More Mod Slots.

I got this guys. Who's on my team?

 

very few admins are on at this time and later I've noticed. pick me up str8 to admin

 

This is just to prove my point i made earlier about dead times. Over the next 6 or so hours maybe 1 or two of these servers will pop to life, one will be Eu and the other being nilla or a modded us server if its lucky. If we had a consistant influx of players more staff would be useful but as it stands there is truly no need for more, only those with different availability. Another thing to take into account is that a chunk of the staff are still in school so this may be some of the reason you are not seeing some staff on in your hours.

 

Gmod + TTT are moving in a different direction than the community is which is why your only seeing population and certain hours and more staff isn’t going to keep people on the servers with or without RDM.

Plus I think the term is usually quality over quantity.

 

If more staff played alone instead of hour farming together there would be much morer staff on server all the time but as of now you see like 6 ppl staffing together which means that those 6 will together get hours even if not all does a whole lot. If staff had stricter rules around actual staffing and admins making sure that their mods aren't being useless the problem would fix itself.

 

No

 

Seems entirely unnecessary to me.

 

Honestly, I don't think we need any more open slots. Adding another lead would make it easier for leads to tie in votes for things.

Would have made more sense to continue having eu staff in that lead spot from the get-go instead of 3 NA.

also, the reason you probably feel like there are times with no staff is probably because they tend to group up and staff and then 9 times out of 10 don't staff later cause they got their hours for the day. That paired with people having their own lives and things outside of this community and the multitude of other reasons people meme about for staff not being on. (ex: pubG and all that crap)

You are always free to report people on the forums if you really want action taken for behavior on the server.


anyways, -1 to this idea. I like where it's coming from but it won't solve this issue and the issue wont resolve till staff put more effort into resolving it.

 

I can't refute that some might draw use of it in this sense, but it is also an issue of when people are available to play and how many servers need staff at the time. If 10 people have 3 hours that overlap but only 2 servers need staff, then 5 people will be staffing per server. Doesn't mean they'd be available later that day or skip staffing another day.

Many of us prefer staffing alone, for varying reasons. I enjoy doing staff work so I'll generally only hop on if I'm idle and or there's a need for staff. Consequently I more often go on the servers alone, but it does happen that I end up staffing together with one or two others after a while.

This isn't really something that more people would combat effectively. Most people will share roughly the same timespan they're available, so most people will naturally be playing at the same times and thus be stacked vs some hours that only a few are available because their schedules deviate from the norm.

I don't agree with the proposal in its current state, it wouldn't solve this issue.

 

Then don't staff at that time and staff when people are pretty much begging for staff to get on?

Yeah people have times where they can and can't staff, but you mean to tell me every single one of our staff members is only available at that time and no other? then maybe we should be picking up staff with different availability.

Overall, I'm not buying the "we all just happen to staff at the same time" talk. I've heard it countless times and rather or not people want to admit it there are literally groups of people you only ever see on the server if they are together. Staff can do better and I know i'm getting tired of having to ask for it, you can tell the rest of the community is too. So fix it.

 

If there is too many staff that is only on in that time then its time to get rid of some. What is the point of 30 mods if they only cover the same 4 hours in a day?

 

Milo, you of all people know that this stacking issue has been adressed time and time again yet there is no fix for it. People will staff when they want to and until the day that staff are paid for the job they do and given a set schedual on when to staff and for how long this will not change. Truthfully i am available much earlier in the day then when I staff and I wont pretend I am not. I choose not to staff durring those hours because I have a family that is awake and I do like to spend time with them. At the end of the day this is a volunteer thing, yes we do it to help out the community or we should for those who do it just be a part of the staff team, but volenteering also means that staff will hop on when they want to, some when they are needed but it is becoming a more rare thing. It may be time to clean out the closet and pick up some who have more drive to be there answering every cry for help on the servers ... That is not my call to make.

 

There is solutions to the problem. The admins pick mods and then its up to them to make sure not all the mods only can take the same hours and also make sure that the mods doesn't all just stack hours together. If staff stopped being biased with each other hte problem would fix itself as if you look at all the staff rn you will see ppl with low hours that should been demoted a long time ago and some that barely has enough is mostly seen with others. If its a problem why arent those ppl been demoted and replaces with others that actually care to put in effort?

 

One of the many reasons I didn't have more hours than I did when I was Pmod was because recently, as many people have stated, there are less people on which leads to one server having 4-6 staff on at a time, which wasn't really something I felt like adding onto. I've been staff for pretty much 7-8 months total and it boggles me how people stack onto one server instead of just going onto a quiet server with 4-5 people and asking people to go over there, thus helping in populating it. The admins discourage double staffing but it happens anyway, why not just populate another server? It's time consuming, sure, but staff on a server attracts more players, simple concept.

Not exactly. As you yourself stated, during night hours, EU has the highest population and hence, EU applicants are fit to become night staff as well. The thing about applications is that, all applications, whether EU or Night or Day, can be picked by any admin. The specific tag just means that it has highest priority for that type of staff. I myself originally wished to be an EU mod but I got picked up as Night instead (best thing ever).

The issue for stacking can be resolved as well, it just requires more close monitoring by the admins. It's not always a bad thing to have below 20 hours because of selective staffing, I'm sure the admins can understand that. I personally think that if a person has below 20 hours for two biweekly cycles without a proper reason,they should be considered for removal of their rights. It's not a job, you're not getting paid. It's self satisfaction only honestly, kind of working at a soup kitchen.

We don't need more mod slots, we need the current mods to monitored more closely.

 

It's been time to clean out the closet. Atlas, I'm very aware of the many reasons people may not staff at certain times.

But listen to me for a second here okay? We are knowingly picking up staff who get on at the exact same times and refuse to come on at other times. There are staff members now that are not trained properly, passing on wrong information, actively doing things to poke and pester and stir up already upset community members, and yet the whole reason for being staff is to help this community.

The staff team now is very different from the one I initially joined, and not always in a good way.

Yes this is a volunteer position- but we have got to the point we actively have people covering each others backs, staffing together because it's "more fun", some staff unable to handle servers alone because of training and promotion time, some still asking questions that shouldn't have been issues at this point in time.

There are several staff members that are doing a horrible job at portraying themselves as being here for the community. I'm not trying to cause trouble or "lol omg toxic ex staff yayy" because honestly I've been toxic and i'm not interested in going back. But it's time for change and I am sick and tired of people protecting their stupid mod/admin/lead admin shields instead of doing whats best for the community.

At one point in time I would hear people go "oh guess i'll have to staff later there's already staff there" - now it's just like nobody cares about anything it's either they do it then and we be greatful or they do it then and still not care if it's actually helpful or not.

At the end of the day, being mod isn't hard. It's not hard to get on at a different time if you truly care for this place and want to make a positive change. And honestly you should try staffing those times when nobody else is, the groups of people you get and how fun the servers can end up being is astounding.

 

Ok listen here you people. We can't address the fact we won't have staff on off-times by picking up more mods directly. However, picking up more mods does create a higher chance that those slots will be filled since every staff has a chance to fill different hours with some overlap, so if more staff are present, there is more chance that the off hours will get covered. However, the problem with forcing staff to staff at those times is very difficult. We right now have data as to when there is staff and when there isn't. This has long been available to everyone. However, it's not used as much as you guys want because simply it's not easy to find staff that would staff during off times because they are players and people too. You won't find people playing on off times because that's exactly what they are: off times. There's school going on then, or it's during work hours or sleep hours for most people, so there's no way to truly change that besides giving huge huge incentives to make people staff during the time they usually go to school or work, or play with family.

 

There's more polite ways to address the community members that are frustrated with staff, addressing them like that really doesn't preach your case or build a trusting staff member-community bond.

More mod slots = too many mods, less players actually populating the server, an extra lead to make decision making between leads even harder, and why would we need to add more slots anyways when we already have so many as is?

Makes more sense to clear some spaces for people who can actually staff at other times.

 

But this assumes that every staff will always staff at those times and staff them always. This is simply not how people play. Sure there can be general patterns, but you can and will still leave more servers staffless if you weed off staff that follow a popular pattern and only pick and choose staff that have generally different hours.

 

I dont think it matters. If they werent staff they would join a server anyway, them having staff is pretty irrelevant. (For the sake of making server more populated)

People are not listening to you because you exaggerate pointlessly:

Nobody is hiring based on "Oh you can only mod those 4 hours? Great!." etc

Also staff joining a dead server for most part simply changes nothing. I completely disagree with the fact that staff being on suddenly makes a server more alive, its usually the opposite, as I slay people the server keeps being dead more as people leave(mostly on nilla servers).
If people are going to join at a time they want to play, they are going to join anyway regardless of staff.

As Ink and other said, if a server is dead, its for a reason. If I join a dead NA server when its 10 AM for NA it wont get more players on, all the players are in school/work.

Kinda hypocritical.

To on topic, we really do not need more mods nor do we need to get rid of mods. Staff is responding to calls fast enough so I dont see the problem.