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Goodbye


Calvin

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Ok so.. since im gonna be gone fairly soon for months anyway and probably never touch this game again im gonna say whats been on my mind lately

About stacking:

God where do I begin about this topic... especially during the past couple years it’s been used quite a lot. I just think it's hilarious that certain people only whine about known names being on the same team and not when there’s an actual stack going on. I’m not gonna point any fingers but some people that complain about it are guilty of it themselves and do it in a way more tragic compared to me and my friends. I’ve just had enough of it! Today for example while we were playing on field X there was a clear stack team going on. We lost a building around 5 mins and we were getting completely destroyed.. funny how nobody said a word that time.. but I guarantee if my friend swapped shit would have gone down. That’s also my biggest issue, none of these cry babies cry when there’s actually a stack going such as the CT stack. it’s pretty well known that it’s still going on btw. But like people said people don’t call them out because they're not very good at aiming, however they're good tankers and good at ( "sneaking" <lol.) I’ve been around since the beginning and this community has literally turned into a QQ fest about something so hilarious really.. the best thing about this is most of these people are guilty of it too, especially the people from the CT stack. I do say some of them aren't stacking but I’m not naming anyone in this. I’m not doing this to attack anyone. I’m just kinda ranting about what I feel has made this game dull for myself and many others.

About The Community:

I think most of the shit I’ve been getting was justified, especially from the ultra anti stackers and the ones that truly believe I’m breaking the game in doing so (again they aren't paying attention to the real issue as well) but yeah.. This community has become obsessed with hating certain people and will do anything to make their gaming experience absolutely miserable. Lately I’ve been personally attacked by a couple people about real life stuff, stuff which has nothing to do with the game and should NEVER be allowed in a game. What do the mods about it? Nothing, they just stare at the chat. Maybe giving a mute after several months or something, which is also really making me laugh. I’ve never been attacked in any game this much, god damnit I’ve been playing this game since the beginning. I’ve seen this game at its prime and omg it was so nice, it was fun and everything felt perfect. But the next generation of players in this game is just disgusting and toxic beyond belief. Again I’m not saying I don’t deserve any hate but if they do hate please don’t allow it to be personal, it’s just a fucking game.

About The Game:

For years people have spent a shit lot of time trying to balance everything out to the point where inf combat and everything felt good and was working, that's no longer the case the devs decided to completely ruin all the work they did on balancing and made it completely different basically making stuff like fartlands and marksman broken again (not to mention everything else thats broken now). it's stupid and its driving old school players away and just wasn't necessery, the player count i do admit it made games a lot more fun when it comes to combat but not the performance which should be the priority in the current year we're living in, nobody is gonna play a game where they get under 60 fps lol. also most maps are terrible, i dont wanna shit on the mappers or devs i appreciate their work but seriously Oasis is garbage clearly hasnt been tested in the beginning and some maps also are a complete stalemate totally not well made for any kind of tank combat in anyway, AGAIN not bashing the devs for their hard work i wouldnt be here since the beginning if i hated the game and everything about it. bottom line this game is in a truely bad state and i hope the devs will open their eyes about certain changes and dont try to benefit the bad players, they will get better eventually. no need to make the game noob friendly that way there wont be any new players with the drive to get better and the population would go down.  ALSO : fog is awful remove it.

about the devs:

I respect your hardwork and dedication to making this game better and amazing for everyone, although I do miss the old devs. I feel like the devs currently working on the game are aiming for the wrong things. (again that’s just my opinion and how I view things) For example, the CQC mutator was implemented to counter the Elites, they said that it was supposed to make the elites less of a problem so that the noobs wouldn’t complain as much. That’s not how it should ever be. I think that the focus is at the wrong place. You guys should focus on the peaks this game had and when and what you guys had during that time, I know this game lost the majority of it’s players when the ddos attacks happened but I also think some of the changes made during that time caused people to leave, do whatever you want with this btw but maybe it's good for you guys to kinda go back and see what’s different, and maybe roll back some of the changes you made. < this might be me being naive about the chance this game has of a revival but maybe it’s worth a try.

OK SO: 

This topic was fully my opinion and how I view things and my frustration towards this game, see it as trying to help. I’ve been around since the beginning, I’ve seen this game rise and FALL... again I’m not attacking anyone with this, I’m just being honest and letting out what I’ve bottled up for so long.

i know i sound a bit aggressive but i been putting up with this for so long

And when i return from where i have to be for 4 month and i decide to give this game another try, i will certainly stop stacking and work on the issues people have with me in this community. 

Edited by poi
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I'm sorry you feel this way.

I know moderator inaction has been an issue for many years, and I hope you know that we're genuinely trying to address the problem by empowering global moderators to take action. We're providing new tools (the ability to place chat bans from in-game, for example), comprehensive guidelines, and streamlined procedure (such as chat ban auditing). Hopefully these new tools will be useful to server owners too, and we're adding more, such as admin messages (akin to old ren's) and warning messages (very similar to admin messages). Some of these changes are completely internal and very recent, so they might not be as visible as they need to be. It takes time to ensure everybody is both treated fairly and given chances to improve their behavior. Muting people after you've been targeted for so long isn't meant to be a token action just to make you feel better. It's to try and improve the situation for everybody. It's the result of the new procedures for escalation, and in order to maintain fairness, we have to start with warnings and 24-hour mutes -- we're avoiding jumping straight into long-term chat bans now.

As far as game design choices go, I'm glad to say they're generally agreed upon by most of the team. The CQC implementation changes may be mostly the work of a single dev, but they're in the game because they were discussed by everybody in the team who's interested in balance discussions. They're in-game because we generally agreed that the changes were for the better. They're in-game, because the game needed to be more "noob friendly". Not every game design change is going to be immediately popular, but I certainly hope players are able to warm up to them. Rest assured, balance discussions are still constantly held, and we're continually improving. There's even some small balance changes in the upcoming patch, which we're eager to release.

Stacking is still a common topic within the community and the development team. There's no easy fixes to the issue, and much of it's perceptual. Sad to say, you've become the unfortunate posterchild for the issue. For what it's worth, we are trying to address the issue of team balance. I believe RypeL has some planned changes for the in-game team balancer, and I know Havoc has been talking with server owners increasingly about the issue. As a very long-term goal, I personally hope to be able to add some sort of MMR-based balancer once we eventually have a login system.

Even with all the changes in the world though, nobody can completely control how others behave toward one another. All we can do is try our best, and hope that players will try their best too. When someone smears your name or throws insults at you, it's probably best not to react emotionally, and rather to ignore it and possibly report it. We're pretty much all adults here; I still think we can act like it.

I hope to see you in-game again sometime,
Agent

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I'm sorry to see any player leave the game, especially if it's due to an unresolved grievance. I don't know you particularly well, but I recognise the infamous name and often seeing you play alongside a pairing with player JPJ which had become common sight and something I've complained about a few times due to leveraged frustration of being killed over and over by highly skilled players and I don't consider myself a noob in this game, but I have average infantry skills. I don't typically like high frag snipers in a resources game like this, and my issue certainly it isn't anything personal. Certain other players also play a side by side style which also gets on my nerves, racking up kills. I agree with Agent that you are an easy player to pick out due to your frequent high kill numbers and the frequency in which you play at the same time as the other mentioned player. I do also complain about stacked teams in general when I see many PUG quality players and names all grouped onto one side that will inevitably lead to a quick-stomp game, and whilst the !requestmod function exits, I've rarely ever yet witnessed a team shuffle occur due to this reason. I agree with some other things you've said, maybe the stats should also display number of tanks destroyed in a given game to make it reflect that the game mechanics call for this being more than just an infantry character team death match. It's hard for me to notice what I should expect to change with the CQC mod, but I wonder if some sort of noob-friendly training-mode setting could instead be activated by way of an optional tick box using the existing menu that boosts their stats (and lists it so players can see it is being used) using some sort of honest honour system that then becomes automatically disabled after xx hours of play. 

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Guest once upon the time

@poi 

Hello Poi,
sometimes pauses are not as bad as you think, if afterwards the thing is different you do not know.
In my case, the stand is like years ago that I no longer play pub.
Take the break for beautiful things, definitely give more than Ren X, enjoy your life.
In one point I have to contradict you and that in relation to the maps (mapper).
Unfortunately, some devs wanted the maps to have a standard gameplay, which meant that the mapper could not really be more creative. Either you adapt or the map disappears in Nirvana.
Of course, gameplay is also limited. It's just like that, but if some Devs do not look out of their box, it will stay that way.

Enjoy the break and let yourself be surprised what is coming.😉

I will take a long break too 😉

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good bye poi 😥
it was really fun and hard to fight against you, i've enjoyed it ;) 
i wish you will have good times on other games or stuffs

EDIT:
i'm thinking..

i'm not - i've never been and i will never be - as good as you
it was really hard to fight you, but sometimes i've killed you in 1v1 sniper fights, it was incredible and really enjoyable
many ppl complain about you, but.. what about arty camping in inf paths? like Field, FieldX, Under,...
i'm a inf player, these arties who do invisible damages are really bad
what about bombermans? if it's forbidden in PUG, it's for a reason
anyway, i'm really sad for you because i know many ppl - and i know who - are happy because you left, and they wanted this..

i want to ask something to all good infantry players, i will not say names but everyone know who i'm thinking ;)
if players begin to complain about your skill cuz "you're cancer" "hax" "you're killing server" what will you do?
and if i can't become good to snipe or infantry fight without "be cancer for the community" what i should do?
must i stop to play what i like?

Edited by Reivax
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21 hours ago, poi said:

 But the next generation of players in this game is just disgusting and toxic beyond belief. 

 

There has never been a more diverse and exciting group of players joining this community.  The passion I see from new players is contagious and has breathed new life into many of the social/community functions that this game thrives on.  Discord is humming with all levels of conversation.  New members like @Nexus51325 to Stagger Lee who not only join community events but also play consistently in public game throughout the week.  It's so much fun seeing the diverse of old and new join the pug each week.  Not only are new players playing the game but INVESTING in the game as well!  Contributing dev time and creating new maps.  I have met so many amazing people this year alone it's really exciting to see where this game is headed.  

  

21 hours ago, poi said:

I do miss the old devs. I feel like the devs currently working on the game are aiming for the wrong things. (again that’s just my opinion and how I view things)

the devs decided to completely ruin all the work they did on balancing and made it completely different basically making stuff like fartlands and marksman broken again (not to mention everything else thats broken now). it's stupid and its driving old school players away

nobody is gonna play a game where they get under 60 fps lol.

most maps are terrible

bottom line this game is in a truely bad state and i hope the devs will open their eyes about certain changes and dont try to benefit the bad players, they will get better eventually

 

You have to keep in mind the Devs do this for passion of the game.  I imagine most of them are fans of CnC like you, and try their best in the free time they have to make the game as fun as possible for everyone.  Most of the devs don't even have the time to play the game they craft, and I imagine after spending hours on a feature with the high likelihood of it going bork for no reason is very draining.  The dedication @Havoc89 @yosh56 @Agent and company have put into the game is nothing short of commendable and I hope they are rewarded greatly for it one day.

 

21 hours ago, poi said:

 

the CQC mutator was implemented to counter the Elites, they said that it was supposed to make the elites less of a problem so that the noobs wouldn’t complain as much. That’s not how it should ever be.

this might be me being naive about the chance this game has of a revival

 

It's all about iteration and adjustment, and all the games with modern dev cycles now do it from Dota 2 to Fortnite . The fact the Devs are willing to continually keep things fresh by adding new features keeps people around. CQC is not perfect but when has a feature been perfect upon first release?  It's weird to think now but that same Dev also developed one of the most layered and strategic mechanics in the q spotting/commander mod.

Could you imagine the game without it?

I remember a time when blowing up a med on walls meant crashing a server.  HA!  

The game has never been more stable, and with all the new features in development, and a tight knit community that is invested and thriving, there has never been more exciting time to be a fan of Renegade X imo. 

 

Edited by MintLemonade
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sup

nah wont bash you any more than i did literally the whole time ive known you more or less, this isnt even ingame so i have nothing bad to say about you anyway,

lysten

1st point yeah 80% agree on that

2nd point youre just crying victim right there.. like its the internet we all get our fair share of crap thrown our way but ok.

3rd point OH MY GOD 10020% i agree dude id.. on some points id literally kiss you!

4th point i just skimmed through it but +/- yeah agreeable

and about the last part " And when i return from where i have to be for 4 month and i decide to give this game another try, i will certainly stop stacking and work on the issues people have with me in this community.  " yyyeah poi'tro, when youre back ill be sure to let you know if youre not breaking your world right there, you got my promise :3

This last part is just for poi so no peeking you nosy cats!! no srsly dont look if youre not poi this is hella private-public information.

Spoiler

Poi, lysten bunny, ngl youre making the game hella difficult to even stand at some points, and yeah its not just your skill its you too, you know your playstyle by internet speak is literally cancerous to a game, especially a game who gets 100-150 players, now dont get this the wrong way im not rubbing it in, you even ak..now..la..dged(?) that some critisism was valid, its just that.

Just to awswer your question you asked on hourglass that i forgot to awswer lol: for me atleast, a name on the internet is something that grows on you, what makes you You, since theres no voice, no face, no experssion other than text and a nickname, for me a nickname IS that person, thats why i said ''sad ngl'' when i laughed that you changed nicknames 2 times a day :D (laugh was in good humour dw)

Bruh lemme be Frank here, when you come back, right, change your name.. maybe buy a new steam account and dont.. like dont play like you normally play, yeah it sounds stupid but just see a perspective.. of a new player maybe.. and best part, you wont get flamed 24/7 (and yeah i know how you feel about that too lol(had the same shit elswhere not on renx..))

Anyways bunnydrop, if you dont come back and youre deemed as MIA, ill remember you as that silly Mendoza with a pretty beard, running away from a drunk sakura that has a c4 strapped to her ass. sorry for that heart attack tho :D was hilarious you cant deny that.

And yeah im still salty that you lost that match when i forced you to command.. was tryharding so much for u.. (how tf i remember these things)

ANYWAY, untill we shoot eachtoher again, eh?

Some Love,

Kaunas

 

P.S. OMOGMOGMOGM REMEMBER on reservoir, you were sniping on the dam bridge and i was a tech slutmining, and you were shooting me for like a good minute and i was spazzing out in circles doing a weird dance or something? man those are the memories that stick to you im telling ya.

 

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  • Totem Arts Staff

@poi
i'm sorry that you feel that way,  sorry for every toxic bad comment you got in game and out game.

I know i got a lot of times pissed and frustrated  to loose 1K character i just got XD (your fondness to shoot barracks doors on Under for example when Nod closing us in ), man i felt like volcano of anger,  but it still hurt my guts to see RenX player leaving , so i hope after you finish your business in real life that you must do, come to us refreshed and joyful.

it is really tough play against you , recently i hoped to get more of that so i could practice dogging bullets  lol .  

about your points of interest you mentioned , I speak for my self of course ,  lots of good and bad players coming in almost every day, that's life. some of them curse and say bad 13 old shit talk , while others create amazing maps themes, coding the core project  or making useless mutators lol (speed mutator like any one will ever use it ) 
there mods to deal with the bad ones, responding emotionally to pricks never results in good satisfaction - just as agent said ignore and report.

"And when i return from where i have to be for 4 month and i decide to give this game another try, i will certainly stop stacking and work on the issues people have with me in this community. "         
 - im pretty surprised you managed to say that you willing to try change, not sure if i would could say the same if i was in your shoes.

i had a great time playing on arctic map (that map with the emp building) , with you sarah and jpj.  it was good experience to see how you co op together and hold stance , heal each, target a structure  and such,  in addition also enjoyed playing against you like on Outposts were you and jpj sarah and euan were Nod near our  base on forest and closed that area very well i must say!   

your toughness ,talent, teamwork and a lot more  adds a lot to the game, as John .F. Kenndy once said : "Don't pray for easy life , pray to be stronger man".

see you soon ♥️

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21 hours ago, poi said:

I’m not gonna point any fingers but some people that complain about it are guilty of it themselves and do it in a way more tragic compared to me and my friends. I’ve just had enough of it! Today for example while we were playing on field X there was a clear stack team going on. We lost a building around 5 mins and we were getting completely destroyed.. funny how nobody said a word that time.. but I guarantee if my friend swapped shit would have gone down. That’s also my biggest issue, none of these cry babies cry when there’s actually a stack going such as the CT stack.

You aren't going to point any fingers, but then claim 6-10 people are guilty of stacking, in a way that is "more tragic".

You claim that the CT stack is an actual stack, rather than 5-10 people who get together on Saturday's after the pug and play 2-4 matches of public games together on voice chat. Its pretty hard to get all of us on one team, unless of course, you and your friends switch to one side, making it possible for us to also switch. (you can't switch en-mass if numbers are even/+1).

You going to elaborate on how one group of friends playing together is worse than the other? For us we can probably get around 2 to lets say 10 matches in a week, tops, and only if we manage to get a few games on Friday or Sunday. We have lives to live, jobs to work at and school to go to. You get angry, (rightfully so) when people claim "Stackers!" when 2 or more well known players get randomly assigned to the same team. But then go and claim another stack is occurring against you, when it isn't, and then claim its worse than when you do it? I'd like to know who you think stacks against you in the middle of a weekday when most of us are at work, school, etc.

You are literally the thing you hate. But sure, shit on us some more, that will bring more people to your side.

22 hours ago, poi said:

But like people said people don’t call them out because they're not very good at aiming, however they're good tankers and good at ( "sneaking" <lol.)

Nice jab ;)

 

21 hours ago, poi said:

For example, the CQC mutator was implemented to counter the Elites, they said that it was supposed to make the elites less of a problem so that the noobs wouldn’t complain as much. That’s not how it should ever be.

When you can count the "elites" using only 1 hand, i think the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few here. Especially when there is only ever 1 sever online and only for a portion of the day. There is no competitive tournaments, or champions league here.

I'm going to drop some truth bombs here. This game was only popular in the early stages because of nostalgia hype. Once the older players left for w.e reason. Whether it was because, they got old and didn't have time for video games, didn't like how far it was straying from old Renegade, or because of DDOS. Whatever the reason it was, they are gone, and they most likely wont come back. Our only hope to bring numbers back up, is to find new players. Do you know one of the main reason new people leave? I do. How many times have we all see new people come, claim this game is full of cheaters, and then never come back. An actual tutorial, a disclaimer on what hit-scan is LOL, and a finished and up to date wiki would do wonders for this game.

CQC isn't perfect, I actually hated it when it was first implemented. It obviously needs some more tweeks to get it in a better spot, but something had to change though. The only way to get consistent kills was to only aim for the head. You shouldn't have to unload 3 clips during a firefight just to, maybe kill someone. I exaggerate obviously, but not by much. This made it so that only people with excellent accuracy could get kills, didn't matter if you were ambushed, or attacked in 2v1s. If you had the better aim, you won. It didn't matter how shitty your positioning was, or how aware of your surroundings you were. CQC isn't just for the noobs, its also helps the average infantry players.

The devs took a chance. This is still in beta, we are all the beta testers. You can't move forwards by standing still and not trying anything.
 

22 hours ago, poi said:

they will get better eventually.

 

We both know that isn't the case. There are players who have been playing since day 1, and they still can't hit anything.

 

No one deserves to get harassed in or out of game. Any targeted attacks against you and others should make all of us ashamed. 

21 hours ago, Agent said:

Even with all the changes in the world though, nobody can completely control how others behave toward one another. All we can do is try our best, and hope that players will try their best too. When someone smears your name or throws insults at you, it's probably best not to react emotionally, and rather to ignore it and possibly report it. We're pretty much all adults here; I still think we can act like it.

I completely agree with Agent on this one. We aren't robots though, and I don't blame anyone for reacting to insults or provocations. I do hope that we all, myself included, can move past any past grievances and talk like adults in the future. 

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3 hours ago, Gliven said:

You aren't going to point any fingers, but then claim 6-10 people are guilty of stacking, in a way that is "more tragic".

You claim that the CT stack is an actual stack, rather than 5-10 people who get together on Saturday's after the pug and play 2-4 matches of public games together on voice chat. Its pretty hard to get all of us on one team, unless of course, you and your friends switch to one side, making it possible for us to also switch. (you can't switch en-mass if numbers are even/+1).

You going to elaborate on how one group of friends playing together is worse than the other? For us we can probably get around 2 to lets say 10 matches in a week, tops, and only if we manage to get a few games on Friday or Sunday. We have lives to live, jobs to work at and school to go to. You get angry, (rightfully so) when people claim "Stackers!" when 2 or more well known players get randomly assigned to the same team. But then go and claim another stack is occurring against you, when it isn't, and then claim its worse than when you do it? I'd like to know who you think stacks against you in the middle of a weekday when most of us are at work, school, etc.

You are literally the thing you hate. But sure, shit on us some more, that will bring more people to your side.

There's 2 kinds of stacks one that finishes games under 5 mins if possible and one that only plays infantry and don't care if they win or lose. Remember awhile ago on reservoir, you guys literally rushed us with 4 apcs in no time, and ended the game shortly after. and nobody said a thing, if it was me and jp they would have given us a hard time about it. Also that's something i wouldn't do with the people i play with. My biggest issue about the whole stacking isn't that you guys stack as well, it's that people dont actually say anything about whenever you guys stack, it's always jp and me. And im not talking about you here but theres also a few people from the famous CT stack that whined like crazy even went personal after i started playing with my friends. But they do exactly the same.. 

I might be the thing i hate.. but atleast im not giving people a hard time when they decide to play together. (not saying that you did that) but some of the people that also like to stack did. 

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Guest once upon the time

Short note:
The discussion clearly shows one thing (teamstacking), that it's mostly the older players (veterans) who do it.
No matter which side it makes of you, you drive out new players from the game.
Teamstacking no matter which side is definitely out of order.
You do not have to reproach each other (whoever is doing team stacks), you are harming the game.

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I will miss you poi, I dont think ive ever seen you whine or start a surrender vote, respect.
You are one of the few players that can manage to get under my skin.

Dont worry about haters, their inflated egos just won't let them hate themselfes for being outclassed, they are in all online games and IRL.
If anything you should take pride in it, im actually jealous because no one has flamed me for being too good in ages.

Some jokingly say that balance is an illusion and I think thats true to some degree. Its balanced right up until the point where it isnt, which can happen in under a minute. players join and leave while a building can get destroyed seemingly out of nowhere.
Even with a MMR system i think it will do less than expected due to the many roles there are to fill in RenX, MMR just measures win/loss ratio (far as i know).
Players tend to stick or at least lean towards certain ingame occupations wether they are needed atm or not, would need like a "flexibility" and "prefered class" value in the MMR (also penalizing disgraceful WTJ players) for it to make a balanced team.
and some maps are just... when you get stuck in a choke point with that many players YOU ARE STUCK.

Idk any players well enough to actually change team just to play with them, i mean they are in the same game already lol.
So i can't utter myself about the mentality behind that.

Anyway, sad to see you go.
Come back anytime.

 

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If I may chime in here...

Stacking has always been a huge issue, the whole reason FPI was founded in the first place was due to my fustrations with the great 'CT stack' as I called it back then, typically after PUGs where games would become one-sided slaughter fests. (not always but enough to annoy me at least) I don't know if it was on purpose or not but it annoyed me enough to start a server.

Poi is right, there are a select few who stack together; but only ever moan or scream about it when they are on the losing end of it. I've seen this many-a-times. I never had any ill-will towards JPoi and even approched Poi several times to try and sort something out. The problem is JPOI have been stacking for years, and simply playing one or two matches a week apart was not enough to un-do the fustrations which (fair or not) JPOI was involed in. Granted others have as well; but not as obvious as JPOI who pretty much became the avatar of stacking combined with their skill, they created the perfect storm. Although I can't speak for CT; I did try to cool down some of the hostility towards JPOI but (as I said before) I felt applying the ban hammer and forcing people into a corner wasn't a healthy or sustainble way to fix the problem. I want to point out that mods do not always see chat (I don't) and need a prod from time-to-time -- my door is always open and if Poi felt generally harassed or upset I was there to listen. We define harassment carefully -- simply calling someone a "Dirty stacker"  (as an example) is not strong enough (in my view) to inflict mutes / bans I get similar remarks thrown my way and brush it off -- its called having a backbone. However any direct, personal attacks (that I was made aware of) I would always take very serious.

For years I screamed to the high heavens about how dangerous and counter productive stacking was, it has only been recently that the devs have actually started looking at this as an issue. For the record I don't think playing with friends is a bad thing, but I do feel that reason can be exploited easily - the handful of good players we have in this community equal roughly 5 "normal" players, so having 2 - 3 of them on one team will have a noticable effect (but won't garentee a win) we have clear evidence of this.

Regardless I don't blame JPOI, or any of the other 'stackers' I blame the game design. As I have said many, many, many times before -- this issue will not go away until we set down the foundations for solid team balancing; else the headache and the casualties will only get worse. No body likes to be in one-sided slaughter fests.

By all means encourage people to play together, but understand not everyone *is* playing together, get 10 people to all hop onto voice chat in a public game and you will dramatically increase your chances of winning -- we know this, the data is well founded on this. Granted this is not a problem if both teams are on voice chat aka PUGs (unless teams are poorly formed) but on public matches the effects of 'playing with friends' are lethal. Somewhere we need to draw a line in the sand and design a more robust system with the tools we have. I do my bit, and will switch to the other team (losing) to help when I can and have also made sure that FPI DO NOT all stack together, and if we do -- we do so rarely. I feel that the majority of people who pratice this are selfish and don't share my viewpoint aka 'their fun, above everyone elses'

 

 

Edited by TomUjain
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On 11/26/2019 at 4:56 PM, Agent said:

Stacking is still a common topic within the community and the development team. There's no easy fixes to the issue, and much of it's perceptual. Sad to say, you've become the unfortunate posterchild for the issue.

I'd like to expand on this a bit since the thread's heading more towards just talking about stacking in general.

Whenever I hear that one or two players are having a drastic effect on the outcome of games, I look at the leaderboards and see how they're comparing to their peers. Here's the data I see:

image.thumb.png.f87351d51aa9ab815ecdb6da13c54dab.png

I see poi has about as much impact on a game as Kaunas, bioz 4d, Owl, or MARIUSZ. If you're on a team with poi, you have a 60% chance of victory. If you're on a team with Sarah, you have a 58% chance of victory. He has slightly less impact on win chances than ef-, for example, who wins almost 2/3 of their matches. These stats aren't perfect of course, but data doesn't lie. I think a 10% impact due to skill, assuming the average player has a 50% chance of victory, is fair. As I've said before time and time again, I largely think the issue is perceptual. The other name dropped here is jpj, who is more likely to make your team lose than win, according to the stats:

image.thumb.png.c28660dcbeaedf8df790fb5c00713b53.png

That's a 44% win rate for his last 50 games.

 

The dev team takes team balance seriously, and we do genuinely hope to improve that, but I still think it's important to realize how much of this issue genuinely is perceptual. These "elite players" aren't so elite at all; they don't carry the games themselves. They just do what they're supposed to do, which is play the game, and hopefully they're inviting their friends along for the ride. Whether it's the "CT Stack" or the "jpoi stack" or the "German stack" or the "dev stack", I don't think it makes sense to attribute entire matches to a small handful of people. I  don't think it makes sense to punish people in these "stacks" with verbal abuse and harassment. It just doesn't make sense to me to discourage people from inviting their friends to play the game. If we discourage people from playing together, they're still going to play together -- it just won't be on Renegade X.

 

We spent years encouraging people to play together. That's what made TmX and CT fun places to be, hanging out with others and playing games together, and occasionally trying out silly tactics such as spood beast APCs and the occasional SBH shenanigans. I don't think we should ever discourage that. I still don't think we should ever discourage people from playing with their friends.

 

What does need discouraging is the senseless jabbing at one another. Stop calling each other "elites". Stop calling each other "stacker". Don't bash people for "rage quitting", don't call eachother "2 faced cunt" or "rat", don't call each other "catfish". Don't claim people's posts have great "cognitive dissonance" just because they're trying not to stir shit. Don't drag people's personal lives into the chat of a video game for ffs, as none of us are without sin. Just play the game, and play with each other. If you can't stand the idea of playing with or against someone, then ignore their existence. If you want to get along better with someone, try playing with them rather than against them -- we have voice channels on the Renegade X discord for a reason.

 

I hope more than anything to see the community embrace teamwork again. I hope to see people make the same wonderful memories I have from playing with people in EKT, TmX, and CT. I hope to see the community have fun again.

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Guest once upon the time

Fact is the influence depends on the total number of players in a game.
Playing only 30 people and stacking 4 people is much bigger than 64 players. Statistics are fine, everyone can read how he / she likes it.

 

1 hour ago, Agent said:

These "elite players" aren't so elite at all; they don't carry the games themselves. They just do what they're supposed to do, which is play the game, and hopefully they're inviting their friends along for the ride. Whether it's the "CT Stack" or the "jpoi stack" or the "German stack" or the "dev stack", I don't think it makes sense to attribute entire matches to a small handful of people.


But in one point I have to contradict many, what should the devs do? Prescribe Steam and introduce a ranking on Steam?

If the mods go through and the teams would balance themselves, there would be an outcry again.

The only thing I really can not read is: I want to play with my friends.
Is that really that hard to play with friends against each other? Not understandable. I've always enjoyed sabotaging Radeon's sneaking and we had fun doing it.

The argument that new players come and stay through playing with friends is not true. The numbers for years amount to about 100 active players. Losses of players were only compensated.

Of course, there were more reasons than stacking to make that clear.

That one Dev says friends should play together and thereby the stacking advocates (wanted or unwanted) I find questionable.
Another point is that the "friend players" should think about it, especially if they are veterans and what impression they make on Newbies.

1 hour ago, Agent said:

If we discourage people from playing together, they're still going to play together -- it just won't be on Renegade X.

Insults should have no place in the virtual world, thats true.

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I wish Poi nothing but the best and hope poi can return oneday when things have settled down / moved forward.

 

I know full well that stacking has become somewhat of a buzz word recently and its effects massively exaggerated. As I pointed out in my last post we should be encouraging people to play together but also understand the effects this can have on public games, it is well documented (in demos) the damage poorly formed games can do to the moral and motivation of the community -- we've all been in awful games, and it becomes painful when this drags from session to session in 5 min rounds.

The leaderboard is a very very rough outline of the issue -- a more accurate portrayal would be re-watching clips from (and I use the term loosely) 'Stacked games' as I made clear with Havoc, and in my last post -- having good players does NOT mean a win, but the effects will always be felt by the other team (be that in stronger inf control / tankers / rushes etc...). I am not saying it is right to cuss out or punish said players for playing, I believe this is one of the reasons CQC was invented.

Typically most people in public sessions will be playing solo - so adding in skillful players (2 - 3) and get them to all hop onto discord voice chat will (as I said) drastically improve your odds of winning. I know several people want to paint me as the 'Anti-stack' guy but I would love nothing more than for people to play together its fun and helps the community thrive -- what we need to consider (as I pointed above) is most people play solo (normally) so, in an exaggerated example it would be like placing 10 random people against 10 organized people on skype -- who would win?

Roll the clock back two years before FPI started kicking up a fuss about this issue, back where stacking was encouraged and in its prime on CT and we drastically reduce the length of gameplay and 'fun factor' -- this IS NOT a problem if everyone or most are playing together but the snag is -- most people are not. This defaults to game design. This thread, this 'forum chat' and other forum threads similar in and out of game are a reflection of a problem, over-blown or not it is a problem regardless of how you want to spin it and we've all seen the damage badly formed games can do.

 

Edited by TomUjain
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I also would like to add (this applies to everyone) that a core part of a lot of our problems is how segregated the community is from the dev team. I do feel strongly that we both would benefit from more open communication (as Havoc recently did with us) we need to remove this 'Them vs us' mentailty this is not the devs game, it is OUR game.

I also feel strongly that both sides of this argument be met if some lee-way is allowed. Having a strong robust team shuffle system is a huge step in the right direction -- every time i've been called into do a shuffle player numbers pick up and the games tend to last longer, are more fulfiling and fair.

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1 hour ago, SilentKnight said:

The only thing I really can not read is: I want to play with my friends.
Is that really that hard to play with friends against each other? Not understandable. I've always enjoyed sabotaging Radeon's sneaking and we had fun doing it.

So what do we do when team switching is disabled completely and friends get put on their team after the server scrambled the player list. Do we need a mod/admin on the server 24/7 making sure certain people cant play together? What is a good percentage of "teamstacking"? Should these players only be able to play together 50% of the time? 20% of the time? never? 

I also like going against my friends, its fun playing against strong players. I've had lots of fun in the past doing 1v1, 2v2, etc against people like poi and sarah, and yosh. But should i not be allowed to play with them ever, because they are experienced?
 

When me and a friend decide to join the losing team together and try to rally the team. Am i ruining the game? Should i be punished for this?

When I decide to say "hey, next round lets try this new tactic i was thinking about" And i get people, not just my friends on discord, to buy 12/12 humvees and rush into nod base. Am i ruining the spirit of the game? (its almost impossible to get more than 3 people on the same team, unless others are actively trying to switch too) is 2 stacks facing each other also bad, please enlighten me on this.

When the outcome of the game isn't determined by any of the "stacking" members. Is it still the fault of the stackers? If someone like bioz or radeon join a game and kill 3/4 buildings to sneaking. Should we force them to never sneak ever? only in certain situations? (sorry bioz and radeon, just using you as examples because you are good infiltrators)

1 hour ago, SilentKnight said:

That one Dev says friends should play together and thereby the stacking advocates (wanted or unwanted) I find questionable.
Another point is that the "friend players" should think about it, especially if they are veterans and what impression they make on Newbies.

Newbies will leave for many reasons, every game loses players. Do you still play every single game you own? When a newbie joins a team with good teamwork, do they leave because the other team was having a hard time? Not every match is a stomp, and not every stomp was because certain players were on one team. The JPOI stack could be on gdi on field, completely owning tunnels, and the rest of their team decided to do buy nothing but mrls at the start of the match, and get locked in base. The next 80 mins GDI is completely rammed with arties and light tanks in front of their base, and there is nothing they can do. Do you still blame the stack?

I get the frustrations people have when they face off against certain players. Losing isn't fun. Trying to balance a game around forcing veterans to never play with each other (when there is only 2 teams and 1 server) isn't going to work. We either drive away people who want to play with their friends, or we drive away people who think its not okay. You may not understand why i like to play with certain people (which i don't do 100% of the time) and thats fine, but if i was forced to switch teams by a mod/admin every time, i'd just stop playing, and im pretty sure im not alone in that. The only reason i've stuck around so long with this game, is because of the people i play with. Stackers were told to moderate themselves, and when they did, the community still cried. Neither side is going to win on this, only the community loses.

 

@poi 

21 hours ago, poi said:

There's 2 kinds of stacks one that finishes games under 5 mins if possible and one that only plays infantry and don't care if they win or lose. Remember awhile ago on reservoir, you guys literally rushed us with 4 apcs in no time, and ended the game shortly after. and nobody said a thing, if it was me and jp they would have given us a hard time about it. Also that's something i wouldn't do with the people i play with. My biggest issue about the whole stacking isn't that you guys stack as well, it's that people dont actually say anything about whenever you guys stack, it's always jp and me. And im not talking about you here but theres also a few people from the famous CT stack that whined like crazy even went personal after i started playing with my friends. But they do exactly the same.. 

I might be the thing i hate.. but atleast im not giving people a hard time when they decide to play together. (not saying that you did that) but some of the people that also like to stack did. 

The part where you don't care if you win or lose, is where people have a problem with you. Standing in 1 spot killing the same 4-10 people over and over in a 64 player server frustrates people. Whether you are doing it alone or with 1-2 other people with you, there will always be people to complain. We have talked about this in the past many times. You know i don't care either way, about this, but i know a lot of people do. Not everyone knows how to get around/avoid/remove you like certain experienced players do. It really frustrates people, and it shows. Do i want you to moderate your play style? no. But i know others do, and it appears to be a lot of them.

If we are going to compare stacks, that's fine, we can do that. I remember that apc rush, it took the whole team to do that, not just me and my friends. Am i not allowed to be a commander and ask my team to do things? Should i never rush? What about other players who rush, who dont stack, and dont play on discord with their friends. Should we claim they are ruining games any time they rush? When someone like @Kaunas calls out for a bunny rush, and i happen to be on his team. Should i tell him to "fuck off, don't ruin my game"?

When player counts start dipping below 15v15, I stop playing. It becomes too easy for 3 really coordinated people to win a match. After that it doesn't become fun. No one likes a stomp.

This fabled CT stack is barely a thing anymore. Just because someone like quincey or testman are part of CT, doesn't mean they were stacking. They may occasionally hop onto discord with us if we happen to be on the same team. I can count on my hands how many times this was the case for this entire year. Please don't make CT the boogieman.

How many times have you and your friends played together just farming kills? (which frustrates people a lot apparently). This is why people complain about you, more than CT. Do i think this is okay? Definitely not. I especially don't like the constant harassment you received just for playing with your friends.

Competitive games can sometimes bring out the worst in people. People i know who are kind and generous can sometimes be nasty to others in the heat of the moment. I wont make excuses, or claim others opinions or concerns are more valid than others. People should also be held accountable for their words or actions. 

I really do hope the best for you @poi, just try to not take criticism as a form of harassment. Valid criticism doesn't really matter which source it comes from. Just because you don't like a person, doesn't mean they don't have valid points. (this last part goes to everyone btw)

People will always complain no matter what you do. Its frustrating, but that is life. Use valid and constructive criticism as a way to grow, and tell everyone else who complains for the sake of complaining to fuck off.

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14 minutes ago, SilentKnight said:

The only thing I really can not read is: I want to play with my friends.
Is that really that hard to play with friends against each other? Not understandable. I've always enjoyed sabotaging Radeon's sneaking and we had fun doing it.

I guess there's a few things here.

Different people find different things fun -- some people don't like playing on opposing teams, some people don't like playing on the same team, but I think most people like variety. This is also where perception can really matter though I think. If 2 people are on voice chat together, there's a 50% chance they'll end up on the same team naturally. That's not really stacking, that's just people playing together and happening to be on the same team. Then there's a chance they might just prefer to play together, especially if they just played against eachother or its their first match on voice chat. See below for "stack math".

Just personally, I don't play Renegade X by myself ever. I really never have. I've always played with EKT folk, then TmX folk, then CT folk, and more recently just whenever someone invites me to play or PUGs. In general, I just don't play multiplayer games by myself. If I want to play a game by myself, I pick up something singleplayer, like recently I've started a new play through of Ogre Battle 64. I'm not saying everyone (or even a majority) should be like that, or that people who solo queue into games don't exist, because obviously they do. I don't think this game would survive without those solo players. I just also don't think this game would survive without group players.

Knowing my own habits, if I felt discouraged from playing with friends, I probably just wouldn't play at all.

 

Now for the fun stack math:

If we're talking about a pair playing together on the same team, 50% of games by default aren't "stacked". They're naturally assigned.

If you end up on opposing teams but want to play together, there's a 50% chance the teams won't be even (i.e: there's an odd number of total players). Assuming they're the only people who want to switch teams, or that they have the fastest ability to click the "Change Team" button, that means there's a 50% chance they can still swap onto the same team immediately. Then if the teams are even, there's still an unknown% chance that one of them will be able to swap anyways, as the result of a request team change. I suppose as the player count grows, the chance of a request-team-change succeeding also grows.

This means that if you're determined to play with someone you can manage that for 75%+ of your games, depending on the average success rate of a request team change (a stat I don't have) and your ability to change teams before anybody else. I suppose this means if two people are playing together and have a preference to playing on the same team, 50% of their games will be together by happenstance, ~25% will be truly "stacked", and ~25% will be against each other against their own desire. These rates will also be affected by: people leaving (makes switching easier), other people wanting to change teams (can potentially make switching harder).

Assuming the rates above are accurate, if people were only concerned about genuinely stacked pairs, ~25% of games (assuming max rate of swap success) are what people are saying merit concern. For any groups larger than 2, the rate of successfully stacking decreases for each additional player in the group (because it's harder to get those swaps successfully).

So, what can be done to reduce the ~25% game impact?

  1. Disable team swapping. I'm personally vehemently opposed to this idea, as it's easily bypassed and has unintended consequences. It actively discourages people from trying to play together, which in my personal opinion moves Renegade X away from being team-based and about teamplay. It's also easily circumvent-able using F5 -> reconnect.
  2. Disable request team changes. This might honestly be worth revisiting? This can also be worked around though by using F5 -> reconnect (you leave, person who wanted to swap is able to swap, you rejoin on the other team).
  3. Limit sequential games together for any two players, essentially just disabling team swap for those two players. I'm not sure if this could actually work at all and would probably have many unintended consequences, and would be incredibly nontransparent. Can partially circumvent using F5 -> reconnect.
  4. Limit sequential team swaps for any individual player (i.e: only swap once every 5 games). Again may lead to unintended consequences (if you're like Tom and like you swap to the losing team, you suddenly aren't able to do that often). Can partially circumvent using F5 -> reconnect.

A common theme with the above possible ideas: they can be broken using F5 -> reconnect. Can we make that not the case? Yes, we could force people back onto their previous team. Should we? I personally don't think so. If you F5 -> reconnect and one team has fewer players, logically you should end up on that team. If you're put back on your old team, then the teams are stacked by player count (i.e: 22 v 20). So what can you do, if you want to implement one of the above, but also want to put people on the best team at the time of join? Well, you could punish players for doing that. That seems a bit unfair though since rules like that will lend themselves to be enforced inconsistently (enforcement relies on ability to identify a user doing so) and, at that point, you're saying "we'd rather you not play at all, than to play together".

 

All of that begs the question, why are we trying to discourage people from playing together to begin with? Would we rather them not play the game at all? All we stand to gain by trying to address stacking, is a maximum 25% of games. I still feel the cost is greater than any possible gain.

 

But there's still the over-arching issue of team balance. Naturally having a bunch of people who are statistically more likely to win on the same team will more likely result in a win for those players than not. This is something that can, in theory, actually be addressed. We can address this by trying to use more than just the last game's score to balance teams. We can try using leaderboard rank. We can implement a separate MMR. We can implement a login system, so that everybody has a leaderboard rank and MMR. We can implement a squad system so that players who want to play together aren't team swapping at all, so we can take that into account when balancing teams.

The fun part of the last possible idea is that it makes stacking much easier, but for the sake of improving team balance. Which I personally think demonstrates that the issue isn't really stacking, and that it never should've been about stacking. Stacking is largely perceptual. Team balance is impossible to make perfect, but we sure as heck have room to improve. Complaining about team stacking, in my very personal opinion, is more about expressing hatred towards those players than it is a yearning for more balanced teams. Which is part of why I said in my previous post: we've got to stop jabbing at each other, and calling someone a "stacker", no matter who they are, is a jab.

 

This ended up being about 5x longer than I'd intended, but that's my rant for the day.

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Guest once upon the time

@Gliven First, the servers are never 24/7 full, but no matter.


I have written that it is not easy and if you are one of those who changes to the weaker team with a friend you are in this moment a "Team Stacker" but in a positive sense.
As I read, you also find it good to play against friends, it's good.


It becomes questionable only if the number of players is low and for example you would go with friends in a team and then best against people who are new.
Unfortunately there were and still are players who enjoy having a Slaughter festival. That does not mean that they all do that.
You will never read names by me that have made / make teamstacking or will eventually do it.
That is not my style.
Sure you should play with friends (also together) but some should also be able to read the situation (game done) correctly.

Dont know if mods change you if you wish to support weaker Team🤔

I can only tell you that some have not changed in recent years (whoever) and it still rings in my ears today when I had to read in Irc: Come on, we'll make the Noobs cold. We show them where the hammer hangs.


That was in the past and i read often the same issues with stacking this days.  I will not judge and i do not judge who is more "evil" 😉, because i do not play anymore, but i still like the game, dont ask me why.


But it is nice to read that you also play (not only what is OK) against friends.

In addition, there will never be a perfect balance, which does not exist in other games with significantly more players.

31 minutes ago, Agent said:

Team balance is impossible to make perfect,

100% agree 👍

To be honest every year 2 times in the year the same discussions😮

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OK, maybe I should say something.

Leaderboard / impact of stacks on game balance

The win/loss ratio on the leaderboard really does not say much at all. We have to keep in mind that sometimes poi does play solo, and sometimes jpj also plays solo. Also, sometimes they join in the mid-game / late game, perhaps with a building or more down. These kind of matches are sometimes not winnable no matter what. Not to mention the WLRs of some players on the leaderboard are clearly inflated, which can be done in many ways. With all due respect to MARIUSZ, his impact on the game is nowhere near poi's. 

What would be interesting to know is the win rate of poi and jpj playing together on one team from the beginning till the end of the map. I bet that it is much higher than 60%. You can't tell that from the leaderboard. I will tag @Tytonium here, as I believe he is preparing a data set that may put more light on the issue  of stacking in general (correct me if I'm wrong, Tytonium).

And, as many have already said, it is not only the fact that poi, jpj & friends win a lot of games. Their playstyle - kill farming - plays as much of a role.

Team stacking in general

While it is true that team stacking / lack of team balance has been a part of the game since forever, the issue has never been as severe and never sparked as much emotion as in the recent 1-2 years. There is a reason why you, poi & jpj (and your other friends), became the symbol of stacking. Your skill, your playstyle, and your prevalence is what differentiates you from any other stack (including the "CT stack"). There were weeks (if not months) when you were stacking teams and farming kills day after day in the EU evening peak hours. Of course this was (and still is) frustrating people. You and your friends understand where the frustration comes from (you and Sarah both admitted that).

Of course, many people went too far when venting their frustration. Rules should be enforced, and all cases of harassment / personal attacks should be punished adequately. At the same time, there were many people who legitimately criticized your and your friends' ways by pointing at how fundamentally unfun for half of the server is the game experience that you create. More often than not, you and your friends have ignored them. 

I condemn all haters and people who have insulted you or even touched real life stuff. That should never take place. That being said, putting yourself in the position of a victim is creating a largely false image. You call other bullies, but it is you who have been bullying others - with the way you and your friends stack and dominate games. All of you who stack together are perfectly aware of your impact on the game and of the hate that you generate. But did you or your friends ever care?

@poi

As a competitive player, I have tons of respect for your achievements in the game. In my opinion, there are very few players - if any - who have mastered Ren X to the level you did. Frustration is one thing, but playing against you is always a challenge for me. 

As a person, I have my best wishes for you. I hope you make the best use of your break. God bless you.

 

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I think we can all agree that the main concern people have here is with the script that auto assigns teams. FPI went knee deep into anti stacking last year and speaking from experience it only adds fuel to the fire. There will always be a poi, even if all these 'good players' left the game the power void would be filled by someone else thus making this a never ending cycle of bitching and moaning that ends up going nowhere.

We also can't expect perfection, regardless of what 'system' is put forward -- bad games will happen from time to time it is unavoidable, the main concern is the frequency. If 3+ or more games in a row end up being the same (which is more common than you think) that is when we have to go back to the drawing board and admit there is a problem. On the other side of the coin sometimes we have weeks, sometimes even months (though rarely) where game balance is perfect.

As I have already said, i'm not against people playing together - and I strongly believe that if we were able to fill out multiple servers aka 'dilute' the skill index this problem would barely be noticable, it is only because the community is so compact and small that when the sting comes, we all feel it 10 fold.

Being realistic here, It is very easy to throw flashy ideas at the devs and say 'do this' but I do believe we can get by with something simple such as the ideas Agent put forward regarding forum leaderboard info.

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honestly, i don't think the problem can be solved by a game feature, or a moderator stuff
only players mentality can do real changes
but you know.. in every human groups, you will find good guys, bad guys, etc..
i don't really attempt anything - because if something should be done, it would have been a long time ago
about stack, the word haven't real sense. When 3 good snipers fight together when enemy team have only 1 good sniper, is it a stack? when 15 ppl rush a tun defended by 2 guys, is it a stack? but.. if rushes are stack, what commander is supposed to do ?
Stack is inherent to RenX gameplay, it's a team v team game, not a BR
maybe attempt to haven't stack isn't a good idea, because it's impossible
in a team v team game, you will often have friends who play together, or ppl playing together ( like reps with tanks or when i cover a Havoc with my mobi )
about high skilled players, i feel really sad because poi had not anymore fun - when you're harassed 1/2 games you play.. i don't know how she have played so many years with all this shit thrown at her face, she really deserves more respect
i've tried to become as good as her, and i'm soooo far from her skill - i've headshooted Minji 2 hours ago on Islands during a sniper fight and, oh god, it makes me feel like a cloud when i can headshot skilled snipers
i've wanted to reach poi' skill - i've always known never i will be able to do that, but only reach the best skill i can have - to fight her successfully.
but all these toxic players who harassed her until she left.. honestly, i want not anymore play, if everyone will insult me.
oh, and.. @FPImods @CTmods read your logs, read what players posted when they learned poi's gone.
it makes me really sad to play on a game where i know i can't do what i want because i'll be hated by many players.
(eeerh against a textwall.. definitvely i must learn to reduce my walls)

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This topic went from people going "omg pls return : (" and other half "lmao good riddence byeeee" to a flamewar about stackss real quick. I love how even Agent is defending a literally known stacker that ruins games by saying they dont win matches 100% of the time.

(Im just here since gliven called out my bunnies) 

People like that getting called cancer and everyone hates them but my stacks, CT stacks and other stack dont get called out? Ye you know why? Because the most r'ted thing you can do in this game is sit in one spot and dont let people out of their base by clicking them down in one click, yeee fun stuffs.

And whats the problem with CT stacks? Ye when the glivens the mint lemonados and the dragons of lavas gank you with sbh 3v1 and just brutally disrespect your casual arse thats some stacking right? Fam. This happens once or maybe 2 times in a 1hour match lmao. Not constantly. 

Minji and boxes uuuuhgh top keks in renx uguhuhuhu ye bs fam, ye both can snipe, both can rampage every sorry ass they find 24/7, do they tho? Nah.. 

I dunno lads maybe im just plain dumb, but i honeslty cant understand, how you people dont understand, that certain playsyles amped by 2-4 people constantly is a stage 4 tumour in a game that barelly hits 64 players on a weekday these days. I myself am pretty cancerous ngl, i mean who else can casually ram 12/12 wolvies in the start of a desolation map right, but damn son, atleast i know when to tryhard and when to just do random bs that wont make people press U and type me a hilariously racist comment my way. Feel me?

@Glivenand dont disrespect the bunnies. Field bunnies are like apes. Together strong.

 

EDIT:(removes some christian profanity)

Theres a lot of ways for you elites to have fun in this game (talking mainly to older players like.. idunno 3years +), if your playstyle is making people ragequit everytime, and thats fun for you, you need to sort some things out irl damn.. 

This post was made by the Anti-Stack Initiative and #SaveTheNewPeopleOfRenx community member.

 

EDIT 2: and dont even at me rn. Ingame i dont care if youre someone i call.a friend, a girlfriend, a lad or someone i wish they uninstalled, ingame my top priority is as always has been - new players. Horrible stacks (not meaning just casual unbalanced matches that ACTUALLY randomly happen), people who bash their team publicly by belittleing them or calling them noobs, or just those commanders who shout at that ONE new guy who didnt alt fire on bar and the doza rush failed, those people ill call out all day all night. Idc if youre a top class player, old elite or a developer with all the power in the world. Go agaisnt my new players - youre nothing to me.

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@Kaunas nailed it. Thank you.

I don't really feel like responding to any of the false equivalencies looking to simply gloss over the heart of the issue currently. 

I will say this, I get to play Renegade-X maybe twice a week on weekends. 

You have a squad of people who play this game 12 hours a day 7 days a week, which in it of itself isn't a big deal.  The issue comes with how they exploit the community to fill-in the gaps of their boredom.  Renegade X isn't about going 200-0 sniping from the impossible spot on Under for 3 hours.  Who tf feels that's what this game is about?  They don't push or pull.  They sit and farm new players until they uninstall the game.

And if the devs truly feel this is what they want from the game.  Well, I was again verbally assaulted repeatedly by one of their smurf accounts yesterday. (literally hours after @Agent posted to cool things down) 

Attacked because:

- We attempted an amazing rocket rush from silo (failed)

- We stormed the Refinery, defensive buffing through mines in a desperate attempt to cause perm (failed)

- We discussed the proper way to eat a turkey (success)

- We gathered a group a stanks for a rush which were snuffed out by several meds and mammies (failed)

- We made silo a priority to control

- We stormed the back of infantry path only to be blown to pieces by MRLS fire (ouch)

- We finally destroyed refinery with good timing and tank placement like a bank heist 

 

Ask the community (especially new players) who had more fun? 

The ones being sniped on Under in silence as they spawn in one by one, or the ones taking part in a great escapade discussing turkey? 

 

In the end, it comes down to what do the devs want from this game?  Are they looking to expand the player base?  Then be honest with how some in the community "play this game", including one of the devs.

It's exploitative. 

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4 hours ago, Kaunas said:

I love how even Agent is defending a literally known stacker that ruins games by saying they dont win matches 100% of the time.

If you think I'm trying to exclusively defend poi, you're mistaken. I'm trying to defend players' right to play games with friends, which applies to everyone -- you, me, poi, Gliven, MintLemonade, and everyone else. It's for everyone's benefit. Everyone deserves to be treated fairly and equally.

 

4 hours ago, Kaunas said:

I dunno lads maybe im just plain dumb, but i honeslty cant understand, how you people dont understand, that certain playsyles amped by 2-4 people constantly is a stage 4 tumour in a game that barelly hits 64 players on a weekday these days.

If what people dislike is their play style, then there's no reason to complain about stacking. This is part of why I'm becoming increasingly convinced that "stacker" is just becoming a word of hate. It's not about the stacking (those people playing together), it's about their play style or game skill or just who they are. We should instead be talking about and focused on team balance. We can come up with some neat ideas to try to help with team balance. As I showed earlier, there's not an easy or effective way (that I'm aware of) to address team stacking, and even the most brutal solution (disabling team swapping and forcing people back onto the same team, regardless of team player counts) will only impact at most around 1/4 games. They're separate issues, separate things. We should encourage team play and communication. We should encourage playing with friends. We should encourage addressing team balance issues. We should discourage hateful language.

 

9 minutes ago, MintLemonade said:

And if the devs truly feel this is what they want from the game.  Well, I was again verbally assaulted repeatedly by one of their smurf accounts yesterday. (literally hours after @Agent posted to cool things down) 

And you don't deserve to be attacked in-game either. If you have a name, or a time, or screenshots, I'll gladly look into the chat logs and investigate. That's the same burden of proof I ask of everyone who reports an issue. Unfortunately I can't find the word "turkey" or "MintLemonade" in the global chat logs, despite having been logging all day yesterday. So I hate to have to ask, but did this actually happen, or is this just yet another slanderous smear?

 

31 minutes ago, MintLemonade said:

I will say this, I get to play Renegade-X maybe twice a week on weekends. 

 

32 minutes ago, MintLemonade said:

You have a squad of people who play this game 12 hours a day 7 days a week

As a fact check, you've played RenX for at least 19 hours, 26 minutes, 45 seconds this month. poi has played 25 hours, 57 minutes, 56 seconds. Neither stat includes games which were left early. So yes, poi does play more (about 33% more) , but not nearly as much as you claim.

 

35 minutes ago, MintLemonade said:

In the end, it comes down to what do the devs want from this game?

We want people to play the darn game and have fun. We all want to be able to play the game and have fun. Nobody on the team wants to dive into the swamp of an issue that's team stacking, because we're trying to come up with ideas to address the real issue: team balance.

 

39 minutes ago, MintLemonade said:

Renegade X isn't about going 200-0 sniping from the impossible spot on Under for 3 hours

I agree. If there's a map design issue though, please open a separate topic about it.

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27 minutes ago, Agent said:

If you think I'm trying to exclusively defend poi, you're mistaken. I'm trying to defend players' right to play games with friends, which applies to everyone -- you, me, poi, Gliven, MintLemonade, and everyone else. It's for everyone's benefit. Everyone deserves to be treated fairly and equally.

 

If what people dislike is their play style, then there's no reason to complain about stacking. This is part of why I'm becoming increasingly convinced that "stacker" is just becoming a word of hate. It's not about the stacking (those people playing together), it's about their play style or game skill or just who they are. We should instead be talking about and focused on team balance. We can come up with some neat ideas to try to help with team balance. As I showed earlier, there's not an easy or effective way (that I'm aware of) to address team stacking, and even the most brutal solution (disabling team swapping and forcing people back onto the same team, regardless of team player counts) will only impact at most around 1/4 games. They're separate issues, separate things. We should encourage team play and communication. We should encourage playing with friends. We should encourage addressing team balance issues. We should discourage hateful language.

 

And you don't deserve to be attacked in-game either. If you have a name, or a time, or screenshots, I'll gladly look into the chat logs and investigate. That's the same burden of proof I ask of everyone who reports an issue. Unfortunately I can't find the word "turkey" or "MintLemonade" in the global chat logs, despite having been logging all day yesterday. So I hate to have to ask, but did this actually happen, or is this just yet another slanderous smear?

 

 

As a fact check, you've played RenX for at least 19 hours, 26 minutes, 45 seconds this month. poi has played 25 hours, 57 minutes, 56 seconds. Neither stat includes games which were left early. So yes, poi does play more (about 33% more) , but not nearly as much as you claim.

 

We want people to play the darn game and have fun. We all want to be able to play the game and have fun. Nobody on the team wants to dive into the swamp of an issue that's team stacking, because we're trying to come up with ideas to address the real issue: team balance.

 

I agree. If there's a map design issue though, please open a separate topic about it.

 

We get it Agent.  You are so blinded by your loyalty to your clique.  You take jabs and search for any little detail to derail a point of view.  

Search Black Friday

Search Hoppity

In the end you shouldn't have too, and these details about the fun of discussing Black Friday shouldn't even matter, and I shouldn't have to painstakingly point out things like this.  The problem is you're so desperate to protect actual toxic people in your life you'll do anything the justify the means.

Like I get it, you're looking for little jabs at people because my overall point is still the same.  It's what you all do very well. 

I tried to get at the core of why I think it's important to protect new players.

You go for random jabs to protect people who are toxic. 

Sorry I said turkey instead of black Friday.  Real tragedy. 

I tried being nice @Havoc89 

 

I'm done with that now.

 

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6 hours ago, Kaunas said:

Minji and boxes uuuuhgh top keks in renx uguhuhuhu ye bs fam, ye both can snipe, both can rampage every sorry ass they find 24/7, do they tho? Nah.. 

lol. Kaunas i agree that stacking is a big issue and ruins games, but i dont agree with this one. Pretty much everytime i seen Minji play in public servers she was farming kills with her sniping. idk about boxes because he likes to join under player names nowadays. Also i have like 6x her veh kills admittedly i have more games played but not much, just because she doesn´t snipe as often in pugs doesn´t mean she doesn´t play like i do and mostly snipe in public games. also please stop comparing players to make something seem worse or less.

6 hours ago, Kaunas said:

People like that getting called cancer and everyone hates them but my stacks, CT stacks and other stack dont get called out? Ye you know why? Because the most r'ted thing you can do in this game is sit in one spot and dont let people out of their base by clicking them down in one click, yeee fun stuffs.

And whats the problem with CT stacks? Ye when the glivens the mint lemonados and the dragons of lavas gank you with sbh 3v1 and just brutally disrespect your casual arse thats some stacking right? Fam. This happens once or maybe 2 times in a 1hour match lmao. Not constantly. 

Again i dont give a shit if they stack, the thing that has always bothered me was the fact that they do exactly the same. and feel the need to flame other people for doing so. just because apparently they dont snipe often doesn´t make it less annoying. im sure for tankers it can be quite annoying when some of the top tankers are stacking together with also a personal rep bitch. 80% win chance right there. They gotta stop acting like they´re saints and never do the same thing they hate as well or belittle the issue by saying they don´t play as often because statistically I DIDN´T PLAY MUCH TOO. and i have double almost tripppppple the games played compared to jp.. HMM i stack every game? 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

also @MintLemonade just stop, you claim to get harassed by a smurf name woah what a tragic thing to happen. It's not like you gave someone a hard time for first treating their friends badly by removing some of them. after that you decided to hate them for stacking for the longest time (funny you do the same thing) totally okay because you claim to not play as much amirite. and last but not least you get yourself muted because you decide to shuff your face into someones personal life and flames Jp for being friends with someone. 

Just admit that you stack and break games yourself you and I know very WELL that you also like stacking with your little friend group. sometimes 1 at a time. but you usually dont play alone for long. 

"i tried being nice havoc, im done with that now"  shook it's not like you got yourself muted already anyway. 

Edited by poi
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You claimed there was an actionable offense in-game. It's my job to look into that, no matter who complains. I'm not looking for jabs, I went looking to find out what happened, just to learn that nothing actually happened and that the entire scenario seemed fabricated. Your reluctance to give me any data to help me filter these chat logs just verifies that.

I fact checked the game time bit not as a jab, but to point out that you do play nearly as much as poi, and that the comparisons aren't fair. You're saying a player has no life, that they play the game endlessly, yet you have similar game time this month. You're trying to manipulate and frame a false narrative that simply isn't true.

6 minutes ago, MintLemonade said:

your clique

Yes, poi is my "clique", even though we haven't played a game in the last 3+ weeks. I play PUGs more than I play with poi. This false narrative that I'm defending 1 person, is false. This false narrative that that 1 person is some incredibly close friend of mine, is false. We're friends for sure, but I don't think you know where I put my time, and how much I value level-headed discussion.

You're arguing in bad faith. You're deceitful, and it shows. When you're called out, you last out. If you can't handle discussing issues based on merit, fact, and fairness, you shouldn't join in discussions at all.

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19 minutes ago, poi said:
Spoiler

lol. Kaunas i agree that stacking is a big issue and ruins games, but i dont agree with this one. Pretty much everytime i seen Minji play in public servers she was farming kills with her sniping. idk about boxes because he likes to join under player names nowadays. Also i have like 6x her veh kills admittedly i have more games played but not much, just because she doesn´t snipe as often in pugs doesn´t mean she doesn´t play like i do and mostly snipe in public games. also please stop comparing players to make something seem worse or less.

Again i dont give a shit if they stack, the thing that has always bothered me was the fact that they do exactly the same. and feel the need to flame other people for doing so. just because apparently they dont snipe often doesn´t make it less annoying. im sure for tankers it can be quite annoying when some of the top tankers are stacking together with also a personal rep bitch. 80% win chance right there. They gotta stop acting like they´re saints and never do the same thing they hate as well or belittle the issue by saying they don´t play as often because statistically I DIDN´T PLAY MUCH TOO. and i have double almost tripppppple the games played compared to jp.. HMM i stack every game? 

didnt i say dont at me? smh these people.. (das a joke)

yeah i get where youre coming from, netherlands right?  anyway, clickers in this game have a hard time doesnt matter if they stack or just rampage solo, thats normal in every game, i just really needed to vent out on that post that everyone.. literally everyone is biased towards their friends and just assblast others.. things aint right. its the black on black that makes it shitty, thats why i honestly just.. yeah i dont blame stack so much as people just being complete assholes 24/7, if lets say youre on one team with jp and a minji in a boxes is on the other and you two just nailing eachother in the face till one party ragequits, yeah im all for it, when it comes to people who write ''welp that was my 1st match on this game'' and you look at his kd its like 1:24, tank kills 1 and like 400 points.. then look at a clicker with 100+ kills like bruh.

YE im not saying go easy on people.. thats somewhat teamhampering, it just tickles my insides the wrong way.. mine personally..

no idea how.. i think i failed to quote lmao.. anyway @poi with somewhat respect here, your post went from a topic into a bait and bite flamewar from 3 seperate parties.. id suggest just locking the topic at this point.. no point at keeping a nest where people just cuthroat eachother for bs

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Let us all take a step back for a moment and reflect on whats important -- the community.

I believe the devs have as much passion and love for RenX as we do (the community). As I said in my last post it is very clear the community is divided / feels strongly about 'team balance' (aka stacking -- if you want to call it that)

I don't think stacking is used as a verb to spread hate (although some of that anger does seem to be vented into it) as Agent pointed out, I do, however believe its core meaning has been overly diluted somewhat. At its core when we say a game is stacked it normally means 'unwinable' games, granted sometimes these can't be helped but I do believe 'team balance' related issues is a big problem, too much of a problem - if it wasn't this heat and anger wouldn't have gotten as blown up as it has.

I will also say again, I would (ideally) like for friends to play together but the majority (inc myself) of people don't. Ever heard of the navy seals? or the British SAS? They work in small teams against --- well, an enitre army in some cases. You can't denie that 2 - 3 people (more so if these players are good) do not have an effect on the game. I have seen it 10 fold, granted this isn't always the case and a win is not always on the table -- but a noticable effect will be felt, more so if it is done frequently enough for players to notice (Jpoi?)

 

So what can we do?

 

Be patient, take it step-by-step; I am a big supporter of a solid robust team shuffler -- as I said to Havoc, if and when I have to do manual shuffles I normally leave the people playing together alone (if I can) and am able to (most of the time) sort out the problem with 'poorly balanced games'. We don't need to turn off the 'swap teams' but I do believe that giving indentivies aka an epic unit? should be awarded if people swap to the LOSING team aka 5 - 10 players down.

As it stands the big flaw here is if the team sees no hope -- they quit (very common) and it further hampers the team.  The 'winning' team then has no reason to swap and instead get spammed with 'losing' team swap requests.

 

 

 

Edited by TomUjain
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For transparency, MintLemonade's most recent post (made < 5 minutes ago) has been hidden due to grossly inappropriate language and assaults, and his posts are now moderated (require approval by any moderator) as a result.

I ask people not to degrade into personal attacks, otherwise the topic will have to be locked, as Kaunas suggested.

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I think theres nothing left to discuss in this topic any further. 

I hope whenever i return this game will be fun for me again. 

It can be locked. 

 

Hope to see you all ingame at some point, im ready to fully leave this toxicity behind. 

Goodbye

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1 hour ago, poi said:

lol. Kaunas i agree that stacking is a big issue and ruins games, but i dont agree with this one. Pretty much everytime i seen Minji play in public servers she was farming kills with her sniping. idk about boxes because he likes to join under player names nowadays. Also i have like 6x her veh kills admittedly i have more games played but not much, just because she doesn´t snipe as often in pugs doesn´t mean she doesn´t play like i do and mostly snipe in public games. also please stop comparing players to make something seem worse or less.

 

I'm not farming kills. I play sniper here and there as i play hotwire here and there and any other character. Just because you have more vehicle kills doesn't mean a thing and aren't you the one who keeps comparing?

Please stop and have nice day.

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Certainly one of the more interesting points that I took out of this discussion: Agent is the vast minority of people who think stacking doesn't exist or is mostly perceptual. Even with poi himself agreeing that stacking is harmful to the game. 

 

Sadly, with Agent fighting attempts to resolve the stacking problems, this is the end result of years of stacking-related issues. What can be easily dismissed as "toxicity" is often the result of years of pent-up frustration. While you can argue that all of this is directly the fault of the people who stack, and it certainly is, a good chunk of the blame should also be directed at the dev who single-handedly blocked most attempts of resolving issues. 

Under the guise of "playing with friends", any criticism or actions aimed at stackers was shut down or labeled as toxicity. And yes, most of this was done so in order to specifically protect Agent's own clique - who were the most prominent stackers. It's easy to claim that all Agent's efforts were done to protect people who just like to play with friends, while in reality, it was all aimed at this specific group.
In fact, in many cases, the damage stacking caused was ignored and, instead, the stackers were labeled the real victims, due to the resulting backlash. 

As a result, the entire community was thrown under the bus while they keep being told that all their frustration with stacking is simply between their ears and that they're just being toxic.
Let's not confuse toxicity with backlash here.

Sure, not every single claim ever made about people stacking is true. However, that is not an argument that diminishes the impact of stacking  (as it does happen frequently). It also doesn't diminish years of extreme stacking. It just tries to obfuscate it.

So, Agent, even if you really do feel that stacking is mostly perceptual and that most people are crying over nothing, you are the vast minority. Stop trying to block any attempts to address it and stop trying to push the narrative that complaining about toxicity is toxic (and punishing people accordingly).

 

I also don't think it's unreasonable to ask Agent to stop moderating people whom you personally dislike/hate. Even if Mint crossed the line, your personal grudge against him means someone else should be passing judgement. A simple example was Agent's offer earlier for Mint to report abuse to Agent, though Agent did add that she already assumed it was going to be a false report to begin with. How could anyone reasonably expect Agent to be fair on the matter?
Similarly, I was recently punished in extreme fashion when someone from Agent's own clique decided to start taunting me. (And in the latter case, there were plenty of mods online to moderate if things truly got out of hand).

 

All in all, the recurring pattern is that the vast majority has a (legit) problem with a very small minority. The very small minority essentially has always had a veto right in the form of Agent however.
It's time to break the loop that we're in. We NEED anti-stacking measures and actual team-balancing (that isn't circumvented by teamswitching/rejoining).

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Just to end this whole topic in a better mood:
Thank you @poi for inspiring me to play as a sniper in RenX. Looking at your high skill play I made myself a small goal to achieve: to get on your level of play.
And I had a perfect way to start playing as a sniper in RenX - as a random new player.

I hope that in the meantime you'll become a greater osu! player :D (not gonna lie, I really like watching you playing it) and might even try a very different genre of games like RPGs or racing games, you'll never know when you'll find another hidden gem.

Sometimes we need a rest from such games like RenX and maybe it's the time.

Goodbye, most of us will certainly miss you.

Gexter/Lea.

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It's time to break the loop that we're in. We NEED anti-stacking measures and actual team-balancing (that isn't circumvented by teamswitching/rejoining).

Would you be able to provide any? Because... I dunno about any other dev, but that issue is the one thing I really have no idea how to address without targeting only specific peoples (which is totally unfair) and even then that can be easily circumvented.

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2 minutes ago, Handepsilon said:

Would you be able to provide any? Because... I dunno about any other dev, but that issue is the one thing I really have no idea how to address without targeting only specific peoples (which is totally unfair) and even then that can be easily circumvented.

 

Encouraging team based playstyles, discourage exploitative ones. 

It was the whole point of my original post before being attacked by the clique. 

 

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I'm not really up to date with all this old bad blood between players, but it's sad to see a player go. 

I consider myself a newer generation player and I've never complained about stacking. Get gudder, I say :)

 

Godspeed on your away-time, Poi! Whatever the case, I'd be happy to see you on a server again (just not in your scope :D). 

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I'm.... fairly certain stacking happened because a group just works too well as a team in pub, where teamplay just doesn't happen as often.

That being said, I'd prefer discussing it elsewhere, in an actual topic about it rather than here (this is an Offtopic subforum anyways). The thread has served its' purpose.

PS : And by discussing it, I mean in a civil way. No more of these childish banter. You're all grown up now, start acting like one

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