by CCP » Fri Sep 15, 2017 1:32 pm
James and FPC, I think it would help if you two would tell us what problems you believe need fixing with the RP Team if any. That way we can address our comments to those issues.
Speaking generally though, the RP Team has always suffered from Committee-itis in my view. Committee-itis is when everyone is in charge so no one is in charge. The lack of individual authority leads to a lack of individual responsibility and so no one takes initiative because everyone thinks it's someone else's job.
This issue seemed to get better when individual RP Team members were given specific responsibilities (one for colonies, one for military rankings, one for world congress, etc.). But the problem still exists. For instance, when I joined the RP Team, the first thing I did was post some ideas for world congress RP on the RP Team forum. I thought that since the RP Team explanation post on this site says the RP makes decisions collectively and has collective responsibility for RP Team actions, that we would and should decide together what to do in-game, and then divide up the work based on our individual areas of focus. Well, I think I received two responses, maybe three, and they amounted to, 'that sounds cool.' Little feedback, little elaboration, and most importantly, no conclusion or final collective decision. I don't think this is the fault of the RP Team members. I think it's a problem with the structure of the RP Team -- hence the Committee-itis diagnosis.
As far as how to fix this, first I think we need to get some clarity about what the RP Team is for and what it's supposed to do for the game. I think it's supposed to increase the volume of RP? And maybe the quality too? But that's clearly not all it's supposed to do since my current role in the RP Team is to oversee and lead the World Congress, which is actually more an OOC role than an IC one. The posts around this forum describing the RP Team don't effectively answer this question as far as I remember from the last time I read them. So that's number one: figure out what the RP Team is supposed to do and be.
Now, assuming my assumption is correct, that the RP Team is supposed increase the volume and quality of RP in the game, my knee jerk answer is that we probably don't need a RP Team (committee) for that. What we probably need to do instead is incentivize the players in the game who are already producing high volume and high quality RP in the RP areas we want to see more and better RP. For instance, if we want military rankings, maybe instead of recruiting one player to study and labor over it, maybe we could just put up a discussion thread somewhere and invite interested players to weigh in. Obviously most of the contributions would come from players with the strong views on military RP. At the end, the mods or the whole forum or something could approve the consensus reached by the handful of military RPers. And maybe we could add some kind of award to incentivize and reward participation in the rankings discussion thread. Like, maybe the players who take part in the rankings thread get 10% faster nuclear arms development in their country -- recognized game-wide and enforced by the moderators.
Like I said this is my knee jerk impression so I haven't thought it through, especially about how to effectively align incentives to RP needs so that the critical RP actually gets done. But I think you get the gist of the idea. Bottom line is I'm not at all sure we actually need a RP Team and I think we need to critically explore whether we do and, if so, why.