My experience so far as a GM Intern

Disclaimer: My point of view, not an official post by staff

One of the things I made very clear during my interview for the GM Intern position was: I want to work on increasing transparency between staff and players. Many have asked for this in many ways, including asking specific questions to staff as a whole. While the intent may be pure, it's sometimes hard to answer such questions for the entirety of staff.

What I can do, however, is answer the questions for myself. In doing so, I hope to give you a glimpse into what being on staff is like. Hopefully this will answer some questions and alleviate some doubts you have towards staff.

Why can't staff be more transparent?
Well, we can to a certain extent. The GM Blogs are a huge step forward for increasing transparency. I wasn't a part of staff yet when they started, but I knew that it was a step in the right direction. To continue in this direction, I'm exploring different ways to increase transparency as much as I can. But there's a limit to what can be shared with the public, and a few specific reasons come to mind.
1. Some changes are meant to come as a surprise
2. Some changes are made with the health and longevity of the server in mind, even if it may conflict with popular opinion.
3. Some progress on things we work on are kept a secret to not alert those who we don't want to alert (You know how we ask you not to smega "GMs! Hacker ign: aaa" because it can alert the hackers to logout before we can check, it's something like this).

How do balances like X get into a patch?
The most popular one recently was the thief avoid balance, which was eventually reverted. Avoid was mentioned a few times even before I was part of staff, but real discussion regarding it started March 1st. Like most balancing changes, a lot of discussion took place and a lot of staff weighed in their inputs. Each member of staff has different opinions and contributed to the conversation with what they had to share.

Do my opinions always match the entirety/majority of staff? No, but it's good to have a diversity of opinions.
Do I feel like I have a voice in decision making? Yes, absolutely I do. Even if changes will happen that I'm against, I still feel like I have contributed to the conversation and added meaningful information.

Even if I don't agree with the majority opinion, I can appreciate it. I know the intent for the changes are good and I respect everyone's opinions on staff.

After much discussing and coming to a consensus that something should be done, testing starts. After gathering information through testing, we continue the conversation to see if the change has accomplished the goal. If it doesn't what can be adjusted so that it does. Rinse and repeat this cycle until it's ready for a patch.

What's the workload discrepancy between interns and higher roles?
I do anywhere between 1hr to 10hrs of GM duties a day (taking two extremes, I think I average 3-5 hours normally). This includes patrolling, going through reports/appeals, participating in discussions, gathering information, and other GM duties.
The way I see it, GM Interns should be here to lighten the heavy workload so the other staff members can focus on other things (updating the game/information such like the monster book/library, adding new content, handling white list apps, and other things that may not be appropriate to share with you just yet). That isn't to say GM Interns are limited to this, many of us have expressed interest and have started working on some of these other duties in hopes to better the server.

However, I do feel that staff can use a few more members to distribute the load a little more. I believe that staff members should generally be contributing 1-2 hours a day, and those asking for staff members to do more are asking them to burn out.
Personally, I don't think there's a discrepancy of workload between roles right now. Everyone is contributing in any way they can to make our little mushroom game better. I do think transparency has increased within staff so I can see why previous staff members felt this wasn't true. But as of right now, I think the workload is fair given the number of resources we currently have. The problem is not necessarily the distribution, it's the amount of work that needs to be distributed. For this, new tools are being made and, hopefully, an expansion of staff will follow.

Roadmap
AFAIK:
1. Tools to help GMs do GM things
2. Autoban
3. Website
4. Balancing
5. New Content (large content, not small content)

Just because we are working on things further down the list of the roadmap, it doesn't mean we are neglecting the things higher up. The first 3 are heavily developer-based so there's only so much we can contribute as GMs/GM interns. But I'm excited about where it's at and the current progress.

What are you doing with the huge hacker problem?
Actually, we have been doing a lot ever since we started. The hackers are pretty ticked off. I'm hopeful of the autoban and am excited when this process can be automated.

Spoiler

What is my favorite thing about being on staff?
I feel like I'm making a difference and helping the server.

What is my least favorite thing about being on staff?
The disconnect between players and staff. It feels like every time something happens, players will say "Why staff no ask us for our opinion". But when we ask for opinions it turns into "why are you asking us about this". I feel that both sides should try to meet the other half way.

The most interesting comments from the community that I've read are along the lines of "The GMs don't even play the game". This is often used as an argument for how certain members of staff are unqualified to participate in discussion. Firstly, this assumption is false, and it's quite discouraging when it is used so often. Secondly, all of staff is qualified to participate in all of the discussions that take place. All viewpoints are helpful when we get into a discussion as most things are not black and white. There's never a clear "right" answer.


Have more burning questions that you want me to answer? I'll try my best to get through them.

 

Question. Did you consult staff before making this post? Just in case people misinterpret this as an official post, you might wanna put a disclaimer.

 

Somemore questions.

1. How prioritised is autoban now? At the minimum, when will it be capable of banning hackers, at the very least, for common hacks like dmg hack, god mode, vac?
2. What are the tools that can help improve the efficiency of staff? Are there anything new other than the moderator panel where you have to manually key in the boring details? Because if not, that's how y'all will get burnt out over time.
3. Are the admins open to recruiting more people to form a Balance team and Tester team like what ML did? We can't expect all members of staff to be knowledgeable in every area of the game, and at the same time not every staff is interested in testing new contents because of how mundane they are, or at least based on my experience.
4. With what you've learned over the past few months in staff, what are some things you'd like to see changed in staff? And why?
5. Do you think there should be more transparency within staff, especially access to one another's GM logs and not solely rely on the admins?

Last but not least,

Have you mastered the art of hosting GM events?

 

I fully disagree with this statement, as I have shared across many of my posts before.

1) Have all of the members of staff ENGAGED with all of the content in game prior to joining the staff team? (i.e., actually ran HT, Auf numerous times as a player, understand the mechanics of all of the content in the game by having PLAYED it)
2) Do all of the members of the staff actively play the game or have done so in the recent 3-6 months, understand the economy, and thus understand the impact of proposed game changes?

If the answer is NO to either of the above, how do you expect these members of staff to give an INFORMED and UNBAISED perspective on changes? Would you ask your dermatologist for an informed consultation to treat your high blood pressure even though they are both physicians?

Edit:

Didn't want my perspective above to take away from the fact that I really appreciate a lot of the transparency you are looking to provide here, and that you are always open to engaging with us in discussion

 

Thank you for sharing your experience.
I want to clear up one thing before commenting: even the players who criticize you the most appreciate the time and effort you put in, that especially goes to you and @Kenny who seem to have a strong voice in balance changes and testing.
Nobody wants to bash you, nobody wants to see you fail - we want you to succeed and have no interest in criticizing just for the sake of criticizing.
We are being very careful not to demotivate you with our words, even tho we are sometimes fed really terrible updates and changes that were uncalled for.

Now I want to reply to that quote:
You say that players demand you to ask for their opinion, but then criticize you for asking those questions.
The thing is that you DO ask the wrong questions and focus on the wrong things, for example:
1) When thinking about improving Paladins, how did you think of that crash change? the only person to ever suggest it publicly was @Haplopelma , it did NOT get any support from anyone and especially from experienced players.
If you asked for other suggestions before doing it, you would get suggestions like you got here and in other threads (https://royals.ms/forum/threads/new-crash-change-feedback.188147/), for example what @lxlx suggested which was making blast 2 lines with half the damage, together with his unique elemental weakness suggestion. Or what @EZFebreezy suggested with removing cancel as a mechanic while increasing boss hp and buffing Paladins as damage dealers.
Those suggestions got support from the majority of your most experienced playerbase.
It's all about who you listen to.
2) People beg for improvements to Hero/MM for a long while now, whole threads were made for that.
Instead, we got the recent changes that were reverted and a possible (https://royals.ms/forum/threads/general-mages-feedback.189521/) discussion about mages as bossers?
I hope you go back to the thread @lxlx made about class balance, most of the things you need are there.
I would suggest you make ANOTHER thread for that on your own and value the opinions of experienced players while also working with polls.

Also, I really don't believe that ALL staff members are qualified for an opinion on game balance, they simply don't participate in this content. It's a fact and it's completely OK! That's why there are other things to focus on as a staff member and thats where their efforts should be concentrated.

We want you to succeed, its not US vs YOU, but all of us working together - so please use our knowledge and make better decisions.
I will leave it at that, even tho I have a lot more to say.

 

As far as I know, the only difference between GM Intern vs full GM is just the ability to view whitelist and donator section forum wise. I wouldn't be surprised if Muff was still the only one handling whitelist applications. I'm glad you are putting in the time for GM duties but are your teammates really pulling their own weight? I have no doubt that all the interns are working really hard - I know first hand because some of the interns that were selected were really active on report abuse but from what I've seen and experienced, many of the full GMs just take time off and slowly start to dwindle their activity just cause they end up being comfortable or too complacent with how things are. I know there are more ways to contributing then just posting in report abuse, ban appeals, character issues and gm sub section but it's kind of worrisome how some full GM's don't really have any recent posts at all.

 

I think that the most important thing is that you're enjoying your time as a staff member and feeling appreciated! I can say first-hand that you have been working very hard because during my first week you have visited me like 6 times, and that's only me, lol! Thank you for taking the time and sharing your experience with us and putting your own personal time into making our experience better!

 

I didn't consult staff about the idea of this post, but I did write a draft and shared it with them to make sure I wasn't leaking information that was inappropriate as well as offered them to ask me questions that I can address from my point of view as well. I'll edit in a disclaimer that this is my point of view and not an official post.

1. 2nd on the list, there are already some things that it's capable of doing on it's own already, and it's being updated pretty frequently since I've joined staff. I think it's quite highly prioritized.
2. Improvements to the moderator panel are also highly prioritized, but there is a GM only section of the forums that has really taken off. Communication and transparency within staff has improved drastically, even when comparing my first day to now. Thank you for your concern about burn out , we have made a bunch of internal tools (such as excel sheets) that really speeds up and automates some redundant processes.
3. As far as I know, yes, the main discussion regarding this is "how". And I agree with the concerns too.
4. Expansion of staff (including tester roles), increase transparency further, a better defined roadmap (both a public and private one). As to why, I think most of these are self explanatory.
5. Yes, I think there should be more transparency, but not specifically access to one another's GM logs. I would like to see transparency in terms of what people are working on, what people want to work on, their opinions on each other, and their opinions of the community. I'm not a fan of "GM X should contribute Y amount, otherwise they should step down". It's hard to quantify Y since there's a lot of different things to do. Sure you can quantify it in time, but should we count the time we spend pondering throughout the day about ideas and participating in discussions? I stand more on the, if you want to help, and you are actively trying to help, then you should stay on staff. 1 hour is better than no hours after all.
6. Nope, nor am I focusing on this at all. I'll leave this to others who are better suited to it.

1) The answer is no, but everyone plays the game differently. I haven't done quest virtuoso, for example, but I would still like to participate in discussions regarding quests, even if it's my opinion from an outside perspective. Whenever we discuss something, those who haven't experienced this part of the game often come forward with this fact before giving their input. And the rest of staff usually educates and informs them so they can continue to provide their perspective on the discussion. Of course, those who don't have anything to say about a discussion are free to sit out. I think, if you combined the entirety of staff, you will have touched EVERY single part of the game in terms of experience. And not having experience in something shouldn't bar you from giving your opinion about it. For example, if we are trying to balance Duku leech, there are those who have done it and those who haven't. But all opinions are welcomed in order to achieve the greater goal. So for staff as a whole, the answer is actually a YES.
2) I've seen a good number of staff members playing the game in the recent 3-6 months. I know a number of them also understand the economy and understand the impact of proposed game changes. In fact, some game changes revolve around impacting the economy in some way.

As for the follow up question, since the answers are "no individually, yes as a whole", and "yes". I fail to go futher than the "If the answer is NO" statement .

1) The crash change was not only a way to improve paladins, but also a way to move people away from alienating newer players. Making it so you only have to bring 1 mule vs having everyone in the party bring a mule (if you are trying to min-max runs) allows for more party compositions as well as lowers the bar for getting into runs. The counter argument is "well now they are going to resort to range". Sure, but now there will also be parties that have lower minimum standards as well. It always felt bad being rejected from a run even if I had decent range because I didn't offer a mule. I'm aware there were other suggestions that got support from the active forum player base, but this doesn't represent the server as a whole. I make an effort to go in game and have feedback sessions with the players regarding topics such as these, and I can say that the active forum community is not equivalent to the active player base. In fact, there's a number of experienced players that don't participate in the forums minus some occasional market posts.
2) Each class has pros and cons. I agree with some marksmen improvements, but I don't think hero's need to be adjusted too much in their current position. They are strong multi-target DPS dealers with little effort to play (compared to DKs who will outdamage them with the tradeoff of being harder to play). This is similar to the relationship between NLs and Corsairs. Both are really good, but one will be better than the other if you're willing to put the work in. I've said my opinion about how I viewed each class in their current state already in another thread, but in short: minus a few exceptions such as Marksmen, I believe balancing changes should be targeting content at this point, not the classes themselves. A majority of the content favors single target DPS, which might explain why NL-story is so prevalent. Having new or balancing some of the old content to promote the other classes (ex: long range pinning being required, blocking projectiles to promote single target melee classes, having ways for multi-target DPS to shine, having content where mages can contribute to the meta community, and so on).
3) Yes, It's not "US vs YOU", yes we want to work together. But there are definitely some out there who put their words in a way that makes it seem like we are being targeted. I'm sure the intentions are good (all for the betterment of the game), but there's better ways of doing this than bashing on individuals in staff or staff as a whole (which has been done in the past). Constructive feedback is welcomed, but comments that don't offer feedback and are just put downs are discouraging.
--Edit-- I wanted to also address the ALL staff players comment. Yes, you are right, not ALL of staff has participated in ALL content, but you'd be surprised by how much of staff actually has. Comments about staff not knowing about the content is often a blanket statement at us as a whole and makes me, specifically, as someone who has 3 attackers (with 6 more on the way), legendary collector, and has done every major boss in the game, feel a little misunderstood. It feels like we've all been lumped together as people who don't play the game, when this isn't true for most of staff. While I do agree with the statement of "ALL" of staff doesn't know about end game content, I want to point out that "MOST" of staff actually does.

I personally believe everyone is pulling their weight. Again, this might be due to the increased transparency since I've joined staff (and with that, the knowledge of all the other work that happens outside of the forums, which is what people use to quantify "work done"), but I don't think anyone on staff is "dead weight". Like I said earlier, contributing 1 hour is better than 0 hours. And I believe the sweet spot is to aim for 1-2 hours regularly.

Besides that, thanks for the encouraging words sprinkled throughout your replies. Luckily, I'm self motivated when it comes to being on staff as my first priority is to serve the community. So it'll take a lot more than words to slow me down. But I know that there are members in staff that take a lot of time reading forum posts and gathering information that are more affected by these words. Having been on staff in a different server back in 2012/2013, I knew it was going to be relatively unrewarding volunteering my time away, but it is even more unrewarding when any efforts you put forward are immediately disregarded (not necessarily true or me, but I know some members in staff feel like this sometimes).

 

I have only 1 question for you.
1. Do you wake up at 3am to do balance changes ? If you do, please dont ! BAD FOR HEALTH !

 

Agree

 

Do I wake up at 3am to test changes? No.
Have I stayed up til 4am testing changes.... yes. I might have been really invested in something and went a bit overboard. But I agree, don't do this, health is important.

 

But sometimes there's really no choice unless yall don't mind postponing the update.

 

@Donn1e sometimes the things we talk about in forums feedback are not the "majority" though. I'll use one example, the whole Blast two lines thing. About 1.5 years, I began a conversation about buffing paladin DPS even further. Which roughly 60% of the community was in favor, and from this second wave of paladin buff proposals, only about 40% now are in favor of any more paladin buff in 2021. There's a lot of variables, like getting an overall consensus on any class is tricky due to the fact that the player base is about >50% NL/BS (stats from logs) and don't play other classes or support buffing any other class other than the one they play. So in conclusion, the suggestions and discussions we debate about are many posts are just there to help GMs make the best decision, and finding out what the majority wants vs. what the server needs are very different things most times.

Meanwhile, @Incentv is actively trying to find what the ACTUAL majority of the player base wants vs. what us forum nerds keep talking amongst ourselves. Then there's "2. Some changes are made with the health and longevity of the server in mind, even if it may conflict with popular opinion."
and I hate reading that line, but it's a necessary thing that GMs have the responsibility for, and we can kick and scream all we want, but ultimately it's their decision and we should trust that it was made with all recommendations, input, and community voices in mind. *(Except for Avoid nerf, that shit was awful lol)*

- - -

I've been begging for transparency for a long time in this game and I'm starting to finally see it. It's refreshing. I'm honestly excited to start seeing most people that continuously bash GMs, doubt the server's longevity, and those damn hackers, all get proven wrong. I understand the skepticism from people, but I think it's time to move on. Here is a new GM who is literally answering our questions and telling people they are wrong/right. Yet we continue to doubt. If you continue to feel a GM's opinion or knowledge is unfit for the server, apply to be a GM so you have a voice at the table. Repeatedly ranting about it is useless.

- - -

Thank you @Incentv for this. It was very much needed and should be the standard in the future. I express my utmost gratitude to you. You are one of my best friends I have made in life and wish that being a GM continues to be a challenging yet rewarding journey.

 

Unfortunately this thread is started in his own personal capacity and not officially endorsed by the admins. We're still waiting to see transparency from them. Well of course, GM blog's a good start, but I think more information can be provided about what's going on behind the scene. They should start treating players as the majority stakeholders, and start providing some form of accountability and transparency to a game that many people are investing their time (and money, for those who donate) in. For instance, what is the progress on autoban so far? What's being done to tackle RWT? These are some things that I don't see heavily addressed since the first GM blog, and I don't think Kenny nor Incentv has the "rights" to share it without repercussion from the admins.

 

I completely agree with you dude.

Edit: "What's being done to tackle RWT?" lol I'm not sure they can answer that one though. That's kinda like when cops are publically telling criminals how they are trying to catch them. Like, oh okay that's what you're doing, cool I'll just avoid that. But yea I get your overall point.

 

I see your point. It's obvious that they shouldn't reveal the how they're catching them, but rather what have they done so far that will deter RWTers. It makes a big difference by addressing it, however vaguely, than nothing at all.

Actually, by vaguely announcing how, it might actually deter people from even thinking about doing RWT, unless they don't mind getting banned at all (i.e. those who already wants to quit, and don't mind getting banned from a failed RWT attempt. Worst case? They manage to sell and get away scot free).

For instance, "we have improved our RWT detection and are now able to more easily track the movement of items" -- this is rather vague, as it doesn't specify how it is being tracked (by item ID? by stats? by what?), just that it is tracked and that's all the players and RWT-enthusiast need to know.

 

I think there's a common misconception with staff actually playing the game versus staff that actually experienced the content to a high degree. Like for example, who on staff actually went on/completed a Auf Haven Expedition more than lets say 30 or more times? How many staff members completed a full horntail run after 2020 (due to meta changes) 30 or more times? If I were to guess only Peter, Kenny and you? Am I wrong? It might sound harsh but the community would like informed staff members that actually experienced the content not just login to play the game to make game changing decisions that would impact us all.

I agree, contributing 1 hour is better than none for sure. But you have to ask yourself, is it only the same 3-4 people constantly handling all the reports and ban appeals? This is exactly how burnout happens, and I hope its definitely not the case. I mean if you think everyone pulling their weight then its fine because in the end its just you lying to yourself if its not true. I just find it hard to believe because my group had some clear discrepancy and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same.

 

Direction and decision is more important than hardwork sometimes

 

Fair point, we'll try our best to represent the bossing community in staff discussions regarding game changing decisions.

I actually take this as a complement . It goes to show that the interns are doing well in terms of forum activity, resulting in the workload for this stuff being alleviated throughout staff. I find myself spending less and less times on these tasks due to (1) less reports/ban appeal numbers and (2) everyone else actively contributing to this duty. It's not to say that I have stopped doing this, simply that I feel everyone is pulling their fair share, especially in this regard (even if forum stats don't show it, everyone has been a huge help in decision making on some of the more controversial reports/appeals).

 

Thank you for being transparent and pushing for more transparency on staff decisions and etc. I apologize in advance if im derailing from the thread original intention.

Any experienced dk players can tell you that the difficulty of zerking is practically almost non-existent, so there's hardly any tradeoff unlike NLs and Corsairs as you mentioned. Having played those two class (hero & dk) to 200 & beyond, i can tell you from first hand experience, heroes are literally inferior to dks in every aspect of the game. *What about the content dk can't zerk at?* Well, it doesn't matter because heroes are not wanted at those content anyway. There's a reason why people such as myself have made feedbacks regarding balancing the classes. Because we have trialed, tested and compared based on having hundreds of hours of gameplay experience instead of speculations and assumptions.

There's literally hundreds pages worth of discussions on balancing classes, what do you mean when you say active forum community is not equivalent to the active player base? They are PART of the active player base are they not? Unless you're saying that your at the moment in-game discussion with a bunch of friends has more productivity than the hundreds pages worth of discussion by hundreds of players (veterans and casuals alike), i feel your statement isn't fair to the people discussing feedbacks on forums.