Community Manager Guidelines

Community Managers (CMs) are community members who have proven themselves to be helpful, knowledgeable about game and content mechanics and Nocturnal Souls community decorum, and have a desire to make the community a better place. This is a leadership position within the community and those holding the role are expected to behave as such.

CMs provide the first tier of support to the community and assist with setup, login, and in-game issues, such as quests and custom content. CMs also provide community support through in-game chat and Discord as necessary. CMs have limited powers designed to assist in their roles, such as checking quest and mission status flags.

Duties

  • Be a positive voice in the community,
  • Greet new players to the server and welcome returning players on login,
  • Assist players with questions and problems with in-game mechanics, quests, and content,
  • Help with testing and direction of new content, challenges, and mechanics on the beta servers,
  • Help coordinate and manage in-game events.

Qualifications

Becoming a Community Manager has specific qualifications.

  • Have been a consistent member of the server for over 90 days,
  • Have not had any complaints, jail time, or ban time,
  • Possess knowledge and experience with a majority of the game content, both retail and custom,
  • Have access to all areas and content in the game, including custom content areas,
  • Have consistently shown a good attitude and helpful nature towards others,
  • Genuinely interested in improving the community and the server,
  • Is not affiliated with any other server in any other administrative capacity.

Dismissal/Demotion

There are several reasons that a Community Manager can be deemed unfit for the role and demoted back to a member, or worse.

  • Violation of any part of the Server Guidelines or the Duties of a Community Manager,
  • Helping players exploit the game, its mechanics, or misusing CM powers or commands to bypass normal game mechanics.
  • Showing blatant favoritism towards a player, a group of players, or themselves at any point.
  • An absence of 30 consecutive days (without notifying a GM) or inconsistent logging in without engaging other players,
  • Sharing proprietary information about server development, mechanics, or other privileged information with non-leadership members,
  • Sharing information about any community member with non-leadership members,
  • Being found to be affiliated with another server in an administrative capacity,

Leadership Expectations

As a member of the Nocturnal Souls leadership team, you must be willing to dedicate time to the betterment of the community. This is why we have the base attendance requirement of 24 hours per month. This is the bare minimum–an average of less than an hour a day online with the community.

All staff not only need to keep good attendance, but you must also interact with players. Logging in just to accrue 24 hours while AFK is not acceptable. If you are unwilling or unable to meet the expectation of 24 active hours per month, you will be removed from staff. This is done to allow more active players a chance to contribute to the community and progress in the staff ranks. If you cannot meet this requirement in the short term due to work, family, or other real-life obligations, please let the team know. Real life is a priority and we’re happy to work with the team to ensure it comes first.

All staff must keep current with custom content. This requirement is not satisfied by simply reading about it on the update notes and wiki, but actively participating in the content on one or more jobs. This is to make sure you know how to help players with issues, help the development team find issues, and simply know what custom content is available to players.

Each CM is required to run at least two server events per month. One of these events must be content-related, such as Reisenjima Henge, ZNMs, REMAs, or other battle or progression content. The other can be any type of fun event you wish. Examples of fun events include but are not limited to: Level 1 races, trivia, world NM hunts, etc. Additionally, when doing server events, make sure to rotate players in and out if there are more than 18 who wish to participate. Depending on the event, consider splitting into two groups, each led by a different staff member. Private servers are a revolving door of players. Doing small things like this will teach new players our content, and improve the quality of our community.

Player Interactions

Be courteous and professional to all players at all times on all platforms. While players may not return the favor at all times, staff members must remain without bias or grudge at all times. Kill them with kindness, if you must. You must be cognizant of your staff position at all times–even chat in non-community forums. You are still a representative of the Nocturnal Souls community staff and must act accordingly.

No matter your staff position, watch for and greet new players both on Discord in the #introductions channel and as they log into the game. At the very least, send the new player a /tell welcoming them to the server and seeing if they have any questions or need assistance.

Staff should answer questions and assist players. Most interactions of this type will be in English, so a basic understanding of English is required. The Nocturnal Souls community has a wealth of information on Discord, the wiki, and the Members Portal. If at all possible, help education players with these tools. As necessary, make note of lacking information and provide it to the team to add to the wiki/members portal. Keep in mind that sometimes players would rather be told than do–we must keep responses professional, and tell them diplomatically ‘where’ to go look up the information they requested, but it is not required for staff to ‘hand hold’ at all times.

Monitoring Players and Content

Cheating is knowingly breaking a rule that was set by the Server Guidelines (position hacking, automated claiming, botting and automated gameplay, etc.). Exploiting is finding a way around content by using in-game mechanics.

While there is sometimes a fine line between these two issues, they are not the same thing. Cheating is always a punishable offense, but depending on circumstances, Exploitation may or may not require a penalty for the player. Many players have no idea that the method they discovered which makes some of our custom content many times easier is an unforeseen and unintentional result of coding. This does not make them cheaters, but it is an exploit that should be addressed by the team. However, those who knowingly use an exploit an exceptional amount of times for personal gain cross over into cheating.

Because of the confusion between these two things, players have heard staff say “<this player> cheats” when in fact they do not. For example, just because players are bringing entire parties of SMN or BLU, instead of a ‘traditional party’ to content does not mean they are cheating or exploiting. This is a game mechanic, and no rules are being broken. Bring these occurrences to the attention of the team, but once that is done there should be no more accusations against players who continue to fight in this manner. The team will address these situations either punitively or via changes in content.

Job and content balance is also something that needs to be monitored and brought to the attention of the team when edge cases are discovered. For example, if a specific job, or spell, or ability is doing excessive damage or providing a very specific unfair advantage to all other classes. These balance issues should be addressed as soon as possible to ensure a healthy community of diverse jobs and playstyles.

Finding a loophole in how a fight was coded is sort of the entire point of this game. It is a constant tug of war between the development team, and the player base; one group is trying to find the easiest and most rewarding way to accomplish the content, the other is trying to guess beforehand how the content will be broken by those playing through it. Players who find those loopholes aren’t cheaters, they are just playing the game. It is, however, our job to find excessive loopholes, such as being able to use certain abilities to bypass mechanics and address those.

Community Involvement

Do not forget: this is a game, a form of entertainment, and, first and foremost, an inclusive community.

Our job as staff in the Nocturnal Souls community is to encourage and maintain an inclusive, helpful and fun atmosphere. Sometimes this can be difficult when dealing with particularly trying individuals.

Keep in mind there are a lot of other players that observe us talking with the community, and do not interact as loudly as these disruptive outliers. In response to these abrasive individuals, again, kill them with kindness to maintain your professional demeanor.

Community Managers have a key focus on the growth and inclusion of the community itself, both in the game and on Discord. Casual conversation, answering questions, and sharing information are great ways to build both a knowledgeable community, but also keep players engaged.