Frequently Asked Questions: Admin Edition

[saint swag 2484]

alright post

[Harri 4815]

the most frequently asked and unanswered question is: where is telanir

[_Sug 2809]

Thoughts on the return of LC?

[501warhead 1796]

1 hour ago, Blago said:

Obviously we never clicked, especially considering you kept talking behind my back with Ioannis that I was too conflictive with fellow staff members. Though I'm saying this with a lack of relation bias, it's best for all of LoTC if you get out of this "things will be fine, it's only how you see it." lazed drive. Even if the server isn't dying, you do realize that staying in this state of where everyone is upset and nothing truly productive is coming to change isn't good either? Since I've joined LoTC, which has only been for two years on my other account, it seems that the server has just been in that single area where it's only negative.

Either way, if you don't see the draining player count even at prime summer times as a sign of the server sitting in a stagnation of interest, all the poor systems that though have actually been pushed for reforms by even staff, though denied or neglected because of a personal staff opinion other than a majority which actually feeds the server as well - Than heck, I can't wait to see what actually happens even into the new map if it comes. This practically vanilla experience with fractured rules is no bueno!|

Props to Flamboyant though - Even before he was Admin he actually was competent, and it was fun to help him as a GM. Give him more power to change because he actually has a mindset to benefit the server and not just wait it out while holding onto the power to feed his ego for luring in mineman children. 

 

Just to reiterate from my status update;

 

 

No, I don't see the numbers draining. Actually, they're draining from their summer high sure but to say we're draining? Cmon. Literally 3rd best month of the year, 4 months of subpar activity and we're doing absolutely great now.  And you were an asshole on staff, I wanted to tell it to ya but I respected ioannis and let him know my thoughts so that he could run the team he wanted to, because we let directors have independence. I express my concerns to team directors, but I don't force my opinion on them.

 

But regardless, we're working on the mechanics & the rule set as stated here. Also flambo is a good lad, I'm glad he accepted our offer ?

 

1 hour ago, User said:

You guys are doing just enough to maintain what was accomplished 6-7 years ago at this point. The server isn't dying, but if you were to look at a graph of server player count since 2012 it would literally be a flat line. That's the main issue in my eyes, there's no real attempt at growing. The past few years on LoTC has just been a micromanaging fest. It's not hard to do things like advertise on your youtube account which has a decent following, it's not hard to promote the things that cause the server to break 200+ players for a single event (Wars). You guys practically shun wars, and you don't use your Youtube channel for anything useful whatsoever.
 

It's clear that the past few renditions of the Media team have totally failed, so just take matters into your own hands. Make small videos showcasing the increasing amount of well made plugins on the server, make videos of events that literally happen every day, make videos of war claims with BACK STORY to show people that it's actually a dynamic server (even though that's debatable). Hire someone on Fiverr or something with the donation money to get a nice trailer narration voice. DISPLAY these videos on the front page of lordofthecraft.net. The videos, as useless as they are, still get a good amount of views. They would get even more views if you showcased more than just builds.

Another very obvious thing, the fact that people need to ask "What does X admin even do" is such a massive red flag. Admins should be actively involved, actively improving, actively making feedback threads, actively asking what the players want, actively trying to do things. If all of these things were being done then people would know who they are and exactly what they do. It goes without saying that discussing things in a discord chat a few times a week while having zero presence in game or on the forums is most definitely not good leadership.

Look at Shiftnative's forum activity when he was server lead, I'm not saying he was perfect but if all Admins had that kind of passion and level of effort the server would be a booming environment.

I haven't mentioned competency at all but that seems to always have been a massive issue on LoTC as well. Not everyone is meant for leadership roles, and you guys seem to have a problem with being bias and reacting emotionally to things.

 

 

 

...What? We've accepted 1,600 people this year. 1,500 have joined and 200 of them are still playing, our retention rate is actually going up, currently at 28.5%. What is this flat line you're talking about? Do you even know what you're talking about? Because right now, looking at the numbers, it doesn't really agree with you. That rate can and should be better but we've been rapidly bringing in new players who are enjoying the server - while the retention is garbage it's not this so called "flat line".

 

I do want to take more of the media team into our hands though, but media producing takes a while. I did a few livestreams of the Territories plugin development a while back kinda low-key to see what it would be like and boy I was exhausted after doing such. It's hard balancing all that out. I want to pursue this though, if you're interested in helping out though I'd love to reach out to you non-ironically so you could help out if you wished.

 

I kind of explained the admin thing, we can't prioritize activity heavily. It's nice, it's important, but replacing an admin (I've had to do this way too many times) is stressful, time consuming, and often takes away from our other projects. We gotta choose between hunting a 5th admin or writing war rules, hunting a 5th admin or increasing communication. It takes time to interview people, and it's time we'd rather just use elsewhere if the admin is going to be at least semi-present. It seems backwards but that's my experience.

 

[Cat Evocation 3728]

An update on everything is always appreciated and I understand you want to keep up the tone that Lotc is doing well (Which is it is my opinion people just do the usual "SeRvEr Is DyEInG" every year.. but the tone of the post isn't what I would call entirely professional though some bits were funny.

 

Never the less thanks for your service on the server!

[501warhead 1796]

2 minutes ago, Tox said:

An update on everything is always appreciated and I understand you want to keep up the tone that Lotc is doing well (Which is it is my opinion people just do the usual "SeRvEr Is DyEInG" every year.. but the tone of the post isn't what I would call entirely professional though some bits were funny.

 

Never the less thanks for your service on the server!

 

Ya, honestly I could probably have worded this more professional but at this point I felt the community wanted something a little more sincere than that and usual "I'm super professional 501" weren't doing anything. I didn't want to spend 24 hours carefully drafting up a response and going through every nitpick detail to make sure I can't be misunderstood. I did that, it sucks. If we're going to start communicating then I'm just gonna start talking, and hopefully that honesty is at least to a degree appreciated. If not then oh well

[User 366]

1 minute ago, 501warhead said:

 

 

...What? We've accepted 1,600 people this year. 1,500 have joined and 200 of them are still playing, our retention rate is actually going up, currently at 28.5%. What is this flat line you're talking about? Do you even know what you're talking about? Because right now, looking at the numbers, it doesn't really agree with you. That rate can and should be better but we've been rapidly bringing in new players who are enjoying the server - while the retention is garbage it's not this so called "flat line".

 

I do want to take more of the media team into our hands though, but media producing takes a while. I did a few livestreams of the Territories plugin development a while back kinda low-key to see what it would be like and boy I was exhausted after doing such. It's hard balancing all that out. I want to pursue this though, if you're interested in helping out though I'd love to reach out to you non-ironically so you could help out if you wished. 

 

I kind of explained the admin thing, we can't prioritize activity heavily. It's nice, it's important, but replacing an admin (I've had to do this way too many times) is stressful, time consuming, and often takes away from our other projects. We gotta choose between hunting a 5th admin or writing war rules, hunting a 5th admin or increasing communication. It takes time to interview people, and it's time we'd rather just use elsewhere if the admin is going to be at least semi-present. It seems backwards but that's my experience.

 

The amount of people accepted this year and the amount still playing doesn't really disprove my "flat line" statement. I said if you were to look at a graph of the average amount of players online daily since 2012 it would be a flat line, you can't deny that. The averages were always similar to what they are now or higher, it's always been that way since Availer and Vaq were in charge with the exception of a few very low periods in 2013/14.  As you said, 200 actively playing since the beginning of 2018 is very good. However, if 1400 other people just applied and never looked back that most definitely is a problem.

My question to you is this, have you and the other admins actually sat down together and brainstormed why the retention rate is what it is? This is an honest question, I'm not implying that you guys don't do this. I have witnessed many reasons first hand countless times and can list all of them for you, I'm just curious to see if you guys have identified any of these things yourselves.

As for your response to my statements about the media team, all I'm seeing is a lot of "I tried this, I tried that". Why is it only you trying all of this? Of course it would be exhausting if only one guy is tackling it alone, it most definitely would be hard to balance out you're right. In order to achieve this you could make the criteria for being the Media team leader very very clear. For example:

"We are looking for a Media Team Director who can oversee and manage the following tasks:
- Showcase existing / upcoming plugins in the form of brief trailers
- Create war claim videos that highlight the story behind the battle as well as footage of the fight itself
- Manage the LordoftheCraft youtube account
- Create contests that allow them to submit their own videos, the winner has their video posted on the Youtube channel in addition to a reward"

I'm sure there are a lot of people that would jump at the opportunity. If they fail at doing this, fire em. If they get lazy, fire em. I'm sure you've done this before already but what's the harm in doing it over and over again? Something like this shouldn't just be scrapped indefinitely.

Another thing I'd like to point out is how rigid you guys are. Changes take a long time and most of the time when a new rule set is presented it's received the same way the last rule set was. The entire process seems extremely rigid. Why not create the rules with players live? What I mean by that is literally run EVERY single part of the rule by players in a public discussion thread, the players shouldn't be blind sided by anything. You might say that would take a long time but that's simply not true, if done efficiently and effectively it's definitely possible and is done by many other successful servers so it's not a new concept.

Lastly, why can't you prioritize activity? In my eyes that should be the most important thing next to the satisfaction of players. They go hand in hand.
 

[Ixli 1472]

if someone had a draft of war rules going and wanted to send it to the adminstration, would you guys be open to discussing it?

 

oh and this is a thumbs up for community relations

[501warhead 1796]

20 minutes ago, User said:

The amount of people accepted this year and the amount still playing doesn't really disprove my "flat line" statement. I said if you were to look at a graph of the average amount of players online daily since 2012 it would be a flat line, you can't deny that. The averages were always similar to what they are now or higher, it's always been that way since Availer and Vaq were in charge with the exception of a few very low periods in 2013/14.  As you said, 200 actively playing since the beginning of 2018 is very good. However, if 1400 other people just applied and never looked back that most definitely is a problem.

My question to you is this, have you and the other admins actually sat down together and brainstormed why the retention rate is what it is? This is an honest question, I'm not implying that you guys don't do this. I have witnessed many reasons first hand countless times and can list all of them for you, I'm just curious to see if you guys have identified any of these things yourselves.

As for your response to my statements about the media team, all I'm seeing is a lot of "I tried this, I tried that". Why is it only you trying all of this? Of course it would be exhausting if only one guy is tackling it alone, it most definitely would be hard to balance out you're right. In order to achieve this you could make the criteria for being the Media team leader very very clear. For example:

"We are looking for a Media Team Director who can oversee and manage the following tasks:
- Showcase existing / upcoming plugins in the form of brief trailers
- Create war claim videos that highlight the story behind the battle as well as footage of the fight itself
- Manage the LordoftheCraft youtube account
- Create contests that allow them to submit their own videos, the winner has their video posted on the Youtube channel in addition to a reward"

I'm sure there are a lot of people that would jump at the opportunity. If they fail at doing this, fire em. If they get lazy, fire em. I'm sure you've done this before already but what's the harm in doing it over and over again? Something like this shouldn't just be scrapped indefinitely.

Another thing I'd like to point out is how rigid you guys are. Changes take a long time and most of the time when a new rule set is presented it's received the same way the last rule set was. The entire process seems extremely rigid. Why not create the rules with players live? What I mean by that is literally run EVERY single part of the rule by players in a public discussion thread, the players shouldn't be blind sided by anything. You might say that would take a long time but that's simply not true, if done efficiently and effectively it's definitely possible and is done by many other successful servers so it's not a new concept.

Lastly, why can't you prioritize activity? In my eyes that should be the most important thing next to the satisfaction of players. They go hand in hand.
 

 

- We're currently attributing the retention issues to issues getting new players involved in the community (either through getting lost on the roads or not being interacted with by people), new players not finding anything to do, or new players not really getting into roleplay properly. The monk project was a big effort to try to resolve that which should hopefully start up again and get traction soon, being in-game people to guide folks and teach them the ins and the outs of the server. Then trying to promote community activity with a bunch of stuff so that they can find people to interact with. I think it's a pretty good summary of the retention issues.

 

- We have a general idea for media team director but there arent exactly people chomping at the bit, the team is very small. You'd be surprised at how few really want to do this, it's been like pulling teeth.

 

- Running rules like that would be a headache. Maybe a live stream? I'm not sure. We should do more community reviews though.

 

- Because honestly there are, at any given point in time, between 0 and 2 good admin candidates. Often leans to 0. If we have to kick someone out for activity, then we've got to hunt a new pick which will likely be subpar to the person we put there originally. The pick might come in and they might be bias, inactive, or a combination of the two and then we've reset the cycle. Suddenly we're back to priorizing finding a new admin, and our time is once again consumed by that creating an infinite cycle of not getting shit done. I'd rather work with an admin I can contact over discord every now and again when I need them and they'll be there vs working with an admin who can't do the job, who isn't there, who is incompetent, who is unmotivated, and unreliable. I need an admin I can message, ask them to do something, and they'll get it done and I know they will. I don't need an admin who is going to brush me off, ignore me, or just forget about what they need to do - and all too often you'll find candidates of the latter but not the former. So fishing for new admins every month when someone has a real life change is just absolutely detrimental to the team as a whole and eats far too much time. They'll be around when their real schedule allows them to be around more, but it'll fluctuate.

[Algoda 885]

So a whole load of future promises... wow. I hope for your sake and the server that maybe, just maybe you'll actually start doing something this time. 

 

I can see why people leave staff when working under you.

You obviously have no passion, and should probably think about stepping down soon.

 

Tl Dr of your post: "No, you're wrong but we're going to sit down and take a look at it anyway." 

 

... so nothing is going to happen, yet again.

[501warhead 1796]

1 minute ago, Algoda said:

You obviously has no passion, and should probably think about stepping down soon

 

> literally spent an entire day dedicated to increasing communication, works full time and yet comes home exited to work on/for lotc

 

"No passion btw XD"

 

XD my mans, XD. Glad you don't pick admins, you wouldn't know passion if it hit you on the head. I don't stick around because I want to stroke my own power ego, the power trip disappears after about a month on the team. About a month in you realize the scope of management as an administrator, realize how much you've got to juggle, and realize how much stress it is. Administrators without passion drop like flies. I'm here because of passion, because of vision. But of course, clearly I don't have passion and should step down - I'm contributing nothing to the server!!!!!

[Pandasan 74]

bring back Cappy :*

[Corpean 183]

5 hours ago, Medvekoma said:

 

 

Seriously though, I think you should open up a discord chat about the war rules and ideas. Pretty sure there'd be at least a dozen people interested in a civil discussion.

 

Done! https://discord.gg/j635JDk

[Algoda 885]

30 minutes ago, 501warhead said:

 

> literally spent an entire day dedicated to increasing communication, works full time and yet comes home exited to work on/for lotc

 

"No passion btw XD"

 

XD my mans, XD. Glad you don't pick admins, you wouldn't know passion if it hit you on the head. I don't stick around because I want to stroke my own power ego, the power trip disappears after about a month on the team. About a month in you realize the scope of management as an administrator, realize how much you've got to juggle, and realize how much stress it is. Administrators without passion drop like flies. I'm here because of passion, because of vision. But of course, clearly I don't have passion and should step down - I'm contributing nothing to the server!!!!!

All you've done is keeping the status quo, passion my ass.

 

You're losing it dude.

[L0rdLawyer 2272]

Is the server the greatest right now? No.

Is the server on it's last breath? No.

 

LOTC is at a lull where players want to give up hope but don't want to see the server die. No matter who you are, what rank you held, what your reputation is, it doesn't matter. We are all here because something on LOTC kept us around. We don't want to admit it, but the reason why we all leave and come back is because LOTC filled, or still fills, a void in our lives.

 

There are players that get banned, over and over, yet still try to log on.

There are players that were pushed away by their friends, their co-workers, yet still come back and try again.

There are players that push themselves to the limit to try to make a difference, told they don't matter, yet still, try again.

 

I could go on and on about this all day. Yet in the end of things it comes down to a few things. We're on LOTC for a reason, we stayed for a reason. You have a choice to try and help the server improve itself, or you can sit back and do nothing.

 

@501warhead I will call you out on this. Your words show a lot of emotions behind them. From being tired and wanting to give up, from having a lot of drive behind it all, it's a battle and you have to realize, everyone paints as you being alone. But at the end of the day, that's the struggle we all face. And the reality of the struggle, we aren't alone.