2 dismissals Remove command whitelists for players who haven't played in a year or more (Redux)

[GeneralCamo]

We're going back to this: 

Since this thread was made, we have been on the NBT for nearly a year. After three major event arcs, I believe the time has come to re-consider this suggestion. 

We're moving away from the self-contained event arc, to events that require a more active commitment to our setting and lore. We have events where the decisions of command in one round, will affect the rest of the rounds to come. And a bad or uninformed decision, can cost the playerbase dearly. It is unrealistic to assume that a player who hasn't played for a year, but comes back for the big event, can make an informed decision.

Two events so far have had major decisions affected by command: The Dreary Futures arc ended in a mutiny due to ill-advised decisions, while the Cold Dawn arc had an XO give a blank check to the ALA for weapons and other stuff (which was later betrayed).

To be clear, I am not saying that they can't re-apply for command, maybe even in an expediated fashion. But we need to ensure that players who can shape the course of not just the round, but an entire arc, know what they're getting into, and have the standards that we desire from the current whitelist process. Yes, this is an inconvenience for inactive command, but my major concern is with the rest of the playerbase, who must deal with their decision making. We can look into options for those who get their whitelist stripped later. Right now, I just want to go ahead, and have the community re-consider this suggestion.

[Scheveningen]

In current support of this. I once held the opposite view the last time this made the rounds, but I believe anywhere between a 180-day to a 360-day cut-off period would be appropriate to implement. Preserving the quality of rounds is much more important than having a sheer quantity of a whitelisted pool of people.

[Fluffy]

I oppose this, there are fundamental flaws in this idea:

• Are we to believe that a person that played one round 364days ago is fundamentally different than someone who did it 366 days ago?
• Command whitelists are not lore checks, as said by Garn in the other thread you linked
• If the issue is the impact on canon rounds, the proposal should aim to address that specific scenario, an entire stripping is completely unnecessary as you could just aswell check the last time they logged in, check if there's a custom event running, and print a popup that says "oi this is a canon round and we haven't seen you in a year, wait the next round and catch up to the lore information to play in a command position, play any/some round(s) this week and you will be able to play as command in the next event, be sure to catch up to the lore before doing so!" or equivalent
• If the issue is that people, who put the effort in and got the whitelist, quit and only show up for NBTs, perhaps we should give them more reasons to stay, instead of giving them yet another reason not to? The pool of players isn't infinite, especially on a game of legal age to drink, and even less so in a niche of it; creating quit moments to have temporary "solutions" that creates long term losses is an unfavourable trade; while we can (but shouldnt) retcon (particularly) bad decisions, go getting people interested in the server is between very much more hard and borderline impossible outside of physiological means
• There are IC methods to deal with commands that makes nonsensical/bad decisions, if those are insufficient to deal with them we should empower those, if the captain makes an objectively bad decision and refuses to hear the rest of command saying it's a bad decision, depose him. If there's enough people playing command, in a canon round, that all agree to what you think is a terrible decision, there's two fundamental options: either it's not a bad decision and you're wrong, or we have a far bigger issue than them having the command whitelist to solve, and masking it with a strip would be from painting over rust and pretend the bridge is safe because you don't see the rust to "fingers in the ears and repeating lalalalalalalala" level, aka masking symptoms instead of curing the illness(es)

[Scheveningen]

20 minutes ago, Fluffy said:

If the issue is that people, who put the effort in and got the whitelist, quit and only show up for NBTs, perhaps we should give them more reasons to stay, instead of giving them yet another reason not to?

That is not really feasible. Real life is more important than in-game.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

This will be discussed amongst the command WL team/Moderation Team

[Dreamix]

2 hours ago, GeneralCamo said:

Two events so far have had major decisions affected by command: The Dreary Futures arc ended in a mutiny due to ill-advised decisions, while the Cold Dawn arc had an XO give a blank check to the ALA for weapons and other stuff (which was later betrayed).

Are these examples of "bad or uninformed decisions"? Asking, because:

- Command in both of these events was fully staffed by experienced players.
- This is assuming that bad or uninformed decisions are, well, bad. Things going wrong is a part of the game, and I would find it very lame if everything was going perfectly every time.

 

I've not seen a round be "ruined" by inactive command. I believe this is a non-issue. A whitelist strip like that would only inconvenience players, without really solving any actual problem.

[Fluffy]

52 minutes ago, Scheveningen said:

That is not really feasible. Real life is more important than in-game.

This rests on the unlikely premise that real life managed to fill 365+ days to the point the person could not play a single round across all of them, but somehow didn't right at the NBT rollout, which is a very unlikely premise to work with, even in an edge case scenario. It's far more likely that the player preferred to play or do something else, and found renovated interest in checking us out to see if the NBT brings something fun for him on the table, which brings us back to: perhaps we should give them more reasons to stay?

[SilverSZ]

Unlike last time this topic was discussed. I now have a command whitelist, so I would like to comment on it a bit.

I've not played the game in a good chunk of time. I think two months thanks to my growing university commitments, and personally. I would consider it a disservice to an event if I were to hop on a play a command character for an event. However, I also haven't really seen the idea of inactive/unplaying command coming back for events to be a huge deal, in the events (4 of them) I observed for the Tajara arc I recognized basically all of the command members involved, though I can't say how it went for the final two that I was not able to attend. 

I can also say that the Captain involved in the Dreary Futures mutiny for example, would have maintained their whitelist under this new proposal as they had played within 365 days of that event happening and I believe also would not lose their whitelist to a 180 day period but my memory is rusty.

I have witnessed some cases of strange command choices or decisions but I don't believe these are due to people stepping away from the server and coming back just to event character, but more merely a factor that not everyone will be an ideal player, for events or otherwise. I don't really think the idea of stripping inactive players command whitelists is bad, but it also would not fix the problems that the OP brings up particularly. Active characters are just as able to make a bad decision, someone who hasn't played in 30, 60, 90 etc days can be just as problematic as someone who hasn't in 365+

I think instead perhaps we need to look at how events are structured and run and how we can nudge and encourage command towards decisions that create a better outcome for everyone involved. As mentioned I'm not against the idea of stripping WL's really, but I think the problem would persist just fine. 

We do also need to consider every case of this is really a problem. The mutiny occurring was an IC thing and the product of multiple characters IC decisions and lead to very meaningful consequences for many of them, the Captain who was in charge one of them. I don't think something like that is at all  a problem but instead a very good display of how interesting our canon events can be and how people willing to accept consequences can affect them and the story of the server as a whole. In terms of more simply bad on an OOC level behaviour, it's hard to say, as this would usually only affect one round but does affect multiple due to how our arcs work. Perhaps the solution lies in changing how we approach treating this behaviour in arcs specifically.

 

In summary. I'm not really for or against the concept of an inactivity strip for head whitelists. I think the issues that have been bought up are much deeper and harder to solve than that and we should focus on discussing them outside of the context of an inactivity strip, as that would be more productive overall towards crafting better events in the future. 

[Boggle08]

This suggestion thread is asking if we should hold command-whitelistees to the same standard as event volunteers.

I don't think just instituting another whitelist strip is going to cut it, because command don't know what we plan for events, and they have to make calls in the moment. I think the only way to achieve the level of simulated competency that this thread seems to be asking for is if we were to physically block in the command members to play these events like volunteers, and let them in on what will or might happen.

This is a problem. One, because we really don't need anything whitelisted to be more exclusive than it already is. The second reason, and much more important in my view, is that it is going to strip a lot of agency from our player base during events. 

Going back to the whitelist strip, it won't change anything. An old out of touch command whitelistee is probably about as capable as a guy who just got his recently, and is still getting the hang of it. You're gonna have to tell that guy to sit on the bench if you want ultra competent people in command during event shit; it will be impolite to be new.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Boggle08
more grammar agagagg

[LordPwner]

I was gone for two years, and didn't get my WL stripped because the last thread was shot down (thankfully). And like any good WL holder, I played something safe, while looking into the community/catching myself up on lore and now I'm Commanding again. And starting all the probelms 😎

Like last time, stripping people of the whitelist they work for and continually earned by good play, just because they took a break for some time? It may not make people quit, but man it'll be annoying af. And honestly, if we do it with Command WL, whats to stop us w/ doing it for Species? or AI? Those didn't make sense, this doesn't make sense. If players are the problem, ahelp and punish them. 

Do not punish 'everyone' for some people's actions or for needing to focus on RL/whatever many reasons they aren't playing. We can not demand that people play, just provide a good place that they can enjoy.

[Garnascus]

My opinion has not changed and i am unfortunately giving this proposal a -1. While i agree command play is better if you're in touch with the server lore and culture the rigor of these things are overstated. If you have already received a command whitelist you already have the ability to read and adapt your character to the server climate. A half hour of wiki reading and maybe a round or two can catch you up to speed extremely quickly. 

[CampinKiller]

What Garn said above summarizes my thoughts. If someone is actually a problem, the command WL team can handle them fairly easily, but most people would probably only make minor errors

[Arrow768]

Seconding the vote for dismissal by garn.

I fail to see the problem.
Command Players have already demonstrated the capability to read lore and understand it (in their application)
If someone is inactive it is a relatively small investment to read up on the lore.
(Compared to that reapplying for the whitelist is a very large effort)

[Arrow768]

Moved to the rejected policy suggestion forum following two votes for dismissal.