Karma

It seems like we got some good input on minigames. I will start looking into it and some of the thing that were mentioned like easyhop. I can say this is not a guarantee, but if I/we do anything it will probably start off as an event and see how things progress. I would still like to hear any input people have/what they would like to see if I do get a server up.

So here are my thoughts on Minigames; I do love the gamemode and it was the one that I originally became "AT/AO" for back in the day. It is fun and a good way for people to play together without having gamemode style "rules", with all that said my concern is it's ability to gather a population/bring that population to the rest of the community. The style of game itself hasn't been that popular to the average CS player since CSS, with most people playing more DM style gamemodes or at least TTT/JB/ZE. Not that it couldn't be done, but it would take a ton of work to do. Even back in 2018 or so when the gamemode was still doing well, it took me and Kyle joining the empty server and messaging and inviting everyone on our friends list to get a population started. My other concern is the people who play MG. The regulars themselves are all "movement" players who love autohop and backstab all day long. Without autohop or by adding a speed cap you will lose most if not all of these players. While I don't love how the server plays with these people on it, sadly they do nolife the server and bring a lot of traction/population to the server within their different friend groups. Lastly minigames is not much of a "come to my community gamemode". While that isn't my main concern as I'd rather have people who are running the servers actually enjoy the server and not just run them as a population grab, if we have neither then it makes this idea more difficult. I personally love MG and would be more then willing to run it, even alone, I don't think I have the time to really put into minigames what it deserves. With everything I typed I am not saying its not possible or we won't try it. If we got enough people who were interested I would be more then willing to give it a shot.

Was talked about and we have had some conversations with old GFL members but as of now nothing is directly coming of it.

CS2 Surf: Ramp bugs causing minor issues but server itself is doing fine, possible ways to look into valve issues BHOP: Getting last few timing issues fixed, possible events in future JB/PB: Hopefully will have server fully "finished" and will start populating by running seeding days with Slim MiniGames: This has been talked about a lot between the higherups, it is something that can be done, and honestly shouldn't take too much time; our main concern with opening a MG server is getting a consistent population. The prior regulars would most likely not come back and play and getting people to play minigames more then a short time period is difficult. If we did get a lot of traction around the idea it can be done and would be something I would personally be willing to run. Opening new servers (Plan): When we are opening a new server we are trying to make sure we are setting up seeding days with specific people who can seed on those days. There are certain servers that can be created and played without larger server pop operations (i.e. surf, bhop, ect.) GMOD TTT: Running well, few possible changed to map pool but nothing major server is running well Forums Landing Page: Current forums leads to the main page, looking at adding a landing page with basic info as well as ways to connect more with discord instead of the forums. (Linking donations with discord and discord nitro boosting happening soon) Changes: Possible basic forums changes with topics or headlines, but nothing major. Changing bans is something we are looking at in order to make banning on discord a little easier, nothing set in stone but ban appeals might change location Discord Opening discord to new people: We have tried looking into discord promotion options and some of them have panned out, a lot of people that join threw them have been trolls, bots, or really young kids; we are trying to avoid this as much as possible but it comes down to balancing getting people in and not making restrictions too strict (mobile auth for exp.) Getting people to invite friends: Doing things like party games to pull more people, get people to invite their friends to hang out and play. People hanging out in discord: With discord being the new fad we are obviously trying to make our discord "popular", one thought along that route is that times have changed. Previously people used to use communities to interact with their friends as there were not many ways to talk to friends vocally without it. With discord being where it is most people that are talking to there friends are doing it in private and free personal discords. Other Communities GFL: Shut down recently with this news coming out of know where we have asked to see if SG could help with anything, as of now this direction is not happening

Figured I would add some things of my own, view them as opinions or feelings, whatever you choose. When I first joined SG I was in middle school and did what every kid gamer was doing, checking the new/hot game and trying to meet friends/have fun playing with other people. At the time CS was popular and fun; community servers were a way to take the game less serious and just hang out with some people that ending up becoming my friends. I had a lot of fun times and can name plenty of moments I shared with other SG members including some I still interact with today. As an adult I don't have as much time as I used to to constantly sit on the servers or in voice chat waiting for someone to join; but my main goal with SG as an adult is to foster a place for people to enjoy the community as much as I did. It is no secret SG is not in a place that it once was, but I can say we do still have these moments; just not as often. As of now the community seems more "game night/get together" based when it comes to getting people in chat and just hanging out. Gaming has changed, there are so many games with their own servers that having things "community based" apart from a place for people to chat and hang out has sadly dissipated. There is no part of me that doesn't with I could still hop on Teamspeak and join a call with random people and just have some fun again, and maybe there are communities out there that still have this, sadly they are not home. I don't think there is one right or wrong reason for these things but just a combination of things. Yes some were avoidable and are just fuck ups on higher ups part, no one is denying that; but some are just unavoidable. With all of that said we are working towards what makes us happy, which I think can be agreed upon by any staff; a place where people can come and have some fun and build some memories. Sure there isn't 500 people in discord chatting away constantly, but we do have some fun nights for sure. Secret Hitler, Lethal Company, Game Setup roasting, GMOD TTT (mainly just tamer RDMing anyone he can), or sometimes just a bunch of people hanging out late night chatting and streaming whatever random game they are playing. In conclusion, there may not be one right way to skyrocket SG into the biggest community in the world, and who knows, maybe there is, but we are having fun, hanging out with new and old friends, and creating a place where we want to be. I invite anyone reading this post to join us on these nights and have some fun, because honestly it's not just about gaining the most players we can, but enjoying doing it along the way.

Hello everyone, I have gathered you all here to talk about someone in our community who has put in a boat load of work recently to push us farther. Not only has he been putting in time on TTT for as long as I can remember, and ever since he got TA he has been helping us make some of the biggest changes on the backend (CS2 related). We really thinks he deserves it and I'm sure he will become a necessary part of the team in no time. Please welcome Jazzy to the Board of Directors!!! Jazzy has been around SG since the dinosaurs roamed the earth so he knows his way around pretty well. We are looking forward to see what he will bring to the team and SG as a whole. This promotion should give us access to deep dive into CS2 a bit more so expect some things in the future. Welcome to the team Jazzy!!

Damon is doing quite a bit for porting, could be something to do, but other then people hopping on now and then for nostalgia we don't have many staff/players that would hop on and seed the server. Will all depend on how much time I have to seed/if there is anyone else that will tbh.

- No plan to really change the "forums" as they are fine right now. Only plan was to create a landing page to direct new/younger players who prefer discord to discord. Also a place to find and see our servers without hunting for them. - As of now we are doing really well with GMOD TTT and keep gaining regs to other places (discord, events, and even forums) and would like to keep that rolling. We plan on trying to get surf up before Christmas, though I believe we were having issues with the CS2 platform itself (everything in terms of server work seems done). I can't speak for them but I know Dominic and Caution wanted to get to work on a JB server so that will be in the works soon as well. Apart from that, with the current state of the community we are in a "build from the bottom up" mindset like we are a small or new community starting out. Build regs, run events, and just do little improvements where we can. One bonus is that we do have old regs that will jump into events and play the servers here and there. - The last two I will leave to your imagination

I would like to make a post about the future of SG specifically. A lot of people are attached to the forums and I can see that. There was never a plan to get rid of the forums and the topic of that was only curiosity it what the community thought. The main idea was just to make our website more navigate-able for the younger audience who have less experience with forums. Adding a landing page would allow for a forums button and a discord, allowing people to choose the direction they would like to interact with the community. The discord would still link to the forums for longer posts or explanations of decisions/servers/anything else that needed long form posts that would just not be good for discord. With that said almost all community’s now days have pretty inactive forums in terms of the player base and not staff/rule/how to posts. It is a large change but gaming in general is just more discord oriented now. This is not my opinion but instead shown by all of the community’s with extremely popular discords, some of which don’t have a website at all. I would also like to touch on the future of servers for SG; we are currently trying to keep a lot of effort into Gmod TTT as it has been very successful and brought a lot of members into the community so far (I’m sure no one has disagreements there). Next we are working on getting a CS2 surf server up as a few of the AOs as well as other staff have shown interest in playing it. That will hopefully be out soon, just sorting out the last few things. After that there is not a specific plan but we are looking into avenues such as PB, MG, or ZE; the main thing we would like to have before we jump on those is a dedicated set of staff that is willing to put in the time that Elf, Jazzy, and Huwa are putting into Gmod TTT. These are large player base servers and without the effort of server populating and gathering people to play the servers (a few times a week) they will probably not go anywhere. Once we find the direction we would like to go we will run with it and open another server. One of the main things we would like to avoid is opening a bunch of servers with no one trying to initiate population causing those servers to just sit dead and not gather regulars from them. This has been brought up a few times recently, the staff does hear it, and we would like to fix it. I would like to touch on a few things brought up recently, mainly about community members being a part of population or community revival. There is a lot of truth to this, a few month ago I spent some time asking people what they would like to see (server and event wise) and Minecraft, rust, and CS2 comp was brought up by a few. I then decided to do a CS2 event in which I had 3 total people show up to (we still had a lot of fun either way); most of the people that frequent this community a lot, some of which kept asking me to make this an event, did not show up. Similar goes for Minecraft and rust in which I played each quite a bit and would @ people on discord asking if anyone wanted to join while sitting in VC as well so anyone could join. I am not saying this to call out anyone specific or saying that “it doesn’t work”; I am just trying to point out that if people do want to see this community prosper and grow to hopefully be what it was once before they need to join in. Hop in call and just chat even if you are playing another game, join events, join when people are doing server pop, just have fun as a community. SG is about more then just being a big community, so many fun memories are made by a few people just playing some games together and hanging out. This goes for staff and regulars by the way, I am by no means saying staff is not at fault. Either way I hope I will see some of you in the next event or server pop we do. Also thanks to everyone who joined up for the Lethal Company event we had, I could not join because I was out of town but I heard it was a lot of fun.

New Build FCU (Fire Control Unit) is out of a Sig P365X, Frame is an Icarus Precision Evo XL, Barrel and comp are PMM (Parker Mountain Machine), Slide is a Norsso custom P365X, and Red Dot is a Trijicon RMRcc (does have lower 1/3 co witness tritium iron sights as well). Very happy with how it came out and at the size of a regular Sig P365XL it shoots about as flat as a Glock 17. Next build will be a MK18 suppressed, will be a while but I'll post it when it's done.

So... I'm going to start this with responses to the actual point of this thread so if you want info on the clusterfuck then skip to the second part. There has been multiple points back and fourth about where to go with the forums. I can say right now that the forums will probably not go anywhere. Even if we add a landing page for servers and discord there will still be a way to access them and most likely they will be up as normal. The current goal from mine and most of the AO+ eyes' is to make the navigation as simple as possible for newer players. Most kids and even adults now days are not as familiar with forums/websites as most of us are. There is a big portion of people who use discord as their primary or only source of information, the idea is not really to get rid of anything but instead just tone things down as if we are a new community with a small playerbase. Now for this thread turned into. I will start this by saying something we have said before but people seem to keep forgetting. We will always consider harassment and bullying as a serious offence and just have no tolerance for it. This seemed to be started by someone on an alt and vpn that didn't like Dominic and Caution and decided it would be a good idea to bring up random useless info (to this thread) and just generally complain. Do with that as you will, Dominic who knows who this person is and had a history with him went back and forth a few times, arguably driven by emotion each side spoke with that instead of looking at it as a broad spectrum and troll response (from each side) as they should have. Skipping over some of the details this is genuinely okay and no issue was seen. We have no problem with people voicing their own opinion whether that be factual, emotional, or outright blasphemes. It truly does not matter, Dominic actually message the BD chat asking what our opinions were with him, and even Caution stepping down as they were/have been busy and inactive with life shit. After this happened we were still okay with more people responding and voicing their own opinions, like I said we don't care and you may speak your own free will given it doesn't break the rules (for obvious reasons). Now the issue began when Lynx, an AO tried to tell the people typing +1 to stop, the point of this was that this thread was already off course but the people typing this were not giving any actual input and just posting useless shit. The reaction button does exist and can be used to get your point across. Either way after posting this the people that were banned started to harass and post hurtful shit directed at Lynx. People also decided to take this to discord where people were pasting similar stuff and continuing their hurtful comments directly at Lynx, not the staff as a whole, or the community as a whole, but directly harassing a 19 y/o as each person being an adult that should genuinely know better. Here comes my perspective; I was at work when most of this happened, only getting a message from Dominic before most of this started asking about my opinion on him stepping down, which he did entertain. Shortly after this I saw the rest of the posts on the forums and responded to a few people on discord during the whole ordeal. The team had a meeting while I was still at work in which I backed almost all of you saying not to make a decision and came outright saying that I didn't agree with people being banned. This was until I got home and filled myself in my checking chat logs and seeing full grown adults harassing a 19 y/o on repeat about doing his job at his rank (mind you most of the people doing it wrote the damn rules and took place in the banning of GG, a similar situation). I really didn't understand how much drama came out of this for no reason and how a group of people piggybacked on Lynx for no reason, what everyone did was actual harassment and is just unacceptable. I backed almost every single one of you individually without knowing the situation because I felt like there was no way you could act like this to someone who is almost a child, yet I was proven wrong. If anyone would like to talk feel free to DM me privately, but this shit was childish and just inhumane. To inform everyone Kable was the only one permanently banned, the rest were given a 3 day ban.

So some of this stuff will be pulled from a recent BD section thread but I would like to put it here to get more opinions/see what people think. I will start with the forums b/c I have less to talk about and it seems we all agree. Forums: So I think everyone is under the same agreement that forums are a little outdated and most communities, even ones with a large server and player base just use discord as a primary; to give examples: HJune (rust), Blooprint (rust), Hypixel (minecraft), GFL (cs), ext. At this point I don't think the forums should become read only or wiped as they are still used for large form conversations (like this one) or even information about a specific topic (how to play a certain difficult gamemode), they can also be used as a hyperlink from discord if people want full details about an event or other thing we announce; with that said I think that's all they should really be used for. I love @jazzy's idea with the landing page having the few servers we have at the top with a bar at the very top to get to certain locations as needed. Only thing I would add is a big discord button or link of some sort to get people directly there without jumping threw hoops. Discord: This is the one I have put the most thought into recently (and work), I also think it should be done ASAP as it will soon (if not already) become the backbone of our community. Firstly I think we need to get rid of a lot of channels like people mentioned before. I actually brought this up to @Dominicabout a week ago privately as I think it hinders us quite a bit. We are a small enough community where I think having 1-3 basic text channels would be ideal. For discussion channels I would bring it down to: #general, #food, and #bots (bots for the obvious reason, food because it is actually used quite a bit), as for game related channels I would get rid of CS2 as it is not ever used and honestly just keep #gmod-ttt for now. The other channels are unnecessary and as @Revengasaid, we can just add game channels as needed if the specific talk becomes too much for #general. Now for voice channels I think we have too many as well. In my opinion we would be perfectly fine and probably better with 2-3 general voice channels and keep the abilities for "join to create" private voice channels. They are not really used all that often in the first place. The last major thing I would bring up is info/announcement channels; in my opinion we have too many of these for no reason. Rules-and-info and roles-menu can be merged into one channel just for bot issues (they are necessary), announcements and server-notifications can also be merged into one (we use server specific roles tags when calling for sever notifications anyway), mind you this also could just be done in the #gmod-ttt channel. @Iotamentioned this but the #bd-discussion channel is not used so we can remove that, as well as combining community-input, suggestions, map suggestions, and anything else that falls into that category in one suggestion "thread" channel. We can keep admin applications separate but appeal bans, admin complaints, and player complaints can all be done with help tickets for the time being as we really don't get any. There are some other things that also need to be done on the backend of discord as they were added when we were a much larger community and needed more bots, moderators, and also needed to log certain chat things. I will probably go threw this on my own time but just for the sake of transparency, we have 50 or so roles and random bots in the discord that need cleaned up; this causes random permission issues with channel categories and more that we just don't need at our current community size.

If you guys couldn't tell its coming to a close on the FOTM/MC server, I will keep the server up for a few more days b/c we have it. Thanks for everyone that played and enjoyed, it went well so will probably be doing it again soon. Feel free to check out our new FOTM RUST!!