Then it comes down again to communication Ruta because players have no idea what's been thought about and what's not. You can't be afraid to ask your own audience for help and that's been a problem for a long time, even mentioned in the OP. Transformice is a game that heavily relies on player made content, so it's not shameful or strange to ask players for help. To me, it makes even less sense to not include the players.
Of course I can only give quarterback advice, I'm not qualified to write a full blown strategy, plan for them but it is possible to collect all the advice from different players and develop a strategy based on that or explain why some things could never work. It's never going to be easy or quick.

That is why I said there are a thousand other factors that needs to be taken into consideration but without proper experience, I won't be able to diagnose them. Just from the top of my head, there's flash, official papers to fill out, taxes to pay, legal procedures, contacting officials for serious offenses and all this work being affected by our everyday life and problems. It's already hell and I probably haven't even touched 5% of the workload there is.

I can say "A'ight, I have no experience and any say in how this company deals business" or I can say "A'ight, give me something, let me help even if it only means writing a blog post"

Criticisms of communication between staff and players is an absolutely fair criticism. In fact, I even agree that Atelier801 can do better in that regard. That's not what I've been talking about, though. Meli and Tig have always encouraged suggestions and feedback from their staff and the community about TFM. They are not asking for advice on what games/titles to spend time or money on.

I encourage you and everyone else to say "How can I help TFM" but do not imply "Meli and Tig clearly have no idea what they're doing and the solution to fix it is obvious"

Rutabega a dit :

Criticisms of communication between staff and players is an absolutely fair criticism. In fact, I even agree that Atelier801 can do better in that regard. That's not what I've been talking about, though. Meli and Tig have always encouraged suggestions and feedback from their staff and the community about TFM. They are not asking for advice on what games/titles to spend time or money on.

I encourage you and everyone else to say "How can I help TFM" but do not imply "Meli and Tig clearly have no idea what they're doing and the solution to fix it is obvious"

No, sorry. It was not my point to tell, that Tig and Meli did something wrong... My apologize if you did interpret that way.
Obviously, I wanted to say, that its time to take risks, make something different, something new, what will not be easy, however it will work as a snow (stable basis, but not enough as solid soil) with user help, so refresh will be necessary all the time. Lack of interaction between staffs and users are very bad think, because they can't hear any feedback regarding what users are saying. It's not Melanie's fault, because users interact with staff members and staff is interacting with admins (also in GTArcade, listen to moderator overall feedback, what users said and give small shortcut of everything) so with that I want to say that administrators are putting half of their community responsibility to staff members (Sentinels in Forums, Mods in Game). As I see, this was handled, but not well enough, because I really do hear a lot of criticism from users. So, this must be changed.
First step was communication improving, what is very very offensive, but quite a good strategy, because now Meli doesn't put so much responsibility on staffs and you can even see, that Meli is visiting forums and Discord more often, that means, she see by her own, what is going on in forums and discord. It won't be solvation forever, but it could be maintained for quite a time (if she has it), till moderators could improve communication with users (What is already in process).
Second step, I also saw application opening for staffless communities and here I also want to say (why staffs were sleeping? why in 2020? why it couldn't be 2018?). That made confusion among people, who wanted to join in 2018, but didn't know how or didn't check other forums, like EN. How they could know if apply forms are open? How could they know, how to join without any link in their own community but only edited message -''applystaff801''? At least, this issue is solved too, but took very, very long time.

I love you Ruta and you have put a lot of effort in Atelier801 community and gave your heart in it as well. You are also more experienced in those matters than I am, however, admins were not blind, but few staff members were, because their job is to notify admins and give them proper feedback. That is probably why there is such a big downfall since 2018. and everyone start to talk only now.

It's very hard for me to think about proper solution as well as Peanut, but I ain't defeated yet, as well as you, as well as staffs. I can see they are still on ropes and are not going to let go those ropes so easily. But proper care is necessary. We could share our small pieces of our soul Ruta and we, living players, who have no control over game, nor staff, would like to ask for changes, because its time. This time is now to take risks, listen for feedbacks and make something new and I believe, with your and other support we can do this and put an end to those hard times ahead of us, but we must to support Meli and Tig very much now...

And more I want to add- staffs are now doing great, moderation is in process and unfair bans now can be discussed, also interaction with users is improving, but that won't solve all users dissatisfaction, so it's up to you guys to think something out how maybe y'all could improve something or if our help will be necessary. Way will be long, but won't be unbearable.

Rutabega a dit :

I encourage you and everyone else to say "How can I help TFM" but do not imply "Meli and Tig clearly have no idea what they're doing and the solution to fix it is obvious"

Transformice is their only real source of income, and seemingly tig does not want to work on it simply because he is bored of it which should be outrageous to everyone who works with him. I don't think this is such an unreasonable position to take.

a dit :

They are not asking for advice on what games/titles to spend time or money on.

This is quite literally one of the problems. Normally developers are able to gauge community interest in things, but when they can't they ask players what they would like to see and/or hold polls so that they have an idea of how to move forward. A801 doesn't do this. They completely ignore their suggestions forums and act on whim.


Again, you can disagree with what's being said but trying to police the content of this conversation is ridiculous. It's clear you care about meli and tig but that doesn't mean that you can tell people what they are and aren't allowed to say about them.

Chiaotzu2 a dit :

yeha remember how the mods swept what happened with [removed] under the rug? its no surprise creeps like [removed], [removed], and [removed] could continue their shit for so long. This game has a problem with adults creeping on kids and the mods are complacent in it.

If you have solid evidence of adults creeping on kids, please send it to a moderator, or feel free to contact the police if it is at that point. Spreading names only creates rumors and exaggerates the story, and obviously we cannot go into details for the sake of privacy. Some people who break the rules may deserve to be named and shamed, but most do not, and we will not stoop to that level.

There was an incident not even a week ago like this brought to the mods and they acted immediately so cheers to them on that

This "adult creeping" stuff is way how to use our breath unnecessary. We're civilized humans and only deal with issues in civilized manner. Katburger is completely right about own view, what he mentioned in his comment, however, I must admit that provoking persons, who are in anger and saying them "go to police" is recklessly and unwise. It's critic, that you must to deal with (for now) as people are already fired up and bringing more fuel won't be best idea.
Players need to agree what our staff is trying to tell, even tho it's unfair, because they are only solvation and child's play with words Chiaotzu2 won't help this situation at all. Expressing your own opinion is good, however I think this is the time, when staff members need most of our support.

a dit :

In this situation no. You can have people who refer qualified and suitable candidates. Then you have people who will refer their friend because it would be "fun" to be on the same team together even if they know they aren't the best fit. In this situation we got stuck with that second scenario...

Back when I was more active and doing applications, I remember realizing that I wouldn't actually recommend anyone on my friends list then to be a staff member. Today, mods can say if they think their friend would be suitable, but they are not allowed to vote for them.

a dit :

Additionally you could have trainings where once a moderator starts, they have limited power and they're assessed if everyone thinks they're capable.

This is how the system works already! New staff member start in a smaller position, like a mini-mod. They also have a trial period as a private mod, and now as a public mod using the Anonymod account.

It would be nice if admins could be more involved in the moderation teams, but there's only Meli and Tig left. Meli can handle important issues that come up, but she doesn't have time to babysit staff.

Please don't judge the current team by events that happened 7 years ago! I don't think there are many staff left who were part of that.

a dit :

they already have a shortlist of candidates even before applications are open.

Why do you think this? This has never been the case, at least for EN. When I handled applications, every mod knew very few of the candidates. I mentioned this earlier in the thread:

Katburger a dit :

Since the beginning of Transformice time, people have always said mods only hire friends. As a staff member, you have seen all the new people who join staff, can you think of any that were friends with multiple mods before joining? If so, I can point to the large majority who were not friends. When I was still a mod, I never personally knew more than one person we hired in each round. I still know zero people who are being considered for international teams. This has been accused so many times, and it's incredibly frustrating to see no proof from players besides they themselves not being hired and assuming it was because they don't have mod friends. For every one hired who happened to be friends with a staff member, there are many others who we had no idea who they were before hiring. I would be more than happy to talk about specific people's cases in private.

Lelianna a dit :

Lament a dit :VoirMasquer

Your story is flawed from the beginning, no player will be banned purely off of reports.

MMMMMMMMMM That's not true for some power driven mods, we can't EXACTLY say who, but i bet my entire life savings there's that ONE person

If you know exactly who, please send information to me, another staff member, or the admins. Staff members don't have time to watch every single action taken by other staff, so if someone really is abusing bans, we won't know unless a player talks to us. Banning players for no good reason doesn't really make sense though. It creates more work for all of us, because then we have to deal with player ban appeals. Besides that, you shouldn't judge an entire group of people by the actions of one member!