Inept Moderators
Oct. 21st, 2012 07:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owsf2000This rant is minecraft related. It's more specifically for public minecraft servers that have moderators appointed to crack down on hackers and shit. (This is not about Pseudo World. That's a private server!)
IF you're going to do that because you can't be arsed to log on to your own server enough do the following things:
1. Make sure the mods have the proper commands and powers to prove someone is cheating.
2. If those powers are "too op" for regular players to have access to, make sure your moderators understand that they are NOT actual players and are in fact people there intended to oversee the game.
3. Make sure those moderators, regardless of the above, are COMPETENT minecraft players.
A public server I play lately on and off (I always seem to have a public and private server that I play on.) fails all three of the above.
1. The commands they have access to are "invsee" which lets them see what's in your inventory at any time they desire. and the "find block" plugin. Which announces to them whenever a player finds a vein of ore like iron, gold, lapis, diamond, or emerald. It doesn't work for coal or redstone. Probably because the shit is too common or limited in use. Regular players don't see this on this server. But the mods love telling us they have it.
Why they fail this? These commands only generate witch hunts. They see you getting ore often and can see how much you have in your inventory. They don't know how you're getting it. FAIL.
The other abilities they need after this is the ability to go invisible and the ability to quietly teleport to the suspect to witness firsthand what they're doing. If you're in some tiny dark tunnel you're digging that changes direction for no particular reason and just happens to find all the diamond or emerald ores? Yeah, perhaps you're using xray and should be banned. However on a pvp server, having the ability to instantly teleport to other players would be "too op" especially if you were using it to attack them.
2. They fail in this measure because the moderators are considered regular players. Regular players on a RAID, GRIEF, PVP server. Having any more powers than the commands above and the ability to kick and/or ban players is "too op" and they wouldn't be able to be regular players.
Why they fail this? Most of the mods there seem to only be mods for the commands. Very few actually care enough to actually look for cheaters. So this means you have a bunch of pvpers looking for ripe targets with their ability to see your inventory. Many wouldn't be moderator if it meant they couldn't you know, attack other players and destroy their bases. They can't get commands to fully sniff out cheaters without causing a lot of valid concern unless they're considered staff rather than player. And they don't want that.
3. I don't know if it's just the type of server it is, and the type of player it attracts. But I swear it feels like not a single damned moderator on that server has a clue how to play minecraft beyond digging down to diamond level, getting diamonds, making diamond armor/sword plus enchantments, then attacking other players.
Sure. They know the statistics. They've probably read the minecraft wiki. But I seriously doubt ANY of them know how to cave out the darkness.
So why the rant? In my case in particular I was accused of xraying on two different nights by two different moderators. I know for a fact I wasn't. When I cave, I go find a big deep hole and jump in with my basic armor and tools. A stack of wood, some water, some ender pearls, food, and some torches. That's about all you need to handle just about everything.
When I cave, I also go fairly fast. I'm not taking my time. I run down corridors lighting it up. I make note of ore veins I find in the walls as I go and then on the way back (or at least periodically if it's long) I'll turn back and harvest everything up. That shows up fairly fast. When you're low enough there's ores everywhere. mostly iron. some gold. some lapis. diamonds if you're low enough and are lucky. and emeralds if you're in an "extreme hills biome". In both cases, I was.
Apparently the mods seem to think that the statistical chances of finding an emerald vein, which is always just 1 block, are so insignificantly tiny, that nobody should find more than 3-4 ores on a single caving trip per day kinda thing.
I can find, on average, 8-10 per half hour in a good cave/abandoned mine setup.
So yeah, usually when I hit the 4-5 ore limit, and particularly manage to find each like 5-10 minutes after each other, it becomes "OWSF! STOP XRAYING!".
At least one was "polite" enough to say "tpa me to you owsf. Now. I need to see your mine."
ie: He thought I was digging a mine. I let him see it since I wasn't near my base. And as a moderator on a pvp/grief server, there was nothing to stop him from also setting a home for later use or just outright attacking me on the spot. He seemed surprised I wasn't in a tiny dark tunnel, but still accused me of mining the blocks over the emerald ore that was exposed in front of us. I didn't. That was the 5th ore I had found. I found the 6th, 7th, and 8th not too long after he left. :P
(edit: To be clear. What I was showing him was the large cave/corridor setup I was standing in around lakes of lava. I was not in any kind of artifically dug mine.)
I'll admit. When I read the conditions for emerald veins on the wiki before 1.3 was launched, I thought I'd never see one in the wild, and was glad that emeralds could be gotten from villagers. But then I started caving some new 1.3 chunks. And my fears were quickly erased.
What they don't get is that there's up to 8 1 block emerald veins per 16x16 chunk. 8 chances to be placed by the land generator. If it tries to get placed in an air block, it fails. But all 8 are likely going to be far enough apart on average so that you're not going to lose all 8 due t a bad placement.
And the more surface area in your chunk, the more likely any remaining emeralds are going to be visible in the floor, walls, or ceiling. The more swiss cheese your mine/cavern are, the better your chances. And those are the kinds of places I run around in. Heck, on several instances I found two emeralds within 3-4 blocks of each other. Once this morning there was one in the wall of an abandoned mine corridor. And a second one in the floor right below it.
Anybody that caves even half as well as I do would find similar results. Unfortunately I doubt any of the mods have gone more than 200 blocks from spawn. (Not many players out further than than to attack. :P)
I suspect if I'm ever banned from that server, it's because I found 1 more emerald than they've ever seen in their lives. Which is probably 6.
IF you're going to do that because you can't be arsed to log on to your own server enough do the following things:
1. Make sure the mods have the proper commands and powers to prove someone is cheating.
2. If those powers are "too op" for regular players to have access to, make sure your moderators understand that they are NOT actual players and are in fact people there intended to oversee the game.
3. Make sure those moderators, regardless of the above, are COMPETENT minecraft players.
A public server I play lately on and off (I always seem to have a public and private server that I play on.) fails all three of the above.
1. The commands they have access to are "invsee" which lets them see what's in your inventory at any time they desire. and the "find block" plugin. Which announces to them whenever a player finds a vein of ore like iron, gold, lapis, diamond, or emerald. It doesn't work for coal or redstone. Probably because the shit is too common or limited in use. Regular players don't see this on this server. But the mods love telling us they have it.
Why they fail this? These commands only generate witch hunts. They see you getting ore often and can see how much you have in your inventory. They don't know how you're getting it. FAIL.
The other abilities they need after this is the ability to go invisible and the ability to quietly teleport to the suspect to witness firsthand what they're doing. If you're in some tiny dark tunnel you're digging that changes direction for no particular reason and just happens to find all the diamond or emerald ores? Yeah, perhaps you're using xray and should be banned. However on a pvp server, having the ability to instantly teleport to other players would be "too op" especially if you were using it to attack them.
2. They fail in this measure because the moderators are considered regular players. Regular players on a RAID, GRIEF, PVP server. Having any more powers than the commands above and the ability to kick and/or ban players is "too op" and they wouldn't be able to be regular players.
Why they fail this? Most of the mods there seem to only be mods for the commands. Very few actually care enough to actually look for cheaters. So this means you have a bunch of pvpers looking for ripe targets with their ability to see your inventory. Many wouldn't be moderator if it meant they couldn't you know, attack other players and destroy their bases. They can't get commands to fully sniff out cheaters without causing a lot of valid concern unless they're considered staff rather than player. And they don't want that.
3. I don't know if it's just the type of server it is, and the type of player it attracts. But I swear it feels like not a single damned moderator on that server has a clue how to play minecraft beyond digging down to diamond level, getting diamonds, making diamond armor/sword plus enchantments, then attacking other players.
Sure. They know the statistics. They've probably read the minecraft wiki. But I seriously doubt ANY of them know how to cave out the darkness.
So why the rant? In my case in particular I was accused of xraying on two different nights by two different moderators. I know for a fact I wasn't. When I cave, I go find a big deep hole and jump in with my basic armor and tools. A stack of wood, some water, some ender pearls, food, and some torches. That's about all you need to handle just about everything.
When I cave, I also go fairly fast. I'm not taking my time. I run down corridors lighting it up. I make note of ore veins I find in the walls as I go and then on the way back (or at least periodically if it's long) I'll turn back and harvest everything up. That shows up fairly fast. When you're low enough there's ores everywhere. mostly iron. some gold. some lapis. diamonds if you're low enough and are lucky. and emeralds if you're in an "extreme hills biome". In both cases, I was.
Apparently the mods seem to think that the statistical chances of finding an emerald vein, which is always just 1 block, are so insignificantly tiny, that nobody should find more than 3-4 ores on a single caving trip per day kinda thing.
I can find, on average, 8-10 per half hour in a good cave/abandoned mine setup.
So yeah, usually when I hit the 4-5 ore limit, and particularly manage to find each like 5-10 minutes after each other, it becomes "OWSF! STOP XRAYING!".
At least one was "polite" enough to say "tpa me to you owsf. Now. I need to see your mine."
ie: He thought I was digging a mine. I let him see it since I wasn't near my base. And as a moderator on a pvp/grief server, there was nothing to stop him from also setting a home for later use or just outright attacking me on the spot. He seemed surprised I wasn't in a tiny dark tunnel, but still accused me of mining the blocks over the emerald ore that was exposed in front of us. I didn't. That was the 5th ore I had found. I found the 6th, 7th, and 8th not too long after he left. :P
(edit: To be clear. What I was showing him was the large cave/corridor setup I was standing in around lakes of lava. I was not in any kind of artifically dug mine.)
I'll admit. When I read the conditions for emerald veins on the wiki before 1.3 was launched, I thought I'd never see one in the wild, and was glad that emeralds could be gotten from villagers. But then I started caving some new 1.3 chunks. And my fears were quickly erased.
What they don't get is that there's up to 8 1 block emerald veins per 16x16 chunk. 8 chances to be placed by the land generator. If it tries to get placed in an air block, it fails. But all 8 are likely going to be far enough apart on average so that you're not going to lose all 8 due t a bad placement.
And the more surface area in your chunk, the more likely any remaining emeralds are going to be visible in the floor, walls, or ceiling. The more swiss cheese your mine/cavern are, the better your chances. And those are the kinds of places I run around in. Heck, on several instances I found two emeralds within 3-4 blocks of each other. Once this morning there was one in the wall of an abandoned mine corridor. And a second one in the floor right below it.
Anybody that caves even half as well as I do would find similar results. Unfortunately I doubt any of the mods have gone more than 200 blocks from spawn. (Not many players out further than than to attack. :P)
I suspect if I'm ever banned from that server, it's because I found 1 more emerald than they've ever seen in their lives. Which is probably 6.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 07:49 pm (UTC)So rather than keep the vast majority of the stuff I mine out, I cook it then sell it at the spawn admin shops. Of course I cave a lot and iron is a LOT more common than any silly emerald.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-28 08:53 pm (UTC)The fact is, if such tools alone could actually pinpoint cheaters, one wouldn't even need moderators; the whole process would just be automated.
And don't even get me started on servers in which the only criteria for moderator abilities is the willingness to donate money.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-28 10:38 pm (UTC)Speaking of Good'Ol's Minecraft server, do you know if that shithole is still up? It's more of a morbid curiousity rather than any actual desire to check.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 06:07 am (UTC)