MU Peeves Thread
-
@xCroaker From my personal experience both as a staffer and as a player witnessing things:
- Answering questions that are already covered in the game’s documentation. I have been on plenty of games that have excellent documentation both on their wiki and in the game, yet people will still constantly ask questions that have already been answered elsewhere.
- The subgroup of players that exist across all MUs that I refer to as “The Job Mill”. These players will generate more jobs than the entire rest of a game’s players combined, in some extreme cases multiple jobs a day. They are few, and usually just very invested in the game they are playing, but holy cow can some of them clog up a job queue. The frustrating thing is they’re almost always not malicious about this. It’s just what they do to show love to a game. And holy crap is it frustrating. Even more so when large amounts of these jobs require scenes and NPC support. (And now that I think about it, this could almost be it’s own topic.)
- Continuing to work on build / code stuff. A lot of games start allowing players onto them well before their grid & coded elements are actually ready to go, and this will generate a lot of extra work where staff is trying to finish their baseline game and people are breaking things already.
- Dealing with OOC drama. (This one probably feels like the worst even though it’s mathematically not.) Having people get into an OOC argument, or finding out that a player is a sex pest, or is exploiting the game code to their advantage, is rough on staff. It’s 100% guaranteed to require some level of confrontation about it, and that shit is draining.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
-
@Pavel I wanna hear more about your waistcoat though
-
@xCroaker I really was just posting the meme to be a little silly, but I can do my best to give you an earnest answer. Though I doubt it will really be a satisfying one, and it’s really just one person’s perspective. I can’t speak for every staffer on every game.
I think “overworked” is kind of not the right word to describe it. Fatigue is probably the closest I can find. Everything MisterBoring said is true, but I personally find that a lot of players think that the fatigue happens due to administrative tasks. Things like build jobs, xp requests, character apps, etc. But for me, I think the fatigue mostly comes from what I’d call a “creative tax.” When you tell stories for folks, you put your love and energy into it. But you are not drawing from an endless well. Creativity comes in bursts and windfalls, and there are droughts. The ask is that you basically draw from an endless well, though.
I’d also say that point #4 of MisterBoring’s message is very true. OOC drama is probably mathematically rare, but these interactions feel the most weighted because they’re the most stressful. And to continue the metaphor, it draws from the same well as creativity, but uses much more of the water.
-
@MisterBoring @Noraaa I get it.
Probably could be forked off into a way to modernize and improve games to be healthy for staff and players
-
@xCroaker I think most of us genuinely are just doing our best to accomplish this, while juggling other things specific to our games. In the end I don’t really think there’s a one-size-fits-all solution. More of iterative, incremental improvement, or at the very least striving for it.
-
@xCroaker said in MU Peeves Thread:
Real question: What is staff overworked with in most games?
For me, it’s the labor of making sure plot/story is happening fast enough, that it’s happening often enough, that it’s accessible to everyone, that it’s still interesting and fun to people, that all the dots are being connected in an at least sort of sensible way, that it’s not too opaque and confusing and not too simple and boring, that it’s kept summarized and with reminders so people stay apprised of what’s happening…
Even with all that effort, people naturally lose interest in the game/story over time. Very few people are stay to the end people, which is the nature of the medium. I think persevering through the fatigue of “does anyone even care?” is another kind of staff work, perhaps one that doesn’t get talked about a lot.
-
I think that staff is overworked by staffing.
It’s been a loooooooong time since I staffed a game. Mainly, because if you asked me to I’d laugh hysterically and log off. I may or may not be back. I have feelings about admin’ing now. LOL
There is not a fix all. I think it has to do with growth of game and trying to include everyone. I think at heart staff WANTS to include everyone and wants to see their stories play out. It’s just not enough hours in the day and then the guilt of not including others. Which leads to the you aren’t doing good enough. Which leads to imposter syndrome. Which leads to you have so many things to do that you just can’t figure out what to do. Which leads to decision paralysis as the decisions that need to be made are coming at a daily if not hourly basis. Which then leads to why bother. Which then leads to leaving.
This could be a week, a month, a year, but it’s the lack of understanding that staff are also people with some spicy brain stuff and brain weasels happening too. They sometimes don’t feel liked on their games either or included. Sometimes too backgrounds to not be too foreground, which they also have to think about how that looks to the general masses that don’t KNOW them.
I think it’s just staff stuff is overworked stuff. Unless you are lucky to find that person that adores an aspect and wants to do it because it’s their happy place. Most are just pulling short straws on who has to run which plot or cover which area, etc.
Just my thoughts. As I said, I run from staffing now so maybe this isn’t it at all.
-
@RightMeow said in MU Peeves Thread:
It’s just not enough hours in the day and then the guilt of not including others.
This used to be me, but I think now, going forward if I do run a game again, it will be “If you make it to plot, awesome. If you don’t, well, I hope you find something interesting to do.” or “I’m limiting this game to a maximum player count I think I can responsibly handle, and once we hit the limit, no PCs will be approved.”
-
@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Gashlycrumb we sure could
I think you mean, “I” by “we” and forgot the “wish.” As in “I sure wish I could openly accuse Gashlycrumb without anybody finding out that my ‘evidence’ is hearsay, speculation, and affirming the consequent.”
"This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
– A. Bertram Chandler -
@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
The subgroup of players that exist across all MUs that I refer to as “The Job Mill”. These players will generate more jobs than the entire rest of a game’s players combined, in some extreme cases multiple jobs a day.
For players outside that group, this is a frustrating explaination for non-responsiveness. Certianly the unending job-mill could tire a staffer out, but “I am too busy responding to a small extremely active group to get around to you,” just makes people wonder why you don’t do one job from each person who has one open, and get to those second and third and sixteenth ones from Job-Millers after you’ve dealt with the one from the guy who hasn’t made a request in weeks.
@Noraaa said in MU Peeves Thread:
But for me, I think the fatigue mostly comes from what I’d call a “creative tax.” When you tell stories for folks, you put your love and energy into it. But you are not drawing from an endless well. Creativity comes in bursts and windfalls, and there are droughts. The ask is that you basically draw from an endless well, though.
This is totally legit. Staffers should say it when it happens. I think players will understand. Of course, if you tell me that you’re just drawing a creative blank on my PC and don’t know what to do with him, I’ll probably want to talk about stuff I’d like the character to do or have happen to him.
I wonder how much resentment of players comes from feeling that creative exhaustion and associating it with the player who just happened to be the one in your queue when the block attacks.
-
@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:
Certianly the unending job-mill could tire a staffer out, but “I am too busy responding to a small extremely active group to get around to you,” just makes people wonder why you don’t do one job from each person who has one open, and get to those second and third and sixteenth ones from Job-Millers after you’ve dealt with the one from the guy who hasn’t made a request in weeks.
This is feasible on some games. On other games that are pushing huge numbers, the job glut can just be from the 60+ PCs currently approved on a game. If 60 PCs are generating jobs, then some players expecting a certain turnaround on their jobs are going to get frustrated.
-
@MisterBoring That’s very true. Honestly, I don’t mind a slow turnaround and can be very patient (all my forum whinging aside). What grinds on me is observing that other characters are getting tonnes more shit done in the same time-period. If you do 'em all in order and some players flood your jobs system, they get to do more shit.
I always felt like it was rude to have too many jobs going at once, just like I wouldn’t send you a bunch of emails one after another without waiting for a reply. I was really happy with the ‘you can only have so many jobs open at a time’ feature. (I would add to it some sort of +request/FIRE function so a player with too many +jobs could make an emergency sort of one, but that’d be icing on the cake.)
"This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
– A. Bertram Chandler -
@Gashlycrumb “Affirming the Consequent” is my Ghost cover band. We do electro swing versions of their songs.
-
@Gashlycrumb I think there’s honestly a lot of nuance and discussion to be had on job queues all together. There’s a whole gambit of different job writing styles out there. Some people pack all of their requests into one big thing, some people fire off dozens of jobs a week, and others barely submit any jobs at all. In addition to that, some people just absolutely cannot explain what they’re actually asking for in a job request for whatever reason that is. I’ve seen some absolutely baffling requests in the times I have staffed at games, and I know at least one of those people probably got frustrated and quit because I (and the other staff on those games) were missing their point entirely.
-
@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Gashlycrumb I think there’s honestly a lot of nuance and discussion to be had on job queues all together
Yeah. The original AnomalyJobs came with the coder as the headwiz yelling at people for using it wrongly and establishing by force of virtual lung-power, a standard for single-topic +requests and what sorts of things you could page about without being told it needed to be a +request, etc, and rode herd on the rest of staff about that, probably unpleasantly. As a gamerunner I had a vetting process for them that was meant to keep pacing more fair but would not have been robust enough for a game with the level of GM involvement and plot complexity I wish for lately.
@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
some people just absolutely cannot explain what they’re actually asking for in a job request for whatever reason that is
I know I’ve been that guy. Well, my hyperbolic joke about it is that there are those staffers where you ask if your PC can have a housecat and they tell you that a talking green ridable tiger isn’t themely, and you try to explain housecat until they get sharp and you feel anxious and bad about it and still don’t know if your PC can get a kitten. But of course in actuality it’s nothing simple like a kitten, it’s some complicated scheme that I’m explaining badly.
