Forum mod's

I wonder if that would really change anything in the grand scheme of things though, since most players would know that they're staff anyways. But that's definitely a super interesting idea, and it would probably help at least with clarifying which comments would be expressed as officiated staff responses vs personal opinions.

 

I would love to have this to be honest. Because now that my account is tied to being a staff, I must scrutinize every words in my post to make sure it doesn't backfire on me (cos players dictates us to be professional 101% of the time, leaving us with no room to "breathe" and be ourselves). Please don't forget... we were once players before we became staff, and we still are players. So technically speaking, we aren't any different from the rest of the community, just that we might be seen as a representative of the community in terms of us having direct communication with the admins and developers, etc.

 

I apologise if this is difficult to read or seems disjointed as I am writing this on the bus to work.

Concerning how GMs publicly present themselves on forums then I agree that staff should uphold a certain level of professionalism. I can understand why people are against @Evan 's post in the fm button thread and it was ambiguous towards what it was referring to and rather abrasive. Professionalism does not mean not being able to present one's opinion (as long as everyone agrees that their opinion is not necessarily that of the staff as a whole), but it does require a need to stay positive and calm. Evan however has come out to explain and apologised and although I think it could have been handed better, I hope we can move on from that particular situation.

To address the concerns surrounding deleting and closing threads. My personal opinion on closing threads, specifically those concerning a serious discussion, is that if a thread is derailed it should be locked and then anyone wishing to discuss the original topic is welcome to open a new thread.

Regarding deleting posts is where I think this feedback is constructive. There is definitely quite a lot of discrepancy between members of staff and what their opinion is on deleting posts. I will use examples @William used in his original post and attempt to give my opinion on each of these.

With the Raony post, it was deleted due it being part of an entire off topic discussion. Occasional off topic posts are normally fine as they incite no further derailing of the thread but in this case it caused several replies (probably due to its negativity). This was why it was removed. Imo, this could have gone either way and leaving it there would probably do no harm to as big of a thread as latest accomplishments is.

With get it off your chest, I believe Evan has gone through the entire thread and deleted any post where a user replies to a different users post. Whether this is always necessary is up for debate. Some of the replies in that thread have been rude or negative and really damage how useful that thread is if they are left. Evan decided to delete these along with all other replies for a level of consistency and in line with the original thread rules.

The meme thread is filled with meme which are direct stabs at people including staff (sometimes from actual staff members) and none of these have been deleted from the thread. What has been deleted are a series of replies to a meme.

To sum this all up, I think there is definitely potential for a discussion on what posts are deleted and what are not. Staff as a whole may need to come to a decision on what is happening with this as some are more lenient on off topic posts that are not harmful, than others. What we need from this feedback thread is more concrete feedback about what you dislike about our forum moderation and not just that there is something wrong on forums these days. That is clear from this thread and my buddy list in game.

 

William made a post of how staff applies censorship on players in a dictatorial way. Somehow the focus took a reverse way and now there are claims that actually, the players are the ones who demand that the staff should be professional 101% of the time inducing us to think that the dictatorship is players on staff instead otherwise. I'll not even mention other past dramas some like refunds that staff players obtained. Ops, I did mention, sorry. Come on, I quit. There is no reason to even argue, from what I see this will never change. The good thing is at least we have good memories right, there was a time when we felt that the server was actually our home and that felt good man! We even believed that our opinion mattered. We're not demanding you to be 101% professional, we're in fact protesting against the blindness you've obtained from the staff powers, that blindness makes you act not wisely. We're showing you the truth and since you're blind you'll never see it. At least we tried. Good luck for all, I'm out. Will, my man. We tried.

 

I finally found a topic where the player talks about directly to staff. As I see this is that MapleRoyals has become a "business", ya! a business where your opinion or feedback actually don't matter even don't interesting to make focus group and talk "freely" about what they are doing good or wrong. If they don't like something, they just close it and I'm surprised that this topic has not been closed yet. You guys need a Community Manager, a person who actually interesting what think "yours players", what think about you (ADM's) & what think about the game but it won't happen -f2- so as I wrote before: I Like how people play to be God on the internet. I only see the circus from the outside.

By the way, I'm inactive in the game because I don't feel comfortable in a place where they do not really care that I am. This is just a suggestion, do not take it on the defensive.

 

Just one last thought. Don't you guys think that attitudes like mine should be encouraged? Really, I don't see myself as a role model but, even if it is "off-topic". Did it really bother someone, a random player being nice towards another... It is that how you encourage people to be nice? Deleting their nice posts?

 

Replying or reacting to the memes will be deleted? What? Sigh...

 

The world would be much nicer if more people acted like you.

 

The only real changes based on the community's feedback came from obvious game breaking stuff and even then, I can't remember of many. For not game breaking topics, GMs are almost never gonna say "you're right" "we'll take a look into that", instead they reply with questions or ways to contradict what a player is suggesting with them ultimately not responding when proven wrong or just ignoring every response. It almost sounds like it is an ego issue, like a few players have mentioned in the thread already.

Yes.

Professional: "A person engaged or qualified in a profession". You'd expect a GM to have certain qualities which surprisingly are listed by @Matt himself in the GM applications forum: link here https://royals.ms/forum/threads/gm-applications-read-first.3007/

"The Criteria we look for in a MapleRoyals staff member:

• Kind attitude
• Loyalty
• Role model
• Leadership"

@Matt - 2013.

I think it's evident some GMs lack some of these.

No one said they are not allowed to give their opinions but as members of the staff they should behave in a kind way and try to be calm and empathetic. Also, people pulling the "Staff members aren't paid for their work" card are contributing to the problem too. If someone's gonna apply to be a part of the staff is because (I'm assuming) they wanna help, listen, be a way to connect the community with the staff. They know beforehand they're not gonna get paid; they willingly volunteered. So "not getting paid" is no excuse to not do their job right.

It baffles me how you're saying this is an irony. First of all, we as players can't impose anything; they can. We're giving feedback on the staff handling and reach towards the community. If you consider that "bitching" or "imposing censorship" then I have nothing else to say tbh.

 

-Mad comment about current forum regulations-
-pointing my finger at new staff members that are only capable of seeing black and white-
-comment about thanking the mention-

Okay, sike, I got nothing. Im (happily) not a part of this anymore. But was mentioned by someone so I read it anyway.

As someone who had been around for a good 4 years, I would just like to say that the staff should be a bit more open to not seeing everything black and white and get advice from GMs that did a good job around the 2014-2016 era. Jeen, Tim, Eli, Matt and so on.

 

Even if you are not referring to me, it really hurts to read things like this. As you said all I'm trying to do here by replying to this thread multiple times is to "help, listen, be a way to connect the community with the staff".

Regarding the specific case where @Raony was annoyed about his post being deleted, I explained again why his post was deleted (which I probably didn't explain well enough in the first place) and he now understands the reasoning behind it. I dealt with this in PM as it is easily to chat there and I didn't want to concentrate on that specific matter in this thread, thus creating any more ambiguity on the matter.

I understand that there is things wrong but that is why I'm going through each problem and giving my thoughts on why things were done the way they were and what could have been done differently so that we wouldn't be in this position now. I trying to be as transparent about what staff are doing in terms of forum moderation as possible, but so far I've received very little, apart from a general anger at how staff are doing.

 

That's fair. I asked you to clarify your argument, and you did exactly that. But as for your last statement, I really don't see how it's baffling. Because feedback threads like these are always more than just just "giving feedback," they always devolve into personal attacks. I understand your overarching point that there should be more we expect from Staff members, and I think you've made a really good case for it. But do you truly not see the irony of expecting Staff to take feedback with "kind attitude" and "professionalism" when it's contextualized with so much antagonism and equally negative, defeatist attitude? I get that Staff members have exemplary behavior to uphold, but it really doesn't make sense to hope to incite positive change when there's double standards such as this in feedback posts. I'm asking people to take all technicality aside and consider that they're people just like anyone else.

And the playerbase may not have specific power in imposing rules and regulations, but they are the ones with the greatest power in shaping the overall direction of the community as a whole.

 

I can only speak for myself but when I question people's feedback, it's because I'm interested in hearing you elaborate on your idea and I'd like to think other staff members have that mindset too

Aside from that, somewhat echoing Emo's last post about player and staff interactions and I feel like we (staff and players) could both make an effort to not resort to personal attacks whenever we disagree. Treat others how you want to be treated.


sorry for sap

 

@Stan @Matty Unless you guys want me to start name calling (which I don't think is the case here and wouldn't help at all), I'll keep refering to the Staff as a whole, but that's why I've tried saying "most of the staff". I know not all GMs behave in the way I described and it isn't fair to every member of it. I have a lot of respect for some part of the staff.

 

One more case you may wanna quote.