It's about time I put an end to this era: I'm stepping down to member. Going to keep this short and bitter. My mental health has deteriorated to a point of where I have been starving myself and much worse - the stress that comes from you sexy bunch is just too much and has been for a while but I've tried to suppress it. Nothing personal I promise. I will actively be trying to avoid xG soon in hopes that I can get better. Sorry, I love you guys. Peace.
P.S - You guys better give @Caleb956 DM this upcoming promo/demo, the man is a legend and really wants to make a difference
Ladies and gentlemens!
I've had the best idea for a new division!
the GOLF IT division. I reckon we have plenty players and we need to put law and order! Starting such a division would require a DL. I agree to that position and will make johngalt DM!
I may or may not be drunk, but yall needa make this a thing @virr @Aegean @LeToucan
What is below this paragraph states how I personally feel about the state of the servers and the TF2 division as a whole right now. No other person had any part in this, so if anyone is to be questioned then that person is me. I don’t mean this thread to attack anyone, but its important it gets out there one way or another. I may be being completely irrational with this post, but this is several years worth of frustrations summed up into a single thread, so I apologize in advance.
If you are new here, I'm a previous Division Leader, I've been staff several times, and am currently an admin of the Team Fortress 2 servers.
Take this thread as you will.
Drama
Between several servers, different discords, groups, there has been on common theme between all of them. That theme, is the absolute inability of people to get along with other people that have opposing views, creating drama. There are times that a simple discussion turns into an absolute shitfest for no reason at all, and fuel must be added to the fire no matter what in order to fit each person's own narrative. There are also times when people are constantly mocked on the servers for one reason or another, and when they ask the person who is doing it to the stop the response is usually “get over it” or “just local mute them”. How is that a solution we should be enforcing at all? If people are mocking someone just to annoy them, or get a reaction, or whatever other reason, it is harassment, and should be handled as such. When things are agreed upon and finished, it doesn’t come lightly, it comes when one person steps in and says let's get this done with, almost as if the two opposing parties are unable to even communicate without being at each others throats, let alone negotiate, unless a third party steps in. It’s time to brighten up and get along with each other.
You may be asking, “why is this a problem?” Or you may be rolling your eyes at this point, well I'm directing this at everyone. With the rate of how things are going, these servers we love to play on could very well be dead sooner than any of us think if something doesn’t change. If that doesn’t concern you can you really call yourself a community member? It's all of our jobs to not only maintain the servers, and not only to play on the servers, but the most important job of all of us, is to have fun playing on the servers, not only for ourselves but for others. We all represent xG, even if you aren’t a part of the clan, when you are playing on the servers, talking on the forums, or in the discord, you are representing xG and who we are as a clan. Do we really want drama to be the thing that defines us when people look at the clan? Do we really want people to walk away because of it? I know I don't, and I sure hope you don’t either. It doesn’t matter if “it's just online”, everyone here is a real person, with feelings of their own, we aren't built the same, and we weren't built to handle emotions the same as the next person. If someone has a problem with how you act towards them, or how you treat them, then it's time to lighten up and be considerate for other people's feelings. As is such with the Castroy situation, he is repeatedly mocked with a phrase that is very well known to hurt him, but it is continued anyways because those doing it like seeing the reaction, or seeing that it annoys him.
This can be solved with one word.
Respect.
Another issue I'd like to bring up, is how things are handled in the division. On several occasions I've seen people say “well not many people are complaining about it so it's not that big of a problem”. I firmly believe that having that kind of mindset will drag the division down, we should not be waiting for people to complain to get things fixed, or removed, or added, etc. Our priority should be looking at the issue that is at hand, even if it was mentioned by a single person, and seeing what we can do about it. Fix the issue before it becomes a problem, don't wait until the boat has already sank. On the surf server, there is a well known issue with the checkpoint saver plugin, where it resets your saved position with no warning. I tried several times as a DL to get it fixed to no avail. That being said, I saw someone say that their checkpoint got reset, I didn’t see their name but a few times beforehand but I could see they were genuinely disappointed. The only solution that was offered was to “jiggle your mouse around a bit and test before you walk away”, which is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that simply, they shouldn't HAVE to. We do things to make the experience more enjoyable for all players, if a new player joined and saw that their progress was reset for no reason they'd probably think otherwise and not feel too good about the server at that point. After I saw that, I took it upon myself to finally sit down and fix the plugin once and for all, I didn't do it for myself, or for the higher ups, I did it for HIM, the one who brought it up. That's where the issue of “waiting until it becomes a problem” comes into play. Nobody else thought it was a problem, even the higherup I sent it to( @SegFault ) so he could add it to the server, but when it's affecting our players, at that point it IS A PROBLEM, whether it is widespread or not. I believe this can be attributed to one word:
Motivation.
Something I feel several of our higher ups are lacking, or at least a good portion of the time, especially when it comes to working on the servers. As a DL your job is the same as everyone else, but you have the responsibility to actually add to the servers and fix what's wrong. I'm not saying @mrnutty12 and @SegFault don’t do anything, but it feels like when they can't figure something out they just give up and wait until someone else( @Lithium ) figures it out. In my eyes this shows a complete and utter lack of motivation, and unwillingness to work. You don't have to be working on the servers at all times, but if you are unwilling to dedicate time to it then why are you in such a position? An example of this is with @mrnutty12. I won’t lie and say I don't get frustrated with you when it comes to server work, because I do. And I won't lie and say I'm always nice when I bring it up to you, because I'm not. But when you threaten to step down everytime I DO bring it up to you what does that say? It shows me personally you're unwilling to take criticism for your actions. You have told me yourself that people think you're lazy, and you think you're useless, but you don't try to change. How can you sit there and guilt yourself when there's no attempt being made. I don’t do it to try and hurt you, or push you away, I tell you how it is because it should be a red flag that clearly something is wrong, and that it should change. Another example: Population events quickly went from several times a week to sometimes not even happening once a week, whether that be from lack of players, or those who set them up just not wanting to do them. This issue is not only directed at the higher ups, it could be directed at the division as a whole. To me it feels like many people just don't care what happens anymore, as long as x server has players on then they’re happy, those servers normally being surf or tgh. It's almost as if some people would rather see the server they like completely filled and the other server completely dead, that doesn't sound like a healthy community or playerbase if you ask me.
Management
Management wise, I don't think anyone could ask for a better staff team, but like all teams, we have our faults.
Disagreements on rule matter
Many times I have seen staff enforce a rule in wildly different ways than the next staff, which if it gets the job done is fine, but not when its creating a false idea of what they can and can not do. There have also been times that I've seen rules enforced that I've never even seen or heard of. Obviously we will never all enforce things exactly the same, but there should be more efforts to try. This comes down to one thing, consistency.
Arguing in the servers, or discord
Disagreeing with each other is a given, it's not that big of a deal, but how it is handled is absolutely a problem. A good example of this would be of what I saw last night. I won't give any names in order to provide anonymity but basically, there were two sides. One side said he or she did this on the server and then put the blame on someone else because of x reason, and the other side disagreed and said the person that was blamed was the one who actually stated the issue on the server. Keep in mind, there were witnesses on both sides that had different stories, and there was no solid evidence of either stories. Both sides were at each others neck for over half an hour, over something that couldn’t lead anywhere, and then it was attributed to them “trolling” or being “passive aggressive”. These weren't just people that had just joined the server either, these were including staff members, higher ups as well. Quite frankly it's sad to see it happening.
Rules
It's no secret many people think we are too strict on rules. While I think rules are important to have, at a certain point it needs to come down to staff discretion. In order to do that though we'd need something I mentioned earlier, consistency. As it is right now, I think all of our rules are fair, and they make sense, BUT the matter is, is that we have too many. I understand the want for rules to be specific, and I also understand the rules to be generalize, it should be somewhere in between. Have some trust in our staff and give the players some freedom. We can still enforce the rules, but we don't need to have a 2 page long list of rules, either.
Conclusion
I won’t sit here and put the blame for what's happening on one person, because what's happening is all of our faults, and that means the only way things will change is if everyone works together. We are all told that the servers losing players can be attributed to “the game dying”, that’s not a good reason. If anything, that tells me we need to push harder than before to get our servers back to where they should be. There are rumors that are thrown around on the daily of “they said this” or “they did that”, and there are constant disagreements within our own staff team, and times when staff are at each other's throats while on the servers. There are times when the entire server is riled up because of situations like this. How many people have to leave before something changes? I didn't plan on coming back so soon originally even considering the irl information I learned, but I also didn’t plan on never coming back. I came back because I saw what was happening, and I care for this clan more than damn near anything, and I'm not willing to let this continue without at least trying to get it fixed, it's time for people to take off this mask as if everything is fine in the community and buckle up and get this figured out. If you disagree with me, then feel free, if you agree with me then feel free; but no matter who you are, it's time for things to change around here. We are supposed to be a community, a community traditionally is a group of people who share common interests, and goals. What kind of community are we when we aren’t acting like one.
Division
Team Fortress 2
In-Game Name
red
Identity
STEAM_0:1:52947739
Position
Moderator
Time Active on Servers
server time 20+d
Information
I'll keep it short...
it's too balance the tf2 staff roster.
@SegFault recommend me for staff ?
Hey, how does karma work in this forum? Mine dropped from -2 to -4 even though I was just posting normally, not attacking anyone. Could anyone explain it?
Welcome! While on these servers and forums you have to be one of these.
-Gay
-Furry
-Sock Wearer
-Jojo Fan
-Toxic (Don't)
-gaybonfiregaming
-All of the Above
Also this is coming from a black man so if you dont make the word "nigger" allowed everywhere for this african american's comfort, you are a racist piece of shit and i am literally crying and screeching right now
Because of context. I don't call people faggots and neither do I call people niggers, but let me try to give my opinion on this subject. I'm also going to refer to the "n-word" as "nigger", since that is the word we're talking about and we're having a reasonable discussion where I'm not using it as an insult.
As far as I know, it's not like the word "faggot" is allowed no matter what. The word is allowed in a certain context in which you are not harassing someone. For instance, if someone were to call QueenofHeart [or any queer person] a faggot because of the fact that she is transgender, that would be punishable. However, in my opinion the meaning of the word faggot has kind of changed. I'm definitely not denying that awful people are still using it to be homophobic, however, there is a certain episode of South Park that illustrates this situation. To briefly summarize the episode, a ton of bikers start annoying the city and people eventually start calling them fags to the point where everyone just refers to them as fags. At some point people got concerned because of the apparent homophobia that someone did a TV report showing a child a picture of a gay person and a biker, asking whom of the both they think is a "fag". The child pointed to the biker and completely ignored the actually gay person. In other words, in this and in many other instances the word "faggot" is not being used in a homophobic context. If someone on a tf2 server is like "shut up, faggot", in 95% of the cases he doesnt use the term "faggot" to insult gay people, but instead to insult an annoying person.
Does that make it better? Kind of, I think. While I'd agree that nobody should say it, people always will and I don't think we, as a gaming community, have the power to stop people from doing that. Our regular players, yes, probably, but literally anyone who ever joins the servers? I don't think so.
People have already started to describe generally annoying people as "faggots", way before this community was even established, I believe.
However, the meaning of the term "nigger" has not changed. People still mostly use it to be intentionally racist. There is basically no context where it would make sense to call someone a "nigger" simply because they are annoying. People haven't started doing that and still aren't.
Again, I'm not condoning the usage of either of these words, I'm just trying to explain why there is a difference in my opinion. Not to mention the argument @Elcark made last time, that we'd have to basically start banning everything from here:
List of disability-related terms with negative connotations - Wikipedia
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
If people intentionally use the word "faggot" to discriminate against gay people, then that should be a no go, but using it in a relatively "harmless" context which doesn't relate to discriminating against gay people is something different.
Also, you should watch the episode of south park I was talking about if you have time, it's called "The F-Word".
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