Server Review

[Equinox]

For the past two weeks, starting on November the 4th, I have gone under the alias of "Dark Shard" and have returned to the server to sort of "start with a blank slate" and see where the server has gone in terms of quality. I played strictly citizen, and dabbled in being affable to the Combine and its systems, to eventually turning to rebellion in the most organic way I could manage knowing that I wanted to look at both sides of the Citizen coin. Some of you may have seen me on my character "Mason Sunderland".

This is going in the complaints section because it is private, but it includes both positive and negative points.

The Positive
The server has a very good groundwork established overall. It has a good foundation that can easily be made into something phenomenal, yet there are things holding this back. I'll touch on these later. For now, I'll go into the specific positives. This part is relatively short, not because the server is horrible, but because you only need to explain a positive to a certain point before it becomes redundant.

Good Standard of Roleplay
While there are minges and some players who perhaps lack the BEST grammar and such, the average roleplayer seems capable and entertaining to RP with. Most if not all my RP came from fellow players, even if I had to coax it out of them. This makes passive RP rather nice, and presents a city of at least believable characters, even if that requires suspension of disbelief at times.

Well Developed Content
This is rather obvious and self explainatory. Of course it's still user made content on the source engine for what is essentially a niche game mode, but for what it's worth it's the best the game mode has to offer in terms of development.

No Obvious Glaring Flaws
There are no crazy and ridiculous flaws that often act as bleeding wounds for servers. No weird factions that shouldn't exist, no cringy models walking about, etc. When you first start and for the majority of the time, it's non-offensive. This is good for the very first impressions, but this doesn't do much for when the actual flaws show themselves.

Intriguing loyalist sub-faction
While I personally am not too interested in the loyalist scene as it is, I can tell that it is providing lots of roleplay. I liked how your higher up loyalists could actively make a change in the city, should they have enough status to do so. Higher ups actually feel like celebrities and the loyalists of the server actually feel like a group. While they may not be at their full potential, they definitely seem fun to partake in.

The Flaws
The server has quite a few flaws, which all have something in common that I've noticed. I'll leave it to you to find what they are before I summarize it at the end. My goal here in the end is to expose the weaknesses and problems with the server so they can be improved. Keep in mind that these flaws are from a Citizens perspective. I may not see the other side of the coin, but in the end that won't matter since your average and new player is a citizen.

Lack of Top-Down Interaction for Citizens
This applies to both workshifts and to normal Combine interactions with citizens. The factions belonging to the Combine seem to only go the bare minimum when it comes to interacting with citizens. Sure, there might be a workshift, but these are either uncommon, or only accepting very small numbers of the actual population. The whole point of these workshifts is to provide a means of currency, congregate players to one spot, be a catalyst for events, and/or flesh out the world by making it feel real. Despite this, the workshifts seem to be very infrequent. There may be citizens everywhere walking around with nothing to do, yet despite there being plenty of CWU on, there are no workshifts.

This also translates to any other events. Events from the Combine involving citizens almost always seem to be at the most random times, and often involve either a small part of the population, or a sub-faction that only a select number of players have a character in. What's the point of these "epic events" involving the higher ups when your average player is still just walking around on the street, staring at concrete?

Failure to maintain occupancy
This also applies to multiple parts of the server, specifically functions and factions that fall under the Combine. On the average day, it seemed there was no more than 4 or 5 Civil Protection on. Sure, this allowed for more free roleplay, but it got rid of that tension that a citizen should feel when walking the streets. Businesses were far worse. There were more businesses shut down than open, and often times it was only one or two businesses at a time- out of 7+ businesses being around. These are supposed to be hubs of RP, yet I never once found a restaurant to sit down and dine in. I never once found a bar that I could just chill in and talk to other roleplayers. They were always closed. And not to rag on the certain kind of businesses, but most businesses I saw open were literally just players acting as straight up vendors and nothing more. You'd walk in, have a small chit chat, buy an item or not, and leave. Nothing more.

This begins to show an issue that I hinted at the beginning of the flaws. Why aren't these businesses being shut down and re-occupied by capable individuals? Why aren't there more Civil Protection despite players seeming to always want to apply? Why are CWU failing to run workshifts on a semi-common time frame when they are walking around everywhere?

Big Events that fail to include citizens
I never once saw a big event that Citizens could actually partake in. When something BIG was happening in the city, it was always, without fail, Combine versus Rebels. Citizens were relegated to sitting in a district, if not being locked in an apartment. This is a massive flaw, and is utter ass. It got to the point near the end of the two weeks where seeing an event provoked a negative response of "Well, guess I'll just sit in the apartments." while we just waited for rebels and combine to finish their bout. The worst part is that this should be obvious. The Citizens are the largest playerbase. Why are admins just running events that practically exclude them?

It's not even that Citizens can't partake directly in the event. It's that the staff are literally forgetting about them. If there are rebels attacking, why not have a few admins play rebel event characters that run into the apartments trying to escape or flank the Combine? If it's antlions, why not have a few split off to hunt citizens? If it's something like a fire, why not have it spread to where the citizens are? It's like the staff create these events yet are too tunnel-visioned to see that the majority of the server is being left out of it. I don't see "well it was player made" being an excuse either, because it is totally within the staff team's power to extend the side effects and consequences into the citizen playerbase.

Utter lack of player engagement
There is literally z e r o player engagement on this server. Not once did I see a staff member help out the roleplay of a citizen. Not once did I see an admin overseeing an RP environment, or making moves to actually alter the appearance of a location beyond just slapping literally less than 5 or 6 props down and calling it good. I personally called for staff a few times and got no response unless it was someone actively minging.

Citizens are wandering aimlessly with nothing to do yet staff seem to be complacent in that they feel everything is working as intended, when it obviously isn't. I've even seen citizens make full on protests, yet there is not a single /event to say "Oh hey, citizens are protesting in Victory Square!" Essentially, citizens are ignored, and it seems the only thing that can rouse the staff to do anything roleplay wise is the rebels outright attacking the city.

Circlejerk Rebels, no true Rebel to Citizen interaction
Rebels are doing exactly what I expected when I heard of them before I started my re-immersion into the server. They stand around in big gears and guns, despite people being everywhere, yet at the same time they seem content on telling anyone who interacts with them to fuck off. Granted, I met a couple characters (really only one) that actually interacted with my character and others. But the only obvious rebels were incredibly reserved despite how flaunting they were of their gear.

But not once did I see rebels actually engage with citizens. I never saw these characters take off their gear and actually be among the people. If you weren't in the slums or sewers, you saw NO sign of even a rebellious influence with citizens. Sure, they may b e in the presence of citizens, but they seem content on always being somewhere, telling them to go away, or just ignoring them outright and walking off. In short, the only interaction that seemed possible was surface level questions and nothing more. It's giving off the overall vibe of "The rebels are an exclusive bunch who don't actually care to RP with citizens." which is essentially isolating citizen players from an entire part of the server. I never, ever saw a rebel try to give citizens something to do, or something to work for. It was always them who did stuff, but no one else.

In short, circlejerk galore.

Overall Lack of anything to do
A few of the previous complaints fall under this, but it stands to present a massive issue. There is nothing to do beyond passive RP. The vast majority of my time was just walking around and trying to start RP with other players. Even when staff were on, citizens were relegated to just walking around and doing nothing. In short, a lot of the time, it was boring. I never once left because I had to be somewhere, or it was late. I left every day because I got bored and wanted to play something else to occupy my time. Sure, there were moments that I had fun. A few even brought a lot of enjoyment, especially when it was a very good character I was RPing with. But this was only found in passive RP, and was fleeting, because as soon as RP with that character ended, I knew I was going right back to, you guessed it, walking around with nothing to do.

This leads into my final, biggest complain for this server.

The Staff Team appears absent in its own server.
This is, what I feel, to be the root cause of all the issues. Everything that is wrong with this server is because the staff fail to address it. It's not even that they are addressing it poorly or trying yet failing- it's that they outright fail to even try and fix the problems on this server. If they are, it isn't even showing.

Why are the Combine failing to interact with citizens? Because the staff team (which include CMs) doesn't seem to want to crack the whip on its faction leads and make them reevaluate and reoccupy their factions with people who care. Why do events only seem to be between Combine and Rebels? Because the staff team fails to consider that the majority of the playerbase is being left out and is ignoring citizens entirely. Why do citizens seem to be bored and running about aimlessly aside from the RP that they have to create? Because staff are failing to see this and/or don't care enough to engage its players. Why are businesses mostly empty and locked up despite so many players being online? Because staff do not care enough to actually see that these businesses are occupied, or at the very least made aware to the people.

It's the staff team's job to be a steward and host of the server. This includes the rules, but it also includes the quality of the server. The staff seem to handle rule breakers well enough, but have absolutely failed to engage the citizen faction. It feels as if the staff have abandoned this server, because they are absent in every part of it that involves citizens and the majority of players.

Is it burnout? Poor admin quality? Or just actual ignorance in the face of these issues? The worst thing about all of this is that this server has the potential to go above and beyond, yet the staff team just doesn't give a shit. Everything is there for this server. It has EVERYTHING it needs to be really fun, yet the staff sit on their pile of potential and do nothing. I don't mean for this to come off as me just taking jabs at the staff, but what else can I do when all issues point to the staff?

Intent
In the end, I just want this server to be fun enough to invest time into. I'm pointing out these flaws so they can at least be realized and fixed. I even know members of the staff team who would agree to all of this. Unfortunately, the last big attempt to fix the server, which included the stage meeting and a large petition, was pretty much dropped and ignored after the staff team was supposedly supposed to really engage and fix the server. Yet most the problems I see, at least from the citizen side (the most important side), are still persistent and glaringly obvious. I honestly hope this is addressed.

In the end, the server isn't horrible. It isn't even "bad" per say. If anything, it's just mediocre. It's average when it shouldn't be. It's painfully normal. This is all exacerbated by the fact that there is potential for this to be a really REALLY good server.

 

[swagile]

For the past two weeks, starting on November the 4th, I have gone under the alias of "Dark Shard" and have returned to the server to sort of "start with a blank slate" and see where the server has gone in terms of quality. I played strictly citizen, and dabbled in being affable to the Combine and its systems, to eventually turning to rebellion in the most organic way I could manage knowing that I wanted to look at both sides of the Citizen coin. Some of you may have seen me on my character "Mason Sunderland".

This is going in the complaints section because it is private, but it includes both positive and negative points.

The Positive
The server has a very good groundwork established overall. It has a good foundation that can easily be made into something phenomenal, yet there are things holding this back. I'll touch on these later. For now, I'll go into the specific positives. This part is relatively short, not because the server is horrible, but because you only need to explain a positive to a certain point before it becomes redundant.

Good Standard of Roleplay
While there are minges and some players who perhaps lack the BEST grammar and such, the average roleplayer seems capable and entertaining to RP with. Most if not all my RP came from fellow players, even if I had to coax it out of them. This makes passive RP rather nice, and presents a city of at least believable characters, even if that requires suspension of disbelief at times.

Well Developed Content
This is rather obvious and self explainatory. Of course it's still user made content on the source engine for what is essentially a niche game mode, but for what it's worth it's the best the game mode has to offer in terms of development.

No Obvious Glaring Flaws
There are no crazy and ridiculous flaws that often act as bleeding wounds for servers. No weird factions that shouldn't exist, no cringy models walking about, etc. When you first start and for the majority of the time, it's non-offensive. This is good for the very first impressions, but this doesn't do much for when the actual flaws show themselves.

Intriguing loyalist sub-faction
While I personally am not too interested in the loyalist scene as it is, I can tell that it is providing lots of roleplay. I liked how your higher up loyalists could actively make a change in the city, should they have enough status to do so. Higher ups actually feel like celebrities and the loyalists of the server actually feel like a group. While they may not be at their full potential, they definitely seem fun to partake in.

The Flaws
The server has quite a few flaws, which all have something in common that I've noticed. I'll leave it to you to find what they are before I summarize it at the end. My goal here in the end is to expose the weaknesses and problems with the server so they can be improved. Keep in mind that these flaws are from a Citizens perspective. I may not see the other side of the coin, but in the end that won't matter since your average and new player is a citizen.

Lack of Top-Down Interaction for Citizens
This applies to both workshifts and to normal Combine interactions with citizens. The factions belonging to the Combine seem to only go the bare minimum when it comes to interacting with citizens. Sure, there might be a workshift, but these are either uncommon, or only accepting very small numbers of the actual population. [We cannot accept every person on the server as it would dilute the quality of the workshift; CWU are actively encouraged to reward good roleplayers but you can't properly reward them when you have to read 10 /mes per second]. The whole point of these workshifts is to provide a means of currency, congregate players to one spot, be a catalyst for events, and/or flesh out the world by making it feel real. Despite this, the workshifts seem to be very infrequent. [The currency part is something I agree with; we don't pay enough in our workshifts. Whether this is an IC or OOC decision, I am not too sure about despite being CWU lead, so take that with a grain of salt. Congregating players into a spot and being a catalyst of events is something the CWU has already done and done for months now, though our bigger shifts have been on the backlog as ive been focused on getting us more CWU management. Also, these shifts run into the same issue as above; make them too big and you dilute the roleplay quality of the entire shift]. There may be citizens everywhere walking around with nothing to do, yet despite there being plenty of CWU on, there are no workshifts. [We run shifts almost every hour at times, or at least once every 3 hours if its low CWU hours, but sometimes we do not get people attending even on high pop as they are busy in slums scavenging and making plans, or there is something holding them up like shopRP or just general passiveRP with people].

This also translates to any other events. Events from the Combine involving citizens almost always seem to be at the most random times, and often involve either a small part of the population, or a sub-faction that only a select number of players have a character in. [Read the above; same issue. We try to include normal people in our factions but we can only do so much until the event becomes a clusterfuck to manage; you of all people should know this. The more you add the more people it takes to GM and the harder it gets to coordinate, so we lower event numbers unless we make it a generic NPC event]. What's the point of these "epic events" involving the higher ups when your average player is still just walking around on the street, staring at concrete?
[The average player can choose or not to choose to enter these events; we do not bar events unless we have serious quality concerns, such as a player we know is incapable of properly roleplaying the event. Unless you feel its hard to get into these events? I presume, based on the CitizenRP aspect, you feel its hard to get into events as a citizen but thats just how it is; factions like to hijack events for themselves and thats something thats hard to fix unless we want to railroad events and completely shut off certain factions from participating but even thats difficult as certain events REQUIRE those factions to respond, such as a fire event needing CWU to respond].
Failure to maintain occupancy
This also applies to multiple parts of the server, specifically functions and factions that fall under the Combine. On the average day, it seemed there was no more than 4 or 5 Civil Protection on. Sure, this allowed for more free roleplay, but it got rid of that tension that a citizen should feel when walking the streets. [This is mainly an issue because of the fact that there is no tension on the CP side; for the longest time before you hopped on server, the resistance faction was completely dead outside of a handful of players who were demoralized by the pummeling that they got since the grind was shit to get script items in order to do resistance activities. We have since fixed or at least remedied the issue for now and CP activity is picking back up, plus apps have opened again]. Businesses were far worse. There were more businesses shut down than open, and often times it was only one or two businesses at a time- out of 7+ businesses being around. These are supposed to be hubs of RP, yet I never once found a restaurant to sit down and dine in. I never once found a bar that I could just chill in and talk to other roleplayers. They were always closed. And not to rag on the certain kind of businesses, but most businesses I saw open were literally just players acting as straight up vendors and nothing more. You'd walk in, have a small chit chat, buy an item or not, and leave. Nothing more. [This is an issue ive foreseen and dealt with for a month or so as my tenure as normal CWU, Supervisor, and now as Vice Director. We are trying to fix this issue by creating a new faction with more creative freedoms (such as shops focused on Function over scripts) while giving them all permits so they can get the script part of their job out of the way should someone need a specific good. It is slow going as change in all big servers is, but its getting there so this complaint is being addresed].

This begins to show an issue that I hinted at the beginning of the flaws. Why aren't these businesses being shut down and re-occupied by capable individuals? Why aren't there more Civil Protection despite players seeming to always want to apply? Why are CWU failing to run workshifts on a semi-common time frame when they are walking around everywhere? [As stated already, businesses are a flawed model as they are seen more as a job than as a enjoyable passtime for most players so only the few active people kept it barely teetering, and removing people never solved the issue since someone would get a business for a week then go inactive again, and the process starts again. Hopefully with the CBU reform im pushing this issue is fixed. CP's are explained, and CWU does its best but it is what it is; you can't have constant activity on a faction that demands creativity every hour. We try our best and we even do big shifts that are a lot more interesting than packing peanuts, but even then sometimes we do not even get people coming to our workshifts so its kinda disheartening].

Big Events that fail to include citizens
I never once saw a big event that Citizens could actually partake in. When something BIG was happening in the city, it was always, without fail, Combine versus Rebels. Citizens were relegated to sitting in a district, if not being locked in an apartment. This is a massive flaw, and is utter ass. It got to the point near the end of the two weeks where seeing an event provoked a negative response of "Well, guess I'll just sit in the apartments." while we just waited for rebels and combine to finish their bout. The worst part is that this should be obvious. The Citizens are the largest playerbase. Why are admins just running events that practically exclude them? [You need to give an example because we just had two major fires that tons of citizens participated in putting out that were caused by rebels and was not gate kept. Ive never seen an event that forced citizens into apartments; maybe I am on a different timezone than you? Even if it is the case, not every event is micromanaged by admins; sometimes it is the players that hijack the event. For example, a fire might happen in the RDT, but CP players tell Citizens to fuck off (which has happened, mind you), and so the RDT burns down completely due to the CP's negligence. We can't control for that factor and we shouldn't; IC is IC in that aspect which is why its hard to make events just for Citizens because other factions like to run in and do their own thing. Also you state we run events that exclude citizens; I try to include them as much as possible but some events citizens do not want to join at all, due to danger to their character (sewer shifts from CWU) or it doesn't fit their characters ideology, etc].

It's not even that Citizens can't partake directly in the event. It's that the staff are literally forgetting about them. If there are rebels attacking, why not have a few admins play rebel event characters that run into the apartments trying to escape or flank the Combine? If it's antlions, why not have a few split off to hunt citizens? If it's something like a fire, why not have it spread to where the citizens are? It's like the staff create these events yet are too tunnel-visioned to see that the majority of the server is being left out of it. I don't see "well it was player made" being an excuse either, because it is totally within the staff team's power to extend the side effects and consequences into the citizen playerbase. [We have done exactly what you said multiple times already; I myself have used admin rebel chars to try and include citizens to varying degrees, and we've had admin rebels die next to citizens who then picked those guns up and either continued the fight or ran away to hide the goods to fight another day, or even reported it to the CP's. You need to be specific because a lot of what admins do isn't seen by players directly because they do not have logs + noclip nor a staff chat / VC to see what we actually do unless we state it].

Utter lack of player engagement
There is literally z e r o player engagement on this server. Not once did I see a staff member help out the roleplay of a citizen. Not once did I see an admin overseeing an RP environment, or making moves to actually alter the appearance of a location beyond just slapping literally less than 5 or 6 props down and calling it good. I personally called for staff a few times and got no response unless it was someone actively minging. [Again, lack of perspective. We have gone to players (or at least I have) multiple times to auth things, even outside of the auth boards, as long as its reasonable. We have also overseen fights, and created interesting scenes (at least Noh has) in adminbox for people to participate in, and the barricades in the Indigent entrance area were also made by us. Fires were started by players and fully GM'd by admins, and we even had Infestation events that changed the way the world worked, forcing CP's, CWU, and Citizens to contain it. Maybe from your perspective we aren't doing enough, and maybe so, but ive tried my hardest on this front while also dealing with CWU and ive seen what other staff have done as well. Certain things we cannot authorize as well without a full written auth and reasoning behind it, such as a mortar that the UFF is trying to build or trying to clear the sewers of the gas, simply because we have to think of the damage it can do to the server on a long scale].

Citizens are wandering aimlessly with nothing to do yet staff seem to be complacent in that they feel everything is working as intended, when it obviously isn't. I've even seen citizens make full on protests, yet there is not a single /event to say "Oh hey, citizens are protesting in Victory Square!" Essentially, citizens are ignored, and it seems the only thing that can rouse the staff to do anything roleplay wise is the rebels outright attacking the city. [The protests were actually responded to; Futurists, if thats what your talking about, lit the Slums on fire so in return we firebombed their VICTORY-2 store. This gave them the incentive to try to push forward the Militarization One act, and when denied, they started a fire in secret in Slums again due to rebel activities, which is slowly changing the opinions of others on the Militarization act, which was mostly player done (the firebomb was an admin but the rest was all IC by players). We aren't going to just /event everything that people do; it removes the genuine and original roleplay people put in, and some things shouldn't be evented for everyone to know; they have to found out IC through talking to people or joining citizen groups, etc. Otherwise we turn into darkRP where everything is /adverted for the entire server to see and there is no mystery anymore. Trust me, as an admin that knows almost everything that goes on in the server, the loss of mystery definitely hurts my IC interactions].

Circlejerk Rebels, no true Rebel to Citizen interaction
Rebels are doing exactly what I expected when I heard of them before I started my re-immersion into the server. They stand around in big gears and guns, despite people being everywhere, yet at the same time they seem content on telling anyone who interacts with them to fuck off. Granted, I met a couple characters (really only one) that actually interacted with my character and others. But the only obvious rebels were incredibly reserved despite how flaunting they were of their gear. [Yeah this is a problem and there isn't much we can do about these types of people. The best rebels we have actually put their shit away and walk around with no gear and interact with people, but its hard to incentivize this type of play. Especially when we have a loyalist issue; most people who put their stuff away are too afraid to tell people they are a rebel cause they get reported for the smallest shit by loyalists in Slums, so most of them do the smart thing and keep their mouth shut unless they interact with your character for OOC weeks and take a risk. Thats why the big time rebels are so obvious; because they have nothing to lose as most that walk around in full gear are BOL already and if caught would get killed, gear or no gear. We also have a script mentality issue in rebels because most of the old guard of rebels right now are all people who spent OOC months to get their gear and so they only care about people on the same "mindset"; the grindset, and if you aren't with them your against them. Cringe but it is what it is].

But not once did I see rebels actually engage with citizens. I never saw these characters take off their gear and actually be among the people. If you weren't in the slums or sewers, you saw NO sign of even a rebellious influence with citizens. Sure, they may b e in the presence of citizens, but they seem content on always being somewhere, telling them to go away, or just ignoring them outright and walking off. In short, the only interaction that seemed possible was surface level questions and nothing more. It's giving off the overall vibe of "The rebels are an exclusive bunch who don't actually care to RP with citizens." which is essentially isolating citizen players from an entire part of the server. I never, ever saw a rebel try to give citizens something to do, or something to work for. It was always them who did stuff, but no one else. [Read above. We do have good rebels but they are good rebels /because you do not know about them/. As soon as they are discovered, they are reported by 3 different people with request devices and now they are fucked. So they have to interact with you for actual OOC weeks till they tell you exactly who they are; otherwise, they could be the shop owner down the street, or the guy walking past you to get a ration, and you would /NEVER/ know. The rebels you see are the ones who either have nothing to lose (BOL) or they are just stupid. They also interact with citizens, but again, they CANNOT just walk up to people randomly like us admins and give out jobs, because they risk losing weeks to months of character development, containers, bases, etc. all because you are a 1 day old character with a request device ready to report in for 5 SC. So they wait till they've talked to you for a long time before they give jobs].

In short, circlejerk galore.

Overall Lack of anything to do
A few of the previous complaints fall under this, but it stands to present a massive issue. There is nothing to do beyond passive RP. The vast majority of my time was just walking around and trying to start RP with other players. Even when staff were on, citizens were relegated to just walking around and doing nothing. In short, a lot of the time, it was boring. I never once left because I had to be somewhere, or it was late. I left every day because I got bored and wanted to play something else to occupy my time. Sure, there were moments that I had fun. A few even brought a lot of enjoyment, especially when it was a very good character I was RPing with. But this was only found in passive RP, and was fleeting, because as soon as RP with that character ended, I knew I was going right back to, you guessed it, walking around with nothing to do. [We are trying to fix this by adding a overarching storyline, but its difficult to pull off because we need to do something that includes the entire server and all its factions without excluding or gating off any one faction. But all the factions have some sort of hostilities ICly against each other and want to keep the events to themselves (mostly rebel vs combine, but also union factions vs union factions such as CWU vs CMU in trying to get RP for themselves sometimes). So we need a greater plot point that strings together all the players, and we haven't got there. Its also an inherent issue with CityRP; a lot of it is boring unless the players either come to the admins with their ideas, or the admins themselves have an idea to keep the atmosphere alive. We also have to deal with people complaining if its not fully lore accurate even if its fun, like Biotics being given more freedom just as an example, and its doubly worse for admins since we get called favortist and all that. So it is what it is].

This leads into my final, biggest complain for this server.

The Staff Team appears absent in its own server.
This is, what I feel, to be the root cause of all the issues. Everything that is wrong with this server is because the staff fail to address it. It's not even that they are addressing it poorly or trying yet failing- it's that they outright fail to even try and fix the problems on this server. If they are, it isn't even showing.

Why are the Combine failing to interact with citizens? Because the staff team (which include CMs) doesn't seem to want to crack the whip on its faction leads and make them reevaluate and reoccupy their factions with people who care. Why do events only seem to be between Combine and Rebels? Because the staff team fails to consider that the majority of the playerbase is being left out and is ignoring citizens entirely. Why do citizens seem to be bored and running about aimlessly aside from the RP that they have to create? Because staff are failing to see this and/or don't care enough to engage its players. Why are businesses mostly empty and locked up despite so many players being online? Because staff do not care enough to actually see that these businesses are occupied, or at the very least made aware to the people.

It's the staff team's job to be a steward and host of the server. This includes the rules, but it also includes the quality of the server. The staff seem to handle rule breakers well enough, but have absolutely failed to engage the citizen faction. It feels as if the staff have abandoned this server, because they are absent in every part of it that involves citizens and the majority of players.

Is it burnout? Poor admin quality? Or just actual ignorance in the face of these issues? The worst thing about all of this is that this server has the potential to go above and beyond, yet the staff team just doesn't give a shit. Everything is there for this server. It has EVERYTHING it needs to be really fun, yet the staff sit on their pile of potential and do nothing. I don't mean for this to come off as me just taking jabs at the staff, but what else can I do when all issues point to the staff? [Well you state a lot of things, but im not seeing solutions. Its all well and dandy to talk about the citizen faction and how we need to fix it, but I don't see a solution due to the inherent nature of the Citizen faction. As one of our staff members likes to point out, Citizen events will almost always get hijacked by other factions for their own purposes, either due to lore reasons or because they want to have more fun than others, or simply because they are a dick IC and have the authority to take it over. Unless we railroad those factions, this will always continue to happen. As for a lot of the other issues, they are repeats of the above and ive already replied so idk what to say on that front. You have a very big image of the staff but we actually only have like... 5-6 people on the staff team actively playing it at any one time, and quite a few of us want to focus on IC stuff at times, so its actually more like 1-3 at times. For example, I am a SA for events AND a CWU lead; I have to put in time both OOCly fixing the faction AND ICly actually existing so people can reach me and talk to me about things, and I also have to run shifts to fix the City cause fires / general breakdown / etc. happens. Other admins have roles like Rank Leader and have to at least be active on that because otherwise their faction breaks down, etc. We're trying to replace admins in faction lead positions again because of this very burnout reason, but its hard because most of the people who know what they are doing and understand the IC and OOC goals of factions are also, coincidentally, smart enough to have applied for admin].

Intent
In the end, I just want this server to be fun enough to invest time into. I'm pointing out these flaws so they can at least be realized and fixed. I even know members of the staff team who would agree to all of this. Unfortunately, the last big attempt to fix the server, which included the stage meeting and a large petition, was pretty much dropped and ignored after the staff team was supposedly supposed to really engage and fix the server. Yet most the problems I see, at least from the citizen side (the most important side), are still persistent and glaringly obvious. I honestly hope this is addressed.

In the end, the server isn't horrible. It isn't even "bad" per say. If anything, it's just mediocre. It's average when it shouldn't be. It's painfully normal. This is all exacerbated by the fact that there is potential for this to be a really REALLY good server.

You bothered to make this server review so I replied to this to the best of my ability / knowledge.

Answers are in red and bolded.

 

[Equinox]

You bothered to make this server review so I replied to this to the best of my ability / knowledge.

Answers are in red and bolded.

A lot of these responses seem to point to a matter of getting a message across in-game. If these things are all so obvious and present, why does it seem that I, who is walking around, am missing all of them? Not saying that I am the deciding factor, but I went into this as a regular player joining the server and playing as a Citizen, so I imagine this is what other people go through as well. I doubt my experience over two weeks was just a series of freak coincidences.

For example, with staff engaging players as a GM type figure, I saw literally zero of it, both with other players and me asking for staff. I really do hope this is just an issue with timezones, but I've hopped on quite a few times when there was 50+ people on. Is this just a staff manning issues in which we are understaffed? Either way, if these things are supposedly everywhere, I failed to see it in the two weeks I played. This is not me doubting that it exists, but I'm just putting that in for the record.

As for the rebels, I can understand that. It does make sense that the only rebels I see are the most obvious and, for lack of better terms, inexperienced ones. I'm okay with rebels who have to keep quiet. I've always accepted that there will be issues with rebels who try to flaunt shit like they won't get PK'd for it eventually. My issue mainly was that these characters are forming hard circlejerks that brush off the normal player. I know this is an issue that is hard to fix, but as someone who is just reviewing the server, it's worth noting.

As for me not suggesting fixes, that's not what I'm posting this for. This is in the complaints section. If I were to type fixes for all these issues, this would be in the Suggestions forum. This is a review of the server. I'm exposing issues that I had with it, as someone who played as only a Citizen. My usual playing times were from 5:30 or 6 PM US Central to ~7:30 or 8PM. Sometimes getting off a little later.

Unless we railroad those factions, this will always continue to happen.

To which I say, why not? It was in my understanding for as long as I've been with WN that the Citizen faction was always, ALWAYS treated as the primary faction due to how important it is for the server. The Civil Protection especially were meant to be almost narrative in their presence in that they were to be flexible in how they approached the Citizen faction in order to create the best roleplay for citizens- NOT to just "win and stomp out the enemy".



Aside from all this, I'd like to reemphasize that this isn't meant to be a scathing heave of flaming vomit all over the staff. I know I've made some rather harsh comments about the staff team, some of which were accusations, but it's hard to write a review like this and not point that out. Essentially, I'm angry because I care. If I didn't, I'd just leave Willard Networks, or at the very least not write this review.