Hate the admins? Love them? Let us know!

[Mr. Munchlax]

Well, I've never had a problem with any of the admins, but I haven't been able to play tf2 in a while so maybe I just don't know what's been going on lately...

[Fenriswulfdemon]

[Nocturnefoxx]

[Purplecat]

[RumRunner]

ok so a brief return to the forums to clarify a few things. my wording to witchie was "some people do not respect or trust some of the admins and mods as a leader should be". first of all you do not need to like someone to respect or trust someone as a leader. nor do you have to hate them to not trust or respect them as a leader. historical example time: Patton. hated by his men. still an excellent general. his men followed him. they trusted and respected his tactical judgment. did they like him or love him? no they hated him. but since he was a qualified leader and acted like one they followed him. another example. arcalane. he and i have never gotten along. don't know why. we just never have. i still respect and trust him as a leader. because he has earned that leadership trust and respect.

second all mods and admins are by most in the community viewed as leaders. but not all have the respect and trust a leader normally has. in most cases because they have done nothing to earn it or show they deserve it... in most cases it is as simple as just doing the job... it just varies from person to person. and the more visible the mod or admin then the more it takes... just a side effect of being more well-known among the community. the thread that resulted in the most recent problems was a poorly thought-out and even more poorly executed attempt to try and get some of the admins and mods to realize that in being such they were also leaders... as said it was very poorly executed and as a result kind of exploded in my face... and once again i apologize for the problems it caused. i merely should have contacted the admins and mods over pm and kept it to that instead of using the forums. consider it a lesson learned.

but as stated i did not mean to imply that the admins were hated it was merely a misinterpretation... so i figured i'd clear that up now before anything else bad gets caused by misinterpretations.

[Makaze]

[Makaze]

OKay joking aside, you wanted an opinon, fine, I geev to you amidst a Klonopin induced haze

Apologies in advance as when I get thinking, sometimes it comes out in a scatman John like torrent of words. I hope they make sense grammatical errors aside. The core of the rant is just communication

In response tot he "Say your piece" request on the group page via steam(Note this is not an attack, please do not take it as such)

I do wish there were more communication between Admin and Player, rather than what honestly feels a bit of a do as we say, not as we do type thing.

The jadedness some admins give off(some of it warranted, some of it not) is kind of driving a wedge between folks, on problems that could be solved if folks would stop being so defensive, stop seeing sarcasm and mockery as the best way to reign in the voice of concern or a whine, yes I know I'm a care bear, need to toughen up whatever.

Just I feel there needs to be more open dialogue amongst you all and us, rather than a feeling of, I can't go to admin "x" for they'll just talk down to me, not take me seriously.

Or I can't go to admin "y" because rumor has it they don't even listen to him/her at their little meetings, there needs to be some solid ground as to what is a valid complaint, what isn't, both mechanics of the server wise, sportsmanship wise etc etc. Maybe on occasion step back, think, and maybe see how things can be fixed without some hardline THIS IS HOW IT SHALL BE WAY, and take member input to heart.

The way I see it, we both need each other to make the server work, we need yall to run the shit, enjoy the shit, protect the shit, yall need us to play in the shit, play with the shit, talk with yall give yall feed back, y'know?

The issue of teamstack, I won't try and sugar coat it, it does happen regardless of how one explains it. But it does sometimes come down to, folks not communicating/knowing what the fuck is going on, or people simply not wanting to branch out(though we have some in the admin pool who do go out and try to meet everyone and show hey, we are not elitist).

I mentioned in a earlier post on maybe increasing dates for tactics and meet and greet type shit, without the backdrop of OMFG serious game, all there is is WIN!

A more open layout as to what each of you do, or partitioning out of duties and such so its not all on a handful of you, while it seems others are just there and have admin commands might help.

I do wish you would ALL sit down with some players, have a forum of sorts(not the message board kind) and discuss some of the bigger issues going on. The biggest ones I can see are 1) Ops seem to be split on the definition of team stacking, or re write the rules in game as they see fit, or the interpretation is was never unanimously agreed upon per various situations that may not have been considered. 2) The jadedness can only be sustained for so long, before it spreads and shit just rolls down hill and tears this joint apart and it just becomes ccs 2.0(once again, not an attack, mellow)

Overall with this I guess my core point is, COMMUNICATION AND OPENNESS, yes you're admins, yes what you say goes, but come on, include the people who roam the servers like herds of trigger happy perverted buffalo with a mad on for being goofy and mass digital murder, it would go a long way in relations, and I mean all of us, not some small group here, be it admins, close friends you've known since Cartoon Network was good, artist herds or what have you, nothing will change if folks stay in their little comfort bubbles and forget there's more to this place than just a handful of jokers, otherwise yall wouldn't be advertising as yall been. I know IRL has been FUCKED UP for a lot of us, and I can understand what it can seep through to this place, not faulting folks, yallz human just like the idiot writing this.

But there comes a time when we need to sit down, set aside the cup of bitter and just open dialogue, calm, intelligent dialogue. yes I know its a tall order but I do believe it can be accomplished with a little organization, openness and remebering we're all here because we all have similair interests, and in that we find a common thread to build on.

[Cryptic]

[Stormcaller3801]

I think it's safe to say that there are a couple things to keep in mind.

First, there is the law of ZOMGCONSPIRACY!1!One. In its most basic form, it states that if you are in a position of power, someone (particularly anyone who your authority affects) is going to be convinced you are abusing the privilege. This is simply a given. You will be accused of persecuting specific individuals, favoritism, bias, nepotism, and probably somewhere along the way there will also be accusations and/or threats of made involving your job/income, criminal acts, and and/or prejudice against a specific race, creed, color, gender, sexual preference, religion, or system of government. In some cases this will be done subtly. More often it will involve screaming loudly about persecution if they so much as think you looked at them funny while they were blinking.

It is worth noting that the above is entirely separate from people who have legitimate concerns or complaints, primarily in that the latter are individuals who are capable of acting rationally and re-evaluating their opinions. Unfortunately this pretty well rules out any of the former recognizing themselves.

Second, there is the law of inverse hospitality. What this law states is as a community grows, the probability that any new member of the community will be an asshat approaches 1. In other words, small groups will tend to be friends, particularly ones that remain static. As the community increases in size, the odds of some of the people in that community being asshats increase, and the larger the community the greater the proportion of it that will also earn the asshat label. This can be controlled for, such as with strict rules enforcement or screening new members for asshattery prior to integration with the larger group, but the more people you have the harder this becomes. There are ultimately two ways to rein in this phenomenon: limit the number of individuals to a small group (which may involve purging members from the rolls), or accept a certain threshold of asshattery in the community at large.

TFP is at least in part centered around competition between members, and a set of open servers. There is TFP5, but let's face it: membership is easy enough that it's akin to having an unlocked door on your house. So long as someone's willing to make the effort of turning the knob, they can get in. That means that there's going to be an inherent attitude of me versus you, and a community that is more or less equivalent to the number of people who play TF2. These things are going to result in a subset of the population that's going to constantly accuse the admins of abuse, at the same time as some (not necessarily the same individuals) that are going to accuse their fellow players of abuse. People will hear these complaints and either ignore them or assume there's some substance to them. Some of those complaints can be addressed, but others it basically is going to come down to people having to trust the admin, or their fellow players. Some will, some won't. That means that the complaints are going to continue, and ultimately will have to be lived with. That, or make all the TFP servers members only, carefully filter out membership to those people who can all get along (most of the time) and proceed from there.

Personally I don't have an opinion on team stacking. I've been in games that have been ridiculously one-sided, both in my favor and against. Some of those have been stacked, others haven't. To my knowledge I've never seen the Tawner family play as a group of more than two or three people. The instances where I've seen these small groups, I wouldn't have been able to distinguish them from any other team save for either complaints about it, or happening to check the scoreboard and recognizing names from Niko's art.

The only admin that I've had any issues with at all would be Dark Lucario, but that's not because Dark has abused his position or done anything wrong- there's just been a couple rounds of play where I wasn't fond of his behavior. That's a personality clash, and it's inevitable, and I don't hold it against him because it involves both things he couldn't have known and probably some oversensitivity on my part.

If I see blatant abuse, sure, I'll call you guys on it- either directly or by playing on other servers. But at this point in time, the only complaints I have with regards to admins playing in games has nothing to do with admins- it has to do with the people who respond to it with yelling, cursing, complaining, and just generally throwing tantrums about it. That makes it not fun to play. So at least from my perspective, the only way this is the admins' problem is because you guys are the unlucky ones who have to clean up the mess.

[Serykins]

Honestly, I love most of the admins, you guys are just there, and you do your job. You all like having fun and screwing around as much as the rest of us do, which is good.

TFP servers are the only TF2 servers I play on, because for the most part, they're more laid back, and fit what I like, people just having fun together.

If I had any problems, it's that sometimes the admins break the rules they're meant to enforce, like spawncamping and forcing autobalance. It's annoying, yes, but it doesn't make me think they're bad people.