a not very important announcement

[paintballdude956]

Hi all,
This is probably a bit vain to have a forum thread about it, but I wanted to make a quick one just to announce my resignation so people who don't log on much also know.
It's been a long time coming. While I had a lot of fun being on the time, I felt like it was time to move on both for personal reasons and reasons on Graal.
I know I always didn't hit the mark on my stuff (Christmas was a bit of a mess, eh?), but I honestly gave it my best effort.
*****END ANNOUNCEMENT, BEGIN RANT**********

I just wanted to give a big shoutout to a lot of the great staff I've been lucky enough to work with.
Exolia, thanks for letting me do my thing with the devs. It was great working with you
Amsel, you're a cutie
Ice, thanks for scripting stuff when I had no idea what to do
Rogue, thanks for being a great family cat
Swift, you're a crazy kid. Thanks for being the ying to my yang. We made a good team.
Fuubaz, you make the best graphics I've ever seen on Graal
Mesh, you seriously go above and beyond your job
Namey, I'm so glad you came back <3 you make great levels and are just a swell guy
to my devs current and past, thanks for the hard work and for putting up with me.

To all the players, a shout-out and a condemnation.
Thanks for playing. Seriously. It's 2015 and I can go onto steam and buy fantastic games for like a buck or two. It's wonderful that people still play Graal in a time like this. By you guys playing, you're allowing a volunteer team of developers to work on games in a unique environment. It's a lot of fun to make new stuff. When I was hired as Gun Admin, I knew 0 about anything development related. Now I know the basics. Thanks for that.

On the other hand, I see so much hostility on the forums and in game towards staff. You all fail to realize that every level 4 admin on Era is 22+, has a job and/or goes to school. They do this in their free time for absolutely no compensation. In fact, all the staff on here do it on their free time (they get compensated with like 1 EC per 4 hours of work... that's it)

When you spew hatred at us day after day after day, are you really surprised when we quit? When we ask ourselves "why are we spending hours and hours on stuff that is not even appreciated by the ~200 people in the entire world who will actually see it?"

And what's far worse than any of that? When certain individuals side-line coach and say "why isn't it like XYZ? If I were X admin, I could do so much better." You don't know the half of it. Not only the immense work that goes in, but the amount of trust and responsibility required for these positions.
I once explained it as a certain paradox- the people you want to be high staff on graal cannot put forth the time to be high staff, and the people who want/ have the time to be high staff are not fit for the position.

The average level 4 admin is: 20+, working full time, smart (often a computer scientist or at least has a background in it), responsible. In short, we're adults. We don't have a ton of time.
Who has a ton of time? Kids or the unemployed/ people not in school. Do we want those kinds of people running Graal? Probably not, to be honest. Granted, Rick was super young when he was manager, but I think that's more of an exception than the rule.
In short, it's very hard to assemble a good team. When Exolia consulted me on who I thought would be a good gang admin, I honestly could not think of a single person whom I both trusted and thought would be a good fit. That's unfortunate, but true.

So, sorry for the rant. I'm only speaking for myself here and not the rest of the team. Take it all with a grain of salt.
Love,
Ish Soul