Authentic Old-School Mabinogi Experience
Anopen letter to the community from Patoots
Posted at 09-02-19, 09:17 pm Link | #1
Posts: 172Hi guys it's me, Patoots. Through the many years I've been on pro many things have happened, groups have come and gone, I've had my ups and downs, and we've all struggled to keep things going as we try our best to provide a sustainable service for you to play. Recently, personally, I've found struggles being able to interact in any fashion in a way that doesn't feel forced and frustrating to the point I end up lashing out at players. This is unacceptable as a GM, let alone the community manager and I take full responsibility for my irate behavior. But I want to just share my thoughts with the community. It's high time I at least let you guys know what's going on, why I'm not around, and what I'm feeling, what I've been feeling, and more.
It is obvious that there will always be many groups of players with varying preferences who will not always enjoy or appreciate the content we make or the way we, mostly I at this rate, handle decisions, punishment, content directions and more. This is fine, I am glad, thrilled to have a community so diverse in idea and preference because it keeps things fresh and prevents things from stagnating if things are done well enough. I'm not writing to you all to complain about all of that, far from it. But what I have also noticed is that there is never a time where I do something that I'm not called a tyrant, or a fascist, or this or that, which causes other players to defend my decisions and divides the community. This has always torn at me, but I never really do anything but complain about this on the off due to how much it honestly gets to me. It has, how ever, topped with the times in the past where negativity and insidious behavior plagued our community, worn me thin and close to my last nerve. I would be lying if I say I have never thought about leaving my position entirely, and leaving this project to its own devices. But I always know that I appreciate this community too much, I know we get new players a lot, and I know we have loyal players too who would be lost if things got even harder for our team to pull together.
Though things have been stressful, our teamwork has gotten harder to flow more smoothly as has been publicly explained in the past due to time restrictions and draining interest from people here or there which has lead to multiple people leaving our content team causing us to try and bring more along, and roadblocks seem to come at every turn both due to concerns on how the community will handle this or that, or due to interest or time restrictions preventing key aspects of development on future content from proceeding along, even with all of this trouble it would leave an incredibly bad pit in my mind to just up and leave, as I want to see things succeed, I want us all to enjoy the game, I want our projects to flow, I want our content to be well received, I want our community to thrive and I want to be able to proudly say that I was there to at the very least help it all happen.
That being said, my own interest and spirit has drained over the past several years. Dealing with a community is hard, but trying to keep them happy with such a nuanced demographic is incredibly tiring, time consuming, and genuinely destructive to your mental health when you try to handle it all the best you personally can only to cause issues or otherwise make players feel like they are being treated unfairly, getting the short end of the stick, keeping communication between the team proper with the players as to keep you all not feeling abandoned and more. It's been truly exhausting, and I can't decide personally to myself whether or not this experience has been a rewarding hassle or just, after a point, an uphill battle with no end. I don't have fun doing this anymore. I only think of the bad things when I get on, and it only further sours my mood towards the whole thing. It's a mental block that I personally have found extremely difficult to climb over.
With that in mind, it's a very complex situation that I find myself in as I don't want to abandon you all, or our awesome team. I want this to be positive, I want more content to come out, I want things to get fun again, and I want us to all experience that fun together. I've stuck my neck out for this project multiple times with multiple risks, and I can't help but think it would all have been a waste, a huge waste, if I just left and everything were to fall apart shortly after. I'm very thankful for all the experience I've had with you all, I'm very proud to be your community manager and I try my best, despite my frustration and personal issues, to do things as best as my abilities allow.
I'm not resigning, and as for now, I'm not going anywhere, but if things are to improve it's going to take a lot of hard work, energy, and positivity from both our team and community in order to rekindle the momentum we had a couple years ago. I sincerely appreciate all of our loyal players, and I hope you all continue to enjoy the game. I may not be around much, but you are always free to reach out to me personally if you have anything you need to talk about, if you have concerns or more, and I'll do my best to respond. In this situation it's very hard to be outspoken when you feel so defeated at every turn so it is hard for me to spark a fun public appearance without losing my positivity, but it's much easier to speak and initiate positive engagement if I am encouraged or approached about something first. I'm still here, and I hope to be for a long time.
Love you guys, I'm sorry for venting my frustrations and stress, but I thought you should know how hard it is on me to force myself to be here sometimes. I'm glad I do, but that doesn't make it easy. Thanks for reading, and please enjoy yourselves as you play our game, it's what makes this all worth while for me.
_________________________
Boof
It is obvious that there will always be many groups of players with varying preferences who will not always enjoy or appreciate the content we make or the way we, mostly I at this rate, handle decisions, punishment, content directions and more. This is fine, I am glad, thrilled to have a community so diverse in idea and preference because it keeps things fresh and prevents things from stagnating if things are done well enough. I'm not writing to you all to complain about all of that, far from it. But what I have also noticed is that there is never a time where I do something that I'm not called a tyrant, or a fascist, or this or that, which causes other players to defend my decisions and divides the community. This has always torn at me, but I never really do anything but complain about this on the off due to how much it honestly gets to me. It has, how ever, topped with the times in the past where negativity and insidious behavior plagued our community, worn me thin and close to my last nerve. I would be lying if I say I have never thought about leaving my position entirely, and leaving this project to its own devices. But I always know that I appreciate this community too much, I know we get new players a lot, and I know we have loyal players too who would be lost if things got even harder for our team to pull together.
Though things have been stressful, our teamwork has gotten harder to flow more smoothly as has been publicly explained in the past due to time restrictions and draining interest from people here or there which has lead to multiple people leaving our content team causing us to try and bring more along, and roadblocks seem to come at every turn both due to concerns on how the community will handle this or that, or due to interest or time restrictions preventing key aspects of development on future content from proceeding along, even with all of this trouble it would leave an incredibly bad pit in my mind to just up and leave, as I want to see things succeed, I want us all to enjoy the game, I want our projects to flow, I want our content to be well received, I want our community to thrive and I want to be able to proudly say that I was there to at the very least help it all happen.
That being said, my own interest and spirit has drained over the past several years. Dealing with a community is hard, but trying to keep them happy with such a nuanced demographic is incredibly tiring, time consuming, and genuinely destructive to your mental health when you try to handle it all the best you personally can only to cause issues or otherwise make players feel like they are being treated unfairly, getting the short end of the stick, keeping communication between the team proper with the players as to keep you all not feeling abandoned and more. It's been truly exhausting, and I can't decide personally to myself whether or not this experience has been a rewarding hassle or just, after a point, an uphill battle with no end. I don't have fun doing this anymore. I only think of the bad things when I get on, and it only further sours my mood towards the whole thing. It's a mental block that I personally have found extremely difficult to climb over.
With that in mind, it's a very complex situation that I find myself in as I don't want to abandon you all, or our awesome team. I want this to be positive, I want more content to come out, I want things to get fun again, and I want us to all experience that fun together. I've stuck my neck out for this project multiple times with multiple risks, and I can't help but think it would all have been a waste, a huge waste, if I just left and everything were to fall apart shortly after. I'm very thankful for all the experience I've had with you all, I'm very proud to be your community manager and I try my best, despite my frustration and personal issues, to do things as best as my abilities allow.
I'm not resigning, and as for now, I'm not going anywhere, but if things are to improve it's going to take a lot of hard work, energy, and positivity from both our team and community in order to rekindle the momentum we had a couple years ago. I sincerely appreciate all of our loyal players, and I hope you all continue to enjoy the game. I may not be around much, but you are always free to reach out to me personally if you have anything you need to talk about, if you have concerns or more, and I'll do my best to respond. In this situation it's very hard to be outspoken when you feel so defeated at every turn so it is hard for me to spark a fun public appearance without losing my positivity, but it's much easier to speak and initiate positive engagement if I am encouraged or approached about something first. I'm still here, and I hope to be for a long time.
Love you guys, I'm sorry for venting my frustrations and stress, but I thought you should know how hard it is on me to force myself to be here sometimes. I'm glad I do, but that doesn't make it easy. Thanks for reading, and please enjoy yourselves as you play our game, it's what makes this all worth while for me.
_________________________
Boof
Posted at 09-04-19, 05:21 am Link | #3
If this is an admission or taking responsibility for your actions and past behavior thats great that someone in the position of a GM is reflecting on their past actions and hopefully for this community it will help out with issues it's had. Even though I had never been on the receiving end of your "venting" or any of the other GMs (ie banned/warned because they said something or did something that whoever in power didn't like), I have seen and known others who have. Even though I and many of the people I played with will probably never come back actively here due to those past events and mentalities, mabi is a great game and cheers for everything the past team had put into it. It was fun while it lasted for us
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