Some people need help with staff in-game, but there is no way to do so easily. The solution to this is a command (/staffhelp). What the command would do is, when typed by a player, it will send a message to the staff via chat list saying (Playername) is in need of assistance. and directly below say [accept request], [decline request]. Each staff would click either accept or decline request. The first staff to click accept request will be teleported to the player that requested help. If a staff clicks decline request, that individual staff will ignore the request and continue their staff work, although it would be highly recommended among staff by their own .
This was suggested a while ago and that's why we have /staff. Edit: lol, more than a while... from 2012
That is why they have /staff. /staff is you can find a staff member if you need to talk to one about somebody being mean, a question, etc. So, I do not agree with this idea.
I like the idea but as dark said I also don't think it's feasible. The problem is that staff usually needs more information in order to decide if they can help or not. Fictional example: /staffhelp Help, I've been griefed! Seems to work, right? Player tells the staff the problem, staff clicks on the message and gets teleported to the player. ... only to find out that the player was on his residence in town and there's little which the staff member can do. Because blocks in town aren't marked, and whatever happens on your residence is first and foremost your own responsibility. So the result is basically that this staff member spend time over something he couldn't help with in the first place. My 2 cents? Instead of fully relying on the staff also put some trust into the community. Ask in town chat first, see if other players can help out. If there's one thing I learned in the past year of playing on the Empire its that in many cases (some) players can help you out just as fine (no offense intended towards staff, but still: sometimes even better) than the staff can. Edit: emphasis on sometimes. Don't read between the lines
Not always, the staff member in question may be on stage and therefore a p on forums would be more effective +1 as forum pm's can take ages to be answered
We ask that you use another method of contacting staff for help. Reasons: -Staff is sometimes at work/school and cannot log in-game, but CAN get on the forums to respond. -Most staff conversations need to be 2 way. Too often do we see reports with barely any extra information included. The staff members then try to get more data by visiting the players when possible, but the player logs off, goes afk, or simply won't respond. It's hard to help if you don't provide details. Please use /staff and come see us or message us on the forums. Most minor issues can be solved on the forums and a lot of the staff, like myself, can check it while at work. If it's a more complex issue, then it may take a bit of time to get a response because we want to ensure that we can get to a place suitable to be of assistance. For example, I won't respond to a road edit request while at work because I cannot get in-game to handle it right then and there.
Oh, I didn't think of that I guess this suggestion would make sense. Maybe a /staffhelp that would just send them a message if they are on stage or something.
But how can you find them? There a usually only 2-3 staff online at a time. And they could be anywhere. Since you may not know where to find a staff, this command would allow the staff to willingly teleport to you.
And how can you tell where they are on that server? You would have to walk the area and perimeter for hours to find a staff member on that specific smp.
If staff need to they can teleport to you already. if you need to talk to them you can pm them. It does not matter where they are.
What about the staff that are on 'standby'? It's happened to me personally when I needed help fairly urgently for something but there wasn't a player to name out so I couldn't make a report and there was nobody on /staff. There's usually at least a few staff that are available but aren't ingame, and there's no fast way to get a hold of them. I had to /report my alt to get a hold of a moderator (which sure enough came right away and solved my problem) but I was then muted (for an entire hour lmao) for misuse of report, even though it was basically necessary. I should have expected the mute since EMC is quick to pull the trigger for a mute anyways but that's besides the point. There should be a version of /report for reports that don't have a specific person to name as the first parameter. Either that or we shouldn't get muted for trying to get an available staff online since forum PMing takes forever to get a response, or we should get some sort of fast ticketing system. Something similar to /modreq on other servers.
That's what my post was all about. The situations where you would need to /report without a name need to be on the forums with staff so that the details can be written out, with more space than what is available in a line of chat. Griefing reports need coordinates, time spans, people in the outposts, etc all depending on the situation. Other help issues are fastest handled on the forums if no one is in-game. Of course, this does depend on the situation for reasons as I stated above. If your situation is not urgent, then you can wait for a staff to join at a later time. We've discussed the option of adding a /staffhelp type of command in the past and we decided that is was counterproductive. Primarily because the details usually required are not able to be fit in a /report and secondarily because it would clog our system of dealing with chat mutes, etc that we try to have a very quick reaction on, because chat issues require the fastest response to be effective.
