This post is a criticism on the SeriousTTT servers. It is divided into three parts for your reading ease: THE MODS, THE PLAYERS, and THE END. Read whichever one(s) you want, but I implore you to at least give THE END a glance. In my opinion, it is the most important part. I will not be reading or responding to any posts that are made in reply to this. I apologize if I made any spelling or grammatical mistakes (I don't believe I have), but I believe that my message is still clear despite any of them. Thank you in advance. THE MODS I joined these servers a while ago as 32OrtonEdge32dh. @RhazhMatazh told me to join because I could get a mod spot if I applied. I made my application on May 5th and was accepted as a trial moderator under @The Seventh. I told real moderators who broke the rules, who should be slain, all that. I was doing well and learning along the way. About twenty-one days later, I was removed for what I believed to be no reason. The Seventh explained to me that the other moderators didn't find me fit to be a moderator, and I later learned that I had been harassing another player (which I deeply regret and didn't really realize I was doing). I couldn't really see why at the time, but I didn't want to rock the boat so I took it in stride, acted like what they were saying was constructive, and re-applied. I didn't think too much of it, but that was my first real bad experience with the staff. In the months since then, I have just had more and more bad encounters. Lead admins, admins, mods, trial mods. Multiple players from each group wronged me in some way, intentionally or unintentionally, big or small. I have seen players from each of these groups break the rules of the servers with no punishment levied against them at all. The staff doesn't take care of the servers well. Too many players are allowed or even encouraged to RDM with staff online and never be punished. I encounter someone RDMing either me or another player every single day I play on these servers. It's not every day that those people get slain or banned. When staff are online and in the game, there is no excuse for people who break the rules to not get punished. If they are tabbed out for a long time, which they often are and use that as their excuse, they are supposed to put AFK in their name. I have not seen this happen more than once in my time on the servers. The staff often aren't on the servers enough. When servers are understaffed, some moderators will refuse to join other servers without moderators, even when mass RDM is rampant. When you take a volunteer job, you have to do your job or leave the position. If you value playing the game more than improving the quality of the servers, you should not be a moderator. I know that every player has obligations, whether they are staff members or not. Every staff member jumps at the opportunity to tell me this. The issue is not that staff members have obligations, it's that many staff seems to have obligations that keep them from doing their job at the same time. Servers should not be moderator-less for almost an entire day, multiple times in a week. My main problem is that it took me until recently to realize that the staff does not care about the players (at least the ones that aren't their friends) or the servers. I put too many hundreds of hours of playtime into these servers without really speaking up. THE PLAYERS Allow me to preface this very short third of my post by saying that I am a heterosexual black male. I have seen too many players say too many things that they should not be allowed to say and go unpunished. I am a proponent of free speech, but the community as a whole takes it too far. Players should not be allowed to call other players "niggers," "fags," "faggots," and the like. These words are slurs and calling players these things should theoretically be categorized as harassment and the user should be punished for it as such. This happens with every level of staff, from the owner down to trial moderators: nothing happens when players verbally assault other players using racist, sexist, and homophobic slurs. Too many players cozy up to the mods. By acting like best friends, creating inside jokes, et cetera, they get the benefit of the doubt whenever they are in trouble. Players who are ex-staff and players that get close to the current staff rarely get slain or banned when they are in the wrong. Players lie too much when they are in trouble. It's well-known within the community that you can easily get away with RDMing another player by just saying they passed an unidentified body. Part of this is that moderators shouldn't take these players at their word. It really is not that hard to look at where the dead player is, track their path, and see what bodies were there and if they were identified or not. I know this because during my time as a trial mod, I did this exact same thing dozens of times. If you volunteer for a position, do your job thoroughly. And the players make the servers worse places to play by killing whoever they want and giving a bullshit explanation to skirt justice. THE END What can you do to fix these problems? Apply for a moderator position? No. The only people getting accepted are small children and ex-staff. What can you really do? You can leave. There are thousands of other Trouble in Terrorist Town servers that have better staff and better communities. And in case anyone still feels invested in the servers, you should still leave. If Highwon notices his population dropping, he might realize that there is a real problem and step in to try to fix it. And speaking of Highwon, I'd like to tell him "you're welcome." He's welcome that two players donated money to him on my behalf to keep these servers alive. I wish I could get them refunds, because I don't like that these servers that I do not support are being helped out by donations that are attached to my name. I'd also like to tell the moderators, admins, and the like that they're welcome too. I've given them a clear-cut list of the issues with the servers. If they really do care about these servers (which would be contrary to their actions so far), then they would take what I have written here to heart and make some changes. I'll end with this. Below are the rules for the moderators of this server. Ask yourself how many of them they actually follow. Rules bolded are ones that are rarely followed, in my experiences. 1. Be polite to players and don't disrespect them. 2. Invest time in investigating reports of any nature (rdm, ghosting, harrasment) before punishing players. 3. Don't use your powers in any way other than punishing players for breaking rules or helping players that are stuck. 4. There should never be a time where you curse at a player whom you interact with as a staff member. 5. If a player comes on the forum to report you or appeal a ban, be courteous and explain your side of things. 6. Monitor other staff and report them accordingly through the right channels. If you're uncomfortable posting about it, send any of the admins a message on Steam. If you feel the admins aren't the right people to contact, private message me here on the forums. 7. Don't use the @@ command for chat purposes. It should only be used to notify the remaining players that camping or delaying is not allowed. 8. No suggestive sprays/avatars (cleavage, buttocks etc). Keep it professional. If a superior asks you to change your spray/avatar, please do. 9. Don't use third party communication services (Skype, teamspeak, mumble, etc) while in-game. Don't use psay (!p) for round related chat unless investigating reports. 10. When you are point farming or going AFK for long periods of time (30+ minutes), change your name to include "AFK". 11. If you're going to access your forum or join in-game from a network with another user of SeriousTTT who has played in-game or has a forum account, please notify an administrator as soon as possible to prevent confusion. 12. Don't advertise this community on other communities. Don't go causing problems on other communities (such as RDM sprees).
I would make a counter argument here, and tell you that many people DO care about the servers. Maybe, just maybe, we are doing the best we can in picking moderators. We do the absolute best job we can do with managing our moderators. If you've had so many problems with them, why have you not reported them? I would also like to point out, if there are thousands of better servers for TTT, why are you still here? Not to sound rude, but seriously, what would then be the point?
No offense but most of the reports on mods don't get a punishment if they're valid; the mod just gets a "Talk"
You're right. We should start demoting mods left and right for mistakes they are expected to make. Moderators are SUPPOSED to make mistakes and learn, that is in the nature of the position.
Actually, if a mod makes enough mistakes, then that mod will get demoted. Not gonna mention any former mods who were demoted, but one of the said mods were demoted for making too many mistakes over a short period of time.
Yes, you should. No you shouldn't. That would be fucking dumb. Try demoting him for 1 week like spitefulvenom got when he was yelling at a player.
I just see that the servers have changed a bit more from the way they were when I was an admin; staff has changed, both in core values and level of commitment, servers have been added, and the community has grown. One of the main reasons I left was because I saw my mindset of staffing was being edged out by changing values of the newer gen mods. I still care about the community and I believe your feedback should be taken with a grain of salt. I think some of your words are a little rash, but you have made some good points. Thank you.
So, instead of talking to them about it and perhaps allowing them to learn, you think we should just demote them for a week for making mistakes that can be learned from? I am not going to deny the fact that you guys make good points, but you don't see everything, from all points of view clearly. At all.
Shouldn't you still talk to them? Yes, you should. Spiteful got his talk as well. Mods don't go around making mistakes. But a slay to a player keeps the rdm away. A spanking to a kid helps them learn. Why won't a demotion or some kind of punishment help out a mod and know this is a SeriousTTT Community?
What if you don't have another moderator to replace him? You've essentially shot your own team in the foot by taking one Moderator who could be staffing out of the equation for a week, without someone else to replace him. As I said previously, this post does make some good points, this isn't one of them.
If you're an admin then you should pick good mods. Good mods shouldn't screw up all the time. If you couldn't replace him then he should still be punished. If you have a server with your friend. And your friend is messing with other people. Would you ban that player even though you can't replace him?
I would just like to say that this server is amazing and that the mods do the best they can. i respect them for what they do and think it is a vary nice thing that the put lots of time in to and that is is not a way you should be treating them, after all they are donating there time.
I've come to notice that some newer players have become mod within a month or 2 of joining which I find kind of...a concern to me at least (I cannot come up with a proper word). I feel that in order to apply and become a mod, you need to have time on the forums, 4-5 months, and maybe 200-300 hours accumulated on the servers. Don't get me wrong, its not I don't want them to be mod, but I've been on the forums since March/April, and I've accumulated well over 500 hours, not to mention I have a clean record when it comes to bans, I haven't been kicked, I have, however, been muted and slain multiple times, and I feel I should be, not a perfect example, but a good example of what a mod should be and have. That's not to say you MUST have a clean record to become a mod, I'm sure some people have had a Karma Ban or a different ban here or there. What I also have notice is I get up around 7:30 AM Central time and hop on GMod and on the servers, and I well often come across staffless servers, maybe a mod on 1 or two servers, but that's about it. And it kind of stays that way until maybe 11 or 12, I understand some people have jobs and or class, but I see more Night staff and evening staff than morning staff. I feel as we need more mods that can be on during these times. I'm not trying to promote myself, hell, I've had two apps denied so far and with I stated above, I'm not too anxious to reapply a 3rd time since I feel more people that have not been on for long will get the jobs than me, someone whose been on for several months and worked up to a few hundred hours.
Listen, every admin, right now should go to each one of their mods and rate them against all the other kids on a scale of 1-5; 5 being among the best and 3 being just doing their job, then 1 being not enough. After doing so, sit down with each one of them and let them know what areas they can improve on; leads can do the same with admins. Use this as feedback to improve our servers.
Thank you for your concerns. I'm inclined to believe you have a very one-sided and close-minded opinion on your experiences, and are generalizing the servers because of some of your encounters. I'm sorry that you have somehow been wronged, but blaming the servers as a whole for something a few people did is childish and unnecessary. Also, you can always ask for a refund if you do not like your stay here. No one is forcing you to be here. @MangoTango, I've advised this with many of my administrators and we all do something of this sort. Monthly team meetings on TeamSpeak work wonders.
Orton, I've known you for a long time, longer than STTT has existed. After you got your computer fixed and started playing TTT again, what else would I do other than encourage you to go to my main server. When I encouraged you to apply, you had already been part of the community for 2-3 weeks and we were short on staff. If you had acted the way you do now back on the ee forums, then I would have never told you to apply. You even got accepted as trial, but blew that chance by slacking off on reports and criticizing some of the rules. If you were wronged by any staff member, then you have the reports section. While you may have been wronged before, I doubt you were wronged anything past a bad call on a report, which you have to understand that the staff are all human and make mistakes. Reporting something like that on the forums not only notifies their superior and has them punished, but it ensures that that particular bad call won't happen again. As for players RDMing with no staff on, that is never encouraged. If a new player joins the server while no staff are on, and they see RDM fests happening, then that gives our servers a bad name. If you get RDMed with no staff online, it isn't hard to screenshot the damagelogs and make a forum report. Staff have access to old damagelogs to go more in depth than what regular players have, but even if the staff checked every single round of every single map of every single day of damagelogs, there's still too many variables outside of logs that could affect whether a kill is RDM or not. As for when you do report on forums, standard protocol for a single RDM with no staff on is an 8 hour ban, because like I said, everybody makes mistakes. 1-2 RDMs can be brushed off as minor mistakes and receive more lenient punishments, but as they start to pile up then the punishments start to get longer. As for staff not being on often enough, there are too many things that can affect when staff get on. They could be at work browsing the forums on their phone, or they could be cooking and not able to staff. They may just not wanna play gmod, because the staff are allowed to play other games as long as they put in enough time on the servers. Again, you have to realize that the staff are all human. You also have to realize that they may not have enough staff to keep 5 servers covered 24/7 when every single one of those staff members has personal obligations to deal with outside of gmod. You also mentioned that some of the staff play favorites, but I can guarantee you that if any staff member is caught doing that then it's grounds for a fast demotion. If you ever see a staff member playing favorites you can either report it on the forums or take it up privately with their superior. If someone is saying something that offends you such as nigger or faggot, the best thing to do is to mention it in admin chat. You have to realize that staff have to do more than just deal with your case. What if it's the second to last round of a map and 10 reports pile up? Most staff would deal with the reports before anything else, but putting a big green message in their chat box could notify them about you being harassed. As a former staff member, I can attest that when you have to deal with multiple reports, it isn't uncommon to start concentrating too hard on the reports and missing a few things in chat or over voice, especially when you have the big RDM manager popup blocking most of your screen. It's a somewhat known fact that saying something like "he walked past an unID" or "he was KOSed" can turn a report into word vs word and get you out of a slay, but you have to realize what happens later on the road for those people. If someone does that too much and gets a bad rep with the staff, then an admin can intervene and give them a harsher punishment than if they got a normal punishment for all of the times they tried to exploit their way out of a slay. These people aren't hard to spot. There are giveaways that can tell if someone is a loophole troll, and while they might not be punished immediately, karma is gonna come and bite them on the ass later on. There is also the fact that mods aren't even allowed to handle certain loopholing, because only admins are allowed to use discretion with punishments. As for applying for staff, ex staff do get picked often because they are safer picks than other applicants, and picking a bad mod reflects on the admin that picked them up. If there aren't many good applicants, then those people have an even higher chance of being picked up. If you have no reputation/a bad reputation with the admins, then chances are they may pick someone else before picking you. Admins won't pick someone unless they think they would do good as a moderator. Even with a shortage of staff, they won't just pick the best of the worst so they can keep the servers staffed. I still can't believe you want my donations refunded just because you don't like the servers anymore. If you want to leave, then leave. I have lost all respect for you after seeing this post. I donated to you, helped you get trial, and now look where you're at. You had a chance with this community, but in my eyes you blew it.
I'm saying this right now. This thread will stay where it is, and will remain unlocked. But if this turns into a rage storm with people fighting constantly, I'm going to lock it and leave it here. If you're going to act condescending towards another, and gang up on each other, play TF2 and talk smack. I don't want drama on the forums.
