Staff Progression

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Sweetboi

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I haven't seen many staff update their forum threads lately, unless I'm looking in the wrong places. I usually check on the Frostbite Project, Change Logs, Announcements, General Talk; if there's a thread that's updated with progress please let me know.

Lots of players call this a dead game but I don't want to believe them, if i can hear any news on progress it would help myself prove those players wrong. So far i know the npcs are being worked on before  any new spawn blocks and the sevii islands can be placed in-game. I really am looking forward to sevii and seeing the changes made within the spawn blocks. It's just been so long since staff has discussed anything new to their players, so some news would awesome, thank you.
 

Jinji

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[Glow=#9932CC]I thought from the title that this was going to be a question about how you become Staff or the ladder of ascension when you are one, heh.

Progress on PWO continues apace, with work being done in several areas. However, because of how close we are now to Christmas, many of us now are no longer at home or are otherwise pre-occupied with Christmas preparations, or the usual high workloads that always seem to build up at work before seasonal closures. So we haven't all been able to be here, but that's not to say we aren't working whenever we can.

You may remember that a little while ago we did the Mapping Contest to introduce another special user-created area to the game. We haven't forgotten about this; and hopefully we'll have something special to share with you all fairly soon.
[/Glow]
 

Sweetboi

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Jinji said:
[Glow=#9932CC]I thought from the title that this was going to be a question about how you become Staff or the ladder of ascension when you are one, heh.

Progress on PWO continues apace, with work being done in several areas. However, because of how close we are now to Christmas, many of us now are no longer at home or are otherwise pre-occupied with Christmas preparations, or the usual high workloads that always seem to build up at work before seasonal closures. So we haven't all been able to be here, but that's not to say we aren't working whenever we can.

You may remember that a little while ago we did the Mapping Contest to introduce another special user-created area to the game. We haven't forgotten about this; and hopefully we'll have something special to share with you all fairly soon.
[/Glow]

I'm aware that staff do get pretty busy and do have real life to deal with and Christmas does get busy. I just like to have staff keeping in touch with their players from time to time, even just through forums. At least monthly news on how progress is coming along would satisfy my curiosity, no matter how big or small the news is. I do look forward to the map contest and i appreciate the fossilween event a lot.

Everytime a player has said "this game is dying", "I want to switch to another game" or  "a 1000 year's til hoenn"; I tell them that this game puts in quality before quantity to make the game run smoothly with minimal problems, that the sevii region will be worth the wait once it's ready and the community is excellent here. I want the players to appreciate the game so much that it won't demotivate staff members.

Since you brought up the staff member ladder and stuff I might want to know about TESTING,. If don't have to be a staff member for testing, i would like to hear more about it.
 

Rigaudon

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Will elaborate.

Current projects...NPC scripting redo, which I emphasize a lot when people ask me similar questions. We have to recode every NPC in the game to bring creative freedom up to snuff (and eliminate some nasty bugs). This takes priority over just about every NPC-based content/future updates, because otherwise we would end up writing the same things twice. Once for the implementation, then the rewrite.

Once that is done with, I will re-evaluate some priorities but likely will push harder for less detailed events in return for more work on perma content, because the remaining projects are so large. This includes the DD spawn block and the spawn system as a whole, which I believe needs some adjustment (mainly in T1). This sounds basic, but switching processes like that means we will need bigger changes around the CG group (of all things) and responsibility shifts/policies within the GE group. I may or may not go into more detail in a New Years announcement about this since that's always a fitting time for reflections and resolutions. I'm also still trying to beef up the CG group, which means I'm looking into the community as a whole to see if they may be qualified based on how they react to different situations (as I have been for months). To note, knowing that information wouldn't give anyone any sort of (for lack of better term) advantage, so go nuts.

RE: Testing -
We need to have something to actually test properly first before considering inviting people into a testing group...which means NPC scripting redo has to happen before pretty much anything big/shiny/new can.
 

Sweetboi

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About the CG group, do you mean the players of PWO when you say "looking into the community". I may not want to attempt to become a staff member or know the proper role of the CG, but if there's anyway I can assist with anything big or small then I would be happy to help while being a player at the same time. Like I may not be a staff but you could PM me here and request me to do a small errand like "Sweetboi, could you please check on an npc for bugs, can you check some attacks for us and so forth). It would give me something to do in my spare time, I haven't really done much besides battle tower or attempting to add more wins for my Guild Building dream, so if it's not against the rules to have a player do small errands for you without becoming a staff, I'll be glad to help out.
 

Rigaudon

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I think something like 95% of staff in all of PWO's history were promoted from the playerbase. This includes me, the GEs and GMS...even our DEVs. I can only think of one who wasn't, and he's not here anymore. :0! There's always at least a few staff paying close attention to the community for that reason (as well as staff generally watching the community for feedback). Its our primary promotion source and we haven't really developed others, because knowing a person before asking them to wield all these cool powers without pay is a lot less risky.

For fun info: Testers are normally privately invited. Depending on the timeframe given for testing and the size of the project, that could be anywhere from 2 invites to 8-10. Most of those testing projects require some bit of confidentiality.
 

Sweetboi

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What kind of qualities are you looking for. Someone friendly, someone who's online alot, people with developing experience - what would be the minimum requirement?
 

Rigaudon

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Sweetboi said:
What kind of qualities are you looking for. Someone friendly, someone who's online alot, people with developing experience - what would be the minimum requirement?

Warning, you just asked me something I'm very interested in, so you win an infodump. Congratulations!

Aside from potential and willingness to learn, I am not concerned about pre-existing skills much, even if those are a nice plus. We tend to teach people who we hire to at least a basic degree, so if they show enough promise, are working consistently enough, and have a good attitude they'll be good hires. Namedropping Reli here (sorry Reli), he didn't know that much when he started but he showed a positive attitude and willingness to learn, and now he's doing almost all of the events. ;D Now we do have 2-3 people very qualified for more technical design (in school for programming, database management, etc) but most of us are not. I was some 15 year old kid as CG (technically MOD) with no guidance when I started.

I guess the most basic things are...does a person have skills that staff currently needs, does that person have a personality that would not hinder/cause conflicts within the team, is that person reliable and follow through with what they say they will do, is that person proactive, how informed is that person, etc. I'm fairly strict about this. If a person is unreliable, too easily riled up, I can tell they are only motivated to get a tag, or they share a completely different vision for the game's future from our team (to the point that it would conflict), I pass. This probably seems pretty basic but you'd be surprised how many people lack too many of these qualities for me to consider.

I think I can tell an example that happened years ago and so doesn't apply to anyone here currently...there was a polite, conversational player who was knowledgeable about PWO and adapted their suggestions well to staff limitations (which is always a huge plus), but outside of the initial discussion didn't want to follow through with the tedious grunt-work or research required to get that idea rolling. While they were a good influence within the community due to their positivity and ability to rationalize, there wasn't a reason to hire them if they weren't going to follow through; they made a good player, but they would still only make be good player as a staff member. Same for if a person isn't proactive, because with our limited manpower I can't go around (for lack of better term) "babysitting" people. I also can't accept all the project ideas and just pile them onto myself or somebody else within staff, because we all have a bunch of stuff to do as-is...no matter how good or reasonable the blueprint is. Also so many people ask me "how do I become staff." I tell them where to apply for, say, a skill-based position. They say they will, then never do it. Why would I hire somebody who is too lazy to even post a forum message or even PM somebody I suggested they talk to?

When I hire people like this, they don't hurt anything but tend to not contribute much, which on paper looks like we "break even." But remember we spend hours training people so overall we lose weeks to a month of time we couldn't have put into updates. Hence why I am so analytical about people on an individual level.

If somebody is pushing way too hard for the position (to the point of butting in without consideration or constantly tooting their own horn), it makes me wonder if they wanted the opportunity of staff to do more good or if they just like having a tag. Not that wanting a position is bad; I wanted CG, I wanted Admin to an extent, it just depends why a person wants a position, and the way we know why they want it depends on how they treat other people. It's not hard to filter this out tbh. When I hire people who are just putting on a face, they get bored and drop off the face of the earth, abuse their power, or they aimed for a staff to try and "change us from the inside" to match their own vision from the game with little respect for everyone else on the team and little understanding of why we chose the path we have.
 

GawertyXL

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Well said, long time no see from me, but this subject caught my attention, I'll give this topic a bit more than I usually have on the PWO forums in a long-time.

When I joined PWO when I was ~13, I was in 8th grade and I can recall asking in the chat how one became a Community Guide, because I had seen someone who was one, and I was instantly glamorized by the respect, and to an extent, community-based power this member had, they are no longer registered on the forums, but the person was Mist. Too me at the time, this was a long-term goal that I wanted to reach, and I can actually recall around the time that Crenel tried rebooting Passenger Pidgey that I was checking the forums daily for a PM, and even months and months after that summer, every time I had a forum message, my heart literally skipped a beat, because I always had that yearning to be a staff member, but as Rigaudon said above, you can't fake certain desires, and knowing myself throughout the years, I know now that I am unreliable in that sense, I always wanted the tag because of what it entailed, but I never really put the work in, I actually brought a fair bit of drama in my own ways through my own account Reapernox being banned because I had helped a member use the forums when theirs had been banned, and even months and years after that, that member kept popping back up, and I was always somehow involved, whether it was telling the staff team they were back, or having rants/discussions with said member on the forum.

I don't know why I decided to post on this topic, but really, a part of me wanted to help Rigaudon with an example as the points made were very well given in their post, because I know the type of person I am, and it felt like it'd be good to give an example of one of the people mentioned above, I had the desire to be staff for a lot of my teenage years for the tag, and for the respect, and later on I had the desire to be staff to help PWO, but I never had the initiative and drive to follow through on every-singe-time I would come forward asking about it, I admit first-and-foremost, that the type of attitude I had, will not help ANYONE looking to be staff for PWO in the present or future, you won't get in.
 

Jinji

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And all of the above goes a way to show why the initial step of becoming Apprenticed for a Staff role is very much a "don't call us, we'll call you" basis. If it were not, we would likely be swamped with hundreds of applications from players who, in some way or another, are more interested in the prestige associated with being Staff than in actually making a positive contribution to the game or our other services. This is a major reason why we suggest people do not ask for a Staff role - instead, ask what it takes to be considered for one, like this thread has done ;)
 

Sweetboi

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So you saying I might have what it takes to become part of the staff (if wanted to of course). It would be something to consider but I can see taking part in staff work requires a lot of commitment. I understand staff have their fair share of real life scenarios; if I'm not mistaken Rig here is taking part of a class in university and many staff members here have jobs too. It might also mean i may end up sacrificing some free time to help out.

I know have tried to sacrifice my time a bit to help out around and shout out a few suggestions. Since we didn't have a christmas event last year I made my own and tried to make it unique as possible, I started a cheap daycare a long time ago because i thought about the new players that wouldn't have much money to spend. Daycare did get stressful to the point where i broke down and had to quit and i imagine a staff position can put others under stress.

Anyway my next question is, would I be using a different username if a staff did choose to hire me? I would dislike to lose the priveledge to battle with players, trade with players and have fun with them like the occasional trivia games i use chat for (the end with different prizes each time).

I feel like I'm one of the few players that understand the input that staff bring to this game. You're sacrificing lots of free time, learning new skills just so you can complete another project, coming up with new ideas for events, figuruing out how the next spawns/maps will work and i could probably go on. That's why I wanted to throw in a thank you screenshot because you bust your bottoms just to make this game great. I just hate seeing people disrespect this game that I enjoy so much. The other day takuku was in the Help channel and a player announced the game was dead, which made takuku leave the game for the day.
 

Jinji

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Should a player become Apprenticed for potential consideration for Staff, as part of the process we will recommend the creation of another account. This is to allow players to maintain their Player account for standard play and being able to battle and trade (not permitted between players and Staff); while separating out their eventual Staff duties should they actually become a full Staff member. It also means that should the player end up retiring, going inactive, or being demoted from Staff, the Staff account can be simply banned to protect our security, rather than go through the tedious effort of stripping powers and removing goods obtained using Staff powers etc. Of course, a player CAN choose to use their current account as their Staff account - but it isn't something we're keen on for the reasons just mentioned.

It's also the right of the Apprentice to decide whether or not Players are made aware of an Apprentice's previous identity as a player - some Staff prefer privacy, so we won't say who an Apprentice is otherwise known by unless they themselves reveal it first or give the okay.
 

Shiny!Midou~

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many new players want to join the staff members for only the tag that's why you shouldn't accept them cause the don't do any work after all and plus that i think that staff members have to be a minimum players for example if a staff have gone ofline for a week i think that you should kick him from the staff members plus that i don't want to hurt anyone but at my time when i played i think only 3 staff are really working (Pansy,relicanth and you riga ) so that mean the others are busy with the real life i know that they don't get paid but in order to be a staff member you need to work harder that's know as taking the responsability that many staff don't have it
sorry for the bad english
 

Chocobo7

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ahmedov said:
many new players want to join the staff members for only the tag that's why you shouldn't accept them cause the don't do any work after all and plus that i think that staff members have to be a minimum players for example if a staff have gone ofline for a week i think that you should kick him from the staff members plus that i don't want to hurt anyone but at my time when i played i think only 3 staff are really working (Pansy,relicanth and you riga ) so that mean the others are busy with the real life i know that they don't get paid but in order to be a staff member you need to work harder that's know as taking the responsability that many staff don't have it
sorry for the bad english

Just want to butt in here :)

You can't judge a staff members activity from what you see of them, from my experience every staff member does a lot more than what can be seen from most players. What role they have in the team directly impacts what parts of their role you can and can't see, a CG or GM for example will tend to be more active visibly than a content creating role as players can't see what happens behind the scenes. I can fully sympathise with wanting to see more from them, this sort of thing has hung around PWO since its very beginning and more communication is always a positive. It's just wrong to compare that lack of communication with a them not working.

And it is always nice for the staff team to have truly dedicated players wanting to join them to help make the game better :D
 

Rigaudon

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if a staff have gone ofline for a week i think that you should kick him from the staff members plus that i don't want to hurt anyone but at my time when i played i think only 3 staff are really working (Pansy,relicanth and you riga )

I'm glad you think so highly of me, but if we kicked people out for a week of inactivity, I would have been booted from staff long ago. Hehehe.
We have inactivity clauses that we agree to once we become apprentices, including the ability for staff to give a heads up of inactivity and a return date.

Think of it this way. Let's say we spend a month training somebody, and they finish an important project that takes a few months of work. That's already a net gain. Now let's say they go inactive for 2 months and then come back and do another project that requires 2 months of work. As long as staff are aware of this inactivity beforehand so that we don't rely on them during that time, it "costs" us nothing to keep them on the team during that time. In all we spent 1 month training this person and received 3-5 months of effort back, which is a gain for the project, assuming they didn't half-*** their work/leave it all buggy/demotivate other staff by having a horrible attitude/make horrible design decisions (something I tend to not let people do with permanent projects since undoing the damage on those is a monumental task).
 

GawertyXL

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Rigaudon said:
if a staff have gone ofline for a week i think that you should kick him from the staff members plus that i don't want to hurt anyone but at my time when i played i think only 3 staff are really working (Pansy,relicanth and you riga )

I'm glad you think so highly of me, but if we kicked people out for a week of inactivity, I would have been booted from staff long ago. Hehehe.
We have inactivity clauses that we agree to once we become apprentices, including the ability for staff to give a heads up of inactivity and a return date.

Think of it this way. Let's say we spend a month training somebody, and they finish an important project that takes a few months of work. That's already a net gain. Now let's say they go inactive for 2 months and then come back and do another project that requires 2 months of work. As long as staff are aware of this inactivity beforehand so that we don't rely on them during that time, it "costs" us nothing to keep them on the team during that time. In all we spent 1 month training this person and received 3-5 months of effort back, which is a gain for the project, assuming they didn't half-butt their work/leave it all buggy/demotivate other staff by having a horrible attitude/make horrible design decisions (something I tend to not let people do with permanent projects since undoing the damage on those is a monumental task).

Really and truly it appears as if it's a give and take type of process, the existing staff give their time in training whomever is an apprentice for whatever rank, and the amount of time they put back into the role in a positive light, without causing inter-staff issues is what you get back out of the month spent training them.

This type of process doesn't only exist in a game like PWO, this actually exist in the real work world as well, if someone trains you for a position at a job, they aren't wasting a lot of resources if you improve their company, but if you end up being a hindrance, you end up being a waste of their time and money, when they could find someone more talented and less of a hassle to work with.
 

Shiny!Midou~

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riga you didn't understand what mean i said that if a staff go for inactivity for a long period he should just quit the game because after all any one want a job he should take her responsability even you but sometimes as you said they make big effort that can be so helpful and i want to say that this game will be back when everyone work together :)


for example for me i am banned and fonty is not online for like 8 days and i missed very useful things ingame that is soooooooo mean :( lol
 

GawertyXL

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You got banned for more than likely a good reason, and you choose to blame it on others? I can agree that there could be more Moderators around, but you aren't even following the proper appeal method, which is using the Playerdex and making an appeal on there.
 

Klay

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Also, about the banning system, it's more like a cooldown than someone pressing a button to release the beast (for what i understood), so having a GM online when you should be unbanned isn't necessary.
 
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