In-game moderator

[Bellatrixa]

Oh trust me, we've been called racist and such for enforcing that rule, but at the same time it's there for everyone's best interests. I understand that there are large numbers of Filipinos for example in the CS community in general, however the game itself is in English. Logic would dictate that English is therefore the "official" language of the game and something that most if not all players understand. Asking players to use English in world/local/trade chat means that they can speak Tagalog or whatever they like in their guilds and parties, but if they're going to communicate with the server as a whole, English is the best way to do so.

I won't disclose how much I personally get paid as a GH, but I can assure you that it's not enough to make a major difference on the economy of the game and is a very small perk that I didn't expect nor enquire about when I applied for the position. We're quite fortunate that our community is much smaller than R2 and as such the workload isn't overwhelming with only 3 servers total. We've had our fair share of drama and yes, a couple of times we've said we don't get paid enough to put up with it, but at the end of the day, we're the ones who decide how much **** we're letting happen and exposing ourselves to. The rules were put in place when CS launched on Gamedp so they've been there all along. Introducing rules well into the lifespan of a game/server? That's going to cause a lot of backlash. Imo this is something that should have been implemented at the start of the lifespan of CS on R2, not several months down the line as for you guys I can see it's going to cause more problems than it's worth.

[Raynethx]

back on topic guys

[Bellatrixa]

Oh my mistake, I thought the topic was about player staff, how it would work and how effective it would be, not your personal conversation with a forum moderator that wasn't relevant to the original topic.

I guess we have a different definition of "on topic" on Gamedp.

[Raynethx]

Opinions are fine i just don't like it when others go beyond the topic because it can get real messy

[Bellatrixa]

I think the point that I was trying to make was that my posts were on topic and pertaining to the topic at hand whilst yours were not, making you a hypocrite for suddenly trying to claim that the thread was getting off-topic when you and a moderator had been the ones derailing it.

I guess that in itself shows that R2 isn't a suitable place for player staff along with the points that I made which were on topic. It's a shame as they do work out elsewhere or maybe the choices of player staff so far have simply been bad choices and should be regulated more closely by the R2 staff.

Oh look, I still remained on topic

[MemoryLane]

I think the point that I was trying to make was that my posts were on topic and pertaining to the topic at hand whilst yours were not, making you a hypocrite for suddenly trying to claim that the thread was getting off-topic when you and a moderator had been the ones derailing it.

I guess that in itself shows that R2 isn't a suitable place for player staff along with the points that I made which were on topic. It's a shame as they do work out elsewhere or maybe the choices of player staff so far have simply been bad choices and should be regulated more closely by the R2 staff.

Oh look, I still remained on topic

I'm happy player staff works out well on a different game with a smaller community. However, it would not work here. There are several reasons why- one, our community has already been established. Drop a player moderator into the mix and you will have one lonely player as their friends get mad for getting muted and everyone else who gets muted screams 'biased mod' because they won't see the friends of the mod get mutes too.

Two, our world chat is not english only. Unless the player mod is multi-lingual, or there's one mod for every language spoken, then there is no way to fully enforce chatroom rules as a player. At least, not without discriminating against people who speak english because the player mod only speaks english, for example.

Three, we have a very large community and a lot of servers. The time staff would have to put into finding mods, surpervising mods, answering dozens of questions from the mods, will take staff away from things far more important than a chat players can regulate themselves.

There is an ignore button if certain people are out of control. Most of these people stop their behavior when it stops being acknowledged anyway. For extreme content, there is the ticket system that players can upload screenshots to. In a sense, everyone can be a player mod by using the ignore feature and tickets.

[Raynethx]

that dosean't very player friendly yh i get your point that does make sence there are alot of players that speak different languages it woundn't be too fair on them either you can't blame them if they say something and then you go blame the mod whoever muted that person it'll make alot more trouble that way.

[Bellatrixa]

I'm happy player staff works out well on a different game with a smaller community. However, it would not work here. There are several reasons why- one, our community has already been established. Drop a player moderator into the mix and you will have one lonely player as their friends get mad for getting muted and everyone else who gets muted screams 'biased mod' because they won't see the friends of the mod get mutes too.

I think your main barrier is that the community is so large and established by now that trying to bring in a new set of rules would end up with one hell of a mess. As for the mutes, we actually use the same method as used in Dragon's Call where warnings and mutes are announced in world chat for all to see so players are aware of what is and isn't acceptable as let's be honest, most people don't bother to read rules. It also shows that friends of the staff do actually get warned and muted like everyone else. We have had some screams of "omg bias" but these are generally groundless as they are by people who are breaking the rules. We don't mute people for the hell of it.

Two, our world chat is not english only. Unless the player mod is multi-lingual, or there's one mod for every language spoken, then there is no way to fully enforce chatroom rules as a player. At least, not without discriminating against people who speak english because the player mod only speaks english, for example.

The English only rule is a subject of debate although it's a rule I'm familiar with from time spent as staff on other servers and games. I personally don't see it as racist or discriminatory as the game is in English, the announcements are in English, therefore one would assume that people who play are familiar with at least basic English or they wouldn't understand English when it's used in world chat or in the game text. Asking people with English as a second language to use English is encouraging them to improve their English skills as well as speaking a common language that everyone will understand making it easier for them to find parties and chat etc as well as from a moderation aspect. However, as I said previously, I can see how applying that rule now would cause uproar as the community has been established for so long and people are used to how things are now.

Three, we have a very large community and a lot of servers. The time staff would have to put into finding mods, surpervising mods, answering dozens of questions from the mods, will take staff away from things far more important than a chat players can regulate themselves.

That would definitely be the other largest obstacle and why I feel it's a "great but too late" idea. The amount of staff supervision is minimal on Gamedp as the community is much smaller. I know Aeria have a similar setup to our Game Helper system with Game Sages. I'm not sure how large their CS playerbase is but I can guess it's much smaller than here.

There is an ignore button if certain people are out of control. Most of these people stop their behavior when it stops being acknowledged anyway. For extreme content, there is the ticket system that players can upload screenshots to. In a sense, everyone can be a player mod by using the ignore feature and tickets.

Oh I'm all for players using the ignore function and sometimes I worry that in game staff have caused players to forget that such a feature exists, especially as staff we aren't allowed to use that feature in case we're missing rule breaks. I'm going to guess that punishments for rule breaks from tiickets result in bans? Sometimes I wish that in the more severe cases that we were able to ban instead of mute as I find that mutes can inflame some situations and that for other people they simply don't care as it means ohnoes they can't talk for 15 minutes or whatever. It's a reasonable deterrent but I can't honestly say we've had many issues since we had a server merge a few weeks ago.

On the last point about players using report systems themselves, is there any particular reason that there isn't a report function on the forums for posts? I know that VB 4.1.x definitely has it. Was curious as to why it's been disabled as having to PM a mod or other staff member seems rather long winded if you're wanting to bring a post to the staff's attention and it's not an awfully hard feature to set up as you can have the reports post as threads into a staff only section to be dealt with.

[Raynethx]

Regardless of whether there will be an in game mod or not it comes under the developers choice and decision evey game has their own different rules and set of placements as much as i hate to agree with the mod i amagreeing with the mod just our words alone this debate won't really solve much so i request a topic lock.