My views on the state of the community

Hello

I've been thinking about expressing how this community makes me feel for a long time. I've also been considering why the player count is how it is. This is an opinion piece on what I thing is right and wrong with the community.

The Game Itself

I feel sticking to the basics and just changing up the maps is a pretty good move. I was invited to join a forbidden TTT server so I did to see what it was like, and damn was it confusing and I felt outgunned because their stuff levels up and people can fly and stuff. Like that was terrible to me. I like our server because even the upgrades don't make a huge difference, at least they don't affect the gunplay. That being said, it would be cool to convert one of the dead servers into a more 'experimental' server where you do weird stuff like add different roles for a month, or change up the guns a different month. People can have the option of TTT with weird stuff or TTT classic.

New Players

There aren't a ton of players staying in the community. We still get a lot of new players who visit the servers during peak times but a lot don't stick. I feel this partially has to do with the fact the N-word is allowed to be said on the server. Even if the point is that allowing it somehow takes away it's power to be offensive(?) it still drives away people who might have otherwise joined the community. If I was living with my parents and they heard that word thrown around in the server I was on I'd probably be banned from the game entirely. Another reason people may not be staying is the staff, but I'll get to that in the next section.

Staff

I do have issues with the staff. My main issue was that when I was staff a lot of the communication has migrated from the forums to discord. I felt that discord is too cluttered compared to the forums, but that could be a personal issue. Staff turn around seems to be pretty high, and that does cause for a lot of chances for miscommunication. Miscommunication causes confusion and wrong judgments on cases. Of course, it's hard to get people to agree to volunteer so much of their time for very long periods of time.

Ex-staff/Regulars/People who have been around forever

I feel like a lot of issues come from this group. I see a lot of people who are just mean and vindictive towards others or especially staff because things aren't the way they used to be or they aren't the way that person wants them to be. There's a lot of putting staff under a microscope and determining that if staff doesn't interpret the rules in the exact same way that the staff are wrong. A whole lot of nitpicking of what staff does. I've always believed the staff should be held to a higher standard, but there's a point where people forget that staff are human, there's a point where people forget that they are volunteers and for the most part trying their best and their ideas of what's the most fun and most fair don't always line up with everyone else's. It gets kind of ridiculous when an exact wording of gravedigging is used to argue that commenting on something from 2 years ago isn't gravedigging, but a thread made for the sole purpose of disrespecting current and old staff "isn't harassment" because even though it literally hits the definition of the rule people feel like that isn't what the words mean. And the actions on server aren't any better. Regulars have always tried to manipulate the rules a little to their advantage, but now it's just a bunch of bullying the staff. People mic spamming exactly 2 times so the staff can't ban them, people yelling into their mics unnecessarily just to argue "that wasn't mic spam cause it wasn't long enough". People intentionally annoying, targeting, bothering staff in ways that are just on the edge of the rules and then when they finally get punished reporting the staff because it wasn't technically against the rules. And a lot of it just seems to be the mentality of "it's okay to bully the staff and annoy other players because the rules aren't exactly how I want them to be". To be honest it breaks my heart that people think being as annoying as possible and bullying is the correct way to advocate for changes in the server or rules.

During my most recent tenure as staff, staffing took a lot more out of me on a daily basis than it did when I was staff before. There seemed to be less players I actually liked playing and more players I'd rather not be on at the same time they were. It's really hard to want to put time and effort into volunteering when it feels like I'm being treated badly for doing my best to help the community. I'd astounded that there's even a staff team at this point, cause it doesn't seem worth it to me anymore.


Note: To avoid any disrespect, shaming, flaming or other harassment no names are mentioned in this post, only events that I have seen happen. Events used are just examples and should not reflect any direct opinion on the people involved. Please do not bring any names into this thread in an effort to call them out, disrespect, shame, etc. Thank you.

 

"Note: To avoid any disrespect, shaming, flaming or other harassment no names are mentioned in this post, only events that I have seen happen. Events used are just examples and should not reflect any direct opinion on the people involved. Please do not bring any names into this thread in an effort to call them out, disrespect, shame, etc. Thank you."

lol good luck

 

ok cool i guess

 

I'll talk about my views as well

I feel like the Lead Administration as of recent has been kinda... shit. There's been a complete lack of leadership since Mango was lead. Love him or hate him, he did actually get shit done. He held people accountable, and I liked that. He did like one thing that made staff members mad but honestly it's whatever lol

I can't name any of the people who did anything I disagree with during their tenures as lead administrators, because that may be counted as harassment (???)
I mean, it's pretty obvious who I'm talking about, there's not exactly many leads but anyway here's my thoughts lmfao

We've seen a lame duck, a very hot headed lead who never really did anything and definitely didn't uphold his promises before his lead tenure, a dictator, and maybe one decent lead. Overall, there's a complete lack of actual leadership. The administrator position has become a glorified moderator. When's the last time an admin made a decent ruling in the Q&A section? When's the last time an admin actually defended their position? Just about every admin currently has said that they don't care what the rules are, they just want to know what to enforce. They don't train their mods -- there's literally new directives from the leads for admins to actually train their trials and their mods, yet I've had to train many mods on how to do something as simple as fucking ban someone. Like... what? Where did the administration go so wrong where doing something as simple as teaching the ULX menu become a rarity? This is also clearly demonstrated in the recent lack of proper evidence collection and retention. Too many times recently have mods said in appeals and reports that their recording failed, or they never recorded the event in the first place. I have written a very detailed guide for staff members on how to use OBS, on how to record with demos, take screenshots, etc.... yet they somehow fail to collect evidence. These staff members were never really held accountable during my staffing tenure, it's kind of become too positive. It's kind of like a circle jerk in there, it's like an echo chamber. We should be positive, but you can still be constructive and hold people accountable. Sometimes people fuck up, there's nothing wrong with fucking up... everyone fucks up. Get over it, you're not a shit mod because you fucked up. But the echo chamber is too strong, I don't think any of the staff right now have ever really thought they've fucked up when they have -- like the staff members who fail to collect evidence. They've failed several times, they should have learned to record their shit properly. But the echo chamber says "You didn't do anything wrong!" or, "It's ok bro!". No... it is not ok. You failed in doing your job. Accept the failure, learn from it, and move on with your life.

tl;dr: fuck the police coming straight from the underground...

 

I agree with a lot said in this post. Its hard to get new players who have ventured from other communities, because our rules are so much more different than most servers out there. Not a lot of communities have a GBA rule, or a grace period rule, or even an UNID rule. It also kills the player base when the player gets killed for shooting at a traitor or someone kosed and the persons response in the report is "You shot someone". That always kills my mood.

The staff should always be held to a higher standard than players, but like you said its easy to forget that they are just another human being, like me and you. No one in this world is perfect, but even when people understand that they still make petty reports just out of spite. They go above and beyond to make it seem like the staff member is horrible and that what they did is impossible to forgive.

I am actually happy to see those players that cause trouble just enough to not be banned get punished. It shows that admins+ are finally fed up with their actions and are capable and more than willing to put a stop to it.

 

BrO iTs jUst a GmOd sErvEr gET ovER iT

 

Never woulda fucking guessed.

 

Just rename the report section to "TTT Staff Reports" since players don't get reported anymore. Everyday it's the same few people reporting the same few staff members for insignificant shit. And this isn't even new. This toxicity has been happening for well over a year now.

 

Considering vanilla is the server that brings in the most players, I doubt we need an experimental server. For a lot of players our modded servers are that experimental server. There's another server I won't name that basically tried to reinvent the wheel with all the custom addons they had, and I don't remember the last time I saw them populated.

 

I actually 100% agree (I know shocking).

I think some people get way too carried away with looking at the staff team. I mean, I feel bad for any son of a bitch who has to be a lead admin, because that shit is hard. People have so many opinions and you can't satisfy anyone. It is a harsh balancing act because so many people want you to step in and deal with everything, but then when you deal with it everyone gets mad. I personally think the administration is a little weak right now. I think they need to take a more active role in the community, both in hosting events, commenting on threads, and dealing with their moderators (both training and discipline). I think the lead admins need to take a step back and really start to let their admins deal with stuff on the forums.

That being said, I genuinely don't care enough to report staff members for things. Like, it doesn't do much in the end. I have legit reported one staff member since I resigned and I did it in private. I didn't even really care to know what happened, I just passed something along. Staff got it hard enough without me coming after them every second. Also, I try to be super friendly as well. I only diss on people who diss on me if that makes sense. I agree though, the group of ex-staff/regulars can be incredible toxic. We all are a bunch of assholes and we want our opinions to be heard and shit cuz we think we know what's best when in reality we aint got no fucking clue. I know I have no clue.

Thanks for making this thread man, and I honestly think that a lot of people are starting to get tired of the constant "i hate staff team" mentality, especially when it is over such silly stuff.

 

There's been one constant from the beginning. If you can figure that out you know what the problem is and why it'll never be solved and why it doesn't matter to express much of anything. Personally I'm surprised people haven't already grown bored enough to realize nothing will happen.

Before anyone says that constant been here for the good and the bad it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you surround yourself with people smarter than you then 'you'll be responsible for making something shine.' The bad has always been there.

If anyone else wants to rate confused to this then you've been had and you'll get gypped before you even realize it.

 

I think something you kind of glossed over was the plain and sad fact that GMod itself is just kind of dying; it isn’t just the community. Yeah, there are new players, but the lesser numbers aren’t because the community has gone to shit, it’s because people just aren’t playing gmod as much as they used to.

Sure, we could probably have better retention, I haven’t noticed too many newer people on the forums, and maybe you’re right about why we don’t retain too many people, but that isn’t really my place to say if you’re right or not. I will say, however, that after being gone for what, like 1-2 years or something, the vibe in the community has changed drastically. Coming back and hearing people openly say the N-word with no punishment was kind of disturbing to me, I will admit. But that rule was changed before, and it can be changed again, and that’s what I think a lot of us on here aren’t thinking about. Something I have to disagree on a lot of people with is their sentiment that the staff is “shit. There’s always room for improvement, but that’s true for everything ANYWHERE, nothing is ever going to be perfect. Bottom line, every time I’m playing and there’s staff online, it seems to me that the rules are being enforced as well as they ever have been. Yeah, I’ve seen the instances on here of certain people being banned for one reason or another and making a whole thing of it, but I really don’t care; it’s drama that doesn’t involve me, so I choose to ignore it.

Anyways, your point of players being schmucks to staff is true I guess. The entire report section is just reports on staff members, someone else in this thread made the joke that we should just call it staff reports because nobody cares about reporting players; they just want to report staff for “wrongfully” slaying them or whatever, but in reality it seems to me that they just want to give the staff a hard time.

I get not everyone here is going to like each other, it’s still a moderately sized community, hell I don’t even like everyone here, but I think we could all just benefit from practicing mutual respect - at least give each other respect despite your opinion on each other, it just keeps things more fun for everyone if nobody is getting disrespected.

I think this has gotten a bit long-winded, and it probably doesn’t even all make sense because I’ve been writing it for the last two hours while watching a movie, but my main point I’d like to make is this: It’s a gaming community, we’re all here to play some gmod and have fun, so let’s just try to keep a positive environment and have fun with each other

 

The fact is that the community is super toxic and we don't punish toxic people. Staff punish toxic behavior but for the most part, this is completely discretionary as everything is treated with a "this is what they said but this is what they meant" mentality and nothing comes of it. Staff aren't online either due to timezones or they fulfill their 5 hour per week minimum staff requirement and then go play league. The extended rules is complete poopy for new players who are slain for some obscure reason, complain for 10 minutes, then get slapped with an rdm and leave. It's the same shit every time. Also, TTT gets old. It's one of 20 significant gmod gamemodes and it's not even the most popular one, then you have 50+ servers to choose from which dilutes the playerbase even further, and god knows they ain't choosing this community more than any other. I think we all need to take a step back and realize that this is an unimportant, niche game that isn't truly worth the trouble. It took me 3k hours to realize that. I'm not gonna say that game is dying, because March had the highest player count since 2016, so that's a pretty lame excuse. If this community is dying, it's not for any reason the staff team can't control. Unfortunately this is the product of a series of wrong paths taken by upper management over the course of years. SGM was literally about to shut down until Mango came back like the messiah he is to rescue this beta feeding ground, so kudos to him, but now he's gone and the same thing is happening.

For me personally I quit because I was targeted nearly every game because I reported people for breaking rules, and sometimes that would be mods. I didn't report for clout or to piss people off, I was actually pretty neutral, but everyone takes things like this personally. Eventually got to a point where staff wouldn't take me seriously about anything, even if I had proof. People who harassed me in the past for trying to enforce rules are even mods now, which I find ironic.

gg.

 

I'm definitely the minority, but I'm fine with the way the servers are right now, content and rule wise.

It's hard to say why there's a lack of new players, and it isn't just one thing. I wouldn't blame it on the slur change, considering vanilla is the 2nd highest ranked TTT server right now on gametracker.

 

I agree, I like how things are. It is different than in the past, but I honestly think having a smaller community makes everyone seem a bit closer than it used to

 

Remember Python?? xD

 

If you look at the numbers of players per much it’s ever really changed. It’s always been 25-35k people per month playing.

 

Shieeet I’ll eat my words on that then lol