Main Forum Container minimized. Expand Tweet Defending the art of Game Theory. Even when it's Angry 2 replies [Admin] Gryph667 a Posts: 31 Admins Admin Developer Gold Donor



I'm prefacing it with some reality. Chroma runs a themed, Role Playing server, with the intent of continuing and expanding on the stories and events that spring from the Reddit April Fools Events, starting from April 1, 2015 and the Button.



It is not just a Towny Minecraft server. It is not just a place to make and protect cool builds. There is supposed to be conflict and strife and resources to fight over, in addition to alliances made and broken. Entropy vs Order, Light, Dark, and the Twilight in between. We are building stories, not just structures. Otherwise, those structures have minimal context, little meaning, nothing that stands out against the thousand other servers out there competing against each other and us. We're building a game inside the game.



And when building a game there will be buffs, and there will be nerfs. The first is great. The second sucks.



A steady diet of buffs, much like candy, ends up being unfulfilling and uninteresting. Vegetables can suck, but they really are good for you.



Now that that's out of the way, onto the screenshots:



No Nerf Only Buff







Context:



The Towny update gave us a lot more control of what towns and nations could do and how they were constructed. Many of these items are ones we wished were present back when we started. About a year into the life of the server, we realized that anyone making a solo town wherever they wanted was counterproductive to the core principles of the design. The map was littered with one person towns, mostly folks that had left and had no one in a position to carry their torch. So, we implemented a policy of town applications.



https://old.reddit.com/r/TheButtonMinecraft/comments/4g0ksb/nevermore_town_app/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheButtonMinecraft/comments/4esrkl/citrus_city_towny_application/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheButtonMinecraft/comments/4g6f2l/new_void_nevermore_town_application/



The problem was solved. Towns, as a concept, actually meant something again, and were much easier to understand for new users. I'm not sure precisely where during V3 the practice ended, but the challenges it created have resurfaced. When Vivian and her crew showed up, one chunk of the map was taken up by active actual towns, a second large chunk of the map was used by effectively dead "towns", and the rest was mostly desert and similarly "undesirable" land. As such, they set up shop on the edge of the map, away from everyone and everything, spatially.



New Cairo showed up and surprisingly they set up ship in one of those desert spaces, more power to them. Or is it that that's what's left, when looking at the map, with tiny claims everywhere.



Action and Response:



Hold a poll about some of the new settings, asking for input about what values would make sense, not for creating a town, (which had previously been decided was three, just not enforced for over a year) but for a town to create a nation or join a nation. I made it clear that 1 wasn't a valid value for either, please only use the ones I listed.



At the time that I responded as depicted in Nic's screenshot, the UNofficial results were that creating a nation should have five residents, and 10ish illegal votes had been made for 1, which meant 3 was winning with 3 votes.



I made a severe mistake and responded with uncaffeinated brain, tactlessly describing how I was going to lump the 1s with the 2s. I humbly and unreservedly apologize for my wording.



I stand by the logic.



Out of all the known detractors, only one person would be affected by this kind of change: Wind. Everyone else is in towns of at least 3 people. This is not a policy or design change intended attacking freedom, it is a configuration change to sociologically make it easier for town leaders to recruit new people to their banner, yet letting the true rugged individual have the chance to work in solitude, without skewing the political map too terribly, as Klerigos has, taking the grain of truth out of the joke. This ties back to the premise that the server owners, the people that founded the server under the principles outlined, are going to seek out and make changes that support those principles, sometimes over "give players everything they ask for". Some effort has to be required or it isn't fun. I've repeatedly seen where GM1 builds are dismissed as meaningless, precisely because of that principle.



Will people be upset? Well yeah, when has anyone been happy about a nerf?



Next:



The Railroad Rumble



















Context:



This was a complete and total cluster fuck. The requested "service" or "thing" was a map wide rail system that people could tap into so eventually anyone connected to it could get to Shop Island, a Server Owned and Managed Resource (as in we had to use world guard, and police griefing, regulate stuff coming in contact with it.)



LadyVulcan volunteered to oversee this "Via Appia 2" project, using guidelines that were already in use for tunnels already done.



The regulations had to do with tunnel width, height, elevation, lighting, enclosure, and intersections. With a mostly hard preference for straight tunnels. None of this seemed unreasonable to me or the Staff, and it was something none of us were interested in mucking with. Ordinarily it would have been the perfect Ali thing, but she was on a "break." The guidelines seemed reasonable such that any user, expert or novice, could navigate the system and have minimal chances of dying thousands of blocks from home, all hope of reclaiming their stuff gone.



Action and Response:



Enter the Aurorans/Aurelians. Nothing seemed amiss. They were set to make the longest E/W tunnel on the map, with an intersection to the projected main N/S trunk aligned to Shop Island. They didn't just object to one thing, they objected to everything, especially on the premise LadyVulcan was saying it. I tried all kinds of ways to explain it. To this day, I have no idea what or how they think an essentially federal transportation set up looks like. I'm fairly certain the EU has lots of regulations about their trains that individual countries have to follow if they want to connect to the main system. As a result, with such a significant group of the server now against a unified rail system, I dropped it, killed the project, apologized to LadyVulcan, and reported back to the Staff the project failed.



Responding directly to Legendosh's recollection:



I have no recollection of LadyVulcan ever claiming any ownership over anything, nor was she empowered as such. Oversight is not the same as ownership. Additionally, it was made clear at the time, to my recollection, that local rails were not tied to the same requirements, as they were local, as the Britguard/Aurelian lines were. As to me "jumping in," the Project Lead encountered a challenging conversation, and requested assistance from the overseeing authority, and I was the one with context and availability. At *no* point did I personally say LadyVulcan owned any rails. Again, oversight is not the same as ownership. Legendosh and Co, apparently feeling being overseen in *any* capacity was anathema, was the reason they "won" as their position was practically and ideologically incompatible with the original project purpose. As such, to this day all rails are still use at own risk, no one is replacing shit if you die.



If Legendosh and Co is still unhappy about this, I have no idea what to say. Maybe they thought talking to "LadyVulcan's Manager" would give them huge satisfaction as I smote her and agreed with everything they said. I'm very happy making the Redline, and haven't thought about their rail since, with the exception of mentioning weeks ago I'd be open to a connector rail between our systems. No one has approached me to discuss it. Meanwhile, LadyVulcan is now a member of the staff, and not once mentioned reopening the rail discussion. I expect because the whole thing left a sour taste in her mouth. Which makes me sad.



More Plots...More Plots...More Plots...Ok Sotp Plots









Context:



For months, people were having the same problem: build ambitions bigger than available space. The amount of available land people could claim was limited by the number of people in their town, and after a while, more users becomes scarce. As this was a Towny Issue, and none of the other Dev/Mods were overseeing it closely, I picked it up, seeking a solution to the unhappiness.



I came up with a three pronged approach, and discussed it with everyone on the staff thoroughly, as well as asked users generally about aspects of the plan. First, we'd do a flat increase of the number of plots per person a town would get. Second, if that wasn't enough, they could buy plots through the mayor interface. Third, they could fill out a form, and formally apply to the "Land Authority" for more plots, assuming they provided the correct paperwork and qualified.



Staff went back and forth how much to buff the citizen amount. The amount decided was done so as a collective. There was a similar discussion about the purchase program. The main concerns raised were about people with lots of money outstripping the ones without, despite one of the ancillary advantages was bleeding excess money from the system. The other problem was concern about this increasing "outpost pox", which is why we didn't want to just open it up to max. I don't recall the discussion ever really thinking about a flat rate, it was always "it goes up, but by how much." I initially set it for 1.5. We'll come back to this.



As to the application process, there was some head wind, but I was adamant that we needed to be able to make exceptions, and that there should be a process behind it, so that there's a paper trail, and it's all above board, as we're all players as well.



The release date for the changes arrived after they got reviewed and approved, and as it was my project, I was on the hook for the community show and tell.



Action and Response:



I scheduled and started the show and tell. It was about explaining the changes, and why they were made.



Nicolai argued we were creating an unreachable achievement. Had that and the citizen increase been the only changes, I'd have agreed with him. With the request process, his argument had no value in a strict game play sense. It still doesn't. In the discussion and after a private discussion with him, it ultimately came down to the detriment caused by a UI element that we had no easy control over. He was the only person raising this concern, and his vehemence made it obvious it was personal, not esoteric. In sidebar conversations the demand made no sense, and undoing the change wasn't even considered at the time. It didn't matter even when Norb considered a customization to hide it from the Towny Dashboard. Nope, logic and reason, both useless.



Looking at Wind's contribution, the story behind the change, the design parameters was for the three paths to have increasing levels of difficulty the more they were pushed, and we honestly wanted the purchase program which we had the least control combined with the greatest potential for abuse (outpost pox) to be the hardest. Yet we didn't want to disable it entirely, forcing people to either recruit or "beg." I tried a lot of different ways to communicate that, but repeated "I don't like that, don't do that" kept happening, especially in relation to that element I talked about, which we can't remove. The limit has to be an integer, and while we can bend systems, database structure isn't a bendable one.



As this is one of those "you don't listen to us!' accusations, I heartily disagree. We heard you. It's the reason I lowered the value to 1.2 from 1.5 before the change went live. The whole of the update package was in response to the cry for more land. Your arguments about one part of it weren't persuasive enough to overcome much more overwhelming ones.



Also, yes, we're revisiting the values. Just like I revisited it right before implementation. This isn't because Nic and Wind were right and we're wrong. We weren't "worn down". We have months of data and experience, and we're working on additional incremental changes, because that's what software development is about, incremental changes. We can only approach perfect fun, never really attain it, because that idea of "perfect" isn't the same for everyone.



Discussion Lock









Context:



We have a lot of plug ins. All of them are for a reason. There's a ton of things on the back log tied to those plug ins. We have precisely one active coder who knows Java, and of the other "Devs", we have a lot of orphaned plug ins lacking active management. Some, this is okay, you guys don't notice. Others, like Economy and ShopChest, especially the Server Shop, players notice fast when they fuck up. It is a struggle maintaining expectations of what can and can't be delivered. This is work, learning these systems, learning the commands, understanding how and where they touch. Thank god for Sin and Vulcan joining the Dev group.



Action and Response:



MCMMO is requested on every survey. We've never considered adding it because of all the moving parts and all the configuration work required. Ali *never* completed the initial set up of Jobs Reborn. MCMMO is a lot more complicated.



My response was candid and blunt. The professional Product Management way to respond would have been "That's a great suggestion, and one we've looked at previously. We'll see who on the dev group can take it up!" quickly followed by forgetting the conversation because the last time it happened, and the time before that, and the time before the answer was "fuck no."



This wasn't a shut down. It was me being honest and not lying to anybody. Because I *hate* it when people lie about features, functionality, and what is or isn't being worked on.



lol u mad



Combining two complaints into one, as there was an attempt to triple double dip.









Context:



These are also fallout from the More Plots update discussion.



Actions and Response:



I got pissed repeating myself over and over again to two individuals that wanted to make the conversation about achievement hunting instead of letting people get more land. I definitely lost my cool, and if I didn't apologize for it then, I do here. I've gotten a lot more experience at product demos since then, and the format will be much improved, should we have a release that warrants it.



In parallel, remember we're players and people too. Not adversaries. People get pissed. All I can promise is to hide it better.



Disconnected









Context



Arsen wanted to change the entire point of the server to not be roleplay. Arsen is barely ever around. Arsen was very annoyed that auto farms, something that the staff argued over for weeks, were banned. He even demanded we adjust the server settings to increase the spawn rate so he could get more loot.



Actions and Response:



I spent a lot of time and effort listening to him, and explaining how what he wanted wasn't tenable, possible, or even reasonable. His claim "the actions of the moderators are disconnected from the community" held merit and the staff working to be more transparent with what we're doing and when did come from that. At the same time, I, acting on behalf of the whole team, refused to reverse the ban on all his auto farms.



Knowing the stance of all the members of staff at the time, I stand by that position. Reminder: nerfs *will* happen.



Yes, I blocked him. And I said I was doing so, instead of ghosting him. I was at my job and had tasks to complete before end of day, and running around in circles with him was going to screw my personal life which comes first. *BUT*. I didn't want to completely shut down Discord in case someone else needed something I could actually help with.



Again. Blunt and candid. Asking me to, in the future, be more nice or diplomatic would basically be asking me to lie.



I'd rather be known as a truthful blunt asshole than a charming liar.



Clean up in Aisle Gryph







Context:



A staff member screwed up, and the channel was turning into an unholy mess.



Action and Response:



After scanning everything that was exploding, I rushed in like a bull. Effectively had a public trial. In that screenshot, while Teemo can claim he was innocent, his contributions to the conversation painted him as having the coat pulled back and hand ready to go for gun.



Considering it was a very public staff fuck up, I disagreed with the "clean up" heavily but was overruled. Now there's no evidence of it, me getting everyone focused on me instead of each other, or the resolution.



Just a thinly veiled accusation.



No regrets.



"But I Don't Wanna"







Context:



Staff was making a lot of changes and providing multiple avenues of communication, as neither Discord, nor Reddit can provide everything. One of those was setting up a suggestion board on Enjin so that we can have clear and easily reference-able conversations in a single thread, with the additional ability to direct others to the same link if they had the same concern. One that never locked, a la Reddit.



Action and Response:



LadyVulcan hated the nerf. I was not a fan either. I wanted a link I could give to staff saying "Can we PLEASE address this?" instead of "check the pins" or "scroll up in #channel."



As to the accusation it was intended to shut down the request, please post a face picture I can laugh at.



I mean ffs, once I knew where the edit was in Git, and got buy in from the other staff, that was the first thing I did was undo it.



Let Me Get This Off My Chest







Context:



Someone went around and robbed from a bunch of chests in the wilderness. The staff discussed it and in context of the RP and server culture advertised, and declared that Towny was the system for chest protection. Anything that was messed with because permissions were effed was restored.



Action and Response:



We had declared the chests in the open as pvp fair game. Arsen was again advocating for that to be abandoned and that we grant him the demanded change. His request for more plots we addressed as explained earlier in this post.



It's disingenuous to call a pvp situation an issue to be solved. "Please don't let them attack me!" "Please don't let them take my stuff!"



Is the idea of Player vs Player really that hard to grasp? Is claiming an outpost or using ender chests that esoteric?



Is it just me, or are all these accusations of shutting things down just people upset we choose not to exhaust ourselves doing other people's emotional labour, patting them on the back, and giving them every cookie they ask for? Wait, was that the last of these?



Conclusion:



There's a lot of conflation happening. First let's address the conflation of "admin" and "mod".



A mod is a person that has mod powers on the Minecraft server and the Discord.

An admin is a mod who also has remote access to the server so Norb isn't the only poor bastard to fix a crashed server.



Devs are people that review, write, fix, and configure plug ins for the server.



Sometimes there are overlaps. Some mods and or admins are also devs. Not all devs are mods.



Let's also be blatant that all of these screenshots, couched in terms of "this admin" or "here's an example of an admin", are about me. Allegedly no one has anything bad to say about anyone else on the staff.



Taking into consideration that I volunteer to do a lot of talking and explaining, and most of the staff let me, I'm okay that I'm the focus of this hit job feedback session, it means that everyone else on the staff, everyone, or at least Nicolai, is mostly okay with. Which makes sense as I am mostly okay handling difficult conversations, while others on the staff are not.



Moving on.



All mods have a say in developing design requirements for where the server goes. No changes happen if a minority of the mod team is in favor of said change. People expressing proposed changes or expressing opinions about the changes proposed by others are expected to have a moderate working knowledge of the back end and the system limitations.



Next, the interpretation of "heard" vs "agreement". We listen a lot. We talk about what we hear...a lot.



Sometimes we will agree with you. Sometimes we will not. Sometimes some of us will agree with you, and some of us will not.



Will we be open about those disagreements? Sometimes yes, mostly no. As I mentioned earlier about the Prot nerf, I disliked it, but others were staunchly for it, so I backed them up. While I collected data. Ali was more vocal about her not being a fan, which was counter productive. Instead of collecting data, and building the argument, folks harangued her to just "fix it".



Another two words being conflated are arrogant and wrong.



Yes, I am at times arrogant. I'm an adult with a solid career in software development. In a normal situation, I doubt most of the players on the server, being less than half my age, would be associates or peers.



I've developed the Update Release Notes format and process, I've set up a ton of assets on Enjin to increase avenues of conversation, the War Process, as it currently exists, is my design, balancing player wants for violence with other players need for security. I'm in the trenches with Norb when the server crashes. The bonus plot request form, end to end, was my project. The PlotSquared implementation, my effort, 100%. All of these things, noticeably, aren't mentioned or depicted by my detractors, yet are all actions and efforts taken because yes, I personally am listening and hearing to all of you.



Just because I am acting, or come across as arrogant doesn't mean I'm wrong. Maybe an asshole, but not wrong.



After spending over four hours writing all this, I'm okay with that.



In my shoes, would you be? In this thread I'll be breaking down and unpacking all of the responses for easier viewing.I'm prefacing it with some reality. Chroma runs a themed, Role Playing server, with the intent of continuing and expanding on the stories and events that spring from the Reddit April Fools Events, starting from April 1, 2015 and the Button.It is not just a Towny Minecraft server. It is not just a place to make and protect cool builds. There is supposed to be conflict and strife and resources to fight over, in addition to alliances made and broken. Entropy vs Order, Light, Dark, and the Twilight in between. We are building stories, not just structures. Otherwise, those structures have minimal context, little meaning, nothing that stands out against the thousand other servers out there competing against each other and us. We're building a game inside the game.And when building a game there will be buffs, and there will be nerfs. The first is great. The second sucks.A steady diet of buffs, much like candy, ends up being unfulfilling and uninteresting. Vegetables can suck, but they really are good for you.Now that that's out of the way, onto the screenshots:The Towny update gave us a lot more control of what towns and nations could do and how they were constructed. Many of these items are ones we wished were present back when we started. About a year into the life of the server, we realized that anyone making a solo town wherever they wanted was counterproductive to the core principles of the design. The map was littered with one person towns, mostly folks that had left and had no one in a position to carry their torch. So, we implemented a policy of town applications.The problem was solved. Towns, as a concept, actually meant something again, and were much easier to understand for new users. I'm not sure precisely where during V3 the practice ended, but the challenges it created have resurfaced. When Vivian and her crew showed up, one chunk of the map was taken up by active actual towns, a second large chunk of the map was used by effectively dead "towns", and the rest was mostly desert and similarly "undesirable" land. As such, they set up shop on the edge of the map, away from everyone and everything, spatially.New Cairo showed up and surprisingly they set up ship in one of those desert spaces, more power to them. Or is it that that's what's left, when looking at the map, with tiny claims everywhere.Hold a poll about some of the new settings, asking for input about what values would make sense, not for creating a town, (which had previously been decided was three, just not enforced for over a year) but for a town to create a nation or join a nation. I made it clear that 1 wasn't a valid value for either, please only use the ones I listed.At the time that I responded as depicted in Nic's screenshot, the UNofficial results were that creating a nation should have five residents, and 10ish illegal votes had been made for 1, which meant 3 was winning with 3 votes.I made a severe mistake and responded with uncaffeinated brain, tactlessly describing how I was going to lump the 1s with the 2s. I humbly and unreservedly apologize for my wording.I stand by the logic.Out of all the known detractors, only one person would be affected by this kind of change: Wind. Everyone else is in towns of at least 3 people. This is not a policy or design change intended attacking freedom, it is a configuration change to sociologically make it easier for town leaders to recruit new people to their banner, yet letting the true rugged individual have the chance to work in solitude, without skewing the political map too terribly, as Klerigos has, taking the grain of truth out of the joke. This ties back to the premise that the server owners, the people that founded the server under the principles outlined, are going to seek out and make changes that support those principles, sometimes over "give players everything they ask for". Some effort has to be required or it isn't fun. I've repeatedly seen where GM1 builds are dismissed as meaningless, precisely because of that principle.Will people be upset? Well yeah, when has anyone been happy about a nerf?Next:This was a complete and total cluster fuck. The requested "service" or "thing" was a map wide rail system that people could tap into so eventually anyone connected to it could get to Shop Island, a Server Owned and Managed Resource (as in we had to use world guard, and police griefing, regulate stuff coming in contact with it.)LadyVulcan volunteered to oversee this "Via Appia 2" project, using guidelines that were already in use for tunnels already done.The regulations had to do with tunnel width, height, elevation, lighting, enclosure, and intersections. With a mostly hard preference for straight tunnels. None of this seemed unreasonable to me or the Staff, and it was something none of us were interested in mucking with. Ordinarily it would have been the perfect Ali thing, but she was on a "break." The guidelines seemed reasonable such that any user, expert or novice, could navigate the system and have minimal chances of dying thousands of blocks from home, all hope of reclaiming their stuff gone.Enter the Aurorans/Aurelians. Nothing seemed amiss. They were set to make the longest E/W tunnel on the map, with an intersection to the projected main N/S trunk aligned to Shop Island. They didn't just object to one thing, they objected to everything, especially on the premise LadyVulcan was saying it. I tried all kinds of ways to explain it. To this day, I have no idea what or how they think an essentially federal transportation set up looks like. I'm fairly certain the EU has lots of regulations about their trains that individual countries have to follow if they want to connect to the main system. As a result, with such a significant group of the server now against a unified rail system, I dropped it, killed the project, apologized to LadyVulcan, and reported back to the Staff the project failed.Responding directly to Legendosh's recollection:I have no recollection of LadyVulcan ever claiming any ownership over anything, nor was she empowered as such. Oversight is not the same as ownership. Additionally, it was made clear at the time, to my recollection, that local rails were not tied to the same requirements, as they were local, as the Britguard/Aurelian lines were. As to me "jumping in," the Project Lead encountered a challenging conversation, and requested assistance from the overseeing authority, and I was the one with context and availability. At *no* point did I personally say LadyVulcan owned any rails. Again, oversight is not the same as ownership. Legendosh and Co, apparently feeling being overseen in *any* capacity was anathema, was the reason they "won" as their position was practically and ideologically incompatible with the original project purpose. As such, to this day all rails are still use at own risk, no one is replacing shit if you die.If Legendosh and Co is still unhappy about this, I have no idea what to say. Maybe they thought talking to "LadyVulcan's Manager" would give them huge satisfaction as I smote her and agreed with everything they said. I'm very happy making the Redline, and haven't thought about their rail since, with the exception of mentioning weeks ago I'd be open to a connector rail between our systems. No one has approached me to discuss it. Meanwhile, LadyVulcan is now a member of the staff, and not once mentioned reopening the rail discussion. I expect because the whole thing left a sour taste in her mouth. Which makes me sad.For months, people were having the same problem: build ambitions bigger than available space. The amount of available land people could claim was limited by the number of people in their town, and after a while, more users becomes scarce. As this was a Towny Issue, and none of the other Dev/Mods were overseeing it closely, I picked it up, seeking a solution to the unhappiness.I came up with a three pronged approach, and discussed it with everyone on the staff thoroughly, as well as asked users generally about aspects of the plan. First, we'd do a flat increase of the number of plots per person a town would get. Second, if that wasn't enough, they could buy plots through the mayor interface. Third, they could fill out a form, and formally apply to the "Land Authority" for more plots, assuming they provided the correct paperwork and qualified.Staff went back and forth how much to buff the citizen amount. The amount decided was done so as a collective. There was a similar discussion about the purchase program. The main concerns raised were about people with lots of money outstripping the ones without, despite one of the ancillary advantages was bleeding excess money from the system. The other problem was concern about this increasing "outpost pox", which is why we didn't want to just open it up to max. I don't recall the discussion ever really thinking about a flat rate, it was always "it goes up, but by how much." I initially set it for 1.5. We'll come back to this.As to the application process, there was some head wind, but I was adamant that we needed to be able to make exceptions, and that there should be a process behind it, so that there's a paper trail, and it's all above board, as we're all players as well.The release date for the changes arrived after they got reviewed and approved, and as it was my project, I was on the hook for the community show and tell.I scheduled and started the show and tell. It was about explaining the changes, and why they were made.Nicolai argued we were creating an unreachable achievement. Had that and the citizen increase been the only changes, I'd have agreed with him. With the request process, his argument had no value in a strict game play sense. It still doesn't. In the discussion and after a private discussion with him, it ultimately came down to the detriment caused by a UI element that we had no easy control over. He was the only person raising this concern, and his vehemence made it obvious it was personal, not esoteric. In sidebar conversations the demand made no sense, and undoing the change wasn't even considered at the time. It didn't matter even when Norb considered a customization to hide it from the Towny Dashboard. Nope, logic and reason, both useless.Looking at Wind's contribution, the story behind the change, the design parameters was for the three paths to have increasing levels of difficulty the more they were pushed, and we honestly wanted the purchase program which we had the least control combined with the greatest potential for abuse (outpost pox) to be the hardest. Yet we didn't want to disable it entirely, forcing people to either recruit or "beg." I tried a lot of different ways to communicate that, but repeated "I don't like that, don't do that" kept happening, especially in relation to that element I talked about, which we can't remove. The limit has to be an integer, and while we can bend systems, database structure isn't a bendable one.As this is one of those "you don't listen to us!' accusations, I heartily disagree. We heard you. It's the reason I lowered the value to 1.2 from 1.5 before the change went live. The whole of the update package was in response to the cry for more land. Your arguments about one part of it weren't persuasive enough to overcome much more overwhelming ones.Also, yes, we're revisiting the values. Just like I revisited it right before implementation. This isn't because Nic and Wind were right and we're wrong. We weren't "worn down". We have months of data and experience, and we're working on additional incremental changes, because that's what software development is about, incremental changes. We can only approach perfect fun, never really attain it, because that idea of "perfect" isn't the same for everyone.We have a lot of plug ins. All of them are for a reason. There's a ton of things on the back log tied to those plug ins. We have precisely one active coder who knows Java, and of the other "Devs", we have a lot of orphaned plug ins lacking active management. Some, this is okay, you guys don't notice. Others, like Economy and ShopChest, especially the Server Shop, players notice fast when they fuck up. It is a struggle maintaining expectations of what can and can't be delivered. This is work, learning these systems, learning the commands, understanding how and where they touch. Thank god for Sin and Vulcan joining the Dev group.MCMMO is requested on every survey. We've never considered adding it because of all the moving parts and all the configuration work required. Ali *never* completed the initial set up of Jobs Reborn. MCMMO is a lot more complicated.My response was candid and blunt. The professional Product Management way to respond would have been "That's a great suggestion, and one we've looked at previously. We'll see who on the dev group can take it up!" quickly followed by forgetting the conversation because the last time it happened, and the time before that, and the time before the answer was "fuck no."This wasn't a shut down. It was me being honest and not lying to anybody. Because I *hate* it when people lie about features, functionality, and what is or isn't being worked on.Combining two complaints into one, as there was an attempt todouble dip.These are also fallout from the More Plots update discussion.I got pissed repeating myself over and over again to two individuals that wanted to make the conversation about achievement hunting instead of letting people get more land. I definitely lost my cool, and if I didn't apologize for it then, I do here. I've gotten a lot more experience at product demos since then, and the format will be much improved, should we have a release that warrants it.In parallel, remember we're players and people too. Not adversaries. People get pissed. All I can promise is to hide it better.Arsen wanted to change the entire point of the server to not be roleplay. Arsen is barely ever around. Arsen was very annoyed that auto farms, something that the staff argued over for weeks, were banned. He even demanded we adjust the server settings to increase the spawn rate so he could get more loot.I spent a lot of time and effort listening to him, and explaining how what he wanted wasn't tenable, possible, or even reasonable. His claim "the actions of the moderators are disconnected from the community" held merit and the staff working to be more transparent with what we're doing and when did come from that. At the same time, I, acting on behalf of the whole team, refused to reverse the ban on all his auto farms.Knowing the stance of all the members of staff at the time, I stand by that position. Reminder: nerfs *will* happen.Yes, I blocked him. And I said I was doing so, instead of ghosting him. I was at my job and had tasks to complete before end of day, and running around in circles with him was going to screw my personal life which comes first. *BUT*. I didn't want to completely shut down Discord in case someone else needed something I could actually help with.Again. Blunt and candid. Asking me to, in the future, be more nice or diplomatic would basically be asking me to lie.I'd rather be known as a truthful blunt asshole than a charming liar.A staff member screwed up, and the channel was turning into an unholy mess.After scanning everything that was exploding, I rushed in like a bull. Effectively had a public trial. In that screenshot, while Teemo can claim he was innocent, his contributions to the conversation painted him as having the coat pulled back and hand ready to go for gun.Considering it was a very public staff fuck up, I disagreed with the "clean up" heavily but was overruled. Now there's no evidence of it, me getting everyone focused on me instead of each other, or the resolution.Just a thinly veiled accusation.No regrets.Staff was making a lot of changes and providing multiple avenues of communication, as neither Discord, nor Reddit can provide everything. One of those was setting up a suggestion board on Enjin so that we can have clear and easily reference-able conversations in a single thread, with the additional ability to direct others to the same link if they had the same concern. One that never locked, a la Reddit.LadyVulcan hated the nerf. I was not a fan either. I wanted a link I could give to staff saying "Can we PLEASE address this?" instead of "check the pins" or "scroll up in #channel."As to the accusation it was intended to shut down the request, please post a face picture I can laugh at.I mean ffs, once I knew where the edit was in Git, and got buy in from the other staff, that was the first thing I did was undo it.Someone went around and robbed from a bunch of chests in the wilderness. The staff discussed it and in context of the RP and server culture advertised, and declared that Towny was the system for chest protection. Anything that was messed with because permissions were effed was restored.We had declared the chests in the open as pvp fair game. Arsen was again advocating for that to be abandoned and that we grant him the demanded change. His request for more plots we addressed as explained earlier in this post.It's disingenuous to call a pvp situation an issue to be solved. "Please don't let them attack me!" "Please don't let them take my stuff!"Is the idea of Player vs Player really that hard to grasp? Is claiming an outpost or using ender chests that esoteric?There's a lot of conflation happening. First let's address the conflation of "admin" and "mod".A mod is a person that has mod powers on the Minecraft server and the Discord.An admin is a mod who also has remote access to the server so Norb isn't the only poor bastard to fix a crashed server.Devs are people that review, write, fix, and configure plug ins for the server.Sometimes there are overlaps. Some mods and or admins are also devs. Not all devs are mods.Let's also be blatant that all of these screenshots, couched in terms of "this admin" or "here's an example of an admin", are about me. Allegedly no one has anything bad to say about anyone else on the staff.Taking into consideration that I volunteer to do a lot of talking and explaining, and most of the staff let me, I'm okay that I'm the focus of thisfeedback session, it means that everyone else on the staff, everyone, or at least Nicolai, is mostly okay with. Which makes sense as I am mostly okay handling difficult conversations, while others on the staff are not.Moving on.All mods have a say in developing design requirements for where the server goes. No changes happen if a minority of the mod team is in favor of said change. People expressing proposed changes or expressing opinions about the changes proposed by others are expected to have a moderate working knowledge of the back end and the system limitations.Next, the interpretation of "heard" vs "agreement". We listen a lot. We talk about what we hear...a lot.Sometimes we will agree with you. Sometimes we will not. Sometimes some of us will agree with you, and some of us will not.Will we be open about those disagreements? Sometimes yes, mostly no. As I mentioned earlier about the Prot nerf, I disliked it, but others were staunchly for it, so I backed them up. While I collected data. Ali was more vocal about her not being a fan, which was counter productive. Instead of collecting data, and building the argument, folks harangued her to just "fix it".Another two words being conflated are arrogant and wrong.Yes, I am at times arrogant. I'm an adult with a solid career in software development. In a normal situation, I doubt most of the players on the server, being less than half my age, would be associates or peers.I've developed the Update Release Notes format and process, I've set up a ton of assets on Enjin to increase avenues of conversation, the War Process, as it currently exists, is my design, balancing player wants for violence with other players need for security. I'm in the trenches with Norb when the server crashes. The bonus plot request form, end to end, was my project. The PlotSquared implementation, my effort, 100%. All of these things, noticeably, aren't mentioned or depicted by my detractors, yet are all actions and efforts taken because yes, I personally am listening and hearing to all of you.Just because I am acting, or come across as arrogant doesn't mean I'm wrong. Maybe an asshole, but not wrong.After spending over four hours writing all this, I'm okay with that.In my shoes, would you be? Posted Dec 3, 18 · OP · Last edited Dec 3, 18 [Admin] Gryph667 a Posts: 31 Admins Admin Developer Gold Donor



I will post a comments as a reply to Gryph's post on enjin, as enjin seems like a horrible place for back-and-forth communication to be had.



1. "No Nerf Only Buff"



In here we see Gryph say two things that are completely at odds with each other: "I humbly and unreservedly apologize for my wording." and "I stand by the logic." He says he's sorry, but he isn't actually sorry at all, and wants to continue doing what he wants rather than what the player wants. The South Park video of BP comes to mind.

Furthermore he says that only Wind will be affected out of the detractors. While Wind might be the only casualty out of the people who voted "1", the town of Dusk (Expanse) with Xanman11 would also be affected. Then there are the 1-person towns that would be blocked from joining a nation if they wanted to ( Winterforge, Klerigos, Ashen_Assembly, Silk_Road, and Harrowgate). By nitpicking just the detractors, Gryph is attempting to downplay the major issue of limiting the rights of 1-person towns.



https://images-ext-2.discordapp.net/external/-HW29vEcCCHkBNj7EdE-C1izG8GcuUnJZwtw-Q-mBCo/https/i.ytimg.com/vi/15HTd4Um1m4/maxresdefault.jpg

2. "The Railroad Rumble"



Here we have an admission of a clusterfuck, but then we have some outright lies in the response.



First Gryph attacks the people that currently exist as Aurelia. He says, "I have no idea what or how they think an essentially federal transportation set up looks like. I'm fairly certain the EU has lots of regulations about their trains that individual countries have to follow if they want to connect to the main system.", which is an attack on Aurelia by implying that they don't know how their own country operates. Nice to know that his main counterpoint is a break of Rule 1 (Don't be a dick).



Additionally, Gryph says "I have no recollection of LadyVulcan ever claiming any ownership over anything, nor was she empowered as such.", when the first Screenshot of this point is Gryph telling Legendosh to replace "Lady" with "Server Staff". If that isn't meant to be empowering Lady to do what she wants with a project without input from anyone else, I don't know what is.



https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/518218841491374082/518224877262471178/convo_1.PNG

3. "More Plots...More Plots...More Plots...Ok Sotp Plots"



A clear example of staff ignoring feedback about an issue in favoring of doing what they want. Gryph tries to defend this by saying that, "We have months of data and experience,". There wouldn't have been months of data and experience needed if they listened the first time around. Gryph also tries to claim that they staff listened by reducing the exponent from 1.5 to 1.2. The staff clearly didn't listen, because we wanted the exponent to be gone altogether. Not reduced, not delayed, but gone.



Gryph also glosses over how the staff made fun of the "unreachable goal" argument by increasing the limit from 90 to 9001. Nice to know that he was only addressing problems he could answer to, instead of answering the problem of pointing and laughing at the player's troubles.



4. Discussion Lock



Here we have a great example of why the #current-projects channel was a good idea. Because Gryph made a mistake in shutting down a discussion in not telling the person that the idea had been passed around the staff chats, and was being considered. I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I have heard that MCMMO was waiting on a dev to pick it up to test it on the server. Shame that the admin's response was to yell at a user about staff burnout rather than admitting that it was being discussed. 5. lol u mad



In this example we have an admission that the admin lost their cool. We also have an admission that they will try to "hide it better". Why do you feel the need to get angry at all? Shouldn't it be your role as a member of the staff to deal with players? Getting angry at a player for asking a question is really unbecoming of a staff member. They should always be cool about it, even if it is repetitive.



6. Disconnected



An example of how Gryph changes the narrative in response to a problem. Instead of seeing that the issue was him publicly announcing that Arsen isn't worth his attention on Discord, he focuses on how Arsen was unreasonable in his demands. Instead of saying "I'd love to continue this, but real life calls me away", he publicly closes the discussion altogether.



It isn't about not lying to the players, it's about not being a dickhead to the players while not lying.



7. "Clean up in Aisle Gryph"



This one was a huge mess that included threats to mute users, and was essentially a very long and large rant from Gryph. Why Gryph decided to do this is unknown, and at the time the staff decided to clean up the mess, because the #feedback channel was new at the time and Gryph's behavior was uncalled for. Instead of apologizing for making a mess of a brand new channel, ranting endlessly, and threatening a user, Gryph instead decides to say "no regrets" about the whole thing. How very admin-like.



8. "But I Don't Wanna"



In this response, we get a sort of good reason why there was a direction towards enjin.



This credibility is instantly destroyed with a request for something to laugh at.



Instead of acknowledging that enjin is not the best way of communicating about issues, we instead get more laughter from staff about the playerbase wanting a way to communicate with the staff. Feels great to have our opinions heard in that manner.



9. "Let Me Get This Off My Chest"



Once again we have a staff pointing blame towards a user for wanting a change, instead of acknowledging that they unilaterally shutdown a conversation. Instead of seeing that someone wanted the ability to lock their chests, they decided to shut down the whole conversation because "PvP is PvP", when there were many simultaneous conversations about what PvP means to the server, and what the wilderness means to the server.



10. "Conclusion"



Admins, mods, devs, they are all people that talk with each other about what's best for the server, and it often feels like you need to be in "the circle" for your opinion to be heard. Defining what each role does doesn't make it any easier for player ideas to be heard when they are shut down by an admin every time.



Yes, the screenshots all include Gryph. It seems like Gryph is the main source of the problems, and this was discussed in the Protest Server. We were wondering ourselves "Why is Gryph in all of these?" "Why do we not see any instances of Norbi, Iie, Figy, or Ghost in these screenshots?" "Who the hell is running the show behind all of these responses? Is it Gryph or is someone telling Gryph what to write?" There was no good answer for it, and the only conclusion we could draw was that Gryph himself was the issue.



We want Gryph to stop being the main person communicating with the community and be demoted to mod. The negativity he constantly brings far outweighs any positives from "blunt truth". He openly admits to being arrogant, and refutes that he was wrong in any instances. The players decide who is wrong, not the admins. To put yourself to such height that you can never be wrong is to assume absolute power.



Furthermore, it shouldn't a requirement to understand everything about the server in order to ask for a change. I don't need an understanding of a combustion engine to ask if I can add a spoiler to my car, I just need to ask my mechanic if it can be done. Locking every suggestion behind an understanding of the server only disincentives ideas that may change how the server is run. If you tell someone that they have to understand the server before they can form an opinion, you are telling them to join the staff to get their opinion heard. That is the core of the issue behind this protest. Normal players not getting their voices heard. Posted here for Nicolai:I will post a comments as a reply to Gryph's post on enjin, as enjin seems like a horrible place for back-and-forth communication to be had.1. "No Nerf Only Buff"In here we see Gryph say two things that are completely at odds with each other: "I humbly and unreservedly apologize for my wording." and "I stand by the logic." He says he's sorry, but he isn't actually sorry at all, and wants to continue doing what he wants rather than what the player wants. The South Park video of BP comes to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4 Furthermore he says that only Wind will be affected out of the detractors. While Wind might be the only casualty out of the people who voted "1", the town of Dusk (Expanse) with Xanman11 would also be affected. Then there are the 1-person towns that would be blocked from joining a nation if they wanted to ( Winterforge, Klerigos, Ashen_Assembly, Silk_Road, and Harrowgate). By nitpicking just the detractors, Gryph is attempting to downplay the major issue of limiting the rights of 1-person towns.2. "The Railroad Rumble"Here we have an admission of a clusterfuck, but then we have some outright lies in the response.First Gryph attacks the people that currently exist as Aurelia. He says, "I have no idea what or how they think an essentially federal transportation set up looks like. I'm fairly certain the EU has lots of regulations about their trains that individual countries have to follow if they want to connect to the main system.", which is an attack on Aurelia by implying that they don't know how their own country operates. Nice to know that his main counterpoint is a break of Rule 1 (Don't be a dick).Additionally, Gryph says "I have no recollection of LadyVulcan ever claiming any ownership over anything, nor was she empowered as such.", when the first Screenshot of this point is Gryph telling Legendosh to replace "Lady" with "Server Staff". If that isn't meant to be empowering Lady to do what she wants with a project without input from anyone else, I don't know what is.3. "More Plots...More Plots...More Plots...Ok Sotp Plots"A clear example of staff ignoring feedback about an issue in favoring of doing what they want. Gryph tries to defend this by saying that, "We have months of data and experience,". There wouldn't have been months of data and experience needed if they listened the first time around. Gryph also tries to claim that they staff listened by reducing the exponent from 1.5 to 1.2. The staff clearly didn't listen, because we wanted the exponent to be gone altogether. Not reduced, not delayed, but gone.Gryph also glosses over how the staff made fun of the "unreachable goal" argument by increasing the limit from 90 to 9001. Nice to know that he was only addressing problems he could answer to, instead of answering the problem of pointing and laughing at the player's troubles.4. Discussion LockHere we have a great example of why the #current-projects channel was a good idea. Because Gryph made a mistake in shutting down a discussion in not telling the person that the idea had been passed around the staff chats, and was being considered. I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I have heard that MCMMO was waiting on a dev to pick it up to test it on the server. Shame that the admin's response was to yell at a user about staff burnout rather than admitting that it was being discussed. 5. lol u madIn this example we have an admission that the admin lost their cool. We also have an admission that they will try to "hide it better". Why do you feel the need to get angry at all? Shouldn't it be your role as a member of the staff to deal with players? Getting angry at a player for asking a question is really unbecoming of a staff member. They should always be cool about it, even if it is repetitive.6. DisconnectedAn example of how Gryph changes the narrative in response to a problem. Instead of seeing that the issue was him publicly announcing that Arsen isn't worth his attention on Discord, he focuses on how Arsen was unreasonable in his demands. Instead of saying "I'd love to continue this, but real life calls me away", he publicly closes the discussion altogether.It isn't about not lying to the players, it's about not being a dickhead to the players while not lying.7. "Clean up in Aisle Gryph"This one was a huge mess that included threats to mute users, and was essentially a very long and large rant from Gryph. Why Gryph decided to do this is unknown, and at the time the staff decided to clean up the mess, because the #feedback channel was new at the time and Gryph's behavior was uncalled for. Instead of apologizing for making a mess of a brand new channel, ranting endlessly, and threatening a user, Gryph instead decides to say "no regrets" about the whole thing. How very admin-like.8. "But I Don't Wanna"In this response, we get a sort of good reason why there was a direction towards enjin.This credibility is instantly destroyed with a request for something to laugh at.Instead of acknowledging that enjin is not the best way of communicating about issues, we instead get more laughter from staff about the playerbase wanting a way to communicate with the staff. Feels great to have our opinions heard in that manner.9. "Let Me Get This Off My Chest"Once again we have a staff pointing blame towards a user for wanting a change, instead of acknowledging that they unilaterally shutdown a conversation. Instead of seeing that someone wanted the ability to lock their chests, they decided to shut down the whole conversation because "PvP is PvP", when there were many simultaneous conversations about what PvP means to the server, and what the wilderness means to the server.10. "Conclusion"Admins, mods, devs, they are all people that talk with each other about what's best for the server, and it often feels like you need to be in "the circle" for your opinion to be heard. Defining what each role does doesn't make it any easier for player ideas to be heard when they are shut down by an admin every time.Yes, the screenshots all include Gryph. It seems like Gryph is the main source of the problems, and this was discussed in the Protest Server. We were wondering ourselves "Why is Gryph in all of these?" "Why do we not see any instances of Norbi, Iie, Figy, or Ghost in these screenshots?" "Who the hell is running the show behind all of these responses? Is it Gryph or is someone telling Gryph what to write?" There was no good answer for it, and the only conclusion we could draw was that Gryph himself was the issue.We want Gryph to stop being the main person communicating with the community and be demoted to mod. The negativity he constantly brings far outweighs any positives from "blunt truth". He openly admits to being arrogant, and refutes that he was wrong in any instances. The players decide who is wrong, not the admins. To put yourself to such height that you can never be wrong is to assume absolute power.Furthermore, it shouldn't a requirement to understand everything about the server in order to ask for a change. I don't need an understanding of a combustion engine to ask if I can add a spoiler to my car, I just need to ask my mechanic if it can be done. Locking every suggestion behind an understanding of the server only disincentives ideas that may change how the server is run. If you tell someone that they have to understand the server before they can form an opinion, you are telling them to join the staff to get their opinion heard. That is the core of the issue behind this protest. Normal players not getting their voices heard. Posted Dec 6, 18 · OP Agent_Star_Fox Posts: 1 Untagged users



The majority of the Chroma Gamer Minecraft community have come together with a statement. They are unhappy with how past discussions and debates involving the Minecraft server have played out. They are especially unhappy that Gryph is the prominent staff member that has handled these discussions. The players have voiced their opinions, desires, and concerns on many topics, and most of those requests have been brutally denied. He has been unpleasant during these discussions and is considered a negative influence on staff-player relations. Being continuously shut down has made players uncomfortable voicing their opinions at all, afraid of being belittled, ignored, or otherwise attacked or threatened by Gryph. All players deserve to be treated with respect, and they find that respect severely lacking when Gryph is the one communicating on behalf of the staff. This is what has led to a protest by many of the players demanding long-needed change to restore respect and equality between staff-player relations.





One such demand is to elect a player representative who will be the voice of the people whenever they have questions directed at the staff. Additionally, there should be an admin representative exclusively in the position of communicating with the players or the player rep on behalf of the staff. The two representatives will theoretically handle all discussions between players and staff.





This is an excellent idea, it is often when a topic arises that all players have multiple stances regarding it, with many ideas and questions being asked. These are quickly buried in discord chat. As it goes, staff usually only start answering one particular area of discussion at a time. This leaves the vast majority of players feeling ignored, or with inadequately answered questions. With so many players repeatedly asking questions, it can also make the staff feel backed into a corner, or that the players aren’t listening to their answers either. It is often times that even if certain things were answered they weren’t given ample reasoning or that the explanations too are lost in chat. This quickly creates circular arguments, rising frustrations, and as we have seen, degraded relations.





With the implementation of a player representative a safe space is created in which all players can form their opinions and questions into well planned discussions. This can be passed from player rep to admin rep, where the discussion can continue without getting lost, shutdown, or heated. This prevents players from seemingly ganging up on staff –even though this is never intentional, and it prevents staff from becoming defensive and lashing out at players. It gives staff ample time to sufficiently explain why certain decisions were made, while also giving them room to see if any player feedback has merit or can be implemented, eventually leading to an agreeable solution.





The second demand is to create a public list of all items being worked on or discussed, or planned by staff. This is to pull back the curtain and allow all members of the community to see everything that the staff has going on. This will prevent staff from coming out with seemingly random and ambitious ideas that the rest of the community have had no idea about. It will ensure that if players make requests or ask about a feature, they can see if its already been added to the project bulletin or if it deserves more discussion.





Another idea worthy of putting into immediate effect, this can alleviate many of the communication problems pointed out by both players and staff. Players frequently have ideas about plugins and systems that they are excited about, and they ask staff about them or put in a request. What players don’t often realize, and what hasn’t been pointed out adequately enough by staff, is that many of these things have been added to the review/to do list.





Even when added to the list, it can be a long time before review or implementation. It has been stated by multiple staff that there is a large amount of burnout from staff members. Part of this is because of all the requests from the players who don’t fully comprehend the amount of work demanded of the staff, such as the fact that it takes a lot of time to be able to understand and work with plugins, and that there is just a long list of items on their plate.





Creating the public list will decrease the amount of times players will continue to ask for certain things, things they think have been ignored or didn’t realize have been asked about already. This will be less stress for the staff team, and will foster understanding between the players and staff when the players see things that they’ve asked to be added on this list, as well as the sheer amount of work the staff has to complete.





The third demand set forth by the players is to unlock the feedback-archive channel. It is not clear to me (and I haven’t asked) why this channel was locked and hidden from players, or when/why staff would pick out content from that channel. However, it is clear to me that players should have the same ability as staff to access and review past ideas and information in that channel so that any content posted that is pulled from it has context for all players. Since I am not as familiar with this particular demand, I can only say that I generally agree with the idea, but I cannot expand on the history behind it or explain the additional benefits besides that of transparency.





The last demand is to remove Gryph as an admin, for the players agree that he is negative in his communication and has a dismissive attitude in dealing with player questions, decisions, and request for clarifications. They state it is unbecoming to the staff to keep him in a position of authority. I feel that there has been miscommunication in regards to how the staff hierarchy works, and while it has recently been touched upon lightly, it would be of great benefit to explain how it works, to continue fostering an understanding regarding what the staff does, and why it wouldn’t be good for the community to ‘demote’ Gryph.





The staff team consists of mods, admins, and devs. Mods have powers on Minecraft Server and Discord, and Admins have these same powers with an additional role of remote accessing the Minecraft server to restart the server when it crashes. Some Mods and Admins are also Devs, meaning they help develop the plugins and projects for the server. It has also been stated by multiple staff members that not all the current staff are able to be granted Admin (console access) because they are either too new, burnt out, or just do not have high enough availability.





Multiple staff members have said that all staff have a say in the development and design requirements for server changes. All of them spend a lot of time debating and discussing ideas and solutions to try and meet our wants and needs while staying true to the theme of why the server was created in the first place. We know that even with a different voice or staff member, while the tone would be less severe, and better received, the answers would still be the same in all of our previous discussions with Gryph. It has been stated that all the staff hash it out in the background and that on certain issues particular mods/admins often take lead because they have more experience. This does not mean that Gryph or any member in particular is leader of the staff. He is not the sole deciding factor in any design choice. This has been clearly stated. To say that Gryph is ignoring the majority of players for his own agenda is misleading. His agenda is that held by the rest of the staff, to ensure that the integrity of the server remains intact.





Additionally, it would be remiss to say that Gryph doesn’t listen to the players. A large portion of the tasks he has undertaken have been things that players wanted. More land. More violence. More security. Plot world. He set up assets on enjin for us so that we could have another avenue for suggestions and player feedback. He has straight up done so much for us as players. Things we’ve directly asked to have. Months ago, the staff team created #feedback and #staff-fishtank to increase transparency and communication when we said we were unhappy with the way things were working. They listened to us then too. Can we really blame him for trying to make us happy? He tries to please us, even if he does fall short. Even though Gryph is flawed in the art of letting us down easy, can we really say that he doesn’t care about the community as a whole? We now know that the staff actively seek resolutions to ongoing projects, including Gryph. Even though we weren’t aware of it, they were and are continuously thinking of new ways to change the current features to accommodate us.





What would be the benefit of removing Gryph as an admin? We now know that he is not the front of the staff team, nor is he the leader. Having a player and admin rep would mean that he would not be communicating directly with the players or the player rep. We already know that staff decisions take a majority vote, so he would not be able to usurp the admin rep, even unintentionally. He has no power over another and there is no longer a way for him to even inadvertently relegate any player.





We can no longer claim that the staff doesn’t listen to us. We cannot pretend that we aren’t overbearing and demanding towards the staff, and we cannot deny that at times we can be just as arrogant as we claim Gryph to be. We more often than not take the staff for granted, especially Gryph, and we should recognize that it is frustrating and a slap in the face when we very nearly label their products that they put so much effort and thought into as ‘shit’.





We can’t ever thank the staff enough for their continued dedication to creating an immersive world for all of our enjoyment, but perhaps we can show them our gratitude and support by accepting that Gryph doesn’t deserve all the blame. We owe it to our own community to recognize that Gryph is an irreplaceable asset. To lose him as an admin would be a devastating loss for Chroma Gaming. We are all flawed, and we know that conflicts and miscommunication are things that will happen in any group. What is important for us as a community is to continue to fight for each other, not tear each other apart. I think we can all see why these conflicts occurred. We can all agree that there have been fantastic steps taken to bridge the gap between players and staff, to restore much deserved respect to all members, and we should continue to take the correct steps to ensure our entire community moves forward as one. The following statement summarizes the views of the protesting party, the proposed changes to the server, and explains my view of how removing Gryph as an admin per their demands would be detrimental to the Minecraft community.The majority of the Chroma Gamer Minecraft community have come together with a statement. They are unhappy with how past discussions and debates involving the Minecraft server have played out. They are especially unhappy that Gryph is the prominent staff member that has handled these discussions. The players have voiced their opinions, desires, and concerns on many topics, and most of those requests have been brutally denied. He has been unpleasant during these discussions and is considered a negative influence on staff-player relations. Being continuously shut down has made players uncomfortable voicing their opinions at all, afraid of being belittled, ignored, or otherwise attacked or threatened by Gryph. All players deserve to be treated with respect, and they find that respect severely lacking when Gryph is the one communicating on behalf of the staff. This is what has led to a protest by many of the players demanding long-needed change to restore respect and equality between staff-player relations.One such demand is to elect a player representative who will be the voice of the people whenever they have questions directed at the staff. Additionally, there should be an admin representative exclusively in the position of communicating with the players or the player rep on behalf of the staff. The two representatives will theoretically handle all discussions between players and staff.This is an excellent idea, it is often when a topic arises that all players have multiple stances regarding it, with many ideas and questions being asked. These are quickly buried in discord chat. As it goes, staff usually only start answering one particular area of discussion at a time. This leaves the vast majority of players feeling ignored, or with inadequately answered questions. With so many players repeatedly asking questions, it can also make the staff feel backed into a corner, or that the players aren’t listening to their answers either. It is often times that even if certain things were answered they weren’t given ample reasoning or that the explanations too are lost in chat. This quickly creates circular arguments, rising frustrations, and as we have seen, degraded relations.With the implementation of a player representative a safe space is created in which all players can form their opinions and questions into well planned discussions. This can be passed from player rep to admin rep, where the discussion can continue without getting lost, shutdown, or heated. This prevents players from seemingly ganging up on staff –even though this is never intentional, and it prevents staff from becoming defensive and lashing out at players. It gives staff ample time to sufficiently explain why certain decisions were made, while also giving them room to see if any player feedback has merit or can be implemented, eventually leading to an agreeable solution.The second demand is to create a public list of all items being worked on or discussed, or planned by staff. This is to pull back the curtain and allow all members of the community to see everything that the staff has going on. This will prevent staff from coming out with seemingly random and ambitious ideas that the rest of the community have had no idea about. It will ensure that if players make requests or ask about a feature, they can see if its already been added to the project bulletin or if it deserves more discussion.Another idea worthy of putting into immediate effect, this can alleviate many of the communication problems pointed out by both players and staff. Players frequently have ideas about plugins and systems that they are excited about, and they ask staff about them or put in a request. What players don’t often realize, and what hasn’t been pointed out adequately enough by staff, is that many of these things have been added to the review/to do list.Even when added to the list, it can be a long time before review or implementation. It has been stated by multiple staff that there is a large amount of burnout from staff members. Part of this is because of all the requests from the players who don’t fully comprehend the amount of work demanded of the staff, such as the fact that it takes a lot of time to be able to understand and work with plugins, and that there is just a long list of items on their plate.Creating the public list will decrease the amount of times players will continue to ask for certain things, things they think have been ignored or didn’t realize have been asked about already. This will be less stress for the staff team, and will foster understanding between the players and staff when the players see things that they’ve asked to be added on this list, as well as the sheer amount of work the staff has to complete.The third demand set forth by the players is to unlock the feedback-archive channel. It is not clear to me (and I haven’t asked) why this channel was locked and hidden from players, or when/why staff would pick out content from that channel. However, it is clear to me that players should have the same ability as staff to access and review past ideas and information in that channel so that any content posted that is pulled from it has context for all players. Since I am not as familiar with this particular demand, I can only say that I generally agree with the idea, but I cannot expand on the history behind it or explain the additional benefits besides that of transparency.The last demand is to remove Gryph as an admin, for the players agree that he is negative in his communication and has a dismissive attitude in dealing with player questions, decisions, and request for clarifications. They state it is unbecoming to the staff to keep him in a position of authority. I feel that there has been miscommunication in regards to how the staff hierarchy works, and while it has recently been touched upon lightly, it would be of great benefit to explain how it works, to continue fostering an understanding regarding what the staff does, and why it wouldn’t be good for the community to ‘demote’ Gryph.The staff team consists of mods, admins, and devs. Mods have powers on Minecraft Server and Discord, and Admins have these same powers with an additional role of remote accessing the Minecraft server to restart the server when it crashes. Some Mods and Admins are also Devs, meaning they help develop the plugins and projects for the server. It has also been stated by multiple staff members that not all the current staff are able to be granted Admin (console access) because they are either too new, burnt out, or just do not have high enough availability.Multiple staff members have said that all staff have a say in the development and design requirements for server changes. All of them spend a lot of time debating and discussing ideas and solutions to try and meet our wants and needs while staying true to the theme of why the server was created in the first place. We know that even with a different voice or staff member, while the tone would be less severe, and better received, the answers would still be the same in all of our previous discussions with Gryph. It has been stated that all the staff hash it out in the background and that on certain issues particular mods/admins often take lead because they have more experience. This does not mean that Gryph or any member in particular is leader of the staff. He is not the sole deciding factor in any design choice. This has been clearly stated. To say that Gryph is ignoring the majority of players for his own agenda is misleading. His agenda is that held by the rest of the staff, to ensure that the integrity of the server remains intact.Additionally, it would be remiss to say that Gryph doesn’t listen to the players. A large portion of the tasks he has undertaken have been things that players wanted. More land. More violence. More security. Plot world. He set up assets on enjin for us so that we could have another avenue for suggestions and player feedback. He has straight up done so much for us as players. Things we’ve directly asked to have. Months ago, the staff team created #feedback and #staff-fishtank to increase transparency and communication when we said we were unhappy with the way things were working. They listened to us then too. Can we really blame him for trying to make us happy? He tries to please us, even if he does fall short. Even though Gryph is flawed in the art of letting us down easy, can we really say that he doesn’t care about the community as a whole? We now know that the staff actively seek resolutions to ongoing projects, including Gryph. Even though we weren’t aware of it, they were and are continuously thinking of new ways to change the current features to accommodate us.What would be the benefit of removing Gryph as an admin? We now know that he is not the front of the staff team, nor is he the leader. Having a player and admin rep would mean that he would not be communicating directly with the players or the player rep. We already know that staff decisions take a majority vote, so he would not be able to usurp the admin rep, even unintentionally. He has no power over another and there is no longer a way for him to even inadvertently relegate any player.We can no longer claim that the staff doesn’t listen to us. We cannot pretend that we aren’t overbearing and demanding towards the staff, and we cannot deny that at times we can be just as arrogant as we claim Gryph to be. We more often than not take the staff for granted, especially Gryph, and we should recognize that it is frustrating and a slap in the face when we very nearly label their products that they put so much effort and thought into as ‘shit’.We can’t ever thank the staff enough for their continued dedication to creating an immersive world for all of our enjoyment, but perhaps we can show them our gratitude and support by accepting that Gryph doesn’t deserve all the blame. We owe it to our own community to recognize that Gryph is an irreplaceable asset. To lose him as an admin would be a devastating loss for Chroma Gaming. We are all flawed, and we know that conflicts and miscommunication are things that will happen in any group. What is important for us as a community is to continue to fight for each other, not tear each other apart. I think we can all see why these conflicts occurred. We can all agree that there have been fantastic steps taken to bridge the gap between players and staff, to restore much deserved respect to all members, and we should continue to take the correct steps to ensure our entire community moves forward as one. Posted Dec 6, 18 Quick navigation ------------------------------------------------------------------ Infrastructure Announcements Outages/Slowdowns ------------------------------------------------------------------ Minecraft Server Developer Blog Plot Request Process Server Suggestions Server Support Justice Ban Appeals ------------------------------------------------------------------ Community General Discussion Gaming ------------------------------------------------------------------ Website News & Announcements Site Suggestions