Zucceta
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Post by Zucceta on Jan 17, 2015 20:57:51 GMT
While most suggestions on this board are regarding gameplay systems and mechanics, sometimes for specific races, this suggestion is for everyone as human people, staff and players alike.
sWg, known to most here as President Bao, or Virion, had a noble idea when he gained joint ownership of this site, one that I commended at the time; the idea of a democratic forum. The implication was that this would lead to no bias that had occurred on previous sites we had adminned and staffed before; namely, Resurrection, this site's precursor and prequel. A lot of this staff bias came from a small party of mods and admins, one of which was gaming the site's mechanics to a massive extent - having four characters but only claiming ownership of two, sparring his characters off against each other for increased gains, fusing his two Namekian characters for an insane power boost, and even grading his own characters, the ones he did not take ownership of. Him and one of the other staff members ran off and created their own site after I banned him for gaming the system, a site that is now dead.
The system has worked, to a degree. Members have been able to vote on changes to the system, who gets elected as staff, and such. Bias has, for the most part, been avoided.
However, I believe this system, as it works today, is too inefficient for the site to continue as-is.
Suggestions that have been proposed and mostly agreed with have taken ages to be implemented.
Many of the members and elected staff do not appear to have an eye for balance in the overall meta-game, as designed on Resurrection and currently iterated on in Souls. Many of the changes I have noticed are for the worse overall. I am not insulting anyone. It takes someone with years of experience trying to create a perfect balance to really see the game as a whole, and one wholly detached from roleplay and the characters you have created.
One of the suggestions I read when I came back a month or so ago was for the removal of quality gradations for training threads, and it made me feel sick. On a site created with the original intention to encourage the improvement of one's writing ability and to enable rich story-lines to develop, I believe suggestions like this could destroy the integrity of the site. It is possible that this suggestion was due to a perceived slowness in thread grading; recent events in the staff team are probably the cause for this.
In sWg's own words,
On a normal forum system, problems like this, while not eradicated, are very much rarer. The forum's creators hand-pick staff by asking members they have gained a relationship with whether they would like a position. Existing staff members choosing people who they believe can handle a workload seems to work better than members volunteering, realising that they can't handle the workload, and then quitting their job or even the site entirely. You haven't just lost a staff member, you've lost a character or two.
Most of the current staff are amazing. I have no problems with any of them. But much time could have been saved, time that could instead have been focusing on a smaller group of dedicated staff members, training them on more than one aspect of the staff job. On the previous site, everyone was trained to do every job - with the exception of one staff member who took far too much offense at everything, one of the ones cited above who took off after I discovered the extent of their cheating, all of the staff responsibilities were shared equally.
So what I am suggesting, then, is a return to a similar system as the one I have used successfully in the past.
Every suggestion in this board would still be considered, much in the same capacity as it is today. If many members agreed with it, staff would discuss it and see how it would affect the overall meta-game.
I will talk more on what this entails later. I know several other staff members feel the same way. This is not an attempt to take power away from you, or to undermine anyone, player or staff member. I just believe in a more efficient system, one that would prevent frustrations that I have noticed boiling over in my couple of weeks back.
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Zasho Hirugetsu
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Post by Zasho Hirugetsu on Jan 17, 2015 21:03:21 GMT
I am one of the aforementioned staff members who is wholly in support of a reform away from total democracy and allowing the staff to take the reins. Things get implemented much more quickly if every single opinion isn't weighed.
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Pipa
Archived
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Post by Pipa on Jan 17, 2015 21:07:11 GMT
I support this statement. While I do believe it is foolish not to listen to the member base when they really want something, they do not have full clarity of the way the game is being balanced. Furthermore, the ideas that are good and balanced can be 10000% faster to approve if some sort of representation exists rather than waiting.
The reasons that dictatorships are bad in real life follows the classic example of the Roman Emperors. Augustus Caesar was brilliant, but his heirs were not because they were picked from birthright rather than merit. We do not have that problem here, so the evils associated with it are not really a problem.
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Jettasin
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Post by Jettasin on Jan 17, 2015 21:37:24 GMT
I agree, I don't see the reason why every single thing needs to be discussed, voted on and agreed to by members. I fully understand and having some things discussed and voted on with members but not everything.
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Ora
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Post by Ora on Jan 17, 2015 21:50:46 GMT
Message approved.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2015 2:18:52 GMT
I agree that the current method of implementation of new ideas is needlessly slow, however I believe that the problem isn't in the system but the method it is being used. Please correct me if I'm wrong but there doesn't seem to currently be any limits on how long an idea is discussed before it is brought to polls and then implemented. I believe that this should be addressed instead.
What I recommend is a forced march of sorts on the decision process that would get most ideas passed after a week of their introduction, and the rest within two weeks. Here is the way I can see this happening: -If there is opposition to an idea within a week of it being posted then the idea would be considered accepted and the changes it calls for would be put into effect -If there is opposition that hasn't been resolved by the end of the week then the differing views would be put into polls to collect a public vote. The option with the most support after three days would be accepted. -If there is no clear winner by the three days time then the staff would decide upon the best solution or come up with a compromise. If no one interjects within four days of the staff decision then the ruling will be implemented -At any time the staff can intervene if the ruling being discussed would negatively affect the system and cancel the entire process. The thing I wish to stress with this part is transparency. Just saying that a suggestion shouldn't be implemented is more likely to cause frustration, spark fires, and make people less willing to put forth their ideas in the future. Make players see your reasoning before you shoot something down.
Under this concept there would still be the opportunity for democracy but without the chance for congestion to build up and incomplete discussions being put on the backburner.
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Zucceta
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Post by Zucceta on Jan 18, 2015 2:42:11 GMT
Unfortunately, the above solution does not resolve the issue regarding balancing the overall metagame, nor members who volunteer for staff positions and then abandoning due to the workload.
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Post by Scargot on Jan 18, 2015 3:15:45 GMT
I agree with this.
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Kadbra
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Post by Kadbra on Jan 18, 2015 4:53:43 GMT
'Balance in the metagame' is only as important as the members want it to be. The fact that this site is democratic and actually ASKS people about their opinions is a huge boon, and I'm strongly against any change to that system. We won't die if it takes a bit longer to implement features.
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jinzon
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Post by jinzon on Jan 18, 2015 8:07:15 GMT
I agree that staff should be able to take command of every aspect of the site to increase the flow of things. Having one or two people that work on one thing only tends to slow things down a lot. I have seen this in my first ever dbz board I joined. But picking the right staff is a hard job indeed and the job itself can be stressful.
As for the way things are suggested/discussed/voted on, well those things could be streamlined as well. If the item in question is deemed unimportant or has no real value to the way the game and system works, a staff member should be able to politely point out the flaw in the suggestion, thank the person for their time on posting their idea but explain that it has no place at the current time instead of straight out telling them it was a dumb idea. A time limit of a week, two at the max for any discussed subject should be put in place. at the time of expiration it is moved into a poll for members to vote on which closes after three days so that staff can make the final decision and implement if it makes the cut.
So I can see the points made here and agree with most of them.
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Post by Pieter Wolfbane on Jan 19, 2015 3:24:21 GMT
I want to agree, but I want to know what fields were to be covered in the staff's powers, so I know what I need to mold into to. What was the old focus that you want to refurbish and use again, Zucceta and Zasho?
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Zasho Hirugetsu
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Post by Zasho Hirugetsu on Jan 19, 2015 18:28:29 GMT
I believe what Zucceta has in mind is allowing the staff to work as a democracy, where additions and adjustments to the game are decided on through evaluation in the staff area and then voted on within. The staff being representatives of the player base itself, as we are players.
His reasoning for such a change being that the current process, where every opinion is weighed, simply takes far, far too long. It's taking an excessive amount of time in this very thread.
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Zucceta
Administrator
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Post by Zucceta on Jan 19, 2015 22:50:05 GMT
^
As it is, Kadbra, the suggestion's board would stand is it currently is. Other players could still weigh in, and the more people like the idea, the more likely staff will also like the idea. However, if it's something without an eye balanced towards the overall gameplay systems, detrimental in the long run to player happiness or the ideas that this forum was created to explore, then it will probably be denied.
A forum is a creation of a few people. Like any creation, those people had an idea in mind when the forum was created. If everyone can change it, the initial intention can be lost or derogatorily reduced.
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Kadbra
Rising Soul
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Post by Kadbra on Jan 20, 2015 10:39:36 GMT
Good points, but Staff is not always right about balance and new features, either. Let's say the majority of the Staff likes a new feature, but a really large amount of the users have good reason not to, then there should still be a way of stopping implementations, just like how Staff should be able to deny things that might destroy the basic idea of the site.
I've seen one too many sites ruined by staff that thinks their opinion is always the right one. Not saying that that would apply to the people here, but power can get to anyone's head with some time.
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Post by President Bao on Jan 20, 2015 12:23:54 GMT
There is an important factor which may have been overlooked here; Things are slow because they reach a bottleneck, and that bottleneck is staff - more specifically myself. I have observed that things right now are very reliant on being channelled through me, in part because of my seniority and understanding of the systems, in part because as admin I have access to implement new things, and in part because the old idea of a 'leader' is still going strong despite the notion of decentralising the process. My push for a full democracy wasn't just about giving members more of a say and avoiding shady behaviour(though they were absolutely factors), it was about essentially cutting 'staff' out of the process altogether. I wanted to topple staff from the role of 'kings' to the role of 'maids', existing to grade and serve only. Ideally this would mean that, even if the entire staff team disappeared overnight, all it would take is couple of volunteer graders to step up and things would keep moving without even skipping a beat. This was directly inspired by the events of Ressurection's downfall, where an overnight fallout with staff caused the place to literally die in an instant. ------ In terms of this decentralised efficiency we're not quite at that stage yet, largely because the infrastructure still isn't in place(which again falls back on the fact that it has largely fallen to me to build it, and I am a bottleneck), but I still strongly believe it is a better option and would not what this place to relapse into a more user-exclusory management system. For example the removing quality grades discussion, you may disagree with the idea, and think it is horrible... I wasn't much of a fan myself, but that's no reason that it should not be considered and discussed. Even from 'undesirable' ideas, great things can develop. Much like the scientific method, everything should be challenged, alternatives should be considered - The purpose of discussions are to present the cases for and against a given topic, to allow people to give their input, to extract the core 'problem' of the proposed solution and consider other rival possibilities there are... and to teach, to educate people about the game. If something truly is the best option, it should be able to stand on it's own merit, and continue to stand as such until a better option succeeds it, and so on. But I'm getting slightly off topic - ---- For a system to work properly it needs structure, that structure can come from a person/people, or it can come from an external process. We're continuing to build and refine that process, but I still fully stand behind our democracy. Locking people out is certainly one *suggestion*, but I personally think there are better way of operating the suggestions section more efficiently than that. It does mean one thing though... I need you guys to move away from game content discussions and help develop this more 'boring' stuff a little more. You can see where I've made a start(eg. updated rule/enforcement policy, 'discussions before polls' policy, featured discussions groundwork laid, etc.), but my time is very limited currently so I haven't been able to follow it through, don't rely on mr bottleneck to be the only one actually proposing/developing such things, get out there and begin concepting through this stuff with your fellow members . ((as for staff, all staff should indeed know all aspects... these latest mods just started around the time you returned so they were still learning the basics XD Never planned to stop just at grading. The assignment to certain areas is different though and may be slightly misunderstood, I can go into detail about the logic behind that but for now heading to bed, it's late))
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