First of all, I'd like to say I am trying to take a neutral stance on this topic, and I want to avoid being seen as someone who is bashing the GMs on this server, because that isn't my objective in writing this. As @Jeen said, vague responses to this topic will provide little substance. I'd like to apologize in advance since I don't have specific evidence in regards to GM favoritism on Royals. I have, in the past, ~gm'ed for many different boss warps (especially in early/mid 2015, when the server was unstable a lot of the time) and have noticed that there will be GMs online (either they are warning people who are posting obnoxious smegas or are clearly moving around, non-afk in the FM) yet my boss warp ~gm will not be attended to. However, I understand that GMs too are humans and will most likely not go out of their way to ignore a warp request/other GM assistance-requiring request. Especially with the server population having expanded greatly this past year (without a terribly large number of additions to the GM team - taking into consideration that some of the current GMs are inactive and one or two have left the server), I realize that when a GM hops online or onto the forums, there will be an enormous number of things for them to do. Added to that there are probably a lot more requests online that are difficult to read or understand due to the ever increasing non-English speaking player base. Under these circumstances, it is an entirely reasonable point that GMs may miss your request, and that they are not ignoring your ~gm messages. That said, the fact that I don't believe that GM-ignorance doesn't exist doesn't rule out GM-favoritism - I think these two things, while related, should be viewed separately. "GMs are humans too" is a valid reason as to why GMs may not be ignoring requests, and may be simply just missing them. However, I don't see much of a point in using this reasoning when you can say the same thing to explain why GMs may show favoritism. GMs are humans too; there is an inherent sense of bias built into everyone, whether this be on a conscious or unconscious scale. Because of this, I find it to be a bit of a naive thought to assume that every act that GMs have done are totally clean - which is what some people seem to be suggesting when reading through posts like these (and in an ungodly amount of threads sharing a similar topic to this thread). Conscious reasoning does not always have complete rule over one's actions. To believe it does is to believe in something that is non-human. I do not have hard evidence, but there are a large number of conversations that go on in Skype and other messaging platforms on suspected GM favoritism - I highly doubt that all suspicions are wrong, as I don't really befriend many people who have a bad/cynical view of this server's GMs. Sorry to be the skeptic here; I myself have quite a few friends who are also GMs, and I do not believe they will intentionally ignore or show blatant favoritism. However, my opinions on this topic come from what I believe are characteristics that are just grounded in human nature. Obviously, as not much can be done about something so inherent in all of us, I don't believe there is a one-stop solution to the problem @Corpse has brought up, which is why I started my post by saying I am taking a neutral standing on this. This is my opinion as someone who has been here since mid 2014 - I believe I am providing an opinion that has been molded by the relatively long experience I've had on this server. I am sure many, many of the older players will agree with me when I say that there have been occasional cases of misconduct among GMs (most of these GMs have been forced to leave or have left themselves, which shows that the GMs are definitely not being lazy in maintaining their integrity), so why write off the opinions of skeptics who have their own reasons to believe in GM favoritism and have thus made a reasonable post in the Feedback section?
Apologies if my Two cents comes off as redundant. On the subject of people having bad or cynical views of GM's, I've been seeing a lot more people voicing their displeasure through Shout box recently. As a result I think its kind of culminated into some other people thinking things are a certain way here when they aren't. I believe this view comes from a lack of perspective. Many of the complaints that I see about GM's comes from players who forget who the GM's are. They aren't paid employees of Nexon. They're not even compensated for any of the time they put in. They're regular people with Jobs, and Families who volunteered to help with something they're passionate about. Tim alone has made Royals his primary job over the last week based on some of these hacked account reports we've all read. Its completely within reason that A GM may only have 5 minutes to log in to handle a few rewarps and then be pulled away to handle RL things. You, nor I have any idea. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt. And just because someone appears to have been assisted quicker than you doesn't immediately mean that favoritism has taken place. There are different circumstances that lead to certain things being easier to handle than others. Two things that look exactly the same may not actually have the same answer. With the few GM's I've met, they've been nothing short of professional. And as it has been mentioned before, its extremely frowned upon to try and get any kind of assistance from a GM friend without going through the right path. You just don't do that if you respect them.
From my past experience, it's one of the reasons why I quit the server. Not just the favortism part, but I feel this game is understaffed. There's been many times where I never got a rewarp but I'd wait for an hour for it. There was my 1st HT run where there was a mass d/c. My friend's party got rewarped, we waited 2 hours and nothing. Right when we were able to cancel, a GM we were close with ended up helping us out. And then he handled others, and said to whisper him should we get stuck (which we did because 2nd prehead was showing up). I have a couple confirmed refund threads from back then that I have never got refunded for because no GM on (or maybe on their legit account) and I would spend an hour waiting for those refunds but never got them because there were no GMs on at that hour ever it seemed like. We could only run at that time because my friend would get off work late and he would boss with us for a bit before going to bed. I feel this server needs more GMs, or maybe more close to full-time GMs. I understand this is voluntary and GMs like to have fun on their main account too, but I feel like sometimes it's in their obligatory duties to help out the server. They signed up to be GM, but some are on their mains a lot more with no GMs online. (If there was a way to be able to chart the hours of how many hours each GM is on their legit compared to their GM account would be nice). Of course, this is just my opinion and just how I feel. That's one of the reasons why I don't play this server anymore.
GMs aren't obligated to do anything, let alone provide services to entitled jerks who feel like volunteers owe them more than they already give. They sign up to be a GM to help in any way they can, so rather than being entitled you should be grateful they decide to help at all. Without them this server wouldn't be able to run at all, demanding they spend a certain amount of time on their GM when they also want to play and enjoy the game is straight up selfish. Basically you don't play this game because you're an entitled and selfish brat who wants others to cater to your in game "needs" at the expense of their very limited time, energy, and enjoyment. How would you feel if you were forced to volunteer close to fill time with no pay or tangible reward of any sort and the people you served were ungrateful and always demanding more? No one would do that. I do agree with one point however, there needs to be more GMs. The quality over quantity argument holds no ground anymore either as the population has far outgrown the amount of GMs as a proportion. When I joined there was about one GM per 100 people, and while that ratio was hardly sustainable it has dropped far too much. There are also good trustworthy candidates for GM that have applied, so that's hardly a good excuse either. I honestly don't see why another GM or two can't be hired. I get that we want to avoid another GM abuse/lying situation, but really... The current GMs and the community deserve better. The load the staff has is enough to occupy all of them full time. Maybe alter the application process to avoid these situations, require an actual skype call interview type thing and a certain amount of people to vouch for the person. Or require them to show a persistent dedication to the community in different ways, I don't know.
I beg to differ. I'm an official in the sport of badminton. The hours are horrendus, and the pay is crap. It's basically free volunteering for over 12 hours a day, and sometimes I spend more than I get back. Why do I do it? Because I love the sport, I signed up to give back to the community. There's time when there's people that annoy me, ask stupid questions, I get frustrated, but I keep my cool. I try to be professional. I work over 14 hours a day at a tournament, it gets very boring and repetitive, but I still do it. I volunteered to do that job, doesn't mean I should just be like "technically there doesn't need to be an official, and it's a privilege for them to have officials (BECAUSE it gets extremely understaffed and not everyone has officials on their courts all the time)" that I should just not care about them. I signed up for a reason. To help out and give back. If you aren't willing to do that, don't sign up. My life is all about that, I've been doing this for over 6 years and I know many who have done this for over 10-15 years. So don't go calling me an entitled, selfish brat without even knowing me or what I do. I said that it was my opinion and that's how I feel, no need to go around and insulting me and making assumptions. This is a thread and I've stated my opinion of how I feel. You can disagree with my opinion, you can state that, but give constructive criticism like an adult and civilized person. Don't just judge people when you don't know who they are.
The relevance of this eludes me completely. The fact of the matter is people in general are ungrateful towards members of staff who do this for no pay at all. The positive things they do are never adressed, the negatives are nearly always exaggerated. Have there, in the past, been situations where GM favoritism has played a part? Undoubtably so. Do these (very few) issues compare in the slightest to the amount of time and effort they put into this server? No, not by a long shot. If you, or anyone else (but mainly you, seeing as you claim it's part of what caused you to quit the server) comes across a situation where you feel GM bias or GM favoritism is an issue, you could just report it to @John or @Matt , and I'm sure they'll adress that member of staff if needed. So far, several accusations have been made regarding favoritism, yet no proof has been provided. What's the point to this then?
This happened months ago. There's nothing I have now that can change things. The way I just see things is that they signed up for it so IN MY OWN OPINION, I feel like they should help out more than play on their main. I understand it's a privilege, but to me, it's an OPTION for them to sign up and volunteer. That's what volunteering is. You give up hours and don't get much in return, but you do it cause you are passionate about it, which is what I was talking about in my post and explaining how I understand how it is, I've been in those shoes as well. I just feel like more effort is needed from them (my opinion of how I see things). And in return, I just asked for constructive criticism of my post in a civilized manner like you have done. I came in here to state my opinion cause my friend in game asked me to. But after that, I get called a selfish, spoiled brat? Basically one of my feedback on possibly solving this problem is to have more "full-time" like GMs. That way if more people end up getting rewarped, rather than a GM signing on real quick from their main to rewarp, the general perception would be different. But what I feel like this thread has done, is it at least brings awareness to the community and that IF they feel this way again, they can bring it up to Matt or John, or maybe like the replies have said, it will shine light and make them understand better what being a GM is like. A feedback thread is about stating opinions and seeing how the server feels and maybe find a way where maybe two sides can figure something out, or maybe change a person's point of view one way or another to where it's understanding for the side who originally gave the feedback.
This is supposed to be a thread where people bring forth ideas and brainstorm. Let's not bash each other on it please or we will be forced to lock the thread.
Everyone has a different point of view. Whether you believe that volunteering should be a full-time obligation or a hobby, those are still personal opinions. People will do what they do, and you can judge all you want, but in the end, it is the individual making the decision. So let them decide how many hours/how much effort a volunteer should (or can) put in, and if a problem arises, simply make a thread with proof if there has been a misconduct or offence committed, and they will sort out the problem themselves. Back to the main point, favoritism shown by GMs. I think (again, personal opinion) that it has already been made clear that the GMs we have now solve issues chronologically, whether it be character issues, rewarps, or ~gm's. However, favoritism is inherent. If you had to help a either a close friend/family member or a total stranger you only know about because they messaged you, I am fairly certain that you would choose to help the one you know personally. (But we all know everyone in Royals is one big family! :3) As Kivin said: I am not saying that the GMs we have now prioritize their friend's rewarp, requested through a PM, over someone else who has made a thread and is waiting in game. I am simply stating that favoritism is unavoidable, no matter how small, as that is human nature, to help those who we know best. But as it stand right now, concerning rewarps, there is no favoritism, and whether it be through human flaw or simply overwhelming requests, there will still be parties left unwarped, even if their dc fits the criteria for a rewarp. This brings me to my next point. It has been brought up by many people, and I am sure many more have noticed, that there is a "shortage" of GMs. With the Royals community growing larger day by day, there is no way that the current number of GMs can handle all the issues popping up. however, it is not as if there is no one wanting to help out, as there are many staff applications, and I believe that many of those applicants should be considered a position. My personal belief is that there should be more GMs, and many (I think) are qualified to be. The time should be taken to address this problem (rather long overdue), but still, I am not the one to be "hiring" staff members, and I am not nearly as busy as the staff is. In the end, these are just my opinion, suggestions, and if anyone else has different ideas on how things are currently, please do share. I feel that the community's insight would be much appreciated now, especially since Royals is growing so fast.
I understand that you are to believe there need to be more staff members as many warp requests ingame do not get attended, but I want to emphasize what Aly said before where the reason to why a lot of these requests aren't attended to is because the players requesting them simply write ~gm messages without any relevant information. A lot of GM messages we receive just include the following: "halp", "dc zak pls warp" or "is there any GM online?". We can always ask each and every person that writes a ~gm message like this to add more relevant information to their message in the future, but from my experience people will never do it. I can tell you there's a certain bowmaster on this server and I won't call a name, that I've asked over 7 times now to write more than just "help" everytime he or she dc's from a boss run and every time the player says he or she will do it but never actually does. Where I'm going with this is that it's not persé an issue of us being understaffed, but more that it would be nice if players help us help them and not to expect us to help them without us knowing what the problem is. Of course that aside sometimes we just don't have any GMs online which can be caused by anything real life related, like my internet dying f5. To come back to the favoritism part of this thread, I have personally never seen any favoritism happen regarding to warp requests. I know that Mike and I did some bosses together when I still played and whenever disconnection problems would occure we always attended the warps requested chronologically and warped ourselves last or not at all in some cases. If GMs warp their parties but not others in the scenario where the other parties do qualify for a warp and have written a half decent ~gm message, then I'd say it'd be very wrong of the GM to do but as it is right now I am not to believe this ever happens. If I would have to write a list of the reasons why a lot of players don't receive warps, it would look something like this: The ~gm message includes no relevant information that can help us help them. The request is simply for something we don't warp for in our policy. Players have their entire party or squad send ~gm messages, or spam the ~gm system rather than waiting patiently. Players go afk right after sending the ~gm message and end up wasting our time since we went to check out the boss location and players to be warped. Or we're simply not online at the time. Oh and I will mention this to give some perspective to the original post of this thread: Shortly after this thread was created I went ingame to check the ~gm messages and I found the OP's one. I'm not going to say what was literally in that message but I will say that is in the category of ~gm messages mentioned in my first paragraph. With that said I am not to believe there was any favoritism going on at the time.
Thank you for your input. The topic isn't about ~gm messages being hard to understand. The topic is about GM conduct. In this case about GMs helping people they know over people they don't. While I understand a lot of confusion arises over vague ~gm messages and players should definitely keep their messages concise and to the point, again, it's not what this thread is about. I'll also offer some perspective on my original thread, even though the focus should lie elsewhere: Hardly that's the only warp message I've sent. If I recall correctly I've sent roughly 6 messsages in each one specifically asking for Krexel rewarp. Only the last one you are picking out right now is the one I decided to not be specific in, because I felt that if after all my requests I wasn't specific, a GM might be interested to ask me what my issue is. I sent this message around the time I heard through a buddy that a party got the rewarp to HT, through buddy list contacts. I'd like to ask for everyone to stay on topic, as this is a discussion thread. Not a report and not a thread to get angry at one another. If this was a report, I would have accepted John's offer and finished this business over PM long ago.
In that case I want to give a friendly reminder that we can only see your latest ~gm message and not the 5 messages you've sent before that one. With that said it would help a lot if you keep sending the same ~gm message with relevant information every 20-40 minutes until you get a reply. If you do not get a reply from us you can always try to make a thread but I believe you have already done so. Right but my reply to this thread I believe is to be in place as I wanted to clarify that this feeling of GM favoritism might not be based off of the correct facts, and that the majority of players that believe there to be favoritism going on might just have sent a ~gm message falling under the category I've mentioned in my previous post. I'm saying this because I have been accused in the past to be biased or to contribute in favoritism just because the player did not receive a warp from me and they were to believe I would've warped for it if it were to be a friend of mine (Just like so many people on the forums mention how they never receive any help ingame from us but do you know what they wrote in their ~gm messages? I do and with that said I know why they didn't receive help, which has nothing to do with who they are or who they are friends with as their ~gm messages simply do not meet the standards). I'm not trying to say there is no favoritism at all as there's only so much one can experience so who knows maybe it happens when I'm not around or paying attention, but I am saying that the term biased and favoritism are used way too lightly for what they actually stand for and that I am not to believe there is any real form of favoritism occuring on the server in the last few months (From my experience since I've become a GM).
In my 3-4 months of playing this server, id like to have my input in here. I have not experienced nor seen any signs of GM favouritism on this server, BUT I have seen an increase of complaints about GM's via SMEGAS and threads/chat on the forums. Yes it may be frustrating that you don't get a rewarp or refund I can understand that, but you need to consider that GM's are human they cant have 24/7 surveillance on this server and they aren't getting paid for this, they are volunteers. They do it because they love this server and want to help Royals grow and develop. I personally have only experienced Disconnections from the game and have made threads and have had GM's respond within 30min-1hour which I greatly appreciate! The only problem I see is that lack of Staff on this server. I am not blaming anyone for this, its a private server so I understand. Iv been through plenty of private servers so I understand the lack of Staff, but with Royals growing and changes coming (New Source) its hard for GM's to see every single message they receive. If you DC during a Boss run and a GM doesn't reply to you, just take a deep breathe and move on, you can always attempt the boss the next day. I think GM's are doing the best they can and I think they deserve to be thanked for their hard work. I also think more Staff would make a MASSIVE difference to both the community and GM's as it would take a ton of pressure of the GM's as new Staff could help by doing rewarps and looking out for the community. Maybe Staff from different time zones would be a good idea so when a GM is offline atleast another GM would be online since the different time zones. But that's just a suggestion. Overall, I think GM favouritism doesn't exist in this server.
what is this post? calm down you guys. if GM doesn't respond to ~gm it's not the end of the world. just move on or post on forum to wait for an answer lol. i'm sure the GMs are working hard to make this server run smoothly. stop complaining lol
I disagree with part of what you said. Yes, it's true that on GMS rewarps were never done. Having said that, GMS didn't face the same connectivity problems this server does at times. So I understand why some players ask for rewarps. I personally never bother, because I don't care that much, but I understand others' point of view on it, and I don't think it can all be qualified under a sense of entitlement. The sense of entitlement comes into play when a large amount of people demand rewarps at once. That's when claims of bias or favoritism come pouring in, and that's the wrong way to look at it. TL; DR : The fact that people ask for rewarps isn't an issue, the way they do so is the problem. People need to understand that not everything can be handled all at once, but that does NOT mean favoritism is a factor.
I think what people aren't getting with the ~gms is that 1. ~gms are messages - when a GM character comes online, they view these messages and attend to them accordingly. If your message does not explain your situation clearly, they are unable to help you. 2. Rewarps are not manditory. They are a privilege given to us as we all know that the server can be unstable, and the staff would like to compensate us for our losses. (So while GMS did not do rewarps, they did not need to as there were rarely, if ever, server related problems that causes mass dc's, resulting in lost boss runs.) 3. When a character sends a ~gm, only their most recent one is shown when they look through them. (Just learned this one today xD) So it would help everyone out if we could write clear, concise ~gms and not spam useless messages. Not everyone writes ~gms in an understandable and helpful format, and there is usually enough spam and useless messages whenever a mass server - sided dc happens that the GMs online at that point cannot get to everybody. On the topic of the number of staff, yes, it would help greatly if everyone to help the staff help them, but I think a few more staff, covering different timezones, would be helpful. Not manditory, as they are volunteers, but helpful, both to lighten the load of the staff and to have faster response times to the community. (Again, not a requirement for the staff to be catering to your every call or need.)
As someone who has been on this server for a while and gone from knowing no GM friends to now knowing quite a few, I have thoughts that I'd like to share on this topic, some of which may be repeating what others have said. As @Aly said, friends of GMs (or even acquaintances) know very well that they should not be whispering or messaging GMs individually for warps or GM requests. Now, I've never done it because I'm not an ass and I respect my friends, but I know people that have done so and have subsequently been removed from GM and legit buddy lists. They have also been heavily rebuked for their actions. Thus, having GMs on your buddy list or their legits on your buddy list literally gives no gain aside from being able to chat with them like normal buddies. Thus, this is a moot point as nobody should be randomly messaging GMs for help. All the ~GMs go into a centralized system that then spits them out in a chronological order. This chronological order slash party size order or etc in which GMs deal with their GM requests removes the issue of human nature entirely. Maybe human nature causes you to be excited when you see a ~GM from your buddy in the list or happy that you can help your friend, but if you're going through them chronologically anyway, you'll still take care of whomever you're taking care of before moving on. That person being your buddy still doesn't impact your behavior — you're not choosing your friend over someone else. I can honestly say that I have been both warped and not warped in waiting for a boss warp, even when having one of my GM buddies online. I distinctly remember one time when HT was still perma-sedding, we waited so long for a GM rewarp/sed break (because the server had also just had a major lag spike so GMs were warping other people) that we could not continue the run when we eventually got a GM there. If GMs are not prioritizing their buddies, I guess I fail to see where the favoritism comes into play. Obviously, I'm not naive enough to just believe that everyone in the world is perfect and rainbows and butterflies everywhere, but again, I think that is addressed by the formal mechanisms that have been built into the way that GMs handle things: chronologically going through ~GMs in game, chronologically going through forum requests, etc. Like what other posters have mentioned, I think that the uptick in complaints about GM misbehavior or favoritism is coming from the fact that the server population has been expanding drastically faster than the GM population has been. People don't always understand why their GMs aren't being responded to, and so they are looking for explanations. I'm not dismissing the validity of their frustration, and I get how annoying it can be to not get rewarped. But I just don't see how human nature plays a role in their actions when they have methodical ways of going about their GM work that take out the impact of igns or whatever. Now, if we're saying GMs are lying about how they go through their requests, or if we're saying not all GMs do it this way, that's another story, which is why the administrators are asking for evidence/proof, so any misbehavior that has or has not happened can be dealt with.
I would like to just add a small note from my personal perspective on how a misconstrued perception of favouritism may have arisen, especially in recent times. During the last couple of months, I have been very busy with some IRL business and thus whenever I'm on, I tend to be on my legits, catching up with some friends, with my gm client tabbed away. As with the update to our warping policy, when I hear reports of lag through my buddy list, guild, alliance and shoutbox, I will tab to my gm and wait for the ~gms to roll in and then go through them chronologically. It just so happens that part of the information that we as staff get, is via mediums that are more likely to be populated with people that we know. Obviously, this is not people requesting assistance from me as they know I would just ignore them if they did so, but is a primary hub of where I source my knowledge of mass dcs, as many of them are regional, and thus do not personally affect me. So yes, you may be correct that being friends with me may mean its more likely that I'm aware of the situation, given that I am free and online in game, but regardless of if I know you or not, if you affected by the server wide connection issue at the time, I will help you. Because of my schedule, when I tab into my gm it is likely that I am only helping to sort out the ~gms that were sent in the last 10-20minutes and thus were linked to the lag spike event and inadvertently ignored requests that were made prior to this; however this is rare, as if I am not in an urgent rush, I will typically be tabbing into my gm every so often and trying to clean up on messages sent in the past hour or so, or there is another staff member online. Regardless, my time has somewhat freed up now, so will hopefully be able to help anyone in need when I am around. *disclaimer* - this is my personal experience as a staff member and I cannot apply this to other GMs, although I suspect there are similar cases
Rewarps shouldn't be given at all. In my opinion GMs have too much influence on the players and shouldn't even interact as much with players but that's for another topic. It seems to me that this problem only occurs over rewarps? No rewarps, no GM favoritism. Problem solved.
