draconian original

I, PinkDraconian, vice of division V (RL-EU) would like to welcome all of you and invite you to read this. I've tried to keep this as neutral and mature as possible and please respect that in the comments. We all have our views and I think each one of those should be taken into account. Please make your comments worth the read. I want to have new perspectives on this topic. If anything that has been said in this thread already has been mentioned in other Opium Den-topics, then please still bear with me since what I'm trying to get across here is way bigger than just these changes in general. I'm talking about how we keep a community rolling and growing but most importantly, happy. Most of what I'm saying here will be very abstract since I don't want to push DI into something, I just want DI to grow in a positive manner and feel like this post is definitely worth reading, whether it actually gives you a new view, or not.

A community isn't just a group of people who like to game. These people all have, each and every one of them, posted at least 15 posts and in most cases even 50. They care about what happens within DI, they care about our future. We should treat them that way. Give them insight. I'm not saying that every member should get access to anything that is going to be changed but at least some of us should. You may argue that the Opium Den is the place to do it but that only helps after the changes have been effective. A possible solution would be to post changes a few days in advance in the Opium Den to make sure we all get a chance to prepare for them and if needed give our thoughts. The changes currently happen so fast and without any notice in advance and that just doesn't feel right.

We as officers, put a lot of time and effort into this community and currently I'm just not feeling like I'm being rewarded for my work. I don't feel like I have any insight on where DI is going and when changes may happen. I may be working on something when suddenly the next day a new change switches it all up. The changes have all been very direct and immediately into effect without any time for them to be reviewed or tweaked by us.

I do know that @GreatJackal thinks 5 steps ahead and has a great future in mind for DI and that these changes need to be made because in at a minimum 2 years from now, DI will make their money back and stuff. But the one issue I'm having with that is that if DI focuses too much on the Esports aspect of it, you're going to leave a HUGE portion of the current community out. Most of them are just here for fun and I feel like they are also a huge part of why DI currently is so popular. Sometimes, you need to think in the now or possibly one step ahead. Five steps in just too much. There are too many variables that you can't possibly all take into account. We are currently treating our community like an Esports organization whilst we're not even close to it. I hear GJ saying things about paid coaches, hyping players up but I honestly don't see that happening in the next two years so I don't really see that necessary as it's going to have backlash sometime. If you tell people in the community something, they are going to want it fast and we can't give it to them fast so watch out with promising things because anything may happen and if it, sadly enough, doesn't work out, you're going to be left with broken promises, which again would take a huge hit on the community. I know that you aren't directly promising things but that's how people perceive it. You can't undo that so be careful. People need to know about the future but keep it abstract.

When there are problems, I agree that changes need to happen. This is obvious and everyone agrees with this. Saying that we needed to change is no valid reason to justify people actively being punished because some in the community do. Over my time working with people in general, I've learned that in order to get people to stop doing stuff that's wrong, you need to reward people that actually do things correctly. If people are abusing a system, then don't just remove or overhaul the system whilst making it harder for others, that actually did nothing wrong, to execute whatever this was about. I know that this sounds hard but what I'm getting at is that there are better possibilities out there, look for them!

Okay then now I'm going to go into a few concrete examples of changes that I'd like to see changed and that according to me shouldn't ever have been implemented.

20 XP = 1 REP. Now, I did agree that posting should've been nerfed but let's be fair. 20 posts = 1 REP. From my experience, if you put a whole hour into posting, you get about 60 posts. That's 3 REP and this has been the excuse for the higher ups to justify their change since it looks fair right? 1 hour of going to an event equals 1 hour of posting. The difference is that little to none people actually like posting for hours on end, meanwhile going to an event and playing a game is way more fun and most people would actually like to do that. Meaning that posting got over-nerfed and we've seen it happening already. People don't find the worth in posting anymore. Some people used posting to get their REP each month since they couldn't actually attend events due to work, school, etc. Those people are currently scrambling. They like posting, they still do but making 200 posts just for 10 REP is kind of over the top. I'd rather see 10 posts be worth 1 REP. Not only is this number way more achievable, it also looks way less daunting.
Events. So, we have to take screenshots at the beginning and ending of events. This kind of ruins a whole bunch of events. Last week I hosted 15 events. I really enjoyed them. Playing some fun Rocket League modes with people, come as they go events. This was amazing! For me, players are worthy of achieving a token if they actively attend for at least thirty minutes. Why shouldn't this be enough? Why is it that you need to be there at the beginning and end? For some events, for sure and they should be able to make sure that people can only join from the beginning and stay 'till the end but if we have a casual Rocket League training, then we start playing and people can join in and leave whenever they want and if you were there for at least half an hour, you got a token. Right now, we've already seen all our trainings being shortened 1 hour since else it'd be impossible to get people tokens since almost nobody actually plays for two hours and that is fine. That is perfect! Why should this be bad? Also, if I organize an event with my roster. Why do I need to upload screenshots? That's the most useless thing ever. I used to take screenshots for some of my events just so that I didn't have to remember who showed up and that worked for me but right now with roster trainings where only 3 players show up at most, it just seems kinda useless. Casual events aswell should just stay casual. They're supposed to be fun! There are many come-as-you-go events where the focus is just playing and having fun! Not focusing on being there at a certain time and staying there for so long. If I log on and have 45 minutes to play and I see an event that's currently going on, I'll just ask the hosting officer if it's fine if I join and hop in! I play for 45 minutes and leave and get my token since I played and was active. Within DI, we have so many rules that already have their effects on new people, scaring them away. This one part that was just right and worked for everyone was the only thing that hadn't been overshadowed by rules. There were people that abused the system and they need to be punished, of course. But don't punish everyone else. There are better ways to solve this. I don't want to see any comments saying: "Then suggest a system where that happens" because you're a little too late with that. That should've happened before this change went into effect. Also I don't think that these rules actually achieve their goals. Currently I can still host an event that lasts 20 minutes and give everyone tokens for it. It's still abuse-able. Like yesterday my officer training only lasted 22 minutes and everyone got tokens. I could do that with all my events. Plan them in for an hour and after 22 minutes say. The event is over, take a screenshot and be done with it. Another example. The Karaoke. It lasts for six hours split into 3 events (7-9 , 9-11 , 11-1) Let's say I join in at 9:10, which for karaoke as for many events is perfectly possible, after the screenshot has been taken. Let's also say that I leave at 00:40. Then I've been to karaoke for 3 and a half hour without even gaining a single token meanwhile before I would've gotten 2.
What I'm going to say right now can get me in a bunch of trouble but I honestly don't care. I refuse to upload these screenshots. I'm going to host my events like I always do and anyone who engages for over 30 minutes will get their token. I've never abused this system and think these rules are ridiculous. They don't serve any purpose to me and just limit events both for attending players as in hosts. I'm incredibly discouraged to go ahead and host events just because of this and so are many others. I'll take as many strikes as needed for this but I just feel like someone has to actually step up sometime. This clan is becoming more strict with the day and if this keeps on going then one day we're going to collapse. I've already had a bunch of (old) players say that to me and I do feel the same. If this keeps going on, then I'm going to look for something different out there since DI just wouldn't be able to cover for what I need.

*PinkDraconian