MCC Staff Situation

Hello people of MCC! So at the start of August I made a post regarding the current situation of the minigame servers, the main problem behind this and the actions which the server needs to take to fix these issues. If you would like to read more about it, I'll leave the link here - https://mccentral.org/community/threads/mcc-minigames-situation.6127/
In this post, one of the things I mentioned that was hurting the development of MCC was the Staff Team which will be the main topic of this post. I tried to avoid the topic in my post as someone would see it as "Staff Disrespect" but with the current situation of MCC, it needs to be done.
Quick disclaimer; All content in this post in mainly my own opinions. I'm not directly attacking any specific staff members so please, if you think you might get offended, either leave this thread now or put some rub on your *** and sit through it.
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Ok so getting into things quickly, I firstly want to talk about the activity of Staff members. I've mentioned this before in my other post but I want to reiterate my point. Being an EU player on a server with the majority of the playerbase and Staff team being US means I would statistically see less players and staff online than the average player. However, I'm quite the night owl and play late nights to get the full experience of the server. I occasionally play during EU times and in this time is when the server is infested with hackers. I'm mainly a minigames only based player but I do play some of the other sub-servers like Prison and ArenaPvP. All of the gamemodes I play in minigames or any of the sub-servers have hackers on them with no Staff in sight. The Staff team has stated this to be because there is a lack of EU Staff members. If that is the case then the server should push for more EU Staff members but not once have I seen any Staff member or the server advocating they want any. If the server does actually have any EU staff members, it would be recommended to push for them to actually be active as I've never seen any on minigames or the majority of sub-servers. If the server is actually lacking in EU Staff, you should just push for more. There is no shame in it. The majority of servers, regardless of player count do this and it's something that I believe that MCC should implement so they aren't overflowed with only a US based Staff team. Now the larger problem. With the majority of the MCC Staff team being US and the majority of the playerbase being located somewhere in the US, you would expect to see a good number of Staff on all minigames and sub-servers, right? In reality, very little are actually on. I've only been a player on MCC for about a 2 years so I have a rough idea of all the Staff members on the server. I actively check to see who gets demoted, promoted etc. and keep a lookout for online Staff whenever I'm online and the results are horrible. I took a look at the Staff team roster that MCC has posted on the Forums and picked out the Staff that I've actively seen online, not including Factions Staff. For all categories e.g. Helper, Moderator etc. I will give a number for the amount of Staff that I've actually seen actively online;
Helper - 1
Moderator - 3
SrModerator - 2
Admins - 0
Owners - 0
I will deliberately avoid mentioning the actual few Staff members I've seen online as it may cause an uproar that I really don't feel like dealing with. As you can see however, the number is low. This is only really my view of the active Staff members while someone else's could be different depending on timezones, sub-servers played on etc. but for someone who plays 5 out of the 7 days of the week, you would think the number would be higher.

My next point is one that somewhat relates back to my first paragraph but I want to make it its own point and that is the minutes Staff have to play. This is something that I've heard from other Staff and ex-Staff who's names I will leave anonymous to uphold their privacy. All Staff member must complete a specific amount of minutes on each sub-server and minigames yet the server has a large number of hackers. Why is this? Well, from what I've been told, most of the Staff team don't actually finish their minutes on the majority of the servers. They only play the ones they want to. This is understandable with Factions Staff but for every other member on the Staff team, there's really no excuse. Very few of the Staff in my opinion actually complete their minutes as they should. From starting with Helper, to Moderator, to SrModerator, the number of minutes you have to complete increases but for Admins... they have NO minutes to play. This is probably one of the most ridiculous things I've heard about. The Admins administrate the server yet don't have to be on the server? If one thing needs to be fixed about the Staff team, this is most definitely one of them. I do see posts on the forums from at least one Admin but never online. The rare times I'd actually see one online is during a UHC event.

This will most likely be my last point and probably the one which will be deemed the most as "Staff Disrespect" but I will continue to state it anyways. So, what I want to talk about is Staff Corruption. As far as I'm aware the Staff team in my opinion could be considered "corrupt" to an extent. My main reasons for believing this are;
- Staff will just play their minutes and not get on anymore
- Staff leave player reports unlooked at to others can get complete their report requirements
- Admins don't have to even play on the server
- Some Staff (probably) falsely punish players knowing they shouldn't be (I'm a victim of this)
- Staff avoid actually trying to staff and spend their time playing on gamemodes
- Staff inactivity is overlooked
- A lot of immature Staff (from personal experiences)
- Lazy Staff
A lot of these points could probably be countered and that's understandable and I'm sure most of the Staff who will even look at this (if they do) will disagree with most of my points but this is how you portray yourselves. If the MCC Staff team actually did their jobs, were active and and professional then this post wouldn't exist in the first place. There will always be flaws in a Staff team but MCC's goes to another level. I'm sure many players agree with me and may don't. I'm not going to develop on this point any longer as I think it speaks for itself. If you have any opinions of your own that you would like to add in, go for it. This was mainly made as a wake up call to the Staff and the players that something needs to be done. Hope you enjoyed my rant! :)

 

This is something you've experienced before?

 

As far as I can tell, the staff aren't preoccupied. Forums reports is outstanding currently from my own experience. It's taken 5 hours for some reports and others up to 12 hours. If they were actively looked at, reports wouldn't go unnoticed for 5 hours. I don't feel the need to talk further about forum reports as in my last post I made I went over it pretty well. You can check it out here - https://mccentral.org/community/threads/mcc-minigames-situation.6127/ The whole banning thing is something staff rarely do. I'm pretty sure now only SrModerators and above and actually ban players now and with the majority of SrModerators not being active bar 1 or 2, they don't leave the impact they should. Staff can also be online while managing forums, it isn't hard. There's really no excuse in that part.

Firstly, you talked about Staff going in vanish and yes, I would like to think they have that permission but that doesn't work with the way minigames is setup. You cannot spectate minigames nor join and be in vanish as it disrupts the minigame. The vanish part is helpful for events like UHC, Prison, Factions etc. were Staff can overlook ongoing situations from afar but the lack of Staff who actually play regularly and have access to vanish is little. Your point about the anticheat being bad is something I can agree with but doesn't have anything to do with the Staff. It needs fixed ASAP and has been like this since 27th of July or something like that but has nothing to do with the Staff not doing their jobs. You mention the Staff try their hardest to catch hackers from report tickets etc. but as I stated in this and my previous post which you can read here - https://mccentral.org/community/threads/mcc-minigames-situation.6127/ , the way they handle forum reports is honestly just dreadful. Once again, I'm not going to talk too much about it but they leave reports unchecked so others can get their "report requirements" which is absurd since their main goal should be to get them done with as quick as possible and at the highest quality. In-game also isn't managed very well as with the new anticheat development, the hackers have began to thrive. With this, the Staff should've thought to actively check in game, don't you think? The problem is, they don't. The management in game is the same as it was without the new anticheat flunk even though the situation has worsened dramatically. Using discord for catching hackers makes no sense. Sure, people can ask for Staff assistance but that's all really. I read the support chat in the Discord quite often and really only 2 Staff members actually attempt to take action in game if it involves someone hacking. THIS is what I mean by lazy Staff. You also talk about how minigame hackers aren't the only problem and I stated that as I play other sub-servers, not only minigames. I already made a post just dedicated to minigames as it is atrocious but all sub-servers need the same attention. The problem is that while Staff are suppose to play minutes on all servers, they don't. That's why some have been neglected and get little attention. One thing you said that I couldn't disagree with more was that forums isn't the place to call out Staff. I mean, where else am I meant to do it? The forums is used to discuss matters related to the server and I strongly believe that the current situation with the Staff team needs attention brought to it and shared throughout the MCC community. If the Staff can't take the criticism given to them by the players, they aren't really fit to be staff. Next, you talked about staff having to catch up to stuff irl and that can explain their inactivity. I 100% agree with this point that they should put real life matters first before Minecraft. However, when they apply to be Staff, they agree to dedicating themselves to the server. If they cannot dedicate fully, don't apply for Staff, it's pretty simple. If they can't be on, demote them off the Staff team and replace them with players who can actually actively moderate the server. Finally, you said I should apply for Staff. Now, I've thought about it but it wouldn't be a good idea. I've had the experience and met all requirements but I don't have the time to be Staff. I'd love to try and fix the problem from the inside but it's impossible really.

 

I completely understand were you're coming from but I really don't see any pushes to fix these things. Sure, they might not be easy but they need to be done. I really don't see an excuse not to try and upgrade the current ways the server is Staffed. I would also like to believe that there is no Staff slacking or inactive but it's quite hard to believe especially when the results aren't evident at all. The Admin situation I understood from the get go but in game activity is still something big that Admins should be actively trying to implement themselves so they can grasp what the current state of the server is like, what needs fix and how they can improve things.

 

True, my opinion could come across as biased and that's mainly due to all the experiences I've had. Skywars does have a lot of activity on it because the situation there is the worst. It's nice they're trying to handle it but I haven't noticed a lot of improvement on the other gamemodes. I never mentioned this is my post but by activity, I was talking about how active they were while Staffing. There has been a lot of incidents were Staff have just been playing the game, even with someone blatantly hacking in the lobbies and have just ignored it. A lot are online but really only partake in the "easier" reports should I say like chat related problems etc. Once again, my overall opinion could be seen as biased but really that's all due to the lack of good experiences with Staff on MCC. If the Staff situation was good, I wouldn't have such "biased" opinions.

Firstly, I also agree that Timppali explained all my points very well however not enough to change my views on anything. Your first point talks about Staff minutes and about "overworking" with Staff minutes being reduced. You and Timppali both talked about how they're monitored strictly yet I've been told otherwise by a few people who are/use to be Staff just recently. While they could be wrong, I would like to trust the and take their opinions on the matter as it does seem factual with the current situation. You talk about how leaving reports unlooked isn't corrupt and while it does make sense why, there isn't really a reason for doing it. Sure, they leave some for other people to fill but those Staff should actively checking forums as much as any other Staff. There isn't really an excuse to not having your minimum filled out as I'm sure there is a substantial amount submitted everyday. Your third point talks about Staff not getting paid being a reason to "slack off". Yes, they don't get paid but it says when you apply that it is a voluntary position. I would like to think they'd treat it the same as being paid for most of the time. True they deserve breaks but these "breaks" I see Staff taking can last a few hours. I've also seen a few Staff members ignoring me asking them questions or just being straight up AFK. Clearly the system isn't very strict. The Staff activity bit I've also spoke about before some I'm just going to move to the last point. To me, no matter what age the Staff are, if they're going to be Staff, they should be professional. I understand about wanting to have fun and joking around with when that's how you act all the time are you really fit to be Staff? All your points were great points and I do agree with them to an extent but with everything that's happening currently, it's really no excuse for sloppy Staffing.