Hi Verdant and DBO community.
I wanted to firstly start off I completely understand @Verdant's post, and really appreciate the honesty and transparency you have with the community. It's honestly a privilege we have as a community to be able to DM you. However with that being said, and after reading your situation and gaining more insights (and honestly I'm guilty like everyone else), I actually would like to make a counter request which is for not only yourself, but the entire DBO GR staff to close their DM's.
The reason being, is I know this community and how it operates, and unfortunately I know this announcement won't be enough. Players will still continue to DM you regardless. I've sat on your side of the fence long enough before as game master for DBO G, and I was in the exact same position to the point where I closed my dm's. This was a system the old DBO G staff chose to do to help funnel all support requests to tickets. I know it works. And honestly, I'm guilty like everyone else, where I've dm'd you about things and thinking back I shouldn't have. After reading your post, I felt guilty because I knew I was one of the players who dm you about account issues I shouldn't have.
From an end-game player perspective, I think this is the only solution, and honestly it will help the community the most as someone like me would love for you to concentrate on working on the game rather than dealing with over 9000 dms every day. We all value what you do for the server, the community and the time and effort you put in and we don't want that getting in the way.
Additional suggestions to help the management of the situation:
- All DBO GR staff members, testers, translators, edit your discord profile to contain "Have a DBO GR issue? Please create a ticket: https://forum.dboglobal.to/ticketsystem/". This is how you can help Verdant and save you from repetition and funnel more requests to tickets. Please see my discord profile as an example.
- The following categories in the ticket system should be assigned to game masters, moderators, community managers and team leaders: Player Report, Account issue (support). bug issue.
- I'm not sure how the staff is operating in the back end of things, but when I was GM I was assisting Daneos with bug tracking, where if a bug report was made I would test it in-game and put it on trello for him. This was surprisingly really effective, and how the staff can help Verdant.
- End-game players, let's help in the new players helping players channel as much as we can. We have been around long enough and let's all play our part to help Verdant and the team out. Positing memes on discord can be fun, but honestly I'd rather help players first and post memes later.
- Please provide a tech support voice chat channel on discord. I would like to go into voice chat and help provide technical support to those in the community that need help, and would even go the mile by blocking out time every week to help those. I'm happy to set up consultations/appointments and do live tech support so I can help players with their issues. All this is for the end-goal to try reduce tickets.
- The average response time for tickets is currently 8 days 12 hours 20 minutes as of making this post. Let's help Verdant respond to tickets, rather than discord messages so we can shrink down this time.
Thanks everyone for your time to read and looking forward to the positive results we can bring for DBO GR. I'll try to think and implement more solutions for the team over time and thank you for everything you do.
Kind regards,
-Tempest