Ceroria
Mockingjay
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2012
- Messages
- 11,024
- Reaction score
- 13,943
Right now I could go up to almost any player who plays MCSG actively and ask them to speak their minds about the network and would get a very similar response from the majority of them. These opinions would of course vary from the experiences these players have had, and the mindsets they all present themselves with but the premise would be clear. There are problems. The MCGamer Ship is in rough waters. Well, what are these problems? Why do we have all these problems? What can we do to solve them? Those are the questions that have plagued me for the longest time, and I want to end the madness now. It's time to stop brushing our issues under the table, it's time to stop hesitating, it's time to let crude and unsupported opinion get in the way of the truth. It's time for change.
I spend an awful lot of time on the forums. If a thread has been posted in the community corner in recent times and hasn't been locked by another moderator, there is quite the solid chance I've responded to it. Same goes for the Survival Games Discussions. This means I've seen quite a lot of opinions of different players, and I'm one who observes a lot as well. I know how most people here feel about MCSG based on how they act toward other community members, or toward staff members.
That being said, I see three things brought up by almost every single community member here who is capable of forming their own opinion. Those three are as follows:
1. It is a rather popular opinion that MCSG has too many hackers and needs to find a way to fix that problem, whether it is by hiring a billion moderators, or by upgrading the Xime AntiCheat.
2. "Teaming is unfair and anti-competitive" (directly quoted from a thread made last summer by jonnysurvives). In general nowadays, teaming is seen as frowned upon, tryhard-ish, or idiotic. There are people who take solo play very seriously and would like to see a limit on how far a team may go.
3. Since practically the beginning of time, it has been stated over and over again by so many members of the community that the staff is either corrupt, uncaring, dumb, incapable of listening to the community, containing staff members incapable of forming their own opinion, etc.
Now what is the underlying root problem of all these complaints? To put it in the most simple way possible, it's lack of communication. Misunderstandings turn into anger. Anger gets thrown out, and broadcasted by YouTubers, YouTubers inflict biased and untrue opinions to people who then in turn complain to the staff, and to other members of the community. Something that was a problem that could have easily been solved by communication and understanding has now turned into a year long debate that has ended only in flame and hatred toward the staff. Some issues are more exaggerated than others. I'd like to weigh in my opinions on the three main issues that I've seen arise, and if anybody else has something they'd like addressed, please ask it here and I'll do my best to see to your issue or what you'd like clarification on.
Issue #1 - Hacking/Cheating
One day, magically, around last summer hackers appeared out of nowhere and flooded MCGamer. Nope. Not true. Hackers have always been a problem. In the MCSG beta days it was nodus. Then it was things like speed hacks and BSM, those led to the return of things like aimbot and forcefield. Forcefield evolved into kill aura, then came fly hacks, more advanced cheats like autoclicking, ghost clients, etc. from there the chetaing problem just became worse and worse and here we are now, at some points not being able to distinguish cheating from skill, and constantly accusing and harassing about some cheating on a video game. Here's the outlying point, none of this is MCSG's fault at all. We didn't create hacks, we didn't advance hacks. In fact, if you want to blame someone for hackers, go blame a server who spent so much time upgrading and perfecting their anticheats that hacked client creators had to step up their game to bypass or even manipulate anticheats. Those players with their beefed up hacks came over to MCSG, and now it's our turn to retaliate by upgrading our anticheat. In my opinion, I believe an upgrade of the efficiency of Xime is well overdue, and if the developers need help perfecting it, we have one giant willing community here to help give their knowledge on hacking and help to stop it because we all have one goal here, to eliminate them.
The bottom line here is that our hacker influx is not to be blamed on us. If people spent less time complaining and more time looking for solutions, things would get done a lot quicker. Now, I'm not just talking to community members. The staff has to realize this and instead of saying that we're working on it, look around and think about if we actually are working on it, and if we aren't we need to then take the initiative to do so.
Issue #2 - Teaming
Man, I simply to this day never understood why people complain about teams. Now before you go all crazy telling me how stupid I am and how I never play MCSG because I'm a mod and whatnot, you have to realize that all mods were community members at some point, and most for a while. Keep in mind that I was a regular player for 2 years, and did quite a lot of playing. A lot of newer players will run into say, a ton of double teams, the rare three-four team, and the ultra rare 5+ man team. If someone finds more than 3-4 3+ teams in a week, I'd call that unlucky. That's a good number compared to what it used to be. None of you guys complaining must have been players back in 2013 on the US servers. Once the AS servers were shut down, many of the Japanese and Chinese players moved to US with their friends. I'd get up on a Saturday morning in the summer to play MCSG and spend my average game fighting multiple teams of 3-5+ per game of players with similar names and skins. Did I complain? Nah, I used that opportunity to learn how to take down these massive teams and can still apply that in the future. The teams you guys run into today are nothing like that. Albeit the underlying fact is that there are still teams wherever you go, but it's always been that way! Only recently have there been tons of complaints!
Here's the thing, though. The thing is, people are starting to be bothered by teams, and in today's highly competitive environment people are asking for change and that cannot be ignored, which is why it isn't being ignored. In case some people haven't noticed, it's been stated by multiple members of the staff, heck even ChadTheDJ himself stated that there is change to come in the future regarding our policy on teaming and the oh-so-wanted solo servers. Yet here people are almost denying that things like that were ever said and are so bent on thinking the staff is incapable of listening even though there is overwhelming proof that we are actually trying to make a change based on the popular opinion of the community.
Issue #3 - Players Have Negative Opinions About Staff
Alright. People say the staff team never listens to suggestions made by the community. As I stated in the section about teaming, those people simply need to open their eyes. Here's another thing to take into consideration. Just because somebody wants something implemented, doesn't mean it's going to happen! In some cases of denial, it's not because we don't listen, it's because we have listened and discussed it but have deemed it unworthy and not a good enough idea to be implemented. Up until recently that was the issue of solo servers. Until a few months or so ago, we were not going to implement solo servers. It had been discussed and shot down every time. Now there is new talk and discussion of finding ways to do so efficiently, yet people go around complaining telling us we never listen.
Here's the ironic thing. In the past we have listened. There was a community poll done by the administration over the summer of 2014 asking if people wanted a leaderboard update and stat reset. There was, if my sources are correct, over a 2/3 portion of the community voting for yes. You know what happened when we implemented what the community wanted? Everyone went right back to saying we did nothing they wanted, and completely ignored exactly what just happened and why it just happened. The community asks for something, gets their way, finds problems with it, and goes back to pretending that none of the blame is to be on them, and blames the people who only made actions based on calculations on what the community said themselves.. In order for everything to work correctly it takes participation from everyone. If you don't do anything to help, you have no right to complain.
Am I saying that these people complaining are 100% wrong, and that I'm 100% right? No. In fact, if I did say that I'd be contradicting almost everything I said previously in this thread. The staff isn't perfect guys. All our mods and senior staff members work to make sure everything is running smoothly and according to how our players want it (not matter how it looks to you, that's the truth. Take it from me, someone who's been on both sides of the fence).
How We Should Fix These Problems
We just have to work together. That's the bottom line. Whatever issues many community members may have with the staff, they need to be put behind and left in the past, and my fellow staff members need to step it up and work with the community as well as realize that it's okay to have opinions of their own. Sometimes I feel like us staff members get caught up in being too professional and uniform, that we forget that helping and connecting with the community is part of the job, and we need to understand problems and work alongside others to fix them instead of shooting them down.
All in all, we need to work together. That's what this is all about, so let's work together and make a change.
I spend an awful lot of time on the forums. If a thread has been posted in the community corner in recent times and hasn't been locked by another moderator, there is quite the solid chance I've responded to it. Same goes for the Survival Games Discussions. This means I've seen quite a lot of opinions of different players, and I'm one who observes a lot as well. I know how most people here feel about MCSG based on how they act toward other community members, or toward staff members.
That being said, I see three things brought up by almost every single community member here who is capable of forming their own opinion. Those three are as follows:
1. It is a rather popular opinion that MCSG has too many hackers and needs to find a way to fix that problem, whether it is by hiring a billion moderators, or by upgrading the Xime AntiCheat.
2. "Teaming is unfair and anti-competitive" (directly quoted from a thread made last summer by jonnysurvives). In general nowadays, teaming is seen as frowned upon, tryhard-ish, or idiotic. There are people who take solo play very seriously and would like to see a limit on how far a team may go.
3. Since practically the beginning of time, it has been stated over and over again by so many members of the community that the staff is either corrupt, uncaring, dumb, incapable of listening to the community, containing staff members incapable of forming their own opinion, etc.
Now what is the underlying root problem of all these complaints? To put it in the most simple way possible, it's lack of communication. Misunderstandings turn into anger. Anger gets thrown out, and broadcasted by YouTubers, YouTubers inflict biased and untrue opinions to people who then in turn complain to the staff, and to other members of the community. Something that was a problem that could have easily been solved by communication and understanding has now turned into a year long debate that has ended only in flame and hatred toward the staff. Some issues are more exaggerated than others. I'd like to weigh in my opinions on the three main issues that I've seen arise, and if anybody else has something they'd like addressed, please ask it here and I'll do my best to see to your issue or what you'd like clarification on.
Issue #1 - Hacking/Cheating
One day, magically, around last summer hackers appeared out of nowhere and flooded MCGamer. Nope. Not true. Hackers have always been a problem. In the MCSG beta days it was nodus. Then it was things like speed hacks and BSM, those led to the return of things like aimbot and forcefield. Forcefield evolved into kill aura, then came fly hacks, more advanced cheats like autoclicking, ghost clients, etc. from there the chetaing problem just became worse and worse and here we are now, at some points not being able to distinguish cheating from skill, and constantly accusing and harassing about some cheating on a video game. Here's the outlying point, none of this is MCSG's fault at all. We didn't create hacks, we didn't advance hacks. In fact, if you want to blame someone for hackers, go blame a server who spent so much time upgrading and perfecting their anticheats that hacked client creators had to step up their game to bypass or even manipulate anticheats. Those players with their beefed up hacks came over to MCSG, and now it's our turn to retaliate by upgrading our anticheat. In my opinion, I believe an upgrade of the efficiency of Xime is well overdue, and if the developers need help perfecting it, we have one giant willing community here to help give their knowledge on hacking and help to stop it because we all have one goal here, to eliminate them.
The bottom line here is that our hacker influx is not to be blamed on us. If people spent less time complaining and more time looking for solutions, things would get done a lot quicker. Now, I'm not just talking to community members. The staff has to realize this and instead of saying that we're working on it, look around and think about if we actually are working on it, and if we aren't we need to then take the initiative to do so.
Issue #2 - Teaming
Man, I simply to this day never understood why people complain about teams. Now before you go all crazy telling me how stupid I am and how I never play MCSG because I'm a mod and whatnot, you have to realize that all mods were community members at some point, and most for a while. Keep in mind that I was a regular player for 2 years, and did quite a lot of playing. A lot of newer players will run into say, a ton of double teams, the rare three-four team, and the ultra rare 5+ man team. If someone finds more than 3-4 3+ teams in a week, I'd call that unlucky. That's a good number compared to what it used to be. None of you guys complaining must have been players back in 2013 on the US servers. Once the AS servers were shut down, many of the Japanese and Chinese players moved to US with their friends. I'd get up on a Saturday morning in the summer to play MCSG and spend my average game fighting multiple teams of 3-5+ per game of players with similar names and skins. Did I complain? Nah, I used that opportunity to learn how to take down these massive teams and can still apply that in the future. The teams you guys run into today are nothing like that. Albeit the underlying fact is that there are still teams wherever you go, but it's always been that way! Only recently have there been tons of complaints!
Here's the thing, though. The thing is, people are starting to be bothered by teams, and in today's highly competitive environment people are asking for change and that cannot be ignored, which is why it isn't being ignored. In case some people haven't noticed, it's been stated by multiple members of the staff, heck even ChadTheDJ himself stated that there is change to come in the future regarding our policy on teaming and the oh-so-wanted solo servers. Yet here people are almost denying that things like that were ever said and are so bent on thinking the staff is incapable of listening even though there is overwhelming proof that we are actually trying to make a change based on the popular opinion of the community.
Issue #3 - Players Have Negative Opinions About Staff
Alright. People say the staff team never listens to suggestions made by the community. As I stated in the section about teaming, those people simply need to open their eyes. Here's another thing to take into consideration. Just because somebody wants something implemented, doesn't mean it's going to happen! In some cases of denial, it's not because we don't listen, it's because we have listened and discussed it but have deemed it unworthy and not a good enough idea to be implemented. Up until recently that was the issue of solo servers. Until a few months or so ago, we were not going to implement solo servers. It had been discussed and shot down every time. Now there is new talk and discussion of finding ways to do so efficiently, yet people go around complaining telling us we never listen.
Here's the ironic thing. In the past we have listened. There was a community poll done by the administration over the summer of 2014 asking if people wanted a leaderboard update and stat reset. There was, if my sources are correct, over a 2/3 portion of the community voting for yes. You know what happened when we implemented what the community wanted? Everyone went right back to saying we did nothing they wanted, and completely ignored exactly what just happened and why it just happened. The community asks for something, gets their way, finds problems with it, and goes back to pretending that none of the blame is to be on them, and blames the people who only made actions based on calculations on what the community said themselves.. In order for everything to work correctly it takes participation from everyone. If you don't do anything to help, you have no right to complain.
Am I saying that these people complaining are 100% wrong, and that I'm 100% right? No. In fact, if I did say that I'd be contradicting almost everything I said previously in this thread. The staff isn't perfect guys. All our mods and senior staff members work to make sure everything is running smoothly and according to how our players want it (not matter how it looks to you, that's the truth. Take it from me, someone who's been on both sides of the fence).
How We Should Fix These Problems
We just have to work together. That's the bottom line. Whatever issues many community members may have with the staff, they need to be put behind and left in the past, and my fellow staff members need to step it up and work with the community as well as realize that it's okay to have opinions of their own. Sometimes I feel like us staff members get caught up in being too professional and uniform, that we forget that helping and connecting with the community is part of the job, and we need to understand problems and work alongside others to fix them instead of shooting them down.
All in all, we need to work together. That's what this is all about, so let's work together and make a change.
