I my personal opinion, you should only be able to apply if you meet some (maybe at least 3?) of the following criteria:
-Unturned I Gold
-Unturned II Gold (or whatever the equivalent will be)
-Unturned I Experienced (2400 Hrs)
-Unturned Forums Regular
-Unturned I Early Access or other Beret
-Contributed significantly to Unturned I or Unturned II
Applications should be harsh.
All those criterias involve owning something or having reached something related to Unturned, none of them make someone suited to become a staff member.
All of the examples you used except maybe the last one and the EA DLC can be obtained by literally anyone.
Just leave it to Nelson and/or current staff to decide what do when the right moment comes (which is still far from now).
Point of making a thread for something that you already started discussing ?
smh
Already discussed this in another similar thread but -
Your idea of an application isn’t harsh at all, and most of it does not revolve around merit.
Gold and Early Access is unnecessary, as if paying for premium or playing during Early Access grants partial eligibility to apply for moderator.
The only suggestion I can agree with is contribution to Unturned as it shows interest in the game. But as I’ve said in the other thread, the ideal moderator should have a good behaviour and fair judgement, and this can only be found through observation.
This one makes sense. It would be kind of weird if you were somehow given access to moderate an official server, but didn’t have the server pass to log onto official servers.
That is not harsh.
Only reputable 18+ community members should be staff on official servers, chosen by Nelson personally.
There should not be applications.
I think a fixed criteria should not have to be made for server staff to be selected by Nelson.
If anything, I’d imagine server staff being picked based on their contributions to the community as a whole, both U3’s and UII’s. I suppose this is really something that speaks for itself and doesn’t require a set of guidelines to dictate what’s good enough and what isn’t.
Just to give a bit of my input on this, since there’s a thread actually dedicated to just the staff application process now—
I don’t see a reason for any of U3’s DLC (e.g., Gold, Twitch, Early Access, Crimson/Gold Beret) to be a “plus” towards getting staff. It’s not weeding out people who don’t deserve to be staff, it’s just weeding out people who weren’t a part of the community at a specific time or haven’t paid money.
Concerning U4’s DLC, the only one I believe should be required is the server pass. If someone is to be staff on a server, then they should already have the server pass. If someone applies without the server pass, they do not have a good idea of what the community is like and as such cannot help as efficiently. If the pass is subscription-based, then staff should be exempt from the subscription.
Rather than making the Experienced Beret relevant to staff applications, make it based on U4’s playtime. I don’t think it needs to be 2,400 hours, but by 400 hours most people already know all they’re willing to know about the game. I’d argue that making playtime in official servers is more relevant than playtime overall.
Something like being a “Forum Regular” is its own kind of qualification. It’d make sense if applications asked for “experience in the community”, which I’d say includes stuff like:
or whatever. It could be as vague as it needs to be, since those are all things someone should look into rather than assume is an inherently “good” mark on the application. The “contributed significantly” kinda falls under this too.
Age doesn’t matter that much. If Nelson wanted to do a contractual agreement, then I’d say that minimum age should be 18. However, I don’t see a reason why he would. The only things worth pursuing a contract over would be for:
Otherwise, the minimum age only has to be 13. As far as “termination” goes, Nelson really doesn’t need a contract if that’s the only thing it’d be used for.
I’d say to go with the time-proven method. Have an application system set up, select individuals that seem to fit the criteria best, give them a trial position with limited perms and set regulations, and then pick the best staff members out of those who did the best job.
Note that it’s probably important for there to be clear and well-defined rules and regulations for what a staff member can and can’t do, as having vague rules can most likely lead to some misunderstandings.
Do we keep track of who used to be forum regulars? It’s not too difficult to gain or lose the badge.
Those are some good odds for me then 
The main guideline is that staff just shouldn’t be able to play on servers they moderate on. It’s more understandable when no other staff is available, but this is a pretty standard rule for most high-profile servers for any game, and works well.
Nope. The best you can do is just look in the #regulars-lounge for posts.
To clarify though, I’m not suggesting
as criteria.
Pretty good odds for anyone who can explain why they’re qualified to be staff. Being able to reference other things more immediately relevant to the game is just an easy starting point in someone’s list of reasons.
Because all of it does feel rather arbitrary someway or another.
Why do we need staff members for official servers though? We just need a decent anti-cheat.
Which third-party anti-cheat software do you consider perfectly sufficient? Or do you mean to imply that Nelson Sexton should just learn to create his own?
Other games with official servers don’t have staff members, which is fine.
But a “decent anti-cheat” really is just any mainstream anti-cheat. Anti-cheats don’t catch everything, and they don’t always do it in a “timely manner” convenient to the other players having to experience hackers (sometimes this is intentional, like with VAC).
It also doesn’t catch non-hackers, which at the very least include people performing exploits.
VAC, PunkBuster, FairFight, EAC, and BattlEye are all considered good anti-cheats for what each actually analyzes. From my understanding, most game communities consider BattlEye to be the best anti-cheat (or at least it was a few years ago, I’m sure all the ACs have made significant strides since then). People like PunkBuster and FairFight and all that, for the games that it works for. Sometimes, an anti-cheat just doesn’t work as well with one game than it does for another.
That, and some games are just more vulnerable than others. The best anti-cheat in the world isn’t going to help as much when there’s core issues with the game.
Inb4 “just make a good enough game to go with the good enough anticheat.”
Would region matter in anyway? Not sure how the official servers would be hosted.
But yeah, I’m all in for staff qualifications based on contribution and experience. Having some community background/history would also help on trust
The dilemma is simple. No amount of applications or requirements will produce the best people or weed out trolls, and if anything it weeds out good people and brings in bad ones. Think about group applications or etc. Purity tests and so fourth don’t help.
Almost all of the criteria suggested in OP is ridiculous and does not give any meaningful look into how trustworthy, righteous, or determined a potential staff member will be. At the end of the day, I just want staff who bootlick me, not the other way around.
Usually a good thing to note on any application. Even if all the official servers were based in Canada, region diversity is good for “night shifts”.
I agree with almost all of this. However, I take issue with the “best people” part. The best people might just never apply, or they’re not even a part of the community. Best is subjective, and it’s relative. You will never find the best person ever, just the best relative to what you’re given. I’m perfectly fine with that, because you can still find the best people—relative to everyone else who’s relevant.
Otherwise, I agree. OP’s criteria in particular isn’t that relevant (as others have also stated).
I believe that staff should serve the server, not the individuals. The server’s community shouldn’t be bootlicking the staff members, and staff shouldn’t be bootlicking individual community members.
Staff can do everything in their power to provide a great server experience without bootlicking. Staff can also do the bare minimum required of them and choose not to go beyond that, because they have no reason to (if staff were expected to “go beyond”, then that should’ve just been a part of their obligations [and if it was and they refuse to acknowledge it, then they should just be removed]).
I’m curious as to what level of observation people are thinking of. Obviously community reports would factor in to it in addition to whatever’s going on with the staff side of things, but are you thinking of taking it as far as actual polling in the “official server community”?
And is there an implication that sometimes there will be more trial mods than actually needed, and technically there’s a bit of an internal competition to see who should be staff? Obviously per-situation basis for how that works out, but still curious if it was being implied.
But that’s all still under the assumption that official servers have staff to begin with, of course. I’m not yet convinced that they will though.
lol populism
mhm
but they should, and they ought to. If they aren’t serving us and fulfilling their justified job to the fullest then they’re a failure at said job.
OK, and thats why the bare minimum should be raised very, very, very high. The “bare minimum” or expectations of staff should be high.
So in some form of application it should ask multiple questions like if it where a mock-job review.
One thing that always got under my skin was how long the anwsers for said questions would be.
“Why do you want to be here? Explain in 5 paragraphs.”
I don’t think we would need to write that much to get our point acrossed.
Also, i’m going to say this from personal experience, but i don’t think we should strictly exclude people who’ve been punished before whenever if it was on the sub, steam forums or here. Exclude some people but it should really be based on how long ago was the punishment, for example a year+ shouldn’t affect the applications to the point of being denied.