Volunteer GM system

Or nothing at all like Capcom. XD

Sorry…had sneak that in there. Was a Capcom Mod for 15+ years… had took another mod less then a minute to delete my account, and destroy everything I had done. (and staff was unable to restore any of it. ) Other Mod? another 10+ year vet of mod system. Walked away with no issues. (every mod got removed, and site basically died…(and closes soon(or maybe have)

I would not trust randoms… I barely trust most Mods, even when I was/I’m one. I’ve seen plently across Games and Forums cross the line. Not talking using Nuke button, but you know “grey area” Were no one agree on what should’ve been done…

Even payed staff makes mistake. (had that during MH1) Several instances over other games I’ve seen.

It really needs to be a payed staff member who has some sort of “punishment” when they mess up. And proper tools to go thru a list of issues, and visit each server and slowly clean up.

At same time, Funcom has slowly been fixing holes. Its only matter of time before its done…or they move on to next game. =(

I can understand what you are saying. However, a GM would not be ruling over a server. They would not even be on your server unless a player had a complaint that needed GM assistance.
Funcom is already responsible for the Official Servers and how un-playable they have become for the vast majority according to these very forums. Being responsible for a handful of people screened by Funcom, would be much less headache than watching the 1000’s of servers not allow players to reach resources and have an enjoyable game experience.
If you are not experiencing any of these abuses by players, then no GM would need to come to your server. If on the other hand you were a person who felt they needed to place building pieces to block others from resources or dungeons (not saying you are at all) then I suppose you would not want a GM to show up on your server.
GM’s are not rulers or Police, they are people who have made their time available to assist players. Now I am sure that some players would report things that are not abuse and simply a side effect of PVP or because they felt like they were mistreated. This is not issues for GM’s and they would be told that by the GM.
As far as Funcom employees being tied up monitoring GM’s, it would be much easier to monitor a handful of people than 1000 servers.
GM levels would mean that only a small amount of GM’s would actually ever talk to a Funcom employee. Lead GM’s. A handful of GM’s could cover a lot of servers. A lead GM could oversee a lot of GM’s.
No one is ruling over or in charge of any server, that is not a GM role. A GM would simply log into the GM system and begin picking tickets. One at a time.
I appreciate your opinion and understand your fears but, how would you do it differently?

I have read that also, and to be honest. The number of paid employees it would take to GM the number of servers they have, would make this economically unrealistic. You could have three or four times the number of volunteer GM’s handling the same server load.
That’s why I feel the player base should jump in and help Funcom with the game we all love so much.
I understand how players would fear other players being a GM. Ask yourself though, if you were a GM, would you abuse your position? I think most would truthfully answer no.
PVP breeds an environment of distrust of those you do not know. So having someone you do not know, being called to your server… yes that is scary. But if you are playing by the rules, what’s to worry about. An abusive GM? It could happen, I’m not saying it can’t. I’m just saying it would be extremely rare and Funcom would undoubtedly handle it to the players satisfaction.

I have worked as a volunteer GM on several MMO’s in the past dating back to Dark Age of Camelot. Tells you all how old I am. lol
To be completely honest, I have never seen a case where a GM hand picked by a company, was abusive.
Some were over strict and either learned to be more lax or they moved on.
Limiting GM admin abilities means just that, they would be extremely limited in what they could do. That said, the Lead GM would have a lot more power and be able to do much more if necessary.
What I have found in the past is most GM’s are hesitant to take action and then hesitant on how severe an action be. They typically will contact the Lead GM for advice or to verify the level of abuse by a player, prior to any action being taken.

I’m sorry about what happened to you at Capcom. I can see where that would turn you off as far as Volunteer GM’s go. All I can say is hopefully if a system like this is taken seriously by Funcom and implemented, there would be some safeguards built in.

Although I wished that there were moderators for official servers, I think this would be about the most difficult job in the whole gaming industry:

  1. Complexity of the gaming situation

I am playing and loving this game for a long time now because of it´s complexity. All the different aspects like building system, terrain and map knowledge, raiding techniques / siege warfare, character progress, ressource management and thrall capturing, stat builds and fighting, alliances and diplomacy make this game one of if not the most complex computer game out there.

  1. Excessive demands

Because there are so many different aspects involved and because of the sheer amount of time people invest, most of the players are highly emotional about things that happen ingame. Modarators will have to be skilled to cope with this emotionality as well as with the complex game mechanics.

  1. Diversity of opinion

Even in this forum, where I suppose some of the most experienced and mature Conan Exiles players are participating, people don´t agree about every rule in the game. Let´s take the example “building over ressources” (it´s nothing personal nor do I want to discuss this topic here): Funcom always claims that blocking resources is considered a legit war strategy, still there is always someone who wants to call out for banning players who do that (crap).

  1. Available individuals

What will happen if moderators will come to different decisions regarding similar situations on different servers and how will this be displayed in public? Imagine how toxic players will rage against the moderators…
I think that most of the reasonable people will therefore not participate from the beginning. The few mature ones with enough time and patience probably already admin their own servers. What if most of the players to apply for beeing a moderator will do it because of personal or their groups benefit?

  1. Judicial subjects

Then there is the legal aspect. Can you sue a game company for banning for the wrong reasons? I can imagine that having moderators involved might render this question a little complicated (sorry, I´m clueless here).

In the end, I think that the biggest part of the job (the inspection of abuses as well as the decision on the actions taken) has to be done by paid workers hired by the company. Voluntary moderators could only support, but never replace professionals.

I agree 100%

Again I agree, however GM’s would be sympathetic and state this is not a GM issue. People are always emotional when they spend a lot of time building in a game. That feature is one reason people stay with the game so long. They don’t want to lose what they have built. I think most players understand that.

This is part of any relationship. Differences of opinion are the most gray area in any relationship. Who is right who is wrong? Maybe neither. Gray areas can not be acted upon by Responsible GM’s. That decision would have to be made by a Lead GM or Funcom themselves if the Lead was unsure.
Is this abuse or a war strategy?

It could be considered a war strategy, but this type of war strategy will kill a server. So who wins?

I know it would be extremely difficult to find people willing to deal with this type of headache, but I think they are out there and it would grow over time to include more and more GM’s having a smaller and smaller work load. Some players want this game to succeed and are willing to give a bit of their own time to help it succeed.

The terms of service agreement already addresses this:
Taken from the Conan Exiles Terms of Service Agreement
“FUNCOM RESERVES THE RIGHTS TO SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ANY ACCOUNT, SERVICE OR YOUR ACCESS TO THE GAME AT ANY TIME FOR ANY OR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE AND FUNCOM WILL NOT PROVIDE REFUNDS OF VIRTUAL ITEMS OR VIRTUAL CURRENCY. IN THIS EVENT, THIS AGREEMENT WILL TERMINATE IMMEDIATELY.
You may terminate this Agreement by ceasing use of the Software and Service, cancelling any account you may have with us to use the Service (if any), and permanently deleting all copies of the Software in your possession or control.
All other Sections of this Agreement will survive such termination.”
You can read the entire Agreement here: CONAN® EXILES END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT (“EULA”) (English version).

The system would need safeguards, Funcom would have to screen applicants. Applicants would have to be willing to deal with the headache. There would be growing pains. There would be disputes. But in the end, I think, there would be a more enjoyable game play experience for everyone.

Wow… That was a long post and took a long time to respond to. :slight_smile:

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Sounds quite explicit to me :grin:
Well perhaps then it´s time to make some more use of this …

I think the decision to ban an account on a permanent basis should rest with Funcom. A 3 day ban for exploits and things, until Funcom can review the situation, would be a reasonable action. In my opinion.
Not applicable for first time offenders unless an extreme case presented itself. Warnings seem to work because people then realize someone is watching and paying attention.

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I didn’t say they would be available to “fix” glitches and bugs, however they could document them to the point Funcom Devs would have reliable info to go off of. instead of some of the non descriptive bug reports that people submit and then say, no one has answered me. Usually no answer comes when no one can figure out what the heck people are talking about.
Bugs are above the head of a GM. They have to be fixed by the Devs. That said, giving Devs complete descriptions of the bugs by a trusted source, would reduce the time they have to spend researching how to duplicate the bug to figure out what or how it ishappening and the best method to address it.

I had literally PM’d Hugo about something like this a few days ago. Even if they don’t grant admin rights maybe they could have volunteer players visiting other servers to snap screen shots or videos and verify things on Funcoms behalf so that a proper admin could step in as needed.

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Yes I could have worded that better. To fix a bug would require a Dev. To “fix” wrong word to use (I should have used Solve temprarily).
What i was referring to is:
Have you ever been stuck in a wall and unable, no matter what you did, to get out of it. I have. Only way out was to log out of game and back in and the second time it happened, I had to re-log twice.
it would have been nice to be able to just conatact a GM and state I’m stuck. they could pull you out of the wall and all is good.
Or,
Have you ever just finished crafting that armor your have been working so hard for and put it on your best thrall, handed him/her the sword of Crom and set the thrall next to the front door of your base while you run to grab that axe you’ve been saving in your vault. Run back to the door only to find your thrall has fallen through the floor. Sure you can rescue the thrall, but you would lose that armor and the sword.
If and I do say “If” a GM were available to answer your call, they could retrieve the thrall inventory in tact.
GM’s are not just looking for exploits or someone to lord over. They would be there to help. Even if in small ways.
Both of those examples above show a temporary solution to a bug, the fix would have to come from the Devs.
I hope that explains things a little better.
Thank you for catching that and keeping me on my toes.

GM’s would not have full admin rights. A very limited set of functions. Move to a certain player. Move a certain player to the GM. If exploits are found, a lead GM (someone Funcom trusted) would have to make the call. If that Lead GM were unsure, it would then be referred to Funcom.
Like I said in my opening statement, GM’s are not Police. They do not have a specific server they are in charge of, they simply pick up tickets submitted by players and go through them. If there is a ticket they can deal with, they would. If it were questionable behavior, documentation in detail would be the best solution.
It sounds like PVP Official servers don’t want anyone looking at their server and that’s fine. Do PVE Official servers feel the same?

I have to call it a night guys. I promise I will read this in the morning and answer any questions or concerns the best I can.
Keep in mind I do not have a plug and play system for this. This is a system that Funcom would have to develop and implement. I don’t have all the answers. I do want to hear the questions, because that furthers answers.
Opposing opinions are also very welcome. There is always the possibility we will find the solution somewhere on common ground.
I think a system like this could work to everyone’s benefit. It would never happen over night. It would probably never be a perfect solution. It would most certainly be better than what we have currently.
Anyway, with that I am out of here for the night. Thank you all for posting and challenging my suggestion. I appreciate your thoughts and ideas.

Another unfortunate point that needs to be considered is international legislation regarding volunteer work and how it’s different in different parts of the world. There are countries and states where you can’t use volunteers for tasks that require specialized skills or training; these need to be done by paid employees. And acting as a GM/Admin in an online game is definitely not something you can hand to the next random passer-by on the street.

I don’t know how other online games handle this these days. What I’ve seen (and experienced) in the past seems to indicate that any volunteer moderators etc. act on a purely volunteer basis, ie. they’re not required to spend any number of hours per week on moderating duties. This, in turn, can lead to people wanting to become moderators just for the status boost, and end up being unproductive. This means that the company needs to have a large pool of volunteers in order to have at least someone available to act upon critical issues, and a large pool increases the risk of having bad apples among the group.

And the Community Management (or some other department) would need to manage and coordinate these volunteers and ultimately act on the more serious cases. Volunteers who don’t work for Funcom couldn’t terminate contracts, ban accounts, etc. unilaterally.

This is an interesting and important topic, but we need to understand the challenges of making it a reality. It’s a lot more complicated than just handing out deputy badges and forming a posse.

For PVP-servers, this kind of “help” is NOT TOLERABLE AT ALL from my point of view
(I cannot speak for the PVE / PVE-C community here for the lack of experience).
I think that´s why @Shadoza dismissed the idea of moderation completely:

PVP means competition, you cannot allow anybody to help in any way when this help is not available for someone else in a similar situation. This would only open the door for a whole lot of s.h.i.t.storms.
But:

NO! PVP-servers need to be looked after more than anything else. But not in the way of babysitting beginners when they loose their gear to lava or loose their base to the purge.

PVP-servers need somebody to fight cheating. This applies to three main topics:

  • fighting exploits (speed hacks, lag switching, scripting ect.)
  • exploits gaining ressources (for example duping)
  • base building exploits (mainly building under mesh and outside the green wall)

To keep it simple: I think the third point is the most fatal for the gameplay, while at the same time beeing the easiest to combat. Introducing moderators to prepare reported cases of undermeshing for one or two funcom admins could change SO MUCH …

A good way that there is no abuse of GM is by encouraging them, it does not need to be monetary, with having the DLC’s for example, I am a Spanish youtuber and I already offered myself once to help manage your servers as GM, to help the Spanish community, I only asked in exchange for the DLC’s on PC (on PS4 I have them) but they never answered me.

I agree with you. Losing your gear to lava or your base to a purge or even another player, is not a GM issue, it’s part of the game. That is not considered losing anything to a bug, which is totally different.
It’s going to happen, you will lose something to a bug. If, and it’s a big if, a GM is available to look at what happened and can interpret that this is a loss due to a bug, maybe they can find a solution, maybe all they can do is say “That’s sucks, I’m sorry, I’ll bring it to the attention of the Devs.” GM’s are not teachers for noobies, they are not babysitters, they do not get involved with game play.
The absolute worst thing a GM could do is help a player gain any type of advantage.
Maybe a GM would not be available to help the player, 100 tickets in que and yours is number 99. You may not get an answer the same day you put the ticket in. Too late to help with the bug, but not too late to document the issue for you and send the info to the Devs. This is not bios, this is work load.

Funcom would have to make a list of what they (Funcom) considers a violation, and a list of recommended actions for those violations. They would also have to make that public, so there is no question by the players.
The only interpretation a GM can make is “Could this be an honest mistake?” If the GM answers “Yes” then just warn the player and explain this is a violation and they need to correct the issue.
In the case of Under-meshing and building outside the green wall, those are blatant violations. Funcom has already stated this. So anyone doing it can not claim it is an honest mistake. The recommended action should be, in my opinion, remove the base. The player is still in game, the account is still active. They are still the same level, they still have the inventory they were carrying. The base is removed along with all thralls and chests. Seems harsh but, I feel if people know it’s a violation and do it anyway, they should understand there are consequences.

You are also correct, there are three types of servers with three different play styles.
What may be considered Abuse and a violation on a PVE server, may be considered a war strategy on a PVP server.
Under-meshing and building outside the green wall is a violation on any server I believe.
In the case of a Newly dressed thrall falling through your base floor to Oblivion:
On a PVP server, that may be considered hands off, by Funcom.
On a PVE server, it may be okay to help the player retrieve that thrall if a GM has the time.
If you lose a thrall to lava, the only response a GM could give for that, no matter what server you are on, is: “This is not a bug” and if the GM were feeling particularly snarky, they may add “LOL - Learn anything”
A player base being destroyed by a purge: “Learn anything”. Ticket closed.
There would be variables depending on the type of server the GM was called to.

@Shadoza Has legitimate concerns. I am am not discounting those concerns at all. In fact I have the same fears. That is why I would hope that some safeguards and a good application and screening process would precede any implementation of this type of system Also, a good outline of violations and recommended actions regarding those violations would be essential. Violations would pertain to GM’s also. A GM caught playing the game while logged into their GM account would be considered cheating, however, the penalty for a GM cheating would be even more severe than a player caught cheating. The actual penalty would be up to Funcom and GM’s would be made aware of those penalties prior to accepting the position. While logged into a GM account, your actions and locations would need to be logged. My recommendation to a GM would be never enter a server you have a game account on. Refer the ticket to another GM or a Lead. This will prevent any misinterpretation that the GM is cheating, or showing any bios.

In my opinion, cheaters are where a GM system would make the most difference. On all Official servers.

@Kapoteeni You are correct, Volunteer GM’s would work the hours they want as many hours as they feel comfortable with. I recommended 4 to 6 hours because more than that and the GM’s head would explode. GM would not be given specific schedules that they are required to follow.
There would undoubtedly be times when no GM was on or no GM was available to answer a ticket.
There would most likely be too few GM’s to handle everything.
However, if a GM could successfully handle one or two tickets during their time spent in the GM system, then that would be a success for the system and would be a success for the entire game community.
Handing out Deputy badges is a good analogy, and that would destroy the system. You are correct. That is why I suggested an application and screening process. Not everyone that applied would be a good fit. Funcom would have the headache of trying to weed through the applications to hopefully find a few that would be a good fit.
I know it puts another load on Funcom in the beginning but I feel it would reduce their load in the long run and be worth the initial time invested.
It also gives Funcom Devs a powerful tool in that they can then request GM’s gather certain information regarding bugs to help them determine the priority in which they deal with those bugs.
So even if a GM was unable to assist a player in recovering from a bug, the player would know that the GM is gathering information about that bug, forwarding that to the Devs to help them determine the best approach in addressing that bug.

@SilverxCloud My opinion is, GM’s should come into this knowing there is 0 compensation. They get nothing. They do it to help further a positive gaming experience for all. That is not to say that Funcom can not look at the GM’s and say, this particular GM has really stepped up and provided a positive experience for the players lets reward them with a DLC. But the GM should not expect anything in return for their service.

I apologize for the late response guys, but when I logged in and tried to respond, the system told me I had to wait 6 hours. :slight_smile: I’m not sure what I did wrong but, sorry about that.

qft

totaly support this, they had a system like this in AOC with the FOA’s wich i was a part of so this is in no way impossible…

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