Sensible server moderators & small community

[kristi]

Hey all,

The past days i've been growing increasingly frustrated by the handling of players by servermods of the 2 most popular servers right now: EKT and MatrixRen.

Beforehand, this is not a post to flame or whatever. I do want to address this and raise awareness about a fact that server owners should consider a big responsibility.

The RenX community is small, and most days the only 2 populated servers are EKT and MatrixRen. Both servers are some of the better moderated servers, but lately i've noticed more mods being around with a childish attitude. This is something which i noticed has been pissing off quite some people and made people leave RenX. Server owners should keep an extra eye on these things as this can destroy the fragile RenX community. That is to summarize the responsibility mentioned above.

To name 2 examples from today:

I. I was playing on EKT marathon server. A bunch of matches things were okay. But when the map field got voted in, 3 dudes swapped from GDI to NOD, making the game very unbalanced. It was 2V8 at that point, which is ludicrous. Luckily 2 nod guys swapped back to GDI to balance things a bit out, but it was still 4V6. The game's moderator at that moment (EKT-JollyCake) didn't care. A bunch of minutes later our WF got destroyed and the issue was pointe dout once more. This time EKT-JollyCake said no one wants to join a team which's WF got destroyed. That while the problem was pointed out 10 minutes prior! That's something of a childish attitude which gets awfully close to bullying another team. By the time I dc'd from the server there was only 1 other gdi left (one which swapped from nod to gdi to balance things) while nod had 6 ppl still.

II. On MatrixRen, things were fairly fine most of the day. But at a certain moment on the map Whiteout 2 arties started base2base shooting using an apache as spotter. I caught them red handed in the act, but they popped my McFartland real fast and i could only get 1 screenshot of it which didn't clearly show it even. I called a mod, but noticed 2 were online at that point. One of the base2base shooters was WxBlueEyes. The issue was reported by 4 GDI people, but the moderator insisted we were talking crap. While we saw it with our own eyes. Now I do not know if that mod was flying the apache or was a friend of WxBlueEyes (he's not an unfamiliar player on the server and generally behaves well) this was clearly bullying the other team once more. The worse part is that MatrixRen strictly enforces the no base2base shooting rule, while 2 mods were aware of the problem but didn't care and even called it bullshit. I pointed the exact position of the apache and one of the arties (just in front of the airstrip close to the entrance) but they said an arty had never been there while i got shot by the same arty from exactly that position.

Now, the thing is. A large amount of players were pissed off by this childish and bullying behavior of mods today. I've seen about 15 people (nearly) ragequit RenX today.

So in that sense, I would like to remind the server owners that they have a responsibility in picking moderators which can act in an adult way if needed (in case of reports of improper behavior of players).

I hope this trend will not continue, and I will wait with playing RenX for the coming few days till beta 3 is out. I got kinda fed up with this shit.

Also, I specifically registered on RenX forum to point this problem out and make server owners aware of this responsibility they have for the RenX community.

[Skeeze]

As to your first example, as moderators we cannot force players to change teams but you also cannot change teams if the opposite team has less players so getting an unbalanced team is caused by players leaving not by switching teams.

Second example is a case without any proof or any moderator that has seen it (from what I understand based on your post) . So unless a moderator knows you can be trusted I don't think any moderator anywhere would kick the accused person. I understand it can be frustrating but innocent people being kicked will sure be more frustrating.

Just a tip to get proof for the moderators to review is: hit f5 and type "recorddemo" and report the player on the forum providing the server time it happend and the ingame time left. Moderators will review the footage and take action accordingly

That being said, you can always post any issues you have with a moderator on the servers forum.

[kristi]

Case #1 was actually due to teamswapping. But the biggest issue was the mod being like "suck it up" attitude. The mod could swap to gdi himself but didn't want to either.

Case #2: Four people indepedently verified the situation there. But I suspect the mod in question being a friend of WxBlueEyes. Regardless after discussing this on the server for a long time i got fed up with them protecting the guy while it was too damn obvious that he was doing it. It's also what caused me to get suspicions about the mod flying the apache which was spotting for the base2base shooting arties. Also, it was a mod I had hardly seen before, and must be a fairly new mod on MatrixRen server (or one which was relatively inactive).

My goal of this post was not to discuss these moderators themselves. Nor these players. There's a clear correlation between this behavior and people leaving RenX to play other games (and not returning to RenX). This is not something you can talk to about with those server mods. This is something the server owners themselves have to be made aware of. And if they don't care, well, I'm quite sure someone will eventually set a server up which at least works better in that regard.

I love RenX as a game, and I missed C&C Renegade a lot. But I'm just so afraid that obnoxious people like in the cases mentioned above will ruin the community. As this is also something the RenX developers can't fix, it's merely to try raise awareness of this problem, not to demand the RenX devs or whatever to fix it. This is also a problem occuring on multiple servers, not just this single one server.

[Truxa]

Kristi, first of all the Devs do try to fix issues like base-to-base shooting as in your example on Whiteout. One of the changes they made is that arty shoots in less of a curve in the upcoming patch.

Case #1: You are talking about a very small game where only 10 people play. Depending on the previous game, the matchup is created for the next game based on the player's score of the previous game. (So I believe through empirical observation) That combined with the frequent crashing in Beta 2, it could be possible that the matchup was made but certain players from the same team (coincidence) crashed. The new game registered them shortly, thus placing the teams as arranged by previous games scores.

In any case though, small matches like these are bound to be one-sided and unfair. Who wants to single-handedly defend an entire base against a majority attacking from 2-3 different sides. This game is more balanced around at higher playercounts.

Case #2: b2b is never accepted on both EKT and TmX servers as far as I know. Notifying it in general chat should remedy that and if not, type this command: !modrequest (or was it !requestmod). It sends a message through IRC to request a mod for that server. Dunno if it works on EKT, but TmX has this.

Lastly, TmX is advertizing they seek server mods to be able to assist ingame on every part of the day. If you feel that a specific mod is being unfair, type this command: recorddemo this command inititates a recording, stored server-side, for 2 minutes. All you need to do is post your issue on the server forum, tell them you initiated the recorddemo command to prove your point and they will investigate. OR (as I usually do) issue the recorddemo command and 2 minutes later issue the !modrequest command (or was is !requestmod) followed by a small text e.g.: !requestmod player0000 is shooting b2b recorddemo initiated

This will tell the mods in IRC that they might want to check that video out immediately.

Don't give up on RenX on behalve of one rotten egg in a full basket, just quit for the day, play another game and come back later that night or the next day. I've been on and off for weeks at a time due to people exploiting things I didn't like

EDIT:

Check this preliminary changelist for Beta3, posted a few weeks ago:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=73818

Almost at the bottom of the post made by JeepRubi, you see this:

Artillery:

- Projectile speed reduced.

- Artillery projectile gravity pull reduced to give less of an arch.

- Artillery explosion blast radius increased.

[Goku]

Case 1: I agree with Skeeze dude. I cant force people to team change. Also jollycake isn't a moderator (!showmods in game will show you who is moderating at the time) as he doesn't want 2. If you require help use !modrequest reason.

Case 2: b2b isnt allowed If i see someone doing it is 2 warnings then a ban. Most mods would change team and check then take screenshots. But as a normal player I wouldn't expect you to have to 2 do this.

Like tmx we have been advertising for people to join our moderator team for like 2 months? Only one person has applied. Myself and the few admins i have cant be in game 24/7 (not to mention most of my mods are bored with fighting glitch beacons etc all the time so they haven't been in game much either), if you want to help out with problems like this then i suggest you either apply for mod status or recommend people who fit the bill.

I admit i have been neglecting my server as i got bored with the glitch abuse (which is hard to prove a lot of the time) and the crashes, so i've been waiting for beta3.

Also moderating on Renx is hard work compared to the old ren. We cant temp ban, nor is there any form of client id that we can ban with so if someone doesn't like us enough they can just vpn and rejoin and cause hassle. Ive added dns to fight against this but still makes it hard, not to mention we have no way to force team changes, refund credits for team hampering or disarming glitched beacons, hell we cant even ask the server for the game score via rcon. The eva messages we can send in game vanish straight away sometimes so we cant even be sure people get our warnings to stop doing X. I get that its a beta but really stuff like this should be high on the devs list. Bad experiences will turn people off the game for good and they will be unlikely to return.

Regards

Goks

[jollycake]

I think all the points regarding myself on EKT have been addressed, but I'll just say one or two things. I'm not a moderator, I'm yet to play my first clanwar. I just play a fair amount at times.

Regarding the swapping, sometimes I will actually swap to play GDI on field, which a lot of people wont do. But I'm not always in the mood. If I dont see GDI buying tanks and trying to hold the field I wont bother to swap and help them as I'd be trying to do all the teamwork myself. I cant recall the details of this game so possibly that was the situation there, or maybe I'd been on the losing team a few games in a row and wanted to try be on NOD on field and win for a change.

What I probably should have done instead was vote to add a few bots to both teams on level 4 or something, but the bots around lvl 4 on field on GDI generally either stand still or just get in a tank and charge to the obelisk by themselves anyway so may not have been that much help.

On previous custom renegade servers there were hierarchies of mods and commands to move players by force. I don't have these powers in renx, even if I was to be a mod, I think? Idk.

Thanks anyway

[kristi]

@Truxa: I think that arty fix will definately correct what was happening on whiteout Also, the !requestmod and recorddemo commands are what i was looking for! I did request a mod with that command, but the recording of a short video (2 mins it was iirc) should be a better solution than trying to get in close with my mcfart and pop a screenshot.

@Jolly: sorry for my misunderstanding then In the end I think it was good that match got rushed. Esp. after te GDI WF was popped. Field with about 10 players in is no real fun Well anyways, issue forgiven, considering your explanaition and the explanation of few other ppls here

@Goku: Thanks, !showmods is what i needed

/edit:

@Truxa: I won't quit, just needed some time to calm down and stuff I also am waiting for the end of match CTD issue to get fixed (I hope beta 3 fixes that part). I noticed not opening the purchase terminal or menu the last 30 secs before match end prevents the CTD bug from appearing. But of course, with an ion or a nuke you know the time it's gonna take to end, but if someone does a sneaky C4, then you don't