Response to Lead Developer blaadam’s Resignation.
The State of Firestone Founders appreciate the work and effort blaadam has put into the State of Firestone in regard to development. His work will never go unforgotten, and as a community, we’ll all forever be appreciative of him.
I would like to address the claims made by blaadam, so here is my response to the following:
Blaadam’s first claim of favoritism simply is not true. Everyone is upheld to the same standards, and given a level of leniency with conduct within servers and in Stapleton County; not to mention blaadam himself, he was given rule exemptions within the Discord server, and when his conduct was getting out of hand, we had to remove that perk. When issues arise among a Developers conduct, that is addressed internally by the Founders, and we won’t ever publicly slander Developers in that regard. Secondly, pathwaysbball and I were not aware of any Developer perks that existed within Stapleton County, besides the Dev Party Bus that only developers are able to purchase from the car dealers. We learned, through Developer horseplay, that other perks existed and were removed by blaadam, which pathwaysbball and I support, as the perks should have never existed to begin with. These perks were discretely added without the authorization from the Firestone Founders. A final note on this, when I reached out to him asking about the perks he had removed, he would not specifically tell me.
In regard to blaadams second subject, involving the rewards developers are given, he’s not wrong. Other than monetary compensation, there is not a whole lot that we can do alternatively in a Roleplay group. Past suggestions I have brought up, are icons next to names above a users head, to represent their role as a Developer. As blaadam himself stated in his resignation, there was issues with horseplay/abuse of some of these secretly added Developer perks, so the addition of any additional permissions goes into question.
Next subject to address, is team structure. I at one point realized I was getting overwhelmed by having my hand fully in the cookie jar, so I approached dovntime to see if he was interested in becoming the Lead Builder, so he can focus on the builders. Dovntime agreed to the promotion, and took that oversight for me. Through this, I learned dovntime needed to learn some leadership tactics, as there was some issues among communicating with some people on the team. There were several conversations by pathwaysbball and I to attempt to rebuild the relationships within the build team, which rendered unsuccessful, presumably because of their first impressions, it was something neither party was able to look passed, drawing my involvement back into the build team.
Project assignment is the second part to the previous paragraph. As a project manager, I am tasked with assigning projects, hence “Project Manager.” Blaadam questions the addition of a Quarry being added into V3. I had simply dug a hole out of the Hillview hill, put a label on it, and alerted the build team of the new project. The hole in the hill was nothing near to what the final product is to look like, it was simply marking the general location I wanted it to be (they could’ve filled it back in and restarted for all I cared). It was proposed to be a simple cave/quarry entry, and a building that was needed. The intention was a simple place for people to go, to sell ores collected from mining. To me, this was an essential aspect of the mining experience in V3. The Quarry had be a subject of conversation years ago as well, so I can’t blame him if this idea had gone forgotten. The dirt road from years ago, going to the proposed Quarry location still existed all these years before actually going into development.
Moving on, blaadam goes onto complain about the boat channel lights I added into V3. I simply communicated that I added them, and the response I received, and I quote, “Wtf no, There’s already lights.” I went around, and verified, there was in fact, no lights placed under bridges for boats. Blaadam in his resignation goes on to explain why the lights aren’t good, going into how many parts they are, and how they had scripts in them. Do I disagree with him? I don’t, but had he simply communicated that issue with me, I would’ve addressed the optimization of the lights. Right before his resignation, I actually replaced them with much more optimized lights, so the issue was addressed before he even realized it.
The previous two paragraphs seem silly to me for him to include in his resignation reasoning, but none-the-less I respect his opinions. Both issues could have been avoided if he had simply been open to communicating with myself, the Project Manager.
Continuing with builds, blaadam goes on to discuss my other project of a new Football Stadium within V3. I’m unsure if he forgot, but Firestone soon will be partnering with the OFL (Old Football League) with our own team. In previous discussions with blaadam, I learned the implementation of a functional stadium in V2, and V3 itself just would not work out. So the stadium in V3 was planned to be for looks, with a sub-game through the hub system, of the functional stadium. To reiterate, had blaadam simply reached out to me and asked about it, he would’ve gotten this knowledge and the plan. At the rate the present build team was going, this type of a project would not have added too much on their workload, and if anything, again through open discussion, it could’ve been made into a construction site until we could address that specific build. My last note, as blaadam had preivously mentioned “essential core gameplay,” I would argue the Prominence rework does not fall into that category.
Blaadam then goes on to say that I don’t stick to my word. I suppose the wording of this is tricky, because here’s how I look at it. If you’re doing a project, and you original pose an idea that doesn’t seem good at the time, and you deny it, but later rethink it and go forward with it, is that going back on your word? I would argue not. Blaadam’s talk about the Governor’s Manor interior a simply a personal opinion of his, and how he does not personally like it. Pathwaysbball and I went over the build, and quite frankly like it, with some tweaks needed. Given it was what we had completed, and we had paid for it, I decided to toss it in for the meantime, so the Governor had a place to be. I still did not oppose a rebuild if dovntime was up for it, but again, there was other projects taking priority.
Now onto the Developer discord server. Blaadam had made changes to the discord server made for our Developers and QA team, once again without communication and authorization from me. So in response, given his already building lack of communication with all the above issues mentioned, I removed his administrator perms and ensured he had the core discord functions he would need. Blaadam was consistently doing things behind the back of pathwaysbball and I would communicating it to us, so in response we had to start to remove permissions, which were intended to be restored through a civil conversation regarding his communication about changes. Where’s his respect, if he just goes and does what he wants, by bypassing the very people who hired him?
Onto blaadams concern with game moderation. I am unsure why he is upset with me on this, as this update was done by Samtella, by moving our moderation system into the Roblox ban API, which has alternate account detection. Samtella communicated that with me, and I signed off on it. In recent times, we didn’t account for the fact some people had criminal alts, however at the same time, said users should also know from playing on their main accounts, all the game rules. So through people being moderated in recent times, we learned of this issue. I then push an announcement about this so the community was aware of what was going on. No talks of changing this or modifying this were ever brought to me following the announcement.
To conclude the explanations of everything I stated above, this all comes down to blaadam, and his lack of communication with me. Anyone that has been around me for awhile knows, if you approach me with ideas, are open-minded, and can explain to me their point on either a project, or a policy, I am not a difficult person to convince and get on board, or at least meet halfway when provided some logical reasoning in a civil manner. I’m more likely to oppose an idea, when it’s demanded, or already added without any authorization beforehand. Ultimately, blaadam is not wrong when he says I have the final say, whether input was asked for or not, I quite literally do, which is why this level of communication is paramount from the top of the development team.
Blaadam was an amazing developer to have on the team, and it is unfortunate for his resignation, and it is unfortunate that he was unwilling to sit and have a conversation with me to resolve the issues he had with me. He does complain that I told him that he was replaceable, which I did tell him, and well quite frankly, everyone is replaceable, I am a realist, and I won’t lie to someone. This comment made to him came after he tells me that I couldn’t find someone to fill his shoes. I took this as a scare tactic against me from making any moves to remove him myself. The last time that style comment was made to me, was from TheFurryFish (TFF if you see this, no hate, we’re good now).
I want to end this long post with this. I don’t hate or dislike blaadam, the first year he was hired on, was our prime. He would consistently communicate, express ideas, was open-minded, was willing to compromise, meet in the middle, and more. Since then, it feels like he flipped a light switch, and I am not sure why. His communication dwindled, him testing the discord rules while on rule exemption escalated to where he had to start getting moderated, to where we are now, a resignation. It’s a shame, but it was bound to happen.
All of this was preventable. Him and I have had meetings, pathwaysbball and him have had meetings, they would always go well, express issues, he would admit his fault, we would admit our faults, and agree to work on them, t hen he would improve for a week, and then go back to his grouchy, mute self, to where no matter what I did as the project manager, was an issue with him. It got to a point where nearly on a weekly basis, pathwaysbball and I had to sit in a call, and discuss how to resolve the issues blaadam is having and causing.
Overall, it was best for blaadam to resign, as I feel there’s more to this than just these issues resulting in his decision. Blaadam at the end of the day was not willing to talk 1 on 1 about our issues, and try to come to a resolution.
Blaadam, once again, thank you for all your contributions, and I hope to see you as a ro-state competitor in the future!
-FedoraMasterB98
