Phoenix_

Heyo, the last couple of days we have been playing Manhunt in GTA and it's been loads of fun. I think it would be fun to get a massive event going where it's either a full lobby in free roam or a session where it's an actual map that's pre-setup. I should note that this game is based entirely on trust, and I ask that if this becomes an event and you participate, you remain honest and don't spoil this for yourself and others. Rules: General: Civilian vehicles that can be naturally found only. This includes helicopters/airplanes at the airport and police vehicles if you get the cops on you. Players are confined to the area that is pre-determined by the players or whoever is the "leader" of the game. We've been doing from the hills to the airport, or smaller than that depending on the number of people. Player nicknames above their head must be turned off. Your minimap must be turned off, but your HUD may remain on. The seeker who kills the hider has first dibs on being the next hider but may allow someone else to hide if they choose. Hider(s): Must act like a civilian as much as possible. You are given 2 minutes to hide around the map, during this time you can do whatever you need to get into a position where you can hide in plain sight. You are allowed to use an SMG to kill a seeker if you notice they are near you. If you are killed by a seeker, you lose and the round is over. Seekers: You can not use personal vehicles and must find a vehicle on the street/at the airport. You can not leave a designated area until the hider's 2 minutes to hide have elapsed. You ARE allowed to work with other seekers, but the kill is first come, first serve. You are only allowed to kill a hider if you notice they are not behaving as an AI should, or something is off about their vehicle (headlights off at night, banged-up vehicle, not behaving correctly around police, etc.) You may only kill a hider with a bullet-shooting pistol. This bans the Atomizer. I don't think I missed anything here, but if I did please point it out and I'll add it to the list. If allowed, I'd also be happy to host this event, but as I'm not on the events team I don't know if I am allowed.

Back when I was CA, there was a thread regarding the standards for playtime awards for our servers. From my understanding, this was meant to be pushed out in some form or another to the public so people could know when to request awards, and so that more people knew that most of our servers awards were based off CT + T time and not "Connection Time" that you see in the GameME stats. Is there any possibility that we could see these standards for the benefit of players interested in the forum awards?

Is there going to be an incentive to play CT anytime soon so the ratio isn't fucked? I can see the ratio constantly being terrible for the coming weeks.

So now that the initial shock value of this change has passed I actually sat here for a little and thought about how things could be adjusted moving forward to make this change more liked and accepted. To provide some background on my thoughts moving forward, I want to state first off that I personally think the only real merit to allowing all or any LG/Vet to have admin powers is that they will be extra people to help administrate the servers when admin count is low or admin activity is low. I think many of the Vets who lost their admin powers were entitled to having admin because they had admin powers for so long without the majority of the community batting an eye. That's just how I see it. I feel like it's at least kind of understandable that they're entitled to wanting admin powers because some of them have had them for YEARS despite minimal activity over that time. But, at the same time, they didn't have to be given powers to begin with, as stated before. Firstly, I think both the LG and Vet ranks should be able to obtain SA/A powers by requesting it. If someone in either of those ranks decides they want to be active for a while and help out in the servers but not make a return to the staff ranks, they could submit an "Admin Powers Request" that if accepted, they would be granted SA/A powers on the servers for three months. The form would include name in-game, the reason for wanting powers, etc. Maybe a better way of doing it would be asking how long they'd be around to grant them those powers for x amount of time and not an arbitrary 3 months, just an idea. I don't remember who it was, but I know pretty recently I talked to an HG who wanted to help admin the servers, so they asked for LG because they knew they wouldn't be able to maintain high activity in the servers for an extended amount of time but they still wanted to help out while they could. I think this would be a good system because it wouldn't require giving everyone in that rank indefinite access to admin powers, but it gives them the ability to obtain the powers they once had. My next suggestion is to remove the LG's access from viewing the CA section. I don't really understand why this decision was made at all if you ask me, but I guess some may be able to provide some sort of guidance? I mean if we're going along the lines of it just being a recognition of what you've done rank and shifting it away from holding power for HG and Vet, I don't really understand why LGs now have more permissions than before. On top of this, not even half of the LGs have been on the forums this calendar year, so I'm sure the majority of them would be out of touch in the sense of this community and may not be able to provide the best advice. I'm not saying they don't have the ability to make good ideas since the majority of those people were once Board members, I just question if the ideas they would provide in the section would be applicable to current happenings here. This one is a more personal one, but I certainly don't trust someone who drunkenly comes into TS every few months to spew shit about the community and try to get leaks from CA+ sections to have current access to this section where many classified discussions happen. Outside of that case, I still don't really see a need for LGs to have access to the CA section, though. To backtrack a little though, I don't know how well my first idea would actually do in execution, but I feel it would be a fair middle ground to satisfy the interest of both parties, that's all.

did I do this right? [video=youtube_share;nhZ86YTiWYk]

I guess I'll chip in my 2c here as well. I'm going to be a bit out of place speaking on things beyond HG, but I'll share what I feel nonetheless. I think that it's good that Legend was more or less split into two. There are people who can be distinguished in their actions from being Board members or Tech Team members who contributed more than absolutely anyone could have imagined. But, the people who are currently in the Veteran rank who contributed lots and lots over years at this community I think got the short end of the stick here. As multiple people in this position already spoke about this, I believe those who made large contributions and proved still semi-active members in the community who maintained the trust of the staff and community and upheld the rules of SG should retain some form of admin ability to assist in the servers when they decide to pop on. Describing what the 'similar perks to HG' are may have helped out here because as it stands, for those people their current position in the community outside of getting the recognition they deserve is pretty vague. IMO they should at least be able to have basic powers like mute, kick, gag to be able to help control servers if no one is on or they just want to help out. They've done nothing to betray your trust, but it seems you've betrayed them in their eyes.

We have something similar to this in the Monthly Art Contest. Perhaps this could be a theme for a month? There's a base image and whoever does the most interesting/creative photoshop wins? I think doing voting in Discord would also be an interesting addition for art contests in the future. @nesquik, thoughts?

While it is valid that a group of CTs that get fucked by this secret and lose quickly should take it as a learning experience, it's just not that simple. The issue with how you're seeing this situation is that you expect greatness from every CT, which is just unrealistic. While it would be great if the JB server was a utopia where all the CTs had mics and could give great orders, it's just not the case. Not only this, but I've also seen groups of CTs who are actually better at the game, who give orders immediately and come out of armory ASAP who still can't get hold of a round because by the time they're out of armory there's already 3 people in the pool, 2 in soccer, and 3 in showers. While I hate to say it, you need to lower your expectations of the general player base when thinking about these things because you have players with 30 days on the server and players with 30 minutes on the server. If a brand new CT or even just a fairly unexperienced CT is trying to learn the game more and repeatedly gets destroyed every round, they're very likely to either leave the server or join back on T. I'm also hoping that if the usability of this secret was modified that the ratio on the map may improve since not too many people want to play CT because it is too easy to rebel on this map. Revamp is one of the most T sided maps on the server, with the Ts winning 78% of all rounds (The average is between 75-70%). @Cody. came up with a great solution of keeping the secret but removing the T spawn point there. This would allow people to still use the secret but not allow the Ts to gain complete control by 4:50. I just think it would be good for the sake of map balance to throw the CTs a bone here and hopefully provide some form of balance.

Right now, there are 25 maps in the Jailbreak map rotation. I personally haven't played a good 7-10 of those maps in a good while now. While there's always the maps you can guarantee will get played like razor, vipinthemix, spyvspy, summer jail, etc., I think it's good to try and keep a fresh map rotation whether it be with new maps or maps of years past to try and keep variety when a non-mainstream map gets voted in. I think it would be good to do a map marathon of the 10 least played maps, do an in-game vote to see if the map is worth keeping, and then bringing those 10 maps to a forum post with the vote statistics to then have more feedback on what should stay and go. To promote trying to find new maps instead of recycling old maps (I mean, they got removed for a reason), I think it would be good to have a map suggestion contest and have the most played map (out of the added group of maps) after like, a month?, get some sort of prize. This would encourage people to try and find good maps for the server and hopefully incentivize players to try and play the new maps you guys would add.

The title explains what I'm suggesting pretty much. I personally think it's really busted and unbalanced that literally every T can be out of their cell and rebelling before CTs can even make it out of armory. The map already has a plentiful amount of secrets to use and I think either nerfing or entirely removing this secret will provide a tiny bit of balance to the map and give the CTs a chance to control rounds without the ratio pushing beyond 2:3. If removing it entirely is undesirable, if there is a possibility of not making it useable until 45-60 seconds have passed in the round, that may be a good option as well. The ability to have everyone out of their cells before the CTs exit armory is totally unfair, especially at high pop. I encourage everyone to share their thoughts on this, I'm not sure where a lot of others stand on this.

This beauty has been passed down for years in my family. Good call quality, super reliable.

POV: Biden stares into your soul trying to remember what to say

I want to preface this by saying I mean no shade to anyone and I don't want to start any drama because of this thread, being the whole point of this thread is to try and stop this recent bullshit drama culture. Recently, I feel there's been at least some sense of disconnect between quite a few regs and staff members and some of the higher up staff, or at least decisions made by them. There's been a nasty cycle of people disliking a decision or two, and either publicly or privately expressing their dislike of the decision made resulting in some sort of drama usually resulting in that person getting in trouble, demoted, whatever. I just don't want this stupid shit to continue because this is meant to be a place where people can chill out from the everyday stresses of real-life and just be able to chill with some homies. I definitely believe there is fault on both sides in these situations most times. On the side of the regulars/staff, their responses when actually contacting the higher-ups could definitely be less aggressive and more clear at times. But, unless if this is exclusive to the friend group I'm in, I feel there is a general feel of dissent to the choices of the higher-ups equating to "passive-aggressiveness" in the eyes of the higher-ups. More importantly than which side is more wrong/right than the other the true issue is a lack of clear communication. From the player side, we should definitely take steps to make our intentions and wishes stated more clearly through making threads or going to the higher-ups directly instead of making half-witted remarks behind backs and not going anywhere with it and just leaving the problem to sit in your mind. On the higher-up end, if the stories I heard from multiple people are the full story, actually going through with being transparent would be a huge step, because it seems many times the responses people get are either perceived as vague or end up with people playing the waiting game and feeling like their situation doesn't matter. I understand you're not our butlers and can't and won't cater to our every want and wish, but at least making it seem like you care more than a robotic support ticket email would be a good first step. People get annoyed when they have to bug numerous times, sometimes over the span of week/weeks just to get a response to an ultimately simple issue or question. Overall, I just hope that this petty drama shit can be put behind us and we can try and have more open communication and reduce the amount of stupid conflict there's been. I hate seeing people get in trouble or demoted over ultimately petty shit. Now, more onto my most personal concern and that is that there aren't any steps to come together as a community to mend this rift on either side. I have no real way of making this sound nice but this is meant as a genuine question... what are the Internal Affairs and Community Advisor teams doing to bring the community together and trying to get the community's feedback and put it through to the higher-ups? Like no offense to any of the people on the teams, because I am friends with multiple people on those teams and I have nothing against them as people, but what are they doing activity-wise? Like I have no visual evidence of any of it since I'm no longer a staff member, but from what I hear the CA section is pretty much dead, and for the CAs, outside of player complaints, what have they been doing? If their section is for the better part "dead", they aren't really trying to reach out for public feedback on the community, and (except the ones on the events team) making any events, what function are they serving? Like I am really not trying to throw shade at any individual or group of people, I'm just concerned at the general activity of staff from high to low and how and how it will affect the community in the long run. From a manager of a server admitting they do literally nothing for the server, to from somewhere around 30-50% of our admins being either completely inactive or minimally active just has me concerned. tl;dr- I'm tired of the stupid bullshit that's been going on. It doesn't matter who creates it, the point is it's time to stop and come together. This shit is fucking stupid, it's an online gaming community and shouldn't devolve into persistent petty drama. If there's a repeated problem with each other, just avoid contact with the other party if at all possible. It's time to let bygones be bygones and understand that while we may not agree with every decision here if we want to question it we should go about it in a civil manner to expect a civil response back. Give respect to get respect. To the other side- while it's upsetting that repeatedly disrespectful remarks get really annoying and you all have your own way of getting rid of it if a more civil approach is taken upon being approached, all I hope is that we are understood as upset, and not passive-aggressive. Otherwise, I just have my own concerns about staff activity (or the lack thereof) and how it may have a negative impact in the long run. Overall, I'm just concerned at the times here and I wanted to voice my concerns even if this is really dumb sounding. If this strikes a nerve with anyone I apologize, and will happily discuss it over PMs to try and mend the situation I've created. I'm not all-knowing and could have made erroneous statements in here.

[video=youtube_share;44-p5W7eJYc]https://youtu.be/44-p5W7eJYc Heres a vid of da meeting. Still processing atm

Well, warzone is a computer-intensive game from the looks of their recommendations for hardware to run it. What are your video settings? I would suggest turning them down so it's less on your computer. Otherwise, I would suggest closing other things in the background you aren't using to free up more ram. I know GeForce has "optimized" settings for games, so you may try that and see the results.

To start, this would be a suggestion to the new forums which may already be a feature there. There should be a way to link your Discord profile to your forums profile so people can add you on Discord by clicking a handy little icon under your name. On top of this, there should be a Discord bot that can let someone do the command ".getrank" or "/getrank" that will search for that user's Discord ID on the forums and give them the correct ranks related to their forum account. I suck at explaining things so let me provide an example if I weren't clear enough: Say @fantastic just joined the Discord for the first time and received the "guest" rank allowing him access to the most basic channels. A new channel would be made in the Discord called "#getrank" where people can run the /getrank command. Fantastic would run this command, and as long as his Discord was linked to his forum account he would receive his ranks automatically. This would save some trouble with getting people their proper ranks, and would only make the mods really responsible for taking away ranks if someone steps down or is banned.

Should have clarified. I meant not changing the rank name away from "Internal Affairs". "Internal Affairs Officer" makes sense as that's the technical job position out there in the world.

Internal Affairs makes sense to remain the same. It's our version of an HR Department and it's hard to think of something else that makes sense. Otherwise, the only things I have to suggest are these small two changes. They're extremely nitpicky but I spotted them nonetheless. If the intent was to use singular syntax, it makes sense to drop the S's. I know this could have just been a typo when writing the thread, and it may have been made like this already, but if you want to make most of them singular, it makes sense to have them consistent. (That sounds really snarky, my apologies.)

Dead thread but bump. Now would be a great time to get a bunch of scrims going because of corona-cation. If not this, CSS scrim would also be dope. A week of the old maps would spice it up for some laughs, give some people nostalgia, and newer players a glimpse into the past of CS:GO.