Some thoughts. Applications System, Investment, and Time

[Spiffspoff]

I've had my fair share of battles with the application forums, though I imagine mine have been fairly light in comparison to most as I've never made a real application for a signature. Most of what I've thrown up has mercifully been reviewed within a week, which I think is a pretty fair turnabout in most cases.

However! And this is the big butt. It doesn't have to go much beyond that before it starts to interrupt the stories of the characters your interact with, or even your own. It's certainly no secret of mine that I intend to go for Artisan, and the related upgrades on one of my current characters, and for that reason I obviously need to make, and assist in making all manner of curiosities.

But that's the kicker already, because it's an enormous amount of time to sink into getting, and while I personally find the road enjoyable to tread, and try to juggle several projects at the same time to expedite the process of making things, waiting two weeks can often be a pretty disheartening thing especially as the view-count on your thread goes up by two or three views a day.

It becomes a bit of an issue with Artisan/Masterwork/Grandmaster specifically because they have craaaazy cooldowns to begin with, meaning even more time is made between application, item, and then the artisan buff. I'd argue it can be downright inhospitable in some cases, depending on how long an application is stewing.

As Chance said, it's a volunteer position, and it can be extremely daunting to pick through a myriad of logs, and then hold discussions about it with other staffers, that's understandable. But the inconsistency can be hard to understand as a player at times. I do think having more application admins-- perhaps a few whose job is specifically to go over said application forums is a step in the right direction, and I don't mean admins that also carry out tickets, or staff decisions, or work in-game. No, I mean specifically just application-management.


TL;DR:
- My apping experience has been mostly great.
- Artisan suffers greatly from long app times.
- The inconsistency can, in my opinion, be remedied greatly by having specifically dedicated staff for the purpose, and more of it.

[Nailman]

While I do agree with the general sentiment I do disagree with some of it. The app system is generally fine as far as items go, even if it does take a while, they're naturally really tough choices - You have to take what was approved beforehand in question, and items are naturally an extremely long term effect that goes beyond what most signatures will give. More staff will generally help getting these nailed down sooner, but item apps are something that naturally takes a while; An oppressive statline on an item will result in either having someone needing to go "haha hey drop your weapon we gotta nerf it" a few years down the road or something that gets passed around to give people protagonism over their peers.

What I really can't stress enough is that the problem of applications, in my case, is about making my time feel relevant. Personally, I dislike putting together apps. They take a while, and in my case they involve going through logs because now, a scene that I had 3 weeks ago has snowballed into a bunch of different situations or served as a catalyst for how my character acts in something very relevant. Do I remember the specific day that my character talked to another one who told him to do something somewhat specific? Fuck no. But now I have to do it because if I don't put in logs I feel like my chances at approval are getting cut by a tenth of what they would otherwise be, which means now I have to go around, build an app where I have to summarize 20 logs in an effort that it will somehow summarize my character's story and even then it misses a lot of beats because every scene I do with my character, I try to make it relevant in the future.

In summary, I hate eternia homework. I love the forms, though, and I think that the best way forward is in fact to rely more on it specifically for ability applications; With the added caveat that denials would need to be put out all the same, and a more elaborated application on the forums should be an exception requested upon if there's a feel that the forms provide incomplete (or, in the case of dishonorable conduct, wrong) information. This ensures that the time of everyone involved is respected, imo; Admins take less long to process an application, it helps signatures be a thing that occurs mostly to characters who are IC relevant to the game at large, and I don't have to see someone AFK in the square for 3h saying "I'm getting logs"

[Sharrayzen]

Waiting for apps can be a jarring process. Is my two cents. I've enjoyed that change with mastery tokens and understand that some things do require deliberation, and presently it could very much just be the lack of admins on the applications side of things that make it feel like I'm waiting in a DMV line with no appointment scheduled. What did it for me is that I've had... no real success with forum applications between characters. The ones that got approved have all been through using the Google form and having Chance message me in DM. To that effect, Chance is the application team - to me.

Hell, to this day, I have an app on my old character for rune writing that has upwards of thirty views, bumped, and never got a response on it - this one goes back to basically the start of the year. However... what did get a response was when I made wedding rings for a member of the staff and it got same-day processing like a week after it.

On this current character, I'm back to apping on the forum and currently five days in. It's for the simple things like Fortuna to get the build going that makes it feel like my time is at a standstill, so I just continue to pad the application.

[Chance]

Moving signatures back to the form only, and involving all staff in that process would likely be a healthy change from all angles.

Done.

[Chance]

Brainstorming avenues of feedback for the form that doesn't involve Discord. Maybe we can leverage the in-game ticket system & have admin PM open a ticket for the person, if a staff member wants to ask them a question or has feedback.

[TheLostThing]

Brainstorming avenues of feedback for the form that doesn't involve Discord. Maybe we can leverage the in-game ticket system & have admin PM open a ticket for the person, if a staff member wants to ask them a question or has feedback.

I've seen things like that in other byond games and they usually work fairly well, and makes it easier for both staff and players to reference it later since you can see the tickets you've previously opened

[Milly]

I think the one issue of Admin PM was that it only popped up in the client, and there was no way to inherently know to open a ticket to respond unless the admin actually says so in the admin PM. Having it open up with a ticket automatically with said admin would be incredibly helpful and a great QoL improvement, imo.

[Shanal]

Also an actual feedback, small or elaborate, in case of denial instead of, "If it takes more than 3 days, you are probably denied," would be so much better, ye.

Makes it less limbo'ish and also can elaborate on *why* someone was denied, and what they can improve, yada.

[Chance]

Also an actual feedback, small or elaborate, in case of denial instead of, "If it takes more than 3 days, you are probably denied," would be so much better, ye.

Makes it less limbo'ish and also can elaborate on *why* someone was denied, and what they can improve, yada.

No. Replies aren't going to be given for every request, that was one of the major issues of the forum apps. It slows it all down. Beyond 3 days = the request wasn't granted.

To put it into more context, there's 30+ requests in a day & that's after we replied to every forum app. So it's important to understand why this trade-off is non-negotiable, and to avoid beating a dead horse in the future.

Feedback/questions might occur but not always. Currently we lack a means to do so besides forum/Discord, so we're working on that. An in-game request system would probably superior to a form anyway, using the ticket system as a base, but that's more long-term. Maybe this alternative ticket/request system can be worked into 2.0 (the feature creep grows when it was meant to be a smaller/short-term update). That would make a yes/no & attached reason, or queries, more workable for sure.

[Detective100]

If one of the main issues is that there's so many requests, "3 days equals denial" is doubly an issue.

Without a response, you won't be able to know whether you didn't get an answer because they didn't approve of the request, or because your app gor swept under the rug with all the other requests hovering above it.