My experience as a contributor

[Bjorn Blue Tiger]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to talk and open up a bit on my experience as an Arelith contributor, since I have apparently been removed from the contrib team.

First of all, just so you guys understand the context, you must all understand that deving for a neverwinter persistent world has always been something I wanted to do. I've been playing neverwinter and D&D in general since I am a kid and making the game I love more enjoyable for everyone while having fun - I'm a dev IRL - would literally be a life experience for me.

The opportunity actually showed up some weeks ago! I was really glad and decided to take it, even though I'm really busy IRL.

The first days were pretty nice. People were kind and respectful to me as I was setting up my PC, exploring the code base, taking a quick look at the existing systems, etc. I was really enjoying my time.

And then I started to work on the parry system and TT, which I both had on my mind for many years. The way some of the team members started to interact with me at this moment was unacceptable. I'm still not even sure why it changed, all of the sudden. But it was clearly unprofessional, unrespectful and degrading. I was, at some point, intimidation. I worked in three different companies in my life so far and never I've been treated like this. Never, members of a team have been interacting with me this way. I felt uneasy, sad - if not depressed - most of the time and my mood in RL clearly reflected that as peope close to me asked me if there was anything on my mind. The climate was toxic. I have been accused of plagiarism - the person who accused me however quickly realised his mistake and excused him. I have high respect for that person and don't keep any hard feelings against him. This is also true for other members of the team.

It however really hit me, as I've never been that kind of person, and started being on the defensive in most of my interactions with the team's members. At this moment, I started asking myself why I kept - voluntarily - working on the project. I was supposed to have fun and I didn't have fun. At all. Most of my time was actually spent talking and responding to aggressive inquiries instead of deving. But I didn't want to stop in the middle of something. When I start something, I finish it.

My attitude toward some members of the team unfortunately became rude. I was irritated, less patient and as I said earlier, on the defensive. I believe this is why I was removed from the team.

I want to repeat this. I've been in groups in all my life. Work, sports, name it, team working is something I really enjoy and never had any problem with before in my entire life. I'm actually usually someone that brings something to the group and brings that group to an other level.

I wanted to share this experience, as I think it is to consider for anyone considering deving for Arelith.

It really left a bad taste in my mouth and I had to share this with the community.

This is lifting a weight off my shoulders. I can now move on.

Bjorn

[NPC Logger Number 2]

My heart goes out to you and I sincerely wish you the best.

[DangerDolphin]

I'm sorry things went badly for you, I love the parry system you added.

Being a contributor can be very stressful and new contributors particularly are under heavy scrutiny to ensure changes they make are balanced and bug-free. I can understand how some of this scrutiny can come across as combative and rude, especially when working across the internet and with programmers with IRL Charisma as their dump stat.

I hope you stick around the server, you really had some good ideas.

[Ork]

HM. Thank you for your confessional, and I think this should probably serve as a reminder than in an online community we have to work extra hard to make sure our voice and intentions are being communicated with fidelity.

[dallion43]

I guess it is wiser to avoid the minefield and skip the"Usually in dev teams there is a coordinator that is..." to:

I appreciate the work you have done. Short or not, one addition or many, anything added to Arelith and NwN, a many years old game with mechanics some can recite in their sleep, is a blessing.
Thank you.