Notice GM Blog: April 2021

Thank you for your response and these are all valid questions.

I think making this data publicly available could be beneficial for the following reasons.
- It would give prospective applicants a realistic idea about the workload that is involved. This should encourage people to consider seriously before applying whether they have the time available to commit to this role.
- Overall I do believe this should provide a positive light in the way people view Staff if they know the huge amount of time that's being dedicated by our volunteers for the rest of the playerbase.
- It should promote some transparency about which Staff members are going on hiatus because of real life, or other commitments. Whilst I do not want to label, I think it's important to know how many Staff members are active out of the 18 we have. Do we need more? How many more do we need? What role would they fulfil if we recruit them?
- Personally I feel it's important for current and prospective GM interns in the community to know if interns are being overworked. It is well speculated amongst the community that once GM interns are promoted to GMs the heavier portion of the workload generally falls to the new interns and I think this is an extremely unhealthy work environment regardless of whether it's a volunteering setting or not.
- The number of hours spent on getting hackers banned provides an objective indicator on whether there are less hackers or not, and by how much compared to 12 months ago, and whether this is a phenomenon purely related to the server's population or whether elements of the autobanner are having a tangible impact.
- How many hours are spent cumulatively on game testing? Is it enough? Do we need more testers? How many? I think are all relevant questions - it would be nice for once not to have a server check dedicated to bug fixing new changes and this would save the admin/dev team time to attend to other matters.

Rather than me speculating Kenny's been the only one testing Auf/HT changes in relation to the avoid and platform tweaks (given he's the only one who's actually spoken to the community about such testing as well as one of the only Staff members who actively participates in these bosses) - it would really build a lot more trust from the community to know that major changes like these are extensively tested by multiple members of staff who have experience and knowledge to this content before it's implemented.

A lot of this is about building community trust in Staff that the team has unfortunately lost over the months. I would likewise be very curious if you have other ideas for doing so. The monthly GM blogs and your own interactions with the community definitely helps with yours - but I find it really hard to believe people are active when they remain silent for months and months in a role that's designed to serve the playerbase.

 

I think this is a really important point to emphasize. There has been a lot of turnover and staff burn out historically, and a key reason has been quoted due to workload inequality. As a player, there is really no line of sight that workload or workload equality has changed with our current influx of GM interns.

Across forum threads, Kenny has shared insight behind all of the work he has done for testing, and rebalance changes. In addition to this, he has handled a 291 Reports / Appeals, all within the past 1-2 months since he has joined staff. Compare this to Soren, who has been on staff for 7 months, but only tracks 34% more activity in these categories.

A more drastic example - Dasha has supported 956 Reports/ Appeals in her short tenure as a GM intern. Becca has been on staff since Jan 2020, and frequently mentions the GM time she spends on handling hackers / reports, but with over 1 year + of tenure she has actually supported less cases than Dasha has in 1-2 months.




these examples aren't perfect given there are other responsibilities that each member of the staff team is working on outside of handling reports / appeals, but it does highlight a clear dichotomy between active and inactive members of the staff team that persists.

Rather than INCREASING the count of staff, it would be great to get insight on what "teams" and priorities each GM / GM intern is focused on. Is the need for more support due to not having enough staff members, or too many INACTIVE GMs who are not pulling their share? We need to find ways to drive workload efficiency and equality, increase visibility, and reduce the turnover of staff members rather than filling gaps as needed and retaining a large staff count. Sharing this with the community helps players buy into the longer term vision of the server direction, and provides accountability and recognition for all of the work that active GMs are dedicating.

Yes, this is a volunteer position with lots of responsibility, but like any other role GMs/Interns should be held accountable for the commitment they've made so that we are not diluting the efforts and voices of the minority of staff, who may be putting forward a majority of the collective effort for the server.

 

I thought it was the one who reported the most to hackers.
I have lived deceived. Many hackers, Many hackers, the economy of the game is falling.
I think we need a reboot.

 

There is quite simply a lot that requires an admin, and then some even that mods can't do due to no access to platform to ban (this is what allows the GM's to look up characters/bans/IP's, etc).

No reason to air dirty laundry or name names- but when you take out the interns from the last wave, I can only name like 1 or 2 staff members that didn't have something big happen in their life which definitely contributed to any gaps in activity (of course, some may have just not shared). Babies? Shitty family? Really shitty family drama? Moving? Breakups? Shit happens, and personally, the whole "active vs inactive" debate is just a talking point that means fuck all.

The reality is, doubling the amount of people on Staff (arbitrary number) would do little good, as would culling the herd of "inactives", especially without things changing. What they really need is more admins, but obviously that's difficult. GM's have all the tools they need to do their job, but there are extra things they need to make it easier they don't have. More Admins eliminates the bottleneck, in the same was more developers would speed of development. It's not an easy fix, but simply hiring more and getting the inactives out will start having diminishing returns because of other factors.

Just my 0.02$.

 

100% agree here. There's only so much that gms can do on their own, and if all the current tasks are being kept up on, of course you'll see some that are less active if they can't get to it as fast as others. Even though we need more admins, it's very hard to trust someone enough to give them access to such confidential information.