The Wynncraft Mod Team - A Discussion/critique Of The Mod Team

This forum post is meant to provide constructive criticism with the goal of helping growing the mod team. I will not be mentioning names here however mentioning specific cases should be okay in the comments (Just don't go too far). I'd like to note this is going off what I know of the mod team, if any information is incorrect I will try and correct it.

Punishments

The punishments that the Wynncraft mod team give can be at best vague and at worst not enough. While most servers will have a 3 punishment rule for most things, Wynncraft will always default to one: A permanent ban. While yes you can appeal there is no guarantee that you will be unbanned if your ban is for something minor.

For most of this thread I'll be comparing the Wynncraft mod team to Hypixel. If you cheat and get caught on Hypixel you'll get a 30 day ban, get caught for cheating again and you'll get a longer ban until finally you get permanently banned. This kind of banning style is what I would consider the 'gold standard' for modding.

Some examples of what punishments could be (first offense),

Minor Glitch Abuse: 1 week ban
Major Glitch Abuse 30 day ban
Duping Intentionally: 30 day ban and a complete wipe of their account
(I put intentionally here because considering the latest trade market glitch was very easy to do unintentionally)
Cheating/External Tools: 30 day ban

My last point here is going to be the ban messages themselves, if you were to add these types of temporary bans, you would have to display the ban time in the ban message itself. This isn't necessarily a critique but just something that would be nice if this sort of thing happened.

Deflection

Whenever I've seen a mod member critiqued or compared to the Hypixel mod they will mostly use the argument of 'We do not have the resources the Hypixel mod team does'. This is pretty easy to disprove of that not being the limiting factor because Mineplex (A similar size to Wynncraft) has a similar style of modding compared Hypixel. While how effective they are at modding is up for debate (Which is mostly limited to their tools and a lot of other factors) it shows that if you wanted to improve the mod team, you could. Even if you don't want to compare to Mineplex you should still strive to be similar to the Hypixel mod team. A possible argument to this might be 'Hypixel is a different game compared to Wynncraft'. This would be true except Hypixel Skyblock has been created which is similar enough to Wynncraft where the modding would be basically identical.

Hotfixes & Bugfixes
(This is aimed more at the developers than the mod team)

This is probably the thing I've talked about the most in public VCs. I regret how I argued in those VCs and how I didn't provide any suggestions most of the time, so I want to do that here. Smaller bugfix updates (and the ability to do them) around every week is something important to game development. Being able to fix something like the Journey Further softlock in a quick hotfix or bugfix instead of every year at worst is something a game needs if it wants to thrive, something with Wynncraft is lacking. Wynncraft has a steady playerbase, but its not a good thing to softlock them (especially when its such an easy thing to softlock) which will just end of frustrating the player. Not releasing a hotfix for theses bugs is a fundamental flaw with Wynncraft in my opinion and should be improved in the future. I cannot give much advice here as I do not know the setup Wynncraft has currently, but personally I would rather not have a big content update for 1 year if it meant more of the non-gameplay flaws of Wynncraft were weeded out. Weather the community would want that I have no idea.

Conclusion

My overall opinion of this is, the mod team has a dedication but does not have the right tools for the job. I'd like to see some discussion in the comments and see how this could evolve in the future. If you comment something that just points out the flaws without providing what could be done better (or could've done if its a specific situation) that would be the best type of comment for this thread, at least.

 

what

 

I messed up the title .-.

 

Wrong forums question. Either General Suggestions or Feedback would be propably better.

Disagree. You should be banned at least until the glitch is fixed.

Not sure if the account wipe is really necessary, seems too drastical for me. (idk why but perma ban seems less drastical lol)

Agree

 

i wish the mod team would finally fix the darn market bugs

 

Moderators don't fix bugs, moderators aren't developers

 

^^^
Moderators moderate, developers develop.

 

I did say the hotfix probably wasn't entirely just the mod team

 

the mod team has SO many problems but really dont think anything you talked about is remotely close to those problems

 

What are they then?

 

It heavily discourages duping, could also only be done in extreme cases.

________________________________

This was meant to be a starting point for a discussion on what other problems the mod team has, not necessarily all the problems. These are just the ones I feel heavily about.

________________________________

I didn't really know where to post it so I don't mind it being moved.

 

You can request a move by reporting your own post and saying "Move to (section)" iirc.

 

extremely inconsistent enforcement of rules, multiple cases of moderation just done completely incorrectly, blatant bias in the mod decision making

really am just speaking on personal experiences here and i know for fact the list doesnt stop with my three examples

 

First off, the mod team aren't the team that patches bugs. Second off, Wynncraft has a hard time pushing fixes, as most of the time it unintentionally push a new feature aswell.

 

That would be good to mention.

And communication (which is also admin problem)

 

I know that work was for the developers, I wrote that part with that knowledge, however it was related enough that I decided to include it. And no, they push new features because their system wasn't meant to handle hotfixes. Which is still unprofessional for something as large as Wynncraft.

 

Nice thread.

Anyways, I think a way to push bug fixes is absolutely needed. Somebody softlocked by a quest can easily wait 6 months to a year for a major push, which is unacceptable (unacceptable just in terms of how bad the issue is. Being locked out of a character, especially a level 100 character is hours and weeks, perhaps months or years of time investment, being unable to continue because of a bug that's usually fixed quite quickly, but not on main, is terrible and damaging to newer and older players alike)

Also, inconsistent ban times is bad, I agree. I think the 3 strikes things sounds cool. Regardless, there would be good in making the bans somewhat standardized.

 

Honestly I was a big hypixel player at one point and I am telling you right now they do not give a damn sometimes. I played mega walls which has the most cheaters other than UHC and Skywars. They never come to help if there's a cheater.

 

It's just huge huge communication issues. The mod team punishes on a completely arbitrary basis (you can be banned or let off with a gentle warning depending on the mod who handles your case, NOT your punishment a lot of the time). A standard is absolutely needed, and from what I've heard from multiple mods this isn't necessarily an issue of bias on the end of some mods (although there very clearly is some, however it'd be improper to mention them here) but rather a mod team management issue. Management and structure of the team needs overhauled, the rules need to have actual punishment guidelines attributed to them, public announcements regarding bigger issues need to be made (remember when mods decided to randomly start banning for the CUC glitch with zero warning to the playerbase? Not a good tactic), and more.

I'd love to see tons of changes but unfortunately the vast majority of the team can do anything about it, so it's left up to the few people heading it. 95% of the actions of mods don't deserve them being shit on, instead you should probably shit on the garbage guidelines they're given to work with by up above.

 

Not really much I disagree with here (if anything, only the punishments, but I imagine everyone would disagree over the specifics on this issue). I have to say that they definitely need to find some way to implement hot fixes.

I was locked out of a class which I had been playing on for years and finally got it to lvl 101. I had completed every discovery, quest... and was so close to completion when I got softlocked in Lutho and has to wait MONTHS for it to be fixed. Luckily it wasn’t my only lvl 100 class, but I don’t see how this can be thought of as acceptable. As much as I love Wynncraft and the team who makes it. There is no excuse for having to wait months to even play.