Im going to weigh in on this here as I am tired of seeing it crop up.
The constant reason I see this suggestion is "We dont have enough slots to accommodate everyone", this is not a problem with the slots, this is a problem with over-hiring, Assistants is meant to be a decent position to attain, not allowing every tom, dick and harry to take, there is also consistently a lack of monitoring of assistants to the point 6 monthly purges are constantly required as no one monitors activity / inactivity.
We should not be increasing slots of a role just because you are over-hiring, furthermore I would like to present the option of communication between players i.e. "Hey, how long are you going to be on for as I need to do my assistant reqs" or something of this nature, as a community, communication is important rather than just "more slots"
However now to delve into a few other issues;
Site Command RP
Extending the assistant slots means that you remove more RP from Site Command who routinely have complained in the past to SSL / NL that there is "no RP", so increasing this limit to provide more RP to other users will just result in this complaint escalating
Site Administration
In the past we have continuously seen a state of more Assistants = more Site Admin overreach whereby Assistants inflating their self-importance will seek to curtail and involve themselves to the point they hinder Site Administration or try to remove parts of their role for themselves, I do not feel that is wise to increase that.
Requirements Tracking / Overhiring
As mentioned above, I have seen this throughout my years within the Network whereby Assistants are just seen as this role with no prestige and anyone can get into it, that is not what the role is for, it is a sub-administrative role that supports places and acts as proxy, thus we should not entertain the idea of overhiring everyone, as this leads to less slot time.
On top of this, Assistants never actually have activity monitored to the point 6 monthly purges have to happen because people have left months ago and no one actually pays attention to them and we end up with a rogue CL4 who comes to minge later down the line, if activity and standards were monitored, overhiring would be likely reduced.
If accepted, what's next
So I will ask this bluntly, say I accept this to 3 slots and im convinced its a good reason to the point we can all agree, how long before "We need 4" appears, as this happens all the time due to the above, this is why we reduced the slots in the first place to make it a prestigious position not a position where everyone is an assistant walking around.
I am happily up for discussion, but I really struggle to see the need outside of the want.
Kind Regards
Yeke
Reply time!
Site Command RP
This is conflating two seperate issues. Site Command complain about the lack of RP *flow* because of the fact that the Code 1 to Code 5 loop continues to have a chokehold over how long RP is allowed to last on the Site without it being meaningfully interrupted. The CONTENT of that RP is different per job, and Assistants have a unique and distinct function that means we are not having our jobs stolen by them just because there's more of them. It's important to mention that because of the function of Assistants and their delegatory status, they go elsewhere to begin or authorise RP on our behalf, and thus those players can become quite essential to RP for some scenarios. Any hindrance to their ability to get onsite as a result can serve as a demotivator for other players that aren't even connected to the whitelist to begin with, because THEIR actions are now being rendered to a standstill because of something out of their control.
The "Prestige of Assistant"
Hard disagree with you on this one Yeke. As
@Fricky Hecks pointed out yesterday in the thread that I started, the only actual requirement to get the role is to be a total level of 50 on the server. Additionally, your message of application requirement guidance that you put on most jobs on the forums is borderline identical for the Assistant roles as it is for GSD CPT and Medical Consultant - it's the generic reminder that if you're going up to CL4, you should be able to act professionally and maturely. By that logic, if you're ready for the other two roles, you're ready for OSA/ECA
Absolutely nothing concrete in server structure mandates that these positions be held to a higher standard, it's become a phantom expectation which I personally disagree with. Assistants can be given as much responsibility as we trust them with, and newer CL4 members deserve a chance to wade into the waters of that responsibility at their own pace on a job that interests them, not be given the expectation of immediate perfection. Frankly, if the problem was Prestige, then the issue isn't the amount of slots available, it's how many individuals we've recruited and at that point you may as well go about enforcing hard caps like the regiment tab does, but we both know that would not solve the issue at hand.
Ratio of Assistants to SC Members
Both Site Command factions can have 4 members on the site in normal circumstances. Having one assistant per 2 council members is NOT healthy for the Assistants. We all constantly get bombarded by RP encounters just by being there, and frequent delegation is required. How is one player meant to handle the delegation of tasking from not just one SC, but TWO, all while having their own interesting RP to perform and engage with on the server? It doesn't make sense. Having the third goes back to the very thing I said in my initial suggestion about easing the bottleneck. It's an additional slot to delegate the tasking between themselves and thus ease the burden, making their collective job easier and allowing more RP elsewhere to occur naturally.
To put into perspective how insane some days get as SC and thusly why we need Assistants ready to go for delegation immediately:
Wednesday the 12th, I flag on at about 6:30PM. Immediately, the GOC are at SOP Wing and a war is about to break out because they have a warrant to take the Dpt. Director of DEA away. I immediately have to go down there, get bearing on the issue, contact Ethics and come up with an impromptu and fun RP solution to let this play out without going to war, deal with a personal RP storyline involving two specific players in the midst of it AND work with A-1 during the whole thing. From 6:30PM to about 9:00PM, I had ZERO downtime. I need the Assistants available to work with, but they can't move mountains if all of O5 are on, which for the record they were!
Site Admin
This is very much untrue at the present roleplay climate, at least on UK. As the Super and Senior team can personally attest, I have been doing what I can to fundamentally rip apart the two gameplay loops and give them differentiation on the server, with SA having more autonomy to make some judgement calls on the server without us. For example, O5 forfeiting the ownership of RSD and giving it to SA as well as further ERT empowerment. Site Command have been giving as much room to breathe for SA as possible and the Assistants have absolutely no reason to overstep into their loop because they have more of their own things to do as well as their own things to work towards thanks to, at least on OSA, the inclusion of the Senior OSA role of Factotum and more. Site Admin are flourishing in that regard and continue to have my full backing, as well as personal instruction from me to Assistants to let them do what is needed and choose when to come to us if they need help.
The "we need 4 slots" issue.
Yeke I'm going to be honest, this isn't my problem. Every time a concession or change is made on the server, it's an inevitably as much as time is that someone is then going to ask for the next layer of that change because SOMEONE always wants to push the line. I have no personal interest in a 4th slot because I think at that point you do open a bit of risk in the sense of "oh 1 Assistant per 1 SC member" and people will start misconstruing the reasons why I made the suggestion in the first place. I can continue stating that it isn't something I want as much as possible but it's going to be a case of needing you to kinda just trust me on this one that as -1 I have no intent on being cheeky or pushing the line with this should the suggestion be accepted, because I'm not stupid.
Requirements Tracking
Similar to the topic of prestige, however I will concede that SOME additional monitoring wouldn't go amiss because of mistakes like this being allowed to occur in the past. As it stands, we've gone through a major audit of the roster and everyone who has been auditted to be on there is correct. If a third slot is introduced, I could consider adding some very minor tracking to make sure the slots aren't being abused.
General Playerbase Convenience
This is to do with something I hear repeated a lot about "we don't want people MAINING Assistant..." to which I respond; why not? It's still a CL4 with major RP implications and impact to the server if done right, and the majority of the people I know that actually play on OSA a lot specifically actually have an alternate role to hop onto if they really wanted. Yes, there are certain people who play the slot more than others, but that doesn't change the fact that people aren't taking the slot out of exclusivity, but because they genuine have that much of an interest in playing the role, something that we shouldn't be stopping for a passive slot on the server ever. Considering the above points made about the likening to GSD CPT/Consultant and the fact that they have way more slots available, then it is logical to state that Assistants should have the same grace afforded to them in the interest of convenience to letting more roleplay get done faster around the Site.
Playerbase Availability
Another thing this does is ease the flow for those who actually only have set times they can get on the server anyway. An example I'm going to cite is
@JesterX3 who is one of the newer OSAs. They have started university this year and have extremely fixed times to get on the server due to the issues involved with having to travel around the country on trains to be at their campus (I experience this hell too, I'm sure many others do as well). If they get on and see that due to a funnel of the slots, they can't actually have a turn when they need to, of course they're going to be burned out or not exactly have motivation to stick to the role!
I also have minimal desire to enforce slots for certain players at certain times to counteract this while keeping only 2 slots, because that is a very easy slippery slope into questions regarding fairness, bias and other potential OOC issues that people would have with the judgement calls made. The easier solution is to increase the chances to play on the role, which is done via the 3rd slot.
Overall Thoughts
In my opinion, I just think it's common sense to give the 3rd slot a chance. There's clearly been a shift in roleplay mentality which allows for these jobs to be extremely active of late, but also in a unique way where they have minimal overlap with roles like Site Admin due to the way that Site Command have been adamantly focusing on keeping gameplay unique. I can appreciate concerns of the past, as well as concerns of the future due to the slot issue, but that doesn't change that my concern is here and now only with the 3rd slot and the ability for Assistants to have more opportunities to play and have fun on a role that is currently very appealing to be part of.
Long ass essay done, thanks for reading and I'll reply further as needed
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