Henry d'Esterre Darby

Fair enough.

There's nothing to forgive. I'm not here to hold a grudge or to screw people over, I'm here because I love Naval Action and I can provide some help to the Development staff by letting them focus more on the game than on keeping the forums civil, on topic, and under control.

Moderating is not a popularity contest. It is not something that you give to someone who can have their clan vote for them. The job requires good behavior, the ability to coordinate and communicate with others, the ability to keep secrets, etc. Most of all, it requires that the person can, effectively, behave in a manner that positively reflects upon Game Labs as a company. "Voting" doesn't provide a review process for this. There are currently two active Spanish Language moderators. One of whom has been doing most of the moderating in your forums lately (it hasn't been me for the most part, despite your accusations). Perhaps if those utilizing the Spanish forums were more respectful of their fellow Spanish speakers, we wouldn't be seeing reported posts for rules violations coming out of your forums. Sorry, I didn't mean to say that. What I meant is that not because something is not polite means it has to be ignored, even in the worst post there is some truth. I develop business related software for a living. I've been doing it for nearly 20 years. We're all human. The difference between a customer getting in my face and yelling "that was a horrible feature, what were you thinking you stupid f***" (and yes, I've gladly hidden posts that were WORSE than that) and someone saying "hey, when you changed that feature, it really messed up a way I used your software" is immense. The first guy likely won't get anything out of me. I'm going to sit in my office and rage for a minute or three, and then ignore everything he just said because the way he said it angered me to the point that I couldn't give a rat's ass what his problem is. Given it happening enough times, I'm going to go work elsewhere - there's tons of great software jobs out there, and not enough qualified people to fill them. The devs aren't required to work on the game. They can walk off and find gainful, profitable employment anywhere, any time, without losing a minute of sleep (hell, they might get MORE sleep not having to work so much overtime). The developers are human. They work hard, long hours on the game. There is NOTHING on this planet worse, as a manager, than when someone starts saying rude things to my team, who are already emotionally messed up from spending nights and weekends pounding out the code to make the product work. I personally have refused to pick up the phone over the weekend at a job or two when people outside our department effectively broke my morale by being rude jerks to me. I was never even sanctioned for it, because I had managers that understood my value to the company, understood that I'd been putting in 20-30 hours a week or more of overtime over months to get the feature put out in time, and understood that their choice was to either let me quit (I had a box packed up on my desk, ready to go, before leaving the office that weekend) or to tell the jerk to take a hike. If you don't like something in the game, you can come here and state it without being rude, without insulting the people that are working very hard on the game. I will happily hide such posts, every time, because I care about the game and I care about the development staff. Further, Admin cares very much about his people, and he's going to yell at me if he feels we're letting people abuse the developers that are working so hard for him. The folks that work on this game do it because they LOVE the idea of this game. Users who are abusive to them damage that love. Damage the love enough, and it becomes hatred, and the game is static, left to die on the vine. We can ALL treat each other with respect and dignity here. Paying someone some money doesn't give you license to abuse them or treat them poorly. The maid cleaning your hotel room deserves just as much (if not MORE) respect than your boss, co workers, mother, or even the people you run into on the street. Edit - When I say "You", I'm not saying "you Caesar" or anyone in particular. I'm simply addressing the reader of the post, whomever it may be.

First of all, bad opinions of the game are NEVER hidden. Ever. People who are jerks are sometimes hidden, but people are highly critical of the game and features on these forums every day, and to claim that criticism of the game or its features are hidden is completely unfounded. My comments regarding 15 posts in two years is solely regarding threads that criticized the moderators. I'll restate it again - In two years, I have only seen 10-15 posts total that were locked or hidden due to the discussion of moderation rule. Given what has happened in the Spanish forum recently, that number is now closer to 20 (though many of those posts were mainly off topic). We even have a user that has a torture device from the inquisition being pictured as our idea of moderation. He hasn't been sanctioned. I've noted your request to edit more, hide less. I'd like to see if other users agree. Finally, moderating the forums like National News would make them completely unusable for the Developers. They spend too much time already trying to sort through the mess that exists now - moderating the entire forum like NN would mean that no one's ideas would be considered for the game, because they'd be buried under a gigantic pile of, as Admin would say, "shitposts".

Friendly fire is punished by an automatic system that issues negative XP and, with enough friendly sinkings, an XP reset and/or the offender being sent to the Pirate faction. The screen shots are inconclusive. Case dismissed.

In nearly two years of moderating this forum, I can count on one hand the number of threads that have been flat out removed for discussing moderation. It's less than 10. Maybe 15 if you count locked threads. 15....in two years. I'll also note that I personally reached out to you, Caesar, two days ago asking why you were so angry and asking you to discuss your specific complaints with me so that I could better understand your point of view. Your response was an insult to my "moderation abilities", and a flat refusal to discuss your grievances with me. Now you're here, trying to have that discussion. That's fine with me, we can have it here. So let's open up the curtains and reveal a little of what goes on behind the scenes. I'll agree, posts are more often hidden than edited (when they are completely bereft of content that furthers the purposes of the forum) on these forums. To be honest, it takes a lot more effort (and therefore time) to edit the post than to just remove it. But why edit/remove it in the first place? Most often we remove content because it will (and does) lead to post after post after post that has nothing to do with that thread, or that contains insults or other violations that are not constructive and that do not help the developers to make the game. Perhaps we should more often edit the post, removing all of its content, and leave a message as to why it was moderated. This means that users will have visible "hand slaps" that are visible to all. Or maybe, it's better that the content just disappears and the forum at large isn't any the wiser. Would you, as a community, like to see less hiding and more edits with reasons as to why the post was edited, or should we continue to hide? Bear in mind if we decide to do more editing, and less hiding, if someone posts outside the rules, and then 20 people respond and start flaming, that's 21 posts of moderated content that you now have to wade through while trying to get to a point where you can respond (on topic) to the thread itself. Hidden posts don't take up any room on your threads. We also moderate different boards differently. Developer News and Patch Notes is more closely moderated than Open World and Combat Mechanics Discussions, which are more closely moderated than the rest of the boards (except for National News), and then you have National News where we rarely step in - because the forums at large requested a "free for all" space where they could be disrespectful to each other (within reason). Finally there is the language based forums. Users in some of these forums are far more likely to take an anything goes approach to posting I've noticed. We have national news content in these areas - some users think that's ok, others send reports in pointing out that we're not following the rules by leaving those posts in there. Would you, as a non-English speaking community, like for us to allow National News style posts in the foreign language forums (maybe with a suitable tag in the subject line so people who don't want to be insulted can avoid them), or moderate those forums as we would the rest of the forums? Finally, to avoid a lot more typing, I'll repost some prior thoughts I have shared regarding moderation. In addition to the two, underlined, questions I've posted above, I'd like to hear from the community at large with their thoughts on moderation style and approach based on my thoughts below. The quote ends with a question - please take a moment to answer that question in this thread. Edit - This is your opportunity to ask us why? To discuss what you don't like about moderation - specifically. As long as you're respectful, no warnings, no sanctions, we'll answer your questions. The current assertion is that there are hundreds of you out there upset with our moderation. Let's hear it! Tell us why! I'm dead serious about this.

So, since we're actually leaving this open and discussing it, perhaps you can link specifics for us? Have you requested that the thread be hidden? Have you PM'd the moderator that locked it and requested changes or discussed your issue?

My assumption, and it's only a guess, is that there will be a certain time period during which you can vote. You don't have to vote, and if you don't log in and vote during that time period, your vote will simply not count. So it will be optional, it will be timely (e.g. the vote won't just sit out there open forever waiting for something), and it will be something you can do/not do as you desire.

Let's get back on the topic of feedback on the crew management update. Thanks.

This is under review by the Admiralty. If any of the accused parties have anything to add, they may PM me. Thank you.

Correct. I'd get a screenshot of the person agreeing to it in chat to be safe. This will not let you escape from negative XP rewards for doing damage to a friendly though.

That means that for a period of time, the conquering (and conquered) nation's ships wouldn't be able to attack each other. So effectively, an Alliance (see the Alliances system thread) would be auto-declared, making the ships of those two countries unable to attack each other without turning pirate.

Please continue the discussion at the topic Skully linked. Thanks!

Bear in mind - you can still attack any other nation that is not your ally. You can still harass their shipping, you can even have clans that are continuing to make deals with other clans (e.g. Britain is allied with Denmark, but most of her clans agree not to attack the United States). From the sounds of it, you get EXTRA rewards from attacking a declared enemy, but this idea that you can't continue to do the same thing you're doing now - where agreements are signed between clans, will not change unless that agreement is between two enemy nations - in which case, as a clan, you can still not attack the declared enemy if it disagrees with your politics.

No thank you. Having been a part of testing the various travel speeds, etc, the travel speed and world map are fine as they are right now.

Please follow the steps in this thread: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/2892-technical-problems-reporting-guide-known-issues-and-their-solutions/ Post back here with any further information you receive while following those steps.

No, not good. Please relax.

Let's get back on topic please.

Please submit an F11 in the game. Thanks!

This sounds to me to be a ridiculously complicated and unnecessary "solution" to a mechanic that is not a problem right now. If XP/Gold were granted to the victor when a ship surrendered based on the total amount of damage done to that ship, we'd be good to go without all of this complexity.

We generally warn players for doing the same here. It's generally frowned upon.

The 20 second countdown when you attack pretty much simulates both ships sighting each other and clearing for action I believe. As to how long it really took, I'm not sure either. Generally, the two (three?) off-watches' hammocks were already stowed on the sides to hinder boarding - the only hammocks that needed stowing were for the watch that was sleeping at the time of being drummed to quarters. Similar to what you mention, there was splinter netting and fearnaught screens to erect, galley fires to be put out, "belongings to the hold" only really applied to the captain and maybe the officers - I think most sailors' sea chests were there already - they weren't littering the gun deck with them. Guns' bowsing and tampions to be removed, gunports opened and guns run out. Bulkheads to be struck and removed (this was a pretty fast process I believe), deck sanded, and slowmatch to be lit (for those ship that still used matchlock). Ships' boats to be deployed over the side and trailed from the stern wherever possible. Finally powder to be brought up for the guns. I think you're also right about a partial clear in an emergency.

I still maintain that there is a bug with location generation on wrecks - there just needs to be more data to replicate the problem. Please F11 every time this happens with a shot of the map (hit M, F11, M again, then fill out the form).

Please report this problem via F11.

I think I see your proposal more clearly. My concern still rests with making fleet ships too "must have" though.