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Whats with the admin response time?


Zach..

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3 minutes ago, Viscaria said:

I'll go ahead and give a little insight into what my average day has been like lately to give people a slight look into what I do on the daily and touch on a couple of points I saw people bring up in the discussion.

The first thing I do after waking up and doing my morning routines irl is check both Discord and my forum PM's, I answer everything here that I need to and usually catch up on a few Discord channels to keep myself in the loop of any ongoing discussions, this usually takes me anywhere between 1-3 hours depending on the current workload. The next thing I usually do afterwards is open the game and check reports and tickets, if there's some outstanding I'll get on them, this can take around 1-2 hours usually, but if during my cycle this was later in the evening, could take 1-3 hours on average, but often times during the evening reports don't stop flooding in and people need a break. Following that, I'll either start working on something within my subteams whether its PM or LFM that I have pending, this doesn't really have an average time spent but I would say around another 1 hour, again depending on current workload. After all these steps are complete with my routine I need a break by then, so I'll usually either spend some time roleplaying, watching something or spending time away from my PC. Usually I come back to all things GTAW a couple hours later and check up on reports and tickets, working on some if needed, then going back to roleplaying while chipping in on more reports and tickets throughout the evening. Give or take, this is what my average day is like, adding things in the mix like forum reports, refund requests, player requests who reach out to me, and all that jazz, the time I spend can and usually is more than listed when everything is added up, overall I would probably say I average around 5-7 hours per day doing admin duties, which is not something every admin is able to do.

 

I read a couple of things that I can touch on, such as allowing search warrants to not be supervised, and I don't believe that this could ever be a thing, its ultimately the same as saying we could allow unsupervised breakins. We need to do a few things while doing search warrants, the first is to supervise the quality of roleplay to ensure people aren't just typing things like /petme Dog searches the entire kitchen. We also need to view /stashinfo's and go off of what those say and make sure the search goes smoothly and pass along items they find. Search warrants should also be interactive, I can't speak for other admins, but personally I like to get players more engaged with the roleplay, for example - if players are actively roleplaying thorough searching and showing high quality roleplay doing so, maybe they'll find extra, things like that which require someone in this position, I think comparing this to something like d&d is a good example, I often have players do /roll 1 20 when appropriate and I've found that players have much more fun with these type of engagements.

Why can't supports have access to commands like flipping cars and unlocking properties? There's a whole number of reasons why, but its not really my place to touch on this question, but what I can say, is that supports do have a lot to handle in their role already, and further adding to that, like Wuhtah said, would definitely overwhelm them.

The bottom line is that currently the staff team is a bit understaffed for the amount of work required, if becoming a staff member is something you believe you want to do, then I encourage you to apply when recruitment is open to help combat the issue and help the community thrive even further, even if you're not sure if the staff team is for you, you can always give it a try and step down should you decide that it's not.

 

 

 

.. And you do it for free! 

 

Thank you for your hardwork 🙂

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1 hour ago, joshua said:

200 IQ FIX:

 

stop letting people rack up 13 admin record entries before they get perma banned (but then they get unbanned 1 month later via appeal, and are re-banned a few months later)

start banning people instantly for malicious rule breaks

 

it feels like this server's management prefers quantity > quality in the playerbase at the moment - which isn't a huge surprise given the regular peak player count is down ~400 players from where it was last year. due to this approach, people are given WAAAAY too many warnings, resulting in more reports on a regular basis which make admins sad because they sit on the list and hope someone else takes the annoyingly complex tickets and reports

I was a paid community manager at a toxic game company & community for years. Before I got there, they were a “teaching” community, allowing people to get away with far too much. Very similar situation. The toxicity was literally making people leave. Long-standing members just left and never looked back. 

 

I implemented a “break-in” period of 3 months that allowed players to receive minor warnings / non-written warnings. After 3 months, it was a 3-strikes you’re out policy. All written warnings and temp bans. After 3 strikes, permanent was actually permanent. Appeals were obviously allowed but it was a 1 year minimum. Guess how long it took for the toxicity to stop? People got right real quick. They took time to know the rules. We also notified the community every time there was a rule addition or change via in-game methods and not just on the forums. People appreciated the notice. 
 

Everyone is so afraid of this supposed mass-exodus of people who will leave if things get more strict. It’s bullshit. The people will whine and cry but they will still abide by the rules. The people who do leave in a temper tantrum always come back. The majority of people will stay and the server would be a better place for it. 

Edited by Brofessor
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1 hour ago, joshua said:

200 IQ FIX:

 

stop letting people rack up 13 admin record entries before they get perma banned (but then they get unbanned 1 month later via appeal, and are re-banned a few months later)

start banning people instantly for malicious rule breaks

 

it feels like this server's management prefers quantity > quality in the playerbase at the moment - which isn't a huge surprise given the regular peak player count is down ~400 players from where it was last year. due to this approach, people are given WAAAAY too many warnings, resulting in more reports on a regular basis which make admins sad because they sit on the list and hope someone else takes the annoyingly complex tickets and reports

1 month is a stretch lol. I have seen a player banned for erping with minors that got unbanned two weeks later. Most bans here last 3-7 days. But you have to rack up 15 unofficial warnings first. No wonder the general quality of RP went to shit when trollers and other rulebreakers can just walk away freely from any rulebreaking. But as you said, that's what you get for trying to push quantity over quality.

Edited by sCrax
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1 hour ago, Viscaria said:

the first is to supervise the quality of roleplay to ensure people aren't just typing things like /petme Dog searches the entire kitchen.

This is on LSPD/LSSD though. They have standards of RP and it takes a long time (from what I'm aware) to even partake in these situations. I highly doubt that LSPD/LSSD leadership would ever let any RP like that slide. This just kinda implies you, or the admin team, have zero faith in our legal faction management. It could even be a case of LFM admins checking through the logs making sure everyhting went well after the scene.

 

1 hour ago, Viscaria said:

the amount of work required

As many others have said the admin team brought this upon themselves by the amount of bureaucrasy and hoops you have to go through.

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3 minutes ago, shotgun_sam said:

This is on LSPD/LSSD though. They have standards of RP and it takes a long time (from what I'm aware) to even partake in these situations. I highly doubt that LSPD/LSSD leadership would ever let any RP like that slide. This just kinda implies you, or the admin team, have zero faith in our legal faction management. It could even be a case of LFM admins checking through the logs making sure everyhting went well after the scene.

 

As many others have said the admin team brought this upon themselves by the amount of bureaucrasy and hoops you have to go through.

This is a decent suggestion. In PD at least, there's maybe 1-2 search warrant a week. Why not let these happen on their own, then FM can review it after/periodically check on them or even have PD submit a copy of their logs after? This would speed things up immensely.

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- needing an admin to hold up a 24/7 even for just the rp and not taking any cash or items

- cant use a car/bike/BICYCLE in a robbery without approval

- cant rob too far from your neighborhood without approval

- cant mug in like half the places that shit actually happens in OOCly unless u got an admin's ok or "historical claim" (im looking at you, vespucci)

- cant mutually void a car crash without approval, cant mutually avoid ANYTHING without approval

- cant wear any of the non-blacklisted t-shirts that say police, or any of the generic EMS stuff and try to scam/pose/impersonate ICly without approval

- cant break into a house without approval

- cant break into a safe without approval if the house is unlocked

 

like come on man, you cant do shit without approval

 

i swear i spend more time explaining why my character does xyz or validating my character's actions via forums/pm/leadership than actually roleplaying my character. for a server so bent on "ALWAYS REMAINING IC" we sure dont like do that shit

 

too much micromanaging, an overabundant reliance on an antiquated system with archaic rules that dont belong in a server with this population or put too much stress on it. the worst part is i cant even become an admin or a support to try to help, id never be accepted and thats the sad part because i cant even begin to try and implement a solution 

Edited by radreaper100
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12 minutes ago, radreaper100 said:

- needing an admin to hold up a 24/7 even for just the rp and not taking any cash or items

- cant use a car/bike/BICYCLE in a robbery without approval

- cant rob too far from your neighborhood without approval

- cant mug in like half the places that shit actually happens in OOCly unless u got an admin's ok or "historical claim" (im looking at you, vespucci)

- cant mutually void a car crash without approval, cant mutually avoid ANYTHING without approval

- cant wear any of the non-blacklisted t-shirts that say police, or any of the generic EMS stuff and try to scam/pose/impersonate ICly without approval

- cant break into a house without approval

- cant break into a safe without approval if the house is unlocked

 

 

like come on man, you cant do shit without approval

 

i swear i spend more time explaining why my character does xyz or validating my character's actions via forums/pm/leadership than actually roleplaying my character. for a server so bent on "ALWAYS REMAINING IC" we sure dont like do that shit

 

too much micromanaging, an overabundant reliance on an antiquated system with archaic rules that dont belong in a server with this population or put too much stress on it. the worst part is i cant even become an admin or a support to try to help, id never be accepted

 

 

This, way too much micromanaging is why it takes so long for your reports to be handled. 

 

And people being petty as fuck and /report ' ing people for shit like using /outfit on a bmx, like cmon... 

 

have some more faith in your players, stop making everything ifm / admin approved for simple little tasks.

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1 hour ago, Mistery14 said:

This first line could apply to what you just said, actually it could apply to all of us.

 

And it does. That first line could be the server's official motto. A third, if not half, of the issues GTA:W has, not just the staff-related ones, are self-inflicted due to mismanagement and complacency on behalf of those that run their respective shows. Don't fix what's not broken will kill this place on the long run, but at least it'll have mapped charging stations to make up for it.

 

1 hour ago, Mistery14 said:

Any player, including you and me are more than welcome to apply for staff ourselves if we feel like admins aren't doing satisfactory work - But we don't. Why?

 

It's hard to have any interest in being part of a group of people who see you as a threat to the server for wanting to help new players by standing in a safezone or who automatically assume bad faith on your end when confronted with a situation that was entirely created by their own incompetence. Besides, it's not like you have to be an admin to criticize their work or to offer them advice and guidance.

 

1 hour ago, Mistery14 said:

Remember that at the end of the day, none of them are obligated to do what they do and it's something we should be grateful for. I'll throw an assumption here and say that none of them are being paid for it - Staffing is supposedly purely voluntary work. 

 

The argument that "it's voluntary work" is a double edged sword. Granted, the fact they're volunteers should make regular players think twice before being knuckleheads towards the staff for what they do, but on the other hand no one is forcing the admins to be admins. It's a well-known fact that being an administrator is a thankless job and if you join the staff expecting every one of your actions to be met with a ticker-tape parade by the playerbase, you're better off spending your free time doing your own thing, because once you have that  green name, it's not expressions of gratitude that'll be thrown at you daily.

 

1 hour ago, Mistery14 said:

On top of that you state that admins are responsible for writing the server's rules. I don't think it's true, correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I'm aware, they enforce the rules, not every admin makes them. 

 

Rules come from the staff team, regardless if it's a level one admin or management, and many rules related to specific areas of the servers (i.e. properties, factions, etc.) come from staff teams that are mostly composed of admins. And even if the admins don't write them, as you assume, they still enforce them, and if they enforce rules they themselves don't believe in without any attempt to change them, then they just show a hypocrisy that is hard to justify. 

 

1 hour ago, Mistery14 said:

But what do your regular admins have to do with any of that?

 

You can only pass the buck so many times before it has to stop. Who is responsible for that, then? Lead admins? Management? The founder? What's stopping a regular admin from calling out a rule that's superfluous, obsolete or pointless and bring it to the attention of those above him in the chain of command? If they don't or can't, then it's back to the original cause of many of this server's problems: complacency and mismanagement.

 

1 hour ago, Mistery14 said:

Adding more rules will never do the server any good if they're not supported by decent foundation rules that set an RP standard to begin with.

 

And yet most of what the server has done in the last few years has been adding rules upon rules and erasing any concept that showed promise for a different kind of RP. And it wasn't the community that did it. They might have called for it, but they didn't do it.

 

3 hours ago, Wuhtah said:

Every day, for the past week I have seen 10-15 new forum reports pop up. 40% could be handled if players respectfully talked to each other and treated each other like human beings.

 

That's always been a staple of every server, as it has the fact that 40% of the players reports could be solved by more communication. What hasn't been part of every server is the amount of bureaucracy and red tape that make any DMV look like a stroll in the park compared to GTA:W. If admins were only in charge of reports, chances are there'd be far less cases of burnout among them. Instead they have to manage reports, properties, vehicles, faction concepts, make monthly charts about guns and drug usage and so on and so forth, all activities that bring almost nothing in terms of roleplay in-game and drain the fun out of the game.

 

On the note of communication, it's not like the staff is above having issues in clearly communication what they exactly want or in finding a compromise. They're perhaps the first offenders in being more interested in robotically enforcing rules as opposed to actively encourage roleplay, bureaucracy be damned. Since I've already highlighted enough problematic staff members, feel free to reach out to me if you want me to elaborate on this.

 

3 hours ago, Wuhtah said:

As for adding pointless rules, go ahead to the rule suggestion area and see how many players want to add more rules and enforce it more harshly. 

 

That's because the staff created a server culture that sees the establishment of rules as a magic cure to all issues, so players have bought into the idea that adding more and more rules will deter troublemakers from making trouble. But even though a speed limit sign can tell you you're not supposed to go over 50 mph, it's not going to stop you from hitting 200 mph.

 

Make the staff as reactive force instead of a proactive one. You can't possibly cover every single rule breaking situation that happens and if you try, you end up exactly in the situation you guys are now, burned out and stretched thin. Why on God's green Earth do players have to ask for an admin's permission to skip a car crash by mutual consent? 

 

In regards to the community wanting the rules being enforced more harshly, the problem is not the harshness, but rather the absolutely flippant way in which they're enforced by different admins. For a server that preaches a lot about standards, the staff seems to have none in regards to the enforcement rules, with repeated rulebreakers being given warnings after warnings while first-time offenders go straight to the ban can.

 

Maybe adding rules about it will fix the problem.

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Because play2win mentality is not punished as much as it should be. I sometimes open up the reports section and it's filled bangers reporting each other for DM, MG and common courtesy cause they got shit on in their own hood OR civilians/cops who get shot and think that they are unkillable just because they are 'doing their job' or 'not involved in illegal RP'.

 

 

Forum reports should be a last resort thing, where you suspect foul play beyond reasonable doubt and I've always treated it as such, but it's become part of the GTAW culture to report the moment something doesn't go your way and write up a paragraph. And from the POV of an admin I can see how that shit can get boring fast, as it all becomes so trivial after the first hundred reports.

Edited by BigWhiteDrilla
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I think the administration handbook should be published to the forums, and I think that the rules/procedures/policies that admins need to abide by in terms of response times/handling of incidents should be published too.

 

This would allow players to 1) understand what the staff team can/can't/should/shouldn't be doing and 2) hold staff accountable when they are doing the wrong thing, and give praise when they are doing the right thing. Admins are the closest thing we have to server-wide cops, whether that's the intention or not - so publishing that stuff like we publish the law/common procedure would be in the community's best interest.

 

I also think the staff management team/Nervous should (if it doesn't already exist) create and publicize an administrators mandate. The mandate should be fleshed out and dictate what the purpose of having admins is for and when they should/shouldn't be stepping in. Would do a lot to have admins be considered as 'members of the community with elevated powers working for the community' rather than the odd admin who goes power hungry and serves their friends who then tarnishes the staff team's reputation.

 

We should also give more powers/commands to players for things to be fixed for themselves. 

 

For example, /fixveh is a perfect example of doing something right. If I needed to /report to have /fixveh done I'd go insane. 

 

Having an admin spectate people/give permission for doing things such as shooting people in businesses etc is just game limiting in some circumstances and frustrating. 

 

The response time of admin reports in game on this server is nothing short of atrocious and should be improved, and it's not difficult to do. I think the whole staff structure needs a massive overhaul. It stinks of inefficiency and unaccountability. 

Edited by Akhmed Shamkhalaev
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