Underhanded PR staff
 

This has been brought to my attention several times and I too would like to have something DONE about it. I contacted management several times about my concern but I always seem to be "forgotten". So? What better way for administration to remember than with a thread staring at them in the forums ^_^?

Now I'm sure you folks realize, that development staff are not the sole contributors to keeping the era community healthy and happy. No, Little people exist as well, "middlemen" if you will. These middlemen serve the purpose of dealing with smaller concerns, such as Inquiries, Player Issues, and Events.

Now as you know, the world doesn't revolve around sunshine and stickers, certain benefits must be claimed and distributed to keep work flowing.
Lets look at the benefits to being a member of PR staff, I mean everyone's complaining that we don't have enough active GPs, FAQs, and ETs, instead of having applications at the end of every week why don't we dig into the issue?

GP - Run around and assert yourself with a big pompous attitude, and fly around buildings like a jerk but you receive ONE EC every.... 7 hours of being ONTAG?

FAQ- Sure you get to sit on your ass and hawk the playerlist because you live to answer questions and have nothing better to do. For 7 hours of doing absolutely nothing I'll give you a shiny EC.

ET- You can't idle on tag like the other members of PR staff, no you must be busting balls, and the time you are on tag reflects the amount of ECs that are handed to you. You my friend, the most hard-working of the 3 get an EC every 7 hours.

Has anyone else ever joined an event and won an EC within under 5 minutes? Or am I the only one who finds the benefits to PR incredibly stupid? 7 hours of scratching your nuts and dealing with whinny kids or 7 hours of non-stop hosting and you get ONE EC? Lets be realistic here folks.

Now moving onto RIGHTS for completing your duty successfully.
Hey Squirt and Deo are UN guys, they know more about it than they do Era. On UN FAQs and ETs get RCs, and other unnecessary privileges.
On UN your opinion and word as a member of PR staff is allmighty. On Era you're accounted for nothing as a member of PR staff. Hey, I would love to supervise a trade or administer a bet. But if I claimed that I was present at the time of the event that would make no difference whatsoever, ETs and FAQs alike. Why is my word of advice as an FAQ with 300 hours of tagtime worth less than dirt? Who knows.

But I'm a reasonable guy and I'm not going to ask for anything more than what I need to successfully do my nut scratching duty as FAQ. I'm sure all of you have at one point asked an FAQ a question, and I'm sure some questions were related to completing quests or explaining the purpose of a building, whatever.
I cannot begin to recollect how many pms I receive asking "Please warp to me, I need help with...". So with my graciously granted FAQ powers, I hop on my skateboard and make the scene in a cloud of pearly white smoke.
I'm not asking for something silly, I'm asking for something realistic. You can even administer the warp right (since it's such a huge concern) to whoever administration and FAQ Admin deems worthy. FAQs need warp rights.

Based on that logic, ETs should get jail rights for event disruption.

How many problems in Graal actually need you to be present to show them? I bet most of those "Please warp to me PMs" are the result of someone not wanting to fully type out their situation.

"WARPTO ME EMERGENCY PLZ"
::warps::
"MY SHOVEL BROKE WHERE DO I FIX IT

Yeah, bad thing about being FAQ is that you cant do anything but sit down :[. You can't dig, pick trash, mass message ...almost nothing related to money. and no pking of course <.<.

Perhaps 1 shiny EC every 5 hours + a disscount on the NPC weapon store? :3 (just an idea...)

Though about warping rights... even though they could help you with your job... you probably wont get them x-x. Because you can do it all through PMs, shoudnt involve you answering questions personally...

When you're asked to have a quest finished, or the purpose behind "this" building is, or can you show me where the battery shop is? It's not from laziness good sir.
And ETs wouldn't need jail rights, they simply need a strong enough word to report event disruption without needing "evidence".

I want to be able to mass people. Last time I did that, I got very vulgar words that other players may find inappropriate from a number of staff members that I can't mention their names. So being an FAQ, though higher status than a player, obstructs our privilege to mass. Nice.

If they can just shove off and let me mass my stupid yet witty things, I'm good. I am a social person, I am assuming that the other FAQ members are as well. So that can be a nice privilege.
Oh of course, FAQs are not allowed to be massing what they're selling/buying/similar. Perhaps if they're caught massing SELLING LOL FOR 20K then they can get disconnected or something.

The reason for that is because when you're on staff tag, your mass messages override a players 'ignore mass messages' option. They chose to ignore those "stupid yet witty things" for a reason...Staff messages should be reserved for important things such as announcements.

EDIT: As far as the rest of this thread goes...the reason for most of the restrictions and lack of rights for PR staff is due to the fact that trust has been abused countless times.

They override ontag and offtag, it shouldn't matter. The simplest solution is not to open the bubble. I unchecked the allow mass message box, but still receive messages from staff offtag.

I miss the old days of typing up random Chuck Norris facts. People would anticipate my messages like their favorite podcast. Of course when someone asked me to stop massing all that, I'd politely yield for the remainder of the day.

Then I'd steer mass flamers into making them think they're both wrong and arguing about absolutely stupid things.

I actually did not know that ignores are overridden if it's a red speech bubble. Anyone exploiting that obviously should just get some sort of punishment for doing so. If there is strong punishment for repeatedly being an idiot, I believe that the abuse will dramatically go down.

That's only true for RC staff. You won't recieve messages from FAQs and ETs if they're not on tag and you have the ingore mass messages option enabled.

Most likely you're getting mass messages from admins on RC. RC mass messages override tag or not.

When it comes to on-player messages, you have to be on a staff tag to override.

Showing people where something is makes sense.

But you shouldn't be guiding them through a quest, there's guides for that. Especially if you end up using your invincibility on tag to help him somehow.


As for the ET thing, you missed the point.

Not necessarily. I still get Mesh's and Squirt's offtag player masses. Sales stated that because they are listed as RC staff I still receive messages.

Make your point clear instead of beating around the bush and I'll get it.

I really doubt you're getting Mesh's messages these days...

I love how he use to mass out a selling list then jump on his LAT tag as quickly as possible.

Yet, I disgress...

This is an issue, and it's not one that's really as much as a problem anymore. It's no longer possible for anyone except a select group of staff to warp in to houses (they will be warped out). The only problem is businesses, or if they'll abuse the right somehow (e.g. warping inside a base during a gang raid).

I'll let Squirt know about the problem.

People with RC will override even on player off-tag, unfortunately.
;)

We need to be able to do more as FAQ's I've been on tag over 48 hours since being hired last month and the most questions I've been asked is on the day of battle of the bands on how to vote... Same as wasser I've recieved fairly vulger pm's from staff at the time(Angel) telling me to shutup they know what we do. But the fact of the matter is I get asked more questions running around then pm's you'd be amazed how many players don't check the list (mainly hose that need the most help) another problem is when players ask where something is all I can do is point them in a direction, because if I try to take them there, someone looking for free kills will kill them even if I ask them not to