Hey @kingray12,
Before I say anything else I want to thank you for being reasonably cordial about your feedback here. I don’t agree with a few things you’re saying here, but it makes a huge difference when players post in good faith to have a discussion and not just to make personal attacks on the staff.
Regarding you specific concerns, this jumps out at me as the biggest misunderstanding:
bias
We are all biased yeah, which is something we try to acknowledge and account for. Our rules were written with this in mind, amongst other things.
Some of the rules are up for interpretation, which is an unfortunate necessity given that when we had more concrete rules in the past, trolls in the community would find loopholes to sow discontent only to say stuff like “technically i’m not breaking any rules. mod abuse!”.
Needless to say, dealing with that is both tiring for the team and a bad experience for the wider playerbase. Hence the change to more subjective enforcement, which means our enforcement is affected by bias. We are human, after all.
regulated
The good news though, is that your point about that the mods “answer to no one” couldn’t be further from the truth. They all answer to me as the owner, and ultimately I answer to the players. IC is my business now, and if I fail the community then I fail my investment, and at its extreme this would mean I’d eventually have to shut IC down.
Obviously, nobody wants this, which is why we do have guidelines in place for the mods to follow. A lot goes on behind the scenes that the players don’t see before moderators take any action. We have lots of conversations, both between mods and other mods and between all of the mods and me. It is very much regulated and they very much do answer to somebody.
Of course we aren’t perfect, and I’ve openly acknowledged that we always want to improve. This is why, after all, that constructive criticism as yours is not only welcome but encouraged.
The fact that we didn’t delete your post here, and are actively involved in a discussion with you should be evidence enough that we aren’t, as you put it, “quick to lay down the 'Hammer”'and enforce thier ‘laws’” simply because we are “opposed”.
When the mods take action, it is because a rule is violated. That’s the only reason mods ever take any action. Why else would they voluntarily do work in their free time for an unpaid job just so they can often be bashed over it, including personal attacks and sometimes even threats?
The reason is simple: they’re doing their jobs as I’ve directed them to. That’s the only reasons mods do anything. That’s why I hired them.
That doesn’t mean that they won’t ever make a mistake or mishandle an interaction with a player. I myself do that more often than I’d like. We never claim to be perfect, only that we’re doing our best to manage a community.
Do you have specific examples of this?
As far as I can tell we literally have a 100% response rate for any player who contacts us about anything, including discontent, and including when players message us to personally attack us.
The only possible exception I can see is for players who raise issues in chat, but chat is for community support, not official support.
If any player ever wants to contact us about anything, they are always free to message @Imperial_Conflict or specifically @game-moderators for game-related issues. We will respond to anybody.
The idea that we actively ignore anybody, including unhappy players, is contrary the systems I’ve set up in the last 2 years specifically to facilitate feedback.
If you have specific instances of something you find to be horribly done, we’re all ears. We can’t fix generalized statements like the one above, but we can address specific issues and aim to improve our processes.
Yeah, ETA is right now, as in we’ve been actively adapting to player feedback for the last 2 years. Despite our most cynical players claiming otherwise, we listen to our players.
I appreciate you expressing your thoughts, and doing so constructively. This thread itself is proof that the system in place is working as designed.