When you stay with the community as long as I have, you start to notice patterns, and everyone is eventually subject to those same patterns. Even me, someone who takes pride in staying with the community for so long and still being on good(ish) terms, may jeopardize that with this very thread. I may not be the oldest standing community member (see Teezy, Lemoncakes, Nope trash), but I have a bit of input of the developing community over time. Even as a seasoned ex staff member myself, you may have trouble believing everything this post says, as I've seen plenty of goodbye posts against the staff myself and joked around with others saying "lol this guy doesn't know what hes talking about". I may be falling victim to many of the things I've seen happen to others in the community. Off the top of my head I know that op 666 and the skype ban backlash have all adversely affected the state of the community (can't think of others right now, but I know there's more than just those two events), but when you look into them, they start to show similarities. Lets compare the people involved with op 666 to one of the most hated skype groups, Mr. Rogers neighborhood. Both involved a close group of friends from the community, and both ended up with a bad name after something happened that they didn't agree with (Zabiba's ghosting demotion and the skype ban, respectively) and they retaliated. Highwon always stresses putting the community above your friends, but looking back you see people doing the opposite. People would much rather stick with their friends than with and owner who seems very distant to the community, bar a select few. Sometimes people might just consider the community to be their group of friends and nothing more. This problem has gone on since the server started, and may never end. One of the purposes behind the skype ban was to stop this, but with a community so huge it's like making everyone at high school hang out with everyone else. The skype ban didn't really do much anyways, because people just made locked channels to keep it confined to the few people they wanted to talk to. The skype calls themselves, I know have been going on for a long time, to my knowledge weren't popular until around april-august 2014. I remember the first time I skyped with the community, I was in a call with Ahpux, Kam, Bobasawr, and Slicck, who had just returned to the community after a long absence. I never really talked much with Ahpux after that, and Kam didn't stay with the community long, but a call with Slicck and Bobasawr ended up growing to include most of the staff, and became known as the STTT staff chat. I can say right now that I regret ever going into those skype calls. It was so much fun being with some of my favorite people in the community, but in that skype call, and every other one, we trash talked some of the staff we didn't like. I would have never dreamed of doing that before the skype group, and would have just told their admin before. Not only that, but I felt like I wasn't doing as good of a job after skype than before, not to mention my hours lowering while I was spending more time on skype than the servers. Ah lets not forget how people's hours dropped because of the skype groups. Back when I first got mod we had 3 servers, but east 2 and vanilla came shortly after. Mods then were criticized because they usually only played with their friends, leaving other servers staffless, but some of the biggest offenders of that were pulling 100+ hours every 2 weeks, with the average staff hours being 60-80. There is a bit of criticism of staff playing CS:GO instead of TTT now, but how is that any different? Lots of times I went on teamspeak and saw locked channels of a few people and asked if I could join, only to realize that their channel was being used to play a game. Too many times I saw locked channels being used in lieu of the official SCS:GO/other games channels on teamspeak. This just shows that while staff used to play more TTT in the past, that may have been a result of the servers themselves being the main voice chat service in the community. People get bored of any game after long enough, and TTT is no different. What kept people playing could be a result of the people they made friends with playing on the servers, but when they migrate from playing TTT together to talking on skype/teamspeak together, they end up as a clique that usually doesn't get new members, since they go on the servers less and stay close to each other. This makes them get more distant from the rest of the community, and more likely to choose their friends over the community when something occurs. Like many people, I'm starting to view the community as merely the people I've known for a long time. I've seen plenty of people come and go, some of the most highly regarded staff be labeled toxic in a matter of days, and I'm just too fed up with it. Lets take a look at captain vodka for an example. A good number of people would think of her as someone that was aiming to harm the server. What did she do? She lied to Highwon and kept her skype group going after the ban. People simply dismiss her as a toxic player and forget that she was one of our most dedicated staff members for over a year. This just begs the question, did she really do something wrong or just fall prey to the inevitable? Regardless, no matter how bad of terms someone leaves on, if they were a good staff member, they were a good staff member. More recently Lemoncakes was demoted for showing favoritism to one of his mods. Take a look at Cthulhu's farewell post, you can see that she's angry, as she should be being one of the many staff members that felt wrongfully demoted. Anger tends to drive too many impulsive decisions that lead to more impulsive decisions. When someone demotes a staff member while they're angry, that leads to the ex staff member making impulsive decisions, and other people fed up with their demotion follow. Even I was still angry at the Lemoncakes/Cthulhu incident when I started writing this, as you can see where I say I may be leaving on bad terms, because I did have a bit of a rant to make at the current state of the staff and about the skype ban, however in about an hour writing this post, I calmed down and decided to make this post more civil (while keeping that part unedited, as an example). I have plenty of demotions I can name off the top of my head that shouldn't have occured, but when I look at them all of those are part of "my community", and it's mainly because I stuck up with them for so long, and hated to see good staff members go down like that. I'm sure arguments could be made for plenty of demoted staff as to why it was wrongful, but for me, and probably a lot of other people they only make those arguments for people in their community, and not for every staff member that is questionably demoted. Overall, I'm just losing touch with the community. Not just the community as a whole, but even "my community", the people I made friends with over my time here. Mainly this is because my computer recently broke, but even before that all I ever did was hang out in teamspeak. My last resignation was because I realized that the only reason I even got on the servers anymore was to keep my hours up and not get demoted for inactivity, and I haven't been active since. Not every staff member has to leave on bad terms, but everyone has their time to go. I've pretty much already left, since all I do is go on the forums every once in a while, but now I'm making it official. Whether you think of me as a psychologist or an idiot after reading this is up to you. If you want to contact me after this I wont be on steam often until I get my phone fixed, but I will occasionally log into the forums so people can private message me and I can reply. I accept any steam friend request, so feel free to add me. TL;DRs To all players, while you're not gonna like every single member of the community, keep your circle of friends from getting too limited so you don't repeat history. To all staff, if servers need staff but your busy talking to someone, try having them come on the server with you so you can staff the servers and hang out with your friends at the same time instead of just sitting in teamspeak doing nothing (just make sure you don't end up throwing the staff count out of balance) To all admins+, never make a major decision such as a demotion out of rage or emotion, while someone may deserve it, it's best to talk to them about it and explain why they're being demoted instead of just slapping on the demotion, that way you might avoid an angry forum post and causing a chain reaction worse than if you hadn't demoted them. To Highwon, a lot of players seem to view you as an enigma, including myself. Obviously you don't want to get too attached to players, otherwise you may end up siding with them over the community, but imagine if you were in some of the friend circles. Then they might think twice before turning on the community. Going too far either way would be bad, and there won't be a perfect solution, just one middle ground that's the best compromise. RhazhBash October 2013-January 2015
lol this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Just kidding. It was fun, Rhazh and I can agree with your position on almost everything you have stated. I just think people need to understand that it's alright to let things go and move on. I mean, I still hang out on the forums, but you never see me in game. I think that we are too small a community that the cliques become more obvious as they form. I always tried to admin like a business. Sure, I had fun, but it was a server to run and with my background, I knew I could run it. I resigned basically because of marriage and a loss of interest. Also, I wanted to see others that has potential grow into the staff that they became. Take care, Rhazh. I'll see you around.
I don't get on Garrys Mod anymore, but the friends i've made makes me come back. And I agree, community above everything else. Catch you later Rhazh.
I really liked reading this post, although I disagreed with some of your points. This was a very civil post which greatly impresses me. I will miss you. <3
Alright, besides that pointless gif I posted, I would like to just say a few things. While your post overall has many decent points, I also find myself disagreeing with many of them as well. However, that's because we both have different points of views despite our long history in the community. In the end, we both will have our sides of the argument. I'm impressed that you left your post in a neutral position and I applaud you for it. It's a shame that you're leaving the community due to the circumstances, but that is your decision and I respect you for it. I hope to see you around one of these days Rhazh and good luck in whatever you do in the future.
Just to clarify, this did start out as a rage post over the incident today, and I was planning for this to be a rant, but I get over things fast and was already calming down when I started writing this. The main reasons I'm leaving are my broken phone/computer, loss of interest in gmod all together, and the fact that I've seen today's incident too many times in the past.
That's quite unfortunate. Well, I'll catch you on the flip side eventually at some point. See you around. My rating was for Rhazh not turning his thread into a ranting thread.
I never had a chance to play with you, but I always wished I had. That's the legacy you had with this community, if that means anything to you. Rest in Peace, friend.
I have to say I am impressed with what you have gathered here. Seeing as I am one of the only who read every word of this and am directly related to one of the incidents, I feel it would be appropriate for me to comment here. As many people know, I had my own little Skype Group "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood" that consisted of my admin at the time, captain-vodka, and a lot of other staff members. Eventually a lot of us in the group made strong friendships and Skyping / staffing with each other everyday was a regular thing. We had made strong bonds outside of the server and would talk to each other about our everyday lives and whatever we wanted to. Then the Skype ban came out and I guess we felt threatened that a massive part of our outside of server lives were being controlled. When in reality, we were just being asked to move over to TS3 where stuff could be slightly more moderated. Which was a completely rational thing to ask for seeing as the Skype Groups were causing major issues. I'm not going to get into details of the demotions / resignations of people in that group as that would be doing this: Spoiler Anway. You're absolutely right, I along with my friends made the error of letting our clique keep us from remembering that the community always comes first. (Remember that you youngsters ;3) The point I am trying to make is this. And this is mostly regarded to some of the newer guys. You SHOULD make strong bonds. You SHOULD make memories that will last a lifetime. But when doing so, Remember the place that enabled you to make those bonds and memories in the first place and respect it. Don't make a mistake like the one I and many people have made, Because I guarantee you sooner or later you will absolutely regret it and wish you didn't do it. I certainly do. In regards to the recent event, yes it could be looked at as another clique that went too far. And I hope, even though I know that this is not true, that it will be the last one.
The problem is that we do tell them why they are being demoted, and they either disagree with our reason or simply get angry anyways and then go ranting on the forums about it. We never go through with demotion without putting a lot of thought into it. We knew there was going to be a fallout from yesterday's events so this time we're a little more prepared to handle it. That is all I have to say. It was nice having you around
Some things in the thread should be taken with a grain of salt, because for something like that, it's all based on observation. Honestly I feel that part of the post to be important for all staff to understand, even though it isn't always the admin's fault. I guess I should edit in a part saying to not overreact when you're on the losing end of that.
