A Post-Mortem for Kingsmouth

[surreality]

@mietze said:

Surr, the draconian policy on no staff alts being allowed to have positions of power or huge influence was one of the things that kept the community (of players who are/have been/probably will be at each others throats and princessing and cutting each other out of play on other games) from doing that on RfK. Huge, glaring You Shall Not Pass CoI demarcation with wide lines. It was fantastic. I think that's what made the politics happen ICly as much as the downtime system. That and headstaff with balls AND a customer service touch.

I get what you're saying here; I simply disagree with it wholeheartedly.

That policy essentially states: "the people I hired to run the game can't be trusted to handle these matters impartially or otherwise hand it off to someone else to avoid CoI". It's what it comes down to in the end.

That's exceptionally destructive, as it sets up the expectation that staff could not be trusted to behave properly without those rules in place, when "don't process your own jobs, those of your close associates, or jobs that otherwise involve you" covers it without restricting happy fun times for anyone or implying that your staff members cannot be trusted to be fair if they are also enjoying the game in the same way as any other player is allowed to do.

And that's just nonsense. Plenty of staff can, do, and have done, every day, many for years on end. I would never hire someone who I couldn't trust to do so in the first place.

It feeds the paranoid nonsense by coddling it, frankly, and more or less says people simply can't be trusted. Some people can't. Some can. Hire the ones that can, if someone proves otherwise, fire them. This punished everyone for the sake of the fear of bad apples, which are considerably less common than the tasty kind without rotten cores.

[Derp]

This is one of those rare times when I'm in agreement with @Surreality. Implementing a policy like that not only sends a bad message, it slows down what could otherwise be a considerably faster process, especially if you have a small staff where each staffer focuses on specific areas in which they are more knowledgeable.

Not processing my own jobs, sure, I can get behind that. (I don't think this is entirely necessary in the case of xp spends, really, as current setups have beaucoup documentation of what goes where and when and how, and this can even be handled by automation in lots of cases), but those of my close associates? Yeah, I'm gonna do those. Why? Because having to flag someone else down and explain to them exactly what they're looking at and how it came to pass and what the various rules surrounding it are is a huge pain in the ass, a considerable drain on both me and the person I have to flag down to do it, and is generally more work than it's worth. I'm trusted to use my judgment. I've told people 'no'. Even close friends. I've processed jobs for people I don't personally like as fairly and consistently as I would for other people, and when I thought my judgment was questionable, then I would absolutely go to another person and give them a rundown to get their ideas on it.

That's part of the job. As much as people think that it would be great to run things with an amount of oversight that would make 1984 look all freewheeling and loose, it's simply not feasible. You have to trust the staff. If you don't trust the staff, don't hire those people. If you can't find a handful of people that you would trust to help you run a game, then perhaps running a game is not for you.

[mietze]

It had nothing to do with processing jobs.

[Derp]

@mietze

Perhaps not, but overly stringent COI things are part of that slowdown, and burn-out and such were being discussed there as well.

But if you want to address some other points of it, things like this disincentivize people to participate in anything above a player level. There is always some amount of that with a staffing position, but as others have said, most of the interaction between other players and yourself had something to do with domain stuff -- and if you were locked out of that, then there was basically no reason for you to play other than to just chat with friends.

Staff incentives have been debated back and forth to death, with good points on either side of the line. Philosophically, there's a reason to take both approaches. But in more practical ways, it behooves everyone to try and keep staff active and happy and invested in the game, an investment they cannot make if they can't partake of something on the same level as the players. That's where your burnout comes from. That's where you have trouble finding replacement staff. That's where a lot of the problems that have been discussed come from.

Which again, circles back to my original point -- you have to trust your staff. You have to trust them to have a good time and still behave responsibly. You have to trust that they're in it to make sure that other people are having fun. You have to trust that the minute you turn your back they're going to continue doing exactly what they were doing when you were there, and sure, occasionally run a quick little audit of, I dunno, job logs or something to see what's going on where just to assure yourself that it's all on the up and up. But policies like this are self-defeating.

So while philosophically, yes, there could be a reason to do this, you're going to find it difficult to find someone so committed to this principle that they're willing to sacrifice their own fun and do a shitload of what's being described as government bureacracy style work in order to keep their moral compass pointed in a specific direction. And lo, problems arise. So the practical approach is really the only one that's feasible in the long term.

[Ganymede]

@Derp said:

Implementing a policy like that not only sends a bad message, it slows down what could otherwise be a considerably faster process, especially if you have a small staff where each staffer focuses on specific areas in which they are more knowledgeable.

I don't think it sends a bad message per se. I don't think it's a good policy for all of the reasons you and @surreality have raised. But it seems to have worked the game for a long time, until, at long last, there were too many active players to serve.

I would not have imposed such a policy, but I understand the reasons why someone would put it in place.

[Bobotron]

@Apos
I'm not @Alzie , but as someone who is working on similar systems, and looked in depth at some of the things Alzie mentioned... there are things involved there that you can't really automate, especially if you use the same level of depth that RfK did.

Investigations and crises, for example. Most of the time I would have assumed at LEAST 2 players were involved, particularly if Character A is fucking with Character B in order to smash her resources. So a job is opened by Character A regarding setting up a couple of gang riots, an arson and a murder to draw the cops. Character B has to respond to this and both jobs require staff attention. But player B had an investigation job opened, and so staff have to look at what stuff Character A and Character B have in play (stealth, influence, etc.).

There's no real way to automate that. And it is insanely burnout-building. I run a 40-person LARP RL and I have this type of stuff go on. I have five staffers besides myself, one specifically dedicated to doing only Influence and the rest of us wear many hats to ensure that things are run well, and the only reason we have a good handle on it is because things are limited and that limit makes it managable.

You'd need to set up simpler systems to simplify the overhead. The LARP stuff I'm using for TheatreMUSH, for example, limits downtimes to 3 'downtime actions' per a particular period (2 weeks in default), plus certain exceptions that give you more, but never will one character be doing SO MUCH small stuff that it takes forever to adjudicate.

Systems can't replace actually having trust in your players to handle themselves appropriately either. Sure, you can automate some questionable things like xp spends, but there has to be a point when you are willing to trust that someone who is on staff, who has a powerful PC, is NOT going to abuse that power. I've played on plenty of games where staff had powerful PCs, though none of them WoD and none of them non-consent, but the issues we had were so few and far between (I remember about 3 times someone broke a rule regarding stuff like that, and when we found out they were fired for breaking policy), and it worked out fine.

[mietze]

As a player of a PC who was ineligible to hold domain, I disagree that if you couldn't then there was no other reason to log in other than to chat with friends. If anything, RfK was a place where there was often too much to do to get it done, even if you were not a territory holder.

I do think that attitude of I must be eligble to have all things/do all things and be staff is part of what has contributed to a lot of player-staff mistrust in general, though.

Staff on RfK was not divvied into spheres. All staff on RfK played in their own sphere. All but a very few (the "helper" people) had access to everyone's +jobs and everyone's weekly beatsheet submissions, which frankly gave a ton of inside info on alliances, who was plotting with/against whom, ect--and most if not all also had people they were allied with ICly (they could support people and help people, just not take that position themselves or be the kingpin of that territory). So frankly, there /was/ a high degree of trust required of virtually all staff members top to bottom that I've not really seen elsewhere.

I believe that even "scarred" people were able to relax on RfK because there were very clear boundaries and lines. Most places do not do that well--and it sets everyone up for resentment/failure. There are different ways to go about it--for example, Eldritch has unmovable NPCs occupying all major roles, don't they? So that is one way to eliminate staff alts from even the appearance of using insider info to grab that prince/major mover and shaker spot, because you're denying it to everyone, not just staff. I see that as a valid thing (and there are people who will refuse to play at a place they have no hope of getting whatever they want, just as there are people who will not play or staff at a place that puts restrictions on what staff alts can do). Could the boundaries been moved, sure. But when they started to slip without clarity (I've said many times and I will say it again--it's the absolute clarity of boundaries that I think helped make that community) then things really started to unravel trust wise and otherwise before it closed.

And also, yes--having headstaff willing to /fire/ cheaters and abusers staffside and playerside...immensely, immensely helpful. Most do not have the guts. It's been a rarity in what I've seen in MUSHing. Even better, Shava was able to say no/issue warnings/ect without being a massive asshole (most of the time. She's human, I'm sure there must have at least been SOMETIMES where she failed at that). Like I said, customer care--with big gonads.

[Alzie]

@bobotron Investigations were completely automated actually. Including the results and interception chance for patrols. You mentioned the word sane in your post. I do not know what this word means.

@apos The last system I was coding was +sorcery. I got it up to where it would list all sorceries you had, their theme information, your keywords as given to us and your theme ranks as well as the info for what you could do with those ranks. My desire and intention was automated sorcery where a job would only be created if it targeted another player. I never finished that. It made me sad, but c'est la vie.

@derp If you think the rules were about XP Spends you have no idea. We tracked so much information about XP Spends I could have known when you decided to give someone a random skill on a sunday at 1am by using @force on another person. XP Spends were not the issue.

[ThatGuyThere]

I know I ma tin the minority but I agree with the policy.
If it boils down that you can either trust people or not then why have a rule against staff handling their own jobs?
the thing is for the most part i do not know the various staffers places so there fore I do not trust them, just like i do not trust a random stranger on the street in real life so I know I give more attention to places with restrictive polices as a perspective player because while they might not be followed there is a change where games without out them are almost assuredly going to have issues.
I guess it come down to my disagreeing with @surreality belief that the good apples outnumber the bad,I do not believe this to be true in the MUSH world or the meat one.

[mietze]

@surreality said:

Taking the 'distrust by default' approach, which RfK initially did in this case, exacerbates the problem considerably. Why? Because you've already established that you needed rules to prevent staff from playing because they can't be trusted to not cheat or be unfair if they're doing both. When you establish and foster that mentality among the playerbase, you encourage the worst elements of paranoia and staff vs. player dynamics from the top down.

I want to address this directly. I think taking that viewpoint above is a very combative one as well. Why is it that, vs. "We wish to establish an environment for players where they do not have to worry about PvP conflict with staff alts, as part of the culture of our game."

As I have mentioned above, there was a high degree of trust given and intrinsic to RfK staff that is largely absent on other games (I think this was more circumstance than anything else--it was single sphere and small based. Even TR had rules about playing in one's own sphere now and then (and always broken too). Many massively multisphere games I've seen don't permit sphere staff to hold important positions in their own spheres.

If anything the policy was not "distrust by default" but "establishing trust by having clear boundaries that are adhered to." The fact that you assume that it's distrust by default and staff slamming /is/ part of the problem, created by us as a community with our us vs. them mentality.

Establishing boundaries does not have to be us vs. them. If anything, I think it does a lot to head it off.

Setting rules of engagement to create the environment you want (and there are many ways to do this) does /not/ say anything about the level of trust involved--it's just a tool/vision for how to accomplish your vision.

Should we assume that all staff who set up a game where there is no chance of any player being able to wield a faction head or sphere-head position ICly are doing so because they hate/distrust all of their players? Some people do, but I think that's stupid. It's just staff on that game establishing the boundaries they are comfortable with and making it clear to everyone where those are. And personally, I feel that's a valid thing to do as well.

I play on a variety of game setups, and I support each one. It's easy for me to do because I don't give a shit about positions. However, a staff that sets boundaries with clarity wins a lot of sanity points with me.

[BallisticOrange]

Every game has its mistakes. Looking back, the deluge coming in from The Reach tipped the earlier model for a smaller, active player base administered by a relatively small cohesive staff past the breaking point. The influx in such a short time prevented many of those new players from setting down roots in the same way other PCs did in weeks or months before. Not everyone found RfK's model worked for them, sure. A good many did, and Shava went out of her way to link up similar characters or invest them with inroads. Older PCs helped me settle into the game, and the friendly atmosphere never really broke down but it did become hard to know other players/characters when the +who list jumped exponentially in a short time. That's common on multisphere games. On a single sphere game that underlined community, it marked a definite sea change. It makes me a little wistful for when times were manageable, though the influx brought some truly memorable and great players. So there's that.

How could two to five people give the same personal levels of attention for fifty-five people in short order that they had for thirty, many who trickled in week by week instead of a bulge that never stopped? It's no wonder beatsheets were taking so long to process. Pretty sure staff was burning out through real life commitments and trying to juggle a much more voracious demand on them. NPC interactions and scenes dwindled as staff turned more of their attention to balancing the many requests being put in. Don't know we can point the finger at any one source of activity overwhelming the rest. Investigations definitely ranked high as well as the usual complicated rules questions for blood sorcery rituals. Legwork could turn over pretty fast. XP spends were processed very quickly with a minimum of additional hoops, something that changed my personal opinion of automated spends.

RfK's crisis (and its overall downtime) system seemed to eat up more time than intended with several expansions between 1.0 and the intended 3.0 release. Much as I loved the OSS system, the extra layers of complication didn't do staff favours. Not with the playerbase size they had. Further tweaks to streamline may have made it workable, but it was still a very elaborate bit of work to learn. It wasn't everyone's cup of tea. If you learned and mastered it, you could have an incredible time and add new dimensions to RP. For vampires, it gave incentive to really RP with ghouls and mortals.

Dedicated territory/influence admins helped reduce the overhead somewhat. These admins still had to refer questions back to Shavalyoth and other staff for complicated questions, and there was commentary towards the end that big plots lacked sufficient notes to sustain.

[surreality]

@mietze said:

@surreality said:

Taking the 'distrust by default' approach, which RfK initially did in this case, exacerbates the problem considerably. Why? Because you've already established that you needed rules to prevent staff from playing because they can't be trusted to not cheat or be unfair if they're doing both. When you establish and foster that mentality among the playerbase, you encourage the worst elements of paranoia and staff vs. player dynamics from the top down.

I want to address this directly. I think taking that viewpoint above is a very combative one as well. Why is it that, vs. "We wish to establish an environment for players where they do not have to worry about PvP conflict with staff alts, as part of the culture of our game."

Because PvP conflict with staff alts is not, and should never be, handled any differently, ever, under any circumstances, as PvP conflict with any other person on the game. Period.

Which means having to place rules there is bullshit coddling of either cheaters -- by preventing them from cheating (in easy ways and forcing them to be more subtle about it because if someone's going to play unfair they're going to find another way to do it anyway) in which case gods help you if you gave them authority in the first place -- or of paranoia. And both of these things need to stop for any semblance of health to return to this hobby. Both are egregiously entitled mindsets, and both need to go.

[ThatGuyThere]

@surreality
But Staff are not like other players, knowing the people running things given inherent advantages. Not even in a deliberate sense but in a they I know how the boss thinks sense.
Are all staff no, but no one can tell me that none are. And yes some cheaters will likely find other ways to cheat, but just because my locked door won't stop a determined thief doesn't mean I plan on keeping mine open when I go to bed tonight.
Human beings are very fallible when it comes on picking out who is actually trustworthy and not,, so your wonderful policy of only hiring people you trust is likely just as useful as a locked door, it will keep some out but not all, and by your statement of that some will still cheat as a counter to other policies, well you as a human will still pick wrong.
I know I have trusted the wrong people before both online and off, so are you seriously claim you have never don't that or somehow immune for picking wrong again?
As far as returning heath to the hobby as you said at what moment has this hobby been healthy in regards to staff player relationships? I am sure we can point to particular games for a limited time but in general there has been a aura of mistrust on at least WoD games since the mid 90s.

[surreality]

@ThatGuyThere No one is immune to backing a crappy horse. That's a given. Similarly, perfectly awesome people can still fuck up unintentionally and/or have some kind of crazypants moment of total mental breakdown and go bonkers all of a sudden.

MU* is no more immune to this happening than any other aspect of reality and having an expectation that it will -- or even could -- is... well, it may take me a bit to whittle down the adjectives for ZOMG HAHAHAHAHA ARE YOU CRAZY that should be associated with that notion.

You are not going to immunize people with the policy that RfK had any more than any other policy, and its policy has all the downsides attached that I've described before.

I can't, for instance, say I ever had any 'advantages' on TR when I was staffing there in terms of what I knew or didn't know. I got along with most people fine but never asked for -- and never would have dreamed of asking for -- special favors. (Hint: if someone is the type to do this, don't fucking hire them, omg.) I got so busy with staffing on Reno I more or less never had the chance to actually play again• so I can't say I had any advantage there, either...

You are supposed to trust staff to handle whatever shit you need handled in a fair and even-handed manner. If you don't or can't, don't play there. Your personal baggage is not their problem and it is not their duty to cater to your personal emotional damage that some other staffer did ten years ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Rules that essentially say "we can't trust our staff to play fair so we don't let them do things" doesn't help, it codifies that idea that staff cannot be trusted to be fair.

•I think you were witness to my sole, pathetic attempt at such on Nora, where I got all of three dinky-ass poses out before I got dragged back to the salt mines to tend everyone else's fun and/or drama without even a chance to pose out, so I think that speaks for itself.

[mietze]

I really don't understand why you are going so nuclear either/or, Surr. I really don't.

And nobody has talked about immunizing anything. As I have said, repeatedly, I think the absolute most important thing are clear, defined, enforced boundaries. There is no One True Way of staffing or running a MUSH. It has been my experience that wishy washy boundaries make for trouble though. And frankly, I thought you'd agree with that, as we've talked about it at length before.

However, for that particular group of vampire players, given the cultures of the surrounding games and what Shava appeared to me to be attempting to establish on her own game, I do think that it was uniquely successful in promoting staff-player and player-staff trust...until the clear boundaries began to slip.

Dunno why you feel you need to shift into this "This policy is always evil ALWAYS." I think this extremism is detrimental to the hobby/culture. I don't think it's kind or rational or smart.

Staffing models on massively multisphere games are probably going to have to be by definition very different from small single sphere. And even from MUSH to MUSH in the same "class" of size or breadth, there's lots of room for different styles. I don't know why this is such a hard concept to get across, but apparently it is and I'm certainly failing in this regard. I do wish that people would stop viewing preferences as attacks, on all sides. It's not okay to come onto a game and then scream about how much it sucks that it's not like this other game one once new. All that does is create animosity, and it's /rude/ and unkind. So is making a game's rules and then sneering at anything else that doesn't do things the same way.

Again, I don't think it has anything to do with trust. RfK staff were certainly entrusted with a hell of a lot more than I've seen on anything but full concent/open sheet games. But for whatever reason, folks seem to be absolutely lockjaw fixated on OMG STAFF PCs COULD NOT HOLD ANY POSITION THEY WANTED TO OMG. I am mystified as to why, as I have played on very VERY few mushes that were not sandboxes were there were not some restrictions on position holders or certain classes of PCs or what staff could/couldn't do.

[ThatGuyThere]

@surreality
I play the places I can find fun trusting staff has nothing to do with it ever, except isn't a few cases like Spider but even with bad staffers she is her own special corner case of bad.
I don;t distrust staff anywhere i play but i do not trust them either.
Earlier you said staff shouldn't hand;e their own jobs? Well why not? If it is just about people you can trust either you can trust them to handle their own jobs or not at all right?
As far as trusting staff to play on a game, show me one places that has a policy that states you must trust staff to play here? I have yet to see it and i am one of the strange minority that actually reads news and policies.
Would I think RfKs policy to be necessary on all games? No but on a highly antagonistic atmosphere like a Vamp game yes i think it would me. For back up on that point please see every Fading Suns game attempted to date.

[surreality]

@mietze The 'immunizing' stuff is in response to @ThatGuyThere -- the last bit of the post above mine. I don't think it's possible to immunize, and with methods that do more harm than good IMO, it's just doing more damage while pretending it's possible to create a perfect world.

Partly why it baffles me we're not on the same page is that -- well, we have worked together. I've seen how diligent you are about CoI, and consider you a seriously amazing role model.

You didn't need rules demanding that... that's just what you did because you knew it was the right thing to do, you know? I would trust you to staff on a game I was running in a hot second! (And if I ever get the place I'm slowly prodding together I am seriously going to puppy dog eyes at you, woman, because I think it may be right up your alley and I KNOW you are trustworthy.)

I'm very much in favor, personally, of 'some pivotal roles will remain in NPC hands full stop' for the sake of continuity/etc. on the game, as a player resource. But here's the thing... while those characters are not personal PCs, they're often staff-run if they're of the high end type. (I am also super fond of 'local color NPCs that any player can pose in accordance with whatever notes are provided for the NPC, like 'the waitress that always is stuck with night shift at the diner and remembers everybody's order the moment they walk through the door', etc., but they're a different animal entirely.) Since often enough these NPCs are more powerful than the average PC, I would actually worry more about the potential for abuse there than on a staff PC that, say, owns a club they consider their domain that is their build, is the head of a coterie/pack, or is some important person's second or advisor/etc.

I get the attachment argument in the broad sense -- as in, 'MY character is more important to me than the NPC that might be more powerful' -- but either can be exploited... badly. And one can be taken out, while the other, usually, cannot.

I'm not talking about a free for all with no rules for staff regarding CoI. I just think rules involving OOC behavior need to not bleed over into artificial IC restrictions that further an atmosphere of distrust.

[surreality]

@ThatGuyThere said:

Earlier you said staff shouldn't hand;e their own jobs? Well why not? If it is just about people you can trust either you can trust them to handle their own jobs or not at all right?

That's a standard policy on every game I've ever seen, and every game I've staffed on over the years. You don't make judgment calls for your own PC. I've never not seen that policy in place.

Oversight doesn't get thrown out the window, nor should it. Trust is not blind lemming behavior, and 'trust, but verify' is valid. Oversight prevents so much more potential shenanigans than limitations ever could.

I'm far more in favor of the oversight approach than "do not ever".

As @Derp mentioned, most things that people put in jobs for -- XP spends make up the bulk of it -- are transitioning to automated things that players can do on their own. That involves trust, too -- and it's a beneficial system to have for all involved. Saves everyone time and energy and stress. Typically, some things are exceptions -- merits with special qualifiers, powerstat, a few others that may require justifications or notes or whatever -- and many are things that require a staff judgment call.

'Treating everyone equally' is a requirement. Love them, hate them, don't know them from a hole in the wall, everybody should get treated the same. Yes, this does include you -- but since other people don't have the ability to make that call for themselves, you need to be willing to let someone else make that call for you, too -- because that's fairness.

[ThatGuyThere]

@surreality said:

I'm not talking about a free for all with no rules for staff regarding CoI. I just think rules involving OOC behavior need to not bleed over into artificial IC restrictions that further an atmosphere of distrust.

Ok this is where I am confused, if you don't believe rules can stop the problem then why have the rules?
I do think while not stopping rules can help most people will tend to follow them out of wanting to avoid hassle if for no other reason,.
I agree with you on keeping the important roles as NPCs 100 percent, but there are many games where that is no the intended case such as RfK, the reason I didn't make a second char there when my first left town with his Regent was that an PC prince was chosen.
And it was not any more of an artificial IC restrictions then many characters had, there were three tiers of Characters,; Political, Support and Casual. When a player chose one that put IC restrictions on them.
Now I might be remembering wrong, the policy was that you could not have a Political PC while being staff.
So the restrictions on staff by the policy were no worse then what many players myself included set on themselves, I played a support character. There were also limited slots for political characters, if they get filled up by staff you have vampire Firan where all other players are essentially NPCs for the staff folks to show off to.
I get you don't like the rule but lets not make it sound like it is horribly crippling to staff pcs. Did it make finding staff harder, it likely did so the staffers in charge closed the game. rather then compromise it.

[Derp]

Staff knows what the boss thinks? I mean, sure, I can give you a rough idea of what @Coin may say on certain topics, but that's just because ... well, he's pretty up front with what he thinks about things. That has nothing to do with a staffer's perspective, and everything to do with just having some experience with the guy. I could have told you the same things as a player. Hell, we don't even always agree on things (feel free to ask him, we've had long and drawn out conversations where I've essentially said you're nuts and he says * maybe but that's the way it is*, and we sure don't get special treatment. I've had conversations with him wherein me and my pack got certain things excluded just because it -might- seem like we got a favorable thing going.

And you know what? That works for me. It works for me because in the long run, @Coin trusts me to make a lot of judgment calls. And I trust that he'll run a fun game that I want to be a part of. And the players on that game (as far as I know) trust me to make those decisions too, and to level with them about why I say 'no' when I do. It's all about trust.

And really, I'm in agreement with the statement that just because you had a bad experience with a staffer eleventy-million years ago doesn't mean that all staffing paradigms have to shift to take into account everyone's past experiences. If you're that scarred by some horrible experience, perhaps this hobby is not the right one for you. And while I generally agree that politeness goes a long way, I don't agree that the customer service mindset is the one that should be fostered. You aren't customers. You aren't paying for a service. Your taking advantage of something that someone is doing for you in a non-professional capacity, and expecting it to be run like customer care gives a false sense that people are entitled to certain things that they simply aren't. 'No' is a word that has to be used. Not 'I'm terribly sorry about your inconvenience, here is the thing that you requested and a bonus on top of it because of your trouble'. The guy at the soup kitchen doesn't get to make a fuss because the volunteer serving him soup didn't smile enough or splashed a little on the side or looked at him in a rude manner. Neither does the average MU player.

It's just the way it is. Nobody here is paying staff (staff are, in fact, paying to make it a thing in most cases) and nobody that I know of is currently charging players to be there. So a lot of this, to me, sounds like a silly argument regardless of past experiences of other people. If you wanna run a game differently, more power to you, but acting like it has to be a certain way or everyone else is just an asshole seems a bit wanting, you know?