Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Winterborne wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 11:01 am I like these ideas. Some more targeted feedback from me:

- Forum Helper seems maybe a bit vague. Regarding answering questions and such is this basically a badge that's like "You can trust this person to know what they are talking about" or something? The rest of it sounds like collecting concerns and organizing them to be more easily disseminated in one place to staff in general which is good but I think the complexity of the forum system, its array of PM's, and delayed feedback inherent in a forum's design are part of the issue making this necessary. I would love it if we had a way to get faster turnaround in general on questions and requests and while this is a good start I don't really know how it would pan out long term.

- "Speaker" position is absolutely necessary. I feel like there's a lot that goes on behind "closed doors" - both on the player front, and on the staff front, and to put it best, one hand cannot always see what the other hand is doing. It leads to a lot of worry for players who worry they are not being heard and probably leads to a lot of stress for staff. I think this position is a great idea, even just for the more minor updates it could provide - for example, when players see that things are quiet, the DM team may know that some DM's are inactive due to RL at the moment, or that there's something big in the works, etc. Players have no idea, and often will send a PM and have it disappear into the PM void. Having at least regular updates like "X person will be away for a bit because RL happened, hold tight folks involved in their stuff" is great. Some DM's already post like this for example and that's great, but sometimes that just isn't possible, so having a go between would be a huge help with the playerbase that often feels plots just. . . stop, for seemingly no reason, sometimes.

- Story Teller group is great, but there are already a lot of players that do this on not-level-1 characters. Would this be something people sign up for, with specific guidelines to what they can and can't do, to take say, small one-shot event pressure off of DM's so they can be free to do larger things? I am not sure I fully understand the position beyond it being a quasi-NPC questgiver, which is a great position but I also don't see the need to have it be doled out only by new characters. Some of the most fun I've had is giving small odd-jobs to new characters around town as a business owner, for example.

+1 for all the points Winterborne made here.

There seems to be two discussions going on in this thread already which I think shows just how badly things can't get stay focused on forum topics. This usually starts with (in this case) feedback requested on a certain proposal, then someone saying "Hey, why don't we just do this? Or Why is this like this?" Then its no longer about feedback, its now about that new question/topic.

Hopefully, forum helpers/speaker can help with this issue.

Actually, my query is on forum helpers and speaker... will these person(s) have immediate and direct messaging access to DMs? Meaning, if someone needs an immediate response, will they be able to just ping a DM for it, perhaps Discord? Because if not, there's almost no point since waiting for a response via the forums or pm just make a reply that much slower. And they can be pretty slow already. This is not a jab to DM's but just a truth since most of them get their inboxes flooded daily.

athornforyourheart wrote: ↑Sat Jan 23, 2021 11:52 am
Actually, my query is on forum helpers and speaker... will these person(s) have immediate and direct messaging access to DMs? Meaning, if someone needs an immediate response, will they be able to just ping a DM for it, perhaps Discord? Because if not, there's almost no point since waiting for a response via the forums or pm just make a reply that much slower. And they can be pretty slow already. This is not a jab to DM's but just a truth since most of them get their inboxes flooded daily.

I guess it also requires some topics (like straight rule violations or initial complaints about X) to be redirected to helper PMs or certain subforum, thus, unclogging DM inbox a bit (or a lot, depending on the ratio of such things in DM inbox).

Steve wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:57 pm My question is why aren’t Admins, HDMs,DMs, Developers, Moderatos and QCers not more vocal on the Forum, more engaged, communicating and interacting?

Sometimes it just feels like staff is afraid to have an opinion. Or worse, don’t have any opinions. What has happened in the last years where less Forum interaction by Staff has become the new normal? Not to say we absolutely don’t have communication, because it actually seems to be on an upswing with, at least, devs and QCers.

I’m just going to say it: the DM Team just comes off as unengaged as of late. Not necessary when IG and doing great things, but with topics and forum RP in general.

Personally, I think having more communication from those in actual positions of power is what is needed, not new positions that facilitate communication, but themselves, are mostly just messengers.

Of whom, of course, will just get immediately shot. j/k

There is a lot of work that goes on in the back end on the DM side that you may not see. A lot of it has to do with things that these roles will help alleviate, which will allow DM's to be more engaged with players. Also, December/November just happened to be a VERY busy time for a lot of people on the staff, so we can count those 2 months as pretty much a wash

Your comment here though is sort of the idea behind these changes. As DM's, we WANT to be more engaged, but we seem to never have the time, as we are dealing with such a huge volume of PM's, requests, grievances ect put onto a team of people that do this as a volunteer position. We would all of us rather be in game doing DM things, working on plots, writing cool stories and making things more fun in server; but it's a challenge when we have so much other "extra" stuff holding us back. Take this post, and these ideas as us "reaching out for help" from the community with things that will make our lives, and hopefully yours, much easier to do what we need and want to be able to do to run things in game. At the end of the day, I assume what people want most is more DM Activity and plots going in game after all, at least that's what I hear.

I try my best to keep my ear to the ground of this community as much as I am able, but it can get overwhelming, especially as I do have a life outside of this task, relationships to maintain, sometimes a very hefty workload at work in my real life ect, and in the end my real life has to always come first, as is the same for our entire staff team. We all together really love this community, I can't name a single person on the staff team that ISN'T doing all this because they don't have a huge love for it. But yes, it is good to keep in mind that nobody here is receiving payment for the hours and hours we can spend working on things here that are not always classified as "fun", and it is good to keep ones expectations in line with the reality of how this place operates: Volunteers. Sometimes we all just need a bit of help from our friends (You guys! )

Anything that helps prevent DM burnout is a plus. Do it.

Can we apply to these positions already?

yyj wrote: ↑Mon Jan 25, 2021 1:49 pm Can we apply to these positions already?

Yes, you can apply now. That was one of the initial reasons for this thread. Just send a PM to the HDM team saying that you are interested in one or multiple of the roles.

We have the Speaker role filled, but only one or to people volunteering to help as a Helper so far.

We are still a long way off implementing the Storyteller position right now (as HDM Dialectic is still currently trying out a 'trial' period for it, which has not yet concluded). Therefore, we might not see that bear fruit for a while yet. Thad said, people are welcome to express their interest in it.

DM Boo wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 10:17 am



The 'Forum Helpers' Staff Group:

Helpers are the lowest rank of administration, effectively working with two tasks:
[list]Answering people's questions related to the server, custom changes, or server rules.[/list]

• In a private subforum, they can post issues or complaints which players send to them, which they will then help to resolve in a timely manner. Once a post is made, the helper discusses the issue with both parties, collects evidence and makes a conclusion, which they post on said topic. If they then need to, they escalate the problem to the DM's and/or HDM's.

• This will be an opt-in system. You may choose to send your request/questions to the DM team instead, so nothing will change for you. The point of this is to help share the load.

I see how the first part in which i strike-throughed would work to streamline people's time. The 2nd I have reservations.

If I am understanding this correctly the group would have no authority and anything they decide upon collectively can be over-ruled by the DM team. There is no incentive for anyone to ever post to that newly formed group and if one of the parties doesn't like the solution that team agrees upon they are incentivized to escalate. People who insist on getting their way are always going to escalate and the go with the flow types rarely will. After discussing things at length and being over-ruled , frustration will also inevitably creep into that team. I am concerned that 'the extra step' may cause more problems and hard feelings then it alleviates.

ajcolt wrote: ↑Wed Jan 27, 2021 11:27 am
I see how the first part in which i strike-throughed would work to streamline people's time. The 2nd I have reservations.

If I am understanding this correctly the group would have no authority and anything they decide upon collectively can be over-ruled by the DM team. There is no incentive for anyone to ever post to that newly formed group and if one of the parties doesn't like the solution that team agrees upon they are incentivized to escalate. People who insist on getting their way are always going to escalate and the go with the flow types rarely will. After discussing things at length and being over-ruled , frustration will also inevitably creep into that team. I am concerned that 'the extra step' may cause more problems and hard feelings then it alleviates.

In my eyes, it's not collective work, but 1 person works on 1 complaint while others process other ones.
Helper grabs the complaint, then he/she collects all the needed evidence, then they give advisory conclusion to a DM and ping one to come and make final decision. Thus, DM themself don't have to do all the routine on constant basis for all the straight rule violations that happen.
Just imagine that work a bit.

EG:
Say, Charles posts a complaint about a PC named Henry who was godmodding farmlands guard and was killing horses.
Helper talks to Charles to get situation description, they get screenshots/video. If things don't look clear, they ask Charles who was present so they can talk to them too. So, they just do a whole process of investigating the said situation while DM keeps planning their plot we enjoy so much.
So, after about 15 minutes of talk (or a day, depending on Charles response speed), Charles did give enough of pretty unambiguous evidence that Henry did a "no-no" thing. Helper then writes a conclusion with evidence attacjed in single message, say "evidence is straight, Henry killed N horses in farmlands in presence of <list> people>, here are screenshots and chatlogs" and pings DM.

So, that's the only moment when DM actually starts doing anything! They may don't even know about this complaint existing until all the investigation process is finished, thus, they only need to see helper conclusion and evidence attached and make a decision. If they are in doubt, they can tell helper to ask X and Y to clarify things they find strange.

While we all might not like call-centers IRL, they work efficiently by sorting the least complicated things on lower level, letting only complicated stuff to go higher level. And helper system is not much different to call-center, except it's not that soulless and indifferent since helpers do play on same server and they do want it to be better place to enjoy, so time they spend sorting stuff out, they do for themself and others.

If someone feels there is OOC drama/harrassment/things people don't want to share with lower ranks administration involved, they can still post a complaint directly to DMs anyway.

As of people, who insist on them being right, yeah, such situations will still go to DMs. But, as far as i remember, while having a big talk with DMs about 2 months ago, it was said, that the amount of small reports of someone godmodding npcs/killing horses/etc stuff is pretty big compared complex drama situations. And if someone insists they are right, while other party is not, just go and see screenshots. If someone got caught killing someone in farmlands, they breached the rules already, no matter what made them rage and start safe zone massacre (except for ways to force PC to attack nearby people, but if that'd happen to me, i'd screenshot it immediately).

Please also note, such position is a good way to put people on test before they can rise in ranks in administration too, since higher staff can see their performance and their abilities in real environment, which shows their efficiency and work way better than just a plain "why do you want to become a part of administration" essay.

^^Thanks for the reply. That clears things up a bunch.

I like the direction of these positions. Just wanna make sure we’re all on the same page.

Attn: This is now up and running!

The Forum Helpers and Speaker staff groups are now active, effective immediately. Bear with me while we organize it properly and test it out. It might take a while before everything is running smoothly.

You can now PM them as a Staff Group. They are listed as "Forum Helpers" and "Community Speaker".

FYI, we're still looking for people to apply for the Forum Helper role!

As a refresher, here are their responsibilities:

Forum Helper

• Collect PM's from players, and sort them onto their own forum, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.

• Reply promptly to the message's sender, confirming that their message has been received.

• For simple issues, they can help them out immediately. For more complex issues, they will be expected to collect any necessary evidence on the topic, discuss the matter between all Helpers, and come to a conclusion. If necessary, more complex issues can be passed on the DM team or HDM team, as needed.

Speaker (Community Speaker)

Acts as a liason between the community and all the other staff groups, essentially hearing out people's opinions, and ensuring information gets where it needs to.