So, I saw some people discussing my previous post in chat today. The sentiment seemed to be "yeah, his post was a bit emotional but he had some good points." So, I figured it might be worth my time to re-write my post, this time with just the good points and not as much emotion.
First, jtipton, I will not be getting on TS to discuss these things with leadership. Isn't one of the purposes of the forums providing a place players and leadership can discuss things? I'd rather type than speak, especially in a community of strangers, and pushing TS so hard just makes me less interested in being a part of this community. Very discouraging to see someone flaired as a "community manager" respond to eight paragraphs with all of sixteen words.
For background: I first started playing BC2 on the PS3 back in 2011-2012 or so. Logged 330 hours or so, and stopped playing as the PS3 fell out of fashion. In 2018, I picked up BC2 on Steam, and started playing again. I now have 1,005 hours played on PC, and 668 of those hours I have spent playing on eGO's 24/7 Heavy Metal server. Those 668 hours played are the experience I am speaking from here.
Here's Letherfut's Top Five Problems with the eGO 24/7 Heavy Metal Server;
#1: Baserapers.
The W/K/B system is hilariously ineffectual against baserapers. This game has a tiny playerbase, relatively speaking, it should be easy to completely weed out the rulebreaking subset of BC2 playerbase. There will always be big spikes of noobs whenever the game goes on sale on Steam, and with those noobs come people ignorant of the rules, but I see a baseraper on the server once every 1-3 hours like goddamn clockwork, Steam sale or no. On top of that, once a week or so, you'll get a match where there is no admin online, one person starts baseraping, and other people follow that person's example. Not to mention the population of players who enjoy baseraping, but know not to do it while an admin is online. cough coughRadenzcough
So, why aren't all the baserapers banned from eGO? Simple, because they get EVERY opportunity to learn they can only baserape when no admins are online.
First, they get warned. At least half of baserapers aren't even going to notice this in the chat, fresh messages in the chat disappear so quickly. If they DO notice, it's a heads up of "Hey, this player with the same clan tag as the server just told you not to do that" from which they can easily infer "oh, so there's no rule enforcement when nobody with that clan tag is online." If I was someone who got a kick out of baseraping, or who just wanted to pad my K/D/secure an easy win, when I got warned, I would start baseraping MORE, because being warned told me exactly when the rules will or won't be enforced. Radenz, for example. I know Radenz as a baseraper. I spent several matches last night, while no admins were on, having to fend him off from the uncap at regular intervals. When an admin joined later, he stopped baseraping. Dude clearly understands exactly how to avoid having to face consequences for his actions.
Then, they get kicked, which is functionally just another warning, albeit one that can't go by unnoticed in the chat. The same conclusion, "Hm, that wasn't an auto-admin kick, I guess I can baserape whenever nobody with the eGO clan tag is online then," can easily be drawn.
If, somehow, they're dumb enough to continue baseraping while an eGO member is online, they'll get banned. Now, I use to not take an issue with this part of the process. I guess my naive self sort of assumed the default ban time was something that would, like, have an effect, but it isn't. Apparently, even as an eGO, you can only temporarily ban people. Holy shit, if this isn't one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. How do you expect to deter people from breaking the rules, when there isn't even anyone there to enforce the rules half the time, and the other half of the time, nobody has the capability to enforce the rules in a permanent fashion? This kills my interest in being an admin even more than it had already been killed. This turns the "ban" part of "w/k/b" into functionally just another warning. If a baseraper gets to this point without learning that they can just wait til no admins are online, it's probably because they're having difficulty breathing and blinking at the same time.
#2 W/K/B.
This is basically a continuation of #1, but this time focusing on the W/K/B system as a whole rather than just baserapers. I gather that this system is in place to give players the benefit of the doubt, and is an eGO universal thing. I'm not here to say W/K/B is a bad system in general, nor that eGO should change it clan wide. I am here to say that W/K/B is entirely too lenient of a policy to use on the 24/7 HM server. Using W/K/B on BC2 is like trying to skim a layer of oil off of a swimming pool, using a colander. If you want rulebreakers to actually sit up and pay attention, warn them with a longer than one week ban. That still communicates "you can baserape when no eGO's are online", but it also communicates "we're ****ing hardasses about the rules and you better watch out."
#3 Passive play.
I use to really like the rule "do not camp in the uncap with vehicles' because in theory it should curb passive play and encourage teams to go on the offensive even if they are losing badly. However, I recently learned this rule is actually in place to prevent people from having a reason to shoot into the uncap. Just... wow. Do you want it to be allowed to shoot back at a tank camping on the edge of the uncap, or do you want people to not camp in the uncap with tanks? Thankfully, this contradiction isn't an issue, because nobody ever enforces the "no camping in the uncap with vehicles" rule.
So, since none of the rules address passive play, let me explain why they should. The first 45 seconds of each match are the most critical; 90% of the time, the team that captures B first wins. Once one team caps B, and clears out all resistance, the other team gives up. Most players go recon, all the tanks start camping, at this point the match is lost even though only 2-5 minutes have passed. It's not fun to be on the team that gives up, and it can get pretty boring on the winning team sometimes. However, most teams never realize that literally all it takes to cap B is taking out the AA and pushing a couple tanks in. Most teams don't get to find this out, because the tank players who camp keep their tanks longer than the tanks who push, so eventually all your tanks are occupied by people who want to camp. Once the tank-campers have your tanks, there is zero fun left to be had on the losing team. Anyone who plays on the server enough to be on these forums already understands this, so I'm just reiterating it so that maybe, just maybe, something changes policy-wise in response to this meta.
#4:
We're getting into dead horse territory, but people breaking the rules while no admin is online. This is pretty self-explanatory, and a source of frustration I think some people replying to my last post missed. Shoutout to Tikkun for noticing and understanding that point of mine, and even pointing that out to Iron Kaiser. Frustration with the lack of consequences experienced by people breaking the rules while no admins are online, was my primary motivation to become an eGO admin, and one of my bigger frustrations in my previous post. Most people replying to my previous post seemed to have missed this, or at least didn't address it.
#5:
The entire process for someone becoming an eGO admin. I'll break this down into a few different points.
- The server's "we are in need of admins" message. Tikkun made a post about this, right here on the forums, well over a month ago, and nothing came of that, so I suppose it's just my turn to piss in this particular wind here. This message is so useless. It makes it sound like, somewhere on the Edge-Gamers site, there's a form or something where you apply to be an admin, when in reality the process for becoming an admin is so much more convoluted than that.
- The soft requirement that you use Teamspeak. This was one of the larger reasons I lost interest in becoming an admin. I don't use Teamspeak. I'm not interested in installing it, just so I can use it for ONE server in ONE game. If I was turned off to the admin process by this, no doubt other people have, too, so who knows how many admins the server has missed out on because of this. Probably not too many, but definitely more than one. I thought about installing Teamspeak, forcing myself to use it even though I despise any kind of vocal communication not done in person, but I realized I would have just stopped using it once I reached the rank of eGO.
- The ban request system. Cool, a way for =(e)=s to do something, even though they have no admin privileges! Too bad Trubble never bans people for more than three days, completely defeating the purpose of requesting they be banned at all. The ban request system means that rulebreakers reported by =(e)=s likely aren't even on the server when they're banned, and I'm just a broken record when I say that the odds aren't good that these temp-banned people will try to join the server within that three day window.
"Well, Fut, you're talking mad shit, you gonna offer some solutions or just bitch?"
This is a good point, and something I neglected in my last post. Here are my proposed solutions to the problems outlined above.
#1: A new, baseraper-specific rework of W/K/B.
The first time someone baserapes, warn them BY NAME using !yell, and NEVER use the chat to warn people. Chat messages are missed all the time, it's physically impossible to not notice a !yell message. This step provides a guaranteed heads-up to players baseraping out of ignorance that they need to stop, giving the benefit of the doubt eGO clearly values so much, while still being firm against people who are baseraping maliciously. Second offense, ban them for a month. They were warned using !yell, there is zero excuse for them to baserape again. Banning them for a month retains some benefit of the doubt in being a temp ban, while still being very firm in that a month is a long time. Upon their third offense, ban them permanently. Anyone willing to wait a month, just to be able to baserape again, deserves zero benefit of the doubt.
#2: A tweak to W/K/B protocol specific to the 24/7 HM server
Require admins to use !yell to warn, to guarantee no warnings are missed in chat. Warn people by name, to add a little weight to the threat warning people carries. If someone needs to be banned, they should be banned for at least a week. Banning someone for three days is paying a $10 parking ticket: annoying, but completely inconsequential.
#3: Rules against any form of camping in the uncap, and against people camping in tanks.
Definitely my least important and least feasible proposed solution. Making a rule against camping in tanks would make for a solid couple months of admins having to root out players like CCCP_Oliver and Chris_n_Edgar, who are both regulars and notorious tank campers, which would be annoying for everybody. However, I think it wouldn't really shake up the suffocatingly stale meta on the server. This would be an end to matches where US gets B and C, then a bunch of people in B spend 20 minutes exchanging munitions with three tanks camping on A treeline. Instead, US would get B and C, then have to fight for their life to keep B from being overrun by enemy tanks. Then RU would have to defend B with the same vigor. I think we can all agree that the funnest rounds are the ones where the battle constantly goes back and forth, and the winning team scrapes out a win with less than 100 tickets left.
This also curbs against recon camping in the uncap, or someone spending the whole round on the uncap AA, two types of players that are more hindrance than help to their team.
#4: Get an auto-admin or votekick system.
RaS has an auto-admin, and I like that server a lot for it. You get autokilled if you kill someone while that someone is inside their own uncap. This seems like the perfect solution to the problem of baseraping happening while no admins are online. I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to arrange an autoadmin script that does that, as well as auto-killing any player who enters the enemy uncap. I struggle to understand why this wasn't implemented years ago.
I mention a votekick system just for sake of being thorough. I can't imagine that the server which makes =(e)=s fill out what is essentially paperwork just to report someone, would be willing to put the power of kicking people into the hands of the playerbase as a whole, pubs and eGO members both. I can hope, though.
#5: Not my place to tell eGO how they should or shouldn't select their admins. Being a clan gives you the right to have total authority over how that happens, and it's a system that isn't unique to BC2. I've already presented my opinions on this system.
I love the Heavy Metal server. I really do. Over 60% of my PC BC2 playtime has been spent on it for that reason. But god damn, learning how the eGO administration actually functions has given me a burning hatred for the milquetoast, barely-functional, completely ineffective way in which the server is moderated. The carefree dispersal of benefit of the doubt to anyone who can breathe all but invites people to take advantage of it, and the server is worse for that.
First, jtipton, I will not be getting on TS to discuss these things with leadership. Isn't one of the purposes of the forums providing a place players and leadership can discuss things? I'd rather type than speak, especially in a community of strangers, and pushing TS so hard just makes me less interested in being a part of this community. Very discouraging to see someone flaired as a "community manager" respond to eight paragraphs with all of sixteen words.
For background: I first started playing BC2 on the PS3 back in 2011-2012 or so. Logged 330 hours or so, and stopped playing as the PS3 fell out of fashion. In 2018, I picked up BC2 on Steam, and started playing again. I now have 1,005 hours played on PC, and 668 of those hours I have spent playing on eGO's 24/7 Heavy Metal server. Those 668 hours played are the experience I am speaking from here.
Here's Letherfut's Top Five Problems with the eGO 24/7 Heavy Metal Server;
#1: Baserapers.
The W/K/B system is hilariously ineffectual against baserapers. This game has a tiny playerbase, relatively speaking, it should be easy to completely weed out the rulebreaking subset of BC2 playerbase. There will always be big spikes of noobs whenever the game goes on sale on Steam, and with those noobs come people ignorant of the rules, but I see a baseraper on the server once every 1-3 hours like goddamn clockwork, Steam sale or no. On top of that, once a week or so, you'll get a match where there is no admin online, one person starts baseraping, and other people follow that person's example. Not to mention the population of players who enjoy baseraping, but know not to do it while an admin is online. cough coughRadenzcough
So, why aren't all the baserapers banned from eGO? Simple, because they get EVERY opportunity to learn they can only baserape when no admins are online.
First, they get warned. At least half of baserapers aren't even going to notice this in the chat, fresh messages in the chat disappear so quickly. If they DO notice, it's a heads up of "Hey, this player with the same clan tag as the server just told you not to do that" from which they can easily infer "oh, so there's no rule enforcement when nobody with that clan tag is online." If I was someone who got a kick out of baseraping, or who just wanted to pad my K/D/secure an easy win, when I got warned, I would start baseraping MORE, because being warned told me exactly when the rules will or won't be enforced. Radenz, for example. I know Radenz as a baseraper. I spent several matches last night, while no admins were on, having to fend him off from the uncap at regular intervals. When an admin joined later, he stopped baseraping. Dude clearly understands exactly how to avoid having to face consequences for his actions.
Then, they get kicked, which is functionally just another warning, albeit one that can't go by unnoticed in the chat. The same conclusion, "Hm, that wasn't an auto-admin kick, I guess I can baserape whenever nobody with the eGO clan tag is online then," can easily be drawn.
If, somehow, they're dumb enough to continue baseraping while an eGO member is online, they'll get banned. Now, I use to not take an issue with this part of the process. I guess my naive self sort of assumed the default ban time was something that would, like, have an effect, but it isn't. Apparently, even as an eGO, you can only temporarily ban people. Holy shit, if this isn't one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. How do you expect to deter people from breaking the rules, when there isn't even anyone there to enforce the rules half the time, and the other half of the time, nobody has the capability to enforce the rules in a permanent fashion? This kills my interest in being an admin even more than it had already been killed. This turns the "ban" part of "w/k/b" into functionally just another warning. If a baseraper gets to this point without learning that they can just wait til no admins are online, it's probably because they're having difficulty breathing and blinking at the same time.
#2 W/K/B.
This is basically a continuation of #1, but this time focusing on the W/K/B system as a whole rather than just baserapers. I gather that this system is in place to give players the benefit of the doubt, and is an eGO universal thing. I'm not here to say W/K/B is a bad system in general, nor that eGO should change it clan wide. I am here to say that W/K/B is entirely too lenient of a policy to use on the 24/7 HM server. Using W/K/B on BC2 is like trying to skim a layer of oil off of a swimming pool, using a colander. If you want rulebreakers to actually sit up and pay attention, warn them with a longer than one week ban. That still communicates "you can baserape when no eGO's are online", but it also communicates "we're ****ing hardasses about the rules and you better watch out."
#3 Passive play.
I use to really like the rule "do not camp in the uncap with vehicles' because in theory it should curb passive play and encourage teams to go on the offensive even if they are losing badly. However, I recently learned this rule is actually in place to prevent people from having a reason to shoot into the uncap. Just... wow. Do you want it to be allowed to shoot back at a tank camping on the edge of the uncap, or do you want people to not camp in the uncap with tanks? Thankfully, this contradiction isn't an issue, because nobody ever enforces the "no camping in the uncap with vehicles" rule.
So, since none of the rules address passive play, let me explain why they should. The first 45 seconds of each match are the most critical; 90% of the time, the team that captures B first wins. Once one team caps B, and clears out all resistance, the other team gives up. Most players go recon, all the tanks start camping, at this point the match is lost even though only 2-5 minutes have passed. It's not fun to be on the team that gives up, and it can get pretty boring on the winning team sometimes. However, most teams never realize that literally all it takes to cap B is taking out the AA and pushing a couple tanks in. Most teams don't get to find this out, because the tank players who camp keep their tanks longer than the tanks who push, so eventually all your tanks are occupied by people who want to camp. Once the tank-campers have your tanks, there is zero fun left to be had on the losing team. Anyone who plays on the server enough to be on these forums already understands this, so I'm just reiterating it so that maybe, just maybe, something changes policy-wise in response to this meta.
#4:
We're getting into dead horse territory, but people breaking the rules while no admin is online. This is pretty self-explanatory, and a source of frustration I think some people replying to my last post missed. Shoutout to Tikkun for noticing and understanding that point of mine, and even pointing that out to Iron Kaiser. Frustration with the lack of consequences experienced by people breaking the rules while no admins are online, was my primary motivation to become an eGO admin, and one of my bigger frustrations in my previous post. Most people replying to my previous post seemed to have missed this, or at least didn't address it.
#5:
The entire process for someone becoming an eGO admin. I'll break this down into a few different points.
- The server's "we are in need of admins" message. Tikkun made a post about this, right here on the forums, well over a month ago, and nothing came of that, so I suppose it's just my turn to piss in this particular wind here. This message is so useless. It makes it sound like, somewhere on the Edge-Gamers site, there's a form or something where you apply to be an admin, when in reality the process for becoming an admin is so much more convoluted than that.
- The soft requirement that you use Teamspeak. This was one of the larger reasons I lost interest in becoming an admin. I don't use Teamspeak. I'm not interested in installing it, just so I can use it for ONE server in ONE game. If I was turned off to the admin process by this, no doubt other people have, too, so who knows how many admins the server has missed out on because of this. Probably not too many, but definitely more than one. I thought about installing Teamspeak, forcing myself to use it even though I despise any kind of vocal communication not done in person, but I realized I would have just stopped using it once I reached the rank of eGO.
- The ban request system. Cool, a way for =(e)=s to do something, even though they have no admin privileges! Too bad Trubble never bans people for more than three days, completely defeating the purpose of requesting they be banned at all. The ban request system means that rulebreakers reported by =(e)=s likely aren't even on the server when they're banned, and I'm just a broken record when I say that the odds aren't good that these temp-banned people will try to join the server within that three day window.
"Well, Fut, you're talking mad shit, you gonna offer some solutions or just bitch?"
This is a good point, and something I neglected in my last post. Here are my proposed solutions to the problems outlined above.
#1: A new, baseraper-specific rework of W/K/B.
The first time someone baserapes, warn them BY NAME using !yell, and NEVER use the chat to warn people. Chat messages are missed all the time, it's physically impossible to not notice a !yell message. This step provides a guaranteed heads-up to players baseraping out of ignorance that they need to stop, giving the benefit of the doubt eGO clearly values so much, while still being firm against people who are baseraping maliciously. Second offense, ban them for a month. They were warned using !yell, there is zero excuse for them to baserape again. Banning them for a month retains some benefit of the doubt in being a temp ban, while still being very firm in that a month is a long time. Upon their third offense, ban them permanently. Anyone willing to wait a month, just to be able to baserape again, deserves zero benefit of the doubt.
#2: A tweak to W/K/B protocol specific to the 24/7 HM server
Require admins to use !yell to warn, to guarantee no warnings are missed in chat. Warn people by name, to add a little weight to the threat warning people carries. If someone needs to be banned, they should be banned for at least a week. Banning someone for three days is paying a $10 parking ticket: annoying, but completely inconsequential.
#3: Rules against any form of camping in the uncap, and against people camping in tanks.
Definitely my least important and least feasible proposed solution. Making a rule against camping in tanks would make for a solid couple months of admins having to root out players like CCCP_Oliver and Chris_n_Edgar, who are both regulars and notorious tank campers, which would be annoying for everybody. However, I think it wouldn't really shake up the suffocatingly stale meta on the server. This would be an end to matches where US gets B and C, then a bunch of people in B spend 20 minutes exchanging munitions with three tanks camping on A treeline. Instead, US would get B and C, then have to fight for their life to keep B from being overrun by enemy tanks. Then RU would have to defend B with the same vigor. I think we can all agree that the funnest rounds are the ones where the battle constantly goes back and forth, and the winning team scrapes out a win with less than 100 tickets left.
This also curbs against recon camping in the uncap, or someone spending the whole round on the uncap AA, two types of players that are more hindrance than help to their team.
#4: Get an auto-admin or votekick system.
RaS has an auto-admin, and I like that server a lot for it. You get autokilled if you kill someone while that someone is inside their own uncap. This seems like the perfect solution to the problem of baseraping happening while no admins are online. I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to arrange an autoadmin script that does that, as well as auto-killing any player who enters the enemy uncap. I struggle to understand why this wasn't implemented years ago.
I mention a votekick system just for sake of being thorough. I can't imagine that the server which makes =(e)=s fill out what is essentially paperwork just to report someone, would be willing to put the power of kicking people into the hands of the playerbase as a whole, pubs and eGO members both. I can hope, though.
#5: Not my place to tell eGO how they should or shouldn't select their admins. Being a clan gives you the right to have total authority over how that happens, and it's a system that isn't unique to BC2. I've already presented my opinions on this system.
I love the Heavy Metal server. I really do. Over 60% of my PC BC2 playtime has been spent on it for that reason. But god damn, learning how the eGO administration actually functions has given me a burning hatred for the milquetoast, barely-functional, completely ineffective way in which the server is moderated. The carefree dispersal of benefit of the doubt to anyone who can breathe all but invites people to take advantage of it, and the server is worse for that.
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. making your perception of fun as a rule is nonsense and very hard applicable. it would be OK on some closed squad rush server, whrere only invited people with certain mindset play
