself. 

4

Upvote

 

 

 

All of these words have made me ridiculously happy and hopeful. Glad I popped by to see good things happening.