Phoenix_

Back when I was CA, there was a thread regarding the standards for playtime awards for our servers. From my understanding, this was meant to be pushed out in some form or another to the public so people could know when to request awards, and so that more people knew that most of our servers awards were based off CT + T time and not "Connection Time" that you see in the GameME stats. Is there any possibility that we could see these standards for the benefit of players interested in the forum awards?

So now that the initial shock value of this change has passed I actually sat here for a little and thought about how things could be adjusted moving forward to make this change more liked and accepted. To provide some background on my thoughts moving forward, I want to state first off that I personally think the only real merit to allowing all or any LG/Vet to have admin powers is that they will be extra people to help administrate the servers when admin count is low or admin activity is low. I think many of the Vets who lost their admin powers were entitled to having admin because they had admin powers for so long without the majority of the community batting an eye. That's just how I see it. I feel like it's at least kind of understandable that they're entitled to wanting admin powers because some of them have had them for YEARS despite minimal activity over that time. But, at the same time, they didn't have to be given powers to begin with, as stated before. Firstly, I think both the LG and Vet ranks should be able to obtain SA/A powers by requesting it. If someone in either of those ranks decides they want to be active for a while and help out in the servers but not make a return to the staff ranks, they could submit an "Admin Powers Request" that if accepted, they would be granted SA/A powers on the servers for three months. The form would include name in-game, the reason for wanting powers, etc. Maybe a better way of doing it would be asking how long they'd be around to grant them those powers for x amount of time and not an arbitrary 3 months, just an idea. I don't remember who it was, but I know pretty recently I talked to an HG who wanted to help admin the servers, so they asked for LG because they knew they wouldn't be able to maintain high activity in the servers for an extended amount of time but they still wanted to help out while they could. I think this would be a good system because it wouldn't require giving everyone in that rank indefinite access to admin powers, but it gives them the ability to obtain the powers they once had. My next suggestion is to remove the LG's access from viewing the CA section. I don't really understand why this decision was made at all if you ask me, but I guess some may be able to provide some sort of guidance? I mean if we're going along the lines of it just being a recognition of what you've done rank and shifting it away from holding power for HG and Vet, I don't really understand why LGs now have more permissions than before. On top of this, not even half of the LGs have been on the forums this calendar year, so I'm sure the majority of them would be out of touch in the sense of this community and may not be able to provide the best advice. I'm not saying they don't have the ability to make good ideas since the majority of those people were once Board members, I just question if the ideas they would provide in the section would be applicable to current happenings here. This one is a more personal one, but I certainly don't trust someone who drunkenly comes into TS every few months to spew shit about the community and try to get leaks from CA+ sections to have current access to this section where many classified discussions happen. Outside of that case, I still don't really see a need for LGs to have access to the CA section, though. To backtrack a little though, I don't know how well my first idea would actually do in execution, but I feel it would be a fair middle ground to satisfy the interest of both parties, that's all.

did I do this right? [video=youtube_share;nhZ86YTiWYk]

I guess I'll chip in my 2c here as well. I'm going to be a bit out of place speaking on things beyond HG, but I'll share what I feel nonetheless. I think that it's good that Legend was more or less split into two. There are people who can be distinguished in their actions from being Board members or Tech Team members who contributed more than absolutely anyone could have imagined. But, the people who are currently in the Veteran rank who contributed lots and lots over years at this community I think got the short end of the stick here. As multiple people in this position already spoke about this, I believe those who made large contributions and proved still semi-active members in the community who maintained the trust of the staff and community and upheld the rules of SG should retain some form of admin ability to assist in the servers when they decide to pop on. Describing what the 'similar perks to HG' are may have helped out here because as it stands, for those people their current position in the community outside of getting the recognition they deserve is pretty vague. IMO they should at least be able to have basic powers like mute, kick, gag to be able to help control servers if no one is on or they just want to help out. They've done nothing to betray your trust, but it seems you've betrayed them in their eyes.

We have something similar to this in the Monthly Art Contest. Perhaps this could be a theme for a month? There's a base image and whoever does the most interesting/creative photoshop wins? I think doing voting in Discord would also be an interesting addition for art contests in the future. @nesquik, thoughts?

Right now, there are 25 maps in the Jailbreak map rotation. I personally haven't played a good 7-10 of those maps in a good while now. While there's always the maps you can guarantee will get played like razor, vipinthemix, spyvspy, summer jail, etc., I think it's good to try and keep a fresh map rotation whether it be with new maps or maps of years past to try and keep variety when a non-mainstream map gets voted in. I think it would be good to do a map marathon of the 10 least played maps, do an in-game vote to see if the map is worth keeping, and then bringing those 10 maps to a forum post with the vote statistics to then have more feedback on what should stay and go. To promote trying to find new maps instead of recycling old maps (I mean, they got removed for a reason), I think it would be good to have a map suggestion contest and have the most played map (out of the added group of maps) after like, a month?, get some sort of prize. This would encourage people to try and find good maps for the server and hopefully incentivize players to try and play the new maps you guys would add.

This beauty has been passed down for years in my family. Good call quality, super reliable.

POV: Biden stares into your soul trying to remember what to say

I want to preface this by saying I mean no shade to anyone and I don't want to start any drama because of this thread, being the whole point of this thread is to try and stop this recent bullshit drama culture. Recently, I feel there's been at least some sense of disconnect between quite a few regs and staff members and some of the higher up staff, or at least decisions made by them. There's been a nasty cycle of people disliking a decision or two, and either publicly or privately expressing their dislike of the decision made resulting in some sort of drama usually resulting in that person getting in trouble, demoted, whatever. I just don't want this stupid shit to continue because this is meant to be a place where people can chill out from the everyday stresses of real-life and just be able to chill with some homies. I definitely believe there is fault on both sides in these situations most times. On the side of the regulars/staff, their responses when actually contacting the higher-ups could definitely be less aggressive and more clear at times. But, unless if this is exclusive to the friend group I'm in, I feel there is a general feel of dissent to the choices of the higher-ups equating to "passive-aggressiveness" in the eyes of the higher-ups. More importantly than which side is more wrong/right than the other the true issue is a lack of clear communication. From the player side, we should definitely take steps to make our intentions and wishes stated more clearly through making threads or going to the higher-ups directly instead of making half-witted remarks behind backs and not going anywhere with it and just leaving the problem to sit in your mind. On the higher-up end, if the stories I heard from multiple people are the full story, actually going through with being transparent would be a huge step, because it seems many times the responses people get are either perceived as vague or end up with people playing the waiting game and feeling like their situation doesn't matter. I understand you're not our butlers and can't and won't cater to our every want and wish, but at least making it seem like you care more than a robotic support ticket email would be a good first step. People get annoyed when they have to bug numerous times, sometimes over the span of week/weeks just to get a response to an ultimately simple issue or question. Overall, I just hope that this petty drama shit can be put behind us and we can try and have more open communication and reduce the amount of stupid conflict there's been. I hate seeing people get in trouble or demoted over ultimately petty shit. Now, more onto my most personal concern and that is that there aren't any steps to come together as a community to mend this rift on either side. I have no real way of making this sound nice but this is meant as a genuine question... what are the Internal Affairs and Community Advisor teams doing to bring the community together and trying to get the community's feedback and put it through to the higher-ups? Like no offense to any of the people on the teams, because I am friends with multiple people on those teams and I have nothing against them as people, but what are they doing activity-wise? Like I have no visual evidence of any of it since I'm no longer a staff member, but from what I hear the CA section is pretty much dead, and for the CAs, outside of player complaints, what have they been doing? If their section is for the better part "dead", they aren't really trying to reach out for public feedback on the community, and (except the ones on the events team) making any events, what function are they serving? Like I am really not trying to throw shade at any individual or group of people, I'm just concerned at the general activity of staff from high to low and how and how it will affect the community in the long run. From a manager of a server admitting they do literally nothing for the server, to from somewhere around 30-50% of our admins being either completely inactive or minimally active just has me concerned. tl;dr- I'm tired of the stupid bullshit that's been going on. It doesn't matter who creates it, the point is it's time to stop and come together. This shit is fucking stupid, it's an online gaming community and shouldn't devolve into persistent petty drama. If there's a repeated problem with each other, just avoid contact with the other party if at all possible. It's time to let bygones be bygones and understand that while we may not agree with every decision here if we want to question it we should go about it in a civil manner to expect a civil response back. Give respect to get respect. To the other side- while it's upsetting that repeatedly disrespectful remarks get really annoying and you all have your own way of getting rid of it if a more civil approach is taken upon being approached, all I hope is that we are understood as upset, and not passive-aggressive. Otherwise, I just have my own concerns about staff activity (or the lack thereof) and how it may have a negative impact in the long run. Overall, I'm just concerned at the times here and I wanted to voice my concerns even if this is really dumb sounding. If this strikes a nerve with anyone I apologize, and will happily discuss it over PMs to try and mend the situation I've created. I'm not all-knowing and could have made erroneous statements in here.

Well, warzone is a computer-intensive game from the looks of their recommendations for hardware to run it. What are your video settings? I would suggest turning them down so it's less on your computer. Otherwise, I would suggest closing other things in the background you aren't using to free up more ram. I know GeForce has "optimized" settings for games, so you may try that and see the results.

To start, this would be a suggestion to the new forums which may already be a feature there. There should be a way to link your Discord profile to your forums profile so people can add you on Discord by clicking a handy little icon under your name. On top of this, there should be a Discord bot that can let someone do the command ".getrank" or "/getrank" that will search for that user's Discord ID on the forums and give them the correct ranks related to their forum account. I suck at explaining things so let me provide an example if I weren't clear enough: Say @fantastic just joined the Discord for the first time and received the "guest" rank allowing him access to the most basic channels. A new channel would be made in the Discord called "#getrank" where people can run the /getrank command. Fantastic would run this command, and as long as his Discord was linked to his forum account he would receive his ranks automatically. This would save some trouble with getting people their proper ranks, and would only make the mods really responsible for taking away ranks if someone steps down or is banned.

Should have clarified. I meant not changing the rank name away from "Internal Affairs". "Internal Affairs Officer" makes sense as that's the technical job position out there in the world.

Internal Affairs makes sense to remain the same. It's our version of an HR Department and it's hard to think of something else that makes sense. Otherwise, the only things I have to suggest are these small two changes. They're extremely nitpicky but I spotted them nonetheless. If the intent was to use singular syntax, it makes sense to drop the S's. I know this could have just been a typo when writing the thread, and it may have been made like this already, but if you want to make most of them singular, it makes sense to have them consistent. (That sounds really snarky, my apologies.)

Dead thread but bump. Now would be a great time to get a bunch of scrims going because of corona-cation. If not this, CSS scrim would also be dope. A week of the old maps would spice it up for some laughs, give some people nostalgia, and newer players a glimpse into the past of CS:GO.

I guess a suggestion I would have to try and see how ready certain aspects of our Discord and Discord as a whole for a switchover would be to "stress test" certain things at small increments that would become the eventual norm on the Discord. On the public side of things, Jackbox events/sessions and movie nights are primed to be a testing ground for our Discord. On the staff side, perhaps holding certain team meetings in Discord can allow you guys to test the limits of the voice quality and see how many nitro boosters we would need to have comparable voice quality to TeamSpeak. On top of this, we (as a community/active forum goers) could hop on the Discord from time to time and show activity in both the voice channels and text channels, perhaps with some sort of incentive to get the less motivated members into it. Discord is very much "monkey see monkey do" when it comes to joining voice channels and joining into discussions. Hopefully by getting some staff and regulars talking in voice and text will make less active members and new people want to join in.

Sorry for the lateness of this, but I finally got the video processed and uploaded. If you'd like to find highlights from the community meeting or want to reference anything we discussed, you can find the video here: [video=youtube_share;QMJigJ4JUr8]https://youtu.be/QMJigJ4JUr8 Note: the audio is kinda scuffed, I don't know why it recorded this way, sorry

Hey, this kinda got drowned in all the off-topic stuff, just wanna bump this and remind anyone who needs help this is still here! Best of luck to everyone in their classes.

So something I thought of for a little bit now is that we should allow people to use the TeamSpeak without having an associated forum account. I see no real reason to have people required to have a forum account just to talk in our TeamSpeak. Back when I was CA, there were quite a few people who joined the TeamSpeak and left because they didn't want to make a forum account. Those are potential players on our servers and maybe even future potential forum members. The problem with forcing people to make a forums account before gaining access to anything outside of welcome committee is that many people don't want to make a forum account simply just to access more channels in a TeamSpeak when they could go to a TeamSpeak server with looser requirements or a Discord where they can just go and chill without needing to do anything extra. If we allow people to join our TeamSpeak and interact with the rest of the people without the wall of needing a forum account, they may willingly make a forum account if they don't feel pressured to make one simply to just interact with people. I know we intend to try and make a switch to Discord, but until then I think this would be a good change to make and would be a good policy to keep if the switch to Discord doesn't go over well. Making this thread for reference as this is something I intend to bring up at the ongoing community meeting. Edit: I suggest making a guest rank that allows them to join gaming chats, general chats, etc. Forgot to mention that crucial piece, lol.

I've done my best to read through this thread and I'm going to try and put out a pros and cons of this because this is a really interesting concept that could either go really well or really poorly in execution IMO. Please note this list is my own personal opinion on the pros and cons, but I've tried to include things already stated in this thread. Pros: Allows a pair of eyes when players aren't recording and/or admins+ aren't around to help in the servers. (If text + audio were able to be recorded) Allows players without recording capabilities/players who had their recording software off to submit player complaints and help keep our servers clean. More players may look to submit player complaints since it does a lot of the heavy lifting of a player complaint for them. Believe it or not, people are extremely lazy, especially for something meant for relaxation and blowing off steam. (This one is less probable, but ya never know) May deter some players from breaking the rules if they know there's always a watchful pair of eyes to catch them slip if someone chose to make a complaint. Cons: (via @fantastic) May require the tech team to allow some form of public access to something intended to remain private, potential security worries? I really doubt anyone has the capabilities to cause a security breach in the FTP. Most of our players either don't have the technical know-how to get into FTP from their limited access or wouldn't have malicious intent to go after our systems. But, you can never be too safe with things like this. May require more work than its worth. While this would be an extremely useful tool to have in our big servers if done right, it will more than likely require a lot of work to get it done in a way that benefits all sides the most, and there are no guarantees of how many players will know about this tool and utilize it. Unknown extent of technical requirements. It's hard to really determine how much memory usage it will take to store the footage (especially if it has audio), and how much it will take to run this bot if we need to run it on our dedi, and if it's feasible to actually go through with. Will probably cause an influx of petty complaints and make witch-hunting in our servers far more common for inconsequential instances that will just cause unneeded work and annoyance for our CA+. Overall, I think this would be something at least interesting to test out privately and see if it would even be worth going into a publicly released version to use on our most popular servers. I say most popular servers because I assume this will be hefty to run and it would be better to just run on our top servers where we get most of our complaints on player behavior from anyway.