How players treat staff members

[BenGermann]

Hey, this thread is going to consist of me half-ranting and setting some facts straight. Keep the drama in this thread to a minimum as this is only meant to hopefully open some eyes up on a few issues.

So, the treatment of staff by the players. This is not a can of worms I wanted to open up but it seems like it's needed at this point unfortunately. From what I can see many players are angry at us for updates not coming out correctly, not listening to players ideas, and giving out punishments not deemed appropriate. Okay, you guys have the right to be a little upset. If one of my favourite servers had updated and didn't deliver I wouldn't be very happy. I also wouldn't be happy if our ideas weren't listened to or we received unfair punishments. The thing is, we don't try to make our updates come out half-baked, we don't try to ignore your ideas, and we don't try to be unfair with how we handle our punishments. We do make mistakes, as does everyone else, and we're sorry for that.

With all that out of the way, let's dive into the massive issue at hand. I'm going to put this very bluntly, we are treated like absolute garbage on a daily basis. We get it, we've made a mistake, how about you give us some constructive criticism instead of just ripping into us? I cannot believe some of the things I see said about us and said towards us on a daily basis. We are not perfect machines, we are not robots, we are living, breathing people. I'm sorry we can't make everyone happy, but we really try to please everyone. Let's all be honest for a second, what does saying "lol the staff suck" or "wow what trash staff you guys are" really get done? It does absolutely nothing except hurt us. Those are the incredibly minor things said by the way, much worse is usually said to us. As I said before, give us some constructive criticism for once instead of just throwing insult after insult at us to try to elicit a reaction.

Let's go back for a minute shall we? Remember how I said "It does absolutely nothing except hurt us."? How about we expand on this point. I've been staff for just over 20 months now, I've been subject to a lot of hate and drama from people over nearly two years now. Guess what massive amounts of insults and ruthless hate does to someone after long periods of time? It does a few things I'll tell you that much. To start, when I first applied and got accepted, and for the first eight or so month I was happy and positive about most things. Now if you look at me today, I'm not the same at all. I've developed depression for a multitude of reasons, but the constant negativity and insults from players is one of the reasons it developed in the first place. To add onto that, I don't even get hurt anymore from these insults. I'm that used to having this crap thrown at me on a daily basis that I've become accustom to it like it's something normal. Let's move away from me, I'm not the only one affected. I will not be naming names, but I personally know multiple staff that are feeling constantly stressed and overwhelmed from not being able to do anything about the hate they're receiving. It honestly hurts me to see my friends and coworkers be hurt like this.

If you're already typing a response to counter this thinking it's just me trying to "win back" the players after the mistakes we've made, just stop. This is a serious issue and making a sarcastic or witty response just highlights immature and does absolutely nothing. Furthermore if you believe that me mentioned my depression is a cry for attention or that I'm just overreacting, trust me when I say I would never joke about such a topic and I would never use it to elicit pity from others

This may be a surprise to many people, but we have emotions, we react to hate, we can feel. We are not perfect, mindless machines, we are people. For once it would be nice to be treated as such.

 

[iViper]

Edit: Builders should be mentioned too...

 

[Beetley]

I completely agree with this. The constant hate and disrespect was one of the reasons I left earlier on.
It's not our fault that it's impossible to please every player.

If y'all want us to improve, stick a suggestion here:
https://havocmc.net/threads/suggestions-for-staff-improvement.3609/

 

[Katitude]

- This post also has many similarities that builders face -

That was extremely well worded, I've been staff for about a year now and believe it or not, that's when I started developing my depression as well; I have four conditions and received hate before I was even staff, so it wouldn't entirely be due to players. We appreciate everyone who sticks up for us and takes the time to understand things instead of having a fit, although some people really need to realize treating people kindly is essential. This is something that will allow us to help you better if anything, by just being a good person, literally.

I do my best to let everyone know they can contact me if they ever need to because I love helping you guys, but it's difficult enough with the player hate as well as other issues outside of Minecraft; we're all battling something, or maybe about ten things, I hope this thread can give an eye opener to some players.

To be frank, we get appeals of people straight up flipping out because they broke the server rules and expect an unban, they lie and make it worse, their buddies get involved which (can) make(s) it worse. I was so disappointed to see someone calling the nicest staff member I've ever seen so many flat out disrespectful names based on their flawless looks, which doesn't even have to do with Minecraft, they just wanted to hurt that staff member and kept going on and on until we had to ban them off the forums. I've had another staff member who is constantly talked about, many people form hate groups when they shouldn't, and - because they don't like the person - treat them badly based *only* on their opinion of them. I can see through most players, some like to act tough and they'll either hurt someone or completely shut them down if they feel threatened or that their rep will go down. Some people literally do not care because they only consider what they think is right and cuss at anyone who disagrees. Some of us have experienced harassment every damn day and we let you do that because if we show that it hurts, you have all of your friends gather whatever you possibly can to humiliate us and to most player logic, it makes us a bad staff member.

Drama, this is seriously aggravating and pointless. This is something I deal with a lot on HavocMC, at high school, at home, etc and those moments piled up alone with the hate can really give me an insight on how sick some people are; sometimes I have to distract myself from how terrible people have become and I get anxiety attacks because people don't change, plain and simple. I could go on and on, and the funny thing is, we get this hate not from a single country but everywhere. Canada, USA, Australia/New Zealand, Europe, etc; the ethnicity, skin colour, gender, race etc is also a mix because it is not one group but *everybody* as a whole and the same group can easily fix the solution and help prevent all of the drama or hate or harassment. Some have told me "If it's causing the staff so much stress, why don't you resign?" and if this was the case, the server would die down from a lack of staff members; furthermore, I shouldn't have to resign because others can't close their mouth for two seconds. (I am not resigning, just a point I felt laying out there)

We would like to help you, will you help us?

 

[CravenPython108]

Hey, this thread is going to consist of me half-ranting and setting some facts straight. Keep the drama in this thread to a minimum as this is only meant to hopefully open some eyes up on a few issues.

So, the treatment of staff by the players. This is not a can of worms I wanted to open up but it seems like it's needed at this point unfortunately. From what I can see many players are angry at us for updates not coming out correctly, not listening to players ideas, and giving out punishments not deemed appropriate. Okay, you guys have the right to be a little upset. If one of my favourite servers had updated and didn't deliver I wouldn't be very happy. I also wouldn't be happy if our ideas weren't listened to or we received unfair punishments. The thing is, we don't try to make our updates come out half-baked, we don't try to ignore your ideas, and we don't try to be unfair with how we handle our punishments. We do make mistakes, as does everyone else, and we're sorry for that.

With all that out of the way, let's dive into the massive issue at hand. I'm going to put this very bluntly, we are treated like absolute garbage on a daily basis. We get it, we've made a mistake, how about you give us some constructive criticism instead of just ripping into us? I cannot believe some of the things I see said about us and said towards us on a daily basis. We are not perfect machines, we are not robots, we are living, breathing people. I'm sorry we can't make everyone happy, but we really try to please everyone. Let's all be honest for a second, what does saying "lol the staff suck" or "wow what trash staff you guys are" really get done? It does absolutely nothing except hurt us. Those are the incredibly minor things said by the way, much worse is usually said to us. As I said before, give us some constructive criticism for once instead of just throwing insult after insult at us to try to elicit a reaction.

Let's go back for a minute shall we? Remember how I said "It does absolutely nothing except hurt us."? How about we expand on this point. I've been staff for just over 20 months now, I've been subject to a lot of hate and drama from people over nearly two years now. Guess what massive amounts of insults and ruthless hate does to someone after long periods of time? It does a few things I'll tell you that much. To start, when I first applied and got accepted, and for the first eight or so month I was happy and positive about most things. Now if you look at me today, I'm not the same at all. I've developed depression for a multitude of reasons, but the constant negativity and insults from players is one of the reasons it developed in the first place. To add onto that, I don't even get hurt anymore from these insults. I'm that used to having this crap thrown at me on a daily basis that I've become accustom to it like it's something normal. Let's move away from me, I'm not the only one affected. I will not be naming names, but I personally know multiple staff that are feeling constantly stressed and overwhelmed from not being able to do anything about the hate they're receiving. It honestly hurts me to see my friends and coworkers be hurt like this.

If you're already typing a response to counter this thinking it's just me trying to "win back" the players after the mistakes we've made, just stop. This is a serious issue and making a sarcastic or witty response just highlights immature and does absolutely nothing. Furthermore if you believe that me mentioned my depression is a cry for attention or that I'm just overreacting, trust me when I say I would never joke about such a topic and I would never use it to elicit pity from others

This may be a surprise to many people, but we have emotions, we react to hate, we can feel. We are not perfect, mindless machines, we are people. For once it would be nice to be treated as such.

Disclaimer: don't think of this as my attempt at a witty response, because that's not what it's supposed to be.

Consider this when you say players treat you like trash; if you almost never see staff online, hear stories about false bans (which may or may not be true), see updates full of glitches, and find out that they started a rumor about your friend, what do you expect from the players?

Does this mean players should treat you like a worthless human being? No, absolutely not. What would you expect out of the players, though? Would you expect 100% positivity?

 

[iViper]

- This post also has many similarities that builders face -

That was extremely well worded, I've been staff for about a year now and believe it or not, that's when I started developing my depression as well; I have four conditions and received hate before I was even staff, so it wouldn't entirely be due to players. We appreciate everyone who sticks up for us and takes the time to understand things instead of having a fit, although some people really need to realize treating people kindly is essential. This is something that will allow us to help you better if anything, by just being a good person, literally.

I do my best to let everyone know they can contact me if they ever need to because I love helping you guys, but it's difficult enough with the player hate as well as other issues outside of Minecraft; we're all battling something, or maybe about ten things, I hope this thread can give an eye opener to some players.

To be frank, we get appeals of people straight up flipping out because they broke the server rules and expect an unban, they lie and make it worse, their buddies get involved which (can) make(s) it worse. I was so disappointed to see someone calling the nicest staff member I've ever seen so many flat out disrespectful names based on their flawless looks, which doesn't even have to do with Minecraft, they just wanted to hurt that staff member and kept going on and on until we had to ban them off the forums. I've had another staff member who is constantly talked about, many people form hate groups when they shouldn't, and - because they don't like the person - treat them badly based *only* on their opinion of them. I can see through most players, some like to act tough and they'll either hurt someone or completely shut them down if they feel threatened or that their rep will go down. Some people literally do not care because they only consider what they think is right and cuss at anyone who disagrees. Some of us have experienced harassment every damn day and we let you do that because if we show that it hurts, you have all of your friends gather whatever you possibly can to humiliate us and to most player logic, it makes us a bad staff member.

Drama, this is seriously aggravating and pointless. This is something I deal with a lot on HavocMC, at high school, at home, etc and those moments piled up alone with the hate can really give me an insight on how sick some people are; sometimes I have to distract myself from how terrible people have become and I get anxiety attacks because people don't change, plain and simple. I could go on and on, and the funny thing is, we get this hate not from a single country but everywhere. Canada, USA, Australia/New Zealand, Europe, etc; the ethnicity, skin colour, gender, race etc is also a mix because it is not one group but *everybody* as a whole and the same group can easily fix the solution and help prevent all of the drama or hate or harassment. Some have told me "If it's causing the staff so much stress, why don't you resign?" and if this was the case, the server would die down from a lack of staff members; furthermore, I shouldn't have to resign because others can't close their mouth for two seconds. (I am not resigning, just a point I felt laying out there)

We would like to help you, will you help us?

This is why I love you kat. Strong, independent and nice. A Builder can always help people in many ways! We dont bite c: . And if you are mad at a staff member, please yell me out. In having a good normal life and I enjoy school, sports etc. I dont have any conditions and I really dont care what you think about me. If you are mad at a helper, jr mod, sr. Mod or higher, dont tell at them, please do at me. They have a rough time already, and I can carry a few extra problems.

 

[iViper]

Disclaimer: don't think of this as my attempt at a witty response, because that's not what it's supposed to be.

Consider this when you say players treat you like trash; if you almost never see staff online, hear stories about false bans (which may or may not be true), see updates full of glitches, and find out that they started a rumor about your friend, what do you expect from the players?

Does this mean players should treat you like a worthless human being? No, absolutely not. What would you expect out of the players, though? Would you expect 100% positivity?

No. We just want YOU to go kick a ball, play a game off rugby or go fishing or something, prehaps karate or something, to let your anger flow away.. Dont yell at the nicest community I ever found on minecraft and I've built for maanyyyyy servers.. Please, dont type with capslock behind a computer screen and go do something else.

 

[CravenPython108]

Dont yell at the nicest community I ever found on minecraft

This isn't me yelling at staff members (even though I have done that before), this is me trying to give semi-positive criticism. If it came off as me yelling at staff members, I'm sorry.

Please, dont type with capslock behind a computer screen

I'll check again, but I'm pretty sure I didn't use caps lock.

 

[Katitude]

Disclaimer: don't think of this as my attempt at a witty response, because that's not what it's supposed to be.

Consider this when you say players treat you like trash; if you almost never see staff online, hear stories about false bans (which may or may not be true), see updates full of glitches, and find out that they started a rumor about your friend, what do you expect from the players?

Does this mean players should treat you like a worthless human being? No, absolutely not. What would you expect out of the players, though? Would you expect 100% positivity?

When you hear stories, that's assuming, and most rumours are false; when we false ban someone, they are unbanned. c: I don't expect 100% positivity, I hope for respect; I have to respect someone even if I don't like them..

 

[iViper]

This isn't me yelling at staff members (even though I have done that before), this is me trying to give semi-positive criticism. If it came off as me yelling at staff members, I'm sorry.

I'll check again, but I'm pretty sure I didn't use caps lock.

It was about people in general, not you you seem like a nice guy c:

 

[Al_Cool]

So Helloman, Viper, Beetley, Katitude and probably Beasty, Barret (WildFur), Makiee, RealKaat, Peach, Wavy, our Captain, NHFLX, Saint_Ash... I wish I had something constructive to say that could help, but its out of my knowledge!

As for Python, I can't like what you say about "what would you expect?"

Seriously, I've never saw such people working that hard to increase their relationship with a public. Some of them actually try hard to be friends / or to stay professional with kids who are just disrespectful; and I don't mean every kids of course. A few created topic to give space to angry players to talk, others even tried to apologizes, not for their mistake but for the one of whom they represent. And I can't know, or count the amount of hours used to chat with angry players on various topics.

What is the result at the end? Would it be better if trashing staff would not being denounce? I guess one of the biggest issue about relationship with players of various ages, is that they don't all developed maturity, nor being responsible of what they say, where, when, or why... So I guess, it might become hard to apply basic relationship rules with people who never encountered any of them in their live before being involved into problems?

I don't know if this could be a solution but, about me, a good way to show disrespectful kids that staff care about them, about their fun, their ideas and their problems, even when they send a complain about appeals, would be to apply to them a few simple rules. As soon as disrespect start in a conversation, allow staff to mute the players from the game's, for the forum, or from discord its that happen there. And you also could expand that mute to every others players who could try to talk for someone previously muted!

Example : Someone say ... staff don't care about the server... The reply would be I care enough about the server to know when someone start spamming in a harmful-way. After the best way to respect the person and myself by the other hand would be to apply a direct effect : A temporary mute!

 

[iViper]

So Helloman, Viper, Beetley, Katitude and probably Beasty, Barret (WildFur), Makiee, RealKaat, Peach, Wavy, our Captain, NHFLX, Saint_Ash... I wish I had something constructive to say that could help, but its out of my knowledge!

As for Python, I can't like what you say about "what would you expect?"

Seriously, I've never saw such people working that hard to increase their relationship with a public. Some of them actually try hard to be friends / or to stay professional with kids who are just disrespectful; and I don't mean every kids of course. A few created topic to give space to angry players to talk, others even tried to apologizes, not for their mistake but for the one of whom they represent. And I can't know, or count the amount of hours used to chat with angry players on various topics.

What is the result at the end? Would it be better if trashing staff would not being denounce? I guess one of the biggest issue about relationship with players of various ages, is that they don't all developed maturity, nor being responsible of what they say, where, when, or why... So I guess, it might become hard to apply basic relationship rules with people who never encountered any of them in their live before being involved into problems?

I don't know if this could be a solution but, about me, a good way to show disrespectful kids that staff care about them, about their fun, their ideas and their problems, even when they send a complain about appeals, would be to apply to them a few simple rules. As soon as disrespect start in a conversation, allow staff to mute the players from the game's, for the forum, or from discord its that happen there. And you also could expand that mute to every others players who could try to talk for someone previously muted!

Example : Someone say ... staff don't care about the server... The reply would be I care enough about the server to know when someone start spamming in a harmful-way. After the best way to respect the person and myself by the other hand would be to apply a direct effect : A temporary mute!

Would you like to contact me soon on the server? I want to speak to you VERY positive.

 

[CravenPython108]

I feel like if you're going to ask the players to give you respect, you have to give them a reason. When it takes weeks to ban rule breakers, when we don't see staff online for months, when we ask why our friend was demoted and you refuse to give us an answer, when we submit detailed ideas and nothing happens, when you indirectly call people hypocrites, and say that you cant be bothered to play Mine Wars, a lot of respect gets lost.

 

[Lmusic0505]

This is a nice thread! Well done.

 

[iViper]

I feel like if you're going to ask the players to give you respect, you have to give them a reason. When it takes weeks to ban rule breakers, when we don't see staff online for months, when we ask why our friend was demoted and you refuse to give us an answer, when we submit detailed ideas and nothing happens, when you indirectly call people hypocrites, and say that you cant be bothered to play Mine Wars, a lot of respect gets lost.

There is always staff online YOU just cant see them

 

[BenGermann]

I feel like if you're going to ask the players to give you respect, you have to give them a reason. When it takes weeks to ban rule breakers, when we don't see staff online for months, when we ask why our friend was demoted and you refuse to give us an answer, when we submit detailed ideas and nothing happens, when you indirectly call people hypocrites, and say that you cant be bothered to play Mine Wars, a lot of respect gets lost.

I completely understand your point of view. These are things that we are trying to work on and I understand that if we want respect we need to give a reason. Even so, we at the bare minimum want to be treated as people. I'm not going to make excuses to what you said because we could definitely improve on those points.

 

[CravenPython108]

There is always staff online YOU just cant see them

I'm talking about Mine Wars... Not TMD.

Like right now there's a hacker online.

 

[Kendrq]

I feel like if you're going to ask the players to give you respect, you have to give them a reason. When it takes weeks to ban rule breakers, when we don't see staff online for months, when we ask why our friend was demoted and you refuse to give us an answer, when we submit detailed ideas and nothing happens, when you indirectly call people hypocrites, and say that you cant be bothered to play Mine Wars, a lot of respect gets lost.

These people should not have to give a reason to be treated as human beings. I can get the whole idea of not giving a person respect if they've done something to lose it, but the problem is wanting these staff members to act like super humans while in return you give them sub-human treatment. You can't demand a service and then shun those who are doing their best to provide that for you. Not everything is going to happen in the blink of an eye. It takes time for them to read and make judgments on player reports, sometimes they don't immediately have answers to give, not everyone's ideas are going to be accepted, and most importantly: has it crossed your mind that these people have lives outside of Minecraft? They have families, friends, and other obligations. They can't spend every waking second on their computers but they do their best. And updates are going to have bugs, especially on a server that's almost constantly hosting several hundred players worldwide. Things take time, learn some patience and have some more respect towards these people who are not only incredibly nice and patient, but are giving their all to make your free time more enjoyable.

 

[CravenPython108]

I completely understand your point of view. These are things that we are trying to work on and I understand that if we want respect we need to give a reason. Even so, we at the bare minimum want to be treated as people. I'm not going to make excuses to what you said because we could definitely improve on those points.

These people should not have to give a reason to be treated as human beings. I can get the whole idea of not giving a person respect if they've done something to lose it, but the problem is wanting these staff members to act like super humans while in return you give them sub-human treatment. You can't demand a service and then shun those who are doing their best to provide that for you. Not everything is going to happen in the blink of an eye. It takes time for them to read and make judgments on player reports, sometimes they don't immediately have answers to give, not everyone's ideas are going to be accepted, and most importantly: has it crossed your mind that these people have lives outside of Minecraft? They have families, friends, and other obligations. They can't spend every waking second on their computers but they do their best. And updates are going to have bugs, especially on a server that's almost constantly hosting several hundred players worldwide. Things take time, learn some patience and have some more respect towards these people who are not only incredibly nice and patient, but are giving their all to make your free time more enjoyable.

Please understand that I respect all staff as human beings. As far as I know, I haven't treated staff as subhumans, and if I have, I'm sorry.

 

[Filthypride_]

All I'm saying is; I'm not willing to fight for respect anymore. I know me and other staff members have legitimately worked their asses off to have a relationship with the players that isn't just: "Staff vs Players." Yes, we mess up. But we are forced to fight to be treated like human beings on a mine craft server. I'm sick of it, we had to make a forums thread regarding this issue because of how big it has become. We have tried to meet your demands: Moderators on discord, more mods on Mine Wars, Support Tickets not being opened more than 4 days. Our only response to that is; "Staff teams ****, they don't do anything." To accomplish every single thing that you want done everyday, our moderators would have to be on 6-8 hours a day. Like hell will any of us be forced to do that. The reality is; if this staff team is complete ****, what would It be like if we all resigned?