READER WARNING: This is a LOOOOONG thread and there’s no TL;DR, so if you’re not in the mood for reading a LOOOOONG thread, I invite you to come back at a later time
I’ve noticed that the staff team wants to “bridge the gap between players and staff” - that’s at least the words they are using themselves. However, I feel like there are some serious steps that can be made in the direction of “bridging the gap” that haven’t yet been made while they are, in my opinion, vital in the process. This is why I decided to write up this feedback. It involves a multitude of ideas and changes that I have split up in several parts.
Authenticity
During numerous occasions I find that there isn’t much authenticity in the way that staff converses with players. I will be focussing mainly on feedback & suggestions and classes. I will refer back to these after I’ve explained what I think is the problem in these cases.
In such occasions, it feels too much like a staff member is simply using a certain “format” for the relevant communication. This format offers very little alternative, which means that experienced players will have seen the format dozens if not hundreds of times, which I think has a somewhat negative effect on those players, causing them to be tired of the same type of messages. In feedback & suggestion for instance, I think it demotivates players from actively sending in new suggestions.
Now for some concrete examples, and how I think these could be improved upon. Note that I am merely looking at the messages themselves, not the person who sent them; they could be any random staff member for all I care.
Example 1
Example 2
These are just 2 random suggestions I clicked in the list, but it immediately struck me that the messages sent by the relevant Poltergeist are extremely similar; too similar in my opinion. Both start with “Hello and thank you for your suggestion [name]!”, both have a second sentence fitting exactly in the format “I will [give your idea to] the other Poltergeists and [tell you the outcome].” and both end in “Have a [great] day!”, where everything between [] represents text that differs somewhat. This is extremely limited authenticity. There are countless ways the message could start, such as:
Good day, [name]!
Hello there, [name]!
Greetings, [name]!
And that’s just 3 possibilities. I could go on to mention so many more ways to have a different way of sending such messages, but I think the baseline is clear. I think these messages look far too similar, and could do with more authenticity. This does not only go for messages to indicate that a suggestion or feedback is being looked at, but also for messages to tell the person who made the suggestion or feedback that it is accepted, declined, on-hold or a duplicate.
And then for classes. The format for classes has always been pretty similar:
[Professor greets class]
[Professor tells rules]
[Professor introduces the class helper]
[Further practicalities are mentioned]
[In case of theory class: notes]
[Assignment]
I’m not going to argue with this format, it works and does its job well. The thing I find it lacking in is authenticity, and in particular interactions between players and prof/class helpers throughout the class. There’s a few things I think are relevant here:
- In notes class, I think it would help if, every now and then, the professor asks something to the class in order to provoke a response and to ensure that the class is still actively participating. I’ve seen this in some classes but I find it does not always happen while I think it is vital to keep notes classes interesting to attend.
- During WizPE, I think it would help to ease the pain (I have no reason to complain and I know that, but I know that there are a lot of people who really suffer with parkour) if the professor and class helpers had a bit more small talk with them, so the class is not just all about suffering. Trivia questions really help with interaction I think, but I feel like it could be a bit more interesting on a smaller scale with small talk. I wanted to include this type of class as it’s a unique format and keeps happening more and more these last few months.
- During potions, I feel like this type of interaction is not really needed, as it is usually a very short class and already does its own job of keeping people to actively participate.
- Flying and dueling however is an entirely different story. I should mention that I haven’t been to a dueling class since the revelius update, but from what I’ve heard it contains a lot of waiting around, just like flying when you happen to be in the house that goes last. I feel like it would be very valuable for the professors and class helpers to do some small talk with the students - this doesn’t have to be too much, but at least showing some sign of life while they’re doing their job is something I think that would very much help in “bridging the gap”.
Emptyness
I will again use a forum suggestion as an example since they are handled by Poltergeists, who are supposed to be the bridge I’ve referenced several times now.
Example
This specific suggestion was declined recently with the given reasoning that the relevant room was only built for the event and the staff team does not want it to be accessible very often. But to me, this is a very empty reasoning. The entire suggestion is built around making an event feature part of the permanent gameplay, so I felt it was a bit odd to mention that the room was only built for the event; one of the responders even mentioned that it could involve a new room that didn’t have much to do with the event, but would still allow for this feature to be added to the game.
The point is that I feel like the given reasoning for declining this suggestion is very lacking, it leaves me with a bunch of questions and, in my opinion, doesn’t do a good job of really explaining why this suggestion was declined. I don’t think such an explanation would have to be very big, just a simple sentence like “we feel like this wouldn’t fit” or “we have bigger priorities to be focussing on” as long as some sort of actual explanation was actually offered, which I feel like was not the case here.
Personally I feel like this isn’t properly done in numerous cases. I’ve seen reasonings such as “it just makes sense” or so but every time it just leaves me with more questions than I originally had and I think that’s a big improvement point for not just the Poltergeist team, but pretty much any team that is responsible for communicating with players about decisions that have been made.
Small talk
Personally I think the biggest issue in not “bridging the gap” is the absence of small talk; for the majority of the staff team, that is. I think a lot of players would be a lot more familiar and confident with staff members if those staff members actually took part in conversations in global chats, not just between themselves or with familiar names but with new players as well. I see a number of staff members who, before they were staff, would actively engage in conversation but as soon as they become staff they suddenly stop being active in global chat. While this may be understandable under the current system and is in no way supposed to discredit those staff members, I do not believe this to be very effective when it comes to “bridging the gap”. Especially when it comes to Poltergeists, which is something I want to talk about a bit more now.
As far as I’ve gathered, the aim of the Poltergeist team is to handle forum suggestions by replying to them and by discussing them privately, but also to be in frequent contact with both staff and players (“bridging the gap”). This last thing is something I rarely see.
From memory, I could give 2, maybe 3 names of Poltergeists? I am friends with one of them, and sometimes have contact with another because they are also a prefect at the same time. The point I wish to make here is that it would be a lot more beneficial for the team if the players actually knew them, while I think that the most efficient way for the playerbase to get to know the team is for the team to actively participate in small talk. This way, I think players will be more tempted to come to Poltergeists with opinions or feedback, which is what Poltergeists are supposed to gather.
I would like to stress that this is in no way meant to discredit any Poltergeist, but rather a way to criticise the system they are working in.
If you’ve come this far, I thank you for reading all of it (unless you’ve just skipped to the end hoping that I would break my promise and still write a TL;DR, sorry to disappoint) and look forward to reading your opinion on this matter.
I’ve noticed that the staff team wants to “bridge the gap between players and staff” - that’s at least the words they are using themselves. However, I feel like there are some serious steps that can be made in the direction of “bridging the gap” that haven’t yet been made while they are, in my opinion, vital in the process. This is why I decided to write up this feedback. It involves a multitude of ideas and changes that I have split up in several parts.
Authenticity
During numerous occasions I find that there isn’t much authenticity in the way that staff converses with players. I will be focussing mainly on feedback & suggestions and classes. I will refer back to these after I’ve explained what I think is the problem in these cases.
In such occasions, it feels too much like a staff member is simply using a certain “format” for the relevant communication. This format offers very little alternative, which means that experienced players will have seen the format dozens if not hundreds of times, which I think has a somewhat negative effect on those players, causing them to be tired of the same type of messages. In feedback & suggestion for instance, I think it demotivates players from actively sending in new suggestions.
Now for some concrete examples, and how I think these could be improved upon. Note that I am merely looking at the messages themselves, not the person who sent them; they could be any random staff member for all I care.
Example 1
Example 2
These are just 2 random suggestions I clicked in the list, but it immediately struck me that the messages sent by the relevant Poltergeist are extremely similar; too similar in my opinion. Both start with “Hello and thank you for your suggestion [name]!”, both have a second sentence fitting exactly in the format “I will [give your idea to] the other Poltergeists and [tell you the outcome].” and both end in “Have a [great] day!”, where everything between [] represents text that differs somewhat. This is extremely limited authenticity. There are countless ways the message could start, such as:
Good day, [name]!
Hello there, [name]!
Greetings, [name]!
And that’s just 3 possibilities. I could go on to mention so many more ways to have a different way of sending such messages, but I think the baseline is clear. I think these messages look far too similar, and could do with more authenticity. This does not only go for messages to indicate that a suggestion or feedback is being looked at, but also for messages to tell the person who made the suggestion or feedback that it is accepted, declined, on-hold or a duplicate.
And then for classes. The format for classes has always been pretty similar:
[Professor greets class]
[Professor tells rules]
[Professor introduces the class helper]
[Further practicalities are mentioned]
[In case of theory class: notes]
[Assignment]
I’m not going to argue with this format, it works and does its job well. The thing I find it lacking in is authenticity, and in particular interactions between players and prof/class helpers throughout the class. There’s a few things I think are relevant here:
- In notes class, I think it would help if, every now and then, the professor asks something to the class in order to provoke a response and to ensure that the class is still actively participating. I’ve seen this in some classes but I find it does not always happen while I think it is vital to keep notes classes interesting to attend.
- During WizPE, I think it would help to ease the pain (I have no reason to complain and I know that, but I know that there are a lot of people who really suffer with parkour) if the professor and class helpers had a bit more small talk with them, so the class is not just all about suffering. Trivia questions really help with interaction I think, but I feel like it could be a bit more interesting on a smaller scale with small talk. I wanted to include this type of class as it’s a unique format and keeps happening more and more these last few months.
- During potions, I feel like this type of interaction is not really needed, as it is usually a very short class and already does its own job of keeping people to actively participate.
- Flying and dueling however is an entirely different story. I should mention that I haven’t been to a dueling class since the revelius update, but from what I’ve heard it contains a lot of waiting around, just like flying when you happen to be in the house that goes last. I feel like it would be very valuable for the professors and class helpers to do some small talk with the students - this doesn’t have to be too much, but at least showing some sign of life while they’re doing their job is something I think that would very much help in “bridging the gap”.
Emptyness
I will again use a forum suggestion as an example since they are handled by Poltergeists, who are supposed to be the bridge I’ve referenced several times now.
Example
This specific suggestion was declined recently with the given reasoning that the relevant room was only built for the event and the staff team does not want it to be accessible very often. But to me, this is a very empty reasoning. The entire suggestion is built around making an event feature part of the permanent gameplay, so I felt it was a bit odd to mention that the room was only built for the event; one of the responders even mentioned that it could involve a new room that didn’t have much to do with the event, but would still allow for this feature to be added to the game.
The point is that I feel like the given reasoning for declining this suggestion is very lacking, it leaves me with a bunch of questions and, in my opinion, doesn’t do a good job of really explaining why this suggestion was declined. I don’t think such an explanation would have to be very big, just a simple sentence like “we feel like this wouldn’t fit” or “we have bigger priorities to be focussing on” as long as some sort of actual explanation was actually offered, which I feel like was not the case here.
Personally I feel like this isn’t properly done in numerous cases. I’ve seen reasonings such as “it just makes sense” or so but every time it just leaves me with more questions than I originally had and I think that’s a big improvement point for not just the Poltergeist team, but pretty much any team that is responsible for communicating with players about decisions that have been made.
Small talk
Personally I think the biggest issue in not “bridging the gap” is the absence of small talk; for the majority of the staff team, that is. I think a lot of players would be a lot more familiar and confident with staff members if those staff members actually took part in conversations in global chats, not just between themselves or with familiar names but with new players as well. I see a number of staff members who, before they were staff, would actively engage in conversation but as soon as they become staff they suddenly stop being active in global chat. While this may be understandable under the current system and is in no way supposed to discredit those staff members, I do not believe this to be very effective when it comes to “bridging the gap”. Especially when it comes to Poltergeists, which is something I want to talk about a bit more now.
As far as I’ve gathered, the aim of the Poltergeist team is to handle forum suggestions by replying to them and by discussing them privately, but also to be in frequent contact with both staff and players (“bridging the gap”). This last thing is something I rarely see.
From memory, I could give 2, maybe 3 names of Poltergeists? I am friends with one of them, and sometimes have contact with another because they are also a prefect at the same time. The point I wish to make here is that it would be a lot more beneficial for the team if the players actually knew them, while I think that the most efficient way for the playerbase to get to know the team is for the team to actively participate in small talk. This way, I think players will be more tempted to come to Poltergeists with opinions or feedback, which is what Poltergeists are supposed to gather.
I would like to stress that this is in no way meant to discredit any Poltergeist, but rather a way to criticise the system they are working in.
If you’ve come this far, I thank you for reading all of it (unless you’ve just skipped to the end hoping that I would break my promise and still write a TL;DR, sorry to disappoint) and look forward to reading your opinion on this matter.
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