Staff team changes

following this recent announcement about Staff applications being "officially welcomed", and the current situation in general, i was hoping to bring forward a couple of points for discussion, with these objectives in mind:

• present my view about the Staff team and why it's time for change
• encourage further input from the playerbase about the Staff team and how it can be improved

i'd just like to assert that this is my perspective based on the people whom i've worked with the most, and i'm not in the position to comment about the most recent batch of Interns, GMs and Forum Mods. nevertheless, i feel that most of them have been putting quite a lot of effort into their duties, which i'm very thankful for

1. Staff team revamp
as most of the community is aware, we've probably seen one of the most volatile Staff movement this year. most recently, five members made the decision to leave in quick succession, and i believe more are already following suit at this very moment. i can't speak entirely on their behalf, but i do believe that unlike what has actually been publicised, most of us did not leave solely because of real-life commitments or got burnt out. instead, we simply reached our threshold tolerance with regards to how the Staff team works and is handled

firstly, a majority of the current server leadership has close to no clue about what's going on in the game itself. this also might already be obvious due to the numerous game changes that leave us scratching our heads and wondering what's going to hit us next. when the more experienced players in Staff voiced our thoughts, these members still continued to insist that they are right, despite hardly logging on and not understanding the server's situation/meta at all. worse still, when called out, they even go on to claim that they don't need to have experience to have an opinion. not just once or twice, too. yes, in a sense that might be true, but there's a distinct difference between being uninformed vs. ignorant insistence. because of this, and because those members outnumber the more well-established players, there's usually two outcomes for gameplay debates:

• uninformed changes being made, just because, or
• stagnant discussions with no proper outcome

secondly, moving away from the game itself, the Staff team dynamics are pretty much atrocious. it's basically a few people consistently shouldering the major workload in various areas, namely Development, Testing & Game Changes, Report Abuse, RWT Investigations etc., whilst the rest do nothing but shoot their mouths off and try to claim credit for others' work (or to make themselves look good by presenting a facade)

to make things worse, many of us can already tell that the server owner has the tendency to jump to his girlfriend's rescue, and that's fair enough. i'm sure many of us would do the same or at least stand up for our friends/partners. however, there still needs to be a degree of professionalism involved. instead, this has carried over not only to internal discussions within the Staff team itself, but also to forums now (where he recently smacked a user with an ez 3-day ban just for possibly calling him out)

there are numerous incidences of this happening, but to retain some of Staff's privacy as a whole, i'll not go into further detail. nevertheless, i can assure you that the overwhelming reason most of us left is because of this favouritism, biasedness and complete lack of respect for the individuals who actually bothered to put their heart and soul into this server. i personally felt targeted, no less by Matt himself, despite doing the right thing on several occasions

in this light, i'd like to sincerely implore the two remaining Admins that it's high time to overhaul the Staff team. some suggestions i have are:

• remove deadweight Staff members, especially those who do not contribute in any tangible manner for an extended period of time
• remove any members who are involved romantically, and prohibit such relationships amongst future applicants
• besides the application process, make the hiring process more transparent as well, for e.g allow some form of community input, be it through voting or direct feedback about the applicant. if this is not possible, at least explain why certain people were hired over others
• reassessment of Staff priorities and workload delegation

2. prospective Staff members
to all current and future applicants, i hope you'll take this into consideration, albeit with a pinch of salt since i recognise this is my opinion and you're naturally entitled to yours as well;

• if you're applying because you're tired of reporting hackers and would rather take matters into your own hands, please don't

being a Staff member isn't solely about banning and finding hackers. i'd just like to reiterate this even though i know it has already been cautioned countless times. in the right hands, your hacker reports should definitely be addressed promptly and appropriately, so you shouldn't feel the need to apply just to act on your own and save the time taken to make those reports. unfortunately, it remains a fact that the remaining GMs do not prioritise this aspect of their responsibilities at all. just a quick comparison of each Staff member's posts in various sections of the forums is enough to validate this observation

• if you're applying because you enjoy the attention or you enjoy being in a position of power/popularity, please don't

being a Staff member on a private server like this is tough. it's not just about responding to ban appeals to enhance your visibility to the community. it's not just about hosting in-game events and feeling cool. these novelty emotions wear off very, very quickly, and i can assure you that more often than not, you'll burn out if this is one of your primary motivations for applying. there are so many other facets that come with the role that most people probably wouldn't realise from the start. for one, you'll basically be working with a bunch of arrogant fools who know next to nothing about the game but indulge themselves and their opinions in such a narcissistic, complacent manner that nothing gets through to them

• if you're applying because you're a friend of the current Staff team, please don't

to be very frank, we don't need more people like them. we don't need more people to enlarge the group of circlejerkers that's already in there and fuel their already over-inflated egos. what we really need is individuals who would take their role seriously and genuinely want to serve in their area(s) of interest

i think there's a lot of pent up frustration in the server right now, all with respect to various issues, but i hope that by continuing to have open conversations, we can emerge better from this, even if just a little. i appreciate any and all feedback you might have, but please do remember to keep any comments civil, or at least substantiated, if possible

 

for the server veterans who have been involved with these type of discussions in the past, don't so many of these points feel so... reminiscent? have we just been going in one big circle after all these years?

 

Ily Josh u go girl uwu

 

I wholeheartedly agree with what Josh said. I did not leave because of real-life commitments (well, I do, but it isn't that big to the point that I have to give up everything else). Instead, I was severely burnt out. We all were. And it's sad that it happened. We had an amazing team. We could've done wonderful things together, bringing MapleRoyals to new heights. There's no reason why we couldn't have gotten it done. All we had to do is really come together as a team. Stop the favourism, the biasness. Start respecting people that actually devote their time to the server. This include both players and staffs. Without players, there's no MapleRoyals. Without Staff, there's no MapleRoyals.

 

Thank you for speaking up.

 

Can you guys actually start a gofund me and regulate your own server? (@Kai @Sen @Josh @June @whomever is in agreeance with them) With all the support this community has i'm sure the inception of something great will bloom to life

 

Hi I'm the 6th person to leave staff since October.
Do not apply for staff if you:

• think sexual harassment is okay
• want to be subject to an admin throwing a tantrum about their friends
• want immediate change

 

fuck but i just applied

 

No, but so many of us became friends and it's always sad to see you guys leave. Even though you were probably the most quiet besides Chok.

I agree, we need more diverse opinions, but I can't emphasize how much having Staff that work well together matters... having been thru a half dozen (maybe? has it been that many?) hirings with some... turmoil in the past, everything is so much more functional when we work together and not against each other..

 

Though my time in Staff didn't end well, I must say that it's my honor to have met the group of you. Amazing people. And I hope we can all still stay connected in some ways.

(I'll drop by MC soontm to egg @Gert and @Dave Deviluke again)

 

This seems to be a pattern that has been raised by previous staff members to the community in the past:

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/a-p...community-and-staff-input.116236/#post-653508

while as a player I am very thankful to all of the support and countless hours the unpaid staff and admins are putting into the game, I am not optimistic that anything will change until it comes from Matt himself

 

I feel so dumb but I just realised what the sitting on the owners face reference actually meant. Lmao I thought it was just a weird way of saying that Matt was turning a blind eye to how things were run here

 

Check back again in 2 years time, if this server is still around. If the owner doesn't take ownership of his own server, I don't know who will.

 

Is that why the Neo Tokyo area is so garbage beyond people just solo'ing Dunas v1 or doing Auf? Or the subpar PQ changes (i.e. removed lv limits and called it a day or CPQ2 nerf that caused more smegas for leeching)? Or the odd changes in the past few updates? That's very worrying...

It was already ridiculous that I had to get Gert's attention just to make a Staff member respond to a feedback thread. And it always made me scratch my head that it took almost 2 years of @Haplopelma being tenacious to make Warrior Shields 10 slots to what should have been a no-brainer... If these Staff members that don't even play, and therefore out of touch with the community, are having such a big influence on balance, what's the point of creating a feedback thread? The odd thing is when Staff members are telling players to make feedback threads on stuff they should be gathering thoughts on. And when those feedback threads are made, there's barely any reply to them at all. No discussions. But supposedly there's "discussions" between Staff except with no interactions with the community.

 

Imagine losing Josh and Johnny...

 

This gotta be one of my favorite repeating anime arcs so far. The "Royals Staff Fix" arc. I've seen this so many times in this anime though so I doubt it will have a satisfying ending. Nothing beats the "New Source" arc if anyone is asking. No one cares I know but still in top 10 anime betrayals of all time to the players.

As someone who's been around this server for too long and has had a few friends leak me Pink Bean noods from the inside (if you know what I mean) the main staff have always been so disconnected from the players. Even the lower ranking staff felt disconnected from them too. There has been progress in the past few arcs but honestly this all feels like filler until ultimately mangaka author Matt makes Goken (obviously me) admin to save the server.

Prob just gonna read the manga and get to the part where the Big Bang update inevitability gets released so the community can bitch about something else.

Wonder if One Piece will finish before the server is happy with Staff *insert stupid pepe thonking emote here*

 

God