Jump to content
 Share

Dragoon

GFL and a "Mentality of Stagnation"

Recommended Posts

Posted  Edited by Akott
8 hours ago, hdscorpio said:

Dragoon comes in with a genuine, friendly, polite discussion opener. Salad responds friendly, and polite. Liloz gets butthurt and has some weird victim mentality shit about it, and Arkott is practically foaming at the mouth.
edit to note: I wrote the previous when I was feeling a bit salty myself about other issues, sorry about the overly aggressive nature of it, I'll leave it here for posterity but I don't really think Liloz is butthurt.

 

Akott* 😄

 

2 hours ago, Dragoon said:

I get a good part of where you're coming from, but I also don't think it's fair to insinuate that I'm lying to everyone and have some hidden agenda when these are frankly untrue statements in all regards.

 

Yes, you're right it was heated on my part. However based on the implication, the connection I made was about a "true" message farther into the post rather than what it was presented for. There are some points to be made about activities on servers with staff that need improvements which would be great, but the post, in my opinion, didn't start the conversation for that.

 

I apologize for my tone to make you think that way, I did not intend to insinuate that you were lying to everyone.

Edited by Akott

Akott#1576

 

newest lion photo 2022 - Copy (3).jpg

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


Posted  Edited by Toxic
1 hour ago, Infra said:

I think most of us here agree that GFL isn't exactly in a terrible state by any means.

You're absolutely right, and I don't think anybody tried to make that point. By mentioning stagnation, I think Dragoon was initially stating that the community has reached a point of slower growth, though they said they've since been convinced somewhat otherwise.

 

1 hour ago, Infra said:

I won't even speak for others - I'll personally say that I felt really bad that a major event, where a few of us spent a lot of time working on with an almost endless amount of anxiety throughout, went really well: just for us to get hit with "not doing enough". Oscar was simply bringing up how demoralizing that is. While the takeaway from this thread is that GFL needs to work on getting more support involved, this does not mean we should be making current support feel like they're not doing enough.

Nobody is trying to demoralize you, Oscar or any support involved, the Surf tournament was great work, just bad timing aligned with this thread. I don't think anybody was saying that "not enough" means that everything GFL is doing is not enough. GFL does great things, like the tournament, and I don't think anybody was trying to belittle that in their replies on this thread.

 

1 hour ago, Infra said:

That said, it is also equally important for staff to understand that while things said in this thread may sound like it's all a giant insult, it isn't always the case. Criticism plays a huge part in us improving on our shortcomings.

lol

 

Precisely our point. The good parts are good, and the shortcomings are, well, shortcomings. As you said, there's always room for improvement. Criticizing certain parts of the way the community is ran is not to say that the current support is overall not doing enough. They are doing plenty, if not going above and beyond. 

 

1 hour ago, Infra said:

I don't quite understand how this is a point raised to showcase how GFL is not a gaming community.

I was more so saying it has lost some of its core values of being a gaming community, not that it isn't one.

 

1 hour ago, Infra said:

Furthermore, you are right, GFL is structured as a company in terms of its staff hierarchy and pretty much everything organizational. The simple reason behind it is that this system works for efficiency. GFL is not the small gaming community it used to be many years ago - it is just not possible for things, tech or organizational, to rely on just one person like the "good old days". Yeah, it's complicated and would be much nicer if we could revisit the simpler times, but it's just not possible anymore.

Fair enough, it is more efficient. But, I still don't think lower-level staff should be treated like full-time employees. Just my opinion tho.

 

1 hour ago, Infra said:

Imagine if we had one single person running everything here (or for that matter, in any gaming community, big or small). It would be a complete disaster! Basic, fundamental organizational practice when planning out a structure is never a bad thing: it keeps things healthy and efficient, which is what we need when you consider that we are run entirely by volunteers.

I agree, I wasn't suggesting that one or few people should run the community.

 

1 hour ago, Infra said:

Finally, replacement of our old anycast system should not be the thing we blame for certain servers running into a rough time.

It is though, isn't it?

 

1 hour ago, Infra said:

Quite honestly, if some of our servers got hit hard when ping spoofing was disabled, then it is clear that we haven't done a good job making sure those servers were fun. As @Toxic said, we need to be giving players a reason to be coming back - spoofing pings and lying to people is not a reason for them to come back. Harsh thing to say, I know, but not everything we pursue is going to be successful - replacement of the old anycast system showed this without covering it up.

The ping difference is completely unbeknownst to the player. If the server was shit, it doesn't matter where it lands on the list, nobody would return. Sure, it helps draw new players in, but as I said previously, they need a quality server to return to, or else they wouldn't return. Saying "it is clear that we haven't done a good job making sure those servers were fun" is a complete jab to anybody who put in work on Prop Hunt. Ask any of the 2,000 people in the Prop Hunt Discord - majority of whom joined in 2020 and 2021 - I'm sure you'll find plenty of people who had fun experiences. 

 

1 hour ago, Infra said:

The old system was giving us a very hard time: outages every week, non-stop connection inconsistencies (both for players and staff), higher monthly expenses and a frankly terrible external reputation. A lot of the reasons I just mentioned are due to a lack of maintenance, which no one can be blamed for (it was a very advanced system that not many people had the expertise to run). At that point, should we be sacrificing the basics just for higher numbers? I don't think we should. I think we should instead focus on bettering ourselves rather than resorting to the unethical "easy way out" and sacrificing basic levels of quality.

You're right, and I don't think anybody is trying to blame anybody, be it one person or multiple, for the downfall of it. It is advanced and difficult to run. As for it being "unethical", it is about the same ethics as advertising - the highest bidder gets the eyes of the public - just with more technical knowledge. Overall, my point was that, could one be properly ran, it would be beneficial to the community. I'm not suggesting to "sacrifice basic levels of quality" - what I am suggesting is that, should a time come where it can be properly run, I don't see a reason it shouldn't at least be attempted. Do what you want though, lmao.

Edited by Toxic

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Achievements

On 7/3/2022 at 9:32 PM, Toxic said:

Also - Anycast! I feel like this should go without being said but, we can't act like it is still providing the same benefits it used to. It has been wildly stripped down, and I can personally attest to it's removal/deduction killing Prop Hunt.

 

 

Can we stop pretending anycast was anything more than a liability? I know that servers suffered after its removal, but with Roy leaving GFL (i.e. the only person who knew how to maintain it) and it already having a few problems that caused massive issues on a recurring basis, keeping it around would've damaged GFL in far more significant ways. The initial hit we took in population was far less than the damage to our reputation that having unreliable servers would've ultimately brought. Also what if there was just a complete outage? I didn't even have the access I would've needed to fix it at the time. Our only option would've been to hope it was an upstream issue and that it just fixed itself, which is obviously not a very reliable approach. It's just not something that was a good idea to keep around in the absence of Roy actively maintaining the network.

 

I'm more than happy with a "stripped down" network with fewer pops because at least they have paid staff to maintain it. I'm sorry that my decision affected prop hunt adversely @Toxic and @TheThirdReaper, but I don't believe I had much of a choice in the matter.


71CFA5EE-923C-4740-ACF4-508B753C9AD7.png.92a0d40c0fa7773f71fea2453f581d16.png

(signature made by @Kaylode)

Previously known as Xy.

 

Twitter ❤️Ko-Fi ❤️Github

 

 IMG_0248.jpg

 

ben_mixed_opinions.png

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


24 minutes ago, annoying furry said:

 

it already having a few problems that caused massive issues on a recurring basis, keeping it around would've damaged GFL in far more significant ways.

 

 

When I was with @Dini managing the surf servers and even before when @FrenZy mostly held the reigns, most of the time when there was a problem it was anycast's fault. We had no choice but to wait for it to be fixed, which meant most of the time we had to wait for Roy, which could take hours or even days. Getting rid of anycast was the most sensible decision anyone could make.

 

And this was a very common occurrence.


╔                               ╗

Scott

                               

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


Posted  Edited by Baconator
2 hours ago, Scott said:

 

When I was with @Dini managing the surf servers and even before when @FrenZy mostly held the reigns, most of the time when there was a problem it was anycast's fault. We had no choice but to wait for it to be fixed, which meant most of the time we had to wait for Roy, which could take hours or even days. Getting rid of anycast was the most sensible decision anyone could make.

 

And this was a very common occurrence.

I'll put it very simply for the Anycast situation:

 

Rust before AnyCast: *server lags, and lags, and lags, OH LOOK it just lagged again* "Hey what the hell staff, this server is lagging, shit server bye bye I found a better one" We couldn't fix this mind you and we tried our best to😞

Rust after AnyCast: *server runs smooth* me: "holy shit what happened from a couple months ago, this is insane"

 

It provided benefits yes, however I do believe that GFL-wide (not just in Rust), it caused more harm than good when Roy went on absence

Edited by Baconator

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


I know everything has been said already, but I just wanted to emphasize a point made by @hdscorpio.

 

I understand that you guys put a lot of time and effort into GFL, especially higher up staff, but don't forget that we are here to just play games. 

Yes, maintaining game servers and keeping the community alive is hard, but just chill out before typing up some crazy response. 

 

Also, I am not some perfect person who hasn't gotten pissed before, but I regret those moments because I was arguing about a gaming community. 

And I am not some founder of peach either, I'm just another regular like everyone else. 

 

Just take a step back and actually think before you go 0 to 100 on a person who has a valid concern. 

 

@Dragoon Good post. 

 

My thoughts: 

Do I think GFL is declining?

No, at first I thought it was, but some of you guys made good points and it changed my opinion. 


jitticus

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


I chose a random staff member to see when they last posted. I think that this is a great representation of things that are wrong here. I don't know this person, or what their circumstances are, I just know that they are listed as a Technical Admin of the group and they haven't been on the forums in over 3 months. If you can't commit the time to running the community, then don't pretend to have time to run the community. 

 

image.png.16fd4325a40ce9adab07792f3d15e76e.png

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


37 minutes ago, JimmyJohnz said:

I chose a random staff member to see when they last posted. I think that this is a great representation of things that are wrong here. I don't know this person, or what their circumstances are, I just know that they are listed as a Technical Admin of the group and they haven't been on the forums in over 3 months. If you can't commit the time to running the community, then don't pretend to have time to run the community. 

Is your point that some staff are, in your view, inactive?


Contact me here or on Discord @Liloz01#9857

For help with anything Forum related: 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


1 hour ago, Liloz01 said:

Is your point that some staff are, in your view, inactive?

 

I have two complaints about GFL that I am bringing to light in the hopes that I can be either proven wrong, or so that the community leadership can address it in some way.

 

1) Lack of consistency among administrators. On CSGO ZE, the rules and the punishment matrix for breaking the rules needs to be published and enforced equally amongst the administrators. The number of individuals that constantly troll with soundboards is disrupting the gameplay and when people have non-standard characters in their player name it makes it troublesome for players to !sm them.

 

2) Lack of visibility amongst management team. I don't post on the forums much, but I've been trying to learn more about the management structure of GFL and understand who does what. All I see is a whole lot of drama from a former leader/owner of the group (Roy?) and a lot of discussion about how things were setup and why people like/dislike anycast, yet I see very little input from the current leadership team explaining what's going on, what is being planned, etc. My point for highlighting that person was to circle back to the topic of this post: stagnation. Who is doing what, how are thing going, and what needs to be done?

 

I think that as long as everyone is honest and cards are put on the table, this will continue to be a community that is around for people like myself to contribute to and enjoy playing at. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


2 hours ago, JimmyJohnz said:

I chose a random staff member to see when they last posted. I think that this is a great representation of things that are wrong here. I don't know this person, or what their circumstances are, I just know that they are listed as a Technical Admin of the group and they haven't been on the forums in over 3 months. If you can't commit the time to running the community, then don't pretend to have time to run the community. 

 

image.png.16fd4325a40ce9adab07792f3d15e76e.png

Oh, I remember asking Roy about this a couple years ago. Some staff don't use the forums that often because they just don't have the need too.


jitticus

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


Posted  Edited by Liloz01
4 hours ago, JimmyJohnz said:

1) Lack of consistency among administrators. On CSGO ZE, the rules and the punishment matrix for breaking the rules needs to be published and enforced equally amongst the administrators. The number of individuals that constantly troll with soundboards is disrupting the gameplay and when people have non-standard characters in their player name it makes it troublesome for players to !sm them.

I believe addressing this issue is outside of the scope of this topic, I recommend making a topic here (https://gflclan.com/forum/59-zombie-escape/) highlighting your suggestions/observations and/or create abuse/feedback reports (https://gflclan.com/forms/11-abuse-reports-form/ / https://gflclan.com/forms/9-staff-feedback-form/) to call attention to admins who aren't performing as you feel they should.

4 hours ago, JimmyJohnz said:

2) Lack of visibility amongst management team. I don't post on the forums much, but I've been trying to learn more about the management structure of GFL and understand who does what. All I see is a whole lot of drama from a former leader/owner of the group (Roy?) and a lot of discussion about how things were setup and why people like/dislike anycast, yet I see very little input from the current leadership team explaining what's going on, what is being planned, etc. My point for highlighting that person was to circle back to the topic of this post: stagnation. Who is doing what, how are thing going, and what needs to be done?

I'd first like to say that taking a staff members activity in an area that they do not need to (or in some cases want to) interact with as an indication of their overall activity in their role is not... great. And a general rule that everyone should follow is not attack staff based on activity (I do not think you were attacking @Dreae, @JimmyJohnz - I just want to get "ahead of the crowd"... because activity is one of the main things that I see staff getting (often maliciously) attacked over).

 

Currently, there are some things such as the monthly Council meetings that help shine some light on what is going on in GFL but they are not very consistent or comphrensive and attendance (from members) is very low. But this is another issue that, imo, requires a new topic of its own! I believe that many of the things discussed in this topic deserve to be brought over into seperate topics in order to be properly discussed and resolved (anyone feel like doing that? 😉).

 

That being said, I do appreciate that there is very little to go off of to even learn what @Dreae does; just as there's very little available to learn how things are currently going with him and what he would like to do in future. The same even goes for me, I imagine 99.9% of GFL has no idea what I'm doing, how it's going, or what I want to do/need help with. I know the same goes for a lot of staff, yet there is no "good" system in place to help this. If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve this, I would recommend making a suggestion topic here: https://gflclan.com/forum/39-suggestions/.

 

Edit: I forgot to say... you can just ask. I understand it's a stop-gap solution that doesn't scale well but if you're interested in something to do with GFL... IMO, the best way to get information about it is just asking. On the Forum, preferably; in Discord stuff can get lost fairly quickly.

Edited by Liloz01

Contact me here or on Discord @Liloz01#9857

For help with anything Forum related: 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


Posted  Edited by AsNKrysis
4 hours ago, JimmyJohnz said:

1) Lack of consistency among administrators. On CSGO ZE, the rules and the punishment matrix for breaking the rules needs to be published and enforced equally amongst the administrators. The number of individuals that constantly troll with soundboards is disrupting the gameplay and when people have non-standard characters in their player name it makes it troublesome for players to !sm them.

Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and put my quick 2 cents in here and address this issue since, as one of the CSGO ZE Administrators, we get this complaint a lot.

 

In general, most punishments for breaking the rules depends on both the atmosphere of the server and the administrator currently on. As much as we enforce our guidelines laid out and hold expectations for the community, we also don't want to rule over the server with an iron fist, or else many players will become dissatisfied with over-policing which is an issue we also want to avoid. At the end of the day, this is a community-ran CSGO server meant to be played for fun. The last thing we want to do is take that away from people, hell even some veterans and big names on GFL have left as a result of the change of the state of GFL over the last couple years.

 

I can definitely bring this topic up to our server managers and attempt to provide more consistent punishments towards offenders in the future, but there is only so much we can do without taking away the community's own fun.

 

Also, we do have the report function for a reason and that doesn't just go for players. If you want to report an admin, you're allowed to do so as well so long as you provide valid reasoning. On top of that, if you'd like to discuss this topic more personally with the administrative staff on the ZE server you could also open up a ModMail on our discord by DMing our ModMail bot. I don't believe I've seen you message our ModMail and we encourage you to do so if you have concerns with the current state of the server.

Edited by AsNKrysis

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


Just don't get to a point where you're telling your player base why they're wrong. Your job should be to listen and to address concerns in an orderly manner to ensure the organization is healthy and stable. 

 

As an adult in an IT management position, I understand all what goes into running a fleet of public facing servers, as well as managing customers and their expectations. 

 

It might be prudent to take a good hard look at how GFL is organized, both in management structure and overall how servers policies are dictated to ensure you're remaining competitive and working in everyone's best interests and not just "it is the way it is because that's the way it was".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


5 hours ago, JimmyJohnz said:

It might be prudent to take a good hard look at how GFL is organized, both in management structure and overall how servers policies are dictated to ensure you're remaining competitive and working in everyone's best interests and not just "it is the way it is because that's the way it was".


I think this is the best simplest way to put my exact thoughts. Esp with the CR election it seems a lot like "We've been doing this so we're doing it"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


×
×
  • Create New...