Suggestion: The server.

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13JAR02

Known Member
Jun 17, 2018
108
12
18
Nether
Gamemode
The server.

Description of suggestion
Everything wrong with this server.

I have been on this server for about half a year now, playing primarily towny (lands), and I have ran into tons of trouble on the way, concerning both the composition of the staff team, the forums as well as the plugin implementations.
This has led me to complaining to staff ingame who all directed me to the forums, so here I am, ready to express my concerns.

The staff team :

One of the biggest problems on this network is the composition of the staff team, which to this day is only 10 people. The problem with this is that often when I come online, there is no staff member online. Since the community input is minimalistic on this server, as we are all directed to the forums, many in game problems are not fixed.
I suggest expanding the staff team.

Another issue with the staff team is the permissions they have on the server, as five out of 10 are helpers, who have 0 perms apart from tempbanning warning and tempmuting, you would expect the other staff ranks would more or less be able to fix bigger issues. This is not the case.
I spoke to a former admin just recently, and according to them, all extra permissions an admin got were /ipban and /dupeip.
This needs to change. I respect cloak for trying to solve all the plugin issues himself, but it just does not work.
For example, when suddenly the towny plugin was removed, and the "lands" plugin was added, almost all of the towny features that were not included in the lands plugin, such as outposts, caused a major problem with already existing towns. We had to scroll through all our claims (120 for me) in some stupid menu, tping to every single one of them trying to find our outpost. This issue would not have been there, if there would actually be a staff member actively playing towny.
I suggest, getting a few people on board of the staff team that know their way around with plugins to, atleast, help cloak.
Also, get staff from all of the gamemodes, not just skyblock and survival, as a staff team that has players divided across the gamemodes, is bound to be more effective.

The forums :

Everytime I encounter an issue, I get told "Go to the forums". This sucks and needs to change, if there is a small issue in game, which can be resolved easily in game. It should remain in game.
When I report an issue on the forums it takes 3 days for a staff member to reply. This is mainly due to the fact that everything needs to go via the forums. It just does not work.
For example, yesterday I encountered an issue on "lands", I was crafting 17 enchanted golden apples, using 2 stacks of gold blocks. However, when I went and made them they appeared as regular golden apples. Annoyed as I was I approached a helper, asking if I could get a refund on my gold. As you might have guessed they redirected me to the forums.
I do not have good experience with treatment on the forums, so I went and waited for a mod.
When I did see a mod I approached them on survival, and told them the story. They told me to go to the forums as they could also not fix it ingame as they did not have the perms.
It is mainly an issue that cloak wants to fix everything himself, he has to understand, sometimes you have to give a bit of work out of hand to improve efficiency.

Plug in issues :

This paragraph is mostly about the lack of attention to detail when towny got removed.
Suddenly when I woke up, I went into the server to discover a strange happening had found place.
My town was gone, and so was my nation.
(Both of which had 120k in the bank which was lost too, and never refunded)
It was to my surprise that the custom enchant plugin, who everybody, it seemed, dissapeared too.
Then to my great frustration I had lost my entire town, scrolling through the list of claimed chunks I managed to find it eventually. However, my outposts were still missing, one of which is an enormous gold farm which took 2 weeks to build non stop.
When I asked a helper on how to find my plots, they replied "scroll through your claims".
It struck me that with the removal of towny, many key elements of the gamemode had been removed too, and had been replaced by a substitute that did not work properly.
In the first few days it was chaos in lands, there was no combat tag so evading combat was very easy for my victims.
To this day, the combat plug in seems like the only fixed thing in lands. It remains ****.

If there would actually be staff playing the gamemode, the issues would get fixed more easily, but then staff needs to have permissions to actually fix stuff.

Conclusion :

To sum up, the whole staff system on this server is broken, as no one has actually the ability to fix stuff. Furthermore, the whole staff team is divided between two gamemodes, which leaves the others lacking quality.
A solution to this would be to have a more diverse staff team, and give staff permission to fix things.
Secondly, the forums are too crowded, which hinders staff to respond quickly to immediate issues.
(which they wouldnt be able to fix as cloak does not give the perms to others)
A solution to this would be, getting a bigger staff team, with more perms, or give the staff team the freedom to act in-game instead of the forums.
Then finally, the lands server is experiencing big troubles with the newly added plugins, this could have been prevented by not deleting the towny plugin overnight, or having staff members who play the gamemode.

This critical article was submitted by 13JAR02

P.S
Fix the ****

Possible side effects of suggestion
Fixed server
No trouble
Read it
 
Gamemode
The server.

Description of suggestion
Everything wrong with this server.

I have been on this server for about half a year now, playing primarily towny (lands), and I have ran into tons of trouble on the way, concerning both the composition of the staff team, the forums as well as the plugin implementations.
This has led me to complaining to staff ingame who all directed me to the forums, so here I am, ready to express my concerns.

The staff team :

One of the biggest problems on this network is the composition of the staff team, which to this day is only 10 people. The problem with this is that often when I come online, there is no staff member online. Since the community input is minimalistic on this server, as we are all directed to the forums, many in game problems are not fixed.
I suggest expanding the staff team.

Another issue with the staff team is the permissions they have on the server, as five out of 10 are helpers, who have 0 perms apart from tempbanning warning and tempmuting, you would expect the other staff ranks would more or less be able to fix bigger issues. This is not the case.
I spoke to a former admin just recently, and according to them, all extra permissions an admin got were /ipban and /dupeip.
This needs to change. I respect cloak for trying to solve all the plugin issues himself, but it just does not work.
For example, when suddenly the towny plugin was removed, and the "lands" plugin was added, almost all of the towny features that were not included in the lands plugin, such as outposts, caused a major problem with already existing towns. We had to scroll through all our claims (120 for me) in some stupid menu, tping to every single one of them trying to find our outpost. This issue would not have been there, if there would actually be a staff member actively playing towny.
I suggest, getting a few people on board of the staff team that know their way around with plugins to, atleast, help cloak.
Also, get staff from all of the gamemodes, not just skyblock and survival, as a staff team that has players divided across the gamemodes, is bound to be more effective.

The forums :

Everytime I encounter an issue, I get told "Go to the forums". This sucks and needs to change, if there is a small issue in game, which can be resolved easily in game. It should remain in game.
When I report an issue on the forums it takes 3 days for a staff member to reply. This is mainly due to the fact that everything needs to go via the forums. It just does not work.
For example, yesterday I encountered an issue on "lands", I was crafting 17 enchanted golden apples, using 2 stacks of gold blocks. However, when I went and made them they appeared as regular golden apples. Annoyed as I was I approached a helper, asking if I could get a refund on my gold. As you might have guessed they redirected me to the forums.
I do not have good experience with treatment on the forums, so I went and waited for a mod.
When I did see a mod I approached them on survival, and told them the story. They told me to go to the forums as they could also not fix it ingame as they did not have the perms.
It is mainly an issue that cloak wants to fix everything himself, he has to understand, sometimes you have to give a bit of work out of hand to improve efficiency.

Plug in issues :

This paragraph is mostly about the lack of attention to detail when towny got removed.
Suddenly when I woke up, I went into the server to discover a strange happening had found place.
My town was gone, and so was my nation.
(Both of which had 120k in the bank which was lost too, and never refunded)
It was to my surprise that the custom enchant plugin, who everybody, it seemed, dissapeared too.
Then to my great frustration I had lost my entire town, scrolling through the list of claimed chunks I managed to find it eventually. However, my outposts were still missing, one of which is an enormous gold farm which took 2 weeks to build non stop.
When I asked a helper on how to find my plots, they replied "scroll through your claims".
It struck me that with the removal of towny, many key elements of the gamemode had been removed too, and had been replaced by a substitute that did not work properly.
In the first few days it was chaos in lands, there was no combat tag so evading combat was very easy for my victims.
To this day, the combat plug in seems like the only fixed thing in lands. It remains ****.

If there would actually be staff playing the gamemode, the issues would get fixed more easily, but then staff needs to have permissions to actually fix stuff.

Conclusion :

To sum up, the whole staff system on this server is broken, as no one has actually the ability to fix stuff. Furthermore, the whole staff team is divided between two gamemodes, which leaves the others lacking quality.
A solution to this would be to have a more diverse staff team, and give staff permission to fix things.
Secondly, the forums are too crowded, which hinders staff to respond quickly to immediate issues.
(which they wouldnt be able to fix as cloak does not give the perms to others)
A solution to this would be, getting a bigger staff team, with more perms, or give the staff team the freedom to act in-game instead of the forums.
Then finally, the lands server is experiencing big troubles with the newly added plugins, this could have been prevented by not deleting the towny plugin overnight, or having staff members who play the gamemode.

This critical article was submitted by 13JAR02

P.S
Fix the ****

Possible side effects of suggestion
Fixed server
No trouble
Read it
I agree with fixing a few issues in towny but I must point out that everytime I log on I go on every server to check what's going on. Including towny.
 
I agree with fixing a few issues in towny but I must point out that everytime I log on I go on every server to check what's going on. Including towny.

Checking what is going on, does not compare to actually playing the gamemode. For you checking out "whats going on" means hopping around in spawn and looking for people saying bad words. When staff would actually play the gamemode the many problems that lands have to deal with would actually be experienced by them.
 
This server starting going downhill after cloak fired his head manager who he was close with and trusted and they both knew what the server wanted and needed. Now cloak tries to do this all himself and it’s too hard. Also, I think the staff team is fine and the perms given are fine too, but yes they need to expand considering there’s only 3 helper on everyday and they all just play skyblock. But considering you issue on towny requesting a refund on your gold. Only an op could do that, and I don’t think cloak would be comfortable given some random helpers and admins op like he used to.
 
This server starting going downhill after cloak fired his head manager who he was close with and trusted and they both knew what the server wanted and needed. Now cloak tries to do this all himself and it’s too hard. Also, I think the staff team is fine and the perms given are fine too, but yes they need to expand considering there’s only 3 helper on everyday and they all just play skyblock. But considering you issue on towny requesting a refund on your gold. Only an op could do that, and I don’t think cloak would be comfortable given some random helpers and admins op like he used to.

If he does not trust people to be op, he again has to do it all himself, which he is not able to do. If he is not able to do everything himself, he has to or expand the staff team or he has to give the current staff team more perms.
 
If he does not trust people to be op, he again has to do it all himself, which he is not able to do. If he is not able to do everything himself, he has to or expand the staff team or he has to give the current staff team more perms.
I 100% agree but honestly when I was apart of the staff team I feel I worked really hard with eliminating toxicity and hackers from the server and trying to help players to the best of my ability with my giving permissions for like 4 months and I was never promoted, instead they promote the favorites and the people who just try hard for mutes and bans. Even look at melanie I dont know if there was some sort of situation with her but she was a helper for like 9 months and was never promoted either.
 
I 100% agree but honestly when I was apart of the staff team I feel I worked really hard with eliminating toxicity and hackers from the server and trying to help players to the best of my ability with my giving permissions for like 4 months and I was never promoted, instead they promote the favorites and the people who just try hard for mutes and bans. Even look at melanie I dont know if there was some sort of situation with her but she was a helper for like 9 months and was never promoted either.
And if you are not friends with the staff and talk to them ever day you might as well resign, its a favorites game most of the time and its a really corrupt system once your apart of it, once you get staff all they care about is getting promoted the dont care about the players everyone just cares about how many mutes and bans they can get, and i can say I sucked into that too. And I'm not saying this is how it work all the time but I've seen so many people get promoted over others because or favoritism and *** kissing.
 
First of, thanks for the constructive feedback and for sharing your thoughts with the community. This is what the forums is all about. I respect that.

The reason I redirect pretty much everything to the forums is because everything on here is convenient for me and for the staff. Regarding bugs, suggestions & other stuff it's all in it's own place. It is impossible for me to fix tiny small bugs every single time im online I myself also like to sometimes just get online to chat with others, instead of working. Bugs reported to me in chat also often do not contain enough information for me to fix the actual issue, as kids like to spam "cloak plox fix this and that."

Regarding staff, I think currently the staff team have more then enough permissions to do their moderation on the gamemodes. They won't need more. The helper, moderator & admin ranks are designed to support the server in moderation. Not in actual server hosting or any other technical part. Thats where I come in to play.
I am very satisfied with the current staff team in dealing with pesky spammers and making sure most stuff doesn't go by unpunished, again much respect for them.

Giving staff OP won't help either, they still can't fix anything technical like plugin bugs or other stuff. OP pretty much allows them to easily cheat in items and destroy the server when they have lost interest in it. Wich is ofcourse a to big of a risk for Foxcraft.

We unfortunately cannot force staff members to play on certain gamemodes just to cover the staff presence on that specefic gamemode. When accepting new helpers we often try to get new candidates that play on less populair gamemodes, or on gamemodes that we currently do not have a good staff presence.

If you want to know in detail what has been fixed on Lands so far, I reccommend checking out the changelogs that have been made after it's release. Quite a lot more then combatlogging has been fixed. But yes I still need to fix many more bugs on it. Don't worry it will happen in 1.5 weeks.

When and how do I fix bugs? (since im doing this all alone currently) (EDIT: Actually im not doing it all alone, bless the people who actually report bugs!)
So let me explain current workflow, @Justinc2522 is entirely incharge of recruiting new staff members and checking out the helper apps. That takes a big chunk of work of my shoulders thankfully.

I am in charge of making sure everything runs and stays online and secondly for adding suggestions & fixing bugs.
Not to forget the occasional server reset or revamp.

Currently I have some exams I need to finish, after that I will get a week of most likely, then ill take a look at the bugs again. I always juggle it like that and it's honestly do-able. Most gamemodes are fine in regards to being playable. But I agree that Lands needs some maintenance to get most bugs fixed. So far i've been doing most bug reports in the weekends as thats when I have the most time (when I don't have any exams or other school stuff)

Why don't I hire a new manager?
I don't want to waste my money on someone that has no idea what this community wants in regards to features. I've received huge backlash each time a manager left the community. Wich left me to fix all the stuff you guys didn't like.

Second argument is that it's not worth it for me to get a manager cost wise.

I hope that clears some things up,

Cloakfox
 
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And if you are not friends with the staff and talk to them ever day you might as well resign, its a favorites game most of the time and its a really corrupt system once your apart of it, once you get staff all they care about is getting promoted the dont care about the players everyone just cares about how many mutes and bans they can get, and i can say I sucked into that too. And I'm not saying this is how it work all the time but I've seen so many people get promoted over others because or favoritism and *** kissing.
Thats your personal opinion.

I don't think thats the case.
 
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Thats your personal opinion.

I don't think thats the case.
Maybe not now with Justin in charge, but when I was on staff I heard a lot of scummy things going down. Going on with helper acceptance and promotions.
 
First of, thanks for the constructive feedback and for sharing your thoughts with the community. This is what the forums is all about. I respect that.

The reason I redirect pretty much everything to the forums is because everything on here is convenient for me and for the staff. Regarding bugs, suggestions & other stuff it's all in it's own place. It is impossible for me to fix tiny small bugs every single time im online I myself also like to sometimes just get online to chat with others, instead of working. Bugs reported to me in chat also often do not contain enough information for me to fix the actual issue, as kids like to spam "cloak plox fix this and that."

Regarding staff, I think currently the staff team have more then enough permissions to do their moderation on the gamemodes. They won't need more. The helper, moderator & admin ranks are designed to support the server in moderation. Not in actual server hosting or any other technical part. Thats where I come in to play.
I am very satisfied with the current staff team in dealing with pesky spammers and making sure most stuff doesn't go by unpunished, again much respect for them.

Giving staff OP won't help either, they still can't fix anything technical like plugin bugs or other stuff. OP pretty much allows them to easily cheat in items and destroy the server when they have lost interest in it. Wich is ofcourse a to big of a risk for Foxcraft.

We unfortunately cannot force staff members to play on certain gamemodes just to cover the staff presence on that specefic gamemode. When accepting new helpers we often try to get new candidates that play on less populair gamemodes, or on gamemodes that we currently do not have a good staff presence.

If you want to know in detail what has been fixed on Lands so far, I reccommend checking out the changelogs that have been made after it's release. Quite a lot more then combatlogging has been fixed. But yes I still need to fix many more bugs on it. Don't worry it will happen in 1.5 weeks.

When and how do I fix bugs? (since im doing this all alone currently) (EDIT: Actually im not doing it all alone, bless the people who actually report bugs!)
So let me explain current workflow, @Justinc2522 is entirely incharge of recruiting new staff members and checking out the helper apps. That takes a big chunk of work of my shoulders thankfully.

I am in charge of making sure everything runs and stays online and secondly for adding suggestions & fixing bugs.
Not to forget the occasional server reset or revamp.

Currently I have some exams I need to finish, after that I will get a week of most likely, then ill take a look at the bugs again. I always juggle it like that and it's honestly do-able. Most gamemodes are fine in regards to being playable. But I agree that Lands needs some maintenance to get most bugs fixed. So far i've been doing most bug reports in the weekends as thats when I have the most time (when I don't have any exams or other school stuff)

Why don't I hire a new manager?
I don't want to waste my money on someone that has no idea what this community wants in regards to features. I've received huge backlash each time a manager left the community. Wich left me to fix all the stuff you guys didn't like.

Second argument is that it's not worth it for me to get a manager cost wise.

I hope that clears some things up,

Cloakfox
Cloak, I used to be a developer in 3 servers. I have a lot of free time to spend now, and I know how to manage stuff. If you want a developer hit me up. Put me on a test and see if I deserve.
 
Cloak, I used to be a developer in 3 servers. I have a lot of free time to spend now, and I know how to manage stuff. If you want a developer hit me up. Put me on a test and see if I deserve.
Thanks for the offer, but I already have a reliable developer that takes care of most of my requests for custom plugins.
 
First of, thanks for the constructive feedback and for sharing your thoughts with the community. This is what the forums is all about. I respect that.

The reason I redirect pretty much everything to the forums is because everything on here is convenient for me and for the staff. Regarding bugs, suggestions & other stuff it's all in it's own place. It is impossible for me to fix tiny small bugs every single time im online I myself also like to sometimes just get online to chat with others, instead of working. Bugs reported to me in chat also often do not contain enough information for me to fix the actual issue, as kids like to spam "cloak plox fix this and that."

Regarding staff, I think currently the staff team have more then enough permissions to do their moderation on the gamemodes. They won't need more. The helper, moderator & admin ranks are designed to support the server in moderation. Not in actual server hosting or any other technical part. Thats where I come in to play.
I am very satisfied with the current staff team in dealing with pesky spammers and making sure most stuff doesn't go by unpunished, again much respect for them.

Giving staff OP won't help either, they still can't fix anything technical like plugin bugs or other stuff. OP pretty much allows them to easily cheat in items and destroy the server when they have lost interest in it. Wich is ofcourse a to big of a risk for Foxcraft.

We unfortunately cannot force staff members to play on certain gamemodes just to cover the staff presence on that specefic gamemode. When accepting new helpers we often try to get new candidates that play on less populair gamemodes, or on gamemodes that we currently do not have a good staff presence.

If you want to know in detail what has been fixed on Lands so far, I reccommend checking out the changelogs that have been made after it's release. Quite a lot more then combatlogging has been fixed. But yes I still need to fix many more bugs on it. Don't worry it will happen in 1.5 weeks.

When and how do I fix bugs? (since im doing this all alone currently) (EDIT: Actually im not doing it all alone, bless the people who actually report bugs!)
So let me explain current workflow, @Justinc2522 is entirely incharge of recruiting new staff members and checking out the helper apps. That takes a big chunk of work of my shoulders thankfully.

I am in charge of making sure everything runs and stays online and secondly for adding suggestions & fixing bugs.
Not to forget the occasional server reset or revamp.

Currently I have some exams I need to finish, after that I will get a week of most likely, then ill take a look at the bugs again. I always juggle it like that and it's honestly do-able. Most gamemodes are fine in regards to being playable. But I agree that Lands needs some maintenance to get most bugs fixed. So far i've been doing most bug reports in the weekends as thats when I have the most time (when I don't have any exams or other school stuff)

Why don't I hire a new manager?
I don't want to waste my money on someone that has no idea what this community wants in regards to features. I've received huge backlash each time a manager left the community. Wich left me to fix all the stuff you guys didn't like.

Second argument is that it's not worth it for me to get a manager cost wise.

I hope that clears some things up,

Cloakfox
I will have to disagree on some of your points, for example stating that giving OP status to staff members (admins), will not help in the technical part. People with the op status will most certainly have access to the many commands regulating permissions.
Also, if that is not the solution, giving a rank such as admin access to the plug in directory would most certainly help taking pressure from your shoulders.

Another remark you made was that the staff team was big enough to deal with the pesky spammers and hackers. I agree on that point, however the staff team is not large enough to have staff actually play the gamemodes, as they are required to keep an eye on these misbehavours.
When having a bigger staff team, staff might have time to indeed cover all the gamemodes. Which will ultimately help with solving bugs, glitches and issues, but also have a constant monitoring on the pesky spammers and hackers.

I have the utmost respect for you trying to keep the server running all by yourself, but I think, judging by the way some issues have been in the game for a long time, and new ones keep appearing, you might need to find someone else who can help you on this issue.

Another point, I am not suggesting you should hire a new manager, I suggest you to have some kind of developer, a player that knows his way around with plugins, free of charge.

Goodluck with your exams.
 
I will have to disagree on some of your points, for example stating that giving OP status to staff members (admins), will not help in the technical part. People with the op status will most certainly have access to the many commands regulating permissions.
Also, if that is not the solution, giving a rank such as admin access to the plug in directory would most certainly help taking pressure from your shoulders.

Another remark you made was that the staff team was big enough to deal with the pesky spammers and hackers. I agree on that point, however the staff team is not large enough to have staff actually play the gamemodes, as they are required to keep an eye on these misbehavours.
When having a bigger staff team, staff might have time to indeed cover all the gamemodes. Which will ultimately help with solving bugs, glitches and issues, but also have a constant monitoring on the pesky spammers and hackers.

I have the utmost respect for you trying to keep the server running all by yourself, but I think, judging by the way some issues have been in the game for a long time, and new ones keep appearing, you might need to find someone else who can help you on this issue.

Another point, I am not suggesting you should hire a new manager, I suggest you to have some kind of developer, a player that knows his way around with plugins, free of charge.

Goodluck with your exams.
The last people that were admins that were op were jayxkrazies and redex, and Im pretty sure giving a admin op on your server is a very risky move unless like those two people have been seriously trusted. Also, I think I heard cloak says he wont be giving anyone else op no more a long time ago.
 
I will have to disagree on some of your points, for example stating that giving OP status to staff members (admins), will not help in the technical part. People with the op status will most certainly have access to the many commands regulating permissions.
Also, if that is not the solution, giving a rank such as admin access to the plug in directory would most certainly help taking pressure from your shoulders.

Another remark you made was that the staff team was big enough to deal with the pesky spammers and hackers. I agree on that point, however the staff team is not large enough to have staff actually play the gamemodes, as they are required to keep an eye on these misbehavours.
When having a bigger staff team, staff might have time to indeed cover all the gamemodes. Which will ultimately help with solving bugs, glitches and issues, but also have a constant monitoring on the pesky spammers and hackers.

I have the utmost respect for you trying to keep the server running all by yourself, but I think, judging by the way some issues have been in the game for a long time, and new ones keep appearing, you might need to find someone else who can help you on this issue.

Another point, I am not suggesting you should hire a new manager, I suggest you to have some kind of developer, a player that knows his way around with plugins, free of charge.

Goodluck with your exams.

Most if not all staff do not know how to work with the several servers/gamemodes or it's plugins. That results it a bigger chance of staff screwing up things, making matters worse.
Then there is also the this thing where the chance is considerately high that a staff members goes rogue when resiging and decides to damage the server.

We currently have enough staff when looking at the playercount. I argree with you that yes it would be nice if they also played on other gamemodes. This is a thing we look at when accepting new helpers.

Most stuff get's fixed eventually but not within 24 hours, or withing a week. I also feel that some of the bugs are not as urgent enought to get fixed in a 24h timeframe. I do however agree with you that Lands has gone live for to long without getting any much needed bug fixes.
 
Most if not all staff do not know how to work with the several servers/gamemodes or it's plugins. That results it a bigger chance of staff screwing up things, making matters worse.
Then there is also the this thing where the chance is considerately high that a staff members goes rogue when resiging and decides to damage the server.

We currently have enough staff when looking at the playercount. I argree with you that yes it would be nice if they also played on other gamemodes. This is a thing we look at when accepting new helpers.

Most stuff get's fixed eventually but not within 24 hours, or withing a week. I also feel that some of the bugs are not as urgent enought to get fixed in a 24h timeframe. I do however agree with you that Lands has gone live for to long without getting any much needed bug fixes.

Again, if there is no staff that does not know their way around with plugins, I suggest you find people that do. :)
 
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