route_006 | HMD | April 2012

EVALUATE MY BATTLING!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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!

HMD | April 2012

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DA

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