/tg/Station 13

Eternal September or the September that never ended is Usenet slang for a period beginning around 1993 when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users. The flood of new users overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums and the ability to enforce existing norms.

Another flood is around the corner. I'm hard at work trying to increase traffic to our servers. But there's a problem: unchecked growth threatens to greatly lower gameplay standards and also squeeze out regular community members.

I remember the ssethtide. We had to open up Event Hall as an overflow server. Without many established players there they were left to their own devices and taught each other rules and expectations. This resulted in lower gameplay standards and a lot of issues that admins like Phuzzylodgik had to put a lot of work into keeping in check, such as: rampant ock-ick, ick-ock, and names that clearly violated naming standards, among other general misunderstood rules. Closing and integrating Event Hall players into the community at large proved to be a bit difficult as well as players wanted to stick with the standards they learned on.

How then do we allow a flood of new players to engage our servers (and learn how to play) without having them outnumber our established community members (who would assist them in learning)?

I propose a Newbie Cap, something that makes sure that the ratio of experienced community members is never smaller than the number of new players. This would allow some new players to join and learn, while other new players would have an opportunity to observe and get hours in to bypass the cap. The cap I am suggesting would be very generous, consider something like a 2:1 ratio of experienced crew to interns. That would be 30 new players and 60 experienced players on a 90 pop server.

I've suggested this idea in the past, and Oranges hasn't been for it. Having that said, I would like to have some discussion with the community about this.

How can we future proof for the next flood, how can we welcome in new players without suffering a drop in standards? If the newbie cap isn't an acceptable solution, what is?

Sounds like an interesting idea, if it could be implemented.

If I was a new player and got hit with something like this I would probably just be confused and move to a different server where I can play immediately and likely just stay there instead.

I dont think gatekeeping is the step forward we need to integrate new players faster.

At the end of the day, as much as I hate to admit it, I think we should just have to accept that the culture changes significantly over time. Although I would want to preserve the culture there was when I first played, I've come to realize that the culture we first joined in was a fleeting moment in time. A moment which overturned the culture that came before it, and one which will eventually be overturned by the one that comes after it... this has happened dozens of times of the nearly decade and a half of /tg/station's existence, and ultimately at this point, I think it would probably be selfish of any one temporary player generation to try and stop that cycle.
When it comes to a game community like this one, if you like the culture here now, enjoy it and the fleeting time in the sun. But in interest of fairness to those who came before, and to those who will come after... when things change, either be willing to bow out, or adapt to changing times.

Bawhoppennn wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 9:07 am At the end of the day, as much as I hate to admit it, I think we should just have to accept that the culture changes significantly over time. Although I would want to preserve the culture there was when I first played, I've come to realize that the culture we first joined in was a fleeting moment in time. A moment which overturned the culture that came before it, and one which will eventually be overturned by the one that comes after it... this has happened dozens of times of the nearly decade and a half of /tg/station's existence, and ultimately at this point, I think it would probably be selfish of any one temporary player generation to try and stop that cycle.
When it comes to a game community like this one, if you like the culture here now, enjoy it and the fleeting time in the sun. But in interest of fairness to those who came before, and to those who will come after... when things change, either be willing to bow out, or adapt to changing times.

I agree with this post. If new players' antics threaten to drag the server down in more substantial ways, I think that QC bans could definitely be encouraged.

The wheel turns brother. Either you turn with it or it rolls you over.
/tg/ would be a very different place if the culture froze 4 years ago, or 3 years ago, or hell like a year and a half back.
Stuff like bait servers seem to do a pretty good job of getting people accustomed to the game before they join existing groups, and sorta blend.
Having a cap like that does a semi similar thing but artificially, and honestly projects a weird vibe.

If the concern is not a sudden wave but more just increased throughput, I'd wonder why we need player growth to that level.
I get the idea of sharing the game with people and getting them interested, but if we need to start sectioning them off into subgroups why don't we just.. grow less?

this sounds familiar, didnt i suggest this once

blackdav123 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 7:19 am If I was a new player and got hit with something like this I would probably just be confused and move to a different server where I can play immediately and likely just stay there instead.

I dont think gatekeeping is the step forward we need to integrate new players faster.

not to say one thing or another for the idea but it should be straight forward to have it auto hop you to the next populated server

Kind of like bunker mode

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 12:57 pm this sounds familiar, didnt i suggest this once

We talked about it during my last term (before you were headcoder).

Bawhoppennn wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 9:07 am I think we should just have to accept that the culture changes significantly over time.

TheFinalPotato wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 11:38 am If the concern is not a sudden wave but more just increased throughput, I'd wonder why we need player growth to that level.

The concern is over a sudden wave that could drown us in days or weeks.

This isn't meant to be a daily-use thing, it's supposed to be something akin to the panic bunker but with more nuance.

In a flood admins will strain to handle QC control, they will struggle to stay on top of panic bunker interviews.

I'm trying to remember the circumstances on which I suggested this...but yeah the idea was always it would be a temporary panic bunker like thing that wouldn't be on for too long at any given time (though obviously subject to admin/headmin whims as config)

I think that at one point we were a part of the culture change that occurred. I don't want to gatekeep this experience for new players because at least for me taking part in this change to make the game a lot friendlier to me and other new players was what kept me staying. I'm afraid that if we limited new players and tried to enforce our current culture many simply wouldn't stay.

iamgoofball wrote: ↑Mon Jan 09, 2023 12:25 am maybe we need to quit holding admins in such high regard.

Verily, /tg/station jannies have been exalted as benevolent gods among men by this playerbase for far too long

Forgot to bring this up when i had the discussion on discord, and the op should be changed to reflect this but in short, when Rave says "protect community culture" in the op he actually means "Maintain administration standards". Not sure where those wires got crossed since those are in no way the same goal.

Farquaar wrote: ↑Mon Jan 09, 2023 12:30 am

iamgoofball wrote: ↑Mon Jan 09, 2023 12:25 am maybe we need to quit holding admins in such high regard.

Verily, /tg/station jannies have been exalted as benevolent gods among men by this playerbase for far too long

you're an idiot

Hey guys I have revised the initial post.

Sorry for all the confusion with how I blundered the OP.

My concerns are with making sure that new players learn norms and standards of gameplay by being able to play with the community rather than being shoved into a containment server and left to teach each other. I think we owe it to new players to be able to offer our actual servers for them to learn on rather than leaving them neglected. Administration is a volunteer effort and I remember some admins being uninterested/unwilling to handle EH. We can try to have 24/7 coverage of a containment server but that would be exhausting and inefficient, especially considering that our community members are also able to explain standards and norms to new players.

New players are also a breath of fresh air, generally. I want new people to be here. But I think we need to load balance and ensure that there's a healthy balance of new and experienced people.

This smacks of cliqisheness, you're not entitled to a specific standard of community if you can't scale your moderation and spread of ideas, or those ideas imply don't gell with a new generation.

I have seen multiple cycles of new populations, and each new epoch of population represented a destruction of old ideas and traditions, leaving behind those who didn't adapt and change with it.

But with destruction came rebirth, new ideas, new people, new culture.

Culture has to be malleable and that involves some destruction and creation.

I'm personally opposed to this idea because it's much more likely to result in the death of a playerbase because people will go *where they can play* than any kind of effective method of inculcating people in some preexisting way of doing things. So as people can't play here they will go else where, make connections there and stay.

Anything other than uncondtional embracing of new players is likely to result in immediate or near term death of any server.

Given how little code it will take however, I don't begrudge someone coding it up, despite how dangerous and shortsighted of a thing i believe it really is.

Also side note it actually mattered very little that the event halls were nearly completely unmoderated, because people made the connections that made them stay anyway and then eventually that group cycled into the general population and the learning curve of how to not get banned isn't significantly hard.

If anything I would propose the reverse of this where experienced players have to try the other servers instead.

oranges wrote: ↑Mon Jan 09, 2023 1:31 am This smacks of cliqisheness, you're not entitled to a specific standard of community if you can't scale your moderation and spread of ideas, or those ideas imply don't gell with a new generation.

I have seen multiple cycles of new populations, and each new epoch of population represented a destruction of old ideas and traditions, leaving behind those who didn't adapt and change with it.

But with destruction came rebirth, new ideas, new people, new culture.

Culture has to be malleable and that involves some destruction and creation.

I'm personally opposed to this idea because it's much more likely to result in the death of a playerbase because people will go *where they can play* than any kind of effective method of inculcating people in some preexisting way of doing things. So as people can't play here they will go else where, make connections there and stay.

Anything other than uncondtional embracing of new players is likely to result in immediate or near term death of any server.

Given how little code it will take however, I don't begrudge someone coding it up, despite how dangerous and shortsighted of a thing i believe it really is.

Also side note it actually mattered very little that the event halls were nearly completely unmoderated, because people made the connections that made them stay anyway and then eventually that group cycled into the general population.

This idea is my attempt to do due diligence before I set my sights on drawing more people en masse to our servers.

If we really don't need to do anything different I can accept that and move forward with my goals. I hope we don't end up missing the time we had to make safeguards and do better than we did last time.

Here's some scattered thoughts.

One thing I've come to resent (and still do resent) is a sentiment I first heard when we were putting up the Panic Bunker in regards to some attack or something along those lines. It was some point last year though. There were a lot of people in #help wondering why they couldn't get in, and you had to give the same boilerplate response to why. When it was discussed in backchannels, something along the lines of the following was uttered:

Screw the new people, we've got to stay afloat, we shouldn't fuck around with new people, etc.

I didn't really like that response at the time because I pictured myself as an outsider coming in (especially considering that I discovered the server through Events Hall US during the ssethtide), rather than an already well-established game admin at the time I had that conversation. Perhaps that mindset would be appropriate for something like a large-scale attack that provokes those types of bunkers, but I don't see it as a good thing to assume that mindset always. Some of the best interactions I've seen occur in this game were from players who weren't yet jaded and still figuring stuff out (observing someone with less than 50 hours on the server tends to always be a treat), and it's much more likely that they'll still be around for a long while after we burn out, decay, and die.

If one truly thinks that this is a good community that you want to see flourish, don't deny the fresh, new blood transfusion (to really any capacity, because when you hemmorhage out participants in a community, you really do hemorrhage them out). A good thing about having a larger admin team is that there will likely always be people ready to rise up to the challenge, as well as more people available to fill the gaps in coverage. You don't need to focus on "This one guy HELD DOWN THE FORT during our DARKEST HOURS!" but should instead also focus on "This team managed to keep STRONG and the servers RUNNING during our DARKEST HOURS!". I think sometimes it might be apt to revel in the chaos as well, instead of focusing on preventing it, try and see where the current might take you (granted, would be prudent to set up some "dams" like what you might mention here? I don't know what exactly I want).

Bawhoppennn wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 9:07 am At the end of the day, as much as I hate to admit it, I think we should just have to accept that the culture changes significantly over time. Although I would want to preserve the culture there was when I first played, I've come to realize that the culture we first joined in was a fleeting moment in time. A moment which overturned the culture that came before it, and one which will eventually be overturned by the one that comes after it... this has happened dozens of times of the nearly decade and a half of /tg/station's existence, and ultimately at this point, I think it would probably be selfish of any one temporary player generation to try and stop that cycle.
When it comes to a game community like this one, if you like the culture here now, enjoy it and the fleeting time in the sun. But in interest of fairness to those who came before, and to those who will come after... when things change, either be willing to bow out, or adapt to changing times.

i didnt read this post but i agree with it

Bawhoppennn wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 9:07 am At the end of the day, as much as I hate to admit it, I think we should just have to accept that the culture changes significantly over time. Although I would want to preserve the culture there was when I first played, I've come to realize that the culture we first joined in was a fleeting moment in time. A moment which overturned the culture that came before it, and one which will eventually be overturned by the one that comes after it... this has happened dozens of times of the nearly decade and a half of /tg/station's existence, and ultimately at this point, I think it would probably be selfish of any one temporary player generation to try and stop that cycle.
When it comes to a game community like this one, if you like the culture here now, enjoy it and the fleeting time in the sun. But in interest of fairness to those who came before, and to those who will come after... when things change, either be willing to bow out, or adapt to changing times.

based

I don't think Rave's motivation in making this thread was some sort of clinging to the status quo mentality. I think diffusing new players across multiple servers is actually an interesting idea. Whether or not it's better than confining all the newbies to a single server whenever a big Youtuber makes a video on SS13 is up for debate, but I think the discussion could be a productive one.

Farquaar wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 4:16 am I don't think Rave's motivation in making this thread was some sort of clinging to the status quo mentality. I think diffusing new players across multiple servers is actually an interesting idea. Whether or not it's better than confining all the newbies to a single server whenever a big Youtuber makes a video on SS13 is up for debate, but I think the discussion could be a productive one.

Yeah you're picking up what I'm putting down.

I don't think the primary issue is the number of users, it's the number of admins.

Every time I hop on Sybil, pressing adminwho once per hour has a 95% chance of 0 admins, a 4% chance of 1 admin, and a 1% chance of 2+ admins. To be fair, I'm typically on during off-peak hours, for the US west coast, that being either overnight or in the morning, but, still, that covers 2/3 of the day...

The admin team needs to work on being more welcoming to LRP admins, and maybe even consider reaching out to active LRP players for active recruitment.

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 6:55 am The admin team needs to work on being more welcoming to LRP admins, and maybe even consider reaching out to active LRP players for active recruitment.

Trainers already do this. I'd even say the majority of our new admins were recruited this way. There just isn't enough suitable candidates for recruitment on LRP servers, and even less suitable candidates who already didn't decline their invitation to join the admin team.

I thought this thread was going to be about giving new players an in game hat that they had to figure out how to take off.

Unrelated to the main thread:

Sybil has had this issue in the past where none of the active sybilmins admin, they play instead.
So trainers recruit new admins, who then burn out in the trial period trying to have fun solominning without this like culture of admins talking and doing stuff together.
New admins then burn out, and either become inactive or stop doing it. Then the cycle repeats.

I'm not sure if that's what's going on currently, I think someone who actually does it could speak to that better. I know it was a thing like 10 months back and I don't think? much has changed. I am massively out of touch though.

TheFinalPotato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 1:58 am Unrelated to the main thread:

Sybil has had this issue in the past where none of the active sybilmins admin, they play instead.
So trainers recruit new admins, who then burn out in the trial period trying to have fun solominning without this like culture of admins talking and doing stuff together.
New admins then burn out, and either become inactive or stop doing it. Then the cycle repeats.

I'm not sure if that's what's going on currently, I think someone who actually does it could speak to that better. I know it was a thing like 10 months back and I don't think? much has changed. I am massively out of touch though.

that seems about right from the patterns i've observed in my admittedly short tenure as an admin. people really underestimate how much solo adminning sucks. i and probably most other admins would be far more likely to admin a shift w/ several other ones on.

oranges wrote: ↑Mon Jan 09, 2023 1:31 am I'm personally opposed to this idea because it's much more likely to result in the death of a playerbase because people will go *where they can play* than any kind of effective method of inculcating people in some preexisting way of doing things. So as people can't play here they will go else where, make connections there and stay.

Anything other than uncondtional embracing of new players is likely to result in immediate or near term death of any server.

Never thought I'd agree with oranges but +1 to this. There are plenty of SS13 servers and if new players are facing obstacles like being forced to observe or getting booted to a server where they have horrible lag or it's deadpop, they will simply play somewhere else.

Controlling the flow of new players is a bad idea because that flow comes out as a waterfall and then slows to a thin stream naturally, if you restrict the flow to a thin stream from the getgo you're going to spill a ton of potential players into other servers instead.

Some excessive OOC talk in IC and lowered quality of play for a few weeks or even months is a tiny, tiny price to pay for a fresh supply of potentially dozens of new players that will then go on to learn the rules, improve the servers, maybe even become future admins and coders that would've been on Fulp or Goon instead if this were implemented. 0 barrier of entry is the only way to go.

sinfulbliss wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 6:02 am Controlling the flow of new players is a bad idea because that flow comes out as a waterfall and then slows to a thin stream naturally, if you restrict the flow to a thin stream from the getgo you're going to spill a ton of potential players into other servers instead.

Some excessive OOC talk in IC and lowered quality of play for a few weeks or even months is a tiny, tiny price to pay for a fresh supply of potentially dozens of new players that will then go on to learn the rules, improve the servers, maybe even become future admins and coders that would've been on Fulp or Goon instead if this were implemented. 0 barrier of entry is the only way to go.

Your points are really compelling I just wish there were any safeguards or lessons we could take from ssethtide to take better advantage of the next tide or make it easier on us. Any kind of preparation. I guess I can ask around about how quickly we can spin up extra servers but I think bobbahbrown had mentioned that we can already do that pretty easily. If that's the case is it just matter of testing to make sure or something? Do a quick drill?

I want us to be prepared for the future.

Now that we've all talked about it a bit more I'm remembering that part of the difficulty we had with closing ehall was elitism from the established community as well. If there's anything we can do during the next flood to get more integration between old and new we won't have that issue pop up again, maybe.

Alright there's been really good engagement of the idea I suggested in the OP but I think there are some bigger questions we can ask that would be more productive, so I'd like to re-focus the discussion and open up space for other ideas.

What can we do to prepare for the next tide?
What were the problems of ssethtide?
What went well?
What can we do better?

I joined during the sseth tide and started out on a low pop server to learn the controls, then moved to whatever server was on beyond that had 60-70 pop when I would want to play, this was usually tg event hall, but not always. I do not remember the exact message, but on joining you would get a message explaining what event hall was and you expect a lower gameplay standard on it than on the main servers. This, coupled with the fact that getting onto the main servers took slightly more work, heavily compelled me to get out of what felt like the kiddie pool and into the real game as quick as possible, but it also made me respect the rules on the main servers a lot more because the idea of being able to play there felt much more like a privilege than a right.

A way to expand on the old system might be to require you to link your ckey to the forums to join Terry/Sybil/bagil during a tide. You are much more likely to cherish something you had to work for, even off it was a very tiny amount of work

It would be incredibly frustrating if I was in a position where I was in X minutes into the round and my new friend wants to join my server and they get booted off so my only recourse is to tell them to wait 30+ minutes just to test run the game or I have to drop what im doing and switch servers to fulfill some arbitrary newbie ratio scaled by an arbitrary newbie timerlock.

I could maybe see a priority system where a certain amount of job slots would be reserved for people with X hours, particularly jobs that are integral to station function (engineering, medical, mining), if the fear is that the new players will impact round lifespan by hogging job slots. I would much rather just have like a notification that encourages new people to connect-on-click to the newbie server.

Something like "New to the game? Join *Event Hall* to play in a more beginner-friendly environment!"

Mind you I dont see incompetent people as a problem unless its literally stopping round function.

New players should always be prioritized, even to the detriment of the old players. They are more valuable in every way if they can be encouraged to stick around for the long term.

Even unhinged schizos move on after a decade, we always need fresh blood, and the fondest memories I ever had here were manning Event Hall for days and watching new people interact with the game with bright eyes. They didn't know the meta, they couldn't tell the difference between in game event or admin event, it was all still magical to them. We have so little of that wonder.

Experienced players should embrace it, shift around to servers they play less often, accomodate the new influx of players in every way possible. The ones that don't are selfish, bitter and short-sighted, and should go in the crusher.

Ssethtide was a total success, I don't even think many special preparations are required people will step up to the plate like we did back then. The most important line to maintain for newbies is the OOC and IC one. Short, sharp backhands every time they step into OOC in game or IC in OOC. The separation between the two is an absolute and the single most important rule for keeping the game enjoyable for everyone, and establishing the right mindset that you should feel a degree of separation from IC so you can enjoy dying and making good stories.

The game doesn't have to be totally functional every day, it can be a fucking mess sometimes, that's part of the charm and unique experience you can't get anywhere else. You're not entitled to the exact version of /tg/station you want every round, you live in a society.

What if we had a tutorial island like runescape with a little ruined station that showed the basics of each job and how to heal ect that new players can choose to be spawned in?

JusticeGoat wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 10:04 am What if we had a tutorial island like runescape with a little ruined station that showed the basics of each job and how to heal ect that new players can choose to be spawned in?

I like this idea.

Another possibility is to add "mentors", like TGMC and other servers have, who answer mechanics-related questions but do not take part in admin activity.

ekaterina wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:00 pm Another possibility is to add "mentors", like TGMC and other servers have, who answer mechanics-related questions but do not take part in admin activity.

That idea has already been picked and thrown. There’s no need for mentors if we already have active Admins to handle that type of help. There’s a couple of arguments on the addition of mentors anyway (hint hint viewtopic.php?p=645157#p645157).

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:42 pm if we already have active Admins to handle that type of help.

... do you? Often, there are either no admins or the admin that is on does not know the answer.

ekaterina wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 5:22 pm

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:42 pm if we already have active Admins to handle that type of help.

... do you? Often, there are either no admins or the admin that is on does not know the answer.

Skill issue on our part. But it still doesn’t solve adding mentors. Read the arguments there and you’ll see what I mean.

If you want to see a change, join the admin team.

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:42 pm

ekaterina wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:00 pm Another possibility is to add "mentors", like TGMC and other servers have, who answer mechanics-related questions but do not take part in admin activity.

That idea has already been picked and thrown. There’s no need for mentors if we already have active Admins to handle that type of help. There’s a couple of arguments on the addition of mentors anyway (hint hint viewtopic.php?p=645157#p645157).

I would disagree. When I just started, the adminhelp button was the scariest thing I could ever press, and many times I had no clue how to do something, nobody was around, and I wouldn't press it, for fear of being banned.
Just a thought

vect0r wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 6:06 pm

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:42 pm

ekaterina wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:00 pm Another possibility is to add "mentors", like TGMC and other servers have, who answer mechanics-related questions but do not take part in admin activity.

That idea has already been picked and thrown. There’s no need for mentors if we already have active Admins to handle that type of help. There’s a couple of arguments on the addition of mentors anyway (hint hint viewtopic.php?p=645157#p645157).

I would disagree. When I just started, the adminhelp button was the scariest thing I could ever press, and many times I had no clue how to do something, nobody was around, and I wouldn't press it, for fear of being banned.
Just a thought

Just to be clear; you won’t get banned from misusing the ahelp function as long as you don’t break the rules. This is why I suggest admins should always greet newcomers coming in to always ahelp if they have any questions, and, not only that, also the wiki and the servers tell you this as well.

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 6:25 pm

vect0r wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 6:06 pm

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:42 pm

ekaterina wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 12:00 pm Another possibility is to add "mentors", like TGMC and other servers have, who answer mechanics-related questions but do not take part in admin activity.

That idea has already been picked and thrown. There’s no need for mentors if we already have active Admins to handle that type of help. There’s a couple of arguments on the addition of mentors anyway (hint hint viewtopic.php?p=645157#p645157).

I would disagree. When I just started, the adminhelp button was the scariest thing I could ever press, and many times I had no clue how to do something, nobody was around, and I wouldn't press it, for fear of being banned.
Just a thought

Just to be clear; you won’t get banned from misusing the ahelp function as long as you don’t break the rules. This is why I suggest admins should always greet newcomers coming in to always ahelp if they have any questions, and, not only that, also the wiki and the servers tell you this as well.

Yeah I know; but new me didn't, and I was deathly afraid TO use it, and even if I am not now new, when I was and I could benefit the most from asking questions I was.
Honestly though, I think adding a mentorhelp button that just sends your question to the admins so you get the same functionality and not scaring off new players from asking questions nobody knows the answers for. And we don't want to do that, maybe add a piece of paper which tells you "got any questions? Adminhelp it!" and some other stuff for your first 30 rounds or something would be helpful.

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 5:54 pm If you want to see a change, join the admin team.

I neither want the associated responsibility nor to have to ban people. I'd be fine answering questions, though, which is the benefit the existence of mentors would provide.

You know, we /can/ just code in a mentor help button to send it to the admins to fix the whole “I don’t want to get banned” thing. Perhaps we can make that a reality.

Admins should be able to answer questions, we don’t need another team that /don’t/ want to be admins but /do/ want to answer questions. Then we have to change the rank structure of /TG/, and it drifts us from what our admin team stands for. It’s redundant.

Plus, you can already help players in game physically if you want to be helpful.

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 7:22 pm You know, we /can/ just code in a mentor help button to send it to the admins to fix the whole “I don’t want to get banned” thing. Perhaps we can make that a reality.

I am not opposed to having separate buttons for ahelps about griefing and ahelps about mechanics, but at that point you might as well just add mentors.

ekaterina wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 7:24 pm

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 7:22 pm You know, we /can/ just code in a mentor help button to send it to the admins to fix the whole “I don’t want to get banned” thing. Perhaps we can make that a reality.

I am not opposed to having separate buttons for ahelps about griefing and ahelps about mechanics, but at that point you might as well just add mentors.

me when I forget to bring up a point in my post and decide to edit it and then someone replies and it makes me look like a idiot :(

Epicgamer545 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 7:22 pm Admins should be able to answer questions, we don’t need another team that /don’t/ want to be admins but /do/ want to answer questions. Then we have to change the rank structure of /TG/, and it drifts us from what our admin team stands for. It’s redundant.

Plus, you can already help players in game physically if you want to be helpful.

Anyway, perhaps soon enough I can perhaps try asking some coders to do it (or perhaps the change is too much for our poor policy so I gotta make a new thread, maybe).

Also, another thing to add is that even if we /did/ try pushing for mentors, the policy thread already was discusssed and was thrown. It’s unlikely that it will be picked up again.

I also was too afraid to use the ahelp button for mechanic issues back when it matter most, a separate button would have done wonders for me when I was new.

is it best to show new players a slow green shift, or a hyper chaotic wizard or nukie round?