Java17

1 hour ago, The60th said:

-snip-

Thank you for your response, 60th, I appreciate the time you took to comment on this post.

Let me begin with that I am disappointed that instead of focusing on the main topic of the post, which was to provide feedback about what I personally perceive as flaws in tech team's structure and operation, you've taken to showcase a rather limited view of my contributions to the server, even when you've missed some, notably some that I had left unfinished due to my increasing frustration with the rather spotty presence of dependencies in our repo. This is especially considering that the vast majority of my work was not on Git, but rather contributed directly to the server config, a large portion of it on your own account, and some before I even joined the tech team, as you are well aware. 

Additionally, and unfortunately at the risk of downplaying your contributions, which I am sorry for, these "significant enhancement" you've done were after you've implemented your PvP plugin, which had introduced a few performance issues as was evident by the smoothness of play in the brief period after I've implemented my changes and before the PvP plugin was implemented. You have made changes to the render distance of animals, yet you were not the one to make the changes to the server's config reflecting of the chunk loading itself. 

As for management availability, I always was and still am appreciative of your attempts at being available to tech team members, but there is only so much two volunteers can do, which is why I had implied adding more technicians in my original post might help in alleviating this issue.

I am happy to hear that you've begun work on that plugin, especially after I had raised that concern a few times in our tech channel. It is a good step in the right direction, yet, as you mentioned, I was tasked with contributing to an economy plugin, which is related to one of my pain points which I had mentioned in my original post.

In response to my "unfulfilled responsibilities", I had chosen to address performance issues and helping other team members before taking on the responsibilities given to me by tech team management, and I stand by that, because I believed and still do, that the contributions I had made, while not "responsibilities" were of a higher potential to increase server satisfaction for the players. Especially since, we are all here as volunteers with the end goal of improving the player experience, rather than inflating player numbers.

Since I've been receiving quite a few DMs both on Discord and in-game regarding my resignation from the tech team, I wanted to make a post to serve as my own personal feedback based on what I believe needs and can be done to improve the quality of the tech team, and in turn, the value that it provides to the community. To clarify, my resignation is not due to a loss of interest in the server or the community. Rather, I feel that the current structure and priorities of the tech team are not supportive of delivering a good and balanced player experience.

Current Issues

The tech team, unfortunately, continues to face some of the same issues that have been present since 2021:

1. Limited Availability of Management: I appreciate Llir's efforts on a personal level, but the inactive management remains an issue that requires attention. There is no method for tech team members to request assistance from someone with adequate permissions to deal with many issues that may arise in-game, including, but not limited to, pushing updates to production, requesting missing dependencies and providing a general "guiding hand" to new team members.  

2. Poor Prioritization There seems to be a skewed focus on PvP elements, overshadowing the need for more meaningful roleplaying systems. Additionally, the introduction of mechanics that encourage players to log in daily or use alt accounts only serves to promote grinding, contrary to the narrative experience that should be the core of lotc. I have also been told to stop working on chunk improvements multiple times and by multiple tech team management members, all the while the server was struggling to load 2 chunks in front of a traveling player.

3. Limited Permissions: Team members, and especially the development team, have little to no permissions to resolve in-game issues effectively. This lack of any in game "power" makes it difficult to provide immediate solutions to player concerns. The team is needlessly (at least in my view) separated to 3 sections which have completely different permissions and duties (triage, development and implementation team). This would not be as big of an issue, say, there would be more senior members of the team (technicians), however, currently there is only one, @the60th, which results in a rather uncomfortable reality where you must spam / go on lengthy back and forth with a single team member to accomplish anything of value. This can be remedied by requesting permissions (just as I have done with chunks) to alter specific areas of the server, but it is a length process (took me about a month from me joining the team to receiving these permissions, which I persisted on getting even after being told from the two senior members of the team to not work on them / any performance fix)

A message to members of the team.

I want to acknowledge the talent and hard work that my fellow team members have invested into this server. @Adelemphii, @Greehn and @Aesopian you are very talented, and I hope this message helps to bring some attention to your hard work.

Thanks to @Llir for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this team. 

I also apologize to @The60th for the frequent pings to update the server config through his user (often multiple times a day).

Wishing all the best to the other staff teams, especially the story team ;).