Dominic

Veterans don't have any specific tag to wear currently, but we do have another announcement coming up that will allow all non-admins to represent SG in a new way. In regards to the permissions issues, we'll get them all fixed as soon as possible.

Going to take a bit for all the listed changes to take effect.

Hello everyone, The Board has been discussing a rework to our recognition ranks for a while now. Currently, the ranks being referred to would be Honorable Gamer and Legend. We felt as though we were missing something and that the gap between the two was too large. We've decided to implement another tier that will be a middle ground for this system. While this middle tier will have some general parameters, the Board will still be the deciding factor when it comes down to placing people in one of these ranks. This new rank will be called Veterans! One important thing to note with this change is that we'll be removing the Presidential Award entirely, as we no longer see a need for it. Laid out below is how each rank will be treated moving forward, generally. The lowest recognition rank you can receive is Honorable Gamer. This rank will pretty much remain the same. It can be given to previous staff members or normal members who have contributed to the community in a significant way, more than the average player. Admins will still be able to nominate people for this rank which will be reviewed by the IA team and the Board. This rank does not grant any admin powers. The next rank above that will be the newest addition, Veteran. The people eligible for this rank will mostly be server managers or very longtime admins, but it is still dependent on performance, attitude, etc. People in this rank will not be granted any admin powers, but will be granted perks similar to that of an Honorable Gamer. The last and top rank will be Legend. This rank is for people who have contributed to the community in an extremely crucial way, akin to our now removed Presidential Award, and kept a positive attitude while doing so. Previous Presidents, Vice Presidents, Board members and technical staff are who you'll likely be seeing in this rank, but it may vary further. This rank will have the equivalent of Senior Admin powers on our servers and will have access to the Community Advisors section on our forums. With this change, we've reevaluated all the people who were either Honorable Gamer or Legend and sorted them accordingly. We think we got it down pretty well, but there may still be people we need to look into. You may have lost your rank entirely in this process, you can reach out to a Board member for clarity on why. If you feel you've been misplaced, you can contact a Board member and we'll discuss it. Listed below is all the current holders of each rank. Our current list of Legends: Our current list of Veterans: Our current list of Honorable Gamers: As mentioned above, we've reevaluated each and every person who was eligible for one of these ranks. This has been an extremely long discussion, the Board has spent countless hours doing this. If you have any issues, please reach out to us so we can reconsider. Thanks everyone!

We already have the markers in place that line you two up when you're in an LR and we've since added sprites above people's heads when they're in an LR. This should patch the problem entirely without us needing to remove anything from the store.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm having a blast. It's this cool game where you're actually in the body of a gay man, going through life. Currently in the game sitting in the living room with the rest of my family having a conversation. I don't know what anyone is saying but I do know that I am a homosexual.

Hey, I locked this thread up. Personally, I think it made perfect sense to put this into a public thread as opposed to saying it privately, but I also don't think it's best for everyone to tear each other apart especially if we're talking about coming together and that's what's bound to happen. I'm going to respond to all of your points and probably go a bit more in depth and not stay as vague as you were. Since I feel like this has to be made clear, my following thoughts are mine and mine alone, I'm not speaking on behalf of the rest of the Board and they may post later on. People disagreeing with our decisions is bound to happen. The Board is just five people with a set of opinions, same as everyone else here. It is damn near impossible to make every person happy with any decision we make and chances are there will always be some sort of backlash. This is usually perfectly fine, it really all depends on how people go about expressing their disagreement. There's a lot of times where people actually do it perfectly, by approaching the people who made the decision and discussing it with them in a civil manner. Usually one of the Board / Internal Affairs members is reachable through PMs to discuss any decisions made by their respective ranks. I've always encouraged people to hit me up to discuss anything they want, as that's how I've been treated by previous Board members. This community is a place to unwind, but we also have to keep a certain level of professionalism. Having fun is one thing, but having it at the expense of others or our community image is another. We do still engage in partnerships and cross-community collaborations and keeping a good image of ourselves is important. This is why we punish people for misbehavior and especially pay attention to how people in our staff ranks handle themselves. When you become staff and as you move up in the ranks, you're held to a higher standard and we expect you to meet it. This doesn't mean it's all work and no fun but it does mean we're much less tolerant when it comes to you acting out. Transparency is something I think we always try to strive for. We continue to make changes that offer more transparency within reason, such as the "Who Got Banned and Why" thread and publicizing admin complaints. Something else I think we as a Board pride ourselves in is the fact that we're willing to talk to anyone who has concerns. You can approach us in TS about any situation you have a concern about and 9 times out of 10 we'll explain it to you, within reason. A lot of people tend to make assumptions and only listen to one side of the story when we're perfectly fine telling you ours. This will play into my next piece, but transparency is something we always want to try to improve upon, but as of right now I think we're in a pretty good spot with what information we give out. Now I'll address some recent drama in a bit more detail, without naming names. A few people have received demotions recently, mostly due to their behavior. Somehow, which remains a mystery to me, a lot of people have come to the conclusion that I am the sole reason this happened. I legitimately have zero idea how my name came up as opposed to randomly blaming someone like roux or Rain, but I genuinely don't care. In 99% of cases, a punishment isn't given out by one person. The only situation where it may happen is if someone is acting out in an extreme manner and it needs to be dealt with immediately, but even that will be reevaluated by other members of the respective rank. Official demotions are not done without a majority vote. I do not go around making decisions on my own and there is always a majority on punishments / demotions at an IA+ level. In these situations in particular, there was a majority Board vote for the decisions made and in a couple of them, it was completely unanimous. These discussions also spanned 2-3 days and were not "quick" in any way. The way some of you acted following the drama was completely absurd. A few of you went poking around to other higher ups as opposed to contacting me or another Board member directly. A lot of the stuff being said in those pokes was super ironic considering how those same people acted when they were pulled into a channel with me. I went and addressed a channel of people on TS and mentioned that I was free to talk and was pleased that a lot of you came in and had civil conversations with me. I suppose the freedom to speak to us about anything isn't automatically assumed by most people, but I would've hoped it would be. This staff portion of the thread is a whole other ballpark, but I'll address it briefly. As far as admins being inactive - we don't see any reason to demote admins for minimal activity. It doesn't really benefit us in any way, whereas them logging on whenever they can would. Lots of them are dealing with personal stuff and we're pretty understanding because they don't really have responsibilities that need constant tending to. I think 30-50% of our admins being inactive / minimally active is a bit of an exaggeration by just taking a peak at all of their activity stats, but that's also dependent on what you deem is inactive or minimally active. The Community Advisor rank has been a topic of discussion for as long as I can remember when it comes to the efficiency of the role. Recently I've been making an attempt to loop them in on more topics, so I could've sworn they've been super active in terms of community wide discussion. On the server front I think they're doing pretty good as well. For all I know I'm completely wrong and out of the loop, but I thought the CA rank was in a pretty good spot. The big thing that needs to be taken into account there is that the rank is purposely vague, so it really boils down to the people in the rank. You can really take the role and run with it and do a whole lot or you could do the bare minimum. I appreciate the thread, as I know you have the best intentions in mind with it. I hope I managed to clear some things up with my response. The situation going on really isn't uncommon in the slightest but I think the most important thing for people to recognize is that talking about your issues behind closed doors won't help in any way. Your approach here is fine, or any other route that directly reaches us so we can take it into consideration. Feel free to reach out about anything.

The priority in the queue will probably be reserved for donors. I think the one glaring issue with the idea in this thread is that you'll pretty much be stuck with the same Lieutenants on CT all the time which will be regular players and you're essentially disallowing newer players from becoming a Lieutenant by not allowing them on CT. I think it'll be a shitty cycle where they queue up, can't get on because they don't have enough CT playtime but can't get any CT playtime because they can never get on. That is an assumption based on the number of Lieutenants or players in any other CT rank but I think the basic idea of basing it off of CT playtime makes no sense if they need to get on CT to gain that playtime. Our idea was to make it a donor perk and that's probably what will happen because you won't have that many donors on all the time let alone ones that are trying to get on CT, plus it's a super cool incentive for donating.

The IAs will be keeping the ability to join private channels without a password and there is a thread specifying that they can use it when handling disputes / other stuff that relates to their responsibilities.

We're all big boys and girls and I think we can make constructive posts that contribute to the discussion without making childish insults towards one another. Keep it clean, ladies.

The managers don't feel comfortable adding this. It's very easy to abuse something like this and we don't feel like this is addressing a very large problem that would force us to consider something like this. Thank you for the suggestion.

This was in our plans and will be done on the new forums. You'll be able to link your Discord to your forum account and get your rank automatically on the server. The current system in place to allow non-forum users to use the Discord will remain, which gives them the Player role automatically upon joining. If anyone wants to comment on the system once it's implemented, they can do so in the future. I'll mark this accordingly. Thanks for the suggestion.

Just to be clear - dojo wasn't removed because of the hentai room, it was removed because of low playtime / general agreement that it didn't do well on the server. We can try it again but I can't imagine there'd be an insanely different outcome.

Is the hentai room gone?

The goal is for everything to make sense. That's why Board of Directors is being changed to Directors, because I am a Director and not a Board of Director. Internal Affairs doesn't make sense like every other rank will in the rework and we want to stay consistent. For example, Internal Affairs Officer is a suggestion that came up that makes sense. Also yeah the plural / singular thing won't be a problem, it'll stay consistent.

This entire project is pretty much completely finalized. However, if anyone has anymore ideas for a new name for the Internal Affairs rank, please put them here. Thanks.

I know it's April 1st and shit but this isn't a joke. A discussion thread would not have been my elaborate idea for a prank. Don't shit post because we're gonna moderate this. The bad timing of the thread is because some dude on steroids who plays with airplanes all day wants to fuck with me. Thank you.

Hello everyone, The Board had a discussion about our current situation in regards to running TeamSpeak and Discord simultaneously. Over a year ago, we attempted to make a full switch over to Discord. Unfortunately, there was a lot of backlash from the community because of this decision. Last time, we didn't approach the community about the change prior to attempting to move forward, but now we are. Forcing everyone over to Discord for voice communication would also increase chat activity and general use of our Discord. We're quite behind other communities in terms of how established we are on Discord, especially in regards to how many people are in our Discord and how many people actually utilize it. Potential sponsors will most likely end up joining our Discord rather than our TeamSpeak, and we'd want them to see a thriving one as opposed to a stale one. Additionally, it seems quite evident that a majority of people on our servers would prefer to join Discord over TeamSpeak. Since this seems to be the case, you'll probably be looking at a lot more people using our voice chats and easier integration of players into the community. The main argument that comes up is that we already have so many people used to using TeamSpeak, but that will continue to happen if we leave it open. We'd probably be looking to do a trial run for a short period of time to test the waters as opposed to an immediate full move, but the end goal is to move over to Discord completely. This thread is open for discussion on that matter. Realize this isn't a final decision as of yet, which is why we're coming to you guys about it. Let's all keep our heads on straight and not freak out, we're willing to hear what you all have to say. Thanks.

12 and 13 year awards were added.

To give an update, award additions are on hold as we plan to redo them. This will most likely be rolled out along with the new forums.

A lot of the threads are server related and those need to be answered by managers. The ATs are being pushed to get these responded to, so that's being resolved. Any other threads that aren't server related usually need to be given an official response by a BD for one of the CAs to close it, so it's understandable that those have been a bit backed up. Any suggestions regarding new servers or new forums related stuff has been put on hold though, so that's the reasoning for those. I'll get the CAs to make a list of threads that haven't been responded to so that we can start clearing them out.

Hello everyone, We have a few promotions to announce today. To the Modding Team, we're bringing up 20 scrolls! His new responsibilities will include: Work with the Administrative Team to find and fix errors and exploits found in maps, models, textures, etc. Creating and developing projects for the servers including maps, models, textures, etc. Arming requested maps for use on the servers. Porting popular maps and models from other games to CS:GO for use on the servers. Work with the Media Team to develop graphics for completed projects. Work with the Administrative Team and Events Team for the production of event based projects. To Community Advisor, we have a new member and a returning member. Both of these people have been performing well in their current roles and have earned their new spots. WillofCamelot and Bright are the newest members of this rank! Their new responsibilities will include: Work with the higher staff on implementing important decisions and projects Handling player complaints and issuing bans Moderation of the forum Give awards to members on request Send group invitations to members on request Post in-game server problems on the forum Help in any way to make the servers fun Handle reported posts on the forum Congratulations everyone!

The Board is pretty busy with what's currently on our plate. We're currently trying to have a meeting among ourselves to get things sorted out. Normally that's pretty difficult to do given we all have real life responsibilities to tend to, but with this virus stranding everyone at home it should be easier to get everyone together. (besides Caution because he still has to play around with airplanes) Once we settle things, we're definitely going to try to shoot for a community meeting very soon, it's been something we've wanted to do for a bit here. As far as talking points go, there's definitely plenty, given it's been some time since our last community meeting. Unfortunately some projects aren't developed enough to be talked about just yet. In addition to whatever the Board comes up with to speak about, I'm sure the community is going to have loads of questions during an open floor anyway. In any case, it is definitely a good idea for the Board to meet up with the community. Thank you all for your patience, definitely something we're looking to do.

So it would specifically not show to people in the LR? Sounds a bit complicated but I'm not one to comment on the logistics of a plugin. You'd also have to account for them seeing other beacons from other LRs. So now imagine you're a CT, watching over a few LRs going on. 6 beacons are flashing across your screen so that you don't accidentally kill someone. However, someone on the other side of these people is shooting at you. You now have to shoot past 6 beacons. Feel free to tell me this is an unlikely situation - though I've been in it a million times. This would feel pretty annoying to me and I can't imagine no one else would complain. I think the problem you're addressing is a valid one to be concerned with but this solution seems to have a bit of a downside that I don't think is favorable. I can't think of a decent alternative though.

Don't we already have the white line that connects the two players though? It's still and not obnoxious and tells you who you're facing. You guys seriously don't foresee yourselves getting annoyed as the person you try to shoot at has a big beam of light shooting out of them repeatedly?

I know damn well we're not gonna stop talking or anything, but I'll still throw some emotional shit into this thread. When I first interacted with you after your unban, you weren't someone I thought was going to become this close to me. I suppose I figured you would've just thought I was an annoying little kid like most of the other people during that time. Our relationship progressed pretty quickly and we became really close friends, and I couldn't have been any more appreciative of this because of the atmosphere surrounding squeaky children back then. We started talking more and more and it never really stopped until you eventually came to be one of the people I trust and appreciate most, not only in this community, but also in general. I'm glad the BDs decided to unban you when you appealed, I'm glad I happened to be there to greet you upon your return, and I'm glad we've become this close over the years. Just know you made this community much more enjoyable for me, because that's really what a community is about, the people. SG has provided me with a laundry list of things I'm thankful for, and you're at the top of it man. Cya pussy.