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Those Who Are Watching and Those Who Hear...


Delmodan
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Those Who Are Watching and Those Who Hear...

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It has been a while since such a post has been made regarding how people feel with the changes going on. Frustration, people being ignored, anger, and loss building into those that want to keep what they have built on this server and enjoy their creations. When we take on a staff position, it is something of a volunteer job that can take up a lot of time so things do not fall apart. While we are here, we take on the responsibility to give care and enjoyment for the community. Whether it be organizing forums, looking over lore, or being there ingame to help out. This is something that no matter what you are or what you do as a team, you still have to have that connection to the players so that they in turn enjoy themselves and what the server has to offer. 

 

This is something that has degraded over time. For the Lore Sect, we have done much over a year to try and fix the issues regarding lore and the mess that it was. It has been hard on everyone from creatures to magics that were there from the beginning of this server’s existence. Yet, while we did such, slowly it has lowered into frustration, rage, and sadness to see what has been done thus far. Whether by attitude, ignoring, or flat removing things, it has hurt the community while we the team have pulled away further and further from even hearing concerns and/or thoughts of the community we should care about. Some things we tried to do correctly and while there were internal conflicts going on within some communities, some of us as a team were not there as well to help with this.

 

And for this, I apologize for my part and for my team’s part. Like all human beings, we are flawed. The team is flawed in areas and while we do watch those that have been affected, we still try to carry on for the betterment of the server. We hear the voices of those upset. Some are beyond justified on how they feel and I wish I could say something where they feel better, but at times I cannot. The flaws of the past and present we do see. The slowness of loremags, the apps sitting at times for months, or even trying to get reqs done in a timely manner. While we have made announcements of what we are doing at times, some of the stuff still doesn’t have an excuse. For us, we cannot change the past, however we can try and move forward with what we need to do in order to listen to the community more instead of distancing ourselves further and further away.

 

It is why I made this thread for I as a Story Manager want to hear your concerns, your thoughts, your voices, and your suggestions on what you think could help with things. In this thread I want constructive criticism and what to help close that gap that has been made over the months.

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I submitted a rewrite into the proper rewrite subforum along with several other rewrites, all of which got pushed through, except for mine. Almost a year ago. Now it’s gone. Just completely gone. A few months ago, I was told that it was straight-up FORGOTTEN and that they’d get it sorted soon. It didn’t happen. I no longer have the rough draft I had of that lore. I can’t just submit it again.

Edited by Gallic
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Hi

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The first time I’ve seen or heard of any event hosted was yesterday, since the map started.

If that isn’t a problem enough whether it be marketing or a true lack in events, I don’t know what is.

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My concerns is the trigger-happy shelving of some lores; while I don’t mind some lores being shelved, there needs to be something that’s offered in exchange. Like for people who are races of hard-shelved characters. If I had a well-developed, high-quality character that got destroyed due to the hard-shelf, I’d be quite mad. Advanced races and lores, in my view, are just another level of roleplay for seasoned players who want to do something more than the norm.

 

Also, the lack of events. We haven’t had but one ET event in Ves, that lasted five minutes.

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7 minutes ago, Icarnus said:

The first time I’ve seen or heard of any event hosted was yesterday, since the map started.

If that isn’t a problem enough whether it be marketing or a true lack in events, I don’t know what is.

Sorry Delmo to hijack but I can mention this.

The team was in an insane state of disarray since late last map considering the merges, mass removals and other factors. I'd like to say I'm fixing the problems of the past as outlined in my other update. My priority is to not have events be unknown to the playerbase, but for the playerbase to have ample time to participate in them.

 

 

 

My update post outlines the general direction I'm taking the event sect. I'm wishful in being able to deliver but we'll see

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I feel like, and this is coming from a place of sincere and genuin attempt to give feedback, there hasn’t been enough thought and care put into some of the decisions the lore team has made over this past year. I do absolutely understand that being a staff member on lotc is far more difficult than what meets the eye, and that obviously everybody here has lives outside of it, but the idea that just because the community constantly bugs staff about shelving this creature or that magic, it should happen without thought, really makes me think that some of those calls were made from a place of ‘We feel like the community has made a good enough choice for us not to think it through outselves’. Which obviously could be wrong, but that’s the general feel I get.

 

Now, I understand the importance of listening to your playerbase and doing things to their satisfaction, but the staff does exist for a reason, and in the future, on the topic of things like hard-shelving entire CA races or magics, I feel like there should be a lot more nit-picking in terms of what exactly should be removed. Something less along the lines of ‘The people said they don’t want to see the kind of race that doesn’t do x and y, let’s remove every race that comes close to that’, but rather ‘We’ve noticed that this race specifically takes away from roleplay, and the community has said the same, so let’s try to change that race and if we can’t then it should be removed.’

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imo veteran RPers shouldn’t need a wacky race to make a complex character.

 

That aside, I attended the Djinn event in Brandybrook, which was pretty fun. I think events need to be made more regular to try to reintroduce that sorta stuff as a more key component of LotC. I remember when some tunnelling slime monsters cropped up in the middle of Riga, or a hunter had spotted the tracks of a particularly large boar. It’s small things like that that really populate the world outside the ‘main’ characters that inhabit it.

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@Gallic I recall the lore you speak of. I did promise it would be in a loremag and failed in that regard. That section where it was should’ve been looked at more frequently than it did, but it didn’t until i noticed it for quite some time later. Since then, we did remove those sections so it wouldn’t happen again. The lore piece and some others however I am not sure what happened in all honesty. Several times throughout the course between when you posted and now there was a few times the forums glitched and lore pieces disappeared. I had to get mods to find several, others were flat lost. I can try and get a mod to help me see if we can find it, however I do not know how much hope there is with that. 

@Quintessential  The hard shelving of creatures is rather hard for both Team and Community. I do flat agree it should’ve been handled far better and a better way of dealing with those that lost said chars. It is a double edge sword with deciding on what to do. As we had in the past of those that returned to normal suddenly start giving away secrets or ruining groups just to get back at what they lost/turned back into. Some creatures were inactive, others unbalanced, then some that were forgotten. I would like to see some suggestions you might have in regards to when these situations arise as while shelving could happen and chances given, the creature could still fall into getting shelved and it be good to see what/how we could better the transition of such cases than what we been seeing. 

@SuperDuckyGamer From the outside, I do admit it really does appear like it comes up on a wim. It’s something that we need to better communicate on in regards to what creatures are looked at and why. Most creatures that were hard shelved were spoken up quite a bit and discussed. From reports of abilities overpowered to easily powergamed situations. Even more with how it relates to other creatures already there and with how it goes with the server. These do and have been spoken of for weeks to months at a time before a hard shelving does come about. While I know this doesn’t help with shelving in general, I do hope it shows that we do take some time and care into what we look to remove and that we should definitely work on relaying that better so it doesn’t seem like we just drop the ball randomly on things. 


@mra8ur93ss  Events are something definitely spoken of alot in regards to where and why there hasn’t been many. The team merging, lost of members, changing/promoting of managers has been a long process, but now we are definitely pushing on ahead to where events will be seen more often. With lack of builders, it has hurt some, but Xarkly is working hard to get his areas done while Joel is commanding the team to get smaller events and new bounty areas up and going. Theres several bigger events going on right now with Mystery and others doing things. 

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When I took the Teacher Application to acquire a TA in a certain magic, I noticed that the process of applying in the application I was sent was extremely gruelling, and noticed, too, that it was almost sloppily made – or all it did was, in looking through the lore in chronologically order, ask detailed questions on each part of the lore. I do not believe that a TA should work like that – for that type of application could be manipulated in such a way that meant that all a person would have to do is find the part of the lore and talk about it. It essentially made me summarize every single bit of the lore.

 

It took me 3-4 full hours to complete such an application – in the past, many of those who took the Teacher Application, such as myself, @Wendigo and many others for this magic, were only asked questions which were designed to not truly be located within the lines of the lore itself – questions that only someone very experienced in the lore itself could answer, not somebody who had the lore page open. They didn’t take as long, and the questions were quick fire and able to be answered swiftly – but once more, only by people who were experienced with the lore. Why has the process turned into this, rather than being as it was before? I feel that we should return to what it was before, especially for the magic I speak of.

Edited by Apostate
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@Apostate Very good question. TAs are a very time consuming process with the longer magics taking up to either hours with an interview or several days given the timeframe between Interviewer and the person getting the TA. We wanted to move TAs towards being more looked into and see on the person having knowledge of the lore in question given the many issues that surround those that get TAs and seem to still not properly teach it. The system you are referring too is actually my idea. It’s being tested on to see how it does and I know it needs far more refining. If you have other suggestions on how to go about reducing times on interviews while making sure things are covered, that would help greatly. 

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2 minutes ago, Delmodan said:

@Apostate Very good question. TAs are a very time consuming process with the longer magics taking up to either hours with an interview or several days given the timeframe between Interviewer and the person getting the TA. We wanted to move TAs towards being more looked into and see on the person having knowledge of the lore in question given the many issues that surround those that get TAs and seem to still not properly teach it. The system you are referring too is actually my idea. It’s being tested on to see how it does and I know it needs far more refining. If you have other suggestions on how to go about reducing times on interviews while making sure things are covered, that would help greatly. 

I think interviews should take time and be thorough.

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1 minute ago, rukio said:

I think interviews should take time and be thorough.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Delmodan said:

@Apostate Very good question. TAs are a very time consuming process with the longer magics taking up to either hours with an interview or several days given the timeframe between Interviewer and the person getting the TA. We wanted to move TAs towards being more looked into and see on the person having knowledge of the lore in question given the many issues that surround those that get TAs and seem to still not properly teach it.


Indeed, I think they should – but I think that there should be a far more refined way of doing it than simply rolling through every part of the lore. I am sure that myself and any others who find the system to be difficult to use for applying for the Teacher Application properly can assist in refining it and lowering the amount of questions needed. If it really needs to be 3-4 hours of work, it should be 3-4 hours of work that shouldn’t employ the lore in such a way that means that anybody who has the lore page open can pass the test with flying colours.

Furthermore, on the application, I saw that there was intended to be a ‘live’ section, composed of three teaching scenarios, but I never got this and my teaching application was accepted just after the long writing task. Perhaps a far better option is not to focus on the lore knowledge of the individual in terms of what they can read, but in terms of reading between the lines, focusing on far more ambiguous parts of lore, before focusing on their teaching ability and if they can express knowledge over to their students correctly, demonstrate correctly, cover all necessary knowledge and redlines, et cetera.

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I have a few points I wish to address. First I'll begin with lore submissions.

 

Following the criteria of formatting in lore proposals it can get confusing on what the team actually wants to see for detail, although you listed it out. How far and extensive do we need to write on each ability? If I am writing a creature with an extensive magical prowess do I do the creature or magical format? Citations should be a must for any rewrite of lore, to the coming lore games this will be a good way to keep track of previous lore to see what has changed.

 

To the lore mags, I understand pieces of lore take time and of such should have extensive thoughts and opinions on lore, I would like to understand that despite this - why give us one paragraph or even a single sentence on why the lore was denied and not go into full reasons? Some people spend months writing the lore piece then months waiting for it to be reviewed to then find out its denied with one sentence of explanation without the chance of it being put into pending for changes. What is worse that when you try to contact ST management for an extensive reason on why the lore was denied they cannot give it. An example which I will constantly press is the two previous necromancy lores of both Geo and myself having no answer on them despite my constant asking of ST.

 

To then applications, as pointed out above they can take a few days to a week or more to be reviewed. Regular MAs. This limits roleplay extensively, previously I was told that once you have a MA up with an appropriate teacher you can learn the magic despite it being reviewed or not. Is this still the case?

 

Teaching applications in my opinion are a flop, specifically in interviews; if I just have the lore open I can answer any question thrown at me as thats how it currently works which shouldn't be the case, pre-written questions which test the knowledge of the individual should be done as with snippets of lore. Not to explain all the abilities one can just reword from the lore/guide.

 

This is all for now.

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@Apostate That is very good ideas and something I will definitely think about. I would like to note that if we see people having such threads open during Interviews, we do enact warnings/punishments for it. Mainly given as one should know what they are teaching without having a handbook every step of the way. The ‘live’ section I had to actually recently halt for now as I found that with my interviewers that that was taking more time to even work out with doing TAs which added onto the process of taking longer. While I did find it interesting the few times I did it, I definitely saw that it hindered the process further. 

@Jenny_Bobbs I will try to answer all your questions as best I can. The critieria for formatting with lore proposals I thought was detailed out with what we want to see. Though if it helps, we could add some examples and also state a list of things that would say fall under each category. The answer to the creature with alot of magical prowess would be the playable creature format as it is abilities under said creature that they obtain when turned(or created, w/e it is). 

For loremags, If the verdicts are found to vague, I will definitely make sure its more detailed next time in regards to handing them out. Communication when people ask or enquire further should be worked on better with a denied piece and we managers will try better to communicate in that regard. The necromancy example is something that was more blocked with permissions on our end on finding out what happened. Something I plan on getting fixed soon as its annoying as hell really when I need to see the verdicts. I do apologize with this as I do remember you asking and I should’ve gotten it taken care of.

Applications should never take so long to get reviewed. Period. I was on a sudden hiatus for almost 3 weeks and I was not pleased with seeing things sit when they most definitely should’ve easily been taken care of. It is flat unacceptable.  I will be monitoring this far more closely in the future and will be looking for newer members to help with this area to keep it maintained and looked at more. 

As I stated prior, Interviews for TAs is massively something I’m trying to work on. If you have any suggestions regarding it like the others, that would help out greatly. 

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