Announcment From FPI

[TomUjain]

Hey guys,

I want to address some issues that have been raised recently regarding FPI and clear up a few things. Please note that i'm not calling anyone out or pointing blame, the whole point of this post is to bring awareness to a lot of the issues, and the daily uphill battle FPI faces.

The begining - I founded FPI with Goku last year, mainly -- to help grow the community and focus on a fair, safe and fun community server. My idea was to have clearly defined rules to keep us all in check (inc myself) and to moderate power so that, if it was used -- it would be done so fairly. I still hold that vision true and I have always kept an open ear to anyone who wanted to approch me in private, or had concerns regardless of who they were or what they did.

1) The Mods are aggressive - Needless to say, the RenX community is, in a word, pure anarchy. My mods are constantly solving issues and disputes both in and out of the game from trolls, team hampers, AFKers, general trouble makers etc... etc... All this work is tiring, and going on the front line as my mods do is a thankless job. Keeping moral high as we sludge through a barrage of attacks is tiring. Sometimes my mods do lash out, despite my attempts to keep things calm. A kick here, a tban here etc... maybe too harshly. As I have always said I am always open to be approched, sometimes my mods will make mistakes and sometimes emotions are running high.

 

 

2) We won't let you play with friends - Although some of you are keen to paint FPI as a villain I have tried, and failed to try and meet both sides of the argument to no success. What people need to understand is that the RenX community is very small, and the gameplay very unique and arcady. Roughly 1 in 50 players is 'elite' aka better than a typical player; what this means in a nutshell is 1 'elite' is worth roughly 3 normal players - with the added benefit of knowing the maps, tanks, classess etc.  This wouldn't be an issue if we had several full servers -- but we don't, so one good player will ALWAYS stick out, ALWAYS. Regardles if your team is winning or losing.

Though it is true having 3 - 5 elites all stack to one team does NOT mean a win -- it does make it awfully uncomfortable for the other team. I have many hours of footage on demos to back this up. Typically, the elites will chokepoint an area and farm kills. It almost, always leads to the same result -- people complaining. And who can blame them? If I used IRC to stack all my mods to one team and only went after elite player over, and over and over that would annoy them too.

The bottom line is this: No body likes to be head shot over, and over and over; it turns new players off and fustrates older ones. FPI did try to cater to both sides of this argument but neither side was willing to compromise. Both sides felt like the victem (and to a degree they both were) it lead to intense hate towards the elites, who, in turn laughed it off as them being 'haters' so began this spiral of hate. Somewhere a long the line the issue was blurred and it became a them vs Us, something I tried to fight against when I founded FPI, even within my own mod team.

The 'I want to play with my friend' excuse begins to wear very thin if the last 40 sessions, or every session you log in is with said friend. I wrote up a 3 game rule to try and address this issue, I spoke to the elites in person -- but very few people were willing to listen.  I've been asked, by many sources to just 'ban' the elites as there is only a few of them; on the other side of the fence i've had elites approch me that feel upset, hated and shunned asking me to ban people who call them out. Neither of these ideas were productive, and neither of these ideas were going to solve the problem. Elites will always be a thing, baning the current ones won't stop any future ones from coming in. Constantly going after people who complain will not solve the issue either, in fact BOTH of these ideas would simply make the problem worse. Yet it puts FPI in this weird middle-ground where 'if you are not with us, you are aginast us' are you pro or anti stack? I didn't want FPI to be put into that box, after all the elites are part of the community as much as the regular players -- but at the same time i knew this was an issue, an issue that needed addressing.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

3) Disabling Team Swap - Siving through player aliases and applying manual shuffles / enforcing  these rules lead to extream hostility and complaining from a select few, while I was told to 'ignore' them it simply didn't sit well with me. Basically we couldn't win. As a result we, as a team decided to tackle the issue from the core and disable the team swap. Combined with the new shuffle code for teams things were starting to look up. Now, however we have a new issue -- F5 'Reconnect' while we were working on a patch to stop this I found myself thinking how silly this whole affair is. Believe it or not, the main reason I founded FPI was because I was on the borderline of quitting the game; after three whole weeks of stacked / terrible games on the CT server. Honestly guys I just want you all to be happy; this was never my server, it was always intended to be OUR server founded on democracy and fairness. Granted we had to get harsh a few times but it was always well intended (if sometimes misplaced) My mods are simply tired. And sometimes they lash out at silly / trival things, they are only human after all which is why I try to be understanding when a forced !ban is put in place -- as long as it isn't taking place too often, and it can be addressed then I overlook it.

FPI is now at a crossroads. With one or two people trying hard to put us down (they will fail) it has left my team feeling exhausted. So here is what we are going to do from now on;

Manual Shuffles.

 

I am removing the stacking rule, and we will be re-enabling the team swap. However,  we will be tallying groups of players (under alias or not) playing together -- and if the need arises for us to shuffle; these players will be the ones we switch first. This is the current rule we will be following;

Quote

Re-shuffling - Mods reserve the right to 're-balance' teams after 3 or more sessions have passed of 'bad games' defined under one or more of these conditions; Session ends in 20 mins or less, No back and forth from both teams, Big surge in player lose. Re-balancing can be requested via a !modrequest.

 

As I said earlier on in the post --  I want to see compromise from BOTH sides of this argument, the stackers and the 'players'. Naturally, if the game is running smoothly (see above quote) then mods should not be moving anybody. I hope this has cleared up a few concerns, and I hope you can bare with us during this difficult time.

 

-Yumi

 

 

Edited May 30, 2019 by TomUjain

[isupreme]

Thank you for your well written and clear Posting.    May your mods be strong and your players happy.

I appreciate the effort to provide competitive gaming.

[roweboat]

@TomUjain & Team thanks for all you guys are doing. I think FPI is a great server.

 

Bottom line is, like you mentioned, the root cause is simply because there are so few players. because the player base is small, all problems are amplified.

I understand wanting to do our best to appease everyone, but really I think it is an effort in frustration. 

 

The part that bums me out is, seeing new players come to the game, but literally only staying around a few matches and never returning simply because they got headshott'd 20 times without even understanding how the game works.

Overall I see everyone playing nicely with each other, but most of the issue comes down to keeping new players around and keeping them engaged in the gameplay.

 

My solution would be to do our best to cater to new players and do our best to ignore the "noise" from the veteran players. I'm sorry but if we want the game to grow at all, we are going to have to suffer some growing pains.

[Madkill40]

Cool

[STANISLAV]

FPI is now the best server. Thank you for what you do!

[Agent]

One of the largest issues I've seen in FPI is a consistent pattern of over-moderation and attempting to address every concern by every player. Not only is such a goal unrealistic, but it's also undesirable since you're going to constantly have to address conflicting player wants/needs, and ultimately will have to interact with those players on a far more frequent and intimate basis than should ever be necessary.

I've always emphasized this in the past, and perhaps I haven't been as active lately to keep encouraging it, but moderator action should really be reserved for cases where behavior is obviously malicious. Obviously malicious behavior would be intentional actions such as hacking, harassment, team hampering, and in certain cases even bug abuse. Refusing to attack specific members of the other team should certainly be considered team hampering. "Team stacking" however is difficult to moderate in part because it's not malicious -- there's absolutely no moral justification to interfere with those players' activities. Instead, moderators are trying to change the natural and desirable behavior of playing with friends.

We want people to be able to play with their friends. People who play with their friends bring more people into the game to play with them, creating a more enjoyable experience for themselves and also expanding the player base at the same time. This is behavior that should be encouraged, not discouraged -- I can't tell you how many times I've hopped onto RenX because I've seen Yosh or DoctorB0ng or Sarah or anybody else I know and enjoy playing with on discord or in-game. Playing with your friends makes the game much more fulfilling, and shouldn't ever be hampered. Playing with friends just makes the game more fun.

These "elite" players shouldn't have a duty to play differently from every other player purely on the basis of skill. They're not choosing to be a more prominent member of the community -- this is being forced upon them unilaterally and unfairly. They did not choose to be held to an arbitrary higher standard. It shouldn't be any player's duty to self-limit their team swaps, or to communicate with staff constantly about team swaps. No player should ever have to justify their right to play with their friends. No otherwise rule-abiding player should ever have to justify their right to play this game. Moderators forcing this upon them and then displaying toxic behavior in-game, effectively further enabling harassment while also making no attempt to address it, is just disappointing and a failure of the moderation team.

Additionally, removing features from the game is not desirable. Team swapping is in the game because it's well established that people may want or even need to switch teams. We already have much stricter requirements for team swapping than other games like CSGO; in RenX you're only able to swap teams if it doesn't break the player count balance. Removing significant features unilaterally on a de-facto official server is completely undesirable, and it's a little frustrating for the development team to have to directly ask servers to remove mutators that weren't well thought through. We're not "one or two people trying hard to put us down", we're just trying to make sure the game is being played to its fullest as designed, and enjoyed by as many people as much as possible. If there's a design issue then it needs to be discussed and addressed within the development team or on the forums so that we can address issues with proper solutions, rather than half-baked unilateral ideas that only serve a single server.

In the past I've chalked off "team stacking" as a server moderation issue and tried to ignore it, but it's reached a point and gone on long enough where it should be considered harassment. This needs to stop.

[Jenzuj]

19 minutes ago, Agent said:

We already have much stricter requirements for team swapping than other games like CSGO;

de-facto official server

like csgo? majority play MM and there is no team swapping like at all and casual has the same system if not even stricter because you cant put in queue for it "xxx Want to swap" 

Then pay for it.

[Agent]

There's definitely team swapping in CSGO, and I tend to stack hard with the people I play with. That's getting pretty off topic though.

6 minutes ago, Jenzuj said:

Then pay for it.

Not sure what you're getting at here, other than being unnecessarily aggressive.

[Jenzuj]

As i said, in casual mode yes, in match making no and MM is where the majority of the playerbase are.
My point was that the statement was a load of bull

Its not a official server just because you say it is, you want it official you kind of need to pay for it and run it.
Otherwise as long as the server/moderation doesnt break ToS, you and any other dev for that matter shouldnt get involved.

Edited June 3, 2019 by Jenzuj

[Ryz]

No offence, but since the teambalance still doesn't work as intented I think it isn't too bad to fixate on the teambalance a bit more by manually moving people or making the balance more equal. Offcourse playing with friends is ok, but most of the regular players will confirm that if some of the ' elite players'  which might be friends play together the balance will drift fuhrter off thus making the game unplayable for the majority...

It also looks like some off these elite players are friends because they share the same skill: namely being good at aim...

We' ve seen many times when this stacking happens the server just empties quick and dies. Offcourse this also happened when people joined the same team after PUGs and in many other situations... Hoorah for the people who had some fun with a few short round, but in the end the whole community loses cause of these games... At least it will not help the playerbase... 

Also I do not get why some people ' want to play Renegade-x with friends'  while in reality they change the teambalance in such a way that it is not longer the formula which is called Renegade-x, but it's just downgraded to a single sided slaughter with no effort... If that is the way people want to have it... Where is the challenge then...? Or the fun...

Anyways: 
What I don't get is that there is a topic (see below and there are more) where mutators are encouraged to change the game experience. Once one is provided which doesn't focus on adding extra content but  on balance it is not appreciated while the playerbase seams to show they like it. It would be good if people could choose between various servers with various settings so one can choose the gameplay he / she likes.  Unfortunately the playerbase is too small for that. Ironically the playerbase might also stay smaller cause of the unbalanced games...

For me a good game is a balanced game where I rather lose after a good fight, then win a game where I' ve been (accidently or not) part of a super good group and where we win without effort. In the end I guess we all win with games like this and the playerbase might even grow... 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 3, 2019 by Ryz
Typos

[Agent]

@Ryz Yeah, the general view around mutators has been shifting a bit recently since we don't want to see core game features being randomly disabled such as team swapping or commander powers. We definitely need to draft up some guidelines around mutators, particularly highlighting that core features shouldn't be removed on core ("de-facto official") servers. In general, core servers should try to remain as vanilla as possible so that we can actually continue to balance the game, and also ensure that discovered bugs exist in the base game, and aren't specific to that server.

45 minutes ago, Ryz said:

It also looks like some off these elite players are friends because they share the same skill: namely being good at aim...

Honestly, I suspect this has a lot to do with people only being friends with people who are, well... friendly. I certainly don't have great aim, but manage to have plenty of fun playing with or against friends (including jpj and poi and sarah and others that might be considered "elites").

I also feel like it's worth noting that when the group being complained about exceeds 2 people, you're going to get complaints regardless about stacking. For example if Sarah, jpj, and poi are all playing at the same time, no matter what you're going to have 2 of them on the same team. This often leads to people complaining about a "stack" of 2 people, be it Sarah and poi, or poi and jpj, or Sarah and jpj, even though it's impossible to not have at least 2 of them on the same team. The 3rd player is just disregarded. There isn't really anything those players can do to avoid complaints in those cases, and players or moderators may miss the larger picture when there's friends playing against eachother. For example if jpj and poi are on the same team and people are complaining, a moderator may swap jpj, causing a Sarah and jpj "stack". People will either end up complaining about that stack if left alone long enough, or the match will end before then and they'll complain the next round again. It's realistically not an issue that can always be moderated.

@Jenzuj You don't seem interested in having any dialogue and seem interested in only being hostile, so I'm not really sure why you're posting. I'm guessing you're some sort of moderator for FPI? Thanks for the insight into what's apparently just an overall toxic culture at FPI though. For what it's worth, the development team does have a vested interest in how the game is played, and we have been looking into setting up official servers, but we do reserve the right to delist servers who aren't contributive to the game's beta.

[Guest]

"These "elite" players shouldn't have a duty to play differently from every other player purely on the basis of skill . " - Agent 2019

yes, well and no..

Teams unbalanced? well lets hope the next match is better eh?
6 people stacking on a team? ye thats fine

friends playing with/agaisnt friends? yeah dude, but what pisses me the most, is that these so called "elites" make the game unplayable (wont mention any names for obvious reasons lol). Im not preaching that every good player on here should waddle about and repair rocks, but certain playstyles, that make a newbie pleb dude, that only has been ingame for 1 week, respawn .8 seconds after he left the base doesnt help the community too.

The problem is not "friends playing with friends", the problem is when the "friends" only goal is to tryhard every match 24/7.

[Agent]

@Kaunas Yeah that's totally fair, and high-skill players definitely do have a pretty notable impact in lower player count games especially, though I do think there has been a lot of exaggeration around how skilled some of these players really are. Many of the "elite" players people complain about have way lower win/loss ratios than other players that aren't generally complained about -- a lot of this is genuinely more about stigma and the fact that some players have really high play time in addition to decent skill. It's also easier to get mad at people with good aim than people with great game sense.

For what it's worth I know at least some of these players do make a conscious effort to avoid clearing out servers, especially at lower player counts, and sometimes make an effort to even play against each other. I think that's a commendable effort in any capacity. I don't think we should fault people though for having fun and an interest in winning matches.

[limsup]

I personally believe that this would be a non-issue if we could successfully populate more than one server at least at European evenings...

[Jenzuj]

11 minutes ago, Agent said:

 

@Jenzuj You don't seem interested in having any dialogue and seem interested in only being hostile, so I'm not really sure why you're posting. I'm guessing you're some sort of moderator for FPI? Thanks for the insight into what's apparently just an overall toxic culture at FPI though. For what it's worth, the development team does have a vested interest in how the game is played, and we have been looking into setting up official servers, but we do reserve the right to delist servers who aren't contributive to the game's beta.

I mean not really but Im here arent I?
Did not know that pointing out flaws in someones statements were a act of hostility and you really dont need to be sure why.
And whats up with the smearing?
The delisting thingie, looks like more like a covered threat than anything else.
Would you kindly define "not contributing"?

[limsup]

Okay, so back to what I have suggested... How about a global moderation and mutator guideline, in-game squads and some sort of a team-picking mechanism before the game starts? 

[Ryz]

37 minutes ago, Agent said:

For example if Sarah, jpj, and poi are all playing at the same time, no matter what you're going to have 2 of them on the same team. This often leads to people complaining about a "stack" of 2 people, be it Sarah and poi, or poi and jpj, or Sarah and jpj, even though it's impossible to not have at least 2 of them on the same team. The 3rd player is just disregarded. There isn't really anything those players can do to avoid complaints in those cases, and players or moderators may miss the larger picture when there's friends playing against eachother. For example if jpj and poi are on the same team and people are complaining, a moderator may swap jpj, causing a Sarah and jpj "stack". People will either end up complaining about that stack if left alone long enough, or the match will end before then and they'll complain the next round again. It's realistically not an issue that can always be moderated.

Thanks for clarifying about some things about the mutators, I do (offcourse) not agree however I can understand circumstances change and there is a need to change the rules. I only hope you are also open for the other side of the medal. It would be ashame if all the time you and other developers have invested would go wasted because of (in my opinion) some bad choices which influence the playerbase negatively. 

About the above part (in quote

The problem is not that some people (for example the ones named above) play together. The problem is they ONLY play together or go afk once in another team...

It's offcourse annoying that these people are being punished for being good by some people who call them 'ugly things.' On the other hand they can also be good against eachother, which almost never happens... it would surely improve their popularity and reduce the complaints.

Developers should consider that there hasn't been a single topic ingame which received so much feedback then 'these people' and the 'killwhore stacking'... 

It would be good if they play together one round, are against eachother the next (and not go afk),  be together the other and so on. Then atleast it is random. In reality you just know once the 'group' is teamed up they will stay that way round after. 

A lot of players realize this and because they play together you see also a lot of other good people trying to switch to them (or go afk). It's not the good players fault offcourse that this happens, but the people who know who the good players are will even more unbalance the game by stacking to them. That's also part of the problem... 

TLDR: In reality a few elites who are never divided over teams by 'faith,' 'luck' or a 'balancer' will always play together and many others realize this. These players act like a magnet completly disrupting the game....

 

 

[Ryz]

46 minutes ago, limsup said:

I personally believe that this would be a non-issue if we could successfully populate more than one server at least at European evenings...

Exaggerated, but a lot of truth in it:
Some good and balance games last longer and the server will stay populate till later (East American time) if the games are balanced... 
A few 'unbalanced 'pro rounds' and the player dies... 

Seen some good games of Under / Xmountain / Resevoir last till long!

Team picking / squad thing sounds interesting. 

Edited June 3, 2019 by Ryz

[Agent]

11 minutes ago, Ryz said:

The problem is they ONLY play together or go afk once in another team...

To be fair, there is an AFK kicker and I'm pretty sure most servers have rules (written or not) to kick AFK players. If someone is AFK then they should be removed. If they're actively avoiding attacking a player on another team, then they should be removed since it's essentially team hampering. I feel like those types of issues are relatively easy to address with little controversy -- as long as people play the game it should be fine.

 

31 minutes ago, limsup said:

How about a global moderation and mutator guideline

For what it's worth, we do have global moderators (you're one of them!) and a very thin set of global rules including policy against harassment. We just haven't been enforcing the harassment rule as much as we should, which is something we should probably push to start doing more.

[TomUjain]

Hey guys,

Please show respect, no insults or sassy behaviour please, that goes double to any FPI mods.

Just to chip in here as I feel as this thread is at risk of becoming hostile. Despite what the devs, or anyone else thinks of FPI or its politics we (as I am sure the devs do as well) have the communitys best interest at heart. Despite the disagreements between FPI and the devs I don't want this to be a divide between us, nor do I want this to be a 'them vs us' as all that will do is divide the community further.

With that said.

@Agent I do agree that it isn't fair that 'elites' are put into this box -- which is why I tried so hard to find a work-a-round that benefited both sides. I failed, clearly -- and (as I said in my OP) this problem ended up pushing us to this stage.

I believe, the big issue here is trust -- from what I can see here (and this isn't an attack on the devs) is that the vast majortiy of the player base has lost trust / hope in the devs, adding to that the devs have lost touch with the players as well. The 'stacking' issue, I would argue -- is a fault in game design, a big fault. As I said in the OP it isn't always 'the elites' that guarantee a win, but they do add a very high percentage.  FPI did what we could (maybe going a little too far) to try and keep it fair for both sides; to keep games fun and fresh.

It is clear the players feel very strongly about this problem (call it stacking, bad luck or whatever) as it keeps coming back as an issue again, and again -- and is the very reason I founded FPI in the first place, after two solid weeks of 'stacking' NOBODY likes to be headshot 50 times, it turns newbs off (as my ad campagin last year showed) and fustrates old players (hence the constant revival of this issue, which will refuse to go away until it is addressed, or at the very least looked into)

Perhaps FPI did take it a little too far. But honestly, I believe the devs need to look at ways to address this problem. The recent change to the team shuffler was a massive step in the right direction.

FPI is heavily moderared under very clear, fair and defined rules -- It is a system that helps tackle mod abuse and ensures our server is kept clean and fair for everyone. Do we go over the top? Perhaps, but as I have said many times before I am always open to feedback and always have an open door policy on discord to anyone, regardless of who or what you are.

The bottom line is this: getting hostile with each other isn't productive and will not address the concerns at hand.

[Calvin]

5 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

FPI is heavily moderared under very clear, fair and defined rules -- It is a system that helps tackle mod abuse and ensures our server is kept clean and fair for everyone. Do we go over the top? Perhaps, but as I have said many times before I am always open to feedback and always have an open door policy on discord to anyone, regardless of who or what you are.

I wasn't gonna say anything but i feel like i need to respond to this 

The moderators mainly pay attention to elite players on the same team -- if i count the times i been accused/personally attacked/basically called anything bad in your server while mods were around ingame.. I would lose count. the only thing you did with the stacking rule was brainwashing people into thinking that it's actually breaking the game!. I been around since the release of renegade-x I seen REALLY good people around and i seen insane stacking, NEVER have i ever seen as much complaining about stacking. 

To me this is very sad i been a 100% supporter of renx since the beginning, and it's truly making me sad that i see that this is where renx heading, all you see ingame is people being extremely rude to 2/3 people because they're on the same team... im sure most "elite" players will end up quitting joining public games or might never return. 

truly sad (i have so much more to say but my english isn't very good in large topics and getting my point across) this is it for now. 

[Madkill40]

1 hour ago, Agent said:

These "elite" players shouldn't have a duty to play differently from every other player purely on the basis of skill. They're not choosing to be a more prominent member of the community -- this is being forced upon them unilaterally and unfairly. They did not choose to be held to an arbitrary higher standard. It shouldn't be any player's duty to self-limit their team swaps, or to communicate with staff constantly about team swaps. No player should ever have to justify their right to play with their friends. No otherwise rule-abiding player should ever have to justify their right to play this game.

This is by far the strongest counter-argument I've read so far and I wholeheartedly agree with Agent. 

Here's a little story...

During PUGs some people have criticised the team balancing immediately the moment Boxes/jpj and Minji/Poi are on the same team - Here's the thing though, the moment you or anybody on your team boast about any specific persons' ability is the moment you've already decided to give up before even trying to fight them and also may lead to other players avoiding anyone being boasted. Most people have been in that position and there is nothing wrong with complimenting another player, but compliment a player when they're on your team or by F5 privatesay. But it is best to avoid boasting about anybody on the enemy team for your own teams' sake.

I attempted an social-experiment of sorts during two different Saturday PUGs, the first PUG I said nothing to my team when I heard some of them boasting about specific players on the opposite team, their team inevitably won. Every. Single. Game.

HOW-frikkin-EVER another week I immediately culled anybody on my team from boasting specific players on the opposition and the result was that we won more than we lost. [This has worked in public games as well]

Further thoughts:

If you boast about other people their chances of victory massively increases, you are actually handing the victory over to them because you glorify their ability and at the same time belittle your own ability as well as the abilities of your entire team. (even if the belittling is unintentional and indirect) 

So what can you do?

Mob them by working as a team and attacking them as an group. As a mob or alone, keep them [and by "them" I of course just mean the enemy team] preoccupied as you could be one of the few people on your team from preventing their goal of destroying your team and your base scenario depending.

Here's an example of what happens when you boast the opposition:

Your team mate and you are against an player who has been boasted by either one of you or someone else in your team, lets say you've been having an infantry skirmish on one of the maps - though you may die more times than your opposition you have prevented them from diving deeper into your teams' base, but oh no "They're just too good!" somebody cries and one of you [or both] get a vehicle instead and test your mettle out in the field.

Now there is nobody to stop the propped-up players on the opposition and they kill an building, your team loses, frustrations rise etc. 

You [a player] stopped fighting certain enemies because you focused solely on them as individuals ignoring the fact that a majority of their team could have been playing too poorly to compete in other areas Vs your own team - You've seen yourself as an lone individual and disregarded the fact that this is an team Versus [Vs] team game.

Nobody was actually correct in their boasting however legitimized it may seem because your team has suddenly lost, you simply lost because you or someone on your team gave up before the battle was over and just had to boast about giving up.

You have to keep trying, you may not win every time or most of the time in certain skirmishes but you can at least look out for your team by not boasting about the opposition.

"But what about when they snipe us?!!! Your example also your example is lame butts!" 

My only advice [which has been tried, tested and which has the best results for your team] is to take a risk - Zig-Zag your way to the snipers' position and kill them, weaken them or at the very least distract that gaddamn sniper. If the map allows snipers to get you in your base and the only way to the sniper is via an blockaded by vehicle at the base entrance and the sniper is behind/with them then get an MRLS/Arty and target just that sniper. The moment you and your weapon are in range of the sniper spam 'Q' so your team can know where that nuisance is.

You don't have to win to get better, but at least you'll learn more from losing.

[Guest]

" The bottom line is this: getting hostile with each other isn't productive and will not address the concerns at hand.  "

The only issue that should be tackled is the same issue that has been in this game since 2014 - single server monopolies. This goes to All of the server owners that is, has and will be in this game. The communication is poor and sometimes non-existent when it comes to actually solving a simple problem. What you did, Tom, was an "experiment", as ive seen people use that word when doing something rash. You did it, you saw it wasnt going well, you rewerted, thats fine. The major problem (was) with FPI is mods in general. Except from you, i (as a casual renx player, AT main btw) have never seen a "moderator" that can even hold that title. The past few weeks i can give you credit for standing up for your beliefs and for your own server.

[TomUjain]

I agree Kaunas,

There are strong arguments to be made on both sides of this fence. Even before FPI was a thing stacking was a massive problem; and it was founded based on that one issue. I do not think it is fair that 'good' players take abuse for being good, and as I said in the OP - this is fueling the 'rivery' between both sides.

we can't retain players - as my ad campagin last year showed. Stacking has always been an issue, since the dawn of time. I want friends to be able to play together and I welcome any ideas put forward. However I feel to meet in the middle here we need a mechanical change in game design -- or we will forever be aruging over this issue.

 

Edited June 3, 2019 by TomUjain

[Guest]

mecha..canicl..argorythicm..cal..code'ly.. how about... we stop trying to solve every problem with mutator codes, balance algorythms and game mechanics, and start having a conversation with.. well you know.. the people that play the game and have simple ideas?... wasnt targeted at you only Tom, it was for.. well everyone

[TomUjain]

No offense taken Kaunas,

I agree, some ideas would be a good place to start -- but ultimatly a few game changes (whatever they maybe) is the only way to put this issue to bed. Regardless of what side of the fence you sit on this peoblem isn't going away.

[Guest once upon the time]

First of all, I have to say that I am writing here as SilentKnight and give my personal point of view.
1. Fact is that the Renegade X is not a mainstream game, but what really makes this game so special is the variety it offers or can offer.
2. A server writes something about how he / she wants to proceed in the future and the outrage is great. I do not understand it because the servers do not violate the general rules.
3. What really inhibits the game or the growth (number of players) are the annual recurring quarrels year after year.
Yes, the teamstacking is a "never ending story" and unfortunately it often leads to the new player quickly stop.
Now where team stacking begins or ends is very difficult to define, but that should be decided by the moderators of each server.
It may also be that I'm one of the oldest (age related) in the truest sense of the word and maybe because of that I could still enjoy playing against Radeon and other friends. No idea if it is like that.
4.For beginners, this game is also quite "idiosyncratic" compared to others.

Instead of working against each other for personal reasons should be worked together.
Yours sincerely
SK

[Ryz]

29 minutes ago, poi said:

I would lose count. the only thing you did with the stacking rule was brainwashing people into thinking that it's actually breaking the game!. I been around since the release of renegade-x I seen REALLY good people around and i seen insane stacking, NEVER have i ever seen as much complaining about stacking. 

Sorry but if you havent seen the numerous comments and topics about you and some others stacking on *insert random server name here* then it says something about you. There have been numerious post for years and this was all even before FPI started and if nothing changes it will be when the next server arrises...

Also I know for fact people tried to talk to you, but you just ignore any comment / people you don't like.

Offcourse nobody has the right to accuse you from hacking or to bully you with whatever swearwords they use. But since it turns out you have such a good eye to snipe you can't be blind for some suggestions to change your own behaviour... 

I don't want to insult anyone, but just do a search for previous topics and you will see that what you state is not true.

Edited June 3, 2019 by Ryz

[Agent]

I'm not sure if any functional design change is really needed to address this issue; it's a conversation to be had, but my personal opinion is that it probably isn't going to be necessary, and as of yet no serious ideas have been put forth. Ultimately the issue feels like it boils down to server moderation teams harassing specific players under the guise of arbitrary and unevenly enforced rules, instead of evenly enforcing rules against harassment, as well as just not encouraging harassment.

Even this 3-round rule is highly subject to prejudice and uneven enforcement, and should really be removed. It's part of the problem, and encourages people to believe that people playing together is some horrible crime against gameplay. This leads to further harassment and conflict, rather than resolving it. As Madkill pointed out, any opponent can be outmatched and overcome; perspective has a huge impact. As poi pointed out, moderators haven't been enforcing rules evenly or consistently. These problems really do stem from community/staff toxicity, which I feel needs to be addressed.

[Madkill40]

2 hours ago, Jenzuj said:

As i said, in casual mode yes, in match making no and MM is where the majority of the playerbase are. [Irrelevant off-topic nonsense of another game]
My point was that the statement was a load of bull

Its not a official server just because you say it is, you want it official you kind of need to pay for it and run it.
Otherwise as long as the server/moderation doesnt break ToS, you and any other dev for that matter shouldnt get involved.

 "If you don't pay for the server you cannot have an opinion" ?

That isn't an very community-friendly attitude, especially when somebody else as taken the time, thought and effort into writing an detailed post [which isn't "a load of bull"] and if you are an mod at FPI I hope you don't use this shitty attitude of yours to be one of "those" types of mods. [The type which are c*nts and will always be c*nts to players they choose to not get along with because of something that has been said to them outside of the game, via power-abusing-c*nt-clique]

On 5/30/2019 at 3:35 PM, TomUjain said:

it turns new players off and fustrates older ones.

It probably just frustrates players new and old, no way an new player is going to be put off by somebody better them at a game they've played a few matches of unprompted. What turns new players off more would most likely be:

• Disrespectful players
• Disrespectful mods
• Game crash
• Sound Bug
• Players speed-running maps during low-pop games 
  • Additionally, if you're an 'experienced' & regular player and the server your on has low-pop and you don't recognize more than 50% of the names on the enemy team then show better sportsmanship and avoid the cheap infiltration kill. [This last one is purely subjective, but seriously, is playing this game about your ego or RenegadeX being somewhat newbie friendly?]

Honestly, one thing that APB does really well is its "Help" hotkey. Press 'H' and whatever you are or whatever you're in, you'll receive an quick short pop-up of how to use and control that unit. Its an great idea and RenX would really benefit from this when it comes to attracting and keeping new players.

Last thing: A new player isn't going to really know an good player from an bad player unless their team is boasting about any specific player, which may in fact put them off more than just being killed a lot [which is going to happen in a lot of games where other players have had time to practice than any newbie] - strict ranking systems notwithstanding. 

But don't go blaming people who have spent a lot of time playing Renegade X for playing Renegade X because some people choose to boast about those players in-game and disrupt the server with their lack of self-control over their own unfortunate frustration

[TomUjain]

2 minutes ago, Ryz said:

Also I know for fact people tried to talk to you, but you just ignore any comment / people you don't like. 

Poi has been pretty open minded on the issue I have to say, and has been trying to play on different teams several times, even asking JP to switch back.

@Agent Perhaps. I do feel there is a bit of bias between the 'normal' players and the 'elites' when it comes to direct attacks. Thats somthing I can look into. As it stands our trump card for un-even teams is a manual shuffle after 1 - 3 bad games (as defined by our rules thread) but this is demanding work and we can't always get it right.

I don't think a conversation will do very little, aside from venting out a bit of truth from the community (which I think we need to see more of) but some sort of design mechanic would be a good way forward. I'm willing to put some reasonable ideas on the table, if the dev team was willing to meet us halfway on this problem?

 

[Calvin]

15 minutes ago, Ryz said:

Also I know for fact people tried to talk to you, but you just ignore any comment / people you don't like.

The only staff member from FPI that i had a conversation with about the "stacking" issue was Tomujain and btw i contacted him first about this matter, i don't ignore people, if i respond in public games i just get swarmed by hate comments. (and none of you do something about this)

15 minutes ago, Ryz said:

Offcourse nobody has the right to accuse you from hacking or to bully you with whatever swearwords they use. But since it turns out you have such a good eye to snipe you can't be blind for some suggestions to change your own behaviour... 

All i do whenever im in game is shooting heads, if that's what you meant by "behaviour" over the years i got pretty good at ignoring the people that are rude to me or say things that don't make any sense.. 

15 minutes ago, Ryz said:

Sorry but if you havent seen the numerous comments and topics about you and some others stacking on *insert random server name here* then it says something about you. There have been numerious post for years and this was all even before FPI started and if nothing changes it will be when the next server arrises...

Ye but never it caused people to be rude to me at this level since FPI came out with the stacking rule, they're ALWAYS targeting me, they never let me just enjoy the game, offcourse i ignore them but i still read. 

I feel like you haven't really been noticing the "effort" i put into this after the conversation with tomujain, as i expected. all you do is complaining about the times me and jp/sarah are on the same team, please just let people play and enjoy the game. In every game people are going to be salty stop trying to control everything. this is to all the fpi staff. not just you

Edited June 3, 2019 by poi

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Agent said:

I'm not sure if any functional design change is really needed to address this issue; it's a conversation to be had, but my personal opinion is that it probably isn't going to be necessary, and as of yet no serious ideas have been put forth.

1st i see some bias opinions here, 2nd some serious ides HAVE been put forth and ignored over and over again by the developers. Not even that, but by the Admins themselves. I personally put forth solutions that, yes, will take time, but will (most likely) have good results in the long run. Sassy answers and just plain ignoring options and solutions that the players, such as Cephyrus put forth with his proxy mine defence wasnt even talked about, it was just left forgotten. Start listening to the community that has genuine ideas, rather than blaming it for being "toxic"

[Jenzuj]

3 minutes ago, Madkill40 said:

 "If you don't pay for the server you cannot have an opinion" ?

That isn't an very community-friendly attitude, especially when somebody else as taken the time, thought and effort into writing an detailed post [which isn't "a load of bull"] and if you are an mod at FPI I hope you don't use this shitty attitude of yours to be one of "those" types of mods. [The type which are c*nts and will always be c*nts to players they choose to not get along with because of something that has been said to them outside of the game, via power-abusing-c*nt-clique]

The facts about csgo wasnt irrelevant tho?
Agent said renx has a stricter policy on team swap than csgo, which i pointed out to be false, id say thats relevant.

Never said anything about opinions, i was pointing out how it should be treated as every other game does it.
As long as its a private paying owner and ToS has not been breached nothing should be done or policed.
Im not against the community, im against devs that threatens to delist servers when they dont share the same opinion.

[NodSaibot]

1 hour ago, TomUjain said:

I believe, the big issue here is trust -- from what I can see here (and this isn't an attack on the devs) is that the vast majortiy of the player base has lost trust / hope in the devs, adding to that the devs have lost touch with the players as well.

I don't really see much behind this statement. How have they? Also, we are some of the most active players in the community, so I'm not really sure what you mean here.

1 hour ago, TomUjain said:

it turns newbs off

This has yet to be proven as an issue exclusive to stacking. If we want to use some real life examples, imagine poi and I are on the same team, and jpj on other team. This couldn't be defined as stacking, as no matter what there is 2 teams, and 3 of us, so it is impossible to divide us all separately. Either way, lots of kills are going to happen. As it has happened many times this week, whichever team has the 2 on it will end up annoying the 1 person, and they will go do field or something else. We get a lot of kills, no matter if the teams have all 3 of us on it or not.

1 hour ago, TomUjain said:

FPI is heavily moderared under very clear, fair and defined rules

I notice a lot of mod activity on IRC when de-stacking teams is happening, but I see none when I and others get called barrages of names, and hackused. I know mods are active on IRC, there's no reason to modrequest. Mods are even in-game with this happens, yet nobody stops said harassment and hackusations. Not only that, but there has been a specific player everyday who calls his team "autistic" and "retarded" nearly every game, yet nothing has been done still. There needs to be consistency between mods, they need to know what is acceptable and what is not.

1 hour ago, TomUjain said:

But honestly, I believe the devs need to look at ways to address this problem. The recent change to the team shuffler was a massive step in the right direction. 

I've noticed no real change, as this doesn't really do much. I really believe this has been a good example of the placebo effect. This issue can not be solved with any amount of code. This is a side effect of having a small playerbase and a large skill gap.

 

~~~~~~

 

I wasn't going to respond, but since I was told to, may as well comment on the original post and others.

On 5/30/2019 at 9:35 AM, TomUjain said:

I wrote up a 3 game rule to try and address this issue, I spoke to the elites in person -- but very few people were willing to listen.

Who are these other elites, besides us 3? We went by your 3 game rule, then you guys suddenly removed it and disabled team swapping with no warning. I think it's kind of funny how you paint this picture of us, as if we don't care or as if we want the game to die. We are all long time players, and we love the game. While obviously we only really play to have fun, and it's less fun when we aren't on a team, I'm fine with "limiting" games per day together. Don't straight up lie about this. We are not the only people that stack, but it seems that we are the only ones who get attention on it, just because we are well known under our names or for other reasons. I know that other people stack and "dominate", as it's easy to see, and they also tell me that they do it.

34 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

we can't retain players - as my ad campagin last year showed.

Possibly related to the fact that there's no tutorial, the launcher doesn't work for half the community seems, and the game is filled with people constantly complaining and whining about x y and z.

On 5/30/2019 at 5:38 PM, roweboat said:

new players come to the game, but literally only staying around a few matches and never returning simply because they got headshott'd 20 times without even understanding how the game works. 

 

On 5/30/2019 at 5:38 PM, roweboat said:

My solution would be to do our best to cater to new players and do our best to ignore the "noise" from the veteran players. I'm sorry but if we want the game to grow at all, we are going to have to suffer some growing pains.

Alienating your veteran playerbase with the hope of getting a few new players doesn't really make sense to me, especially when we have never tried to run ads or get new players. Trying to explain lack of player growth or basing stuff off of nothing doesn't do anything for anybody. The game isn't ready to be advertised, that's why we aren't doing it. This is the reason why the game doesn't grow.

3 hours ago, Jenzuj said:

Its not a official server just because you say it is, you want it official you kind of need to pay for it and run it.
Otherwise as long as the server/moderation doesnt break ToS, you and any other dev for that matter shouldnt get involved.

Yes, because the game we've invested countless dollars and hours in should be ruined by some people not on the development team. /s This literally makes 0 sense, and I guess if that was the case we can just change the ToS if you really wanted us to. While we care about our community, we don't need your "clearance" to make changes to the game, no matter what it is. While we are always open to community feedback and ideas, we do deserve some form of respect for our decisions, and I would appreciate if you would stop acting like you guys are invulnerable to changes just because you guys run your own server I've been working with people in this community for a long time, but attitudes like this don't help at all, and are just toxic. We are all on the same boat, we all want the success of RenX

1 hour ago, Ryz said:

The problem is they ONLY play together or go afk once in another team...

It's offcourse annoying that these people are being punished for being good by some people who call them 'ugly things.' On the other hand they can also be good against eachother, which almost never happens...

If you want an example of this, we were on Field X this last week. In Discord we had me, poi, jpj and SMayhew. I was with poi on Nod. jpj attempted to go in the tunnels but continually died, so eventually he just went anti-tank and played tank along with SMayhew in the field. GDI ended up winning. This is just one example of many, as this happens occasionally, especially since we don't stack every game.

1 hour ago, TomUjain said:

It is clear the players feel very strongly about this problem (call it stacking, bad luck or whatever) as it keeps coming back as an issue again, and again

I've only ever seen it complained about in-game occasionally in the past. I think it's become more of a culture thing recently to complain about stackers, even when there isn't (this has happened many times in the past weeks), and just blame that for the reason their team is losing. This is just another bullshit reason and another thing to complain about in this game, just like calling everyone hackers. These people will always exist, there's no changing that, but enabling them and encouraging them doesn't help the community become more friendly.

4 minutes ago, Jenzuj said:

As long as its a private paying owner and ToS has not been breached nothing should be done or policed.
Im not against the community, im against devs that threatens to delist servers when they dont share the same opinion.

I don't really see what you mean here. This has nothing to do with personal opinions, and it comes down to what WE want RenX to be.

Edited June 3, 2019 by Sarah.
123

[Agent]

4 minutes ago, Kaunas said:

2nd some serious ides HAVE been put forth and ignored over and over again by the developers

I guess I should've phrased better, but time is a really serious constraint when it comes to implementing new features. It does take developer time away from other tasks and even when we decide that something is a good idea and that we want to implement it, it needs to be prioritized rationally, which unfortunately means it might not be able to be worked on before other tasks that are higher priority.

It's a totally fair criticism that I don't read and respond to feedback threads nearly as much as I should though.

[RypeL]

Whatever Agent said (i have no time to read it right now) is her personal oppinion and in no way a Totem Arts oppinio. Just keep that in mind.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Agent said:

 time is a really serious constraint when it comes to implementing new features. It does take developer time away from other tasks

riiiight... but what i have suggested (3 weeks ago(to someone who has(in my understanding)high dev rank)) takes almost no effort from the development time, it was an idea to solve.. honestly i rather not write it here. But that an idea, that takes no coding, no tweaking and no dev time, was, from my perspective atleast, ignored, that just paints a picture that its pointless to even try to help a project that, even if talk the way i do, i personally  like a lot.

[Agent]

I'm not sure what idea you're talking about, but it would probably be best to post ideas on the forums so that everybody has the option to read and comment on them.

[Madkill40]

Quite a few of the mutators on the FPI server are an great addition such as beacons being unavailable when the player limit is too low, pop-up reminder if the enemy team has an commander and the other team does not, different crates from the vanilla game, only being able to switch teams pre-game if somebody else wants to switch team but not during an active game unless the teams are unbalanced numerically? Marvelous! And I'm sure there are other mutators I've experienced and enjoyed without even noticing - its great to test potentially future features by experimenting via mutators

The team-shuffler isn't the greatest and its awesome to see active moderation to manually re-shuffle the teams.

6 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

I do feel there is a bit of bias between the 'normal' players and the 'elites' when it comes to direct attacks. Thats somthing I can look into. As it stands our trump card for un-even teams is a manual shuffle after 1 - 3 bad games (as defined by our rules thread) but this is demanding work and we can't always get it right.

Let me inform you of something right now and this should probably be pushed among any server moderation team.

The player tiers (should be) as follows.

Newbies, Regulars & Experienced. [These are neutral and fair terms]

The "bias" you are referring to in its simplest form is the bias from players who cannot stop themselves from venting about somebody else being better than them. Unfortunately for your staff there is only so much any person can take before they accumulate this bias as well, it happens whether you like it or not - if you're stuck speaking to the most easily frustrated people its going to rub off on you eventually. In addition to accumulating this bias [unintentional or not] the terms of the toxic begin to feed into how you refer to different players by proxy and what you may incidentally do is marginalize specific players and put them off from playing the game - Do this too much and RenX will just have players who know venting will score them an catered victory. 

If you keep referring to players as either 'normal' and 'elites' you are furthering this bias, you are letting the toxic-from-frustration players have their way when they are in fact the bigger threat to newbies than regulars or experienced players. If players want to be vocal and bully people who are better than them, kick them, temp-ban them before one toxic p.o.s turns into 10 toxic pieces of scheisse with an mob mentality - This does not only protect experienced players but protects EVERYONE in your server from an player who choose to vocalize their frustrations for everybody else.

You may find moderating players who spew their toxic frustration is much easier when they're boasting and bullying others in all/team/private chat in-game. 

That's just an approach which worked in the past - on an once very popular Garry's Mod server. 

But just to say, backing up Kaunas here - You've experimented and results of any experiment are always informative in some way. FPI is an fun addition from the vanilla game

[kira]

TomUjain and gokou and  all the mods on FPI server, thank you for volunteering and your effort -  without disresepcting CT -  FPI is truley my favorite which i'm playing most of the time.  thank you for you hard endeavor to keep the balance between all sides. 
 

As a person that lives in a country which forces their beliefs at others (religious forcing for Shabbat, women dress modesty and all),  I don't like the idea of taking the freedom from others. in this cast the "playing with friends" thing.   it doesn't matter who i am, i have the right to play with who I want to play, until it hurts someone else.    now i can understand picking a side to be with your friends and to organize tactics on voice chat or what ever,  i can relate because i do the same thing and i had great matches.    once on field the teams were perfectly ballanced, GDI was trapped in the base but we couldn't get in they had hard defense from tunnels and front base.   i was with nexus and dan and torresk, we coordinated on voice chat and it was an amazing experience to (and by the way the rush worked as planned perfectly).
But my case didn't cause any complaints of frustration and that's the difference.      "i want to play with friends"   <  *stacking all renegade X best players at one team and thus make them rage quit* 
now, i don't want to create a situation that hurt the feelings of any elite players, these days or in the future, there is always a programmable solution I think to give those elite players to play with each other at the same team can be allowed but also mixed with separating them for a few rounds.  this is balanced,  to compromise, find the center, compromise a little for a largly better game.  I read poi words and it really hurt to read this, like every one against you and iam telling you poi. you are not alone, though iam not skiled as you I do and like a lot more people here in different positions want the best for you and sarah and jpj and the new players and old players and everyone else, god knows we all have life issues that we just want to escape from even for a little and Renegade X is perfect for that purpose of cleaning your head and heart.  but we can't ignore the fact of complaints and thus we all have to spare a little for the greater cause, for the playerbase, for the amazing server and it's loyale teams, for the fresh players and the future players who havent tasted yet the glorifying feeling of teamwork on a match of 64 players. 

for those who feel less skiles -  I too get frustrated a lot , after buying 1 K credits character and get headshot in my base, tempers me, so in my case i convert it to humor like changing my nickname to something funny, talk a lot in the chat. iam distracting my self and refocusing the gameplay, like someone said here ealier, if i can't kill the sniper, at least wound it enough so he\she go base to their base and my team can advance a little more,  like i do often with tanks.
mammis are all big and powerfull but the player who runs it sometimes does mistakes like trying to kill me instead those 3 arties aiming at him - and thus getting destroyed.  
find your path, dont get distracted by anger, dont blame others, and keep recalculating course like Waze.

Agent , (hi :))  ) though i admire your effort and heart,   i must disagree with you,  i think the mods involvement is important for creating a balance (but as i said give the "elite" few rounds to play together, not sure for the right ratio though) 
as for exmaple the game is the product, the playing the user experience, and mods giving also some user experience and as a user, you want to be heard and not ignored,  you want to feel that people understand you and act for your requesting.    ignoring only fuels anger and frustration.  until there is a trust build between elite players and other kind of players, and the normal environment is peaceful and tolerating (or programmatically ordered and boundaries are set ) , 
there is a need for a human person to get involved to bridge between all sides of the argument.   just letting it settle by it self will make people leave. 
for example, you wouldn't start a computer software company with only juniors? no. you will make a ratio of 5 : 1 seniors : juniors, to keep the environment ordered and professional, until the juniors are all grown and became full senior, you would manually involved to keep the enviorment highly skilled, so in renegade x, until the environment is settled, there is a need for a person to do order. 

 

as solution for example, disabling team switch, auto ballancing but keep tracking the users requests and think of customize solution if can, 
i think a mutator or ingame code built code like after each match, if few players have ratio larger than 4:40 (for example lets say, i don't know how much really it suppose to be )   then those players are splited equally between the sides, and  this code get turn off and on every few rounds - so elite players can keep doing their thing , but also give a chance for other kind of players to do their own thing. 
this is one solution, there could be more others that makes you less give up on your experience, this can be achived by focusing the right topics.

we can think together, how to fulfill our interests if we all share our thoughts politely,  all it needs is one insulative word and the other side stop listeninig and start defending himself, blocking from income communications, even the slightest hint of aggression so please.   for the love of C&C and the Renegade X , be brothers and sisters.
I love you all , who ever you are
Kira
 

[TomUjain]

ultimative

5 minutes ago, Sarah. said:

I don't really see much behind this statement. How have they? Also, we are some of the most active players in the community, so I'm not really sure what you mean here. 

You are very active. But that wasn't my point. I've lost count of the amount of outrages, gossip and general concern the general community has put forward regarding the devs and the direction they are taking the game, as an example;

14 minutes ago, Kaunas said:

1st i see some bias opinions here, 2nd some serious ides HAVE been put forth and ignored over and over again by the developers.

This isn't the first time a statment like this has popped up.

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Who are these other elites, besides us 3? We went by your 3 game rule, then you guys suddenly removed it and disabled team swapping with no warning. I think it's kind of funny how you paint this picture of us, as if we don't care or as if we want the game to die. We are all long time players, and we love the game. While obviously we only really play to have fun, and it's less fun when we aren't on a team, I'm fine with "limiting" games per day together. Don't straight up lie about this. We are not the only people that stack, but it seems that we are the only ones who get attention on it, just because we are well known under our names or for other reasons. I know that other people stack and "dominate", as it's easy to see, and they also tell me that they do it.

I don't like to 'box' players up which is why i always use 'elite' with quotes. Not, not just you three. I'm not painting any picture Sarah i'm simply reflecting what i've seen / heard over the years. I know you love the game, as do I. The '3 game rule' was not been followed anyway; players were using alias or finding loop-holes to try and bypass the rule altogether. I know you are not the only people stacking, and we don't always go after just you.

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I notice a lot of mod activity on IRC when de-stacking teams is happening, but I see none when I and others get called barrages of names, and hackused. I know mods are active on IRC, there's no reason to modrequest. Mods are even in-game with this happens, yet nobody stops said harassment and hackusations. Not only that, but there has been a specific player everyday who calls his team "autistic" and "retarded" nearly every game, yet nothing has been done still. There needs to be consistency between mods, they need to know what is acceptable and what is not.

I can't be everywhere at once. You, yourself were caught abusing mod powers -- I was only informed by 2nd hand info. As I will say again, if someone insults you screenshot it and send it to me -- I will always take your side, regardless of who or what you are -- IF it is genuine.  My mods don't always SEE the insults either, non of us are paid for this and it is hard work - if people are harassing you TELL ME, or GOKU - bare in mind I do have work / life and can't sit on IRC all day. Don't rage quit, have a hissy fit and salk it isn't productive and doesn't help me, help you.

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Alienating your veteran playerbase with the hope of getting a few new players doesn't really make sense to me, especially when we have never tried to run ads or get new players. Trying to explain lack of player growth or basing stuff off of nothing doesn't do anything for anybody. The game isn't ready to be advertised, that's why we aren't doing it. This is the reason why the game doesn't grow.

FPI is held in high regard by a vast majority of the community (despite roughly 40% who hate our guts) -- speaks volumes. As I said in my OP,  it was never my intetion to alienate anybody but to ignore this issue, and pretend it doesn't exsist is silly. I agree, perhaps FPI was a bit too overly zealous on how we went about it; but the ultimative -- doing nothing is far, far more harmful.

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Possibly related to the fact that there's no tutorial, the launcher doesn't work for half the community seems, and the game is filled with people constantly complaining and whining about x y and z.

Possibly. I can't say for sure. And neither can you, could it be that people getting head shot 50 times in a row, being stuck in 5 min losing sessions is a factor too? Possibly. Again, I can't answer.

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I've only ever seen it complained about in-game occasionally in the past. I think it's become more of a culture thing recently to complain about stackers, even when there isn't (this has happened many times in the past weeks), and just blame that for the reason their team is losing. This is just another bullshit reason and another thing to complain about in this game, just like calling everyone hackers. These people will always exist, there's no changing that, but enabling them and encouraging them doesn't help the community become more friendly.

Maybe people vent about it more openly now; but in the old days -- it was just as much of a problem. The 'fustration' has never gone away, even if it is louder today. I agree 'hacking' and 'aim botting' is something I take with a pinch of salt; I try to focus on the bigger picture -- enjoyable games. As I said in the OP; 'elites' (I hate that word) do not always guarantee a solid win, but they do help, a lot.

Bottom line: I've removed the stacking rule, so no one should be moving anybody -- that means you can play on the same team for 50 sessions in a row and you will be left alone. The only thing I still have in place is; if 3 or more 'bad games' take place we will do a shuffle the following round -- which will be fair.

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Re-shuffling - Mods reserve the right to 're-balance' teams after 3 or more sessions have passed of 'bad games' defined under one or more of these conditions; Session ends in 20 mins or less, No back and forth from both teams, Big surge in player lose. Re-balancing can be requested via a !modrequest.

 

[NodSaibot]

10 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

if someone insults you screenshot it and send it to me -- I will always take your side, regardless of who or what you are -- IF it is genuine.  My mods don't always SEE the insults either, non of us are paid for this and it is hard work - if people are harassing you TELL ME, or GOKU - bare in mind I do have work / life and can't sit on IRC all day. Don't rage quit, have a hissy fit and salk it isn't productive and doesn't help me, help you. 

I never said you have to do it. There are mods in-game when this happens, yet they do nothing. You can't say your server is moderated when your staff can not hold up the most basic of rules. If they don't know how to mod, they need to leave the team. Simple as that.

10 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

Possibly. I can't say for sure. And neither can you, could it be that people getting head shot 50 times in a row, being stuck in 5 min losing sessions is a factor too? Possibly. Again, I can't answer.

You and others say it's because of the headshotting, but then you "back down" from your claim. If you're going to make a statement, stand behind what you say. Don't back down the first second it's challenged by someone.

It seems this post of yours and the original/first reply of yours just has the intention of taking needless and random personal attacks for some reason. I'm glad we are all staying professional here though.

10 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

FPI is held in high regard by a vast majority of the community (despite roughly 40% who hate our guts)

If 10% is a vast majority... I don't know what "vast" means to you.

[Madkill40]

2 hours ago, Ryz said:

It would be good if they play together one round, are against eachother the next (and not go afk),  be together the other and so on. Then atleast it is random. In reality you just know once the 'group' is teamed up they will stay that way round after. 

A lot of players realize this and because they play together you see also a lot of other good people trying to switch to them (or go afk). It's not the good players fault offcourse that this happens, but the people who know who the good players are will even more unbalance the game by stacking to them. That's also part of the problem... 

Its a shame you, as an experienced player, don't promote the bigger perspective as well Ryz. 

For the most part, you're pointing out less than 15% of an team in most games as being able to cripple another team - This is mostly true if you have the toxic 'Elites' perspective. 

"So, what is the bigger perspective then?"

This is an team game and 3 players working so well together as a team should be more encouraging for the other team to work as a team rather than letting one or two toxic frustrated XBitches disrupt their own team and cause chaos -Remember! When playing RenX you are not just an individual, you are A TEAM with upto 15 or more people. 

Amusingly enough when you rally a team in an public game they perform better and come out on top in which case nobody gives a shit then about whoever player is doing what. So quit bandwagonning this toxic perspective @Ryz and look at why 3 people can beat another team. Because they, as 3 people, are working so well as a team that they can overcome more than 15 or more players. This is not because they are godlike [which is always an gross-over-exaggeration no matter what game] but because THEY ARE WORKING AS A TEAM. 

Ignore XBitches who vent and indirectly boast about specific players' abilities, !modrequest the XBitches OUT of the server because, I'm not sure if anybody here has ever worked as a group with other people but you know what is more infuriating than somebody who does better than somebody else? 

Somebody bitching about their frustrations of somebody else being better than them. Shut up and fight and prove you can become better. That's it!

People can change their attitude but nobody can change how good somebody else is without mental or physical abuse. @TomUjain Tagging you in the hope that you read this.

[TomUjain]

2 minutes ago, Sarah. said:

I never said you have to do it. There are mods in-game when this happens, yet they do nothing. You can't say your server is moderated when your staff can not hold up the most basic of rules. If they don't know how to mod, they need to leave the team. Simple as that.

Its my server Sarah, i'm the admin -- if mods are not doing their job, or rules are been broken I need to know. So yes I have to do it.

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You and others say it's because of the headshotting, but then you "back down" from your claim. If you're going to make a statement, stand behind what you say. Don't back down the first second it's challenged by someone.

It seems this post of yours and the original/first reply of yours just has the intention of taking needless and random personal attacks for some reason. I'm glad we are all staying professional here though.

I am saying it is a very valid, and strong focus for people to get upset and is a good level of reasoning behind what is causing the issue. I am simply saying I can't garentee that is the sole cause, any neither can you disprove it -- as much as I can't disprove yoy thinking 'no turtorial' is a root cause.

No Sarah, you quoted me first. I'm not attacking you in anyway just replying to your quotes -- if it feels like an attack it is not intended to be that way i'm echoing what has already been done (and you have done some shady things in and outside of FPI)

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If 10% is a vast majority... I don't know what "vast" means to you.

It is a lot better than the offical server, which struggled to retain 0% -- but the support we get is a lot higher than you think. As I said, and will say again -- me and Goku are always open to feedback. We can't always get it right. Sulking and rage qutting isn't productive and neither us can grow from that.

[Ryz]

Well @Madkill40:
I am not vocalling my own feelings towards this as I stated before, but the feelings from a large(r) group ingame. If it would be about me I could better quit or just don't share anything at all cause nothing will change to suit just one person.

You yourself have seen the many topics about stacking in the past. Not agreeing by how it's handled is ok, but ignoring that it happens and that many, many people have complained about it isn't. 

[NodSaibot]

7 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

(and you have done some shady things in and outside of FPI)

Again, how is this related?

8 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

It is a lot better than the offical server, which struggled to retain 0%

Same as above. And, we don't seed.

8 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

Sulking and rage qutting isn't productive and neither us can grow from that.

Again don't know what you mean

[TomUjain]

1 minute ago, Sarah. said:

Again, how is this related?

Because, Sarah it makes your above point regarding my mods doing nothing hard to follow if you have a reputation for being a wildcard -- and you have no screenshots to boot. I pointed out the 'offical server' as an example of how FPI is seen overall; compared to (what I assume) is your version aka - less moderation and more focus on muting harassers?

I never made the claim we are perfect, and i've just (as of now) spoken to my mods about the above point you raised about harasment. I just wish you told me or Goku earlier, or better - gave me or Goku screenshots.

 

[NodSaibot]

6 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

Because, Sarah it makes your above point regarding my mods doing nothing hard to follow if you have a reputation for being a wildcard -- and you have no screenshots to boot. I pointed out the 'offical server' as an example of how FPI is seen overall; compared to (what I assume) is your version aka - less moderation and more focus on muting harassers?

I never made the claim we are perfect, and i've just (as of now) spoken to my mods about the above point you raised about harasment. I just wish you told me or Goku earlier, or better - gave me or Goku screenshots. 

Your "points" have no gravity. At least I tried to moderate, meanwhile it seems every mod is pretty unhelpful. And what do you mean "screenshots"? You seem to paint this picture that I was some mod who liked to randomly ban or kick people. At least I did something when shit got crazy. Don't forget how I updated, configured and kept the RenX server running a good portion of the time. I also happily made you mutators, but you seem to forget this fact and others listed above and want to make it seem like I wasn't integral in FPI's rise. I personally seeded that server many times in the early hours of the morning, because I believed it could be better. Unfortunately I can't time travel, because I would do it differently if I could.

The official server was never seeded, and it's currently have host issues, so it doesn't really make sense to gauge "community approval" by who gets in what server, since we all know it comes down to who seeds. You observed this, and it took you pretty long to catch on to it. If we didn't seed in the "early" days, nobody would join. There's no "oh FPI is cool, let's join there", so please don't even try to say people like FPI more based on the fact that it's populated.

6 minutes ago, TomUjain said:

I never made the claim we are perfect, and i've just (as of now) spoken to my mods about the above point you raised about harasment. I just wish you told me or Goku earlier, or better - gave me or Goku screenshots. 

I shouldn't need to make screenshots to anyone, IRC is a thing and your mods are in-game. I don't need to go to admins for mod work.

[Madkill40]

1 minute ago, Ryz said:

Well @Madkill40:
I am not vocalling my own feelings towards this as I stated before, but the feelings from a large(r) group ingame. If it would be about me I could better quit or just don't share anything at all cause nothing will change to suit just one person.

You yourself have seen the many topics about stacking in the past. Not agreeing by how it's handled is ok, but ignoring that it happens and that many, many people have complained about it isn't. 

Yes, I have seen the many topics but unlike you I seemed to have progressed from "Maybe they could try and be on different teams" to my post on page 1 in this thread [With the big frikkin' card image] which exemplifies perfectly my attitude towards anybody who thinks they can have their way because they bitch about somebody else being good at something.

Is has been stated that certain specific experienced players have actually gone out of their way to play on different sides, they listened to the previous thread and now its time the regulars and other experienced players PAID ATTENTION.

Don't boast another player's ability to play a game under the guise of narcissistic bitching. Quit using the term "Elite" @kira @Ryz @TomUjain like it actually means something, you are promoting the REAL PROBLEM - even in this thread - by using such an gross term such as "Elite" - a term used by some who aggressively idolize but envy and also hate somebody who plays better than them? What the fuck? Who listens to that kind of player? They are always the worst. Player. Imaginable. 

I ran my own experiment and the result was that if somebody on your team is angrily idolizing players on the opposing team your team is most likely to lose, not because of the other players on the enemy team but because your team mate is being the most demoralizing, toxic and potentially chaotic team mate possible to the rest of your team. How? You might ask. Okay. 
I'll pretend to be one of these "Elite" aforementioned experienced players, 

Oh look! Somebody on the enemy team is calling me an hacker and someone else is already admitting defeat? ... Wow, okay that privatesay was pretty damn rude... erm... well if they really think I'm this good I guess I they've given me enough incentive to lack any kind of compassion towards their venting frustrated-selves... Oops... killed a building... I almost feel sorry for the rest of their team, if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have been as motivated to help prove them right!

P.S. ^ THAT WAS NOT AN WORD-FOR-WORD [verbatim] ACCOUNT, just an basic mentality as to why having someone on your team being an XBitch [i.e. Somebody who aggressively idolizes but envies a player who is better than them] is more damaging for the whole team than a few friends playing together and working as a good team. 

I will repeat myself here for you guys again: If you're beaten by 3 people working as team, rally your own team and work together.