route_006 | HMD | April 2012

Entry tags:

how's my driving

HMD | April 2012

EVALUATE MY BATTLING!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Being aware of Rocket activity hasn't done anything for us in the past year though. Same goes for the rest of that. Being aware of a problem and actively working to fix it are two different things, and I've seen a lot of talk in regards to the latter but not nearly enough action.

Something NEEDS to be done, to make them a viable threat again and also make people want to app in as a Rocket without having to worry about being abandoned by the mods and because of that ICly turned into a joke. You might want a mod to be made just to run Rocket things, because this is a class of players that needs it and has largely been ignored except for events. Trainers and breeders have goals, but without something concrete to do on a regular basis, what can Rockets do? Nothing.

Mod presence in general is another issue I want to address. Yes, you guys have lives and have been getting the minimum done, but that's it. These new mods have been supposedly coming for weeks now, but with how long it's taking just to install them, where's the guarantee that they'll be able to pick up the slack? We need mods who can be and are willing to be here to do things for this game on at least a semi regular basis, not once in a blue moon as it has been up to now.

I know you care about this game a lot, and that's wonderful and so do we, but when it comes to mods, we need a little more than just caring now and again. Rather than having to thank you for something great coming once every few months as is the trend, make awesome a regular thing instead.

Agreeing with all of this. I'd like to add a suggestion though, perhaps you could have a helper mod be in charge of plots for the time being until things die down a little? I know you're busy and I'm certainly not saying RP > real life, but we could really use some kind of help with Team Rocket. We've had some things going on, but they've all been player-run plots. And let's face it, I doubt Kimblee-mun wants to run every plot from here on out. She's done a great job coming up with things to do, but shouldn't Team Rocket be doing something by now? The train plot was a long time ago.

I joined this game with the intention of playing a Rocket character. I enjoy that far more than playing a trainer or a breeder. We could really have something awesome here, mods. It will just require a little more work, and maybe a little more help than originally expected.

Yes this. I didn't mean to say RP > RL, but if Rocket IS going to be an option then it should have as much to do as any other one, basically.

We DO want to give the rockets things to do, and that's one of our most important topics right now. We're actually in the midst of working on something more for the rockets right now, but we're in the "fixing all the details" stage so it doesn't cave in on us. With the trips and school, we've had a bit of trouble on our end being able to chat with everyone, but we're working on getting back on speed with that.

As for the new mods, Ara and I both have faith that the new ones will be able to join with us and help in terms of picking up the errors. They're already working behind the scenes, and we wouldn't have picked them if we didn't have faith that they'd be able to help us this far. The actual choosing part had been under delay, but overall we're getting them in the swing of things and I'm quite sure we'll be able to announce them once we get a few things underway.

Right now, we're in the process of all of us trying to implement changes within our group as a modteam and see what we can each do and contribute to better the game. The next week or two will be our jump-on-it week, since we should have everyone on board and working to their absolute fullest.

But um. Why are they working behind the scenes though? I don't... understand why you are being so secretive about them. This whole thing has seemed ridiculously shady to me as a player, between how long it's taken, how we still don't know who they are, and how it sounds like nothing is really going to come of it...

Back when Okami and I were mods, we realized that it was better to start them off behind the scenes and then release them to make sure they could handle the modding before the playerbase knew they could rely on them. We've had instances before when some have flaked on us in the backstage moments, and we didn't think it would be fair to them or the players to know of a mod they could go to and trust and have that mod become completely unreliable or unavailable in a short amount of time. It's just become habit to start them off that way.

It's the way we've gone about choosing mods. We start them off behind the scenes, then we have a giant unveiling. It's not that we're keeping them a secret, we just haven't had the giant unveiling yet. We've just got one more to inform and then we're just about ready for the big reveal. That should (hopefully) happen in the next week.

I can actually understand (or at least I think I can) why they'd do this- in other comms I've been in, when a new mod is picked, people will go to them and treat them like all the others, who know what's going on and have been there longer. There's nothing scarier than having someone demanding to know answers off of you or whatever, especially considering there's already quite alot of things that they would be quizzed/interrogated on. I know a few people that have been turned off mod-dom because of it.

It has taken too long to get some names that's true, but I'm not entirely sure as to why that's shady Anon. We've all been pretty busy afterall.

This is a community game, not the KGB.

It doesn't seem shady to me either. It makes sense. I've never been a mod on any LJ or DW games, but I've got a little bit of experience with it offsite and I've seen a lot of this kind of thing at my job. It's also a benefit to the mods that were picked to be allowed to adjust to their new responsibilities instead of just being thrown to the sharks/a trial by fire.

From a strictly-player standpoint I would rather know that a moderator is comfortable in their role before they officially step up.

For a real-life example: In a retail setting you wouldn't promote an associate to the assistant manager position without acclimating them to their future managerial duties, and in retail it's pretty common not to find out whose been promoted until the training is done and the promotion is official. This being a game doesn't mean quality is any less important, and the mods being hired in from the playerbase doesn't mean they'll automatically know all the in's and out's of moderating. I'd rather they take their time and get comfortable so I don't feel like I'm pressuring them or bombarding them when they're announced. You know?

Yeah, I just wanna chime in here and say that I was introduced... not a very long time after I received the position (I think it was maybe a couple days at most), and almost immediately I was getting interrogative IMs from players about responsibilities I hadn't even been taught about yet, some of which (the IMs, not the responsibilities), were not very nice. Some were very, very angry and were about old conflicts I hadn't even known about (not having been a mod or even a prominent player when they happened), but was being demanded to give explanations for.

It's a really scary thing to go through as a brand new mod, especially one who really wants to help the game but hasn't yet been solidified in their role or shown all the ropes. Not everybody who moderates has been a mod before and may need time to settle in before they're ready to handle the player's expectations of them.

I love being a mod for this game so I certainly don't have any regrets about joining the team, but I'd hate for anyone else to get dogpiled with concerns they might not know how to address before they're ready like I did. It can be pretty upsetting and while everybody just wants what's best for the game and for themselves as players, NOT everyone always has the restraint or foresight to realize that the mod team is not a hivemind and a new mod might have absolutely no idea how to deal with aggressive, confrontational IMs on subjects they wouldn't have known about beforehand unless they had time for the old mods to debrief them.

Even if it's frustrating to wait, I hope the mods' reasons for keeping the new guys quiet make a little more sense in light of that. I know as a player, I'd rather have a mod that felt comfortable and completely ready to take on their responsibilities before being revealed to the world at large, so to speak.

I hope that makes sense, anon!

A mod devoted entirely to Rockets would be fantastic. Maybe helming one of the NPC admins, so Rockets could request to be sent on missions and the like if they wanted? I concur that they need more infrastructure in-game, particularly since they're supposed to ICly be an organization.

This is actually something we've tried that we've all had difficulty maintaining in the end. We're looking into having a mod or two primarily on Rocket plot/duties and secondary to the other parts of moderating. Because of the way most of our Rocket Plots tend to go, it tends to work more easily when there's more collaboration instead of just assigning it all to one.

But the idea of mission requests and possibly a mission board or collaboration is a good idea! I hadn't even thought of that one.

... Weren't Rockets supposed to have missions to do every two weeks in the first place? The fact you say Plots like they've been reduced to mere plot devices for the rest of the game is really worrisome.

They should have things to do OUTSIDE of plots and you guts have totally dropped the ball on this one and just left it up to the players, which really isn't fair to Rockets.

No, rockets were meant to produce pokémon every two weeks, but because they all had to be rare-ish breeds we were allowed to handwave it.

... No, in the beginning of the game, individual Rockets had varying missions and were to receive new ones every to weeks. This was dropped for reasons that we've yet to be given.

The new thing has been essentially useless because we can just hand wave it. It would be like handwaving the gym leaders for the trainers.

Ah, fair enough, I wasn't there for initial Rocket missions.

I do think you're right on the handwaving thing though- it did make the whole thing seem a little pointless.

That's okay, they were only used for about a month. There was some really great stuff with them though. Some characters were selling Magikarp for a lot of money, others were selling Slowpoke Tail; it felt like Rockets were THERE. I was sad to see it fade away.

It's unfortunate that we can't have player owned Pokemon getting stolen, but an alternative might be NPC accounts having their Pokemon stolen or something to the effect? That way at least it feels like a real threat and it's not as hand waved...

I heard about that, admittedly I'm thinking of doing a similar idea to those admittedly- I'm just a little scared of going overboard, regardless of people telling me otherwise

They were, and that completely flopped on our end. They weren't reduced to them, but trying to jumpstart bi-weekly missions when the actual game hadn't had many plots had pushed that on the backburner. That was why we ended up deciding on putting more priority on a more game-wide plot with a heavy rocket influence to spark the activity first, to get as many individuals involved and spark rocket activity before working on the missions. We haven't abandoned the missions at all, and we plan on keeping them going. We're just trying to take on what we know we can handle first.

That sounds good on paper, but when there haven't been any signs of them since... the first month or two of the game, that's really disheartening. With four mods, even making them monthly with as few Rockets as we have can't be that hard.

And you're saying you put priority on game-wide plots, but there's been a huge lack of those overall as well, so...? I'm not really even sure what to say in regards to the missions since you guys haven't really done what you said you changed focus to from them.

That's what we're hoping our new mods will be able to help us with, but we can only know once we get started on everything. This spring, with the new team, we're basically starting afresh and changing how we work things. A lot of the changes we've implemented have just come in other ways, but now most of our focus is on the Rockets.

We're working on one right now, which we're hoping will be a decent catalyst for most of our newer changes and ways to lead how we do things in a better direction. A lot of it has been attempting something and having it either not work as planned or not work at all, but we're trying to start off with things where we have a better start in general. It's a little harder in terms of getting everyone together nowadays since Ara is at a 14 hour difference from me (and one of our newer ones is in the middle of that), as opposed to Okami and I who were just an hour apart and could plot over the phone on any given Sunday. Quite a bit of it is more subtler changes, but we want to start things off with secure footing on our parts in general. We're going to start with this and working on the input we're receiving today, and then hopefully move more progressively forward from there.

I hate to be rude, but quite a bit of this comment could be cut down to read as some excuses along with it's still going to be months before we see any results. That's after the weeks it's taken just to have these new mods slowly but surely being worked into the team. Shouldn't they be bringing new things to the table rather than being trained to be mini versions of you guys? More of the same will just mean more of the same problems.

We've heard the story about Rockets before, so forgive me if I'm wary to believe it again until we start seeing people actually applying for them a lot more and having reason to do so.

They're definitely not being trained to be mini versions of us. What we're training them in is mostly just the basics of moderating and the mechanics of the game, as well as getting them adjusted to doing some duties, but the rest of it is discussion of new ideas and plots.

As for your wariness, I'm sorry I personally can't change your mind. I know I can't just tell you something and have you immediately believe me. I just know the rockets ARE our #1 priority at this moment, and that's what we're currently in the midst of working on.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

HMD | April 2012

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