Bennyh [157211] —
Original article
How do you progress as a member of staff? Are there things you can achieve like a normal player? Read on to find out how BennyH's journey as a Torn staff member took him from Helper to Officer
There are many guides available that can teach you how to progress various aspects of your gameplay in Torn, from building battle stats and earning money through to earning merits and winning competitions. But one area of Torn that is almost never spoken about is the path of progression within the ranks of staff.
How does someone move up from helper to moderator to officer? What must you prove to be considered for such an important behind-the-scenes role in Torn City? And what exactly do these roles entail? Let's find out by looking back on my personal journey from Helper to Officer.
Applying To Be a Helper
Everyone starts at the bottom. Grif’s guide covers in detail what a Helper's duties are, but in short, these particular staff members serve to answer player questions, moderate content, and generally provide support to players where needed. They also get to interact with new players who have just received the automatic greeting that staff accounts send out to greenleafs.
Thankfully, responses like that are rare, as the majority of players appreciate the automatic mailouts. It was nice to see new players entering the game who wanted to give themselves the best possible start and ask for advice. But remember, we Helpers are new in a way too, and for that reason, all incoming staff are given a 32-page ‘Helper document’ to read through as part of their training. This document acts as a ‘how to’ guide and was good information to start with - and I still refer to it occasionally now that I'm an Officer!
Our Community Manager Bogie advertises for staff applications in the Announcement forums, and you'll often see a notification in either the News Ticker and/or the Newspaper too. The last three staff callouts came in March of this year, May of 2020, and January of 2020 - the latter is the one I successfully applied to. My interest in the position came relatively late in my Torn life - I created my account 15-and-a-half years ago while I was still in school, but only started playing properly in 2018.
While I wasn’t overly active in the forums and chat, I still had a lot of time for Torn, so I decided to become a member of staff when the opportunity arose. My first application was unsuccessful, however, this didn’t stop me from being determined to apply in the future. Bogie gave me some feedback which I took on board ready for next time - you'd be surprised how many failed applicants instantly ruin their future chances with a petulant response.
Next time seemed to come around pretty quick. I had a game plan of how this application was going to be different and submitted my application hoping for the best. I acted on the feedback I received and spent more time and effort on my application. At my second attempt, I was accepted onto the staff team as a Helper in training on the 3rd February 2020.
The Shiny Red Name
Shortly after I confirmed I would accept the position, my name turned red, other player's profiles looked different, and several new chat boxes and the staff panel appeared. I was then invited to the Staff Slack channel, which is the main place where staff communicate with each other.
The Staff Slack was inundated with questions for a few weeks while we all learned the ropes. Some new helpers were more active than others, but the benefit of Slack is that you can read up and see what examples the others had bought into the training channel. As good as the training guide was, nothing could beat reading live examples of rules being broken and the responses staff made.
We would discuss each and every case whilst in training before any of us took any action. There is a wealth of experience within the ranks of Staff, and everyone chipped in to assist the new helpers with any questions we had. This discourse was invaluable, as in my opinion, going from a civilian to a Helper is the second biggest step in terms of staff ranks, since there is so much to learn and all of it is completely new.
Staff Suggestions
Just like the in-game suggestions forum, we staff have a suggestion channel in Slack where we can put forward our ideas for improvements to Staff features. Although we don’t need 250+ upvotes to catch Chedburn's eye, some things that we want just aren’t possible, or they'll take too much development time. Nevertheless, there have been several updates to the Staff panel and Staff tools while I've been there, and most are minor changes that make our jobs easier.
One really useful change was the ability to see pending newspaper adverts directly from the staff panel, as this sped up the process to ensure player adverts could be accepted rapidly. Another update that proved useful was the ability to see faction transactions in a simpler format than before, as with years of transaction data at hand, it can take a long time to trawl through this information when abuse is suspected.
Contributions to the suggestion forum demonstrate that not only are you doing your job, but you're looking to do it better, and in turn, help to make your colleagues' lives easier too. This kind of proactive thinking is crucial for those who want to progress within the ranks of Staff.
Where Next?
When you play Torn you're always looking for ways in which to progress, whether it's by training your stats, increasing your networth, or accumulating awards. If you're a helper, the way you progress is by becoming an Officer or Moderator. Indeed, during the recruitment process, Bogie will straight up ask you if you have aspirations of progressing via the staff ranks later down the line.
While being promoted isn’t for everyone, this is something I knew that I wanted from the moment I became staff. I was aware that a higher role would require effort and increased activity, but if truth be told, both of these had already increased ever since I became a Helper. Finally, I had found something that I enjoyed doing that kept me interested, and my enthusiasm for my role was clearly visible on my activity graph:
But enthusiasm and effort aren't everything. If you want more responsibility, you have to demonstrate that you have the character to handle it. One trait you definitely need is confidence in your own decisions, as a wishy-washy approach to the rules simply won't be tolerated by players or those in charge. Those who work as Helpers are given an "In Training" badge to denote their status as staff newcomers.
If you want to lose this badge, you need to be able to pass judgment on clear rule breaches without having to run them by other members of staff. Of course, there will always be occasions where discussion between staff is necessary, and sometimes you'll need to pass on incidents to Moderators or Officers for technical reasons. But for most everyday incidents, you should know how to apply the rules, and do so consistently.
By the 6th May 2020, bogie had a conversation with myself and the other Helpers to see how we were doing and if we were happy to lose our training tags. We were.
Moderator Status
On around June 9th, the new Helpers had been accepted onto the Staff team by bogie. A few days later, Bogie asked a handful of Helpers if they wanted to become Moderators. Bogie often checks in on you during your time as a staff member to see how you are doing, and whether you're still interested in progression further down the line.
All of those who are offered the chance to step up should know that Moderator status is more than a simple promotion. In addition to extra duties, you are also granted much more access to player information. Because of this, all Moderators are made to sign a confidentiality agreement before your status can be changed. When this has been done, the colour of your name will be changed again (to the worst staff colour imo) and you are greeted with another guide - this one only being 21 pages long.
While the step up from civilian to Helper was one of the hardest, going from a Helper to Moderator was actually an easy transition for me. I'd already learned the foundations of being staff, but since Moderators have many more tools and logs at their disposal, it makes dealing with those pesky rule-breakers a whole lot easier.
As far as your duties go, Moderators are expected to deal with much more than the forum and chat reports that are assigned to Helpers. As a mod, you'll work on certain types of player reports, deal with inappropriate bounties, and enforce casino bans to name a few. Your expanded range of reports means that you'll start to encounter more serious rule breaches too, some of which you won't be able to handle.
While it's frustrating not to be able to take care of an issue yourself, this is what the chain of command is for. Some cases you encounter as a Helper will have to be passed up to a Moderator, and some of a Moderator's tasks will be passed up above to an Officer. This structure only fuelled my urge to become an Officer, but first, I'd have to lose my Moderator training tags, which I and others did on the 31st of July.
Officer Status
On October 5th, the wait was over. Roughly eight months since my journey began, I and a few of the current Moderators had a message on Slack from bogie asking if we would be interested in becoming an Officer. The obvious answer was yes, and I was promoted to the top rank available in the staff system. This time the guide was 33 pages long, however, I would soon learn that this document was only a very small insight into what being an Officer was all about!
The detail in this guide made it clear that Moderator to Officer is by far the biggest step up after becoming a staff member in the first place. When the training began, we were told from the start it may seem overwhelming - this was an understatement. The staff panel doubled in size and the number of tools available quadrupled! Player’s profiles changed yet again, and I finally got rid of that horrible moderator colour.
Responsibility-wise, I was now with the big cheeses, jailing players for multi-accounts, real money trading, and middle-manning. No one likes cheaters in Torn, and now I had the experience and authority to help deal with them. But you can't go throwing your weight around just because you've been given more power. While care was always taken when doing staff duties, it was now more important than ever to be meticulous, as my actions could and would lead to accounts being stripped of money, or in some cases, placed in federal jail.
As with other positions, we would take no action at all until it was checked over by another experienced Officer or bogie. For obvious reasons, I can’t go into detail about what exactly we look for or the tools we have, but each and every case is checked and checked again, and at this level, I run cases through bogie before taking any action if there is even a slight doubt in my mind.
Taking Action
As the last line of authority before Bogie, Officers have to deal with a mixture of reports from players, Helpers, and Moderators. Each report I pick up is completely different due to one thing or another. One of my most challenging reports was on a Torn player of nearly a decade who was reported on suspicion of holding multiple accounts. There were hundreds of faction deposits and withdrawals, parcel sends, trades, and cash sends, just to name a few. I knew this one was going to be a challenge, but early on it was obvious that something wasn't right.
Every single action is recorded in Torn, and as an Officer, I have the tools to investigate everything a player has done in the search for hard evidence. After spending a good 2-3 hours over a couple of days trawling through the data, I wrote up my report and sent it to bogie and another Officer for review. They managed to link a further two accounts to this ‘multi ring’, despite the fact that our suspect has used VPNs, had laundered their money through numerous accounts, and some of the evidence being over two years old.
In the end, this was a pretty simple case; we busted a ring of 17 accounts that had facilitated many billions in transfers, and all of the linked accounts, including the main, were deleted. Years' worth of cheating absolutely wasted! Job done and on to the next one. When it comes to the jailed players submitting a Fed report, these will always go to a completely separate Officer to deal with for a fresh pair of eyes and to ensure there are no errors and to ensure nothing has been overlooked
My Advice
While Officer status is daunting at the start, it does become easier over time, to the point that your actions become second nature. An Officers' training period is by far the longest, and having begun in this role in October 2020, it wasn't until March 18th, 2021 that I and my fellow new Officers had our ‘In Training’ tags removed.
Is there still much to learn 5 ½ months after becoming an Officer? Yes, without a doubt. At this time, I am happy I have the knowledge and experience to deal with most reports, but there are and always will be times where I need to ask advice from other, more senior Officers or bogie.
Being an Officer is by far the most interesting position of Staff, but I appreciate it won’t be for everyone. Before I became Staff I expected to give this role an hour or two several times a week. This quickly changed, and I now work as an Officer for several hours a day. I would say 70% of my Torn time is currently dedicated to this role, but this time is gladly volunteered - I personally choose to work so much as an Officer because of how much I enjoy doing it, and not through bogie cracking the whip.
If being Staff is something that even slightly interests you then I would highly recommend it! The responsibility of an official role gives you a completely different insight to Torn, and in my case, it enhanced my gameplay and experience. You don’t need to be Torn’s oldest player or bogie’s best friend to become Staff. I had no interaction whatsoever with bogie prior to applying for Staff, and nor was I well known within Torn.
Whether or not that changes now that I've written an article is not important. As I said at the top of the article, my goal was always to rise up the ranks of staff and become an Officer - fame never had anything to do with it. And now that I've reached that goal, my next step is to become a specialist.
In the Officer team, there are some people who have far more experience dealing with cases such as Real Money Trading. Then, there are others who know how to root out large multi rings that have developed over months, years or even a decade! We proactively seek out these types of players, and this kind of specialist work is something I want to get more involved with in the near future.
How does someone move up from helper to moderator to officer? What must you prove to be considered for such an important behind-the-scenes role in Torn City? And what exactly do these roles entail? Let's find out by looking back on my personal journey from Helper to Officer.
Applying To Be a Helper
Everyone starts at the bottom. Grif’s guide covers in detail what a Helper's duties are, but in short, these particular staff members serve to answer player questions, moderate content, and generally provide support to players where needed. They also get to interact with new players who have just received the automatic greeting that staff accounts send out to greenleafs.
Thankfully, responses like that are rare, as the majority of players appreciate the automatic mailouts. It was nice to see new players entering the game who wanted to give themselves the best possible start and ask for advice. But remember, we Helpers are new in a way too, and for that reason, all incoming staff are given a 32-page ‘Helper document’ to read through as part of their training. This document acts as a ‘how to’ guide and was good information to start with - and I still refer to it occasionally now that I'm an Officer!
Our Community Manager Bogie advertises for staff applications in the Announcement forums, and you'll often see a notification in either the News Ticker and/or the Newspaper too. The last three staff callouts came in March of this year, May of 2020, and January of 2020 - the latter is the one I successfully applied to. My interest in the position came relatively late in my Torn life - I created my account 15-and-a-half years ago while I was still in school, but only started playing properly in 2018.
While I wasn’t overly active in the forums and chat, I still had a lot of time for Torn, so I decided to become a member of staff when the opportunity arose. My first application was unsuccessful, however, this didn’t stop me from being determined to apply in the future. Bogie gave me some feedback which I took on board ready for next time - you'd be surprised how many failed applicants instantly ruin their future chances with a petulant response.
Next time seemed to come around pretty quick. I had a game plan of how this application was going to be different and submitted my application hoping for the best. I acted on the feedback I received and spent more time and effort on my application. At my second attempt, I was accepted onto the staff team as a Helper in training on the 3rd February 2020.
The Shiny Red Name
Shortly after I confirmed I would accept the position, my name turned red, other player's profiles looked different, and several new chat boxes and the staff panel appeared. I was then invited to the Staff Slack channel, which is the main place where staff communicate with each other.
The Staff Slack was inundated with questions for a few weeks while we all learned the ropes. Some new helpers were more active than others, but the benefit of Slack is that you can read up and see what examples the others had bought into the training channel. As good as the training guide was, nothing could beat reading live examples of rules being broken and the responses staff made.
We would discuss each and every case whilst in training before any of us took any action. There is a wealth of experience within the ranks of Staff, and everyone chipped in to assist the new helpers with any questions we had. This discourse was invaluable, as in my opinion, going from a civilian to a Helper is the second biggest step in terms of staff ranks, since there is so much to learn and all of it is completely new.
Staff Suggestions
Just like the in-game suggestions forum, we staff have a suggestion channel in Slack where we can put forward our ideas for improvements to Staff features. Although we don’t need 250+ upvotes to catch Chedburn's eye, some things that we want just aren’t possible, or they'll take too much development time. Nevertheless, there have been several updates to the Staff panel and Staff tools while I've been there, and most are minor changes that make our jobs easier.
One really useful change was the ability to see pending newspaper adverts directly from the staff panel, as this sped up the process to ensure player adverts could be accepted rapidly. Another update that proved useful was the ability to see faction transactions in a simpler format than before, as with years of transaction data at hand, it can take a long time to trawl through this information when abuse is suspected.
Contributions to the suggestion forum demonstrate that not only are you doing your job, but you're looking to do it better, and in turn, help to make your colleagues' lives easier too. This kind of proactive thinking is crucial for those who want to progress within the ranks of Staff.
Where Next?
When you play Torn you're always looking for ways in which to progress, whether it's by training your stats, increasing your networth, or accumulating awards. If you're a helper, the way you progress is by becoming an Officer or Moderator. Indeed, during the recruitment process, Bogie will straight up ask you if you have aspirations of progressing via the staff ranks later down the line.
While being promoted isn’t for everyone, this is something I knew that I wanted from the moment I became staff. I was aware that a higher role would require effort and increased activity, but if truth be told, both of these had already increased ever since I became a Helper. Finally, I had found something that I enjoyed doing that kept me interested, and my enthusiasm for my role was clearly visible on my activity graph:
But enthusiasm and effort aren't everything. If you want more responsibility, you have to demonstrate that you have the character to handle it. One trait you definitely need is confidence in your own decisions, as a wishy-washy approach to the rules simply won't be tolerated by players or those in charge. Those who work as Helpers are given an "In Training" badge to denote their status as staff newcomers.
If you want to lose this badge, you need to be able to pass judgment on clear rule breaches without having to run them by other members of staff. Of course, there will always be occasions where discussion between staff is necessary, and sometimes you'll need to pass on incidents to Moderators or Officers for technical reasons. But for most everyday incidents, you should know how to apply the rules, and do so consistently.
By the 6th May 2020, bogie had a conversation with myself and the other Helpers to see how we were doing and if we were happy to lose our training tags. We were.
Moderator Status
On around June 9th, the new Helpers had been accepted onto the Staff team by bogie. A few days later, Bogie asked a handful of Helpers if they wanted to become Moderators. Bogie often checks in on you during your time as a staff member to see how you are doing, and whether you're still interested in progression further down the line.
All of those who are offered the chance to step up should know that Moderator status is more than a simple promotion. In addition to extra duties, you are also granted much more access to player information. Because of this, all Moderators are made to sign a confidentiality agreement before your status can be changed. When this has been done, the colour of your name will be changed again (to the worst staff colour imo) and you are greeted with another guide - this one only being 21 pages long.
While the step up from civilian to Helper was one of the hardest, going from a Helper to Moderator was actually an easy transition for me. I'd already learned the foundations of being staff, but since Moderators have many more tools and logs at their disposal, it makes dealing with those pesky rule-breakers a whole lot easier.
As far as your duties go, Moderators are expected to deal with much more than the forum and chat reports that are assigned to Helpers. As a mod, you'll work on certain types of player reports, deal with inappropriate bounties, and enforce casino bans to name a few. Your expanded range of reports means that you'll start to encounter more serious rule breaches too, some of which you won't be able to handle.
While it's frustrating not to be able to take care of an issue yourself, this is what the chain of command is for. Some cases you encounter as a Helper will have to be passed up to a Moderator, and some of a Moderator's tasks will be passed up above to an Officer. This structure only fuelled my urge to become an Officer, but first, I'd have to lose my Moderator training tags, which I and others did on the 31st of July.
Officer Status
On October 5th, the wait was over. Roughly eight months since my journey began, I and a few of the current Moderators had a message on Slack from bogie asking if we would be interested in becoming an Officer. The obvious answer was yes, and I was promoted to the top rank available in the staff system. This time the guide was 33 pages long, however, I would soon learn that this document was only a very small insight into what being an Officer was all about!
The detail in this guide made it clear that Moderator to Officer is by far the biggest step up after becoming a staff member in the first place. When the training began, we were told from the start it may seem overwhelming - this was an understatement. The staff panel doubled in size and the number of tools available quadrupled! Player’s profiles changed yet again, and I finally got rid of that horrible moderator colour.
Responsibility-wise, I was now with the big cheeses, jailing players for multi-accounts, real money trading, and middle-manning. No one likes cheaters in Torn, and now I had the experience and authority to help deal with them. But you can't go throwing your weight around just because you've been given more power. While care was always taken when doing staff duties, it was now more important than ever to be meticulous, as my actions could and would lead to accounts being stripped of money, or in some cases, placed in federal jail.
As with other positions, we would take no action at all until it was checked over by another experienced Officer or bogie. For obvious reasons, I can’t go into detail about what exactly we look for or the tools we have, but each and every case is checked and checked again, and at this level, I run cases through bogie before taking any action if there is even a slight doubt in my mind.
Taking Action
As the last line of authority before Bogie, Officers have to deal with a mixture of reports from players, Helpers, and Moderators. Each report I pick up is completely different due to one thing or another. One of my most challenging reports was on a Torn player of nearly a decade who was reported on suspicion of holding multiple accounts. There were hundreds of faction deposits and withdrawals, parcel sends, trades, and cash sends, just to name a few. I knew this one was going to be a challenge, but early on it was obvious that something wasn't right.
Every single action is recorded in Torn, and as an Officer, I have the tools to investigate everything a player has done in the search for hard evidence. After spending a good 2-3 hours over a couple of days trawling through the data, I wrote up my report and sent it to bogie and another Officer for review. They managed to link a further two accounts to this ‘multi ring’, despite the fact that our suspect has used VPNs, had laundered their money through numerous accounts, and some of the evidence being over two years old.
In the end, this was a pretty simple case; we busted a ring of 17 accounts that had facilitated many billions in transfers, and all of the linked accounts, including the main, were deleted. Years' worth of cheating absolutely wasted! Job done and on to the next one. When it comes to the jailed players submitting a Fed report, these will always go to a completely separate Officer to deal with for a fresh pair of eyes and to ensure there are no errors and to ensure nothing has been overlooked
My Advice
While Officer status is daunting at the start, it does become easier over time, to the point that your actions become second nature. An Officers' training period is by far the longest, and having begun in this role in October 2020, it wasn't until March 18th, 2021 that I and my fellow new Officers had our ‘In Training’ tags removed.
Is there still much to learn 5 ½ months after becoming an Officer? Yes, without a doubt. At this time, I am happy I have the knowledge and experience to deal with most reports, but there are and always will be times where I need to ask advice from other, more senior Officers or bogie.
Being an Officer is by far the most interesting position of Staff, but I appreciate it won’t be for everyone. Before I became Staff I expected to give this role an hour or two several times a week. This quickly changed, and I now work as an Officer for several hours a day. I would say 70% of my Torn time is currently dedicated to this role, but this time is gladly volunteered - I personally choose to work so much as an Officer because of how much I enjoy doing it, and not through bogie cracking the whip.
If being Staff is something that even slightly interests you then I would highly recommend it! The responsibility of an official role gives you a completely different insight to Torn, and in my case, it enhanced my gameplay and experience. You don’t need to be Torn’s oldest player or bogie’s best friend to become Staff. I had no interaction whatsoever with bogie prior to applying for Staff, and nor was I well known within Torn.
Whether or not that changes now that I've written an article is not important. As I said at the top of the article, my goal was always to rise up the ranks of staff and become an Officer - fame never had anything to do with it. And now that I've reached that goal, my next step is to become a specialist.
In the Officer team, there are some people who have far more experience dealing with cases such as Real Money Trading. Then, there are others who know how to root out large multi rings that have developed over months, years or even a decade! We proactively seek out these types of players, and this kind of specialist work is something I want to get more involved with in the near future.
Original article
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