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Messages - Charr

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1
General Discussion / Re: Turnover Rate on the Staff Team
« on: February 13, 2019, 01:56:07 am »
Disclaimer: I know nothing of the way the staff is currently being managed, I only speak for the time I've spent in the team. Most of this is also from my point of view, which can vary from that of others. Plenty of valid arguments can be made against my opinions, feel free to but do not expect me to respond.

Joining the staff team is still kind of clouded in mystery. While there are some commonly known qualities you require there's no public resource with any information on how to get into the staff team or what exactly the purpose of the staff team is. As a result sometimes new staff have wildly different expectations as to what they're meant to do, this doesn't often lead them to quit the team straight away but doesn't exactly set people up for staying long. Even upon joining the team it still takes a while for you to be properly informed of things as policy topics in the staff section were heavily outdated or incorrect.

Decent candidates for staff aren't plentiful. Sometimes people would be picked too early and end up not meeting expectations. We had a few rulebreakers turned staff to basically stop them from breaking rules with varying (and mostly terrible) results. And sometimes people were picked for reasons completely unknown to anyone. Not that any of those stayed long, but in some cases the spot could've gone to someone actually fit for the job. When I joined I was told there were certain standards for staff members, and for the rest of my time in the team I watched those standards be lowered gradually in order to justify getting new members.

As a staff member you're met with a bunch of expectations by the playerbase. These vary from player to player and not living up to them can get you quite a lot of verbal abuse. It's rarely ever justified and is a big factor in why a lot of long time staff members end up resigning. A lot of it is manageable, but if you give away significant amounts of your time to a voluntary job and get a whole bunch of insults lobbed at you on a daily basis that'll do you in mentally. At the time (and perhaps currently) staff policy did not have a way to deal with verbal abuse in a permanent way. So you quite literally had to either break staff policy or deal with verbal abuse from certain players day in day out sometimes.

As Jp mentioned demotions due to power abuse were very rare. It's made very clear from the beginning that it damages the reputation of the team as a whole and results in swift demotion and punishment. Though this punishment was wildly inconsistent, going from short temporary bans to a complete removal from the game. The scale of it usuall wasn't that big, for example a moderator got himself demoted after threatening to ban a player if he didn't give the void set he pked from the moderator's unofficial ironman. Management did do a good job of swiftly dealing with abuse like this. If it involved only the staff member and no one else it could take a while as command logs were not checked often.

If management was around more during my time I feel a lot of staff members, including myself, would've stayed longer. Many people's worst experiences in the team would've been far less of a headache had management been around to guide in real time rather than after the fact. Almost nobody directly quit because of this, but it definitely had a hand in lowering morale all around. It's really easy to make your staff team think you're a hypocrite by letting them face consequences for weeks of unannounced inactivity while management is inactive for weeks at a time themselves.

Promotions were what killed off a couple staff members. Be it other people's or their own. Hell I've gotten salty over both myself. The playerbase at large isn't going to give you any praise for the work you put in. The only place it really comes from is within the team. If it wasn't Jandar's own choice not to become an admin then he's likely felt more blue balled than any of us ever have. I myself have gotten pretty mad over certain promotions, and that can and will make you resign at some point or get you demoted for being too vocal about it. It's childish as hell, but the culture in the team at the time didn't really allow for people to grow out of that.

There was almost no progress towards improving policy. This is likely a more personal gripe. I felt a lot of areas in moderation could be improved upon, most other staff members I've been in the team with didn't or felt their opinion on it didn't matter. In my opinion there was by far not enough discussion about this (mostly due to the aforementioned absent management) and even if multiple staff members agreed to something it rarely ever resulted in something permanent. At some point real world trading was made legal, all previously permanently banned offenders were allowed to appeal and receive an unban and that somehow took multiple weeks, multiple discussions and a multitude of re-offenders to revert.

Without a good staff team the game will lose players that can otherwise be kept. It's not all that factors in the decline but definitely something significant.

I'm also alive btw, unlike the memecenter.


2
General Discussion / Re: Resignation from the staff team
« on: September 08, 2018, 11:34:08 am »
My name is Charr, self-proclaimed savior of the wiki, father of the guides section, sage of suggestions, fuhrer of feedback, breaker of the slayer's oath, avaricious argument arranger, connoisseur of construction, maker of marble, frequent foe of flamers, pope of power abuse, duke of don't duel, overlord of overloans, masterful merchant, count counterargument, friend of fate, never nomninating nancy, czar of clan cleaning wildy, prince of pissing off Mary, sender of shoutbox bans, operator of ocean, baron of ban waves, and I have come to claim my birthright as the rightful staff manager of Emps-World.

Memes aside, if you're up for talking you know how to find me.

3
Introductions & Farewells / Re: Why I no longer play
« on: June 15, 2018, 10:19:27 am »
Let's see.

First major thing is that I perm banned big boy for something that should've been a temp ban. Martin and I talked about it and the ban remained. Suppose it's not that bad considering he's a staff member nowadays rather than a bug abuser.

I went through so many logs of people that are known to break rules to find them doing that and punishing them for it. Also perm banned quite a few flamers despite that not being allowed. Hell, now that I think of it it's weird I didn't get jack shit from anyone for all the punishments I've issued that were too strict until I permed Marvin on like 30 accounts. I can say stuff in defense of this but it doesn't matter lol.

I rwted at some point though nobody noticed at the time. Wasn't that much to be fair.

I bought about 9b worth of construction supplies for 400m without telling people they could do the same once it became obvious prices were going to be higher. In hindsight I should've sold them to the general store, 250m con ain't shit. I also bought tons of overload supplies before they came out once I was aware they were coming out.

Recommended moneymaking methods to people that would make me get my skilling supplies cheaper or make my flips better. Used GE logs and bank checking for merching purposes.

Not supported staff nominations for the following reasons:
- Not wanting to finish guides they said they'd write
- Making terrible suggestions
- Being a bad/lazy wiki editor
- Thinking that the nominated person wouldn't try to improve the staff team in any way
Despite some of these nominations turned out to be okay staff members later on.

Forum banned shoaib permanently because he was avoiding sb bans and being a dick. You're all very welcome.

I banned lv persavoz for botting before asking if the logs were accurate to the second. Turns out they're not.

Actively opposed esam121 being in the staff team because he was disrespectful to me one time when I just became mod. Left the team when Martin let him join at some point. Hell I left the team numerous times because someone that I considered to not be working as hard or deserving as I was getting a rank.

I think that the majority of things on this list were the right decision. Not that they couldn't have been done better, but given the circumstances I think most of it is acceptable.

Just asked for my forum account to be closed despite closing hundreds of tickets with the very same request myself.

Quote
Hypocrites at its best.
I have been a huge hypocrite at lots of points in time. I probably still am.

That's all I can think of. I sincerely hope the next Charr will be even more annoying and hypocritical.

Now how do I make it clear to everyone I'm not quitting the way wg quits?


4
Introductions & Farewells / Re: Why I no longer play
« on: June 14, 2018, 10:24:43 pm »
I dont know of anyone that has ever done that in this game, but it sounds fucked up.
You'll know who soon enough.

RWT has been happening for as long as you have played this game, even longer. i can tell you that rwt in 2008 was at a high level and that it was more relevant back then vs now.
Well yeah you're right. I still don't think that it's right that the majority of rich players are involved with rwt though.

If this topic is still going by tomorrow I'll list all the bad things I've done. It's a bit of a long list and I'd like to not miss sleep.


5
Introductions & Farewells / Re: Why I no longer play
« on: June 14, 2018, 08:11:28 pm »
When you don't have 400 players online like we used to be, you can't be very strict about everything, these things go in parallel.
I disagree, rules should be enforced the same regardless of playercount. I understand you shouldn't push away players by giving them harsh punishments, but that should not be the case for repeat offenders.

You always try to change everything around you, but just remember what got you and everyone else playing, it was the way everything is, not how you see it should be.
The problem with that is I know more than I did when I started playing. I'm no longer completely unaware of things beyond surface level. My perspective of the game changed and my opinion of it alongside that.

Your personal hate against me is brought out very well here, as i'm the only person whose name you mentioned in the Entire topic. FYI i never wanted you to dislike me, quite the opposite actually, i enjoyed being around you and wanted to get along with you, i even agreed to fulfill some of your demands/suggestions which i hoped would satisfy you but your personality and radical solutions made it impossible to work with you.
There is definitely a personal bias against you. I've worked with you for around two years, there are certain things that developed that. I'm human, developing a negative bias against a superior that you rarely see doing much of anything is pretty normal. That's not to say I think you're never doing anything, transparency is the issue and I've tried to bring that up numerous times.

Given that anyone in the team is your responsibility I didn't feel the need to call them out specifically.

Even if you believe and know that everything you suggested back then and now is right and best for everyone, that's not the way your going to get things changed.
I have bad ideas, plenty of them. That never stopped me from trying, and it worked numerous times. Good or bad, I have brought about change.

You keep coming back to staff as one of the reasons why Emps has gone downhill, it's just not possible that someone would choose a game based on their staff team?
You're absolutely right, people don't join based on a staff team. The staff team definitely has a hand in people choosing to leave the game however. Toxicity alone can have devastating effects on a community. It's not the staff members themselves, it's the effect the way the staff team is run has on the game.

Thank you for responding. I'm very well aware you didn't have to. I think it's a shame you didn't touch on transparency. If you write another response I hope you touch on it or state a reason why it's not possible.

I said this to For Freedom when he asked me for advice on becoming a mod and thought that becoming friends with Charr would help and now I'm saying it to you and anyone else who might ever want to befriend Charr. The way to Charr's heart is by telling him that's he's wrong. Charr loves criticism, he'll never admit that he's wrong but he does want to know when he is and he'll appreciate it if you can prove to him why he's wrong.
Honestly this is pretty spot on. That last part is something I feel I missed beyond my first 5 months in the staff team. It's likely why certain things got out of hand.

First of all Charr, if you wanna leave. Go leave.
Will do, but as always I have things to say. Letting go takes time. I promise I won't fake my death and start a new account roleplaying as my friend.

You are so obsessed with what you want, that you think you are an ambassador for the rest of the game and what they want.
I don't represent anyone other than myself. I get that you may view me this way though.

I believe the cause is those motivational videos you posted.

The staff team was way worse, and way more corrupt back then, than it is now. (Dream Team)
Corruption has been the back bone of this game until recently.
It has been, large scale power abuse and dupes happened pretty often in scape from what I've heard. The way the current team is set up does definitely reduce that. However I don't think replacing power abuse and dupes with unenforced rules and turning a blind eye to rwt is acceptable. It's better, but it's not good enough.

Wonder why you were in the staff skype group for pretty much half of 2015 given that you say you've done so much bad shit. That's kinda weird.


6
Introductions & Farewells / Re: Why I no longer play
« on: June 13, 2018, 10:24:57 pm »
You have mentioned the economy is in shambles, but what exactly are you trying to say? I cannot identify real issues with the game's economy. I state my point on data we have collected over the past year and charts everybody is able to view on the homepage.

My goal of optimizing the game's economy is to keep prices stable as well as the creation of supply and demand. We have a large collection of data for all trades on the Grand Exchange, let me show a few examples:
What all these plots have in common is that they have a pretty stable price. Yes, whips have increased in price since last year, but we've also introduced crystals to upgrade them. Meaning that these items don't lose their value and that they are in demand. You can argue that a smaller playerbase makes it more difficult to buy and sell items. Yes, I do agree and that's why I'm spending most of my time on advertising the game right now.
I can understand where you're coming from for the most part. The main issue is that a lot of players feel it's impossible to buy or sell things right now. Those graphs you're referring to don't give us the data on how many of something is being sold/bought. We can only make rough estimates by the distance between dots.

Some post here feel like frustration and hatred for the game. I've tried to argue and discuss such aspects, but from my experience this leads nowhere but even more frustration for both sides. Hence I will ignore such posts as well as possibly censor them and issue punishments if it's against the rules. I will take feedback and complaints seriously as long as they aim at helping the game and are not hypocritical.
If you've made statements about how and why the staff team is the way it is I'd very much like to see them. At least, if my criticism of the staff team is what you're referring to in this part. I think having your playerbase informed about certain things is very important, discussing them openly would at the very least keep people out of the dark in regards to these things. If that's not possible we should get a reason why it isn't.
 
If anybody is interested and doesn't already know about it, that's my personal development board:
https://trello.com/b/QGPVa5en/emps-world
The board contains progress and notes about upcoming updates and a backlog of things that are planned or have been discussed and could or will be put into the game.
Where are the updates that invest into the game's community rather than just adding more content?

Recruit people who have an outstanding record for editing wiki pages, writing guides or at least always helping out with the emps world chat for, at the very least, a few months.
We wouldn't have a staff team if standards were that high. This isn't practical.

A point that wasn't mentioned is that this rsps needs a drastic change. a few months back there was this hot discussion about adding an old school emps world server into the game and it ended with Thomy brushing off the project as being too risky.
Sorry, but it's kind of stupid you think this makes a difference. It doesn't change the direction of the game and it divides the already small community.

or just shut down emps world overall and stop wasting everyone's time.
You had a decent post going. Had.

Do you think Thomy is obligated to keep the server up? He doesn't owe you or anyone else anything so stop acting as if you're doing the world a favor by playing a game.
Thank you, voice of reason.

7
Screenshots / Re: Emps-World Meme Center
« on: June 11, 2018, 09:31:19 pm »

Bit disappointing that after all these attempts you still don't fully understand how to make a meme.

Quote from: KnowYourMeme.com
"Daily Struggle" is an exploitable comic featuring a character attempting to push one of two red buttons labeled with contradicting statements.
These statements do not contradict eachother.

8
Introductions & Farewells / Re: Why I no longer play
« on: June 11, 2018, 09:27:24 pm »
Whatever the solution is, you can always suggest it yourself Charr - nobody's kicking you from forums here. :)
I'd say the solution is we remove melons from the game.

Glad you're okay :)
Likewise.

Incoherent arabic gibberish
Man your English has gone down the drain since you left the staff team.

You exactly say what we, old players in particular, feel about the game.
If only you had the ability to state those kind of things yourself.

You know what I knew ages ago.
If only you didn't talk like a flat earther at the time. I would've left much earlier and I would've been maxed on rs3 by now.

We do not issue punishments unless a rule is broken. Members are entitled to their opinion, we don't issue punishments just because you say you don't like the server as long as you're sharing your opinion in a professional manner and not shouting f*** this and f*** that and being all rude about it. Also, there are no exceptions, if you break a rule you will be held accountable for it.
You do not issue punishments unless a rule is broken, evidence is provided and policy allows said punishment. The staff policy lacks in effective punishment. Granted, the way you think of the staff team is influenced by both your rank and how long you've been there. So you aren't being that stupid.

The problem is your lack of a policy to deal with repeat offenders. You can shoutbox ban Mario all you want but he's just going to come back and break the rules over and over. The only reason you don't see Shoaib doing that anymore is because I permanently forum banned him. Can you say you're enforcing your rules if all you're doing is giving out 3 day mutes to people that can't go minutes without flaming? How come y'all couldn't just ban the rune shop bots and had to ruin the rune shop for legit players?

If you enforce the rules how come crusher123 hasn't been banned for the billions of gold he's rwted? Is it that you lack the tools to or does the staff policy not allow you to ban rwters anymore?

You do know the rules topics haven't been updated in ages despite staff policy around those very rules has changed numerous times, right?

I have no personal quarrel with you, I just want to make that clear. It's your choice to represent the team in this topic. At least you responded, though I'd say this was pretty weak.


9
Introductions & Farewells / Why I no longer play
« on: June 10, 2018, 11:57:25 pm »
Some of you are probably curious about why I left given that I've played emps the way I did for years, I'm going to clarify in this thread. A lot of you probably know already, but that's not going to keep me from making a final statement. Tl;dr at the end for people that suck at reading.

If you do not know who I am because you joined the game after I quit, I spent a bit over two years in the staff team and wrote wiki pages, guides, suggestions and feedback.

Direction
Emps has had a couple of big problems since it came back, and while the problem of endgame content got solved with the addition of new bosses there are plenty of problems left. The economy is in shambles due to the low amount of new players, the lack of attempts to help it with updates and due to the effects of stakers on the market. The amount of trading that goes on would almost force people into ironman mode if it weren't for the grand exchange. The sheer amount of money and items that gets rwted by stakers not only takes away huge amounts of donations but also means those players don't participate in the market regularly. Ironman mode doesn't have this issue, but they don't exactly participate in group content the same way regular players do.

New boss drops are done in a way that creates more powercreep, powercreep harms pvp, pvp shapes a lot of demand for gear and supplies and this is why nothing is worth jack shit anymore. The lack of balance in exp rates is making rs3 an actually bearable alternative for emps. It's becoming more and more of an impossible task to fix these issues in a realistic manner with the current conditions. If there is no major change in game direction it will be what kills emps.

Community
Let's analyze two important aspects of the community. The forums and the staff team.

The forums continue to drop in post and topic activity, not only that but the counting to 10k thread makes up for a significant fraction of the posts nowadays. To top that off, the important sections of the forum (guides, suggestions & feedback) are dying rapidly in activity. This makes it a lot more difficult for a developer to connect with his playerbase. I don't know why nobody is doing anything about it. There seems to be very little motivation from players to improve the state of the game.

The staff team, oh boy where do I start. The way the staff team is set up in terms of recruiting and policy is what has caused the team to be in it's current state. In the past recruiting anyone that stood out in terms of quality worked because we had the playerbase for it, however this is no longer the case. We've had seemingly more random promotions and a lot of staff members that were in the team shorter than I was game admin. And rather than putting effort into creating a new system the standards for new staff members continue to reach new lows. And here I thought promoting Mario all the way to admin just to keep him from breaking the rules was a bit of a weird way to do things. The lack of transparency is also something that makes things very difficult for the staff team. There's a huge barrier of entry to it due to the sheer lack of information on what being a staff member actually entails.

Rules continue to be enforced very little if at all, and you can see it's effects on the community. The topics for rules aren't kept up to date. The issue of the report abuse button not doing anything is still unresolved. Real world trading is more rampant than ever, people really seem to want to liquidate their banks, I wonder why? A botting issue was "solved" by just cutting everyone's supply, just making the bot a bit less profitable. I wonder how easy it would be to become the richest player in the game by creating a few scripts, it's not like staff members can do anything if you just get your bot to reply to them.

The current way the staff team is set up continues to make conditions worse for them. If nothing is done about that there won't be a functional staff team left. You can host events all you want but it's not going to make up for the absense of proper rule enforcement. I won't take shots at any staff members, Martin is ultimately responsible for the team and should be held accountable. Not that I expect that to happen, criticism is met with censorship, demotion or punishment. The only time Thomy interfered was when he was told Martin was checking through staff members personal skype accounts using teamviewer and that this was mandatory else they'd be demoted, this was in 2015 for those of you that joined the staff team more recently.

Tl;dr:
It's not a single decision or event that made me quit, rather it's certain things that kept happening. The direction that updates are headed in makes the economy suffer, the forums are rapidly dying and the staff team is set up in a way that makes it hard for them to positively affect the community.

Just like Jp I've found a better alternative to emps in RS3. I don't like that emps is like this, but I'm not adamant about changing that anymore. I've come to terms with it, and in time so will everyone else.

That's all. If this thread gets censored I'll put up the original somewhere so everyone can read it.

10
Screenshots / Re: Emps-World Meme Center
« on: March 04, 2018, 02:36:37 am »

11
Screenshots / Re: Emps-World Meme Center
« on: November 18, 2017, 01:05:53 pm »
This is a bit late cuz Admiral already passed Charr in slayer xp but better late than never I guess


Literally a year ago, but good meme anyways

12
Off-Topic / Re: What annoys or pisses you off?
« on: November 17, 2017, 03:47:51 pm »
When people go outside.

13
Screenshots / Re: Emps-World Meme Center
« on: November 13, 2017, 11:00:15 pm »
Tbh i would be much more suprised if crune is still there by then w/o playing
Was referring to when I was gadmin back in 2016.

14
Screenshots / Re: Emps-World Meme Center
« on: November 13, 2017, 10:40:49 pm »

15
Screenshots / Re: Teaser
« on: November 13, 2017, 10:18:07 pm »
This is far more interesting.
https://i.imgur.com/9JMppIt.mp4

As you can see, the bow hit 0 twice in a row in max gear. Confirmed to be garbage already. #WhyCouldn'tItHaveBeenACrossbow

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