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#1
Dash

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  • Staff teams:
    Events, Support, Marketing

Let me start by saying: nothing in this post is final. We're still mostly in a planning phase, and plans can change. Anyway...

 

One of Crusade Gaming's main problems in the past was the staff. There was a large amount of different ranks, people were always trying to get higher up on Staff often only to become inactive afterwards, instead of just doing what they were good at. There was also a lot of Staff abuse going on, often unnoticed by the (inactive) higher ups. That's not something we want to repeat.

 

Instead of having a top-down structure like we used to, we are now setting up the staff as teams. There will be a team for in-game Support (Game Masters), for building and running events, for forum and IRC moderation, for development, etcetera. A Staff member can be part of one or more teams, depending on where he/she is needed and what he/she wants to work on. Teams can of course also change as needed. If we're planning a project that requires a lot of work, we'll just set up a team for it and get the required manpower in the team.

 

Teams will be lead by the Team Leads. The role of Team Leads will be comparable to Admins and Lead GMs on the old Crusade Gaming. That is also the only higher rank we have for now. We simply don't see a need to add more positions on top of that.

 

Choosing a Lead for a particular team is purely a practical decision: whoever is best suited for a position at the time gets to lead the team. When someone goes inactive, or simply when there is someone else who can get more done, positions will be switched, temporarily or permanently. So for example, if I would go on vacation for a few weeks, I would pass on leadership for my team to someone else. In the end it's Crusade Gaming that matters, not a fancy colour on your name.

 

 

This probably wasn't the update you had all been hoping for. I hope we'll be able to shed some light on what we are actually planning realm-wise in the coming days though ;)


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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

 

 


#2
frob

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thank you for the information, good sir


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#3
Aidiakapi

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Totally agreed there's this is a good step in the right direction. I am actually really happy with this kind of update, since it gives me a bit more confidence in the plans.

Although this idea fixes one big problem of inactivity, it doesn't really tackle the other big ones, power abuse and communication.

 

I have a few questions regarding this plan:

 

  • Will these project teams be open to staff only or to everyone? (Ie. a group a players are thinking of making a promotional video for CG, would they all have to apply as a staff member to be able to get some form of support from the rest of the staff?)

     

     

  • How will rights be managed? (Who determines what rights are assigned to team members? And more importantly, who checks up on those rights?)

    Reflecting back on the previous example, if a group of players would like to make a promotional video and they'd like the ability to fly around for better camera work, how'd you handle that scenario?

     

     

  • When a team is ready to be started up, who'll actually do that? Is that also a team that'll have access to making teams? And again how does this relate to rights, and how do you prevent them from right escalation?

     

     

  • Who'll be in charge of monitoring in-game activity? Team leads? If yes, then the team leads actually need to be more capable than just the purpose of the team, they may not be up to the task and will actually require monitoring if they're doing it well. If no, will there be a dedicated team, or will this be one of the tasks of the team managing team, if such team were to be there (like asked in last question).

     

     

  • How will teams communicate within them, with the community and with the rest of the staff? This one is especially important, because although it's easy to blame concrete subjects, such as inactivity and power abuse as the cause why the old CG staff failed, communication is likely a one of the core problems behind all of them.

     

    Communication to the community is important. On the old CG, staff was basically a black box, stuff got it, but never came out. The only people who knew that stuff was going on were the people in staff, and the people in contact with people from staff. Any player that cares about it, should be able to obtain most information related to staff without actually being a staff member. Of course there's always some sensitive information (surprise events, player specific stuff, the newest exploit, etc.), but most of the information should be freely available. This includes:

     

    Basically, give the community the option to monitor the staff, instead of just the other way around, make it a collaboration to make a great server.

    • Changes in staff structure.
    • Changes to teams and their personnel.
    • Bug fixes.
    • Decisions related to support (we will/won't solve bugged quests, we will help with a bugged wall in ICC until it's fixed, etc.)
    • New events/plans for new events.
    • Discussions about changes (viewing them, in most cases contributing to them would just cause a massive mess).

       

  • Who'll be in charge of fixing 'screwups'. Mistakes happen, intentional (power abuse) or not (accidents), somebody will have to clean up after them. 

     

     

  • How'll you take care of recruiting, applying and tutoring? Is this a task left over to each team on their own? Is there a global overlapping process for just joining 'general staff' before joining specific teams. On the old CG staff, without pointing fingers, there were a lot of GMs who weren't capable of doing what they should've been able to do. This is not the fault of the person in question, not all of us are technicians and engineers. (For those who actually read through this wall of text, and don't know it yet, being a GM actually requires you to know a whole bunch of technical stuff to do seemingly simple tasks.) However, those GMs could've been a lot better if they'd have actually received proper instructions, better tools and initial guidance. Will there be a specific team tasked with educating new GMs and updating the current ones, possibly in coordination with the dev team?

 

Sorry for this huge wall of questions/text, I don't expect you to answer them all straight away. And I'd be happy if you could shed some light on the subjects I asked about.

At the very least, it's good to take all these points in consideration, and use it to solidify the plans you have.


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#4
Ink

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Oh my goodness a big fat juicy post. I'm so excited to reply to these questions. Thank you so much for this post.

 

  Before I reply, I would first like to remind the community that there is an important essence of trust within staff. Due to everyone being familiar with one another, communication isn’t a problem due to a combination of IRC, the forums, and TeamSpeak. Having trust allows us to rest assured that each and every single staff member is acting responsibly towards the shared goal of bringing Crusade Gaming back to the forefront of World of Warcraft private servers.

 

  These teams offer clarification to the community. For example, if someone had an issue with the forums, they could contact me. In the future, if Crusade Gaming grows, the Team Lead of forum moderation would be responsible for hiring forum moderators, if required. The overall end result of having a system such as this in place is much like the end result of a conveyer belt. With people working in specialized roles, the overall product can be accomplished much more smoothly, easily, and quickly.

 

  This does not mean that, for example, Dash would strictly be doing events, and nothing else. With equality in rank, Dash can choose to help GM, or even develop (maybe if he picked up a language!). This is where the important factor of trust comes into play. In the spirit of being transparent with the community, I offer this as an example: just earlier, there was a project involving transmogrification that Dash wanted completed, but was not able to due to time constraints. Another team leader came forward to help out with the effort in order to get it done in a relatively short time.

 

  To be honest, there was no hours of communication between staff members about a system and ranks. Rather, it came quickly and easily together because we simply do not care about ranks. Our primary concern is the server and its community.

 

  In your example, you use members coming together to make a promotional video - certainly something we would love to see in the future. If they did in fact need unique viewing angles only possibly grantable by something such as commands, they could contact any Team Lead (who would then convey the message to someone else who could get right on doing it), or preferably contact the Team Lead in charge of such things (in this case, it would be the Team Lead of marketing, or in-game support). Once the message is received, a Team Leader would work quickly and efficiently to have the needs of the community met.

 

  Obviously, there is a recovery mechanism in situations such as members of staff not doing what they are supposed to be doing. It’s regrettable, but responsibility entails anticipating the future accurately in order to respond if any such situation arises. The concept has Team Leaders reviewing staff – an example of this would be Naald, of in-game support, reviewing the work of GMs (staff) in handling tickets. Naald (or any member of staff for that reason) can work on tickets. Naald, being specialized in that area, could look through things such as logs and handle above situations in the ways he sees fit, with of course some input from other Team Leads if required. Of course, as stated above, there is a sense of trust within Team Leads, and this is one of our greatest assets. Well-founded trust allows us to confident in the fact that Team Leads will never abuse.

If all else fails, there are contingency plans in place. It's a non-issue :P.

 

 

If you have any more questions, feel free to leave a reply below.


P.S. What do you mean you don’t expect an answer straight away? What do you think I am, a casual? 


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#5
Dash

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  • Staff teams:
    Events, Support, Marketing

I'll be adding my view on those points as well. Although they don't contradict Phantom's views it may provide a little different point of view :P

 

 

Will these project teams be open to staff only or to everyone? (Ie. a group a players are thinking of making a promotional video for CG, would they all have to apply as a staff member to be able to get some form of support from the rest of the staff?)

Staff teams themselves are Staff-only. That mean, you apply for staff, and state what areas you would like to help in. If hired, you are then assigned to one or more teams, of course based on what you want to eb doing. That "assignment" can change at any time, as needed and requested.

 

Obviously, staff teams can work together with players to get things done. That doesn't make the players staff, or an official part of the team, but I think that's a non-issue to be honest. In your example, if a group of players wants to make some promotional videos, I would be fine with setting them up with an account with just a few basic commands that can help while recording videos, nothing else. Of course they'd have to be accompanied by a member of Staff to prevent those limited commands from being abused. But in the end I think activities like this should be encouraged.

 

How will rights be managed? (Who determines what rights are assigned to team members? And more importantly, who checks up on those rights?)

That depends on the team really. As you can probably imagine, staff members dealing with in-game support and in-game events have more permissions than forums/irc mods. On the other hand, forum and irc mods would have more powers on the forums.

Although we haven't really discussed this within Staff yet, I intend to have one thread per Staff member in the Team Leader section. That thread will, among plenty of other things, contain details like which access they have in what area.
 

Reflecting back on the previous example, if a group of players would like to make a promotional video and they'd like the ability to fly around for better camera work, how'd you handle that scenario?

Pretty much answered above. I'd think this would be a rather uncommon practice, so I don't think it warrants putting a whole system in place. As long as we make sure they can only access the "enhanced" account while someone to supervise is around, I don't see an issue.

 

When a team is ready to be started up, who'll actually do that? Is that also a team that'll have access to making teams? And again how does this relate to rights, and how do you prevent them from right escalation?

As said, different teams (and team leads) have different levels of access. For practical reasons I and Hash pretty much have access to everything at the moment, we might change that if needed. Other team leads get access as needed. The moderation lead will have the needed forum access to set things up here, the development team lead (also in charge of server administration), will handle things server side when nescessary. An in-game support or event team lead would be able to set up in-game accounts. Etcetera...

 

Honestly, this has not (yet) been discussed in such a detailed manner, and I doubt it's even really needed. As long as we make sure people have the access they need to get things done without opening things up too much, that seems more practical to me than detailing it all beforehand.

 

As for deciding to add a team, that would ultimately be up to current team leads. However, requests from the Staff and the community in this regard should be taken very seriously. If there is a good base for a (temporary) team, there's usually no harm in trying it out. If it doesn't work out, a team is just as easily removed.

 

Who'll be in charge of monitoring in-game activity? Team leads? If yes, then the team leads actually need to be more capable than just the purpose of the team, they may not be up to the task and will actually require monitoring if they're doing it well. If no, will there be a dedicated team, or will this be one of the tasks of the team managing team, if such team were to be there (like asked in last question).

The team leads dealing with in-game stuff (events and in-game support for now) would be in charge of monitoring activity and logs. In general, a team lead is responsible for monitoring those in his/her team, as necessary. It does not need to be a big brother scenario, but of course integrity will always have to be monitored.

 

As for monitoring team leads, we need a certain base of trust. Sure team leads should check up on each other and stay up-to-date on what is happening, but we're not going to set up a system where team leads have to check each others' work and activities all the time. It has to end somewhere.

 

How will teams communicate within them, with the community and with the rest of the staff? This one is especially important, because although it's easy to blame concrete subjects, such as inactivity and power abuse as the cause why the old CG staff failed, communication is likely a one of the core problems behind all of them.

  • Changes in staff structure.
  • Changes to teams and their personnel.
  • Bug fixes.
  • Decisions related to support (we will/won't solve bugged quests, we will help with a bugged wall in ICC until it's fixed, etc.)
  • New events/plans for new events.
  • Discussions about changes (viewing them, in most cases contributing to them would just cause a massive mess).

Teams will communicate mainly on IRC and the forums. As will the Staff as a whole. As will the team leads among each other. As will the Staff to the community. Any other platforms (teamspeak, facebook, telegram/whatsapp, in-game, e-mail, etc), are not primary tools for relaying or discussing important info, with the exception of Staff or team meetings which you'd want to do on teamspeak. In general anything important to a team, the staff or the community should always be announced or posted on these forums.

 

I think going into who exactly covers which area is way beyond the scope of this post. Teams are only just being set up, and we will simply have to see how it evolves. In general a team lead will be in charge for communicating about his team. If needed, we might put a few people dedicated to communication, but with such a simple structure I honestly think we can manage without. We'll see how it goes. Nothing is set in stone.

 

Who'll be in charge of fixing 'screwups'. Mistakes happen, intentional (power abuse) or not (accidents), somebody will have to clean up after them. 

Primarily the team leader covering the area that the screw-up happened in.

 

Also to prevent abuse from being carried out in the first place: especially in-game Staff will get those commands they need, not too much more. Commands like adding items or gold, among others, are to be avoided in my opinion. Although it's probably an illusion to think they will never be needed, it would be good if we could make those very rare situation, so that it can simply be assigned to a team lead if needed.

 

How'll you take care of recruiting, applying and tutoring? Is this a task left over to each team on their own? Is there a global overlapping process for just joining 'general staff' before joining specific teams. On the old CG staff, without pointing fingers, there were a lot of GMs who weren't capable of doing what they should've been able to do. This is not the fault of the person in question, not all of us are technicians and engineers. (For those who actually read through this wall of text, and don't know it yet, being a GM actually requires you to know a whole bunch of technical stuff to do seemingly simple tasks.) However, those GMs could've been a lot better if they'd have actually received proper instructions, better tools and initial guidance. Will there be a specific team tasked with educating new GMs and updating the current ones, possibly in coordination with the dev team?

I have a simple single-application system in mind where people just apply for Staff in general, and indicate in their application what they would like to do. The team leads covering those areas will then discuss among each other and set up an interview if they think it's a good candidate.

I have not yet brought this up in the Staff though, we're not ready to open applications at this time, so we'll see about that when it's time to do so.

 

 

 

In general, I think you're focusing too much on the details ;) Yes, we're thinking about the little things as well, but one of the reasons for going for a relatively simple and flexible structure is not to set everything in stone and be stuck with it. We'd rather use common sense and see how it goes. Thus, we're not going to put every possible scenario in some kind of procedure. We'll see how things flow and change where necessary.


  • -1

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

 

 


#6
Magiccakes

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So then staff structure is like this?

 

http://i.imgur.com/yP4OwdE.png


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#7
Ink

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In general, I think you're focusing too much on the details ;) Yes, we're thinking about the little things as well, but one of the reasons for going for a relatively simple and flexible structure is not to set everything in stone and be stuck with it. We'd rather use common sense and see how it goes. Thus, we're not going to put every possible scenario in some kind of procedure. We'll see how things flow and change where necessary.

I forgot to include that in my previous post. Good point!

 

 

So then staff structure is like this?

 

http://i.imgur.com/yP4OwdE.png

That's a pretty cool way to look at it. I like the circular representations. I'm not too sure about the whole spinning thing, though.


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#8
Magiccakes

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I forgot to include that in my previous post. Good point!

 

 
 

That's a pretty cool way to look at it. I like the circular representations. I'm not too sure about the whole spinning thing, though.

I didnt mean like next one over. But like spin until person desired as team leader is in team leader position. And you can also change the circles or create arrows to point at which team leader is workign with another.

 

example: http://imgur.com/VhVnEZt


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#9
Ink

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I didnt mean like next one over. But like spin until person desired as team leader is in team leader position. And you can also change the circles or create arrows to point at which team leader is workign with another.

 

example: http://imgur.com/VhVnEZt

I would say that's a pretty accurate representation. I would love to see the day that CG becomes big enough to require 50 staff members, too :P


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#10
Magiccakes

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I would say that's a pretty accurate representation. I would love to see the day that CG becomes big enough to require 50 staff members, too :P

Whats more remarkable is that I landed on a perfect 50 bubbles :D. Also, you can have repeat staff members on a certain project as well. Just color code the staff or place names over the bubbles. Anything really, just be creative.


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#11
jasamwolf1

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Lolz who gives a fak about ranks , i just wanna play and have fun with revengeful ♥♥♥♥
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#12
Aidiakapi

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In general, I think you're focusing too much on the details ;) Yes, we're thinking about the little things as well, but one of the reasons for going for a relatively simple and flexible structure is not to set everything in stone and be stuck with it. We'd rather use common sense and see how it goes. Thus, we're not going to put every possible scenario in some kind of procedure. We'll see how things flow and change where necessary.

 

Thanks for replying (both of you), however I do see one major flaw in this, and that's the position of team lead. The biggest and most common problems of CG's power abuse weren't caused by the GMs. They were caused by the leads, due to lack of monitoring them (because of an inactive 'top'). I'm not going to say everyone was like this, but there were quite a few Lead GMs and Server Admins who abused their position of power uncontested.

I understand that you choose trust as a solution, because it's the easiest. But history has shown (and not just CG history), and will continue to show, that when people get more power, they become less likely to be trusted.

The way you're setting it up is basically equivalent to a criminal (lack of subtlety sorry) being it's own judge, and trusting him to be fair about it. And that's where I see a big issue, left unresolved. What I see as a good solution would be to have a team dedicated to monitoring all staff members, it's kind of the IA (Internal Affairs) of a police department. They make sure that the people enforcing the rules, aren't breaking them themselves.

Why such a solution would work, is because the IA officers have nothing to gain by being subjectively, because they shouldn't have any in-game power. When such a system would fail is if IA would have a personal reason to not take action on it.

 

Additionally, it'd completely take away the burden of Team Leads from checking that their team members are exploiting, and allows them to focus on their actual task. For the Team Lead in-game support, that can be making sure the community gets their answers on time. Making the community members feel heard. Channeling community feedback through to the rest of the staff, and acting on it. (Kind of what the Server Admins should've been doing on CG, and sometimes were doing.)

 

Now I'm basing this on my previous experience in CG, as well as my experience working in/managing or being closely related to projects/organisations. I can compare the scenario of CG closest to that off a voluntary organisation with the possibility of personal gain (through exploiting the system). The people who work on CG have almost never really been people with real business experience, and that's to be understood. The devs are generally the technicians, GMs just have a passion for the game, and management were people who grew out of their previous role. Just another reason why many management people became inactive sooner or later, it didn't involve doing what they loved to do. And even though with a lot of effort they could manage to do it, but then there wasn't any appreciation for it.

 

I think the details, especially related to improving the faults in the old system are what's going to make the difference between the old staff and new staff. Sure, less hierarchy and more flexibility will help, but it's just a different way of doing the old thing. Doesn't work if the old thing was broken.

 

Anyways, the reason why I said I don't really expect an answer at all, is because I don't need it, it's not going to be my call. I'm too busy with doing a full-time college and working on commercial projects next to that, to invest a lot of time in CG. Because I care about the server, and I care about some of the people involved with the server, I want to contribute what I can to make the reboot a success. I just hope that you'll actually do something with this, for the better of the server.


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#13
Devolution

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"In character, in manner, in style and in all other things the supreme excellence is simplcity." ~Longfellow


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#14
Ink

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  • Staff teams:
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Now I'm basing this on my previous experience in CG, as well as my experience working in/managing or being closely related to projects/organisations. I can compare the scenario of CG closest to that off a voluntary organisation with the possibility of personal gain (through exploiting the system). The people who work on CG have almost never really been people with real business experience, and that's to be understood. The devs are generally the technicians, GMs just have a passion for the game, and management were people who grew out of their previous role. Just another reason why many management people became inactive sooner or later, it didn't involve doing what they loved to do. And even though with a lot of effort they could manage to do it, but then there wasn't any appreciation for it.


I definitely understand your points and appreciate your concerns. I believe Dash has shed a fair share of light on this issue:
 

As said, different teams (and team leads) have different levels of access. For practical reasons I and Hash pretty much have access to everything at the moment, we might change that if needed. Other team leads get access as needed. The moderation lead will have the needed forum access to set things up here, the development team lead (also in charge of server administration), will handle things server side when nescessary. An in-game support or event team lead would be able to set up in-game accounts. Etcetera...

This means that the owners, being active, will have sufficient ability to oversee Team Leads, if a situation you outlined above does ever truly occur. 


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#15
Dash

Dash
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  • Staff teams:
    Events, Support, Marketing

Thanks for replying (both of you), however I do see one major flaw in this, and that's the position of team lead. The biggest and most common problems of CG's power abuse weren't caused by the GMs. They were caused by the leads, due to lack of monitoring them (because of an inactive 'top'). I'm not going to say everyone was like this, but there were quite a few Lead GMs and Server Admins who abused their position of power uncontested.

I understand that you choose trust as a solution, because it's the easiest. But history has shown (and not just CG history), and will continue to show, that when people get more power, they become less likely to be trusted.

The way you're setting it up is basically equivalent to a criminal (lack of subtlety sorry) being it's own judge, and trusting him to be fair about it. And that's where I see a big issue, left unresolved. What I see as a good solution would be to have a team dedicated to monitoring all staff members, it's kind of the IA (Internal Affairs) of a police department. They make sure that the people enforcing the rules, aren't breaking them themselves.

Why such a solution would work, is because the IA officers have nothing to gain by being subjectively, because they shouldn't have any in-game power. When such a system would fail is if IA would have a personal reason to not take action on it.

 

Additionally, it'd completely take away the burden of Team Leads from checking that their team members are exploiting, and allows them to focus on their actual task. For the Team Lead in-game support, that can be making sure the community gets their answers on time. Making the community members feel heard. Channeling community feedback through to the rest of the staff, and acting on it. (Kind of what the Server Admins should've been doing on CG, and sometimes were doing.)

 

Now I'm basing this on my previous experience in CG, as well as my experience working in/managing or being closely related to projects/organisations. I can compare the scenario of CG closest to that off a voluntary organisation with the possibility of personal gain (through exploiting the system). The people who work on CG have almost never really been people with real business experience, and that's to be understood. The devs are generally the technicians, GMs just have a passion for the game, and management were people who grew out of their previous role. Just another reason why many management people became inactive sooner or later, it didn't involve doing what they loved to do. And even though with a lot of effort they could manage to do it, but then there wasn't any appreciation for it.

 

I think the details, especially related to improving the faults in the old system are what's going to make the difference between the old staff and new staff. Sure, less hierarchy and more flexibility will help, but it's just a different way of doing the old thing. Doesn't work if the old thing was broken.

 

Anyways, the reason why I said I don't really expect an answer at all, is because I don't need it, it's not going to be my call. I'm too busy with doing a full-time college and working on commercial projects next to that, to invest a lot of time in CG. Because I care about the server, and I care about some of the people involved with the server, I want to contribute what I can to make the reboot a success. I just hope that you'll actually do something with this, for the better of the server.

 

I do think your suggestion is interesting and I will definitely be taking it into account. It's probably not a team we will launch from the very start, but it's definitely something I want to consider for the future.

 

If implemented, I think this team should not just be in charge of checking stuff like checking staff logs, but also things like reviewing cheater report, ban appeals, reports on Staff, and stuff like that. In my mind, they'd then be Crusade Gaming's  "court", in anything that requires judging.

 

Anyway, we'll get back to this topic later.


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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

 

 


#16
Aidiakapi

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If implemented, I think this team should not just be in charge of checking stuff like checking staff logs, but also things like reviewing cheater report, ban appeals, reports on Staff, and stuff like that. In my mind, they'd then be Crusade Gaming's  "court", in anything that requires judging.

 

Reports on Staff members, yes, if you'd however do it also for cheater reports and ban appeals, it kind of defeats the purpose, because it adds the personal investment again. Nevertheless, agreed that at launch it won't be that important, but once the staff team starts to dynamically change a lot, then it may very well be.


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