^

This

Im going to be honest, Im not entirely sure what restraints you are referring to for GMs. From a GM point of view this is the most free I have ever been to do whatever I want and to be as creative I want. I think I would need to hear about specific examples, now granted I havnt been as active as a GM as of late mainly due to real life obligations and technical issues making it nearly impossible for me to host events without timing out or rubberbanding across the map but as far as I am aware GMs are able to use nearly anything on the server, they just need to go through the proper lines of approval for it, witch is not hard to do in the slightest.

I will say since being a GM I find it rather unmotivating to draw up a story and create an event for people just for them to sit in the DB line and call each other femboys for 20 minutes instead of trying to participate in the RP that I spent 2 hours planning (this is another big reason I dont host as many events anymore).

When it comes to the server taking a turn from semi-serious to medium-serious I dont really see that either, whether that be because I stick to my own "clique" and ignore nearly everyone who trys to change the way me and my people choose to play the game or it hasnt impacted my group as much I'm not sure.

One thing I would also like to mention is that GMs are pretty much going into a soft reset right now now that the leadership has up and left, I'm hopeful that Caleb and whoever else ends up in the GM leadership positions will be able change some of the things you are referring to.

Im going to agree with Resin on the GM point of view, in hindsight some GMs even lack that slight bit of creativity we look for in events as players. Like full on just doing straight warfare for 2 hours tends to get stale. I will say Im not the greatest builder sadly but sometimes players do tend to not even care for events or even if they are on they just don't pay any mind to it. Also from a pyke perspective at times some of my members wish to do events and have their fun but are restricted by GMs to participate to the point now where if Pyke are even allowed its a rare sight to see as they have been demotivated from participating in such things.

I also agree with this, it can be quite disheartening to put effort into something that you make for others and its just sidestepped for a cool rock, this much I agree. People do have low attention spans and tend to be ADHD brained and don't realise they have stuff they can do, then drift off and end up in there own area doing a completely different task, its sometimes like herding cats. I am guilty of this, as I have been distracted by something funny or cool, or caught up with a conversation with others while the 3 people are doing the only assigned RP negotiations usually where 98% of the player base sort of clocks off till its done, but in general events, where there is stuff to do and activities for them to be having fun with it would be awful for your effort to be ignored.

along with this, a lot of gms straight up just don't assist in sims that are too complicated i feel. at one point we waited for 30 minutes during a tryout when multiple gms were active on their rp job, most likely not doing anything

i mean i became a TGM only recently so i wasnt really aware of this tbh

In response to Jimmy, if you run into that issue again feel free to ping a GM or even dm me and I can ping the entire team because that is something we have been trying really hard to be better at.

I personally am not a fan of On maps but that is just because I am running out of ideas for things to do on the SOG map and because On Maps often times get ignored by the people and they just do not bother to join them even though some of them have great RP oppurtunities and some mixed combat. The problem is that alot of people are used to sloppy half crap 1 hour base defence On Maps that are boring. While there are stil lsome similiar ones the GM team is currently alot more creative with their events even On Maps.

My guess is just that alot of people are tired from the amount of On Maps lately and would like to see more Off Maps with more engaging gameplay then just Lag simulator or Point and Shoot adventure simulator etc..

As for GMs not bothering to assist in Tickets. That is just straight up refusal to do their job that they applied for. The biggest job of any GM is to assist the playerbase and then come the events not the other way around so as Resin said if you run into that problem or see someone else with that problem feel free to contact one of us or make a anonymous Report!

I mean as far as any concerns about pushing the GM team toward a more “medium-serious” expectation, yeah, 100%. That wasn’t something that just appeared out of nowhere. That was the mentality I was pushed toward as an SGM, and it was reinforced through conversations with Management and HCOMM.

The difference is that GMCs were pretty much the only ones actually trying to follow through on that shift. (Vexin and I, specifically.)

When I was an SGM, one of the most consistent complaints I got was that events just weren’t fun. I heard “events aren’t engaging,” “there’s nothing going on for my battalion,” and “combat-only events are getting old” constantly.

So when I moved into GMC, I tried to push toward more involved events and a better variety. I’ll be the first to say I could’ve handled parts of that better, but it also didn’t really move the needle the way I expected it to.

What ended up happening was:

• GMs started getting wary of running more involved events because engagement just wasn’t there

• And at the same time, some people fell back into running the exact same events with the exact same outcomes as before.

And that’s where things just stalled out.

I’ve seen genuinely great events come out of the GM team, but player engagement still falls flat more often than it should, and I’ll be honest, I couldn’t fully figure out why before I burned out on it.

A big part of that, in my opinion, comes down to a lack of alignment between GM, HCOMM, and Management. It consistently felt like HCOMM was running the show, Management was there to stop anything too wild, and GMs were just expected to adjust and “get back to work.”

Take that however you want, but that’s how it came across from my side. I will say, to be fair, Management did make sure we had access to addons or tools when it actually made sense. The issue was more with the bigger picture concepts. Those either seemed to fall flat, or we’d get questioned on what we were even talking about, like the problem didn’t exist in the first place.

Another thing worth pointing out, Management was almost always present for Staff meetings (which, let’s be honest, lasted all of 5 minutes), but once Vexin and I started doing bi-weekly GM meetings, they were rarely there. Oh, and a Head Admin that only ever dealt with one member of HCOMM and budget logs... Make that make sense.

That doesn’t really help when the group being affected by a lot of these decisions is the GM team (or lack of decisions).

At the end of the day, I don’t think this is just a GM issue, and I don’t think it’s just a player issue either. But if the groups that are supposed to be aligned aren’t actually communicating or showing up where it matters, then yeah this is the result you get.