Just a mere suggestion.

Hello, me again. I was thinking about something that I believe could benefit the server greatly! Basicly, I've noticed that the staff to player ratio is pretty unbalanced. I see one mod who is regularly active on Bteam (which is where I play the most, if not agrarian skies) and there is usually a good amount of people on; around 30 sometimes 40. This is a hell of alot of players to one member of staff and I would assume its pretty overwhelming. My suggestion is this: you should recruit more staff for each mod pack, say 2 each for the 6 different servers but the mod that is most active and able to do the job should become a head-mod for that server or 2 if needed. This head-mod could then test the new recruits to see if they have learnt their commands and are able to perform their roles to a good standard at least and would provide feedback to the hierarchy. This would eliminate the before problems I wrote about previously in another post about not knowing commands and it wouldn't have to be written about on the forums as a complaint. Its off-putting to players when a member of staff cannot help them because they haven't gained the knowledge to do so by their own will and makes the job easier for the staff that do play often. I personally feel this would benefit everyone as I know myself, it is frustrating when there is an incident which requires quick action but there is no staff online. I rarely see any co-admins or admins playing on any server that I play on myself which is why I think having a head-mod could benefit everyone. I have witnessed the same similar structure on other servers and it seems to work well. I just feel that that there is a severe lack of staff and this is essential to such a big and popular server which I very much enjoy playing on. Thankyou for taking the time to read my suggestion. Again, I very much enjoy playing on this server and will continue to do so

 

I totally agree with this! More often than not there is no mod online which can be frustrating when a problem is at hand. For example if someone stole from your chest, you'd have to leave the chest for hours until a staff comes on to investigate it (else the logs would be too long to bother ). Staff is an essential building-block to any server; the head-mod idea would lift the pressures off of the Owners and Admins so it is a win-win situation! I hope the 'overlords' take this great suggestion and make it an implementation
~Louis

 

We already have Co-Admins on most of our modpacks who essentially fill this "Head-mod" roll (we just have to be extra sure we can trust them before promoting to Co-Admin rank since they gain access to creativemode), and when it comes to new mods not being sure of how to handle things, we have a skype "staffchat" that they can ask in and usually get a response from another more experienced member of staff straight away, the problem is that sometimes when we promote someone they take a while to respond with their skype username so that we can add them to the conversation group..

For the record we are always accepting applications for new mods at mym.li/staff, the main problem is that most of the people who apply are too new to the network for us to be confident that they can be trusted.

Whenever an application is posted we first check how long ago they first joined the server (we tend to deny anyone who hasn't been with us for at least 2 weeks, and even then that is a longshot) and their /ontime (again we tend to deny anyone who doesn't have at least 48h spent in-game) and then ask for the opinions of our existing staff to see if any of them have interacted with the applicant and can give us some extra information about them like whether they have demonstrated good habits like helping other players just for the sake of being nice, or giving good advice to people asking questions in chat etc, or whether they have shown bad habits like swearing or otherwise being offensive in chat, or any other questionable behaviour etc, then based on all of that we decide whether to hire someone or not, and unfortunately it is more often not (img)

 

I completely appreciate this and thankyou for such a detailed reply but the co-admins are very rarely on, at least in the 2 mod packs I play. For example, im currently in BTeam pve2, there are 20 players online and just 1 mod (BenS1337). He is on regularly as far as I've seen and he is a very good mod, always helping everyone but he is always online on his own, yet in PVE1 there is 2 mods online (martindignam & digo112) for the same amount of people. I dont see the equality as its not balanced. If not get a new rank of head-mod, I'd say you definitely need more staff or the co-admins should be online more. When they are on however, they are incredibly helpful, its just a matter of actually seeing them online and I play almost every day, hours upon end and I think I've seen a co-admin twice since I've joined this server. It can be quite tedious when they are supposed to be outlined as "head-mods" yet are never on and we seem to be getting more reports of greifing, from what I read in the chat. Also, I do have another suggestion. You should incorporate signs on both sides of the PVE2 world saying the farmland is claimable and to not build. I always take the right side when coming to spawn so I did not see the 1 sign on the left about the reset of farmland once a week (which I'm sure hasn't happened yet, correct me if I'm wrong) and I asked numerous times as to why I couldn't claim my house to which I got no reply from anybody except "they changed the permissions". This confused me and with self investigation I then realised why and had to rebuild everything. That was a pain and unnecessary had there have been clear indication to not build in the farmland. I hope you dont see this as and annoyance, but everybody likes feedback

 

To clarify, it's not just a matter of, "turning on the staff switch" to full blast. We are ALWAYS searching applications and since our application system started about 5 months ago, we have NEVER denied a good applicant due to 'too many current staff members'. If we could press the 'double the staff' button, we would have long ago. We promote ALL good applicants always and never question quantity. Unfortunately, the turn over rate is greater than you might think, so it makes it a constant battle that we continuously try to keep up with.