Just to give a bit of my input on this, since there’s a thread actually dedicated to just the staff application process now—
Criteria based on DLC? No.
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.
Criteria based on playtime? Maybe.
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.
Criteria based on contributions? Sure.
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:
- Forum Regular
- Subreddit Moderator
- Discord Moderator
- Curated Content Creator
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.
Criteria based on age? Meh.
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:
- payment, if Nelson wanted to pay all server staff with actual cash
- legal issues, if Nelson wanted to bring a lawsuit against a particularly troublesome staff member that damaged the server experience
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.