My experience as an Atelier801 staff member

Jealy said:
When staff members are friends with an applicant beforehand it's obviously easier to know whether or not that person is suited for staff. Literally anybody can write a good application if they really want to, doesn't mean their actual behaviour belongs anywhere near a staff position, and who better to know this than their friends? Being friends with or being completely anonymous to the staff both have their advantages and disadvantages.

And by the way, people would complain a lot more if staff accepted everyone based on their application alone.

I'd honestly have people complaining the staff were chosen based on their applicants, than accepting a friend. This whole '6 months preparation', or whatever it is, it could be used to view the progress the accepted people have made, but sadly, it looks more of an excuse. I do remember a friend made it to the staff team(i'm not mentioning their name but it left me devastated after hearing how the staff worked with that person.)
The staff didn't trust them, and gave the person another year of private modding/arbiter stuff.
Another friend of mine was asked to apply for a staff position by an EN/E2 mod but refused way long ago, knowing how corrupt the staff is, they don't want to take any part in it. I've always knew there is something wrong with it, there were staff members from different communities who have hinted on how the staff works after they left, but barely anyone noticed.
It's just sad, and I mean real sad. The game needs proper mods, not ones who rely on how they feel in a situation. Just because you've said a word which by the way isn't a rule breaking one, you get a mute or even worse, a ban. There were a couple sanctions on people the past week, I don't know how many were hit, but all of them were banned for 'racial slur', when they literally said a genitalia?
Can you explain to me, how is this racist? So if I say 'Hi' to someone, they will call the cops on me because they were threatened?

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#22

Lelianna said:
Is everyone going to ignore the fact i pointed out the new admin...

OMG WOW GJ :CLAPS:!!!

THANKS!!

#23

Mso said:
Lelianna said:
Is everyone going to ignore the fact i pointed out the new admin...

OMG WOW GJ :CLAPS:!!!

THANKS!!

SO THE BULLSHIT EXCUSE SAYING IT'S JUST MELI AND TIG WONT WORK ANYMORE XD

#24

Peanut_butter said:
Jealy said:
When staff members are friends with an applicant beforehand it's obviously easier to know whether or not that person is suited for staff. Literally anybody can write a good application if they really want to, doesn't mean their actual behaviour belongs anywhere near a staff position, and who better to know this than their friends? Being friends with or being completely anonymous to the staff both have their advantages and disadvantages.

And by the way, people would complain a lot more if staff accepted everyone based on their application alone.

I never did say that you should only accept people based on their application. You need to check their current behaviour, not how they used to behave 3 years ago. I think we both know who we're talking about here and they weren't accepted for FC this round based on the exact same reasons you denied them about a year ago. I wonder who from the team took the time to actually observe their behavior because as far as I saw the applications when I was in the team, for some applications the immediate responses were "oh hell no", "definitely not", "not even a chance" one minute after the application was posted.
And as far as I have observed their present behavior, they haven't said or acted in any way that is enough for them to be denied.

Thing is, friends (who are acceptable) will always be put in first place and that's natural in real life too. However, the problem lies in denying people who could be way better and coming up with a random reason to deny them.

I get the same treatment whenever I try to enter FS. How did I get such a bad reputation? It feels unjustified.

#25

Jealy said:
Literally anybody can write a good application if they really want to, doesn't mean their actual behaviour belongs anywhere near a staff position, and who better to know this than their friends?

Jealy said:
Error_404 said:
Jealy said:
When staff members are friends with an applicant beforehand it's obviously easier to know whether or not that person is suited for staff. Literally anybody can write a good application if they really want to, doesn't mean their actual behaviour belongs anywhere near a staff position, and who better to know this than their friends? Being friends with or being completely anonymous to the staff both have their advantages and disadvantages.

And by the way, people would complain a lot more if staff accepted everyone based on their application alone.

So why the application if that is going straight into trash and you are basing your judgement on friends and recommendations.

To show interest in the position you're applying for, and to let the staff get to know things about you if they don't already.

I can't wrap my head around the logic behind this. Yes, a good application doesn't necessarily equate to an outstanding behavior, but neither does being friends with staff members. Why not just have it as a requirement? "You should preferably be friends with staff members already if you want higher chances of getting accepted." Because it would sound ridiculous, that's why. Even confirming that this is nevertheless the case and not having the tiniest grain of doubt regarding the moral integrity of it just screams injustice to me. Genuinely good people for the position are out there spending time writing an application just to potentially get rejected for no particular reason, solely based on assumptions that their behavior might not be suitable for the position, without giving them a chance to prove themselves. Unless there is a reason to question one's behavior in the first place, why assume the worst if their application is impeccable and they clearly put a lot of time into writing it?
And who says you should only judge based on the application that's in front of you? Do moderators and sentinels not have the tools and capability of analyzing one's current behavior inside the game or on the forums?

#26

Jealy said:
Error_404 said:
Jealy said:
When staff members are friends with an applicant beforehand it's obviously easier to know whether or not that person is suited for staff. Literally anybody can write a good application if they really want to, doesn't mean their actual behaviour belongs anywhere near a staff position, and who better to know this than their friends? Being friends with or being completely anonymous to the staff both have their advantages and disadvantages.

And by the way, people would complain a lot more if staff accepted everyone based on their application alone.

So why the application if that is going straight into trash and you are basing your judgement on friends and recommendations.

To show interest in the position you're applying for, and to let the staff get to know things about you if they don't already.

said:
You are basically saying its pointless for people who dont know staff to try to be a part of something that game offers to ''everyone'' ''Help their community''

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Thanks for understanding my post.

i understand what you are saying i was just kidding. i guess my humour is bad :( delete this post if needed ty

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#27

The most troubling thing of all to me is the fact I have not seen tig say anything for like 5 years. New players literally don't know who he is; All they ever talk about is meli. And trying to complain to meli about the state of the game is like trying to bail water out of a sinking ship with a teacup. The company has produced new games like 5 times., then immediately dumped them when they weren't successful right off the bat instead of trying to improve them. Remember no man's sky? The meme game that got negative reviewed into complete obliteration? It's now sitting at over a 4/5 rating from most reviewers. And I understand if you decide later that a project was a mistake and you don't want to commit to it anymore, but god damn you've done it 5 times now and who's to say you won't do it again with this next game? In fact, I fear more if this new game is successful because then what extremely mediocre attention transformice gets will disappear and go the way of dead maze and the rest.

If they want to keep this ship afloat tig needs to get his head out of his ass and listen to some feedback and improve his games instead of being an immature child that ignores his toys every time he gets a new one.

As for moderators, I've had very mixed experiences. Some are very professional and nice to talk to, but some are absolute dicks and I have had times where I was upset by the level of passive aggressiveness i was dealing with. I'm not sure how well this issue can be mitigated. The lower playercounts of modern tfm mean less viable applicants. But it is a very real issue nonetheless and not some fantasy like many staff members insist.

I don't play very much anymore because of how bad the state of this game is, but I would love to one day come back and see new management and actual updates and response to feedback. So basically never.

#28

Lelianna said:
Is everyone going to ignore the fact i pointed out the new admin...

Aucun is Melibellule's alt account used for purposes such as gifting.

#29

I agree so much with you about everything! Especially about the behavior of certain sentinels and staff. I have come to the forums on numerous occasions to have my voice heard as I got no response from the moderation team about some ingame problems. All I asked was for help and I also suggested my opinion on how to improve the moderation system. The thing I notice, though, was a certain person, I think they're a sentinel, whose similar comment I read on this post too, trying to discredit your truth. This person always speaks in a rude manner to me, I'm not even sure if they are staff, talking about how mods have their own lives and how they shouldn't be criticized. The behavior I've seen is so far from professional staff and it's really driving players and customers away. Thank you for speaking your truth and telling us the things no one would even dare to, as most players are afraid of being discredited by people like the person I've mentioned above.

#30

I noticed all the points I mentioned about management and i think
Everything you said is true
And about the last point that includes all the people who want to help

I have a friend trying to make a transformice with html5
From the beginning, as an attempt to help the company, he plans to contact Millie
Unfortunately, the mods are not serious about their company

#31

TLDR???

#32

Wraith said:
TLDR???

game has a terminal disease

#33

sad truth

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#34

There are a lot of valid points raised here, unfortunately I’m lacking time and mental health to address them all immediately. I’m in a pretty dark place lately, and indeed not communicating enough. I’m off to see family for the next few days.
I will just say that the staff acknowledges the issues raised here and we will try our best to address them. I will still be off for the next few days but I’m far from alone, and I know we can find ways to do better.

#35

Melibellule said:
I’m lacking time and mental health to address them all immediately. I’m in a pretty dark place lately, and indeed not communicating enough.

Hope you start feeling better soon. I'm sure everyone feels the same, no matter how much we like to complain. <3

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#36

This was so long, I am already exhausted. I'll try to shorten this a bit.

said:

Recently I've been reading the Staff FAQ and to my surprise (or not), the same issues are being discussed by players and staff members. Players will accuse staff members of not doing their job right and then staff members will say "deal with it" in a polite way.

Do you have any specific examples of this that we can address? As for the thread, we have been talking about a way to collect player feedback without being mobbed by people who just want to complain to other players and not actually work towards a solution. Even other communities are having a rough time with their feedback threads turning into people complaining about having to follow the rules and leaving us overwhelmed with no time to address valid feedback.

said:
Let's get to the point: staff favoring some people and then disregarding others as quilty or as someone who isn't worth their time at all. It might be a slight exaggeration but we're at a point where if you aren't friends with a staff member, you cannot even get into any teams because they'll most likely tell a story about you and then everyone immediately says no to your application. Do some digging and you will see that the staff are more likely to accept their friends into the teams rather than strangers who they have never or hardly seen before. Of course in real life this happens too... you are more likely to get a job if you are friends with the owners, but at this company, things are a little different. I have seen some people get accepted with mediocre applications while others with outstanding applications weren't. It's not like there's a limit to having moderators, sentinels, map crew, funcorp, module members, etc. but this thing can still happen. Guess it's easier brainwashing friends than strangers, ey?

Since the beginning of Transformice time, people have always said mods only hire friends. As a staff member, you have seen all the new people who join staff, can you think of any that were friends with multiple mods before joining? If so, I can point to the large majority who were not friends. When I was still a mod, I never personally knew more than one person we hired in each round. I still know zero people who are being considered for international teams. This has been accused so many times, and it's incredibly frustrating to see no proof from players besides they themselves not being hired and assuming it was because they don't have mod friends. For every one hired who happened to be friends with a staff member, there are many others who we had no idea who they were before hiring. I would be more than happy to talk about specific people's cases in private.

said:
On the other hand, some people get banned, but this time, it is an unfair sanction placed on the player. If you are one of those players, you must know the struggle of trying to contact a mod just to be told that you should contact someone else... and when you do, that person says "I saw you hacking, you aren't getting unbanned". This is a serious issue that the staff members need to tackle and find a more efficient way of solving. I know there are some moderators with a good heart who will be lenient and remove the ban if it's the first sanction placed on the player or even a second sanction, but there are others who just don't care. Then, I must ask you, why are you a moderator? Just to place sanctions on people you think are breaking the rules and then not even give them a chance to explain themselves? If this happens once or twice a month, then it's not a huge issue to try and solve but the problem is that this happens almost daily on the game and people in the staff don't give a damn about trying to be more righteous. It's not an easy job but please try and be more correct and be extra-sure about sanctioning a rulebreaker. Don't just do it so you can move onto the next report.

I'm not sure who exactly you are talking about, but I would be interested for you to message me in private so we can address their specific issue. This is a valid point, it has frequently been one word against another. Most staff now take gifs of hacking bans, but even then we have disagreements on whether the ban was valid or not. But this is addressed to staff members, not the players reading this thread, and more mods would probably see it if you contacted staff directly. I don't think most will have time or energy to read this entire post.

said:
I would like to explain myself on the "brainwashing" part. It's not literal brainwashing but you can see that staff members are always on the same page and no one dares to speak up against each other, most of the time they accept what their friends have to say and default to that mentality instead of trying to discuss the matters. My experience with this is to do with one specific player, although there are countless other examples. If you're from staff or the other end of the discussion, you will know who I am talking about. The staff has developed prejudices against certain players in the community and continues to do so. If you break rules and behave in a certain way, you can try to change all you want, the staff will still think you're immature and childish even 5 years later. It's like that image of you has been burnt inside their heads and will just never erase. New staff members, who truly act neutrally towards the player, will be told that they shouldn't act like that and that they shouldn't support these players because they broke some kind of rule months, years ago. I acknowledge that I'm too naive and even way too kind (which is why I was never the best Sentinel out there) but I do believe that people can change in a matter of months, if not weeks. And to keep the same distorted image of a player in your minds for years just because they used to behave poorly in the past is toxic. Voting on applications should be based on the application that you've received and the current behavior of the user, not their past behavior. It's good if you know how they used to behave but ultimately, it's not a reason to refuse anyone. Observe the player and form your opinion based on that. I know it's risky to let them into the team, but then again, you can always remove them and sanction them for abusing their powers. I was refused the moderator position based on a lie which I still know nothing about, except that it's been brought up to me by the person who told me about my application. Nobody ever cared to ask me to tell my part of the story.

I think I know who you're referring to here, and I'd be happy to talk to you about it 1 to 1 rather than airing their issues in public. I'm a bit disappointed when we are criticized in public about our treatment of specific people, knowing that we cannot discuss them in public for privacy reasons.

said:
The behavior I just explained might seem like it's only visible from inside the team and normal players cannot become aware of it, while in fact, it's visible on the outside too. This leads to my final point in staff-related issues which is the way some staff members speak to normal players. When I joined, I was told to follow a specific manner of speaking and to conduct myself in such a way as to not hurt the company by any means. Unfortunately, I know some staff members who act like they're gods of everything and they have this rude tone to their messages even if it's not their intention. Having a position at Atelier should not mean you are better in any way. Try and act neutral and don't look down on players, because this can hurt the reputation of the company. As a matter of fact, it already did. I know some people who left because they did not like how the staff replied to them. Stop saying "deal with it" and start saying "how can we help you even if you're not getting unbanned." You may ask now, what are we supposed to do with these players, how could we help them? For starters, explain why and how they were banned, send them a list of the rules, give them advice to help them grow as a person. Obviously, this only works with people who want to help themselves too. You can't do much with people who just shout at you and just want to be unbanned.

I have heard people complain about this, but I rarely see quotes, screenshots, or anything specific. If anyone feels they were talked to rudely or unfairly, please bring up the issue with another staff member. I can think of one case where we did address how someone acted, and the issue was resolved. Just the one case though - if there are more, I encourage you to take screenshots and contact someone.

And the rest is addressed to admins so I will hold off on that for now.

#37

As a staff of close to 4 years, I'd like to think I have enough experience to share a staffs members view on this. This is 100% from my view and my own words, so it might not reflect what other staff do / think. Some points listed in the OP I'm not going to address, because either I don't feel as if they are relevant to me, or I don't really have a strong opinion on them.

said:
Let's get to the point: staff favoring some people and then disregarding others as quilty or as someone who isn't worth their time at all. It might be a slight exaggeration but we're at a point where if you aren't friends with a staff member, you cannot even get into any teams because they'll most likely tell a story about you and then everyone immediately says no to your application. Do some digging and you will see that the staff are more likely to accept their friends into the teams rather than strangers who they have never or hardly seen before. Of course in real life this happens too... you are more likely to get a job if you are friends with the owners, but at this company, things are a little different. I have seen some people get accepted with mediocre applications while others with outstanding applications weren't. It's not like there's a limit to having moderators, sentinels, map crew, funcorp, module members, etc. but this thing can still happen. Guess it's easier brainwashing friends than strangers, ey?

I fully disagree with this. Personal experience; when I was hired as a sentinel, I had zero friends who were staff. I was just a random player who was dedicated to helping the forums, and was accepted onto the team when the applications were open. Pretty much my only interaction with staff was that I forum PM'd Lemodile (ex-modsent) once about updating a thread. Hell, even when I was hired as an arb, I had never interacted with even half of the EN mods, and the ones which I had interacted with were sentinels.
Adding on to this; I can't speak for other community mods, but most of the EN mods hired in the last ~2 years were not friends with any staff beforehand. In fact, in EN's last hiring (not the one which recently closed, the one which closed in January this year), most of the successful applications were from players we had never even heard of before.

said:
On the other hand, some people get banned, but this time, it is an unfair sanction placed on the player. If you are one of those players, you must know the struggle of trying to contact a mod just to be told that you should contact someone else... and when you do, that person says "I saw you hacking, you aren't getting unbanned". This is a serious issue that the staff members need to tackle and find a more efficient way of solving.

When placing a chat sanction, i'll try to include what they said which got them sanctioned in their mute/ban reason. When it's a hack ban, if the player asks me what they were doing to hack, I will tell them what hack I saw them doing, what room they were in, and what map they were on. We can't really give more info than that. That being said, if a mod is being very vague about why you were sanctioned, it's best to let another mod know so we can bring it up with them.

said:
I would like to explain myself on the "brainwashing" part. It's not literal brainwashing but you can see that staff members are always on the same page and no one dares to speak up against each other, most of the time they accept what their friends have to say and default to that mentality instead of trying to discuss the matters. My experience with this is to do with one specific player, although there are countless other examples. If you're from staff or the other end of the discussion, you will know who I am talking about. The staff has developed prejudices against certain players in the community and continues to do so. If you break rules and behave in a certain way, you can try to change all you want, the staff will still think you're immature and childish even 5 years later. It's like that image of you has been burnt inside their heads and will just never erase.

I feel like this is partially true, and partially not true. When applying for mod, the 3 most common things we reject applicants for is login activity, current behaviour, and recent sanction history.
It's stated that there is a "prejudices against certain players" - which is because these players continue to show bad or inappropriate behaviour. We follow potential applicants very closely, both in-game and on Discord (if they have one), which can sometimes show us another side of them which wasn't apparent in their application.

All that being said, if anyone wants to bring up any concerns they have with staff in private, you are more than welcome to send me, or any other EN mod a forum PM.

#38

First of all, thank you for Informing us and taking your time to express your thoughts and your feelings especially.
I agree with half of your arguments you’ve issued earlier, and I deeply apologize for you to go through this, but I’d like to say that you’re full of courage to share with the public, and I appreciate that. Players that got banned or muted 90% of the times deserved it. They should take responsibility and deal with their actions. I’m positive that the staff have had proper training and was trained to review everything before giving a mouse a sanction. However, sometimes mistakes happen. Nobody, including the staff are 100% correct. For example, when a moderator suspects a mouse breaking the rules such as hack or the use of leve, it is hard to understand and distinguish and tell the difference between someone lagging while walljumping to someone using “leve” or “hack,” so therefore we cannot blame them for that.

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#39

Honestly, I haven't been in staff for long enough to confirm nor deny the first half of the thread, but I'll just say that the communication between players and staff does indeed need to be worked on, I myself was ignored a couple of times by mods when I inquired about joining the AR mod team, which doesn't make sense given the AR server desperately needed mods and they should've been keeping an eye out for those interested to apply. Other than that, I'd like to point out that for the time I've been a staff member, mods and sents actually held each other accountable and discussed sanctions thoroughly when they received complaints from players and it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.
That aside, the administration is extremely understaffed, they don't have the budget to hire devs to work on new events and I don't think they give a shit in the first place since they turned down help when offered by some staff members, FOR FREE. I don't think they see potential for TFM anymore, and they're desperately trying to grasp at straws by just releasing items since fraises are their sole income. They lost a lot of money they could've invested in adding new events for TFM on projects they shouldn't have pursued because they clearly couldn't keep up like DeadMaze that died shortly after its release.
It's about time they came clean about their plans for the game/company moving forward.

#40

I’ve read a little and will bring a little more detail to the parts where I’m concerned:

I know I always say I’m sorry and I’ll try to do better, but I truly am, and failing to do so repeatedly is sending me into the depths of depression lately. I’m writing this while having the worst panic attack right now.
Yes I gave myself 500% to try and reignite social media and make a new event and training an external company for emails and doing furs and... it was during lockdown, I burnt myself out completely working hard while having to care for my baby full time. I completely collapsed. Days went by and I struggle to even eat properly, doing the bare minimum for tfm (items and planning) take me forever.
I know you need a proper community manager, and we can’t give you one. Advertising isn’t possible either, for 1$ invested players will only bring back 0.20cts, we tried with a lot of campaigns a few years ago. It’s not sustainable.
I have to stop here because of the panic attack but I’ll try to address the other points later.

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