The Problems that SG Servers Face in 2020

[blackwolf0005]

@Amazing I would report the crash bug were it not around for three years and still not fixed. It’s been recognized by just about everyone who plays the TTT server for more than a couple of minutes, as it’s pretty hard to ignore. And don’t try to shove the problem onto the players, because like I already said, it’s your problem. It doesn’t affect me, because I just join back, but it does affect the server since a whole lot of people leave after a crash. So no, I will not file a bug report and your attempt to shame me will not work either. And though you may be right about the chat-spam, I hope you realize that undercover admins usually get called out in a matter of minutes regardless if they have done anything because it is not hard to scroll though someone’s lists of names if you haven’t seen the user before. Again, being undercover does nothing and may instead cause more people to go an revenge-rdm. And the people who mass-rdm don’t really care about bans in the first place because they don’t play frequently, only coming on to be dicks to everyone.

[Amazing]

7 minutes ago, blackwolf0005 said:

And don’t try to shove the problem onto the players, because like I already said, it’s your problem. It doesn’t affect me, because I just join back, but it does affect the server since a whole lot of people leave after a crash. So no, I will not file a bug report and your attempt to shame me will not work either.

Since when did I try to shame you?? Nor do I play TTT alot so I wouldn't know if it does crash. I was just saying you could make one not telling you, you have to make one.

 

  

6 minutes ago, blackwolf0005 said:

Again, being undercover does nothing and may instead cause more people to go an revenge-rdm.

How does being undercover have to do with revenge rdming? The two dots don't connect.

[20 scrolls]

1 hour ago, blackwolf0005 said:

when admins are present, the old rule of, “You have to see it to punish” applies, and even if you do make a player complaint, it has to be a very big rule-breaking circumstance to warrant a punishment from the SG team.

We admins have to see the situation, not only to prevent from false punishing, but to make sure it wasn't just an accidental rule break. If admins were to act, purely on what players are saying, there would be much more false punishment giving, and it would be very heavily abuse-able.

Under admin protocol we are required to give warnings to a rule breaker, we simply cannot ban someone for one rule breaking (this does not apply for cheating, massfreekill/RDM and leave, doxxing, etc.),  so based on that, if you make a player complaint on one dude killing you for no reason off the start of the round, we cannot apply punishment to the player.

1 hour ago, blackwolf0005 said:

and the increased influx of people who are using alternate accounts or even their primary accounts to rdm or break various other rules and then leave, or stay, in which case they usually aren’t even punished.

We have a plugin called sourcesleuth which prevents banned users to join under the same IP on an alt, unfortunately we cannot prevent VPN users from joining (while there is a vpn blocker option, that apparently cannot apply to custom vpns, and some of our regular players use a VPN for security purposes, so it would just kill down the population.)
 

 

1 hour ago, blackwolf0005 said:

 

Many of the people who rule-break, even in front of admins, as it gives them a kick, rarely ever play the servers. For example, certain people who were banned relatively recently like Chris, zainab, FLORIDA MAN, and others, are far from regulars and the time that they are banned might as well be nonexistent. The next time they come onto the server, maybe a month later, it’s the same behavior, every time, and until a perma-ban is issued, they are a constant nuisance to everyone who comes to just play the game. Plus, permanent bans are extremely hard to issue, and the justification for doing so is hard to warrant. Admittedly, once a permanent ban is given, it does solve the problem, but it only bans one person

We simply can't just perm ban someone for rdming, and we can't stop someone from rejoining and rdming, as we cannot control humans.
 

 

1 hour ago, blackwolf0005 said:

There are a variety of problems that I see here, all of which I am certain will be disagreed with by someone or another, but I have to indulge. For one, the motivation for becoming an admin has become less to maintain the health of the servers, but rather as a personal shield from rule-breaking. What I mean by this is that multiple admins oftentimes hear and see things happening, but neglect to try and confront the issue. Many of them are just there to play the game, and use their status as admin to instantaneously punish anyone who would make the unwise decision to free-damage, rdm, or otherwise do something against the rules against them. Because of this, the SG servers are filled with administrators unwilling or not motivated enough to actually try and fulfill the original purpose of their role. Maybe I’m wrong, and I’m somehow seeing a minority that are only there to try and play the game with their elevated ranking, but I do not think that is the case as I can only think of a handful of people who literally bust-ass to try and prevent people from getting shat on by rule-breakers.

Most people who apply for admin are there because they have been playing the servers for a while, are tired of rule breakers, and just wanna help the server out. You can't blame us for simply wanting to just play the servers, and being on the look out for reports in admin chat. You also cannot blame us for just being focused on rule breakers, while most admins do help make the servers fun, we mostly focus on keeping the server for rules breakers, so that they don't ruin the experience of others.

 

1 hour ago, blackwolf0005 said:

At the same time, admin applications, while not necessarily lenient, have been made into a manner where you don’t really need to know much about the actual person to vote. Someone could act completely nice on the server, make a very good application, be a regular, and they would be accepted. But when off the record, (and I am not saying that this happens) we really don’t know how these people actually act.

Yes this is true that we don't know how someone acts behind the screen, or how they act somewhere else other than SG, but at the end of the day, this is just a simple staff rank on an online community, the BDs are not gonna run a background check on each applicant just to see if they're nice enough for admin.

If an admin is however acting like this somewhere connected to SG, than you can report them to IAs+ or make an admin complaint on them.  

[blackwolf0005]

@splaydAgain, I already said that my experience only applies to the TTT servers, but from what I've heard about the JB servers, you aren't lying. But in any case, my points still stand about the admins rather using their status as a personal shield. I wouldn't have a problem if they could at least just try and do something about the inflow of rdmers, because the TTT server has basically turned into deathmatch server whenever someone with <1000 karma gets on. I appreciate your input, and I don't disagree with much of what you said, but these problems are still prevalent, and are not being addressed. Not that I want admins ban anyone and everyone, but I just want them to do-something. You have no idea how enraging it is to see somebody go unpunished after they kill multiple people but no admin was there to see it. Let's wrap this up, there's too many people replying to this thread and I have to get to them as well.

[blackwolf0005]

@RygorI get your perspective on the matter, but take mine into account; every day there are usually admins on at all times that I play, maybe none at ten-minute intervals, but there is usually at least one on. Now, say somebody comes and rdms you and another person. That's already two rdms. Then, you report to the admin, who hasn't seen it happen and needs to spec next round to get evidence. The next round, the same person goes and kills multiple other people, let's say three people, by a conservative estimate. By the time they get banned, five people have been killed for someone's sick pleasure and they've been banned for maybe a day at most, which might as well be nonexistent since they only come on once a month. My point in the original text, that the bans are not sufficient punishments unless they are permed, applies here. Five people die for a ban that doesn't do shit. And this is not taking into account a situation in which someone mass rdms when an admin is not on, killing even more people. Not saying they need to be permed for small transgressions, but this is the equivalent of no punishment at all.

 

To address your perspective on knowing the characters of people applying for admin, have a look at the three examples of shitty behavior on the parts of admins that I also provided. Dominic's ban, the Discord riot, and the screenshot should already be sufficient proof that at the very least, some people who should not be admins are slipping in. Don't even try to tell me that there is nothing wrong with the way that we accept in admins.

 

And as for the part about !calladmin, I give up. I somehow feel that there is nothing I can do to convince you that it is vestigial, and I suppose that it's purpose is okay enough to warrant a text command.

[Steven.]

I'm gonna try and be as thorough about this and give my opinion as an admin who's been here for over half year a now and a member for around 2 1/2 years, this might be a little lengthy so sorry. 

 

2 hours ago, blackwolf0005 said:

While by no means I am stating that what I am stating is fact, I want to delve into what I think is killing these servers, from the neglect of administrators to do their job, 

 

Rulebreakers

 

On the TTT server, various different people will come on at least once a day and commit their short experience on the server to free killing as many people as they can.

 

When admins are present, the old rule of, “You have to see it to punish” applies

 

The worst part is, the punishments they receive, such as bans, aren’t even harmful to them, since they play rarely and likely have alts. The bans might as well not even be there, and speaking of which, this leads us to my next topic.

There are moments when people join and kill 1-2 people and then leave but that is not enough reason to ban someone for RDM and Leave because as an admin you have no idea why that person killed those players and you also have no idea why they left the server because it simply could've been their internet crashing or their parents busting in their room. Unfortunately there are going to be less admins than usual because of summer ending so that results in 1-2 admins trying to control the server and be able to handle and punish 4-5 rdmers at a time which is extremely hard so they're simply overwhelmed with the amount of spectating they have to do. Majority of our admins who are very active know of such rdmers who join just to cause issues so they aren't as lenient as they are to players who simply don't understand the rules. You can't say our protocol needs to be more severe since we've always have had this protocol and it's never been an issue since it always resulted in some sort of punishment. 

THERE IS A PROTOCOL WE ARE REQUIRED TO FOLLOW SO CLAIMING WE NEGLECT TO DO OUR JOB IS INCORRECT.

 

2 hours ago, blackwolf0005 said:

Ineffective Punishments

 

The next time they come onto the server, maybe a month later, it’s the same behavior, every time, and until a perma-ban is issued, they are a constant nuisance to everyone who comes to just play the game. 

 

Alluding to my point earlier of most players not having forum accounts and not knowing how to record, it’s very difficult for these people to be banned.

 

 But the punishments need to be more severe, or we need preventative methods. 

There is ALWAYS a way an admin can be contacted both in the server and outside the server that I'm sure you are well aware of which is our "!calladmin" feature which pings any admin that happens to have that server notifications on and plenty of them "farm" the call admins. You can also type in team chat with the "@" sign before what you have to say if you need to speak to any admin that happens to be on the server at the moment and 9/10 admins will respond back in admin chat saying they'll spectate the guy so saying admins are negligent just is not true in my eyes.

 

There is literally a subforum under Player Complaints that we worked on walking you step by step on how to record rule breakers and I personally always take my time to answer any questions that players have when it comes to recording players or any rules that there are. There is no way to be more severe for punishment except extending the amount of time the person is banned which we already do for players who are known rdmers. A preventative method that there could be is simply letting admins know that there is someone breaking the rules instead of saying "OMG he rdmed me" try talking to us and explain the situation and we will handle it appropriately.

 

2 hours ago, blackwolf0005 said:

The Lack Of Community

 

Social relationships in games are what bring people together and create good times. However, the SG servers basically lack this. 

 

Most admins themselves, the people who should be helping the servers along and the community, are basically mute.

 

Sweaty try harding isn’t my thing, and the fun times you create with the people you play with is what really makes the servers gemstones, at least in certain scenarios.

Personally I don't use my mic that often because I don't find a reason to unless I find it absolutely necessary like to call someone kos or to deescalate a situation between two members, because sometimes I just want to play the server without being targeted by other members just because I'm an admin. Yes, having members interact with each other is a good thing that every server should have but I believe that our server tends to have times throughout the day where you have the mute sweats and the talkative members, but personally I think the majority of our players interact plenty enough because whenever I'm online there's always people talking. But like you said you aren't a sweaty try hard and that's your own personal play style and you can't force others to play like you so claiming this an "issue" is pushing it in my opinion.

 

2 hours ago, blackwolf0005 said:

Server Crashes

 

This issue isn’t new either. It was here when I started in 2017, and is still here today. Believe me when I say that I know nothing about computers nor servers, so I have no solutions to this issue, but this is one of the major problems that at least the TTT server faces. A crash every two hours, cutting the player count in half, is devastating, and has to be fixed if SG wants to come close to EGO on the player count in the server browser. I do believe that it is something that has to be fixed by the server owners,, as when a crash occurs, it is due to the server, not the players, as everyone is disconnected but no one’s actual game crashes. That much, I am sure of.

I will agree the server crashing is never a good thing and that's why we try our best to make edits to any plugins or remove any maps that result in the server crashing, no one's server is 100% stable even the best communities with the best servers even crash at times. This is something that we work endlessly on trying to prevent future crashes but blaming the crashes on the managers just isn't fair since you don't see the endless hours both @Trazzand @Gentoo put into the server trying to make it as stable and fun as possible.

 

If I'm being truly honest what you said is coming from a very pretentious perspective 

[blackwolf0005]

@20 scrollsI've already said before that I get it's a rule that you need to see it in order to punish it, and it's getting very heavy on my fingers to have to re-type it over and over again to different people. Honestly, I should create an FAQ for this shit. But past the joke, I disagree with this rule; because of this and the protocol that requires you to issue warnings before you can actually punish, it's creating multiple stages which admins have to go through punish someone who very clearly needs a slay or ban, immediately. You can see a guy rdm someone and you can't immediately punish, which is just-stupid. I would rather a few accidental slays on people who didn't deserve it occasionally than having to wait twenty minutes for one admin to ban the mass rdmer who's been killing everyone. This isn't an exaggeration either, it happens about once a week. And I'm not flaming admins, if anything I feel sympathetic for having to go through so much trouble to do something so simple because of "protocol." Why not change the rules so that the enforcers can actually do their jobs as enforces?

 

As for what you said about perma-banning, I literally didn't see any disagreements. I said it was hard to get a perm on someone, you said it was hard to get a perm on someone, are you just making me type shit out so that my fingers burn off?

 

As for admin applications, you may be right that original intentions start out with wanting to help, but I believe that it slowly degrades into just using your ranking as a way to instantly punish someone who does you wrong. And at least know a bit about a person, like play with them for a good amount of time and know that they've got honest hearts before you let them become an admin, because Dom already got banned, a bunch of others deleted a discord server for fun, erasing months of work for the people on it, and Wavy called me a faggot because I beat him in Dead By Daylight. So I do believe there is an issue with the admin application system, and I think you would be hard-pressed to disagree.

[blackwolf0005]

@Steven.I don't mean to be an asshole, or come off as a dick, but please, read the whole fucking thing. I never said that all admins neglect to do their job just that some do. I never disagreed that it is difficult to ascertain whether or not a kill was a rdm, just that the punishments have to be more effective to prevent rdm from being purposefully done by someone who enjoys it. I also never said that you should neglect protocol, just that the current protocol is causing there to be way too many steps that is preventing admins from acting quicker on a rule-breaker. Plus, I've already said my thoughts about !calladmin, and that it is inconsistent, and that is just something that has to be accepted. Also, your response to the "Ineffective Punishments" portion wasn't even a response to that portion specifically, it was about something completely different, !calladmin. I was talking about the inability of the current punishments to keep out or prevent rule-breakers from entering, or doing their craft. I've also said that the little amount of talking is not the problem, it's the lack of community between the players. With new players constantly coming in and joining, there has to be community to tie people together and help each other out. Some people could even tell other people how to download recording software, which would combat the issue of rule-breaking. But this doesn't exist in the TTT server, because people just don't talk. None of them are interested in trying to have interactions, and it's horrible for the health of the server, as returning players are becoming fewer and fewer. I haven't seen Crow in a loooooong time. As for the server crashes, you're jumping to the assumption that I am somehow directly insulting the people who work on the servers; I am not. I am pointing out an issue that has been around for a long time, and I think is detrimental to the health of at least the TTT server. And you calling me pretentious is bullshit.

 

As an added note, if someone makes another reply that is answered by the original text or by one of the replies that I gave to someone else, I will neglect to respond. You people are causing my fingers to fall off. Seriously, read the whole thing and then say something, because I put a lot of time into making sure that nothing would be misconstrued or otherwise flat out wrong.

[Gentoo]

Just a few things I'd like to address on behalf of TTT. @Trazz is welcome to chime in and correct me or add anything where needed, as he's the more experienced of the two of us.

 

Many of the points that you've brought up are very real issues that we recognize. Every one of these things is something that we've taken into account and discussed to one extent or another. I see that you've highlighted a multitude of issues but offered very little in the way of solutions. I'm not trying to knock you in saying this, as finding solutions to issues like this is one of the most difficult things we've wrestled with as a team.

 

Much like you, I started playing TTT about 4 years ago, and loved the hell out of our server. While I sometimes look back and think it's just the nostalgia, it becomes evident when issues like these are highlighted that the server was very different back then, and in some aspects could be considered more enjoyable. Now I'm going to address the rulebreakers, punishments, and admins points together here so bear with me. Admining then looked very different from how admins choose to and are able to operate. While this more laid back approach was very effective at deterring and punishing rule-breakers, it wasn't the most accurate or fair way of handling things. I can recall more than a handful of times being false slayed myself from some he-said she-said scenario. These false negatives are what caused higher ups to take interest in redefining protocol, and a select few situations really forced them to lay the law down in this regard. When an admin tells you that they can't act on something they didn't see they are being 100% honest with you. This style of admining drastically limits the number of situations an admin can handle with their powers unless they choose to sit in spec all day. Is every admin constantly trying to seek out and terminate rulebreakers? Probably not. Could some of them do a better job sometimes? Maybe. Regardless, admins are held to a fairly professional standard, and I think that your observation that many of them are "in it for themselves" could be a little misguided.

 

With that being said, we haven't just written off this issue as the inevitable. We've looked at reincorporating elements of previous TTT admining, we've considered numerous other solutions. I can't say anything concrete in regard to what you will or won't see, but please bear with us as this is something we are actively trying to address.

 

In regards to Lack of Community, it's something that I've personally noticed, but is very difficult to address. We can't really force our staff to talk to people, and we sure as hell aren't going to force our players to. It's come up as a discussion among our CAs a number of times, and we're still open to readdress the topic or consider any proposed solutions, but it seems to just be how our server has changed over time.

[blackwolf0005]

@GentooI know that I’ve been pretty lacking terms of solutions, but I wouldn’t have made this post if I felt that it was at least being addressed. This month, like I stated earlier, has been a real fuck-up. There’s been more rule-breakers than usual and multiple admins have had drama, including a discord riot that resulted in one of them getting doxed, and it just seems like everyone is kiting over these problems. I’m not trying to disagree with you, but there really need to be changes to the rules and the server, as it’s getting unbearable. Thanks for the response.

 

P.S. Fire Wavy