TOPIC: [TTT] TheXnator's Moderator Application

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Steam / Forum Name:
TheXnator

Steam Profile Link:
steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198064645052/

I am From:
England, The United Kingdom

Time Spent at ZARP:
Slightly over 2 years

Age:
15

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I have been in ZARP for a little over 2 years, originally joining onto the TTT server, under the perfect ownership we saw from CaptinF1rework himself. I had played on some other servers which were beyond terrible (one server banning me for throwing a smoke grenade and calling it RDM, one day I might understand that one), with staff nowhere near rivalling that of the ZARP Lead Team and especially the ZARP Community Team. After getting bored of most servers, I stumbled across one which claimed to be 24/7 Minecraft, something I had not seen before, and the map seemed rather interesting. After joining this server, which happened to be ZARP, I noticed just how excellent all of the systems were within the server, how everything worked and just how friendly all the people were, including the staff team. One of the main things which drew me in was also the way in which the staff members are chosen and trained within the excellent, unique democratic system we have here at ZARP, wonderfully enforced by our current Community Team, allowing me, despite my age at this point, having an equal chance to other people, and allowing me to become a part of the staff team based on what people saw from me, and not from any subjective viewpoint. When one of the people who I had met on the server (Liam), managed to get Moderator on the server, I began to look into that. It had been a desire of mine for a very long time to become a staff member on a server in order to help people, so I decided to apply, and got my first ever staffing position as a Moderator on the ZARP Gaming TTT server. A few weeks later, I got admin, then branched out to SSRP and Deathrun, continuing up to the positions which I ended up holding as Prophunt, Murder and Deathrun Server Owner, Surf Server Developer, SSRP Head Admin, TTT Head Admin, Teamspeak Head Admin, Forum Global Moderator, Bhop Administrator and Jailbreak Moderator.

Since joining ZARP, I have developed an incredible passion for the community which has only grown over time, and this has really spurred me on to get to where I am now, and has made me hold a desire to become a Community Manager in order to greatly help out the community far more than I have been able to with my current powers and positions.

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In my time in the community, I believe that I have managed to pick up a vast array skills which I am sure would be immensely helpful towards becoming a Community Manager. Before joining the community, there was not a lot that I would have been able to put here, since I was originally quite shy when I first joined, unable to handle a lot of situations which I would be able to handle today. From positions in Lead Teams and owning three servers, whilst also developing for Surf, I have developed many skills which would be required for anyone who were to go for the rank of CM, including, but not limited to:

• Kindness
• Calmness
• Patience
• Fairness
• Stubbornness (in appropriate amounts, fighting for what I believe to be the correct outcome)
• Professionalism
• Appropriate levels of maturity (not immature, but able to take and appreciate a joke and be serious when the situation demands it)
• Understanding (of people, situations and processes)

On top of these traits within my personality which I have improved on / developed over the course of my time in ZARP, I have also greatly improved on my ability when it comes to coding, which has been constantly developing (pun intended) even more since I began work on Prophunt, combined further with my experience that followed on Murder, Deathrun and Surf, including the Pointshop Summer Update of 2018 for which I put in a large amount of work on ideas and code, furthering my experience and dedication for the community as a whole. Before joining the community, I had at least some level of knowledge in Java, HTML, CSS, JS and Python, and since joining the community and having to do development work (and actually creating the servers in some cases) for Murder, Prophunt, Deathrun and Surf, I have developed a knowledge of GLua, and therefore I have managed to greatly improve upon my knowledge, now being able to achieve far more than I could have done in the past, which can be proven through many of the features on Prophunt, and the content that I added to Deathrun, Surf and the rest of the Pointshop servers.

When it comes down to contacting me, I always read messages pretty much as soon as I get them, and give a reply if needed. I can always be easily contacted on Steam, Skype, Discord and Whatsapp, and for those who are more trusted, Instagram, and I am usually online on Teamspeak and the Forums when I am home, so can also be contacted / address relevant issues there.

I believe that, as a Community Manager here at ZARP, I would be able to greatly improve on these traits and skills, through implementing them into the community, improving on them as I use them to work on greatly improving the community, to the point where I will be the one to win this vote and be seen as the best Community Manager for ZARP Gaming yet!

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Of course, my overall goal as a Community Manager would be to help the community as a whole to expand and rise above where it is currently, and to provide the greatest possible experience for the users in the community, which I would achieve by implementing many changes / improvements to various aspects of the community.


Suggestions System / Policy:

There have been constant complaints in the community regarding the situation surrounding suggestions and how they are dealt with by Server Owners and the Community Team. For a while, I have had this idea for how we could improve the way in which suggestions are managed and reviewed, with an appropriate policy to accompany and ensure that all suggestions are dealt with appropriately.

This system will include an in-game UI on each server which will allow users to create and view suggestions that have been made, also accessible through a similar, web based UI. Within this UI, they will be able to create a suggestion, which can then be seen by all users under a tab for suggestions. Other users will be able to leave comments on these suggestions with their opinions and upvote / downvote the suggestion in order to give clear ideas of the opinions of the community on the suggestion at hand - obviously there would be filters in place to reduce racism, and Server Owners+ would be able to delete suggestions or comments which would break TOU / server rules.

Suggestions must all be reviewed in the relevant meeting for the suggestion (SSRP Lead Team / Community Team meeting in the case of SSRP), in which each suggestion would be looked over in short, before deciding whether or not to vote on it. Similarly to the forum meetings, if one person expressed a desire to vote on the suggestion, then a further full discussion would be held and a vote would follow. Following the vote, the suggestion would be marked as either accepted or denied, and a final comment left with the verdict by the relevant Server Owner / CM Team member, stating the result and any reasoning for the result being reached to ensure that feedback is given in both directions on suggestions.


Pointshop Meetings Policy:

Pointshop meetings would, rather than as they are currently (sometimes happening when someone decided they might want one), become a consistent part of the meeting schedule. We currently have the Server Owners meeting, however this does not include all Pointshop suggestions and items. This meeting would be introduced as a part of the Server Owners meeting on the first meeting of every other month. Alongside this, a clear weekly outcome would be posted for every Server Owner meeting, independent of the Community Team meeting outcome.

Within this meeting, a clear structure would be followed in order to ensure that everything of relevance is being discussed, adding onto the current structure of the Server Owners meeting:

• Review of new Pointshop items, giving Server Owners a chance to put forward any new items they would like to have added
• Review of Pointshop suggestions, not just items, in accordance with the aforementioned Suggestions System / Policy
• Chance to bring up anything else that is felt to be of relevance
• Pointshop Meeting Outcome

These meetings would greatly improve even further upon the communication between Server Owners and the Community Team, and would also greatly improve upon the transparency with the community itself, letting them know that their suggestions are being looked at and that their voices are being heard in order to build on and improve the Pointshop servers.


Ranks Changes:

We have the Staff Rights and Responsibilities policy in order to ensure that it is clear what the rights and responsibilities of each rank were, however we have sometimes seen issues in the community where new ranks have not been properly introduced, and it has led to various levels of confusion and anger from users and staff alike regarding these positions and the member(s) holding them.

What I would do to solve this problem would be to ensure that people cannot get a rank that is not outlined on the Staff Rights and Responsibilities policy. A new section would be added to this policy to state that, in order to add new ranks, they would have to be properly voted in by the Community Team, and in doing so, the rank and relevant information about it would have to be added on to the Staff Rights and Responsibilities policy, in order to avoid any further confusion. Though this is a small change, it would be a significant one for any cases in which further ranks may be added in the future.

As well as this, I would bring about a change that quite a few people have suggested (primarily Annie) which is badges / ranks for Server Owners on Teamspeak and Discord. Currently, Server Owners and Head Admins have the same badges, however a Head Admin does not have the same rights as a Server Owner in the slightest, and cannot help with as many things, with some issues which do need to go directly to a Server Owner+. Every rank outlined in the Staff Rights and Responsibilities policy should have a relevant badge on Teamspeak, in order to ensure that the right people are always contacted for the right situations, and to improve upon the ability to distinguish between people of differing ranks.


SSRP - Special Weapons & Suits:

There have always been complaints about the special weapons and suits on SSRP, and there is a lot which could be done in order to make at least some kind of changes, without removing any of the current items, which would have an impact towards helping with this balancing.

Special weapons and suits need to be rebalanced in order to prevent them from remaining as purely powerful items in the game, which could be solved by adding a variety of debuffs to special weapons and suits.

When unequipping and equipping suits, for a short time, users should receive a small debuff, such as slightly reduced speed, a slight screen shake in order to lessen their ability to aim, and a slightly more opaque overlay for a short time, to make people less likely to immediately equip a suit in combat, equipping them more tactically and using some level of skill rather than pushing a button and immediately becoming OP.


SSRP - Server 2:

Server 2 has been known for a long time as a server that is primarily just used for AFK mining. The focus that this AFK mining has on the economy over things such as basing is also a clear issue, as it removes any interaction with the game in order to gain money and RP properly.

The issues with SSRP largely lie in the fact that many people want to AFK mine to get their money, which may partially be due to a lack of other options available which bring new levels of amusement. In order to solve this, or at least make some progress towards encouraging other methods of making money, something needs to be done in order to make AFK mining less of a viable solution, making sure it only works to some extent and cannot just be used as a constant stream of money. An idea of how to do this would be changes to the actual pickaxes themselves in order to prevent AFK mining from being a potentially infinite supply. If we were to have it so that pickaxes actually had a chance of breaking, I believe this would start to go some way in order to alleviate the issue. As a user mines more and more with a pickaxe, each time the chance of breaking should increase by a value dependant on the type of pickaxe (0.5% for normal ones, 0.3% for VIP, 0.2% for diamond and 0.1% for iridium), and with every stone/gold/ruby mined, it will have the relevant chance to simply break, forcing the user to buy a new one, and preventing them from being able to constantly sit there with the same pickaxe and racking up a huge profit.


SSRP - Economy & Lack of RP:

This one is two issues in one, in regards to the economy not holding a good position to encourage RP and constant gameplay, and the lack of RP and desire to RP itself. I discussed this in my previous CM campaign, however it is notably still something which should still be a focus in SSRP.

To first address solely the economy, there needs to be more potential money sinks on the server. For example, with updates there should be a small chance to lose out rather than make gains on wheels and slot machines, rather than a guarantee to get something good. Another way to add a bit of a money sink would be the ability to gamble with the server itself. Rather than coinflips between players in which all the money remain within the economy, just passing between people, and creating a large possibility for scams and trick between users, if users were also able to coinflip on their own using only cash, then to have a chance of either gaining +50% of their original bet or losing their money, then there would be more chances for people to gamble, and the money that goes into the gambling would not always stay in the economy, alleviating issues further.

To address both issues, the economy and lack of RP both strongly correlate with one another, with less incentive to RP with the state of the economy and having no real gains to anything such as basing or starting a gang other than large AFK bases which are not overly satisfying for all users.

In order to add more of an incentive to RP, we should put some more focus into the gangs on the server, to keep people working on them, raiding people in order to gain gang loot and to add an incentive to work together and interact with other members of the community. A primary way to do this would be through a system such as a Gang PvP system. This would allow gang leaders to challenge one another to a TDM PvP match of their gangs, being able to select members of their gang to participate (both teams must have the same number of players) out of online gang members (gang members would be able to opt out by deselecting an option allowing them to be chosen). The TDM match would not allow the use of external weapons, only gang upgrades which would serve as unlocks for this. Having these weapons working as gang upgrades would provide more incentive to purchase gang upgrades, as they would benefit the gang in their PvP, and it would prevent issues where people with the most suits or special weapons would win, focusing more on the skill of the gang members themselves. At the end of the match (15 minutes), the team with the most score, score being based on the number of kills of the enemy team minus the number of friendly deaths, would be awarded a prize, which could be gang loot or gang cash, also adding onto their score onto a gang leaderboard for PvP wins.


SSRP - Updates:

Another key problem, as has been seen more recently, has been the lack of updates on the SSRP server. We cannot possibly have a definitive solution for this, however suggestions would need to be more heavily considered when it comes to updates, as has been discussed above with the "Suggestions Policy". As a CM, I would always be ready to put forward support for updates on every server in the community, and would actively work with and encourage updates by fellow CM Team members in order to ensure that all servers, especially SSRP, would be regularly updated to a high quality.


The Jailbreak Server:

Unfortunately, it is clear to see that the Jailbreak server is not the most popular when it comes to Pointshop servers. Clarky and DEADMONSTOR have put a lot of work into Jailbreak, and it would of course be a massive shame to see that go to waste, so in regards to Jailbreak, the rankings would have to be carefully considered and reviewed to best work out where the server would end up in the current state.

Much like I always said with Murder, the future of the server would have to be very carefully considered, first of all looking into all of the current plans and trying to work out any way to bring the playerbase up further, looking into other Jailbreak servers and points at which the Jailbreak server has gone up and down in ranking. As a gamemode, Jailbreak isn't overly popular within Garry's Mod, however not to the point where this alone would lead the server not to have any chance of popularity.

If it comes down to it, of course, alternate possibilities would have to be considered. Namely, a Basewars or a MilitaryRP server. The ZARP community have for a while displayed a clear interest in having a Basewars server, and also enjoyment for a future MilitaryRP server. These ideas would be further considered if Jailbreak were to be considered no longer viable for the community, or if we were to create further opportunities for new server slots.


TTT Server 2:

A hugely suggested expansion to the community, more so recently, has been the reintroduction of a second TTT server with a larger map pool. As a Community Manager, I would strive to bring in a second TTT server, possibly on an American host in order to allow the TTT server to further expand out for the American players of the Gmod TTT community. As someone who was staff on TTT when we had the last server, I know that it does provide a much needed break from the constant repetitive gameplay feel that you often get on the current TTT Server. When we had the server previously, there was less of a demand for it in the community itself, and the server had a lot less content on it, so people were being drawn in to the main server purely for the maps. With the server now, there is a lot more incentive to actually join for the content, so a second TTT server is much more of a viable option than it was in the past, as a clear option to bring in old and new players alike and ensure that people are less likely to get bored of playing the same map constantly.


ZARP Task Force:

The Task Force is something which Captin included within his Community Manager plans, and though we did see it introduced briefly on SSRP, it never really took off within SSRP and the other servers, which I would attribute towards the manner in which it was introduced, leaving it very disorganised and having a lot of confusion within the staff team regarding it. Simply put, the Task Force was an absolutely amazing idea and would have greatly improved upon communication, organisation and transparency within the community as a whole, and as a Community Manager, I would strive to see it return to all of the servers, however with some changes made to ensure that it would work as intended.

Rather than holding a weekly review of the Task Force, every Lead Team member would be assigned their task(s) in the first meeting of the month. Not every Lead Team member would necessarily have an assignment, however everyone would be delegated some kind of work to focus on each month, such as ethos implementation, overseeing training or general staff management. For some, there would be new, unique tasks to perform, such as quarterly server reviews, in which the assigned Lead Team member would review the server in their manner of choice, such as by performing surveys, speaking with staff and users, reviewing rankings, etc. The tasks would not be managed too heavily by higher ups, giving each Lead Team member the chance to work on whatever they have been assigned in the way that they believe best suits the task, allowing more freedom to the Lead Team. Over the month, each Lead Team member would compile a detailed report for their task, including any relevant information that they would wish to push forth.

Within the Task Force review, every Lead Team member with a task would put forward their report(s), either written or verbal, which would then be reviewed by the team as a whole, and any relevant action would be discussed or taken. This would continue in a cycle to ensure that all Lead Team members have tasks to carry out, rather than being left redundant for the most part.

With this implementation, we would see a massive improvement for Lead Team members really getting involved with their servers, and would especially see improvements to communication and transparency between the Community Team, Lead Team, staff and users alike.

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Of course, many of you may be wondering why you should support me and not the other candidates who have also put across promises, and coming candidates who will undoubtedly make promises which could show some excellent changes to the community. The question stands however, how many candidates themselves can personally deliver on every promise that they have made in their campaign?

As it stands, I am one of the only Community Manager candidates who holds the ability to code, alongside DEADMONSTOR, and I have shown this countless times across the community through development work for the Pointshop servers, namely with the recent Pointshop Summer Update and the work I have put in their, especially seen through the creation of Prophunt and Murder, with Prophunt now being one of the most popular servers in the community, and having previously maintained a ranking as the #1 Prophunt server worldwide for quite a while. The ability to code is incredibly important to further the ability of a Community Manager, especially with all of the changes and support required in regards to content and changes across the servers in the community.

With every promise that I have made within my campaign, I know that I am myself hold the knowledge and abilities required to make all of these changes to the community and each server possible. With other candidates, you may not see this as much in their promises, especially within those who do not hold the ability to code.

Coming from this, I have had the chance to work very closely with the Server Owners of every other server, other Server Owners of my own servers and the Community Team in regards to the creation of my servers and the work that I have put into all the servers. This is incredibly vital for a Community Manager, as the main part of the role of the Community Team is to run and manage all of the servers, which will be a lot more difficult for someone who has not held positions in the community which require them to manage servers in such a way and to meet deadlines and work together with people in regards to the development, analysis of rankings and improvement of servers in the community. With my experience across the community as a Server Owner on Prophunt and Deathrun (along with my previous ranks of Server Owner on Murder and Server Developer on Surf), I have clearly shown myself to be able to handle such things, and this experience would go hand in hand with becoming an outstanding Community Manager who would be able to successfully deliver towards the community in every promise that I have mentioned.

You will not see another candidate who can put forward as much evidence of their time, experience, dedication and care for the community as I am able, and as a unique candidate who not only will be capable of, but also will deliver on the promises made in my campaign, I can promise the community as a whole that I will make an excellent, if not the best, Community Manager.

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My current ranks in the community are as follows:

>>> Prophunt Server Owner <<<
>>> Deathrun Server Owner <<<
>>> Teamspeak & Discord Head Administrator <<<
>>> Forum Global Moderator <<<


I also previously held the following ranks:

>>> Murder Server Owner <<<
>>> Surf Server Developer <<<
>>> SSRP Head Administrator <<<
>>> TTT Head Administrator <<<
>>> Bhop Administrator <<<
>>> Jailbreak Moderator <<<

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As always, I am open to anything that anyone wants to say regarding this application, and any form of constructive feedback which could help me to improve towards this position, or across the community in general. Thanks for reading my application!


If you would like to display your support for me, it would be hugely appreciated if you could add this into your signature:






I will also give Sally section staff

You seem to have forgot two things, your steam ID and a link to your profile. Here they are for you
Profile - steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198064645052
Steam ID - STEAM_0:0:52189662

Anyway

I have seen you quite a bit on he server and you activity meets the requirements. I haven't had any issues with you directly, keep it that way and you have my

Pretty fun player(although he need to stop joking around with the not true fact that I owe him 2.5k(which I don't)), haven't had any problems and I think that he deserves the job

Thanks for applying for staff at ZARP TTT! During our weekly staff meeting your application, question answers, game trackers and in-game warnings are checked and then the staff team votes on your application.

We just wanted to say Congratulations! The staff team has voted to accept your application, which means you’re now a part of the ZARP staff.

Before you get started, another admin will help train you on the server and get you setup with your new rank. There’s also a handy guide created by the community which should help you get up to speed with your new menus & commands. And don’t forget you can always ask another staff member if you’re not sure about something

ZARP TTT Staff Meeting – Every Sunday 7PM UTC

There’s a weekly staff meeting for the server at the above time, which is held on the ZARP Teamspeak server (IP: ts.zarpgaming.com). You now get a vote on the new staff members and we’ll keep you up to date with new events and server updates at the meeting.

Congratulations and thanks for supporting ZARP!

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