Admins could offer better help... maybe

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Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby MrRootBeer » Mon Dec 28, 2020 4:42 am

Howdy,

So I'm unsure to what extent, how this forum is ran but I've seen a tonne of posts where the admins have commented and just seem uninterested in being helpful. I don't know whether or not there are many admins but sometimes people are waiting days for an answer and bear in mind this forum is a source of info & help for players, it seems odd it's not highly active. Example, there's a post i just read in the appeals page where someone on steam has been banned. Now with steam, there are no login credentials and the poster asks how can they appeal a steam account ban when they log in via steam. The answer given was just simply "log in using the credentials in game, locking post as you've posted from an account which isn't banned". I mean what kind of answer is that. How does that tell the player how they can appeal. This guy could have been banned unfairly, unlikely but you never know, how do they get help just because they log in via steam. The same thing with the trial system, broken as anything, you check the rules, see a report, see it breaks the rules and mark it guilty BUT if a judge decides its not guilty, you get a warning until you are banned from judging. That's utterly ridiculous. Maybe the team can go on a hiring hunt as it just seems like admins have become somewhat disinterested or to busy with life to focus on offering actual help in most instances.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby Flavorable » Mon Dec 28, 2020 6:13 am

The appeals forum is for appeals, not for asking questions. Besides telling the person they need to log in with the actual banned/suspended account is the only thing we can do.

As for the Trial System, if you have any examples, I'm sure we can look into them, but keep in mind that it's a community driven system, so it's not just Judges that find things innocent, a majority of jurors could as well.

Just to add to the appeals thing and people waiting long: The Devs didn't want an appeal-option to begin with, but our Admins decided that when and if they have the time, they would look into it anyway. Keep in mind that every single staff member is a volunteer and the majority of staff have other obligations such as their (sometimes more than) fulltime jobs, school, family, e.t.c.

We are always willing to offer help where we can, but on the other side of the argument: we're not here to hold someone's hand if the information they need is readily available, or if there's a simple answer.

It might seem like disinterest to you, but it's not. If someone doesn't log in with the right account, there's nothing we can physically do except tell them to log in with the right account. If they have questions beyond that, people tend to ask it more specifically and in the proper subforum (or on Steam, Reddit or even Discord), or they send us a PM.

It's always easy to judge from the outside, but it's also to judge with the wrong information. Like you saying there are no login credentials for Steam, except.. There are. Steam players register a ToS username and password just like anyone else, and just like anyone else, they are responsible for that account information and should have it readily available if they need to log in. There's a Forgot Password option, if they need it, but we can't wave a magic wand and just magic some information into existence.

Edit: Forgot to say: You don't get locked out of the Trial System for voting against the majority once, so if you doget locked out, I also suggest making sure you read the entire juror guide, or maybe joining the Trial Server Discord to have direct contact with fellow jurors and staff to make sure you're always up to date on the rules e.t.c.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby MrRootBeer » Mon Dec 28, 2020 7:53 am

To be clear, there is categorically 100% not one single option anywhere at all ever that any steam player has to enter anything accept for a username AFTER you log in via steam. Let's be clear, when ToS did a password update a few months back, not one steam player could log in because we didn't have passwords to update. This means that you cannot log in to this forum without creating an account. Yes you can use your username but you cannot use your steam password as it doesn't work. IF the appeals system is based on username the why doesn’t anyone say "Hey, for steam users, just create an account on this forum but make sure your username matches that of your username in ToS on steam." Then lock the appeal etc. The majority of players do not partake in the forums so they won't know the rules specifically. As for the trial system, take this example, there is an appeal which was deemed guilty, the players name was afk giles, he was vet, he killed people on alert, wrote a will but someone reported him for being afk when he wasn't AND it was guiltied. Like seriously, where is the judgement in that? If you want that report, just look in appeals and you'll find it. I cannot believe ToS didn't want an appeals system like WTF, how on earth could you not have one. Yeah I get it's a small team but players are customers at the end of the day and you cannot hide behind the "it's a small team" excuse forever given how small the team is who run and created Among us. Players buy the game not only to play, but for support if something goes amiss, the game is still full of toxic players, you'll never stamp it out completely but face on, it doesn't look like there's much to do to atleast help lower that number, the trial system isn't enough, yeah OK, player numbers for the game are tiny but still, each of them is a paying customer. As an admin on other gaming forums such as Rocket League, Farming simulator, project zomboid and Rimworld, I'm just saying there's a real need for players to see there's action taken, support when needed and yes, a better responce if someone accidentally posts in the wrong place, it doesn't take much to write a generic cut and paste reply which seems more helpful. This forum looks great but lacks in the support area massively, honestly just have a gander at other forums and check their support areas, you'll see the difference. Again I know its a small team as per a lot of responses given out on here but maybe look into revamping the support/appeals/player reporting sections.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby Flavorable » Mon Dec 28, 2020 10:25 am

Steam users register a ToS account when playing the game for the first time: That's the account they can manually log into the game with and that's the account they can log into the forums with. Players don't have to register a separate forum account (apart from a few here and there, in which case, again, they PM us and we send them to the Admins or Devs to create said forum account for them).

As for when the passwords got a force reset: Most Steam players actually handled this without any trouble whatsoever, apart from a relative handful of accounts whose connection to a forum account got lost when we migrated servers.

As for your example: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=113841 I don't see the appeal being denied, do you?

Just because you don't see us helping Steam users log into their actual forum accounts, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just doesn't always happen in public. ;)
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby Joacgroso » Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:43 pm

Just as a side note, I'm pretty sure MrRootBeer was complaining about innos with exceptions/judge innos, not about juror innos.
Joacgroso wrote:I feel like I went from Light Yagami to Keiichi Maebara.

I still hope one day the game will have private lobbies. They would really help.
Also, please nerf vampire hunters.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby Flavorable » Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:46 pm

Joacgroso wrote:Just as a side note, I'm pretty sure MrRootBeer was complaining about innos with exceptions/judge innos, not about juror innos.


Jurors can't see whether something got guilties by a Judge or a juror majority.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby Joacgroso » Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:49 pm

Can't they see it with TrialBot in discord? IWE reports are yellow.
Joacgroso wrote:I feel like I went from Light Yagami to Keiichi Maebara.

I still hope one day the game will have private lobbies. They would really help.
Also, please nerf vampire hunters.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby Flavorable » Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:57 pm

Joacgroso wrote:Can't they see it with TrialBot in discord? IWE reports are yellow.

Not all Judge innos are innos with exception.
No reply to your support ticket after 15 business days? PM me with your ticket number.

You may PM me for clarifications on appeal verdicts, but keep in mind the verdict will not change.

Do you have 151+ games played and want to help rid the community of toxic players and gamethrowers? Join the Trial System today: https://www.blankmediagames.com/Trial/#start

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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby Joacgroso » Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:58 pm

Right, I was just saying I thought he was complaining about that.
Joacgroso wrote:I feel like I went from Light Yagami to Keiichi Maebara.

I still hope one day the game will have private lobbies. They would really help.
Also, please nerf vampire hunters.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby MrRootBeer » Tue Dec 29, 2020 5:17 am

Regarding that trial report, that is my point I'm making. It got guiltied, yes its been reversed but imagine if I inno'd that report, I'd get a strike against me as judging it incorrectly just because majority ruled it guilty to warrant the ban in the first place. The structure for the trial system is there but needs more work, you also punish jurors for incorrectly judging report, yes spam judging can be banned but just because 1 person sees a report as not ban worthy doesn't mean they should get punished, even in the trial system it says if you feel that it doesn't warrant a ban, 1st time minor offence etc, then inno the report, I did that & got a strike, utter ridiculous. As for the support, like I said, it isn't nonexistent, it's just hit and miss or lacking in areas. As for steam, no, we did not have to create anything when I bought the game years ago, we created a user name and that was it and to confirm 100% no matter what I did, couldn't create an account here using my steam details, I had to create my own one to A- complain about the fact the steam password reset locked us out and B- complain that i couldn't create an account using my steam credentials. As said before, steam users like myself never created a password, therefore we cannot log in to this forum, again no tos account was created, we entered a username and that was it. Maybe now you create a tos account but when I got the game, there wasn't and you cannot use the Georgia password option because it says my steam tos username does not exist. As mentioned before, the forum is OK, the people are volunteers and give their own time up, i do the same with the forums i am a part of but its just the around the managing players part with bans/support etc is a miss. This of course isn't a dig/negative criticism etc, I have a lot of forum experience behind me and I'm just saying you have potential for some improvements in certain areas. Take the section reporting players for example, goes unanswered for a long time when people report players, they've been harassed, upset by a player and come here to log that experience and have action taken but no one knows what happens next, has their report been read, what happens next, what action has been taken etc. Imagine you were playing rocket league, it has some toxic players in the game and you were being called racist names or what ever and the player disconnected meaning you cannot now file a report. You'd want that player to not give someone else the same treatment so you report them on the forum, wouldn't you want a swift reply, a what happens next and maybe an update on what was done? We even apologise to the player with something like "I'm so sorry you had this experience with another player in the game" because at the end of the day, that player is a customer and it's also about creating the best player experience both in the game and off the game.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby Flavorable » Tue Dec 29, 2020 8:34 am

It got guiltied, yes its been reversed but imagine if I inno'd that report, I'd get a strike against me as judging it incorrectly just because majority ruled it guilty to warrant the ban in the first place.

The only "strike" you get is a -1TR, which really doesn't do much unless you consistently vote against the Juror Guide. Guilty reports that turn out to be innocent happen maybe once in every 500-1000 reports. And even if you do get locked out of voting for consistently voting against the majority of other jurors (and a majority vote is the entire point of a community-driven system), as Levin already explained to you before, you can just contact Levin and ask him to check into it and reverse the lock. Is it annoying for people who get locked out? Sure. But on the other hand, to get completely locked out, in the instance of coming straight out of the tutorial, you would have to vote against juror majority more than 12 times in a row. This is why we often refer new jurors to the Trial Server Discord as well, so they can get some tips as to how to stop that from happening consistently, because, as it is widely broadcast: It is a system where the majority vote counts and someone going against the majority vote enough times to get locked out of the Trial System more than once is usually either not understanding what they are doing, committing vote fraud, or voting in categories that get handled/punished way differently than they would think. Often this is solved by simply reading the Juror Guide and Rules Guide, as well as talking to fellow jurors (and staff) in Discord who generally advise people to take the "easier" categories as a start as to get a bit of a buffer for votes that cost you TR.

Regardless, this is an "issue" that only you seem to come across, people that get locked out of voting are few and far between and usually only have it happen to them once.

As for steam, no, we did not have to create anything when I bought the game years ago, we created a user name and that was it

The only Steam accounts that didn't require a register were back in early 2015. Those users still had a username, or could have contact anyone without any issues on Steam Discussions, or through support via e-mail (or via a support ticket on the website). Currently, there is not a single ToS player that does not have to register, let alone cannot register. This is not a staff-related issue, nor is it a forum-related issue. This is an issue of not being able to help people who do not contact support when they do have a problem. Heck, even if you have problems logging into the forums with an account that does not seem like it's registered on the forums, you get an option to "Contact the Board Administrator" with which one can send an e-mail to the Board Admin to have their problem solved.
The majority of people logging in under a different username on the forums for say an Appeal, are people that simply do not know their ToS account password, or don't realise you can log in with your ToS account details. Which is why we point out: "Please log in with the banned/suspended account."
We can't read minds, if people don't contact anyone with issues, there's not a lot we can do, and being preemptive about every little thing that can go wrong is generally a waste of valuable time, because the time we spend helping someone who doesn't need said help, is valuable time we lose to help other people who do need help.

Take the section reporting players for example, goes unanswered for a long time when people report players, they've been harassed, upset by a player and come here to log that experience and have action taken but no one knows what happens next, has their report been read, what happens next, what action has been taken etc.

Every post in Report Players subforum gets answered when handled and moved to "Closed Reports". Every poster (and every member on the forums) can see/follow those posts. The Judges handle those reports within a day (unless there's unforeseen circumstances that render it absolutely impossible for any Judge or Trial Moderator to be there) and they even let the poster know with a reply whether the user was permanently banned, suspended or if the report did not follow the guidelines.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby MrRootBeer » Tue Dec 29, 2020 10:24 am

Mine was 12 times or more on the trial system, it was less than that. Had nothing to do with not knowing the guide, it's because the info there is not complete, therefore new users who see a rule break guilty and judges inno and vice versa. Like a mafia forcing a draw when they can win the game is gamethrowing yet the report gets inno'd i get a strike etc etc.
Probably the reason its me writing these issues is because no one else can be bothered?

Exactly my point, so why was this user who used a steam account not told this, that's info steam players should be told. If your account is pre 2015, do this, if its post 2015, do this instead, it's helpful. When we had the password issue, I came here after creating an account and said about it and I got told "reset your passord" yeah like "I'm on steam and never created a password, we login via steam" was not clear enough that we didn't have passwords to use. I gave up even bothering with this forum to sort it out because that was the most lazy answer i ever read where my point was just ignored. Whose going to bother with an issue when they see admins write like that when a player needed help.

This brings me back to the main point, hire more people who want to volunteer so people get faster response time.
You don't need to be preemptive on everything, just answer with some help, doesn't take any longer to cut paste an answer for certain issues, you answer enough of the same/similar questions to atleast have an idea of better responses. The games player base is tiny, it's not like it's exactly difficult to keep up, the FS forum is ran by 6 of us and the player base is a few thousand, the RL forum is ran by 15 of us and that has a player base of 200K+ players.

I'm just saying, there's room to make this forum kickass, I can see it but gaming forums are kind of my niche so that may explain why you don't get very many of these types of posts. Remember, I'm giving you a window into straight forward player who's brand new to this forum and giving his experience and views based on things I've done and and seen. As I said before, they are not just players, they are paying customers wanting a fun gaming experience with helpful support.
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Re: Admins could offer better help... maybe

Postby Hiway202 » Tue Dec 29, 2020 1:08 pm

MrRootBeer wrote:Mine was 12 times or more on the trial system, it was less than that. Had nothing to do with not knowing the guide, it's because the info there is not complete, therefore new users who see a rule break guilty and judges inno and vice versa. Like a mafia forcing a draw when they can win the game is gamethrowing yet the report gets inno'd i get a strike etc etc.


Hello!

If you have any questions about reports, we’re always happy to help. You can post those reports in the Trial System Feedback/Discussion subforum with your questions. You can also PM a judge if you’d like with your questions or even join the trial system discord server (link is in my signature) where we have a specific channel just for questions. Any of these options are fine, just make sure you post a link to the report you have a question about so we can help as best as we can. You can find the report by opening your trial system user profile and then opening your voting history.

Keep in mind if you don’t post the actual report it’s harder for us to help. Yes, your example should be guilty so I would need to see the report to know why it wasn’t. It could be many things such as the report being filed in the wrong category (for example if the report was filed as hate speech/harassment but they really gamethrew, the report would be deemed inno for hate speech since there wasn’t any). It could also be a juror inno which means that a majority of jurors voted inno on the report because they didn’t think the person broke a rule or should be punished. If a majority of jurors vote inno the report is closed as inno without even being seen by a judge. Judges usually only vote on reports where a majority of jurors voted guilty.

Also you mentioned above that reports in the report players section don’t always get handled. We’re you referring to the ones where a judge replies “there are currently no valid open reports on the user. Leaving open for now”? If so, this is because judges do not have the power to ban or suspend someone if a report wasn’t filed on them in game. Unfortunately, there is literally nothing we could do, even if we wanted to. If this isn’t what you’re referring to, please let me know, but I think we’re usually pretty good about getting a response to those posts quickly.

Please feel free to reach out to people if you have questions, that’s what we’re here for. Also like I’ve mentioned please include examples. It’s a lot easier to answer a question that’s specific and has an example as opposed to a vague one such as “lots of reports go unhandled”

Thank you! Let me know if you have any questions!
Hello, my name's Elencia! I'm happy to answer questions, so feel free to send me a PM if you need anything! However, I don't have the power to grant your appeal, so please don't PM me about that.

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