I became staff initially because I was playing very late on vanilla and staff weren't in that late but vanilla would still be vibing. Late night vanilla became my domain for a while and it felt good kicking out the hackers, helping people learn the game, bugging admins for discretion, and overall keeping the chaos to a fun and manigable level. The rules were a lot more black and white back then and there were no death scenes so getting through 20-30 reports would only take a few minutes, there were also few loopholers on vanilla back then. I left and came back a couple times when I had the time and it seemed like the times I wanted to play weren't staffed. Plus after being staff the time between rounds just becomes boring. Most recently there's been so many changes that it's hard to staff efficiently like I used to, new forgiveness rules, death scenes, toxic gameplay. And the community itself has turned more into trying to fight the staff and get away with stuff rather than just having fun. Sure there were always assholes, but it was majority people who had just joined and would get banned after a map or two and not been seen again, but now a lot of the regulars are just impossible to staff while they're on. I staffed not for the sense of justice but for a fair and fun experience for as many people as possible but when I'm not one of the people having fun it's not worth it. Now I just lurk on the forums
I've played consistently on like 5 servers in my time in Gmod. On each of those servers, I've staffed.. When joining SGM I got along with a decent amount of the staff, and the staff I couldn't agree with caused me to really want a mod rank so I could try to lower the rate of incorrect reports. (At the time I wasn't aware of the forums reporting system) Plus, Vanilla was a very toxic place, If we went one map without a mod you're looking at upwards of 25 reports, from and against most players.. I felt having 1 mod on the server at a time didnt cover enough of the toxicity, and gave too much to that person's plate. So I applied.
I joined staff cuz I was annoyed when I would play and there would be no staff on and someone had to make those RDMing mad men pay. Then I realized I should go outside a bit more and stop playing TTT so then no more staff. The end.
