Staff Interviews - Double Feature! [Nom and Viva!]

Today I present to you a double feature from two members of the senior staff, NomNuggetNom, and Viva.

First, Viva:

Spoiler: What is your current role as an SMOD?

Currently what I do for the most part is anything having to do with bans. Typically I float around servers responding to reports, usually for hackers or glitchers. I’m also in charge of monitoring reports and appeals, and that consists of actually doing them and making sure other staff members do them correctly. If necessary I also discuss appeals with players directly either through private messages or teamspeak.

Spoiler: If you could abandon your current role as an SMod, and pick ANY other role, what would it be?

I honestly wouldn’t want to deal with anything else, I’m perfectly content with what I get to do to help out. I couldn’t imagine having to do what Cuddled does every day with staff management, nor the monitoring of forums reports Roke does, I appreciate them a lot for doing it.

Spoiler: What is your favorite memory on Brawl?

Probably the first day of the merge, which was around May 17th of last year. It was a late night/early morning ordeal where everyone panicked in skype chats and a ton of mcpvp players were just joining brawl and the forums for the first time. At the time it felt like such a different server but as time went on I met a lot of friends during the few months. I’ll always remember that day as sort of a starting point and turning over to another chapter in my mcpvp/brawl life.

Spoiler: What is your favorite memory on MCPVP?

The first (well, the first with amazon gift cards) Quarter Quell back in December of 2014. Everyone had spent the past few weeks or so trying to qualify for the event and once you were there it was probably the most tense I had felt in a while. Just the feeling of knowing if you die cost you $500 got to about everyone in the competition and everyone played really conservatively. I was in a massive skype call with a lot of friends in the tournament and it was a bit grueling knowing that I would have to kill them at some point (or be killed). Of course that never happened since I was one of the first 30 people to die, but this truly was one of the best HG games I’ve had since the 2012 days.

Spoiler: What is the hardest part of your job as an SMod?

Probably dealing with people’s appeals. Often I have to talk to the person appealing directly and have to make judgements depending on what the say and that gets overwhelming a lot of times. Every case is really different so having the ability to make a decision is important.

Spoiler: What is your daily routine like?

On school days, usually I just boot up the forums and check PMs and notifications if I have any. I then go and check the reports and appeals pages and resolve anything I can then and there. Once I’m at home and I have free time I will go on teamspeak and ingame. At this point I will usually float between servers depending on what kinds of reports come through, though I’m typically on HG as my default. At this time I will check and respond to teamspeak pms, and any other messages, usually regarding bans/appeals.

Spoiler: Besides Minecraft, what is your favorite games to play?

The Binding of Isaac Rebirth/Afterbirth, and other dungeon crawler games like that. Sometimes I play League of Legends since my friends won’t stop talking about that game irl.

Spoiler: What is your favorite HG kit?

Phantom, the kit has a lot of versatility, whether it be movement across the map, escapes, taking out towers, etc. It’s a kit that I can just pick and really do anything with, as it’s short cooldown really allows you to do anything that some other kits are specifically guided towards. Only annoying thing about it is that you can die of fall damage from what seems like 3 blocks sometimes.

Spoiler: If you were the sole body in deciding what happens to HG, would you remove no-soup HG?

No, while I don’t think adding no soup in the first place was a good idea, there’s a part of the community who’s established themselves around this gamemode and taking it away now would be a bad idea. Instead the gamemode needs some sort of skill cap of it’s own, or some other factor which makes it interesting, as right now for a lot of soup players it seems like a blowoff gamemode. I think some sort of different take on the gamemode would be good (possibly something similar to Phoenix HG).

Spoiler: How did you find HG?

I think one day after binge watching a lot of youtube at the end of the school year in 2012 I stumbled upon some videos of people playing on those huge Hunger Games maps, the ones where people looted chests similar to most survival games servers today. Originally after some google searching I found a server which hosted games on those maps all the time, but I stopped playing that since quite often the servers were full. Another google search led me to mc-hg.com, and I was instantly hooked.

Spoiler: If you could change anything about Brawl, what would it be?

More youtuber/twitch support. From what I know, there’s no one who really consistently plays on brawl and uploads videos. Ever since way2 left there hasn’t been a person who has picked back up his role and I feel as though this is a good area for major growth, both in player counts and community.

Spoiler: If you could go back to MCPVP and make any change you wanted, what would it be?

Stop the changes to kits like assassin and cookiemonster when they original received their first big nerfs back in 2013 I believe. This I think inspired lots of unnecessary changes to kits and I think it steered the direction of gameplay towards the idea that kits shouldn’t matter as much, and I never really liked that. While there were a lot of factors in what caused McPVP’s demise I do think that this was one of them.

Second, NomNuggetNom:

Spoiler: What is the most memorable experience you’ve had on Brawl?

Just showing up on the first day. Sitting with all the mods in the teamspeak wondering what the hell was going to happen. I had no idea if I would continue to code or anything.

Spoiler: What is the most memorable experience you had on MCPVP?

When I got the email from hclewk telling me I got the job as a coder. That was amazing. I hadn't expected to get it, because he had given me a second coding challenge which I was unable to complete, so I thought I blew it. And obviously, this changed (not to be dramatic) my whole life, because it made me realize I could actually get paid to code.

Spoiler: What is the most difficult part of your job as an Admin?

Probably the people who give staff crap because they can. I won't name anybody, but I'm pretty sure they know who they are. They are rude at nearly every chance they get and really do nothing but dissuade me from doing my job. Besides that, the toughest part is making sure everyone is on the same page. I understandably have to do a lot of explaining about where we are internally, because normal people and even sometimes staff don't know.

Spoiler: What is your daily routine like?

Wake up, make sure nothing is broken. I check Slack to see if anything needs coding immediately. From there, I usually know what my priority is and just get to work. Sometimes it's fixing bugs, sometimes new features. It always changes. That's just my work schedule, of course. I also have classes every day.

Spoiler: Besides Minecraft, what is your favorite games to play?

Rocket League. All day. If anyone wants to play with me, just PM me your Steam username.

Spoiler: Is there anything you see yourself really looking forward to coming to Brawl soon?

Not really. It's hard to look forward to things when it usually requires a lot of work. And everything that I work on is usually gradual refinement of our internal systems, so there are no real landmarks.

Spoiler: Favorite Brawl gamemode?

CTF! I've been playing it for around three and a half, maybe four years

Spoiler: If you could go back to MCPVP, and do anything differently, what would it be?

Probably nothing. I don't think we could have done much to bring it back to it's former glory. The transition to Brawl has gone really well for me personally and I would say everything has worked out fine.

Spoiler: If anything was possible to code in Minecraft, what features would you make?

More communication with the client would be amazing. It would open up so many possibilities. Like if the server could tell the client to render something, or detect when a player clicked a key, etc. Basically the MCPVP mod without needing to modify the game.

Spoiler: Who had the biggest influence on you throughout your time on Minecraft?

I can't just pick one person. Firstly, alexmack (and Redstoner) kind of inspired me to code client mods. He also gave me some pointers early on with coding. Secondly, hclewk, if you count him. He actually gave me a chance to become a coder. But above all else, @birdgirl basically got me involved in the community, so without her I wouldn't ever have started coding. I have no idea where I would be today, which is scary to think about.

Spoiler: Who would you vote for if you were a registered Republican?

Bernie Sanders. Virginia has open primaries.

Spoiler: What are some of your admin duties?

Well, if you ask chickenputty, nothing. But almost all my admin duties are exclusive to CTF, because it's the game I know best, and none of the other Brawl admins really do. In general I redirect most responsibilites to putty.

Make sure you thank @NomNuggetNom and @Viva for taking the time to do these questions :^}

Side note: Do you like the spoilers or naw?