Hey all,
For those that don't know me, my name is Izumi. I'm one of two founders responsible for the creation of this site. Those that have been here for a while may have noticed my inconsistent activity during my time as administrator, and that I've since revoked the role. Well, this is partly because of my job, and partly because of certain concerns that have become apparent to me since I started this website.
As many of you know, I come from a site called TNRPG where things became very unfavorable to quite a few members. Some of those members quit, others learned to deal with it, and a few of us banded together to create Gladius. Naisu and I were the heads of this group, having the most experience as moderators of Naruto RP forums via mostly our time on TNRPG. We knew the problems of that site in great depth, saw what lead to them, and created everything here with the purpose of not only being a fun and enjoyable game, but also something that would never turn into the kind of place we had come from.
Naisu left early on in this site's development, because other staff members below he and I supported a kind of verbal abuse in chat rooms that he simply could not tolerate. Because he and I refused any sort of overriding, unilateral authority (we saw it abused heavily on TNRPG), he hadn't the power to change it and decided to leave instead. He's attempted to return a time or two since then, but the chat rules hadn't changed and so he has remained gone.
This is the first issue I've noticed with this site and admittedly, it's a troublesome one. You don't want to limit people's freedom of expression, but you also want to avoid the kind of toxicity that stops people from wanting to talk in the chatbox. Now this has improved since those days, when we decided to enact a warning and banning system to try and keep things civil in the chat. If you are being openly insulted or treated in a way that you do not like, you tell the person to stop and if they don't, you report it to staff. Staff should then give that person a warning and log it. The second time this happens, that person receives a temporary ban and the third, a permanent ban.
This is all well and good and allows people to adjust to chatbox standards, which haven't been made very clear and open to the public. Unfortunately, we're now seeing immediate bans without warnings and without discussion. This is a concern not only because members may be given no time to adjust, but also because staff is blatantly ignoring set standards. Ignorance of previous standards is one of the things that led to the degeneration of the site we fled from.
Once Naisu left, I took over as sole admin and relegated my authority to simply breaking ties between staff votes. I wanted this to be a site more open to the ideas and standards of others, rather than myself, because one person isn't always going to be right, and anyone taking my place may not want the same direction that I did, so this was a safety precaution.
We went on to write the basic rules and systems, most of which I did myself, all with a connected general balance in mind to prevent any one area from being unjustly overpowered compared to another. I couldn't write all the systems, obviously, so others were made and they sometimes didn't mesh very well with the others. This brings us to the crafting system. Engineering, in specific, has very little guidelines on what is acceptable when compared to other systems, leading to single registrations that blatantly nullify the need of entire systems. This has been a point of concern for me since the first registrations were made, when buildings that erased the income limit of lands (a serious balancing factor) or allowed for the regeneration of limit break points, which are only so powerful because they are (or, used to be) nearly impossible to regain once used. This is a field that's presently being allowed to diminish every other aspect of the site, making it heavily imbalanced.
In fact, it was this issue with Engineering that caused my resignation as admin. This was the last, and biggest, in a long line of disagreements over balance issues with the moderators and it became obvious that we simply had different ideas of what is balanced. Several times in the past I even brought up the similarities between how things were being done or discussed here and how they were on TNRPG. This is a phrase that came up a lot, because my primary concern with overseeing this site has always been to prevent it from becoming like TNRPG.
What was it that made TNRPG so bad, though? It's a site where many people still faithfully RP and have a good time, after all. It was the staff's attitude and their way of going about things. Staff on TNRPG grew to become a group of friends that sought to make their site enjoyable for them. This is not inherently a bad thing, but they became concerned only with each other while neglecting the regular members. They would still check registrations, of course, but we could see a slowly increasing gap between the power level allowed by staff registrations versus those with member registrations. Eventually, it became such that staff got restricted-level customs via registrations while non-staff were denied even basic techniques on the grounds of "too similar to another technique", "too powerful", because they didn't like the member, or without giving a reason at all.
This is why we came up with a set of standards for staff when checking customs. The argument of another person having something of similar power, which was forbidden on TNRPG, was officially validated here. We did not want a member being denied something that staff could get and if they couldn't, then the staff registration needed to be changed so that there would remain a balance. We forbade all staff from denying things without also offering a reason, and we set a guide of what techniques could be made while considering previous ones, to prevent a "copyright" fiasco like we saw on TNRPG.
This last standard is what spurred me to make this post. I woke up this morning to find that a standard custom technique of mine had been denied on grounds of being too similar to a canon technique. I then pointed out 9 key differences between my custom and the canon technique, but it was no use. While this isn't yet as bad as what we saw on TNRPG, where a staff member would register an idea as basic as drawing a blade and then deny every Kenjutsu custom that had even a mention of a draw or the same with ventriloquism or seals which interacted with genjutsu. It is, however, the start of the same pattern. You'll begin to see more and more customs being denied as the idea of what is 'copyrighted' expands further, while this rule will, over time, apply to staff less and less. Even if not for the imbalance with staff customs, this is an ideal that stifles the creativity of the site. Now I don't know if this particular thing has happened to anyone else yet, so perhaps it's as of yet merely a minor issue.
This is, however, yet another standard that staff are choosing to ignore, as they are doing with bans, Kage slots, and restricteds. You see, the In Character way in which TNRPG staff controlled the site was by taking up every available Kage slot. For this reason, we created a rule that no more than half of the Kage at any given time can be staff. Now this wasn't an explicitly written or publicly known rule, because we had the intention of letting members taking over even staff-run villages as time went on and only act as Kage when necessary, to avoid the kind of outcome we saw on TNRPG where only staff could run villages and handle exclusives, while crushing any members that attempted to do the same. As far as I know, this hasn't happened yet, but already all Kage are played by staff, so it's not looking too good.
Another way was by giving themselves restricteds, thereby ensuring that their personal group contained the most powerful abilities and items in the game. This prevented members from getting those things, of course, because staff would not distribute their personally owned restricteds to anyone not in their group. Some would even use those restricteds to crush member characters that started to get a little too powerful. As with the situation before, this hasn't happened yet, but at present, all restricteds not available at character creation belong to staff. Even as a person who watched these restricteds being distributed, it's eerily convenient to me that everything that's been given out is now in the hands of staff. It's certainly great that some things can be started at character creation, but these shouldn't be the only restricteds that members can get. Quests, events, and lotteries should award them to everyone and not just staff.
Again, I stress, these issues have not evolved to the point that TNRPG has, but considering how Naisu and I started this site, it's a huge move in that direction. I was a part of the staff on TNRPG before they went that way, I saw how it happened to them, and I know how it ends. I argued this same thing with the staff there, so they removed me from their group and continued to mock or ignore my concerns. They did the same whenever Naisu, Nyg, Zach, Tsuyo, or any others brought up their concerns and so, seeing this here, I don't expect even my former staff to realize what they're doing. It's up to the members to keep bringing these things to staff attention, in the same way that I am, and hope that they start to change things back to the way they were intended -or even better!- before it turns into the mess that we made this site to escape from.
For those that don't know me, my name is Izumi. I'm one of two founders responsible for the creation of this site. Those that have been here for a while may have noticed my inconsistent activity during my time as administrator, and that I've since revoked the role. Well, this is partly because of my job, and partly because of certain concerns that have become apparent to me since I started this website.
As many of you know, I come from a site called TNRPG where things became very unfavorable to quite a few members. Some of those members quit, others learned to deal with it, and a few of us banded together to create Gladius. Naisu and I were the heads of this group, having the most experience as moderators of Naruto RP forums via mostly our time on TNRPG. We knew the problems of that site in great depth, saw what lead to them, and created everything here with the purpose of not only being a fun and enjoyable game, but also something that would never turn into the kind of place we had come from.
Naisu left early on in this site's development, because other staff members below he and I supported a kind of verbal abuse in chat rooms that he simply could not tolerate. Because he and I refused any sort of overriding, unilateral authority (we saw it abused heavily on TNRPG), he hadn't the power to change it and decided to leave instead. He's attempted to return a time or two since then, but the chat rules hadn't changed and so he has remained gone.
This is the first issue I've noticed with this site and admittedly, it's a troublesome one. You don't want to limit people's freedom of expression, but you also want to avoid the kind of toxicity that stops people from wanting to talk in the chatbox. Now this has improved since those days, when we decided to enact a warning and banning system to try and keep things civil in the chat. If you are being openly insulted or treated in a way that you do not like, you tell the person to stop and if they don't, you report it to staff. Staff should then give that person a warning and log it. The second time this happens, that person receives a temporary ban and the third, a permanent ban.
This is all well and good and allows people to adjust to chatbox standards, which haven't been made very clear and open to the public. Unfortunately, we're now seeing immediate bans without warnings and without discussion. This is a concern not only because members may be given no time to adjust, but also because staff is blatantly ignoring set standards. Ignorance of previous standards is one of the things that led to the degeneration of the site we fled from.
Once Naisu left, I took over as sole admin and relegated my authority to simply breaking ties between staff votes. I wanted this to be a site more open to the ideas and standards of others, rather than myself, because one person isn't always going to be right, and anyone taking my place may not want the same direction that I did, so this was a safety precaution.
We went on to write the basic rules and systems, most of which I did myself, all with a connected general balance in mind to prevent any one area from being unjustly overpowered compared to another. I couldn't write all the systems, obviously, so others were made and they sometimes didn't mesh very well with the others. This brings us to the crafting system. Engineering, in specific, has very little guidelines on what is acceptable when compared to other systems, leading to single registrations that blatantly nullify the need of entire systems. This has been a point of concern for me since the first registrations were made, when buildings that erased the income limit of lands (a serious balancing factor) or allowed for the regeneration of limit break points, which are only so powerful because they are (or, used to be) nearly impossible to regain once used. This is a field that's presently being allowed to diminish every other aspect of the site, making it heavily imbalanced.
In fact, it was this issue with Engineering that caused my resignation as admin. This was the last, and biggest, in a long line of disagreements over balance issues with the moderators and it became obvious that we simply had different ideas of what is balanced. Several times in the past I even brought up the similarities between how things were being done or discussed here and how they were on TNRPG. This is a phrase that came up a lot, because my primary concern with overseeing this site has always been to prevent it from becoming like TNRPG.
What was it that made TNRPG so bad, though? It's a site where many people still faithfully RP and have a good time, after all. It was the staff's attitude and their way of going about things. Staff on TNRPG grew to become a group of friends that sought to make their site enjoyable for them. This is not inherently a bad thing, but they became concerned only with each other while neglecting the regular members. They would still check registrations, of course, but we could see a slowly increasing gap between the power level allowed by staff registrations versus those with member registrations. Eventually, it became such that staff got restricted-level customs via registrations while non-staff were denied even basic techniques on the grounds of "too similar to another technique", "too powerful", because they didn't like the member, or without giving a reason at all.
This is why we came up with a set of standards for staff when checking customs. The argument of another person having something of similar power, which was forbidden on TNRPG, was officially validated here. We did not want a member being denied something that staff could get and if they couldn't, then the staff registration needed to be changed so that there would remain a balance. We forbade all staff from denying things without also offering a reason, and we set a guide of what techniques could be made while considering previous ones, to prevent a "copyright" fiasco like we saw on TNRPG.
This last standard is what spurred me to make this post. I woke up this morning to find that a standard custom technique of mine had been denied on grounds of being too similar to a canon technique. I then pointed out 9 key differences between my custom and the canon technique, but it was no use. While this isn't yet as bad as what we saw on TNRPG, where a staff member would register an idea as basic as drawing a blade and then deny every Kenjutsu custom that had even a mention of a draw or the same with ventriloquism or seals which interacted with genjutsu. It is, however, the start of the same pattern. You'll begin to see more and more customs being denied as the idea of what is 'copyrighted' expands further, while this rule will, over time, apply to staff less and less. Even if not for the imbalance with staff customs, this is an ideal that stifles the creativity of the site. Now I don't know if this particular thing has happened to anyone else yet, so perhaps it's as of yet merely a minor issue.
This is, however, yet another standard that staff are choosing to ignore, as they are doing with bans, Kage slots, and restricteds. You see, the In Character way in which TNRPG staff controlled the site was by taking up every available Kage slot. For this reason, we created a rule that no more than half of the Kage at any given time can be staff. Now this wasn't an explicitly written or publicly known rule, because we had the intention of letting members taking over even staff-run villages as time went on and only act as Kage when necessary, to avoid the kind of outcome we saw on TNRPG where only staff could run villages and handle exclusives, while crushing any members that attempted to do the same. As far as I know, this hasn't happened yet, but already all Kage are played by staff, so it's not looking too good.
Another way was by giving themselves restricteds, thereby ensuring that their personal group contained the most powerful abilities and items in the game. This prevented members from getting those things, of course, because staff would not distribute their personally owned restricteds to anyone not in their group. Some would even use those restricteds to crush member characters that started to get a little too powerful. As with the situation before, this hasn't happened yet, but at present, all restricteds not available at character creation belong to staff. Even as a person who watched these restricteds being distributed, it's eerily convenient to me that everything that's been given out is now in the hands of staff. It's certainly great that some things can be started at character creation, but these shouldn't be the only restricteds that members can get. Quests, events, and lotteries should award them to everyone and not just staff.
Again, I stress, these issues have not evolved to the point that TNRPG has, but considering how Naisu and I started this site, it's a huge move in that direction. I was a part of the staff on TNRPG before they went that way, I saw how it happened to them, and I know how it ends. I argued this same thing with the staff there, so they removed me from their group and continued to mock or ignore my concerns. They did the same whenever Naisu, Nyg, Zach, Tsuyo, or any others brought up their concerns and so, seeing this here, I don't expect even my former staff to realize what they're doing. It's up to the members to keep bringing these things to staff attention, in the same way that I am, and hope that they start to change things back to the way they were intended -or even better!- before it turns into the mess that we made this site to escape from.