Tree of Savior Forum

Tree of Savior's Next Top Moderator - The Forum Volunteer Edition

Suggestions
#1

Lately the ToS forums have been a very … interesting place. Forum activity is down and there are a lot of threads that, put the nicest way I can, do not contribute to the overall atmosphere, misinform potential new players of the state of the game, spread unwelcome and unkind sentiments and just in general reduce the forums to a cesspit. If you critique the game, you get slammed with negative responses. If you support the game or have something positive to say—the same issue arises and usually in an even more unpleasant manner.

It’s getting out of hand. I have privately spoken with several former active members of the forum, who are no longer comfortable posting anything on the forums. This isn’t just “one or two” players. This is not the kind of community that we want nor deserve with such a beautiful and charming game and players that I genuinely believe are pretty awesome overall.

This has gotten to the point where it has created an environment that is more conductive to hateful comments, trolling, and other inappropriate activities.

A potential solution to this problem is to have assistant moderators or aides for the forums/game. There are quite a few other games that have done this both on their forums and in game. While both would be nice, assistants to help monitor the forum would be the most helpful at this time. Some of ideas for what these players/forum users could assist with:

  • Flagging Priority – if two or three of the volunteers flag a post, it gets hidden for review by the forum mods. Late night and daytime hours a lot of shenanigans tend to happen.

  • Moving threads to the proper section – we see a lot of spam posts. Or simply repetitive posts that could be merged with other threads.

  • Limited moderation – given some of the types of images that have been posted on the forum lately that have an adult rating, one or two trusted users should probably be able to edit posts… I’m a little hesitant to suggest this because it can be abused.

  • Guides – assisting players with finding answers to simple questions. Granted, players can already do this, but sometimes it helps to have a more solid/trusted answer.

Having a group of in-game volunteers who are monitored to assist with the botting and gold seller situation would be amazing. I don’t entirely know how this would work, but I can only speak for myself that I would happily sacrifice some of my play time each week to help with this in any way possible. There are plenty of other players who would do this as well.

Even if it was just verifying player reports so that someone else could take care of the account.

One of the biggest complaints I have seen is the feeling that IMC doesn’t care about the community or the game. Something like this may help show that we’re adapting to combat some of the major problems in the game and on the forums. If anyone else has positive suggestions, I’d love to see them added.

Just for some proof of precedence of this, despite my dislike of the company itself, Aeria games has a similar setup to what I am describing called “Game Sages.”

They are required to fill out an application with information such as:

Age
Forum Name
Characters & Levels
Languages Spoken
Contributions
Experience hosting/organizing events
Experience with the forum community
Why do you want to be an assistant?
How much knowledge do you have of the game?
Ect

Their duties involve (This is purely a rip from AeriaGame’s Game Sage’s duty list, this is NOT suggestions I am making, these are purely an example of how another company is doing it. I repeat this is JUST AN EXAMPLE).

  • Forum Support, there will be always people who need assistance. It’s here where a GS help players to find answers to their questions about the game and inform Game Masters of threads that requires attention.

  • In-Game Events, where the GameSages organize, run, and promote events beyond those offered by the game itself.

  • In-Game Support, where the GameSages provide answers to questions, work as mediators for disputes, and generally assist the players to enjoy their gameplay.

I am in no way suggesting we rip off this system and I believe we’d need something more customized to ToS. That being said, I do believe it’s a good idea. Players layers and the staff should be involved in picking players for such a position.

It shouldn’t be something that’s a popularity contest, but it should require individuals who are passionate about the game but professional. I may have just disqualified myself on that note. Haha. I still think we need an extra hand right now, and in the future as the game grows.

7 Likes
#2

Please god NO

it always makes huges flamesand the so called moderators turns into white knights ust to maintain their position or think they are better than others just cause a plate…

Please IMC dont do this never…well to tell the truth i dont think this game can hadle one more year in this way t dont do this election thing.

edit:

For a player to help others or held events or answer questions he can do this alread without no name or whatever…

this plate or moderator name thing will ust turn into a dispute

2 Likes
#3

@STAFF_John @STAFF_Max @STAFF_Ethan @STAFF_Amy @STAFF_Ines @whiteloki @hkkim

Hope they can hear our cries :sob:

#4

I totally understand your concern. I wouldn’t have suggested it until lately. I’m not exactly innocent myself as I often have a really loud mouth. I’m not saying we should copy the entire system, but something needs done. I 100% encourage other suggestions here too.

#5

We had an auto moderator system, and a few people were set as moderators in the very early days. We actually started moderating, by putting threads in the correct location/etc.

Then IMC was like WOOPS! This wasn’t supposed to happen, and got rid of us.

I think it’s a great idea, and usually big publishers have such a system (Smaller publishers don’t because they actually moderate, this doesn’t apply here). The forums really not a great place to be, there’s lots of bashing that shouldn’t be allowed, and non-game related stuff as well as threads located all over the place. But it’s almost like IMC doesn’t care, or just doesn’t understand.

Hopefully they implement your idea.

6 Likes
#6

Sorry to say but is actually a bad system and it will become like a presidential dispute.

for bots u already have a flag reputation system who gives priority to the person with best reputation the problem is that the master of ban hammer dont care for the game anymore.

on the forum we already have gms but they dont care either they dont even read the threads and give some mecanical answer…

so if IMC dont do their job an player will just use this election in his benefit and think they own the forum…

already see this happens everytime

#7

That is a possibility, but it’s much better than continuing on with our current cesspool of a situation.

That said, they have a Discord, they have people they communicate with. All they need to do, is open up a little, be more active, and implement the system @Rabbit has brought up, then actively communicate directly with them through the Discord. If it’s apparent that a volunteer mod is abusing their power/etc, then they have a direct line to deal with you. This requires IMC to somewhat care a little, so I understand that it’s asking a lot. But without it, this system wouldn’t come into place anyway.

#8

if IMC cares a little then this system is less needed cause they would do this in the professinal way not involving with players with some kind of contact and where could bring intimacy and power to just a select player

the way it is a reflect off where IMC fails and its way batter just a fail game than a fail game with forum owners and war elections

#9

I understand you’ve been in situations where volunteer mods were bad.

But that’s not always the case. It is a gamble. The joke is that we all know IMC doesn’t care, or at least doesn’t show enough effort, which is why we need a system like this in place.

If IMC had official moderators that did things in the forum, I would not agree to this idea, but that isn’t the case. This is a suggestion because that’s not the case.

#10

really man?
think for a second, u alread saw whats the majorit of this comunity is made off have u already thought the amount of racism and dispute to say( oh this mod is brazilian or this mod is black or this mod is american and dont represents us from europa or from asia.

Any way or any bet this would turn into a mess if tons of hate and rage

and with the “so good” management of IMC already demonstrate us would be a living forum hell

#11

But the difference is that I absolutely can promise a melon to you and everyone else, everyday! :sparkles:

But seriously,this place used to be a pretty cool site.It was exciting to talk about beta hype and swap builds,features we hoped would be implemented,and making friends here and in-game.

I still love the game dearly,but not it’s management team.I’m sad that such a wonderful MMO with so much potential is being downright neglected by staff,and in turn abused by players. It’s taught me that negative attitudes are indeed contagious and it spread over this site like the plague.

My account will be a year old in 2 days,and I never imagined my feelings on it would shift in the completely opposite direction.I still am patient and have hope,yes,but I can admit that it’s not as much as before.

I like this suggestion and although they won’t actually implement it I’m sure, I also wouldn’t mind volunteering some time every week if it meant improvement on some aspect of this game and its image.

8 Likes
#12

Just don’t release info on the mods race/etc (which shouldn’t really matter btw). If racism is going on, simply warn/ban as that isn’t allowed anyway.

1 Like
#13

and who would ban? IMC? The moderators? hahahahahah its a joke right?

#14

OR they could hire people who are fit to moderate instead of putting their forums in the hands of “volunteers”. I’m going to be honest, I simply don’t trust volunteer moderating positions. More often than not from what I’ve seen, duties were not fulfilled accordingly and biases can be strong.

The last thing we need on these forums is a power trip, but that’s just my opinion so I don’t mind if others disagree. There are many ways that a volunteer moderator may get away with things in their favor. I simply would rather not take that chance.

Moderating isn’t just a basic “do this” and “avoid that”. There are some gray areas in which professionalism is required.

I would much rather see competent staff members hired with enough experience to handle situations. I want someone who can be held accountable (volunteering doesn’t have a set-in-stone incentive like money does) to take the lead.

In truth, anyone can moderate. Whether they can do it professionally, however, is debatable.

3 Likes
#15

Depends, if a volunteer mod is doing such things, they should be banned by IMC. If a normal member is, then they should be banned/warned by IMC, except a volunteer mod could bring it directly to their attention to do so.

I understand this requires IMC to care a little, but it works.

I agree with @strawberry , but it isn’t happening, and this is the next best thing.

1 Like
#16

Players would have to be monitored by the staff, especially at first, who were selected to assist with the situation on the forums. There’s just no getting around that. There has to be some sort of monitoring or it can easily be abused, just as you said.

And by the community as well. It’s not like someone could just lord over the forums unless they were given the tools to do so. I don’t think that players should have the same powers that the staff does by any means. Please, I encourage you to give suggestions instead of simply saying that you don’t like the idea. The entire point of this thread is to suggest some things to help fix this situation.

I am genuinely sad that players are so disappointed by the community and IMC. There’s no reason for things to have become so bad.

1 Like
#17

I would MUCH rather have more active presence on the forum by staff members hired by IMC. 100%. But like @FatePGN has said, it’s just not happening for whatever reason. As long as the volunteers were held accountable–if you moderate a thread you need to submit a report. If you were in game and silenced a player for example–you need to file a report as to when, why, ect.

The selection of players if this were to be implemented would have to be done very carefully as well.

#18

i understand our point of view but to consider it jjust happen to we need it cause de service provided by imc for us is at least bad

for this system to work we would first need imc to keep a short eye on the forum and on every one and if this happen the system wouuld be useless just for show

the reason every one is disappointed and dropping is cause imc is almost telling us that doesnt care for the game

the players cant fill the hole left by imc even if they want it would just call for disaster

#19

I agree with OP, feedbacks here in the forums is not constructive any more. We need someone to man the post, It’s geting out of hand.

Almost every day I always see threads that only discuss negativity of the game not providing suggestions how to improve or what could have been done to make it better.

This kinds of post drives players away from your game, if you trully love TOS like you guys say on your post you should start moderating the forums.

You should also reply on negative or good feedbacks from steam so that the new players will know that your working on the issue. Feedbacks from steam is also important since players view it first before downloading the game.

Example:

New player: Is this a good game to try?

A troll immediately post nope waste of time. The game is dying is not worth it.

We are down to

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2 Likes
#20

Honestly, the only reason I’ve suggested this is I’m getting to a “how much worse could it be” attitude about the whole thing. What’s the worst someone could do? White knight? Then they should be removed from the program. Simple as that.

Yes, it does require participation from the staff/company. That’s part of the whole point of the suggestion. I genuinely appreciate your concerns on it and you have some very valid points.

1 Like