State of the server

[Grape]

Please bear in mind that the below text was written on a phone and was when teachers was an existing role, I simply copy and pasting something I had put on another thread and I think most is still relevent to the current situation and if features are implemented, could sort some things out - as well as a mixture of other suggestions made by people like Ghostkiller on this thread and more.

Staff and Administration
Moderator/Trial Administrator
Many people may like how the current Trial Administrator and teacher system works. However, I believe that we can all agree that changes can be made for the better and I think what I’m about to say can fix the unfortunate state FL staff are currently in.

The Moderator role should have permissions to no-clip, phase, physgun grab, kick, ban and blacklist; the same permissions as Trial Administrators have now. The Moderator’s job is to primarily teach people rather than punishing them and therefore they should have the ability to pick people up and fly to a rooftop and talk to them privately and have the ability to kick people if they still don’t listen and cause mayhem. This way, people have the time to learn rather than being instantly punished.

People should be able to apply for Moderator role and the thread should be public. This way, the community shows their opinion of said person and staff can make an in-depth, and arguably fair conclusion. Of course, the SAS would have the final call however the public votes/opinions will hopefully guide the SAs conclusion in the right direction. You may argue that said applicants will change behavior once they applied however if common sense is used and the community and staff know what they are genuinely like, no bad can come from said public applications and votes and will, in fact, benefit the staff team greatly.

SAs, Admins, and the community should keep an eye on the Moderators as they literally can become future staff which is a very important and currently neglected role in fearless. The Moderator role won’t be a trial period and may be a matter of days until the rest of the staff team believe they are ready for Admin, or a matter of months. The premise is that the Moderator role will have no timer and they can either stay as the role or say yes to the opportunity for promotion.

The more trusted, active staff that take the server and its state to heart, the better.

Teacher
Teachers should have more responsibilities as not only are they rolemodels but should also reflect image of FL. Currently, Teachers don’t do anything other than doing their own and typically isolated roleplay or just give out a bunch of points. The teacher's goal should be to literally do as the role name suggests and teach, rehabilitate players that broke the rules and if a teacher has to post a PR, then they have quite clearly failed their role in the community. Teachers should be the people who are most against punishments and should always focus on having the best attitude with no big ego, arrogance or immaturity. These three things are unfortunately seen in some teachers today as well as the fact even a couple don’t even know the rules, at all.

Teachers should constantly be kept an eye on as they literally represent the community. Do you want FL to be represented by arrogant and immature people that post PRs to get someone they don’t like banned, whilst they don’t know the rules in the first place? I highly doubt it.

Punishments
The issue with the current staff team, punishment system, and guidelines is that it works quite similar to the prison system in the UK. I am speaking metaphorically of course however it is quite accurate. People get thrown punishments left right and center and never learn their lesson. Bans and blacklists are not a deterrent for breaking rules whatsoever. In fact, most people state that if they knew they were about to receive a punishment, they would break the rules within that time to ‘make the most of it’.

Staff must prioritize teaching properly rather than needlessly punishing to boost their ego by a small amount. I use the prison metaphor because the more punishments someone gets, the more likely they will be shunned down on and will lower their chances in getting anywhere in the community. This then enitiates the snowball effect and they will continue to infringe rules as at that point it is near impossible to redeem themselves. However, if staff begin to administrate/punish the same way as prisons/law enforcement agencies in countries such as the Netherlands and Scandina as their priorities are to rehabilitate rather than to punish.

This is the reason as to why countries that rehabilitate and teach have the lowest crime rates in the world rather than punishing which is what most of staff do nowadays. Punishments encourage punishments and teaching/rehabilitating prevent future rule infringements from occurring and that’s the truth of the matter.

When it comes to PRs, staff should go in-depth and even privately contact the involved party(s). Staff should even get other staff’s opinions to come to a fair and justified conclusion with everything in mind and with no biased opinions.

The use of the common phrase ‘User has many hours and should know better’ is completely pathetic. At the end of the day, everyone here is human and are bound to make mistakes. Staff should ensure users are aware what they did may have been wrong and that they shouldn’t do it again. As of now, most staff punish the active, loyal and nicest community members for long periods of time if they make the slightest mistake, which is the biggest reason why the server is in so much chaos.

UBRs need to be taken much more seriously and should be concluded with a large amount of consideration. If someone makes a UBR, they clearly want to come on the server and should be able to, at the end of he day. With JackZ’s ‘last chance’ suggestion approved, and everything mentioned above properly implemented, the server, staff, and entire community will be in brilliant shape.

[konsta]

Come to think of it... I miss Pines although I hated it, the performance of it was superior to V4B1

[DVN]

We do need to look into promoting more staff members, it's something we're actively doing now. It's apparent there is a problem and the team is trying to fix this, I myself have became subject to inactivity but again I'm trying to improve this myself by making more time for the server. It's good that you bring this up, but don't knock us when mistakes happen and you experience problems, just tell us and we will figure out how to fix it after listening to you.

[Awestruck]

No-one will be able to apply for power like that lol

[Falc]

I think what people need to understand is, the team is quite small right now, that's apparent (Take away inactivity).

It cannot just grow within a week, candidates cannot be plucked out of nowhere like a lucky dip and give them the rank, it'll make everyones experience a damn lot worse.

I know it seems like complaints are going unnoticed and "Oh look another thread, let's complain again so staff listen" but take it from someone who's been in their position before, promotions take TIME. A player has to be monitored to an extent where as a team they can all put trust into the person picked to take up the power and responsibility, otherwise you'll find Fearless with abusive staff and we've seen how that ends before, takes you right the way back to square one.

The inactivity is a major issue which MUST be worked on ASAP while staff are recruiting, because it's how the Trialists actually learn, through seeing how other staff deal with sits, how they monitor a full server, etc etc. Inactivity is the biggest priority to be tackled, simply let them go if they cannot or do not have the time to Administrate, don't hold onto a rank for the sake of it, it helps nobody.

[aDisabledDeer]

I agree with what Falc said in basically every aspect.

The one key thing we're missing here is communication between the team and the players - I understand that the team are trying to combat that by having an inactivity thread and having more announcements in the Discord, but the general communication between staff and players about whats actually happening in the team, and what the team plan to do in the future, is lacking.

I hope the point of this thread isn't missed, as some of us are trying to do whats best for the server, and I do hope some of what is being said will be taken into account at the end of the day.

[Jeffrey]

I’ve had quite a lot of fun with most of the maps, including v4b1 which I remember playing most mini events on back 1 or 2 years ago. I’m sure you also appreciated the map eventually until Fearless started sticking to 1 live server.

Of course everyone has had fun on every map, but the fun isn't  all the time. And the FPS is a major factor coming to it. I can't enjoy aggressive because of low fps, which removes my fun, and that is for a lot of people.

V2D was Temporary and everyone knew that by day one that the day will come. so if the map is a mess why would 70% of the community vote for it?

Its not 70% of the community, it's  just the people who voted for it, and no one knows if something will be good or bad if it isn't tried. v2d has the best fps and a lot of players came back because of that fps, i can't say what will  happen to v4b1 in the future, as i can't join the server, however you already see players complaining about the fps, including me while i did manage to play, it was a mess duo to the FPS. v2d was temporary for until Pines came back, however v4b1 was put instead of it. 

As well as the vote was shot, unlinke the previous one, which pines did lead, however after some time more and more players voted for v2d.

V4b1 has been in the community for quite some time now, and I remember a while back there were really good rp’s with better FPS. So for certain, we cannot just blame the map, most areas are stable within the map with FPS, but framedrops may occur mod frequently and it sounds like a modification/update to the server can conflict and cause people have low FPS at certain times. I’m sure a developer can look into the recent updates that have been logged and check if anything is faulty within the code.

It's not the modification or any content that causes the lag, it's the map. Go join a DarkRP server with V4B1 as the map, and it will have the same bad performance as we do now.

Well I’ve seen videos, I’ve never often noticed a high drop in FPS. I think you should give it a chance that it’s probably an update, just for now at least.

[Zona]

There was plenty of passive rp on v2d, people just love to exaggerate, slums doomforts and claim that it's impossible to  rp because of it. My message about people leaving still stands

This is that the map forces you to do certain roleplays. The map looks old and doesn't look like a city which you will see today irl

[Yonno]

Solo administrating is NOT hard. Either you lack backbone, courage, or you just perform poorly under "pressure", but it's really not hard.

[mark2766]

I agree completly the staff team put very little effort in it's a rarity to ever see an admin online and when they are it's like someone said only after people complaining on discord about prop mongers for an hour. People rarely rp anymore since they know that no admin are online to enforce it. Why would you carry on and even want to be an admin unless you are dedicated to being on and to have that responsibility of being on the server. For a server that has so many people donating to the server the fact that this server put no effort into getting admins to do what they are supposed to do or getting new ones is a joke. I will not be subscribing to donator again when mine runs out and I don't think I will be the only one