[Answered] The upper echelon experience

[The Real Slim Jim]

Hey so i was curious how much time the higher echelon of sg's staff spend playing the servers.

 

Mainly talking about Jb and TTT (crackhouse too ig) as those are the more involved servers when playing.

 

Does being a sm+ kinda kill your ability to play the servers and have a good time without everyone fangirling over you bc you are staff. 

 

I kinda expect that most who still play as a bd use alts 

But bds if you dont mind answering whats your normal playtime like on a regular basis?

[Mace]

On 3/8/2021 at 9:08 PM, The Real Slim Jim said:

Hey so i was curious how much time the higher echelon of sg's staff spend playing the servers.

 

Mainly talking about Jb and TTT (crackhouse too ig) as those are the more involved servers when playing.

 

Does being a sm+ kinda kill your ability to play the servers and have a good time without everyone fangirling over you bc you are staff. 

Guess I'll jump in after a week of crickets in here.

For me I'm obviously not as active as I used to be as an Admin during the summer but as you climb the ranks, the more responsibility lays on your shoulders hence not having a ton of time to sit down and play on the servers hours on end.

When I was promoted to CA & MKTM I lost some time I had to play on the servers but being in the middle of school + work I have even less time.

My availability hasn't really been affected too much *yet* since my promotion to SM, mostly been due to external factors. (School & Work)

Now I try and come on when I don't have work pre much so I'm still semi-relatively active.

 

The occasional fangirling can be annoying but at the same time it's nice having people know ya and get excited when they see you come on the servers at times.

It keeps the tone of the lobby light and brings enjoyment for players when they see a Higher-up join the server so that's a +.

Spoiler

This really should be in Off-Topic more than anything but lets just say I forgot how and I mark this as answered. 

I'll leave it unlocked though if others want to answer.

 

[delirium]

You have about 10% less time overall to play depending on the server and the discussions /work involved in maintaining it but it's mostly people's want to play their server at that point. Sure fresh SMs may not be 'jaded' or burnt out on the game mode but over time most people's drive to play their server goes down as the amount of bullshit associated with which ever server theyre aware of goes up.

 

On top of that joining a server into certain groups of people is just unpleasant at some point between CA-BD because you literally get bombarded by people looking to stand out by trying to be your best friend when you literally may have seen them twice in your life. 

 

I'm not sure about the current group of BDs but during my time on the board I never used an alt... I just didn't play as much at points on certain servers and would usually only come on late at night to avoid most of the bullshit.

[BoM]

3 hours ago, delirium said:

On top of that joining a server into certain groups of people is just unpleasant at some point between CA-BD because you literally get bombarded by people looking to stand out by trying to be your best friend when you literally may have seen them twice in your life. 

 

I'm not sure about the current group of BDs but during my time on the board I never used an alt... I just didn't play as much at points on certain servers and would usually only come on late at night to avoid most of the bullshit.

^

[dolo]

I was hoping a bd would say I like to go onto jb and just mfk or smt 

[delirium]

27 minutes ago, dolo said:

I was hoping a bd would say I like to go onto jb and just mfk or smt 

There was a point shortly after death games were added to JB in 2016 or 17 where @Caution and I went on to prove a point and sent everyone to iso for 3-4 rounds and played fish in a barrel and 'catch the grenade' until everyone died with no LR's which is about as close as you'll get to a BD breaking rules like mass free killing 

[BoM]

35 minutes ago, delirium said:

There was a point shortly after death games were added to JB in 2016 or 17 where @Caution and I went on to prove a point and sent everyone to iso for 3-4 rounds and played fish in a barrel and 'catch the grenade' until everyone died with no LR's which is about as close as you'll get to a BD breaking rules like mass free killing 

If a BD is playing in a server they are there as an agent of chaos.

[TheZZL]

4 hours ago, delirium said:

You have about 10% less time overall to play depending on the server and the discussions /work involved in maintaining it but it's mostly people's want to play their server at that point. Sure fresh SMs may not be 'jaded' or burnt out on the game mode but over time most people's drive to play their server goes down as the amount of bullshit associated with which ever server theyre aware of goes up.

 

On top of that joining a server into certain groups of people is just unpleasant at some point between CA-BD because you literally get bombarded by people looking to stand out by trying to be your best friend when you literally may have seen them twice in your life. 

 

I'm not sure about the current group of BDs but during my time on the board I never used an alt... I just didn't play as much at points on certain servers and would usually only come on late at night to avoid most of the bullshit.

 

^ Agreed, I'm not a board member but it still rings true. I miss the days of getting online, constantly rebelling and wiping the floor, and doing homework casually. Now it's a different because if I see a problem I'll want to fix it, or if CT side is unbalanced I feel like I need to swap over and help. That second point though, man, some people just say one word and it makes me want to DC (INB4 "zzl u were like that").
 

Now more of my time is spent in the staff discord discussing/working on stuff, administrating "babysitting" in-game, or getting tired of CS and playing cod

 

[Caution]

I think that the workload increasing = playtime decreasing can definitely be true in some aspects. As basically a manager of managers, a BD's workload can get even heavier when we had ranks like AO staffed full of people with...well we'll call them 'unique personalities'. Because that HAS to get handled at the BD level, we can't delegate that out at all. Now that we've opened up ranks a bit with some more specific purposes, it's been a lot better.

 

The other thing (for me, anyways) is that I've been playing SG for 14 years; a forum member for 13 years; a higher up for 11 years; a BD for 8 years; and the owner for 6 years (something like that). It goes without saying that the people I played games with all those years ago are mostly gone. While I still keep in touch with a few people from back in the day through various platforms, as life pulled me further and further away due to growing up, graduating high school, joining the military, deploying, etc., I felt like I was constantly having to make new groups of friends, as the old ones were just constantly cycling in and out through bans or just life catching up. 95% of the fun of playing games online is playing them with people you know and enjoy, or people you know and want to troll - the other 5% is the actual game itself. With that being said, it stopped becoming fun for me for the most part. Throw in having to learn a new game (CSGO), and it's kinda meh. I'm not saying it's not fun at all now, but I feel like I'm having to work for the fun instead of it just coming naturally, if that makes sense.

 

Some of the most fun I've ever had in my life was 2008 - 2009 prison break with the old school, simple maps...and the few summers we had a CSS scrim server that we had completely full all day every day full of SG people. Think that was like 2012 - 2013 ish. 

[Phoenix_]

Back when I was CA/LA, JB and BHOP, the servers I pretty much exclusively played ended up being more fun for me in the discussion side compared to actually playing. When looking back on my time as staff here, I have more fond memories of ET meetings and "Marketing Team" meetings trying to revive the team with the boys and hours long discussions in the JB chat with @fantasticover what was to come for the future of Jailbreak in a time where we were trying to revolutionize our version of the gamemode, as compared to actually just playing the game. BHOP discussions with @Trazzover what maps to add, features to add, and what maps to do for events was a whole lot more fun to do compared to actually playing the game especially in an era where I think SG had its most toxic BHOP regs to date. 

 

This is not to say I didn't play the servers, but compared to being a reg when I was playing every day, my playtime definitely decreased as I rose higher in the ranks. I feel this is probably because the higher you go, it feels more and more like a job compared to pure fun. You obviously still have fun doing it, it's just not the same when you're doing it for pure fun and not much more than hanging out with your amigos.