Posted by Galen Verge

So long story short I dressed up weird and said "I HAT U RED STATUZ" in my status it said "I EM AMMIN IRL I HATE ADMANS" then I got my chat reset, my status, then a warning for innaproprivate behavior.

I was banned before for using the name "Thallen Enguard [Hacker & Booster]" while streaking in spar, you really can't depend on GPs to be the brightest

You need to be ahead of the curb and automatically assume that the majority of GPs are incapable, so not only do you need to follow the rules but you should avoid doing anything that a stupid person might confuse as against the rules  

A lot of problems like this stem from the poor hiring practices of the GP staff.. Just look at the application:

http://graalonlineclassic.com/gpapp.php

0 situational questions
0 in-game experience questions
0 questions involving gameplay

Where are the questions that relate to GRAAL as a game???

Where are the questions like:

"Does the person in the video above look like they're speed hacking to you?"

"Someone constantly PMs you that they are being harassed by another player, but you see nothing of it when you look into it. They keep PMing you about it. What do you do?"

"You get multiple PMs of someone hacking, so you warp to them but you can't tell if they are or not. How do you deal with this situation?"

"Should a player get warned for having this status? [PICTURE OF STATUS HERE]"

You shouldn't have to teach those kinds of things to people that you've already hired, especially when there are a ton of players who have the necessary knowledge of the game that don't get hired because they were banned 2 years ago over saying "ass" or whatever  

So I can't 'impersonate' an admin, but I can put the word Admin(golden and bolded) in my status and still have scrubs think I'm an admin. Guess I better stop, because I forgot how stupid and confused most of our gp's are. Tis' a shame.  

I actually think Jarace is probably one of the best GPs around, but things like this are annoying:



Your reaction (and essentially answer) to a couple questions is to delete your post and vow not to respond to any more "for the forseeable future"? Sorry, you're only proving my point that GPs are terrible at dealing with difficult issues/questions on iClassic. And like I said, you're actually one of the good ones.

I'm not personally insulting you, I just want clarity and hope that I can make some suggestions to improve on the game.  

Posted by David

I actually think Jarace is probably one of the best GPs around, but things like this are annoying:



Your reaction (and essentially answer) to a couple questions is to delete your post and vow not to respond to any more "for the forseeable future"? Sorry, you're only proving my point that GPs are terrible at dealing with difficult issues/questions on iClassic. And like I said, you're actually one of the good ones.

I'm not personally insulting you, I just want clarity and hope that I can make some suggestions to improve on the game.

I'm not the least bit upset about your post - it just seemed that my post was overlooked and there was no point. You're welcome to think whatever you want about the GP team, if I hadn't grown accustomed to that I would have quit 4 years ago.

Literally anything I do here creates more misunderstandings though, lol.  

In the future, if it's questions like these - its best that you just contact a Graal Police admin in-game/private message them on the forums regarding the issue instead of making a thread about it; you'd get a response either way. Things can easily go off topic if it's like this...  

Alright, you're not upset about my post- great! I'm glad to hear that since there was absolutely 0 intentions of me being rude or spiteful towards you/the GP team in general behind it. I'm just stating my opinion here, you're allowed to disagree with it.

The only thing I ask of you now (pretty understandable) is to at least address my concerns. Can you elaborate on why the GP application is not more gameplay-focused? Lots of issues on the game arise out of the actual gameplay side of it (sparring, towering, baddy killing, etc.) that lots of new staff members are way too inexperienced to recognize/deal with. I intentionally added two gameplay questions in my "mock-gp-application questions" and two social questions that could be interpreted by the GP applicant.

Don't you think the GPs you hire should already know what's an offense and what isn't?

Also I'd also really like to know what was overlooked? My post or the extensiveness of the GP application? Aren't both of these issues that should be addressed?

I've just noticed a concerning trend of staff members (GFX and GPs) on the forums refusing to engage in conversations with players when there are difficult answers involved. Leah is a prime example of that in that christmas hat thread. Instead it was filled with her friends insulting me over having an opinion.  

I got banned for having the name "Wereloly Wenus" during the holidays. The lesson is, don't even try to be funny or you're gonna get banned  

Bring back French power GP leads! #Axel74 #Shaydox  

I think the reason why you were warned is because graal police have an incredibly boring job, which means some of them will jump at any opportunity to do anything even remotely exciting, such as warning or banning a player. I think this is why it can sometimes seem that GPs are incredibly uncompromising and unreasonable with the sorts of behaviour that they punish.

Edit: or it could just be straight up incompetence  

Posted by Meteor

I think the reason why you were warned is because graal police have an incredibly boring job, which means some of them will jump at any opportunity to do anything even remotely exciting, such as warning or banning a player. I think this is why it can sometimes seem that GPs are incredibly uncompromising and unreasonable with the sorts of behaviour that they punish.

On a server like this - I'm sure there's plenty of inappropriate things happening. When I used to be on Ol'West, we used to get 1-2 reports every half an hour or so which isn't a lot. I can understand staff members on smaller servers getting quite bored, but not on a server with more than 4000 players. I don't really see boredom as the key issue in this case.

It might just be that they're new to being a moderator, like what Jarace said previously. However, if a GP finds their job 'boring' then they shouldn't be a GP. They applied to maintain a friendly environment and to enforce server rules, not to have the best time of their lives.  

Posted by David

Alright, you're not upset about my post- great! I'm glad to hear that since there was absolutely 0 intentions of me being rude or spiteful towards you/the GP team in general behind it. I'm just stating my opinion here, you're allowed to disagree with it.

The only thing I ask of you now (pretty understandable) is to at least address my concerns. Can you elaborate on why the GP application is not more gameplay-focused? Lots of issues on the game arise out of the actual gameplay side of it (sparring, towering, baddy killing, etc.) that lots of new staff members are way too inexperienced to recognize/deal with. I intentionally added two gameplay questions in my "mock-gp-application questions" and two social questions that could be interpreted by the GP applicant.

Don't you think the GPs you hire should already know what's an offense and what isn't?

Also I'd also really like to know what was overlooked? My post or the extensiveness of the GP application? Aren't both of these issues that should be addressed?

Meant my post was overlooked - updated it to address this. Given the only attention it got was after I deleted it, I don't think there is much disputing to be done here.

I did not make the GP application, nor can I change it. It's certainly not perfect, but it does a good job of demonstrating someone's personality, general knowledge of the English language, and willingness to put forward effort. After those things are proven, we make sure they have enough game experience to be staff.

In my experience as a GP, gameplay issues have come up less than issues that are more as a result of more social issues. However, gameplay issues are certainly not less important, and I'm sure we can agree on this.

That said, I don't think what you are interpreting as a lack of experience is as you believe it to be. I'm not sure how much I can go into this without it being considered leaking, so I'm going to be careful.

When it comes to banning someone for cheating or something, we have to actually see them do it and be absolutely certain that they are cheating before we act. In cases such as someone speed hacking by small increments, it can be very tough to tell if you aren't a machine, especially given some of Graal's related caveats. I know Dusty talked about this more in depth a while back, and he no doubt understands the technical side of it better than I do.

A concern I see a lot is that we don't hire people if they were banned once before. This isn't true, so long as it is obvious that the person is showing improvement and the ban wasn't for something severe or very recent.

Since our rules are mostly founded on common sense, I haven't seen issues with GPs understanding what is an offense in the past. We outline the offenses in extensive detail to new GPs. In the case of this thread, the warning was a bit misunderstood by the person who received it, and even then it wasn't a perfect warning. That's probably all I can say. I don't think we can expect every new GP to perfectly understand our system right off the bat, it's usually picked up pretty quickly.

I hope this covers most of your concerns, and I'm sorry that I couldn't go in depth as much as I would like to in some cases. If some of this is confusing, sorry, I have a fever and what is probably the flu. Just ask about and I'll try to explain the best I can, though I'm going to do my best to avoid things that could be considered leaking.

Edit: there are a lot of new posts here since I started writing this. I'm not going to reply to them because a lot of them are made up situations as usual (yes, I checked, doubt I can actually call them out directly though) or other things probably trying to bait a response.  

so you cant dislike admins
 

Posted by WreX

so you cant dislike admins

http://replygif.net/i/1196.gif (Unsupported image host)  

Posted by Jarace

Meant my post was overlooked - updated it to address this. Given the only attention it got was after I deleted it, I don't think there is much disputing to be done here.

I did not make the GP application, nor can I change it. It's certainly not perfect, but it does a good job of demonstrating someone's personality, general knowledge of the English language, and willingness to put forward effort. After those things are proven, we make sure they have enough game experience to be staff.

In my experience as a GP, gameplay issues have come up less than issues that are more as a result of more social issues. However, gameplay issues are certainly not less important, and I'm sure we can agree on this.

That said, I don't think what you are interpreting as a lack of experience is as you believe it to be. I'm not sure how much I can go into this without it being considered leaking, so I'm going to be careful.

When it comes to banning someone for cheating or something, we have to actually see them do it and be absolutely certain that they are cheating before we act. In cases such as someone speed hacking by small increments, it can be very tough to tell if you aren't a machine, especially given some of Graal's related caveats. I know Dusty talked about this more in depth a while back, and he no doubt understands the technical side of it better than I do.

A concern I see a lot is that we don't hire people if they were banned once before. This isn't true, so long as it is obvious that the person is showing improvement and the ban wasn't for something severe or very recent.

Since our rules are mostly founded on common sense, I haven't seen issues with GPs understanding what is an offense in the past. We outline the offenses in extensive detail to new GPs. In the case of this thread, the warning was a bit misunderstood by the person who received it, and even then it wasn't a perfect warning. That's probably all I can say. I don't think we can expect every new GP to perfectly understand our system right off the bat, it's usually picked up pretty quickly.

I hope this covers most of your concerns, and I'm sorry that I couldn't go in depth as much as I would like to in some cases. If some of this is confusing, sorry, I have a fever and what is probably the flu. Just ask about and I'll try to explain the best I can, though I'm going to do my best to avoid things that could be considered leaking.

Edit: there are a lot of new posts here since I started writing this. I'm not going to reply to them because a lot of them are made up situations as usual (yes, I checked, doubt I can actually call them out directly though) or other things probably trying to bait a response.

I appreciate the time you're taking out to talk to me about these issues (especially when you have the flu, hope you feel better soon).

When I speak about the GP application lacking in gameplay experience- that sentiment is echoed in my experience playing iClassic, too. I can recount a few times a player was health hacking in the main spar room (would get down to .5 then heal himself to 3) then GP I contacted told me "it was just lag". Experiences like this are frustrating when you streak 25 in the spar room and lose to someone who is clearly speeding but no action is taken because the inexperienced GP in question "did not notice anything besides lag", even though every single experienced sparrer in the room saw the same thing. A speed hacker going at (maybe) 150% speed with minimal lag. This isn't just about sparring though, it extends to every single other facet of gameplay on iClassic.

I just think that clarifying questions like the ones I mentioned here:

Posted by David

"Does the person in the video above look like they're speed hacking to you?"

"Someone constantly PMs you that they are being harassed by another player, but you see nothing of it when you look into it. They keep PMing you about it. What do you do?"

"You get multiple PMs of someone hacking, so you warp to them but you can't tell if they are or not. How do you deal with this situation?"

"Should a player get warned for having this status? [PICTURE OF STATUS HERE]"

can't hurt on the actual GP application, especially since you can weed out people who are completely clueless about the game right off the bat. A good personality and a grasp of the English language is 100% necessary, I agree. But the criteria and standards needs to be higher than that so that we don't end up with confusing circumstances like the ones I explained in the paragraph above. Acknowledging I'm right about the GP application and not taking action as a senior member of the GP staff is just a waste of your influence.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your point about new GP hires having a "basic understanding of common sense rules" on the game, as I and many others have received warnings that were completely uncalled for. It's less about expecting new GPs to understand the system perfectly and more about hiring players with enough common sense not to warn someone for saying "butt" (it has happened before). If they personally find that language offensive, they should just PM them and ask them to stop or else they will clear their chat. Pretty easy!

As a side note, if someone is able to streak to 56 in the spar room using godmode, the issue starts to become about activity too. Electron hasn't been on for 20 hours and before that he wasn't on for a couple days on his staff account..

I'm sorry but this:

is a perfect example of what I'm talking about when I say not enough gameplay experience to understand how/when to take action. I have nothing against him and I'm sure he's a great guy who does great on a personality test, though.

Posted by Jarace

A concern I see a lot is that we don't hire people if they were banned once before. This isn't true, so long as it is obvious that the person is showing improvement and the ban wasn't for something severe or very recent.

I'm happy to hear this. Since nobody from the staff team has addressed this, everyone has been taking it as the truth. Thanks for clearing that one up.