Notice GM Blog: April 2021

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What is up, Royallers?

Quick and dirty GM Blog this month.

First up:
Thank You Evan
A titan of the Community, Evan, has recently parted with Staff, but remains a steadfast member of the Community. We would like to thank Evan for his contributions as a Staff member, to the forum and the server as a whole, over the span of nearly four years; and specifically for the hours he's dedicated to tending to the Forum, cleaning up, moving threads, upholding rules and being an all-round excellent Moderator. We wish Evan the best in his endeavors, and we hope that you all do the same! Thank you Evan!

About the Library and Rankings
Two frequently asked questions we get are: "When are you going to update the Library?" and "Where are the Rankings?" The answer to both questions is really one and the same. Namely, when we finish developing the new, proprietary file format we deem necessary for extracting data from the game's files and updating the website to display said data, in a simple and flexible manner. The current Library is not constructed such that it is modular or easy to manipulate. This is its weakness, and one that we ultimately aim to solve with the next Library, which will be easy to maintain.

Unfortunately, this means that a manual updating of the Library, say by a Community effort, is impractical, and arguably not a good use of any volunteers' time. Sadly, we are unable to provide a time frame for when this work can be completed, but we would still like to inform you about the current situation. In the meantime, we refer you to the Monster Book (the accuracy of which we are going over and perfecting for Update [REDACTED]) for up-to-date information about Monsters, and other popular Internet libraries for information about maps, quests and item drops (most of which are accurate). And if all else fails, be sure to ask the community!

Anniversary Event Planned for Next Month
Lastly, this year we are aiming to release the Anniversary Event on time (next month); and hopefully with a couple of refreshing additions! Although this event has traditionally been held later, during the summer months - MapleRoyals true birthday is May 17th - and we would like to honour this for the Server's 8th Birthday! Can you believe it? 8 years of MapleRoyals! Stay tuned!

Now that's actually all for this month's GM Blog. As promised, short and sweet. Feel free to let us know your thoughts below, and as always: Happy Mapling!


- The MapleRoyals Staff

 

This is shorter then i expected but okay.
Thank you @Evan

 

Thank you for the blog

 

nerf avoid on thief's again

 

Thanks @Evan! The last one of us has left. Godspeed to the new generation (or Degeneration? Idklul)

 

Nice pun

 

guess autoban is not even mentioned anymore huh

 

Time to decide if I want to participate in the anniversary event or play Apex season 9.... tough choices

Thanks @Evan for all your work! I’ll see you on Discord haha.

 

Things I would like to see an update on:

- What Staff are planning to nerf balance next
- How many hours on average per week are currently being spent by Staff on banning hackers and game testing and whether this responsibility is shared in a hodgepodge fashion or appropriately delegated

I don't need a "I'd rather dedicate 1 hour to getting hackers banned instead of hosting [Russian Roulette]". What we need is how many hours are actually being spent. I would like to think this information is not that confidential nor sensitive, and would give the community an idea of the tremendous workload involved in being a GM / GM intern.

One year ago it was taking on average 4 hours+ per day between 3 GM interns to manage hacker reports. Have things changed?

p.s. Thanks Evan. I hope you're making a bigger difference out there - tbh giving people immunity to COVID-19 is miles more rewarding than being Staff here, but that's just me!

 

I hate to say this but do you realize the staff is doing the work to improve the server voluntarily? I love what I am doing to the best ability I can but I hate the idea of asking me to clock in and clock out every single time. I often found myself duo/trio client to boss and patrol at the same time. I often found myself doing the forum work including bug report, ban appeal etc. in some fragment time between here and there. how would you quantify that? and why should I quantify that? You are giving me the impression of saying the staff aren't doing any work hence you want to quantify the hours! In addition, in case you haven't notice, the hacker situation is a lot better than before. The things I would like to see is a simple "Thank you" rather than bashing the staff team over some tiniest little things, even a sentence.

p.s. I deal with the COVID-19 patients every weekday in my city and I found it very rewarding, and so is being the staff here, but that's just me!

 

Thank you for game testing at 3am for a change we didn't want. I'm glad it was reverted, but that's just me.

What I realise is that players voluntarily apply to become staff and by doing so should accept the responsibility attached to this voluntary role. And when you feel that the responsibility exceeds the amount of time you can voluntarily offer to this role, there is every option for anyone to step away.

Why ask about how many hours you can dedicate to staff duties in the staff application if your workload can't and apparently shouldn't be quantified?

When you're not willing to quantify based on a clock-in, clock-out basis people will just defer to things they can quantify

Spoiler

But hey, at least you are actively interacting with the community - that's miles ahead already. Thank you.

 

Every month I request for library update. This month the only real discussion is the library. Hope to see it soon!

 

I don't think @Joez was giving the impression of saying that staff isn't doing any work at all by asking staff to quantify hours. That seems to be a misinterpretation of what he was saying. He gave the reason directly by saying that quantifying hours "would give the community an idea of the tremendous workload involved in being a GM / GM intern." If anything, he was giving props to staff and the work that's involved with it.

He also gave the reasoning of asking if the "responsibility is shared in a hodgepodge fashion or appropriately delegated". That comes off to me actually as legitimate concern of an imbalanced workload between the GM staff and interns, because there has definitely been so in the past that has led to burnout.

How defensive you have come off with your reply is concerning, as @Joez reply seemed like a genuine request and concern from the community. I don't think he was trying to come at you personally or anyone of staff, but rather ask for transparency and accountability from staff - which doesn't seem like an unreasonable request. So, I would ask why it seems you took it so personally and reacted the way you did, because it seems the immediate reaction was to assume the worst, with staff vs. player rhetoric, when the initial intention was not that.

 

This response is very worrying simply because of its defensive nature. I'm not saying it's wrong, because I myself did that too when I was a staff. Now that I think about it, it's because I was burnt out. Just take care of yourself, we're grateful for the work you guys are doing even though you don't hear that too often. As long as your stats isn't like the following staff (i.e. staff-related section to spam section is almost 1:1) , I think you're good.

 

I appreciate your work & i hope you don’t take this the wrong way. Maybe take these comments as a grain of salt, but this is disappointing to read.
As a member of staff, the last thing you’d probably want to do is to argue with your own playerbase that you’re volunteering for.

Giving such a comment as a GM, in a GM Blog doesn’t seems nice. Really.

 

Thank you

 

Happy to hear some work is being done with the Library, its a valuable resource that i'm sure many players miss. Rankings would be awesome too!

Thanks for your effort Evan!

 

Thanks everyone. I'll be quite honest, this surprised me (for a multitude of reasons I won't go into), and I'll take it as proof Matt and Tim and Co. are at least listening (inb4 vagueness). I had no intention of making a post like this- but might as well.

@Joez We are doing about 100-200 shots a week (slowed down considerably since JnJ was shelved), which is a lot for a pharmacy as small and remote as ours. Definitely rewarding, but sucks working 12 hour days 5-6 days a week. I accepted my job offer 13 months ago, moved in May, started working in June, got licensed in July/August, moved again and got promoted in October, and then after briefly settling in covid shots rolled out and it's been going on ever since. It's also incredibly, unbearably depressing some of the shit I deal with day to day at the pharmacy- I am very tired. It's a big part of my drop in activity, and I spent most evenings answering PMs here on the forum and discord, which didn't help with everything else (forum presence in general dropped, as did anything related to in game- having Sen and David around also meant I didn't need to be the only one doing stuff.) Throw in a few other things, and you come to my departure from Staff.

It's not all bad though- Since leaving the discords and turning off PM's on the forum I have, in some small way, gotten my evenings back. So to the people asking, I am playing a lot of Sea of Thieves, OSRS, Minecraft, League of Legends, and I picked up some art that I started like 3 to 4 years ago lmao. I also plan to start streaming again once COVID-19 slows down, but I have a feeling it will roll right into flu season so... it may be a while.

You guys can also find me in game, I started a new xbowman with the IGN Evan and I am shelving most of my other characters/projects to focus on him. Feel free to buddy me in game! My time on the forum will wane quite a bit besides a few feedback threads I have outstanding/still need to make (stay posted, I guess).

To people who do want to reach out and talk, I think the only way going forward will be thru my discord unless you already have me friended/are in the ironman discord (shameless self plug. I have no intention of bogging down this thread and you guys won't be able to PM me on the forums anymore).

Spoiler

I have a minecraft realm people are welcome to join, and there's a lot of pet pictures, talking about Doge Coin (HODL!), and memes about @Gert being short. Just tell me who you are because there is a good chance I won't know you unless your forum name and pfp match your discord lmao.

Please feel free to reach out- after all- you guys, were the reason I stayed on Staff nearly as long as I did and I always like hearing from you.

Spoiler

p.s. @Karven I feel like like I owe you a pizza- I'll get it to you at some point.

 

Would you like to elaborate on why you think it is beneficial for the community to take part of such numbers? If it would give the community an idea of the workload involved with being a GM, what are the benefits you see to this? Do you see it causing people to consider applying for Staff to help offload current GMs, or more generally affect the way people view Staff? I am curious what you expect will come out of being provided with such data, and what enlightenment players will find in it.

Also a valid concern, and one that might be on many people's minds. Of course it is a point of great interest to us on Staff, who wish to maintain a positive atmosphere of cooperation and comradery among ourselves. If current Staff members report their subjective experience, is it not sufficient? And if Staff as a whole announces a new phase of GM intern recruitment, is it not a sign that a consensus has been reached that more hands on deck are needed, which should cause willing community members to step up and apply?

Cheers!