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07-06-2012, 12:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-01-2022, 01:01 AM by Fearless Community.
Edit Reason: Checked Encoding
)
My opinion on what needs to happen:
1. Limit prop usage to donators and/or trusted members (NOT members who have more than x hours on the server). This will put an end to prop pushing and such, and also to the dreaded "Buffer Overflow" and "Reliable Snapshot Overflow" errors.
2. Take time picking admins and actually let the community (that means non-admins) have a say. Just because the admins like them, doesn't necessarily mean the community will feel the same way. Make sure the person in question is actually reliable and has good judgement. Putting an admin on trial won't change anything - as soon as they are promoted to full admin, their efforts decline significantly.
The main argument for admins not being responsive is that they "have a life" which they "must attend to". Yes, that is true, but part of the responsibilities of being a server administrator is that you must be prepared to give up time to look after the server. It doesn't matter if you have the best judgement or you're very well-respected - if you're never even on the server, you might as well not be an admin.
As for the prop usage limitation, the response that always comes from it is "ERMAGHERD I HAET DAT BCUZ I NOT DONATER". The problem here is similar to everyone winning the lottery at the same time - instead of one lucky person earning seemingly infinite quantities of money, everyone would just get a few quid and walk away disappointed. When a 50-man server allows every player to spawn ~20 props (I don't know the actual prop limit, so I'm using 20 as an example), that's 1,000 props in total, the majority of which will be moving around. The Source engine isn't designed to have so many props moving around, or even staying still, at once, especially on a horribly optimised map such as rp_evocity_v2d (the Engine has trouble rendering the city area itself even without all the user-spawned props due to so many things being visible at once). Obviously, all this is going to create errors and cause the server to become incredibly unstable. This is what causes the server to crash every five minutes (if we could just ignore the DDoSing little pansy in his adoptive parents' basement for ten fucking seconds).
When you're new to Garry's Mod and you join a server that allows players to freely spawn props, the first thing you do is - you guessed it - spawn props. On a roleplay server, spawning props isn't number one on the list, but new players won't catch on with that (there's an achievement for playing on a non-sandbox server, and roleplay servers are often second on the list of popular gamemodes - it's an easy achievement to get, and everyone likes getting achievements!) so their first thought will be "hey, why don't I impress everyone by building a giant <insert phallic object here>". This leads to either people getting annoyed, the new player discovering he can push players around with his invention and all hell breaking loose, or, rarely, an admin coming along, explaining to the newbie that what he is doing is wrong and that nobody likes getting pushed around by a giant artificial cock and balls, and that next time he will be punished (apparently, admins tend to ignore the second and third part and instead just ban the player on the spot). This leads back to the problem with the admins - I don't know from experience since I'm a good boy who doesn't get into trouble (usually), but the vast majority of the community has complained at least once that admins aren't explaining the problem (and you wonder why there are so many fucking unban requests being posted daily). It doesn't take long to explain: "Can you please stop doing that" is ALL IT TAKES. You will get people who won't listen and will instead try to ignore you, and that's what banning and kicking was made for: people who WON'T COMPLY, rather than those who simply DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING. If these points are acted on, Fearless will be a much better place.
I guarantee it.
ADHD version: Limit prop usage to donators and trusted members, have admins listen to players; have admins explain before banning; fewer props = no more crash, snapshot and buffer error be gone, no more prop kill and spam.
EDIT: Looking back at the last two paragraphs, I realised I may have strayed from the topic in question a little. But my point still stands; I'm stating my overall opinion on the community in its current state and the whole thing about prop limitations can still be meaningfully linked to what is wrong with the server (because, well, that's basically what it is all about).
1. Limit prop usage to donators and/or trusted members (NOT members who have more than x hours on the server). This will put an end to prop pushing and such, and also to the dreaded "Buffer Overflow" and "Reliable Snapshot Overflow" errors.
2. Take time picking admins and actually let the community (that means non-admins) have a say. Just because the admins like them, doesn't necessarily mean the community will feel the same way. Make sure the person in question is actually reliable and has good judgement. Putting an admin on trial won't change anything - as soon as they are promoted to full admin, their efforts decline significantly.
The main argument for admins not being responsive is that they "have a life" which they "must attend to". Yes, that is true, but part of the responsibilities of being a server administrator is that you must be prepared to give up time to look after the server. It doesn't matter if you have the best judgement or you're very well-respected - if you're never even on the server, you might as well not be an admin.
As for the prop usage limitation, the response that always comes from it is "ERMAGHERD I HAET DAT BCUZ I NOT DONATER". The problem here is similar to everyone winning the lottery at the same time - instead of one lucky person earning seemingly infinite quantities of money, everyone would just get a few quid and walk away disappointed. When a 50-man server allows every player to spawn ~20 props (I don't know the actual prop limit, so I'm using 20 as an example), that's 1,000 props in total, the majority of which will be moving around. The Source engine isn't designed to have so many props moving around, or even staying still, at once, especially on a horribly optimised map such as rp_evocity_v2d (the Engine has trouble rendering the city area itself even without all the user-spawned props due to so many things being visible at once). Obviously, all this is going to create errors and cause the server to become incredibly unstable. This is what causes the server to crash every five minutes (if we could just ignore the DDoSing little pansy in his adoptive parents' basement for ten fucking seconds).
When you're new to Garry's Mod and you join a server that allows players to freely spawn props, the first thing you do is - you guessed it - spawn props. On a roleplay server, spawning props isn't number one on the list, but new players won't catch on with that (there's an achievement for playing on a non-sandbox server, and roleplay servers are often second on the list of popular gamemodes - it's an easy achievement to get, and everyone likes getting achievements!) so their first thought will be "hey, why don't I impress everyone by building a giant <insert phallic object here>". This leads to either people getting annoyed, the new player discovering he can push players around with his invention and all hell breaking loose, or, rarely, an admin coming along, explaining to the newbie that what he is doing is wrong and that nobody likes getting pushed around by a giant artificial cock and balls, and that next time he will be punished (apparently, admins tend to ignore the second and third part and instead just ban the player on the spot). This leads back to the problem with the admins - I don't know from experience since I'm a good boy who doesn't get into trouble (usually), but the vast majority of the community has complained at least once that admins aren't explaining the problem (and you wonder why there are so many fucking unban requests being posted daily). It doesn't take long to explain: "Can you please stop doing that" is ALL IT TAKES. You will get people who won't listen and will instead try to ignore you, and that's what banning and kicking was made for: people who WON'T COMPLY, rather than those who simply DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING. If these points are acted on, Fearless will be a much better place.
I guarantee it.
ADHD version: Limit prop usage to donators and trusted members, have admins listen to players; have admins explain before banning; fewer props = no more crash, snapshot and buffer error be gone, no more prop kill and spam.
EDIT: Looking back at the last two paragraphs, I realised I may have strayed from the topic in question a little. But my point still stands; I'm stating my overall opinion on the community in its current state and the whole thing about prop limitations can still be meaningfully linked to what is wrong with the server (because, well, that's basically what it is all about).