Posted on 26 November 2016 - 05:27 PM

Not really our job - we're more focused on making sure the current playerbase is informed and happy.

Last edited on 26 November 2016 - 06:26 PM by Unwise

Tagging the owners a lot. Mostly us bugging them for information to be able to answer questions better.

There's also broader planning around how we intend to get player input/feedback on a broader scale. Hopefully you'll see the effects of that soon enough.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 05:29 PM

Are there any community managers that were not previously staff already? Does it worry you, as a group, that you might all have very similar community standings and backgrounds, and therefore preset notions and persuasions on how to do your job? on where to gather your information, and which of it to take the most seriously?

If you had to pull a few names from the 13-long list of community managers that seem to have emerged as any sort of leader within your group, who would you pick? As far as I have seen, you all are equals on paper, but I'm sure one or two of you might be deferred to as more senior or more outspoken. Who would you say that would be?

In your short time as a functional group, what have you accomplished as community managers? What about staff-to-community interaction has changed because you exist? If an average community member wanted to reach out to you with an idea or concern, on what medium would he be best received? How is this different than the previous system of lodging his idea on the forums to be open to community and staff discussion?

Does it concern you that there are so many of you? Why are there 13, and how close is that number to the ideal number of community managers? What makes it important to have community managers distinctive to a given region? Does each region have a distinct community, and each of those communities have different requests to those of the other regions' communities?

What about the existence of your positions makes the process of staff-community interaction more transparent? Does it not take the discussion behind doors even further? What courses of action do you plan to follow to make sure that this can't and won't happen? Or, rather, is the goal of the creation of this position to take those conversations behind doors purposefully? Were the staff and admin teams too transparent in the past, and is this position designed to make sure that the whole staff team is on the same page as to their platforms that are visible to the community?

You said your priority as of right now is Badlion Premium. What role does your group play in the process of readying the community for the experience? What decisions are you allowed to make? How much say do you have in the future of Badlion?

I hope none of these questions are too hard to answer. I just want to make sure that this is a good thing, and I'm skeptical by nature.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 05:31 PM

Specifically, what mistakes do you think the OCN administration made? How can you, as community managers, help our administration avoid them? Have they done a poor job in the past?

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 05:45 PM

Metarus has never been staff before. I personally don't think this will make a huge difference, just because we have a rank doesn't mean we aren't sensible or have large quantities of bias. We want to make Badlion a great place for the community, but that doesn't mean we can't question anything. This was a huge flaw of OCN in that it badly prioritized things and didn't properly respond to what the community wanted, and that's the last thing I wanna do.

Too early to tell.

We've just begun our work and I'm personally pleased with the progress we're making on certain topics. Not much has changed yet but that will cease to exist soon. In the case of player opinion, I use Discord, Twitter, and the BL Forums, but that's just me.

We need there to be multiple members for each region to avoid bias and make sure that a better consensus of that region can be given. We need it to be split into regions to make sure that the playerbase can relate to their manager and because of time zones. It's safe to say that people follow a general trend, but as with culture different regions will have different needs.

We make sure that community discussion is elaborated on more in discussion, if there are issues (which there don't seem to be yet), we'll work on them. I have yet to hear any complaints about the staff team being too transparent, though there probably is a need to try and keep answers that require a consensus more on-point.

Our goal in Badlion Premium is the same as always, to see what people think and to report back and figure out how we can make it better.

A lot of your questions are very hard to answer as it's way too early to give a proper response, for instance we've only been together for so long and have no idea as to who could be a real "leader". We're still getting used to this ourselves and need time.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 05:47 PM

I think a lot of my concern is that you are all staff, you all have been exposed to the very hiveminded mentality that the staff has, but you hope to be the "voices of the community." The problem is, though, that to be the advocates of the community, you will (at least in some cases) need to fight tooth and nail with the administrators, and the community already did that. The community has in the past disagreed and will always disagree with the admins much more vehemently than the staff, for plenty of reasons. So what is different - if 7/13 community managers right now took a vote, based on their community interactions, to revert the rating system to elo, would the admins be held to that? How about 12/13? 13/13? Of course not. It's not like the admins before the creation of this position _wanted_ to disagree with the community, it's just that sometimes the community wants dumb things. How can you hope to change that?

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 05:50 PM

This is all opinion and I think @BlueManOtti will interpret this differently.

Overcast's failure in my opinion was a combination of poor admins/devs and improper management of how well-knit the community was. I could try to go extremely in-depth, but I can never fully explain how my memories and feelings of what happened are on paper. I will say that once Ghost Squadron began and a large investment was put into that, it was the beginning of the decline. I would probably have to talk to you on a one on one basis to answer this more accurately.

Our administration has by no means done a poor job, though the minority has expressed such. This is the opposite of OCN's problem in that the minority of OCN thought what the server was doing was fine up until the later stages of this year, by then far too late. We intend to solidify any holes and make sure that the administration is respected as truthful and considerate.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 05:54 PM

I worked on the OCN administration for a brief time and that I will say was considered my period of being in a "hiveminded mentality." I have sense learned to not be as biased and hope to bring constructive feedback to the administration, I'm still fueled by my hate for the ignorance of OCN's admins and I will not take anything without questioning it.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 05:56 PM

Your answer is very vague, and I'm not sure I understand. How can you apply this experience of yours of the downfall of OCN to Badlion, making sure it doesn't make the same mistakes? What about Ghost Squadron made it a poor investment of time and resources, and how can we avoid doing the same thing?

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 05:58 PM

To put it simply, I know what not to do. OCN made many mistakes that I (again) can not fully explain without going heavily in-detail and in discussion which would be better suited for a person on person discussion. The last thing I want to do are repeat those mistakes.

Last edited on 26 November 2016 - 06:00 PM by DerRevilos

I think the only CM that wasn't in the staff team before is Metarus.
From the German side:
@BlueManOtti and I have very different community backgrounds. I think he and I will do a decent job to cover the whole German community.




As we haven't been in action very long I can't really answer this.





We are currently working on a project that should be published soon.



The main reasons why we have CMs for certain regions are the language and knowledge of the communities backgrounds and structures.



We will try to make things more transparent than they were. We are still thinking about concepts how we want to do this.



So far we have only assisted the administration with answering questions about Badlion Premium. We as a group will start making decisions after our first project has launched.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 06:12 PM

We'd like to focus on questions about the server and generic questions about us.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 06:13 PM

Cute! But my question was about community manager Unwise.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 06:15 PM

That question was not generic and did not pertain to the purpose of the thread and was removed, we'd like to be serious here.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 06:15 PM

I think this is a fantastic example of what I don't want from community managers. I want specific examples and information to be brought forward by you guys, in the realm of public knowledge, so that you are as transparent as possible, even where the admins aren't or cannot be. I want you to feel like community members, role models, who inform the community and have their discussions with the community so then when you're burdened with the task of convincing the admins of a community position, you are backed by a refined argument, with examples and evidence and the best information. So please, let's not take this to a one on one discussion - tell me what you think are OCN's biggest mistakes, and tell me how we won't make them.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 06:17 PM

Metarus has never been staff, and tbhitslizzy wasn't staff at the time of her hiring. This was answered by Utsuho but I thought I'd include it.


I think that despite our shared staff background, each of us views the staff team differently and has a different point of view. I was a community member before I was staff, and I still want most of the things that the community wants. I do think I have preset notions, but I'm actively conscious of them and will take them into account.

As for leaders, I agree with what Utsuho said. Only time will tell. In terms of simple outspokenness, I think a few of us are a bit more active.


So far, our main contribution has been on the Badlion Premium threads. We've been trying to answer questions as actively as possible and make sure the community knows there's someone they can trust to have good information outside of the admins. This hasn't radically changed anything, but we're only a week into our existence. I suspect only time will tell how much we'll truly affect the server.

I, personally, am available anywhere - twitter, discord, forums, ingame, wherever. I'll listen to someone's idea anywhere, and convey it to the rest of the group and the owners/admins at the right time.


There are a number of us by necessity, and it excites me personally. The whole point is to have a diverse group that is representative of the various regions of the community, and I think this group fits the bill. I think we could use a couple more CMs from around the community (an Italian CM perhaps?) but this is good for now. Having a CM of each distinct region helps with language barriers more than anything.

You'd have to ask someone in one of those regions for the rest.


Transparency is my goal - to inform the community of what is happening behind the scenes and make the decisionmaking behind staff decisions more open. There will always be discussion behind closed doors, by necessity, but that doesn't mean we can't let the community in a little more.

I personally intend to be as open as possible with my own thoughts, and I would like to share as much as I can about how decisions are made and what's behind them. Obviously, there are two main limitations to this: One, some things must by necessity remain secret, and two, my own reach as a staff and community member is limited by my own presence on social media. I can't reach 10,000 players in a day, but Archy and Gberry can. My hope is that they'll help us reach as many players as we can whenever possible.

The staff and admin teams were never too transparent, in my opinion.


We are answering questions constantly about the service, and will continue to do so. Once it launches, we will collect community feedback and relay it to the admins. My understanding is that our actual decisionmaking power will be limited, but Archy and Gberry will listen to what we tell them very closely.

As for your last question - CM as a position isn't about our say in the future of Badlion - the individual CMs, in theory, should not matter much beyond our language and region. What we're here for is to make sure the community has as much say as possible in the future of Badlion.

I understand your skepticism, but I can't say I share it. Thank you for the questions!

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 06:21 PM

@Hivlik Tagging you here to avoid a long chain of quotes, I prefer to keep it clean like the OCN forums

I'm not telling you my detailed response because I don't want to, I can't because I feel like anything I say about that topic in this medium would be inaccurate to what I really feel because my feelings are way too complicated, I would need to discuss things with you and I can't do that using the forums. I would love to spend the entire night talking about it with you, I just don't wanna use this thread for that as its branching off into another discussion and would just spam up this thread.

By all means DM me, I'm willing to talk about it, and if you're worried about confidentiality nothing I say in that DM will remain so, you're free to talk about it or paste logs I won't stop you. I really just don't think this medium is the best way to do it.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 06:23 PM

Do you guys think you'll ever need a black/African CM? Can more even be hired? It seems like there are quite a bit of you already.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 06:25 PM

If the community there grows large enough, probably.

Posted on 26 November 2016 - 06:27 PM

Maybe in the future for Africa region. Colors don't matter as always. If applicant shows itself pretty good with the application, that person will probably get the job.