Telanir 6434 Share Posted March 24, 2020 (Fireside Chats) Hey team, I’d like to propose we look at LotC quite a bit differently than we are right now. As it stands, almost all of our structures are built to hold a state of stasis—better known as stagnation. Seeing as we are all cooped up in quarantine this is the best time to strike, and better do it now while the iron is hot. The optimizations I outlined for point B) in our tech announcement were beyond my expectations, and we have further plans for server zoning which ultimately may help us support upwards of 600, maybe 700 players. Current status of our beloved RP server. 20tps is perfect server load. Chunks loading times are cut down by factors of >10x, during peak times (220+) we still see occasional delays but no longer than ~10sec vs 5 mins. I believe my previous ideals of a family-sized, efficient, & tight-knit staff may fall apart here. However, I realize we already have the staff numbers to support a server of 700 players and we should have no doubts as for why. Aiming For The Best Each team currently aims at and is satisfied with current player load & the peak numbers we see every day. I propose that instead we measure ourselves not based on what we see now, but whether we can support a server with 500 players online. This is absolutely possible provided that we reorient ourselves to focus on what is absolutely necessary for our players. If we try to grow the server with our current methods we will find it impossible to keep up. Community Team will struggle to keep up with current projects & whitelist app flow. Story Team will find it impossible to micromanage lore for the massive player count & small-time events just won’t cut it to keep the server engaged. Moderation will find it impossible to try and micromanage every disgruntled player interaction online. World Team is probably OK with all this though might need some tools to help deal with cleaning up the world, they will find it hard to meet the demand for event builds though for sure. Tech Team will obviously be on fire if we don’t complete server zoning. Aiming for the best means building systems that will succeed with triple the player counts. Each team has to consider which systems & projects can keep up with a growing server and which systems must be remodeled or shelved before the team gets overloaded. Any lingering feelings that you need more staff right now is an indication that your team is not fit for the future and is not putting forward its best. In my personal thoughts and just to kick off the topic, I would like to offer some simple ideas which can apply to each team. Admins should consider which projects on their team are catering to a 1:1 model, which is to say 1 staff member per 1 player. This model is human and personable and works in certain scenarios—but it is important to consider which ones work with a growing server (especially if our numbers reach our target). What I see in this 1:1 model problem is probably synonymous with micromanagement if you want to read it that way. The idea is for the staff to reorient itself as a team of fun-facilitators rather than trying to be the fun itself. The real fun, the real intrigue—the real excitement comes from player dynamics. The better the staff can facilitate players to bring out these dynamics into the open and forefront the better we are doing our job. (I should ask that we don’t tunnel vision ‘player dynamics’ to mean only ‘conflict`, as all friendships, rivalries and betrayals are core parts of our story). With this in mind, promoting rich Storyline and player engagement with overarching server theme(s) should dominate every breath of the Story Team planning. It’s about getting online and getting players excited to get online and stay on. The Community Team should be intimately involved with community building—highlighting player stories, hosting contests & get togethers, and large-scale player involvement. The Moderation Team can focus their efforts on building up a respectful, accountable, and cooperative community which can help itself and one-another without breathing ticket requests upon the slightest disagreement. Continuing the trend of discouraging on-site moderation is still on track to be an instructive and positive change, but there is more to do. The Tech Team needs to continue optimizing for large player counts and complete the zoning project, but also realize that without a functioning economy and without an accessible grind like professions there is little reason to stay online—especially if your friends are away or if you don’t have a clear goal/storyline at the moment. The World Team is a special case since mainly they are building the next map right now, but the team suffers from ‘nothing to do’-syndrome when maps are out and many members slumber for a majority of our biyearly map cycle. I like the trend of getting the team involved in charters/nations and landscarring, and I imagine better harmony with Story on storyline builds is a necessary next step. There is obviously more to the story than I can cover with one paragraph per team, but that should be plenty of material to begin this discussion. Promoting LotC and Community Building Friend referrals are still the most effective model we’ve had to date. Players recommended by a friend generally have a place to stay and someone close to help guide them with 0 staff involvement. Most people join this way, and we really should be building a server that players can be proud and excited to recommend. Community get-togethers like the Creative Cafe and livestreams are so rich and beautiful they make my heart melt. I love player content and know you do too, so promoting more of it is a no brainer. Contests like the Battle of the Arts bring together the biggest creative talents which would be brilliant to showcase on our Twitter, YouTube, and any other platform. As techs we of course should continue to incentivize voting, but I feel like incorporating a friend referral system with rewards for both players based on engagement & retention could be useful (and idc if it gets abused frankly, it can get punished when it’s caught.) I still believe that we should be finding novel ways to reward players for in-game activity, and there are sensible ways to, for example, make use of region activity without making LotC into a full time job. I’d also tentatively suggest reaching out to our fellow RP communities (perhaps even beyond mineman) and building a friendly relationship, maybe cohosting some events? I wouldn’t view us as competitors really, but probably one big community with a common love for roleplay. Not a big priority and maybe not even feasible, but who knows what can happen. Story plays a big part in this. We definitely need to bring back the kind of eye-poppin’ spicy storyline that can ignite those email headers and discord notifications—reaching deep back into our server culture and pulling back our man Iblees or otherwise. Not something wildly complicated—just recognizable, easy to engage with, and provocative. Building a Media team to host videos or bring back that juicy LotC-BC is always an idea but volunteer-based media solutions have rarely been a focal point here nor a reason for much growth. The LotC-BC series (in 2014 I think?) though was great for community building and really helped make us feel like one community. Also still a fan of the trailers, would be cool if our current content creators in the CT are capable of producing things like this. In the end I think my point is our server performance is faring much better and the iron is hot, let’s brainstorm. 16 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
VonAulus 2076 Share Posted March 25, 2020 5 hours ago, Telanir said: If we try to grow the server with our current methods we will find it impossible to keep up. Community Team will struggle to keep up with current projects & whitelist app flow. Story Team will find it impossible to micromanage lore for the massive player count & small-time events just won’t cut it to keep the server engaged. Moderation will find it impossible to try and micromanage every disgruntled player interaction online. World Team is probably OK with all this though might need some tools to help deal with cleaning up the world, they will find it hard to meet the demand for event builds though for sure. Tech Team will obviously be on fire if we don’t complete server zoning. I agree, we should be aiming to scale up production of content across the board. Specifically, I have been thinking about how we can use the map to drive up activity and engage more players to stick around for the long haul. I understand people may seem my charter reforms as contrary to this stated goal, however, I think settlement health is a better attraction to the server then settlement numbers. The map needs to feel alive and when you approach a place, there needs to be a high chance of finding an interesting RP experience. I think with the upcoming Lair Proposal, Charter Reform, and Nation Expansion projects coming down the pipe we can work on settlement health and player engagement all in one swoop. World edit is the main thing the team needs to be stable for us to get anything done. Recent hamstrings over the past few months have depleted a lot of our members patience when working on the live server. Hopefully with these optimizations we can find new solutions to fixing land scars, removing inactive builds, and other work World does everyday. 5 hours ago, Telanir said: Each team has to consider which systems & projects can keep up with a growing server and which systems must be remodeled or shelved before the team gets overloaded. Any lingering feelings that you need more staff right now is an indication that your team is not fit for the future and is not putting forward its best. This is very important. More people is not normally the answer, different people is. I think members of the staff and veteran players alike get the idea in their head that they are independents who are on staff. You are on a staff “team.” This means teamwork has to be a priority and slackers are going to get cut. We have to put feelings of entitlement and reward those members who are taking initiative and doing most of the work. As you said during downsizing, more members does not necessarily mean more work is getting done. More members actually demotivates the team a lot as you feel most people are not contributing. 5 hours ago, Telanir said: The Tech Team needs to continue optimizing for large player counts and complete the zoning project, but also realize that without a functioning economy and without an accessible grind like professions there is little reason to stay online—especially if your friends are away or if you don’t have a clear goal/storyline at the moment. The economy is something World has been considering greatly. One frustration our team has is a lack of tech/dev support over the entire time I have been a member of staff. One small economy plugin goes a long way for that community. Economic activity on the server is in itself roleplay and will help to drive activity up if it is engaging and has server support. We need to have a way better economic plan for next map and there should probably be a subsection of World Team completely focused on economic reforms. The economy being more immersive and meaningful can only help the server grow to the numbers you are suggesting here. Please give us llama or something! 5 hours ago, Telanir said: The World Team is a special case since mainly they are building the next map right now, but the team suffers from ‘nothing to do’-syndrome when maps are out and many members slumber for a majority of our biyearly map cycle. I like the trend of getting the team involved in charters/nations and landscarring, and I imagine better harmony with Story on storyline builds is a necessary next step. Something I brought up to Luka during my time as manager was that we should do expansions to a map similar to how WoW or Runescape do expansions or content creations. Imagine you have the same team that designs the map stick around and work on smaller projects all together. The job of the map is not done on release, it should just be getting started. We could revamp areas of the map and work with Story to change the map and add more life/detail as the map progresses. These need to be long term plans not based on the whims of one person, but team wide efforts with a collective soul behind it. Athera is a great example of content we should be looking to do more often, with a lot of upside and little risk. 5 hours ago, Telanir said: As techs we of course should continue to incentivize voting, but I feel like incorporating a friend referral system with rewards for both players based on engagement & retention could be useful (and idc if it gets abused frankly, it can get punished when it’s caught.) I still believe that we should be finding novel ways to reward players for in-game activity, and there are sensible ways to, for example, make use of region activity without making LotC into a full time job. I have talked about this before in meetings. Voting can not be the only way to advance the economy. Friend referrals is a great idea. I do not know if it is possible, but could engagement on social media be turned into a way to earn minas? I am generally not a fan of ooc things having in game benefit but that could help boost our presence, there. We should also have an Instagram account that is used to promote builds on the server. Some build accounts on Instagram get a lot of interaction and this is a possible pool we should be using resources to tap into. 5 hours ago, Telanir said: Building a Media team to host videos or bring back that juicy LotC-BC is always an idea but volunteer-based media solutions have rarely been a focal point here nor a reason for much growth. The LotC-BC series (in 2014 I think?) though was great for community building and really helped make us feel like one community. Also still a fan of the trailers, would be cool if our current content creators in the CT are capable of producing things like this. We should get a PR or Media intern. I am sure some college or highschool student could use an internship for their college resume. Some might think this is a meme but people put a lot of crap on those and you could explain that you are an intern for massive gaming community that spans the planet, yada yada how ever many users you want to list. People put they are president of the math club and this is not any more or less nerdy. Times are a changing and people are learning to respect organizing and social media content creation. If at the end you could show a portfolio of work you did for the server and a social media account you helped to grow, there is massive value there. 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LotsOfMuffins 1357 Share Posted March 27, 2020 On 3/24/2020 at 10:12 PM, VonAulus said: We should get a PR or Media intern. I am sure some college or highschool student could use an internship for their college resume. Some might think this is a meme but people put a lot of crap on those and you could explain that you are an intern for massive gaming community that spans the planet, yada yada how ever many users you want to list. People put they are president of the math club and this is not any more or less nerdy. Times are a changing and people are learning to respect organizing and social media content creation. If at the end you could show a portfolio of work you did for the server and a social media account you helped to grow, there is massive value there. If we get an actual content creation team, that’d be great. Some sort of media people should exist, yes. I don’t know if we will actually get some sort of intern, but in terms of actually having a media person or team, that’s necessary. Heck, we need more video editors and artists as it stands right now, and I’m recruiting as much as I can. On 3/24/2020 at 10:12 PM, VonAulus said: On 3/24/2020 at 4:23 PM, Telanir said: Each team has to consider which systems & projects can keep up with a growing server and which systems must be remodeled or shelved before the team gets overloaded. Any lingering feelings that you need more staff right now is an indication that your team is not fit for the future and is not putting forward its best. This is very important. More people is not normally the answer, different people is. I think members of the staff and veteran players alike get the idea in their head that they are independents who are on staff. You are on a staff “team.” This means teamwork has to be a priority and slackers are going to get cut. We have to put feelings of entitlement and reward those members who are taking initiative and doing most of the work. As you said during downsizing, more members does not necessarily mean more work is getting done. More members actually demotivates the team a lot as you feel most people are not contributing. I’m happy to say that the Community Team feels more like a team now than it has in a long while, constantly working together and aspiring to help players, but there is an array of issues that have to be solved in order to sustain a greater playerbase. For example, Telanir explains here: On 3/24/2020 at 4:23 PM, Telanir said: Community Team will struggle to keep up with current projects & whitelist app flow. Which is somewhat true. But in terms of applications, with the overload we’d gotten recently, we handled it pretty well. The real issue of the CT is figuring out how do we integrate all these new players. Currently, monk guidance is pretty helpful. It’s been remodeled a bit in order to help the new player be able to understand chat functions, bank and auction house mechanics, how to find settlements, how to shop, and then finally, get involved in a community. However, this process takes time, and such, it’s difficult to get each new player guidance. We can handle applications somewhat fast and can roleplay while reviewing them, but you can’t roleplay while helping a new player and it does not take a short amount of time. This process is very hands-on and involving. If our playerbase increases, it’s assumed that the demand for new player guidance will also increase. As such, how do we handle it? Well, the issue, as Telanir says, isn’t in our member count. We have at least 5 CT members on at any given time. The issue lies in do the CT members have time, can they break away from their roleplay, who is available, etc. There are a few different approaches to this issue. We could lessen the time it takes to complete guidance. This would mean cutting down on what we’re teaching or speeding it up. Personally, I don’t think this is a great option. We shouldn’t be rushing helping new players. The other option is to automate some of the process. As in, Tutorial Island. This is a project that has been in the works for months. Essentially, it’s an island which new players initially spawn at to get a basic overview of how to do certain, key mechanics, such as the banks, auction houses, shops, chat commands, etc. If Tutorial Island is a thing, we wouldn’t have to guide as many players as, hopefully, they’d be taught through this, and those that do need guidance, it’d be a lot shorter due to not needing to teach every mechanic. So, if there is going to be a large increase in new players, I’m banking on this Tutorial Island project to be a success. On 3/24/2020 at 4:23 PM, Telanir said: Community get-togethers like the Creative Cafe and livestreams are so rich and beautiful they make my heart melt. I love player content and know you do too, so promoting more of it is a no brainer. Contests like the Battle of the Arts bring together the biggest creative talents which would be brilliant to showcase on our Twitter, YouTube, and any other platform. And these will continue! Hopefully, if we can get more content creators, we can hopefully advertise them better. Unfourtunately, we’ve only got two video editors. Got anyone else in mind? On 3/24/2020 at 4:23 PM, Telanir said: I’d also tentatively suggest reaching out to our fellow RP communities (perhaps even beyond mineman) and building a friendly relationship, maybe cohosting some events? I wouldn’t view us as competitors really, but probably one big community with a common love for roleplay. Not a big priority and maybe not even feasible, but who knows what can happen. School RP? On 3/24/2020 at 4:23 PM, Telanir said: Building a Media team to host videos or bring back that juicy LotC-BC is always an idea but volunteer-based media solutions have rarely been a focal point here nor a reason for much growth. The LotC-BC series (in 2014 I think?) though was great for community building and really helped make us feel like one community. Also still a fan of the trailers, would be cool if our current content creators in the CT are capable of producing things like this. We need more video editors! If you know of any or have any ideas on how I can better reach out to the community for some more, let me know! On 3/24/2020 at 10:12 PM, VonAulus said: On 3/24/2020 at 4:23 PM, Telanir said: As techs we of course should continue to incentivize voting, but I feel like incorporating a friend referral system with rewards for both players based on engagement & retention could be useful (and idc if it gets abused frankly, it can get punished when it’s caught.) I still believe that we should be finding novel ways to reward players for in-game activity, and there are sensible ways to, for example, make use of region activity without making LotC into a full time job. I have talked about this before in meetings. Voting can not be the only way to advance the economy. Friend referrals is a great idea. I do not know if it is possible, but could engagement on social media be turned into a way to earn minas? I am generally not a fan of ooc things having in game benefit but that could help boost our presence, there. We should also have an Instagram account that is used to promote builds on the server. Some build accounts on Instagram get a lot of interaction and this is a possible pool we should be using resources to tap into. I can make an Instagram with the content creation team if you guys approve of it. We can have little contests or something on there in order to earn Minas. That might work. And let’s do the friend referral system. Please. 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Braxis 813 Share Posted March 27, 2020 Quote If we try to grow the server with our current methods we will find it impossible to keep up. Community Team will struggle to keep up with current projects & whitelist app flow. Story Team will find it impossible to micromanage lore for the massive player count & small-time events just won’t cut it to keep the server engaged. Moderation will find it impossible to try and micromanage every disgruntled player interaction online. World Team is probably OK with all this though might need some tools to help deal with cleaning up the world, they will find it hard to meet the demand for event builds though for sure. Tech Team will obviously be on fire if we don’t complete server zoning. With Moderation with getting the team better balance between the timezones, which still isn’t perfect has gotten alot better. Even more so since I now have access to all Modreq data we can start pinpointing what timezones need help, which GMs are not touching tickets whilst online, etc. Honestly GM is gonna need a few more hands in it which I plan on discussing with my managers soon. Not talking like doubling our numbers or anything silly like that, but get a few more onto the team and then start to do their training and any retraining that Moderators might need assistance with. I know at least for my team and myself personally I’d rather fine tune and prepare the team for growth, expansion of duties, etc that come with a growing server population. I do really want to see the numbers we had in Aegis/Asulon/Anthos again, but many teams are going to need alot of rework or growth in preparation for such. Which I am not against, just something we will not want to rush if at all possible. Quote Each team has to consider which systems & projects can keep up with a growing server and which systems must be remodeled or shelved before the team gets overloaded. Any lingering feelings that you need more staff right now is an indication that your team is not fit for the future and is not putting forward its best Thats one reason we are doing changes to the Rule Rewrites, War Rewrite, Infraction System etc and having little groups within the team monitor and take note of what works, what doesn’t etc. So that way our systems can be evolving and grow with the server. If we remake a war system that works well today, in a few months as the server grows it may not be the best system by then and might need tweaking. If its a tweak here and there it will save both the community and staff alot of time then trying to redo something and hopefully resolve some issues when a problem within the rules doesn’t get fixed until months after its pointed out because of the tedious processes involved in altering one rule at the moment. Quote As techs we of course should continue to incentivize voting, but I feel like incorporating a friend referral system with rewards for both players based on engagement & retention could be useful (and idc if it gets abused frankly, it can get punished when it’s caught.) I still believe that we should be finding novel ways to reward players for in-game activity, and there are sensible ways to, for example, make use of region activity without making LotC into a full time job. Honestly, a Friend Referral System would be cool, it works well in other gaming platforms, long as we get some decent rewards and balance them it sounds like something that could be a boon. Quote Building a Media team to host videos or bring back that juicy LotC-BC is always an idea but volunteer-based media solutions have rarely been a focal point here nor a reason for much growth. The LotC-BC series (in 2014 I think?) though was great for community building and really helped make us feel like one community. Also still a fan of the trailers, would be cool if our current content creators in the CT are capable of producing things like this. I remember when Haelphon first made the Media Team in late Aegis/Asulon it exploded and greatly helped the server, only to rather quickly burn out and just be a staff group where people had pex, and didn’t do much. Least in my time till late 2013 is what we saw with that. I’d love to see a Media Team return in proper and remain active to help showcase the server. Quote The Moderation Team can focus their efforts on building up a respectful, accountable, and cooperative community which can help itself and one-another without breathing ticket requests upon the slightest disagreement. Continuing the trend of discouraging on-site moderation is still on track to be an instructive and positive change, but there is more to do So far, its been a rocky start but there has been progress made towards this. On-Site Moderation only occurring if absolutely needed, as I am not entirely against it. But when it comes the norm players, or at least a good portion would throw them up all the time willy nilly at the slightest disagreement. When I first rejoined Moderation this was an absolute shock to me. Even more so seeing Gms burn out so quickly or become senile and jaded because of the rapid fire shotgun decisions they would have to make that would just bite them in the butt shortly after. Just flying around at random, which one lead to me catching players doing things they shouldn’t more often then I’d think. But it also has shown me several groups of player hashing things out OOCly or communicating with one another in a non-toxic way to resolve their issues, I hope to see more of that grow to help be a stepping stone in restoring the community to where it was before. At least when it comes to self-moderating ones self and how to interact with other players. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llir 5733 Share Posted March 27, 2020 On 3/24/2020 at 11:12 PM, VonAulus said: The economy is something World has been considering greatly. One frustration our team has is a lack of tech/dev support over the entire time I have been a member of staff. One small economy plugin goes a long way for that community. Economic activity on the server is in itself roleplay and will help to drive activity up if it is engaging and has server support. We need to have a way better economic plan for next map and there should probably be a subsection of World Team completely focused on economic reforms. The economy being more immersive and meaningful can only help the server grow to the numbers you are suggesting here. Hey Grool, I know in the past there has been a lot of issues with this. I’m hoping things can be different leading up to the next map. With the lag gone my focus is going to be focusing towards great content, and I am sure both myself and Topaz would be happy to lend support in terms of economy. A lot can be done with some simple plugins, I agree that the economy is super important and have always wanted to see more done with it. I know that OOC actions can’t be the only way to generate mina, we need to think of creative RP or mechanics-based solutions to economic throughput. I also think our community has a lot of great ideas when it comes to this, just the other day I spoke with a player who wanted to create roleplay-oriented professions on the server, which I think may be an idea worth investigating. On 3/24/2020 at 11:12 PM, VonAulus said: do not know if it is possible, but could engagement on social media be turned into a way to earn minas? Might be tricky, but absolutely something we could do. Great idea! On 3/24/2020 at 5:23 PM, Telanir said: Aiming for the best means building systems that will succeed with triple the player counts. This is key, the Zoning project will be critical to us succeeding at higher player counts for obvious reasons, but also things like player retention, statistics gathering, professions, and bug-fixing are central to this as well. We can’t have techs running around fixing bugs and errors 24/7. Having smooth, user-friendly systems will be core to this. Lord of the Craft should be a unique experience, not just with our roleplay and community, but with the mechanics that comes with it. We had this with Nexus, and although that project reached end of life, it’s tenants are not obsolete. Outside of directly technical aspects, looking at the staff as a whole everything seems to fall back on plugins to some degree. To Community having plugins that run their tutorials or keep better metrics on new players, World having more economic insights and map-making tools they need, Moderation having integrated logging and punishment tools, Story having access to character decks, pre-builds, and dungeoning systems, all of this is needed to handle larger player loads. As a whole though no matter what plugins we code, the teams will need to adapt. On 3/24/2020 at 5:23 PM, Telanir said: The idea is for the staff to reorient itself as a team of fun-facilitators This is important. We can’t handle everything one-on-one, we need the tools in place to make systems that can tell our story for us, streamline interactions, and focus on what matters. Even compared to just a few years ago, half of mod-requests have been replaced by plugins, leaving more time for moderators to focus on, you know, moderating. We need to think of more ways that we can streamline tasks, our staff are not bots, we have bots for that. On 3/24/2020 at 5:23 PM, Telanir said: As techs we of course should continue to incentivize voting, but I feel like incorporating a friend referral system with rewards for both players based on engagement & retention could be useful (and idc if it gets abused frankly, it can get punished when it’s caught.) I still believe that we should be finding novel ways to reward players for in-game activity, and there are sensible ways to, for example, make use of region activity without making LotC into a full time job. Absolutely, ~ friendship is the most powerful force of all ~ On 3/24/2020 at 11:12 PM, VonAulus said: You are on a staff “team.” This means teamwork has to be a priority and slackers are going to get cut. We have reward those members who are taking initiative and doing most of the work. When I first aimed to join upper staff Sporadic asked me why I wanted to be a Technician. I gave an answer that I’ve since seen time and time again on staff applications – I want to help the server – it’s a true and honest answer to the question. He told me that I was wrong – what I really wanted to do was change the server – and perhaps he wasn’t wrong. Most people, whether they realize it or not, join staff because it comes with influence, which is perhaps the most powerful staff perk we offer. We offer players the chance to shape the server in a way you simply can’t as a normal player. This is not to say we should be self-righteous – we are not some omniscient elite – but we must be humble in the fact that we can contribute back to the server we love. We must encourage our members to pursue projects their are passionate about, give them the tools they need to materialize their ideas, and offer them a seat at the table. Our staff our volunteers, no staff member will stick around if they are simply a thankless workhorse. Staff burnout is real, and must be avoided. As Admins we are leaders, not bosses. 1 hour ago, LotsOfMuffins said: I’m happy to say that the Community Team feels more like a team now than it has in a long while I’ve been really impressed with the community team. The amount of projects and events that get done speaks for itself, but one thing that I feel is more important than that is just the sense teamwork and comradery seen on the team, it has soul. Staff shouldn’t feel like a bureaucratic institution where members feel obligated to do work for which they have no interest in exchange for staff perks and power. They should be doing it because they love this server and enjoy helping to shape it, and the community team embodies this in it’s spirit, something we need to keep at the forefront of our staff as we continue to grow, we can’t get lost in sauce. 2 hours ago, LotsOfMuffins said: Which is somewhat true. But in terms of applications, with the overload we’d gotten recently, we handled it pretty well. The real issue of the CT is figuring out how do we integrate all these new players. Currently, monk guidance is pretty helpful. It’s been remodeled a bit in order to help the new player be able to understand chat functions, bank and auction house mechanics, how to find settlements, how to shop, and then finally, get involved in a community. Tutorial systems and areas are essential, I would love to sit down with you and see how my team can support this project. Although it is incredibly wholesome what your team does with new players, it may not scale well, and we can not see the vital guidance given to new players diminished. On 3/24/2020 at 5:23 PM, Telanir said: Building a Media team to host videos or bring back that juicy LotC-BC is always an idea but volunteer-based media solutions have rarely been a focal point here nor a reason for much growth. I think we have a lot of members in our community who are very talented and willing to donate their time and skills to help see our server grow, but I see where you are coming from. Media teams have always been rather under-performing and perhaps it is time to explore other options, if even to simply fill the gaps. 1 hour ago, Braxis said: I know at least for my team and myself personally I’d rather fine tune and prepare the team for growth, expansion of duties, etc that come with a growing server population. I think right now moderation is the best suited to scale, a lot of their systems have been stream-lined recently, the model their team runs on works very well and with a growing experience-bank, the team will have the tools to handle anything thrown at them. 2 hours ago, LotsOfMuffins said: School RP? I personally prefer DateCraft. - - Overall, I think this goal is attainable, we just have to look at building upon and streamlining what we have, while jumping a few large hurdles along the way. I know that we have so much drive, dedication, and ideas on both our staff and the wider community, that we can do this. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Telanir 6434 Author Share Posted March 31, 2020 Alright so there has been so much going on recently that I kept getting behind on this thread—frankly if I want to cover everything all at once & the Story team I will need all day to write and then I’ll be a full day behind lol. First things first, let’s get some HYPE going for 3 things that happened recently, 1st of all we got 325 players online at one time and I was able to sit in Krugmar and witness some smooth-ass PvP, confirmed by the people participating in the pvp itself. Another thing is we just got an awesome video submission from Urguan for Homeland Highlights. Last and big ass one is that Zac is coming more and more active during these virus times so I’ve tossed on any streamer powers onto him I can think of, so he will be able to broadcast & fly around and vanish and whatnot freely. His stream crosses like 80 ppl on peak times and we really feel like a community together during these so I can’t help but smile each time. The last week I’ve just been sitting down with members of the Story team and we’ve been chatting for hours, I’ve reviewed maybe a dozen essay/suggestion docs covering the team as well. It’s clear to me the team is full of a lot of passionate members and I can feel the hunger for change in the air. With that said, the first step is going to be to fix up the permissions on the team as well as to start pulling apart and organizing the absolute spaghetti that holds the team together. I’m going to reply a detailed update on the Story Team regarding preparing this team for server growth. Edit: also a follow-up is I believe the proxy should be fixed now? I changed some settings around so we shouldn’t encounter those phat proxy crashes anymore. ? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Telanir 6434 Author Share Posted March 31, 2020 Ok also I want to generate some discussion on the latest player feedback, so I’m going to highlight the posters & feedback. This first one’s mainly for me, it’s from the gentleman and scholar @Xarkly who kindly responded to the OP with a standalone post with what I think places us on the same page. Hard to convey my thoughts in a grand total of 3 sentences on Story team in the main post but if you want to know my thoughts on how Storylines should be prioritized check out the thread here. In summary, prioritizing widescale Storylines are not synonymous with mass events and we should be cognizant of that. Primarily, gathering 100 players in one area and spamming mobs is no bueno and it’s all about chaining together a cohesive and coherent Storyline with many small and impactful events. I’d add that the main focus of these events should be to facilitate player intrigue and allow much of the meat of the plot to be executed by the players without team supervision but I’ll have to elaborate on this wild statement later. If the team provides the foundation & skeletal structure and can be present for keystone or turning-point events & guidance we can get the most effect w/ the least execution pressure on the team. Ok the next two are for you @VonAulus, I’ll just mention my thoughts on these two threads, 1st was submitted by an ass who figured he’s above the rules when it comes to playground jeering at an admin but it got a lot of traction so I’m adding it anyway, and the 2nd one was by @FlemishSupremacy who suggested a solution in his post, which I am absolutely a fan of I definitely like seeing players doing more of that. I think the biggest lesson to be learned in my eyes from these two threads is the best way to attain server growth is to reward the behaviour we want to see (player activity, roleplay, civility & cooperation). Tofuus (@CrazyBigSpiders) also made a great point that I want to highlight, which is that the metrics we use to identify activity should be more precise, I personally recall players loving the Nexus-Regioning system (besides the bugs lol) because it sent your activity numbers home even if you weren’t present but also contributed some activity to the current region you were roleplaying at. This isn’t too fancy in my opinion and pretty easily doable, it also scaled activity requirements based on the land that you had rather than players online, so more land = more players required was straightforward and fair since groups in Aussie & European times didn’t get fucked. Now, when it comes to dealing with ghost towns I think the biggest qualm here is evictions should not be handled by human beings. There is far too much ambiguity when it comes to it and if a moderator evicts you your first instinct is to argue and good luck convincing anyone that they shouldn’t have their land they were building and living on. (even if they are now entirely absent from it). There should be a fair and solid plugin system which handles these situations which allows players many different options (i.e. paying it off to delay it, getting a free extension one every 3 months for example, etc.). Losing a region though and gaining it have to be huge shift, like imagine going from 50 active players in X region to 2, then there is no question. Alright and this next one from @CrocsGuy is a goodie in my opinion and a good way to assess if the current rule rewrite will have positive effects, @Braxis And, @argonian added on to this with a fantastic point—that raids have usurped villainy. The slow elimination of traditional villainy and the emergence of ‘calling’ pvp are strange constructs that manifested over the last 5 years. When it comes to villain quality, that is easily detectable and evaluated in a public report. When it comes to a raid, there is not really any such thing, and it results in odd looking measures such as showing up to a settlement armed equalling a raid regardless of the consequences (there is not really any other better way to prevent settlement harassment w/ a raid-oriented system). I think we all can drop the pretense that these are ‘intimidation’ events lol and not clever ways to sidestep raid restrictions. If you attack this group then, whelp, it’s time to ‘defend’ yourself & your buds! —Unfortunately it’s not all that simple though, it’s not 100% of the time just clever loopholing as just as often it’s someone giving an honest try at generating RP. Issue is that it is nearly impossible to generate this depth of story progression from the pvp encounter, but is a different scenario in villainy. As bad as we eyeballed villainy to be in 2013 it was at the least a more personal and depth-provoking experience. The current system does allow for depth by accident, but what we really need is a text-combat system where playing to win does not fundamentally break the game. (impossible to expect everyone to play ball fairly when it comes to IRP text combat without a common pattern/system to govern these encounters to prevent them from getting longer than 15mins or breaking down into endless arguing, rolls are too simplified as you have to implicitly agree no lore/strengths/specialties have any edge over anyone/anything else) I think that with the establishment of RP Quality Standards we should continue the careful and deliberate return to the roots of roleplay and its many fruits. I suggest we start a Your View on the best way to design such a combat system. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
VonAulus 2076 Share Posted April 2, 2020 On 3/26/2020 at 8:45 PM, LotsOfMuffins said: There are a few different approaches to this issue. We could lessen the time it takes to complete guidance. This would mean cutting down on what we’re teaching or speeding it up. Personally, I don’t think this is a great option. We shouldn’t be rushing helping new players. The other option is to automate some of the process. As in, Tutorial Island. This is a project that has been in the works for months. Essentially, it’s an island which new players initially spawn at to get a basic overview of how to do certain, key mechanics, such as the banks, auction houses, shops, chat commands, etc. If Tutorial Island is a thing, we wouldn’t have to guide as many players as, hopefully, they’d be taught through this, and those that do need guidance, it’d be a lot shorter due to not needing to teach every mechanic. So, if there is going to be a large increase in new players, I’m banking on this Tutorial Island project to be a success. I like the Tutorial Island idea. I know it has been difficult to get consistent builder help but maybe I could personally help. That is something we could during this map and next. Shoot me a PM so I can move this up World Team priority list. On 3/26/2020 at 8:45 PM, LotsOfMuffins said: And let’s do the friend referral system. Please. This sounds cool to me. I am sure Llir or Telanir would have a better understanding of how to set this up to be automated. Maybe even a stage on tutorial island which asks how do you find out about LOTC? On 3/26/2020 at 8:58 PM, Braxis said: Just flying around at random, which one lead to me catching players doing things they shouldn’t more often then I’d think. But it also has shown me several groups of player hashing things out OOCly or communicating with one another in a non-toxic way to resolve their issues, I hope to see more of that grow to help be a stepping stone in restoring the community to where it was before. At least when it comes to self-moderating ones self and how to interact with other players. That is good to hear. I am glad players are taking some steps towards moderating disputes themselves. The change to relying more on reports and less on in game split-second moderation has been a positive one. As a player I noticed there have been a few less toxic ooc skirmishes in LOOC due to these changes. Moderators need to continue to pressure players to act civilly and I think you have done a good job making rulings to protect the mods on the team. On 3/27/2020 at 12:18 AM, Llir said: Hey Grool, I know in the past there has been a lot of issues with this. I’m hoping things can be different leading up to the next map. With the lag gone my focus is going to be focusing towards great content, and I am sure both myself and Topaz would be happy to lend support in terms of economy. A lot can be done with some simple plugins, I agree that the economy is super important and have always wanted to see more done with it. I know that OOC actions can’t be the only way to generate mina, we need to think of creative RP or mechanics-based solutions to economic throughput. I also think our community has a lot of great ideas when it comes to this, just the other day I spoke with a player who wanted to create roleplay-oriented professions on the server, which I think may be an idea worth investigating. There is a chat in the World Section to staff discord. If you want we could put together what we see as a good plan of simple ideas to help mold the economy with the server. We can then take that to the players to see their creative suggestions and tweaks. I hope to get moving forward on this soon so we can have a plan in place for 8.0. One specific idea we had was for minas mints that I think it pretty promising. On 3/31/2020 at 5:13 PM, Telanir said: Now, when it comes to dealing with ghost towns I think the biggest qualm here is evictions should not be handled by human beings. There is far too much ambiguity when it comes to it and if a moderator evicts you your first instinct is to argue and good luck convincing anyone that they shouldn’t have their land they were building and living on. (even if they are now entirely absent from it). There should be a fair and solid plugin system which handles these situations which allows players many different options (i.e. paying it off to delay it, getting a free extension one every 3 months for example, etc.). Losing a region though and gaining it have to be huge shift, like imagine going from 50 active players in X region to 2, then there is no question. Llir and I have talked about making this a more mechanical system which would ease the burden on the Charter Team Volunteers. Something interesting would be that regions would automatically reset if they were unused for too long, so that the generic terrain would come back from an original backup. We could still intervene to turn places into event sites but would save us the trouble of lots of clean-up world edit. On 3/31/2020 at 5:13 PM, Telanir said: When it comes to villain quality, that is easily detectable and evaluated in a public report. When it comes to a raid, there is not really any such thing, and it results in odd looking measures such as showing up to a settlement armed equalling a raid regardless of the consequences (there is not really any other better way to prevent settlement harassment w/ a raid-oriented system). I think we all can drop the pretense that these are ‘intimidation’ events lol and not clever ways to sidestep raid restrictions. If you attack this group then, whelp, it’s time to ‘defend’ yourself & your buds! —Unfortunately it’s not all that simple though, it’s not 100% of the time just clever loopholing as just as often it’s someone giving an honest try at generating RP. Issue is that it is nearly impossible to generate this depth of story progression from the pvp encounter, but is a different scenario in villainy. As bad as we eyeballed villainy to be in 2013 it was at the least a more personal and depth-provoking experience. The current system does allow for depth by accident, but what we really need is a text-combat system where playing to win does not fundamentally break the game. (impossible to expect everyone to play ball fairly when it comes to IRP text combat without a common pattern/system to govern these encounters to prevent them from getting longer than 15mins or breaking down into endless arguing, rolls are too simplified as you have to implicitly agree no lore/strengths/specialties have any edge over anyone/anything else) I think that with the establishment of RP Quality Standards we should continue the careful and deliberate return to the roots of roleplay and its many fruits. I suggest we start a Your View on the best way to design such a combat system. I have heard from some players a desire to return to a more RP Default system as we try to distance ourselves from our light-faction server recent past. I would be interested in looking into prioritizing dynamic villainy and removing raids altogether. I think you have stumbled on a catch-22. If you create a system to raid people, people will raid more because it has been institutionalized. So a system that was meant to limit raiding potential and destruction has brought it to new heights. Again, players can moderate themselves in most RP situations and when we run into every conflict with Moderation making rulings we get to the point we are at now. We have created a system reliant on Mods, so when that system fails (it has to) people hate the Mods in the system. We have to be careful to not put too much on Moderation as it is not their job to hold player’s hands but to help facilitate roleplay and make our server playable. On 3/31/2020 at 5:13 PM, Telanir said: I think the biggest lesson to be learned in my eyes from these two threads is the best way to attain server growth is to reward the behaviour we want to see (player activity, roleplay, civility & cooperation). Tofuus (@CrazyBigSpiders) also made a great point that I want to highlight, which is that the metrics we use to identify activity should be more precise, I personally recall players loving the Nexus-Regioning system (besides the bugs lol) because it sent your activity numbers home even if you weren’t present but also contributed some activity to the current region you were roleplaying at. This isn’t too fancy in my opinion and pretty easily doable, it also scaled activity requirements based on the land that you had rather than players online, so more land = more players required was straightforward and fair since groups in Aussie & European times didn’t get fucked. I have no problem with coming up with new ways to measure activity but for now I have to roll with the imperfect system we have. I do not subscribe to a lot of what is stated in these posts and I do not think the arguments were super compelling on why we should re-add freebuild or allow inactive settlements to sit there. They do hurt player counts and are more of a headache for Moderation and World. If you took a look over freebuild areas from last map you would see towny spread every 50 blocks that landscared the countryside with no one to enforce build standards. It did not add that many more players as most the settlements were completely empty after one week. Charter’s this map have done something similar and I have noticed as I checked the rosters of the charters, the same 5 people appear on a majority of those being evicted. The same 5-10 players pop up moving from one charter to another, not really adding much to the rp story or map. This is not their fault, the system is promoting this activity. If someone wants to code Nexus plots or w/e we can take a look but I would rather have that in front of me before I agree to it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Telanir 6434 Author Share Posted April 3, 2020 Alright team, so I’ve been talking to members on Story about the team after the latest departure in leadership, and I want to outline some common themes that I’ve seen. I’m incredibly thankful to these people for taking the initiative for days of discussion, and despite it being incredibly tiring lol it has been very helpful. There have been some amazing conversations along the way and many proposals to read so I must thank @JuliusAakerlund @Xarkly @Sykogenic@Riftblade @Cracker @McDaedra @Llir for their contributions to discussions & brainstorming these last few weeks. And a big thanks again to @Xarkly for agreeing for me to link this master doc he wrote, if you want an idea of the waves going on in the team then this should give you a good idea to the scale of future changes to Story team. Many of these points are shared within the team and the doc stands well on its own legs. Obviously as we know, the team is in very rough shape and is definitely not ready for server growth—it’s been a while since I’ve seen spaghetti like this that wasn’t just my own code lol so there’s a lot to tackle. The admin selection will be moving forward soon, but I really need to put these discussions down on paper and maybe explain some things so people have an idea of what we’re looking to see an understanding of from the candidates… Narrative, Giving The Team A Direction One of the biggest flaws with the operation of the Story team has been that most eventlines & other events have been executed in a bubble, or as I liked to call it “a separate dimension”. And I’ve heard this repeated non-stop, people on the team realize it is not feasible to handle and promote player growth without cooperating under a deliberate and open narrative. The ideas I’ve seen as suggestions to be this narrative have all so far been open ended concepts that allow the flexibility within the Story team to roleplay sub-plots without being harped on for being ‘inaccurate’ or not matching the theme. The Narrative explains the actions and roleplay originating from the Story team, and highlight a main direction for a team that was infamous for being directionless, and by extension, stagnant. Giving the team a direction means finding a common thread between the events carried out on the team and connecting them all. It begins with building a cohesive team and then building a unified and solid theme together. Storyline Preparation & Builders I talked a lot about this concept with the prior lead, and the first is that if a storyline requires a build at some point throughout its duration then it should be happening in parallel with the execution of the story. Any plot can have an introductory period where builds are not necessary. This builds intrigue and hype for the eventline while we wait for the establishment of the base after which point it can be “discovered” or whatever other plot device. One of the most common excuses to twiddle thumbs was “Ah I’m waiting on those pesky builders, may the lord damn them for being so slow…” Speaking of builders… We have to stop treating builders like a means to an end, like tools. Some people in the past have wondered why their grand cyclopean narrative was delayed by unenthused builders or worse, why no offers for help stood at all for their storyline. (aka, ‘darn, I gotta do it all myself *huff*’) The reason is—builders are human beings. If you are devising some master plot that needs eager and willing volunteers then you have to involve these people in the executive process. The builds are as important to the plot as the plot itself, therefore these people must have a creative say in the project. You have to inspire people to work with your project, this means working collaboratively. Builders cannot be treated like a ticket system nor like a contractor that you hire for some cash and then leave (not to mention they don’t even get paid lol). ST-side Builders At the moment there is not a strong sense of cooperation between ST & WT, so I’ve heard it recommended many times that Story be allowed to recruit builder oriented folks. I think in the short-term this is fine as long as these members are also participating in storyline execution and not only building, as otherwise they’d just be a duplicate of the World Team. In the longer term, the concerns that I outlined above will need to be covered… Team Powers Story is currently split into an elite sect and a peasant sect, sorry to put the laundry out there but it’s the truth. It’s no secret that the Event side of the Story team has been long neglected, and was often powerless to affect server storyline in a meaningful way without intrusion from their counterpart. With less clout and less power, the team was ultimately rendered insignificant and irrelevant. Only by sheer will did a few projects make any headway and this absolutely has to change. A small first step I’m planning is to equalize permission nodes across the team, perms one side has are granted to the other and vice-versa. After that we can figure out the rest. Some Things Are Better Left Unanswered We’ve had a huge problem over the last decade and frankly right now it’s just sad. We overexplained LotC into oblivion, and there is no potential for tension or investment outside of introducing novel lore in a storyline that somehow enables it to work ‘outside of the expectations of our canon universe’ or something else ridiculous. The best line of thinking I can suggest is akin to this scenario: An in-character manuscript or excerpt that details the fallout of some series of events or experiments, maybe the musings of a dead (or even living) IRP author—whatever, a document that dips your toes into this new lore and provides a forum for speculation, allowing players the ability to interpret new possibilities. This obviously does not work for all things, but for most it is perfect. The tale of the descendants was written from the perspective of the Wandering Wizard. Rasmot the Mad, in Anthos (or was it Athera), left a series of riddles, notes, and journals for players to decipher and engage with, and was one of the most intriguing plots of the time. If no character witnessed it or if it plays no significant role in our day-to-day roleplay then it’s probably an overexplanation or an irrelevant piece. Few people enjoy filler material in a show, and when audiences have a choice they often skip it. If it’s 60 pages long it’s 59 pages too much. There is no reason for us to be so anal about the machinations of the LotC universe—the real roleplay is happening online and not in our word processors. Growth, Road To 500 With a goal and a direction, there’s no point in the team being fractured into two silos. Ultimately, the content that players care to see is the kind they click `Join Server` for and see executed in front of their own eyes. No other kind of content matters, that’s the short end of it and it’s the painful truth. I don’t think there is any reason for anybody to lose their position, since every member on Story is currently capable of logging on and playing their role in the team narrative and theme. But, it is absolutely necessary that all members in the team do this. The bullshit ‘merge’ that happened in early 2019 for Story was just that: a merge that slapped two teams together rather than creating a real Story Team. There is no Story Team now. Right now is the time to build a powerful and meaningful team, one that arguably can become LotC’s strongest asset. The ultimate goal is to deliver meaningful and dynamic content to the players of this community. Players who can inspire, who can worldbuild, and who can connect players while on the server are our bread and butter. Facilitating Roleplay What I mentioned in my original post was that we have to be careful not to think we are the fun itself. In reality, players make their own fun, and it happens best when you give people a story to work with and leave them to their devices. The last attempt made at an antagonist failed (4.0 undead) for many reasons (such as an admin at the time co-opting the storyline to curry favour with another individual…) but chief among them was that rather than micromanaging players & outcomes an antagonist must exist to enhance and highlight existing player dynamics and evils. Take for example a rally of evil forces that tests the rallied strength of the community. The battle & community victory is only a small part of the ‘fun’. Most of it really comes from the stories that emerge from the players that prepare and deal with this threat. World Lore What does world lore mean? Traditionally, it has meant 30-60 pages written up on a secretive google doc. But true worldbuilding actually happens when a player lays eyes on a mysterious structure or ancient gargantuan bone formation and wonders why it is there. Their character’s curiosity becomes the drive to explore the roots of these mysteries. Worldbuilding is about physically creating a living and breathing world, physically meaning blocks & active story. However, these stories absolutely cannot be delivered via a ticketing system. Come schedule your Story Team appointment at 3pm if you want to visit this great location!—no, there can be maybe 1 or 2 zones in a map total that work this way provided the experience is rich enough to justify the bureaucratic element. Curios I’ve long desired to give the Story team a tool that I think will be very important in the transition to an active team ready for growth. If anyone here has played Darkest Dungeon, curios are essentially any object that you can interact with to trigger some kind of story element. Sometimes a curio is a simple treasure, sometimes it delivers lore or narration, sometimes it is a blessing or a curse—or a rarity. Simply put the idea behind curios is you can give any block special properties, in other words, if you enter in a 5 block proximity of the cave entrance you will get audio ambience & even narrative ambience delivered to your chatbox. It is about taking the physical block world and empowering it to deliver a living and breathing story. If a ST member were interested they could make certain blocks spawn mobs and even design a dungeon, but ultimately it falls on people to creatively apply the tools in this plugin. Curios may have cooldowns as well of course. If you were to place a legendary consumable or other artifact you may not want more than 1 player using this curio per week. This level of customizability and the ability to deliver audio and visual ambience (particles & other) combined with text will allow the ST to deliver content that players may experience without requiring an online member of staff to supervise, and will always perfectly deliver the content every time. The human element then can be conserved for projects that need it the most, and members can prioritize the team narrative. Preventing Another Lore Games One of the issues the Lore Games sought to solve was the insane collection of unused or contradictory content which made LotC the incomprehensible amoeba of everything at once that it was—post-LG the idea was to give LotC some definition, and give us back the ability to set some themes & direction for a directionless and stagnant server. Over time we have improved our ability to process and accept new lore to the server, however… the issue with being super efficient at processing and adding new pieces to the collection is Lore Games becomes not a 1 time useful cleanup but a cycle doomed to repeat. New lore does not fix stagnation—it’s about how our existing lore is used and applied. That was the catch-22, the sheer overefficiency at processing new lore—hundreds of pieces a year, is what made the Lore Games feel so necessary. The Lore direction of this server has been tied off from the administrative council for a long time—but it is most certainly an administrative concern, and a community concern as well. We’ve gotten so caught up in the accuracy of lore & how it fits in to the existing canon that we stop seeing it for what it is—an online mineman game, where questions like mechanics and player engagement matter. How does this piece tie in to the current theme on ST & the LotC general experience becomes a question again, and we can begin to fix things again like rampant overbalancing. Bringing the Story team out of the past and upgrading it with the new things we have learned over the years allows us to start working on a unified direction together, while leaving it behind in the dirt & old ways would render the team doomed to fail and repeat its history. I’ve seen suggestions to break apart the LT & ET into two separate teams but why? What leg will LT have to stand on if separated? Each team in the reformed staff have very specific roles to play in the Road To 500 and in promoting server growth, and as it stands the tried and true way for the Story Team to do so is by logging on and roleplaying. Mini-Moderators This is something that really was a staple of old Lore Teams like think back to 2014-times—and somehow it survived into the current iteration of staff, likely by negligence and inertia. If players have a problem with someone powergaming or misusing lore we should be using the report system available to all on the forums and not a private communist party informant with private handling & a private verdict. Moderators can see clear as day when something is out of their league and know when to consult for advice and are currently impressively coordinated at completing reports in a timely manner. I would suggest that in these events Story members can be encouraged to contribute important lore-relevant details to such cases without fear of their posts being removed or warned. New Member Experience The whole dropping people out on a dropship w/ a faulty parachute and waving good luck thing hasn’t been working out so well, so people like @JuliusAakerlund and @McDaedra have been working on incredible new systems in place to ensure new members can shadow an experienced member and receive proper training along the way. Not to mention solid changes to the recruitment & interview process that I look forward to seeing succeed. Dunno what else to say here other than this being an obvious point of contention for the team—every member matters and every new recruit needs the full training experience. There’s more I should cover lol but I want to go have some dinner so peace. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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