Cayorion’s way of thinking

Internal teamwork
Our Internal teamwork is heavily dependant and fueled by projects. Projects are set up either by higher ranks or by lower ranks of team members together to have a certain outcome. The recent races plugin for example was a joint effort between myself and Cayorion, and the newest instance was a project of Ninjabaver. A lot of work many of the team members do is often not entirely seen by the players. A regular players is often only concerned with getting his helpop answered as quickly as possible, but there are a lot of things to consider

From Help A to Solution B
Currently the division of work is largely determined by the Admins doing policy work, moderators managing the projects and trusteds dealing with helpops. In part this explains why admins are often not around to help people on the server or tend to request for help when they arise. This division of workload is crucial to the operation of the team, the admins would not have time to set up projects like Races, Regalia, new Worlds, if the lower ranks did not do the amount of helpops they do. There are some inconsistencies in this policy where admins are sometimes required to deal with certain helpops, but we are trying to find solutions for this problem. Due to this division, it’s important to always remind ourselves that admins are not any more important to the operation of the server then trusteds are, and vice versa. The different ranks would not be able to operate and co-operate so smoothly without this division. This realization also causes team members to consider each other as friends rather then colleagues.

The Pyramid, however
Despite the equal view we have on team members, it is important to maintain hierarchy and a central unit of command. Why? Because otherwise bureaucracy would bog down the team to less then 10% productivity. Imagine having to vote over every single change every proposed to the server. Simply said the server would never “move on” if we did not apply the right of rank to certain situations.

Player input
Don’t make a wrong assumption here, player input is crucial to the way we work in MassiveCraft. Often internal dialogues run into a brick wall because there is not enough opinions or points of view to come to a conclusion. In such cases we have often resorted to using polls to gather a general overview of player opinions. A good example of this was the premium no drop feature. It was long suggested this feature would be removed, but after lenghtly trials and player input through 2 polls and discussions with players, we changed it into the much more fair system it is right now, as opposed to forcing through a change that would upset all the premiums. We found the middle path through input from the players. Suggestions on the forum are also widely considered. It is important to remember however (that like with the races sub category) a lot of the ideas submitted are not feasible or not properly thought through. We do not have the staff available to give every suggestion or complaint the attention it needs/deserves, but we try to be as responsive as possible. Even if your suggestion/complaint never gets replied to, we will read it, that you can depend on.

Transparency
A lot of times when we get critiques from players, they are either ill-founded or simply uninformed, and this issue rears up quite a lot lately. Sometimes the amount of work we do as a team behind the public display, or the sacrifices to work on the server are overlooked or disregarded. To this end, we may consider holding open “team meetings”  in the future. In the past we have always used team meetings to discuss urgent matters, but this always happened behind closed doors, and we think it would be beneficial to players to actually see how we work as a team in there and how we deal with certain issues. We might make an announcement soon announcing time and date of an open meeting.

Some last notes 
Some last notes are very important to consider. Firstly remember that all staff members are or were at some point players. I myself used to pride myself months ago that I was a “staff member of the players” because at that point me being a regular player like everyone else was still fresh on my memory. This has now faded and more-so become the title of some other staff members, but in the end we all have had the moments where we toiled to make castles, mined in deep caves, were savagely attacked or brutally killed (some more then others!). Many staff members have given up a lot of stuff in game to simply be of service to the community and the players, and to make the whole server a better place for everyone. If anything, please treat staff members with some little respect for that.

Circulating false stories about corruption and abuses do not help the server everyone has grown to love at all and remember to always look at two sides of the coin. It’s easy to be swayed by popular opinions and the cries of the loud, but some time investigating might often find you discover the opposite of what was claimed.