Good Progress! But Not Enough...Yet

[Namu]

After playing this game from sun up to sundown I can confidently say the devs have done a great amount of work. Gruntz is such a great idea and it is very fun but it's not ready for mass playing yet.

We have a significant amount of issues with lag, zombie swarms, and most importantly griefers.

The lag is really felt at extraction phase when the hordes don't stop spawning making it nearly impossible to move to extraction.

The zombie swarms prevent a lot of buildings and bunkering to be possible with the amount of bullets they take to cut down a infinate heard.

The griefing has been particullarly bad today, Specifically with a group and a particular person named "Saturn". Bombings, Fires in ammo rooms, Mass RDM. It's really killing the game for a lot of people. There is ZERO admins online to prevent the mass grief and this was a oversight from the ownership/developers. This is a Space Station derivative. You're getting griefers, You should expect griefers, You should ban griefers.

 

[damirsuran]

This is a playtest of a game thats also meant to draw attention to Awhoo/the engine overall. Cant really blame it for lack of optimalization when it already is playable at this stage.

Ive played myself past week and i dont see many griefers, if anything the game mechanics grief the game itself due to the ease of floor removals, chain reactions, explosions and all kind of ways a fire can spread, especially via people.

There are also people like May Best or Olsen who think they are doing a service to the community by targetting people who they think are griefers, it however backfiring and them killing a dozen people, sometimes the wrong ones, sometimes causing collateral damage and it spiralling.
Its a playtest, and even if it wasnt, someone blowing up by mistake or missclicking isnt issue, if you actively go out to war with people you dont like while the rest of us just play normally you shouldnt complain when they attack you back and forth. Most people like me are unaffected by this, from occasional blown up area or missing metal.

 

[Saturn Tiberian]

Hello buddy,

I am an old CMSS13 player, not a part of any group and I have only recently learned of Gruntz' discord server and forum, in which a small clique has apparently been harassing Dean Hall for increased moderation for some time now.

I notice that you are a member of the SS14 community. If you look at the history of Wizden (not just the recent drama, although that is illustrative) you can clearly see the effects of the kind of moderation you are proposing.

I am very familiar with these effects because I have seen them happen to SS14 as well as many SS13 communities such as CMSS13, beestation and /tg/station.

The playbook is always the same:

1. A small clique of "concerned community members" harasses the hosts for increased moderation. They may even provide compelling arguments. Sometimes, they false-flag grief to create an illusion that heavier moderation is needed.
2. Hosts eventually cave in to harassment and create moderator roles.
3. Only losers want to be internet moderators. Therefore, the only people interested in filling these roles are the aforementioned clique, and not the general player population.
4. This clique gradually tightens control over the community through a series of loyalty tests and purges, beginning more innocuously and gradually becoming more and more restrictive.
5. Along the way, the old guard (the only ones who can remember what the community was was like before the over-moderated state) is banned.

On many SS13 servers, this was manifested in note/ban escalation which guaranteed that most old players would eventually be permabanned, as well as a gradual restriction of speech resulting in a "boiling frog" effect.

For example, on CMSS13, an older popular meme was the term "Deltard" referring to members of Delta squad, which were known for having a very aggressive playstyle that often resulted in a total squad wipe within 30 minutes of round start. You will be permanently banned for saying "Deltard" now on CMSS13 because the administrators consider it an "ableist term". The overwhelming majority of the community disagree with this ban but cannot do anything because the moderator team has established total control over them.

This ban was the result of a long series of speech restrictions which started almost FIVE years earlier when usage of the hard-R "N word" was originally prohibited. Gradually further restrictions were added and complaints against it were dismissed as "slippery slope fallacy", this produced a boiling frog effect and most community members only realized how authoritarian the moderation was when it was far too late.

Be careful what you wish for, the wrong people on an admin team can grief you much harder than any players can.