CEONSS

Alright, let's start.
First off, the most simple thing: the server rules.
Insulting other players: not allowed.
Switching to the winning team: not allowed.
Sabotage: not allowed.

I know kring and Eif for a long time now and I'm convinced they usually don't do all this. If this was happening anyway, there obviously are some battles in the personal area going on. But interpersonal relationships, sympathies and antipathies are definitely not my business. I'm only an admin. I'm responsible for a smooth server operation and players following the fairplay rules. In that function I have to say: kring and Eif, if you were doing things like mentioned above or showing other blacklisted behaviours as stated here http://www.ceonss.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13, you clearly have to stop it.

But that little statement regarding this isolated case will not be sufficient as there are obviously far more than just two or three people involved. So this is the point where the case is getting complicated.

From my perspective, we seem to have (at least) two completely different player categories: One player type is very ambitious, always looking for sportive matches and some challenge, whilst the focus of the other group is just fun and some distraction from the real life. The question is: do we want both player groups? The answer is: It's a public Onslaught server, thus, hell yeah, we do want both! But they have to respect each other, no matter what you think about the other. Hey, there's plenty of room for both and it won't work out well if there's no respect and tolerance. Imagine a server with just one group: Do we want a server with ambitious and top-skilled players only? Of course not, would be boring as hell! On the other end, do we want a server with fun & joking only? Well no, of course not! It's the mix of all of the player groups that makes it both interesting and funny.

As for possible complexes & stuff: Neither the boards nor the server are the decent places to analyse somebodys character, personality or even his childhood. That's something personal hence almost always leads to one feeling offended and insulted. There's no room for this here, it doesn't help clarifying let alone calming down the situation, has absolutely no business on the server & forums. You may dislike, hate or even despise a player. That's quite natural in human groups and their dynamics. Come on, just keep it to yourselves, I don't see the point in living it out on the server. It's a fun zone, not a place to let out your aggressions. Be tolerant and respect each other.

Humor: Most evidently, one reason for the personal grudges is the different taste of humor. I'm convinced that all of us do have some sort of humor. One more than the other, one different from the others taste. As Pegasus said within the admins section: "people's taste in humour can vary. What's harmless teasing to one can be an offensive waste of precious little free UT time to another". That's so true, just accept it. I will surely NOT ban or warn anyone due to having a special kind of humor! For example, take Spankys humor: I get it, can take it and love it. During the last years he so often made me laugh so damn hard, I sometimes instantly spat out my beer onto the keyboard and had to clean it afterwards (once I had to buy a new one). I'd so miss it if it would be gone. By the way, when I was a noob he was the first one saying "ok dude, you're ketchup" and "Heinz is ketchup now" after I got lucky enough to kill him with a Goliath or Cicada once in a while and he came back bringing down my vec. I laughed so hard, hence my avatar. For the record, that's only when he's harmlessly joking this way. But uuh well, sadly there are other players not getting this sort of humor but feel offended.
So, this specific example aside, in general, my advice would be to get used to different kinds of humor. If you absolutely not get it nor like it, please say to yourselves "okay, he's just joking, I don't like this kind of humor but oh well" and give it a rest. On the other side, when you're the one joking and the other person you were talking to obviously doesn't get your jokes, not liking them at all, then why go on teasing? Just stop it and give it rest as well!


That being said in general, it's time to go into details:

@kring: I know you are usually not winning team switching so I presume it was not to unbalance teams but for some personal issues with Thom. Same goes for sabotaging - was it on purpose? As I stated above, of course, it's not allowed. You know, it would be a valid ban reason. So, please stop teasing Thom, just leave him alone. Especially your sexual-related jokes like "lickm plz", "smoke my cock", "show me your nille" are going way overboard, definitely. Generally, please omit your sexual jokes, most of the players get offended and there are enough other internet services available to live this passion out ;-)

@Eiforia: You might also dislike Thom, but keep your thoughts about him to yourself, don't assume complexes, please.

@Thom: My guess is, that this all started with kring's playing style. Yes indeed, he's camping a lot with his Hellbender. In your opinion, it's "lameass camping style", his point of view probably is that he's defending a node in a relaxed but effective way. Well, it's a different playing style compared to yours. You're a busy bee and he's camping. Okay, it's maybe not the very finest and sportiest style, but it's clearly not a ban reason. You probably played some time on american servers and might have noticed that there is a major number of players with exactly the same style. So, you might dislike kring for this and even despise him, but it's a different style and to be tolerated.
The fact, that many players got involved and that you're faced with so many animosities shows us that this playing style and personal battle topic with kring & Eifo can't be seen as an isolated case; there must be something more sleeping underneath the surface. So let us consider why this happened, apparently seems to keep happening and allow me trying to approach the virtual reason: In general, you're tending to teach others of what's fair, sportive and what is not. Well, as far as I can tell, you're mostly absolutely right with your perception and judging. No question about that. I think the problem lies with the fact that you even address persons that were playing already for many years. Thom, there's no point in trying to educate long-term players. Spanky for example plays UT since 99. He doesn't need any advices, he knows the rules & all. And he surely will not change anything regarding his playing style. Having played for so many years but getting taught by someone is not very, let's say pleasant . So it's better to omit these advices.
Of course, speaking in general again, it's something different with sabotaging, teamkilling, cheating & such. That is not to be tolerated, no doubt, and every comment about it will be understandable if not, welcome.
In conclusion, yes, you're mostly right but please think twice whom you're telling what. Be a bit more tolerant towards other playing styles and stay a bit more relaxed when someone is joking, even when it's a joke going wrong.


Sooo, that's all, I hope I've dealt with all the most important topics and did hit the actual reasons of this case. I tried to be as objective as possible. Keep in mind that there never is objectivity, but always subjectivity and the illusion of objectivity. Lastly, I'm hoping I was able to have addressed all of this without getting on the wrong side of anybody. You're all welcome on the server, don't want to lose you as players. I hate having to play the smartass role, but obviously, a couple of phrases wouldn't have been sufficient.

I kept my advices as lean as possible. They are not asking too much of any of you, I think. Nevertheless I hope that, if you follow them, you'll get along with each other and we are going to have a friendly and nice atmosphere again.

Now, do we have a deal?

Deal!!

Why is this so familiar to me? I did not read the whole novel (I'm not mazoist) so tell me if I am wrong. :skip:

This topic name should be "share ur feelings" or "board of complains".... and that is the main problem imo.
Some of us (or one of us) think it is still the kindergarten and always run to the teacher because somebody called him stupid.

-Someone: Ban xy!
-Admin: Why?
-Someone: I dont like his playing style!

-Someone: Ban xy!
-Admin: Why?
-Someone: He is a camper!
-Admin: So?
-Someone: I do not like campers!
-Admin: U mean u never do camp?
-Someone: I do but that is different. I do for a reason.

-Someone: Ban xy!
-Admin: Why?
-Someone: He is a cheater!
-Admin: I do not see anything fishy about him. Do u have any proof?
-Someone: No, but he killed me so I am sure he is a cheater. Ban him!

Are these really necessary? Are not these ridiculous? Are not these destruct the community?

I think unjustified and senseless ban appeals should be punished. 3 warns = 1 ban or something like that. Opinion?

Wise words Corvus

laboRHEinz wrote:Thom, there's no point in trying to educate long-term players. Spanky for example plays UT since 99. He doesn't need any advices, he knows the rules & all. And he surely will not change anything regarding his playing style. Having played for so many years but getting taught by someone is not very, let's say pleasant . So it's better to omit these advices.
Of course, speaking in general again, it's something different with sabotaging, teamkilling, cheating & such. That is not to be tolerated, no doubt, and every comment about it will be understandable if not, welcome.

Heinz, you are right with the point that older players often don't want advices for a game, and also in rl btw. older people don't want advices from younger people, considering em as cheeky. This is somehow a (to me annoying) matter of socialisation (with the stereotype: i lived much longer than you and worked longer in this job so don't tell me about blahblah). But i _don't_ want to take it as a fact, that i _am_ actually cheeky when i give advice to an older person. Or when i ask a more experienced player to stop the goddamn insults.

In the end, all that counts, are the facts. Some players were not teamkilling, not cheating, and not sabotaging. But some players were rude and trying to make other players silly. And these _are_ the facts. And if you speak out about em you are not "teaching" or "advising" or whatever somebody.

Would you return to me "i'm longer in this game, don't teach me" when i asked you to stop insulting me?

---

To sum it up i very liked your posting. And i like CEONSS. Thank You for keeping this alive!

This is not an option for me.

I can see the benefit of a doubt when there's his word against hers without substantial proof. Altought you gotta admit any suspicious action regarding Corvus stopped after I brought it up here, which is "interesting" to say the least. It could also be interpreted as fishy. But that's not the point here.

I can also take all the verbal insults as they pretty much don't get to me since a) none of us really knows the other and b) I'm really content with my real life and have achieved most of my life's big goals and've done alotta things that are on my bucket list.
So it's really not about being a "pussy" or tattletale since I didn't ask for a ban based on someone camping and especially not when I "don't like his playing style"... So Corvus get the facts straight, read the whole thing (if you can) and have some balls to call names. It's really not about the playing style I find to be "lame" and whatnot. Of course it annoys me when someone is just after his own score or exploits the maps' glitches without helping his team in any way whatsoever. But that was not my point and perhaps I didn't point that out very well. My bad.

Although I hate campers, every player is entitled to his own playing style as long as it doesn't infringe the rules.
But this is the crunchpoint and what has been my problem in the first place. What I can't stand is actions that infringe the laws (i.e. the server's laws) and were done on purpose not being prosecuted, despite convincingly stating they are not tolerated. What makes this worse is the fact that the guys knew and still know the rules very well ESPECIALLY since they played here for a long time... yet - they didn't follow 'em! And since I did not shut up about it and pointed it out ingame (which is amusingly obviously seen as "teaching" here) I wrote it in this section where it belongs. And what happened? Even the ones that weren't even mentioned and have personal issue with me replied with stuff that didn't contribute to the discussion at all, trying to shift the focus of attention from the culprit to the denouncer.
Hell, both even confirmed all my accusations, I neither saw kring nor eiforia denying ANY of the things I wrote they did. And that's because they're true and I didn't make them up and I didn't make up the radar of certain people, knowing what is possible and what's "luck" or a only-one-match-lasting-no-lag-ping (which corvus always said it would be, which is still totally hilarious) due to many matches on those maps and with the pros on tam and even in international tournaments. But I'm going off on a tangent here. Back to the Eiforia and kring-thingy...
Let me put it this way: A friend of yours you've known for years knowingly commits a crime that violates the law and even if it was his or her first time (which it isn't) all they get is a rap over the knuckles? Really Heinz?
I know where it's coming from (not wanting to lose players and all), but that's just a poor decision and deep down you probably know it.

With those ridiculous consequences (which are barely consequences at all and certainly won't alter any of that behaviour in the long-term) I do not want to be part of this community anymore. Me being the alleged center of all the drama, retiring should have the nice side-effect of all this being put to rest!
Well, let's see if that's the case. Everything should be just fine from now on and nobody "ruins the game" anymore, all is back to normal and there shouldn't occur any drama whatsoever anymore. Yet, I hardly believe that.


Having said that, I really think it all started with a mistake I did: Uploading pictures of my (female) friends and my girlfriend and I on GameTracker back then... This must have made certain people (mainly loners obviously) jealous and as far as I remember, that's also the same period of time where I encountered the first animosity towards agre$$ive and it kinda was the same situation as it was with Corvus. I got suspicious with certain things he did when encountering agressive ingame or while observing and accused him of cheating, yet he denied it the last bit. Him being a well-known player for some years, also playing since '99 and seemingly having won several titles (at least that's what he said) all spoke against me... (We see a pattern here: "Oh he is party of this for such a long time, I can't imagine he'd do something like that!") Well - turned out I was right! Fortunately I could proof it via hard evidence and when this led to his ban, he snapped, hacking the forum and so on and so forth. Many people think that's the only thing he did, when in fact it started with him hacking in-game. His outrage even exceeded the one demic had recently. Who knows, maybe they are connected somehow, but this is only vague speculation. So what I'm saying is that people can change behavious even after several years.
Time went on and at some point MuFoNe came along and bragged with him being always on top, with his "skills" being linking a node and pressing (jump-jump-rocket) (which he has done for years now without progressing) still doing increeeedibly well at least on the scoreboard, fortunately alotta times he went for the wrong nodes and all he is after is his score, so he has never been a big "problem" for other player's actions since they didn't interfere with other people's scores, he was easily killable and nobody got suspicious... Well turns out he also tricks the system scorewise, it's just unknown how he does it. Just spec him and you'll see. Or pm Heinz, who also in coninced of this, and sorry to put you on the hot-spot there heinz.
Knowing that a guy like him (mufone) owns such elaborate piece of software (however it got in his hands), that's really a thing to be worried about.
But not for me it isn't any longer.
____

It was a pleasure and honor to play along your side, having had severeal fun matches and good times, at least for the most part and the ones that are not included in that know who they are.

Thank you laboRHeinz for giving me and giving us all an opportunitly to continue to play the game we love for so many months and years and even after so many servers went offline.

Also mad shoutouts to HuntDown, Pegasus, Salko, SKOL*, B!tchX, Crusha, VK!* and former ZipCity guys - who taught me everything I know about playing (and when it comes to Pegasus even about the elements of style regarding the english language, I look up to you, Sir!)!
Thanks to several APOTA, iTS, TCP, C:\, NBN, T32 and omni-guys (and girls!) that are just tooo many to mention and thanks to good sports like Gollum, ADA a.k.a. FlakBunny, Kentaro[*], p!rra, Elect, moon.Ryokurey, Txugo, gio, Cat, Rotten, Moo, Birdy, MrPenguin, Illex, Zon3r, Borgqueen and some other old and new guys I forgot to mention.. Happy fragging y'all!

And by the way it was only a matter of time I'd retire since my girlfriend eventually had to come back from Australia, which she is going to be in a fortnight, so YAY for that and don't worry about me! I'm doing just awesome even without getting owned by you guys
Have a good day and make the most of it y'all! Cheers!

I won't erase my profile and post in another section apart from here to give some of you an opportunity to drop some lines in case this is what you want to do and since this would be the wrong forum section to do so.

First off, lemme make a couple of quick, technical corrections here before we get to the core of the subject:

7homasito wrote:[...]Fortunately I could proof it via hard evidence and when this led to [aGgre$sive]'s ban, he snapped, hacking the forum and so on and so forth.[...]

What that moron decided to do was flood some news section posts and some msg board threads with spammy posts and generally hateful crap; no actual hacking took place as far as I recall, nobody's security was compromised and nothing was really lost. Well, besides aggre$sive's shit, obviously.

7homasito wrote:[...]Well turns out [Mu_Fo_Ne] also tricks the system scorewise, it's just unknown how he does it. Just spec him and you'll see. Or pm Heinz, who also in coninced of this, and sorry to put you on the hot-spot there heinz.
Knowing that a guy like him (mufone) owns such elaborate piece of software (however it got in his hands), that's really a thing to be worried about.
But not for me it isn't any longer.[...]

I'm sorry to put you on the spot too, but your conclusions here just aren't accurate. I've specced Mu_Fo_Ne on numerous occasions and I've never found anything foul about the way his score progresses through "working" the nodes. There's a point to be gained for every quarter of a node's health one repairs, be it locked or not, 5pts for every enemy node torn down, and that's not getting into the point bonuses one can reap by pally shielding, armour damaging or isolating lengthy chains of enemy nodes through ONSPlus (all currently set to pretty handsome figures, I might add, leading to point "inflation"). Mu_Fo_Ne's grinding playstyle heavily relies on those mechanics to leech pts and rack up a score, so even if we agree on him being skill-less, you can't claim he's not smart about how he plays the game. Still, disliking that behaviour or finding it pathetic doesn't mean it's not legit. I've studied both a lot of the game's ONS code as well as that of ONSPlus and, even though I'm no expert Uscript coder, I don't see how Mu_Fo_Ne's ever "tricked" either system into giving him a higher score than his ingame actions would account for, sorry. The whole concept that someone coded a cheat which bypasses AntiTCC, hacks the server and executes admin commands (player score's not maintained client-side) while its user does normal point-yielding ONS actions to simultaneously drip feed him more points sounds kinda far-fetched, too. Anyway, feel free to ask Crusha or Wormbo about this if you're still unconvinced though, they definitely know more about the subject than most. Lastly, I've never seen heinz express any kind of misgivings about Mu_Fo_Ne' score either - and we do talk about those things - and most certainly not that he's cheating his way to a high score through some kind of specialized software; I think I'd remember freaking out if that'd happened. Are you sure you're right on your assessments here?

Now then, back to the main plot...

Hmm, a most regrettable outcome to a week of drama and bellyaching, if I'm honest here.

Even after heinz took the time to pore through every detail/facet of this sordid dispute's history (and, believe me, he did more research than you may realize) and issued plenty of clear directions and reprimands in his conclusion, that's still no good? You wanna see "blood", is that it? C'mon.
IMO nobody "won" here. If you couldn't pick it up from heinz' wording, no side gets to dictate server policy based on their tastes or dislikes, it's exclusively in the ketchup's hands and I believe he's long stopped playing favourites with any regular. What happened here is, he evaluated an escalating situation and took some first steps toward resolving it; just not issuing outright bans or handing out cartes blanches to anyone to continue acting like jerks. So, both administrative and "diplomatic" actions taken here in the hopes that all parties can reach some kind of understanding as adults. It's unfortunate if not everyone's willing to let go of grudges and give this attempt the benefit of the doubt - free from theories 'bout how one may be hated for being too l33t/cool/serious or untouchable by being the boss' bud - long enough to see if it works or not. And, you know what, there's some people I too have had issues with, but fuck it, for the sake of peace I'm willing to give it another try, see if all this has made any us a bit wiser to our own flaws. If it's a bust and we're all up at each other's throats within minutes again, fine, we can go down our separate roads then I guess; we're all free to make our own choices in the end, nobody's held here against their will. All said and done, like I said, disappointing conclusion.

@Thommy: if I've failed to change your mind on this and you've still hell-bent on leaving, then okay, I'm sorry I wasted your time with this. For the record, it's always been fun playing against you. Most of the people you listed in your post, as well as yourself, all contributed in turning matches into ggs over the past 4 years and certainly pushed me to get better at my game. One of the best pieces of advice I was given early in my online gaming "career" more than 10 years ago has to do with always seeking out better players to play against as that's the only way you can get better yourself. You guys all helped me considerably improve my aim, work on my dodging and movement, optimize map tactics, communication and several other ingame disciplines. Because of all the great people in our communities back in the earlier days of ONSPlus, I also got curious enough and wanted to help with the game's creative aspects which put me on a path to messing with the editor and reading up on the game's classes' source and that knowledge is now slowly enabling me to cobble together small working projects and give back to ppl still enjoying UT. For all that, I'm thankful to you and them, present and retired. If I also happened to've somehow helped you (or anyone else) improve your english with all my rivers of text, that's a bonus I'm more than happy to accept; you're welcome . So, I wish you the best of luck with your goals and an interesting, fun life.
Btw, I was in contact with Huntdown recently and he said he may start playing ONS again soon since he's back home from his studies abroad. Sometimes I wish we all had our timings synced a bit better :/.

Anyway, I'd urge you to give CEONSS one last try this weekend. If for no other reason, just to see if your hunch was right about things still being as bad as before. I mean, whatever happens, you'd have nothing to lose, right ?