The Current State of GFL Zombie Survival

[DessertOverlord 12 / 513]

I want to write a post here to sum up most of the information as I know it from the past few days.

 

Firstly, the "inciting incident" for this is widely regarded as KraftW3rk's (@sabbethinizer's) set of three posts regarding changes he wanted to see added to ZS. In his set of posts, Kraft outlines a few issues he feels are important. Chief among them are:

• Adding Zombine and Tank back into the game.
• Something to counter Wraith's perfect invisibility.
• Nerf Fast Zombie's viewpunch effect so that getting mauled by one isn't instant death because you can't aim at all.
• Butcher requires no skill and obliterates runners.
• Giga Gore & Nightmare are useless currently.
• Shade is too powerful because of his oversized health pool.
• Nerf Tickle Monster. This is the one he put the most emphasis on, citing that his range is too large.
• Stock Zombie & Fast Headcrab are useless.
• Broken, unplayed, useless maps need to be removed or fixed.
• Remove RTV and have people vote every three rounds.
• Personnel issues with the staff members. More on that later.
• 200 Worth is too much. One person can specialize into all three fields.
• Remove Muscular from the worth menu and give it to everyone.
• Rebalance the weapons. Many starter weapons are either too powerful or useless (Pistols and the Tosser SMG, respectively.)
• Add more weapons -- make it more unique to GFL instead of just cut & paste from vanilla.
• Add more, original bosses.
• Don't shut down posts with criticism.

 

Quite the list. While Kraft's posts have some legitimate and useful insights in them, some accused them of being derogatory and filled with needless insults. There is one sentence towards the bottom that meets this standard, that being:

 

Quote

You're included k2. We're coming for you.

 

Certainly not the most friendly, but it also could have been ignored in the pursuit of deescalation. However, k2's response to this was the now-famous (or infamous):

 

Quote

eat shit, idiot, relax

 

Certainly not the most professional response from the manager, either.

 

The summary is that both sides of this argument are to blame. Kraft and his group came out with a hit list with k2's name at the top of it, but k2 also played along with it, which only served to add fuel to the fire.

 

Onto personnel issues, as mentioned previously. I've mentioned this in my discussion with @Z1galord, but in summary, I feel that a lot of the discontent feelings come from a general feeling that there is very little representation of the playerbase within the management, specifically with k2nod. K2 is rarely on the server (I have 16 hours of playtime spread across a week, and have yet to see him), owing to his job and other personal issues. While it's fine to have a personal life and be busy, it's not fine to neglect the job you signed up for when you applied to be manager. K2 should at least step down for now and nominate a replacement for his absence with his work schedule or resign all together. Regardless, having someone who isn't able to dedicate the necessary time to the server in the position of server manager is not ideal.

 

Aside from k2nod, I've seen very few complaints about other staff members. I'm not sure if this is because k2nod is the focal point of attention or if the rest of the staff team have been performing well, but from my experience, @Auralanity, @Deathhawk449, @DOOMSlayer_, and @Trigger have all been online and active in the time I've been on. 

 

Onto another issue. @Kcim (Otherwise known as Shire) was banned from the forums after an incident I am unaware of. If it was his poll that was posted a day ago, that's uncalled for. While I have seen Shire act belligerent before, his poll was in good taste and actually captured the community's opinion better than anything from upper administration that I've seen as of late. His poll came out to a 13 - 4 in favor of Yes, which should be telling that Tickle needs a nerf. Whether he posted something later that resulted in his Forum ban is unknown to me, and if that's the case, please do elaborate.

 

So, what is the point of this exhaustively long post? To shine a light on each side of this argument. The staff team (notably upper administration) has a list of everything that has been suggested, and are creating a Trello that will be visible for the entire community to see. This way, the entire community is well aware of what changes are being contemplated, added, and worked on, should they desire that information. Secondly, I also have word that a temporary replacement to fill k2's shoes while he is busy is being worked on. This will solve the problem of k2nod's inactivity and hopefully result in things getting done faster. Thirdly, the relentless bashing of GFL's staff and servers can cease from Kraft and his group. It's always fun to make fun of stuff, but most of the grievances they had are currently being worked on. Again, I attribute most of the anger surrounding administration to a lack of transparency. If it was announced or more prominently made known that these issues were being worked on, perhaps there would've been less of a shitfest about this issue.

 

To cap all of this off, I want to tell everyone to dial it back a few notches. Nothing will get done with Shire and @geggy constantly on the server talking shit about it when most of their issues with it are being worked on. On the same side of the coin, nothing will come of engaging them in game and letting them escalate, so the staff should either ignore them or be calm about it.

 

If you're on either side of this issue and feel like something is wrong, just ask someone calmly and without throwing names around like you're 14. If you feel like you can't stop the urge to start name calling and getting angry, just remember these wise words:

 

Eat shit, idiot, relax.^[1]

^[1] Intended for comedic effect only, don't get bent out of shape about it.

[DessertOverlord 12 / 513]

Also, a list of links to sources:

Kraft's first post

His second post

His third post

Kcim / Shire's Tickle Monster poll

 

[Liloz01 1,256 / 19,825]

I personally apologise for my lack of action in ZS, I wish I could be faster in dealing with situations like these as it's engaging for me but there's so much to deal with nowadays. With there only being two Directors and GMod DLs (there's also only really one, spread across all of GMod), it's hard, massive demand due to everyone being at home but a slow ramp up in staff capacity. Not an attempt to appeal to pity, just an explanation and apology. Hopefully we can continue to find and retain more staff members.

 

I appreciate your recent posts (1 2 3) in which I believe you are trying to extract causes of the outrage both within the Server and Forums alike while also putting forth some remedies to certain parts of the outrage.

 

I will quote your summarisations and qualms and try to address them.

 

13 hours ago, DessertOverlord said:

Onto another issue. @Kcim (Otherwise known as Shire) was banned from the forums after an incident I am unaware of. If it was his poll that was posted a day ago, that's uncalled for.

@Kcim was recently banned due to the use of an alternate account to evade content moderation imposed upon him for spam/shitposting (Find the Forum rules here: https://gflclan.com/rules/forum-rules/). There is also a link at the top right of every page).

 

Several other users have also recieved content moderation and I hope they do not evade, as it leads to a ban. When posts are reported by Forum users and dealt with by Moderators, they are often hidden to, well, obviously reduce spam and keep topics/forums on track, as to why you cannot view them. The users can appeal their punishment and try to justify what they did or falsify our evidence against them. We do not make this evidence public, unless if they request it, for privacy reasons.

 

13 hours ago, DessertOverlord said:

Onto personnel issues, as mentioned previously. I've mentioned this in my discussion with @Z1galord, but in summary, I feel that a lot of the discontent feelings come from a general feeling that there is very little representation of the playerbase within the management, specifically with k2nod. K2 is rarely on the server (I have 16 hours of playtime spread across a week, and have yet to see him), owing to his job and other personal issues. While it's fine to have a personal life and be busy, it's not fine to neglect the job you signed up for when you applied to be manager. K2 should at least step down for now and nominate a replacement for his absence with his work schedule or resign all together. Regardless, having someone who isn't able to dedicate the necessary time to the server in the position of server manager is not ideal.

As is mentioned @Z1galords post (4) @k2nods front facing activity has took a dive from what it potentially could be, for an obviously justifiable reason - he's a "frontline worker" and there's currently a pandemic, though, it is obvious to see that it does not justify him staying in the position - if I am not active as a Director because I'm dead.. well obviously my activity is justifiable because I'm dead, I can't do anything. That does not mean I stay in the role.

 

13 hours ago, DessertOverlord said:

Aside from k2nod, I've seen very few complaints about other staff members. I'm not sure if this is because k2nod is the focal point of attention or if the rest of the staff team have been performing well, but from my experience, @Auralanity, @Deathhawk449, @DOOMSlayer_, and @Trigger have all been online and active in the time I've been on. 

 I am currently looking into his activity from an objective standpoint, along with other staff members. By objective I mean:

• Active hours on the server,
• Active hours on the Forums,
• Active hours on Discord,
• SourceBans activity,
• (in the case of @k2nod) FTP activity,
• and other aspects.

From my talkings to members of the ZS community and ZS staff members, it's unclear who is and who isn't doing their assigned "duties". Unfortunately, most of this will also be private but you will be able to see the end results and what can be announced publically, will be.

 

13 hours ago, DessertOverlord said:

Certainly not the most professional response from the manager, either.

Concerns of staff "attitude" and "abuse" are also being addressed. I apologise for the time this takes but it is actually far harder than you'd (maybe not you as in specifically, @DessertOverlord due to your experience, but other readers) think to wade through what is shitposting intended to be funny (doesn't always land), what is just completely unsubstantiated and false and what is real. It's the issue with people like "Kraft and his group", they include a few valid points but pad it out with ad hominems, false dichotomies and assumptions.

 

13 hours ago, DessertOverlord said:

Again, I attribute most of the anger surrounding administration to a lack of transparency. If it was announced or more prominently made known that these issues were being worked on, perhaps there would've been less of a shitfest about this issue.

The assumptions, maybe the fault of not being transparent enough. That L is taken into account; it creates anger and confusion for the people who "need" to deal with it and also those who do it.

 

I think it'd be easy to ride the high horse here and say "well if everyone just waited and wasn't so mean, we'd get there eventually", but that isn't good enough. Situations like this can be prevented through proper practice and transparent messaging.

 

13 hours ago, DessertOverlord said:

The staff team (notably upper administration) has a list of everything that has been suggested, and are creating a Trello that will be visible for the entire community to see. This way, the entire community is well aware of what changes are being contemplated, added, and worked on, should they desire that information. Secondly, I also have word that a temporary replacement to fill k2's shoes while he is busy is being worked on. This will solve the problem of k2nod's inactivity and hopefully result in things getting done faster.

I'm currently also working on, as you mention.. a Trello and other methods of messaging to the community what is being worked on and more effective ways to create suggestions. I don't know who told you that.. because I certainly didn't tell anyone publically, but. Whatever. I was planning on making a seperate announcement for the list of changes that are coming to help streamline ZS's development, I still will, but if someone is blurting out my half baked ideas from the staff chat before they're discussed and approved, blegh. More issues to deal with.

 

13 hours ago, DessertOverlord said:

To cap all of this off, I want to tell everyone to dial it back a few notches. Nothing will get done with Shire and @geggy constantly on the server talking shit about it when most of their issues with it are being worked on. On the same side of the coin, nothing will come of engaging them in game and letting them escalate, so the staff should either ignore them or be calm about it.

I agree, apart from the "ignore" part. Lol. Stay calm but please don't ignore if a rule is broken. It's a reason why I believe the server also got into this state, quite a lot of "scared" action from admins. I joined for 28 minutes yesterday and things were said by multiple people that would, in my opinion, definitely warrant a at least a warning or gag/mute. (I understand, teams can't hear each other. Admins were everywhere but at least it highlighted another thing that can be worked on! (admin guidelines))

 

13 hours ago, DessertOverlord said:

If you're on either side of this issue and feel like something is wrong, just ask someone calmly and without throwing names around like you're 14. If you feel like you can't stop the urge to start name calling and getting angry, just remember these wise words: 

 

Great way to end the post. I agree.

 

I'm going to be honest here that I just woke up but I have read this over before posting, if it's incoherent in places please ask for clarification.

 

TL:DR:

Changes are coming. Expect an announcement thread soon. Read all of the above if you want some expansion on some of changes that are likely (not confirmed to be) coming and my thoughts on "this ordeal".

 

Those who break rules, please stop. We are going to be clamping down on ad hominem attacks to try and restore the "servers environment" from the toxic hell hole it largely is today to just well.. it's GMod.. still a toxic hell hole but less so.

 

Thanks, @DessertOverlord. 

[LilyShiro 54 / 1,421]

@DessertOverlord You can fix wraith invisibility by making how invisible they are determined on the player's velocity, so they're invisible when they stay still, and transparent/noticeable when moving. Takes around 2 lines of code at most.