This will be Deleted READ NOW! Someone save the document.

[Westhybrid]

I did say in my previous post, that I was also speaking for my friends. People have also agreed with me in minichat. Like I've said, if I was speaking for the community, I would have said I was.

It just came across as that. And as much as we have taken the consideration of all differing views of the playerbase in the past, I'm inclined to say that you and, what I'm assuming are a few of your Sanctum pals, should at least be more transparent about who is arguing that we don't need a dark and gritty game. Because you're operating under a guise of you having a disagreement, and an untold number of other people, which sounds like bullshit. So unless you plan on naming names or have people actually backing you up that you talked to, that's how it comes across.

[apophis775]

I did say in my previous post, that I was also speaking for my friends. People have also agreed with me in minichat. Like I've said, if I was speaking for the community, I would have said I was.

It literally came across as that. If you didn't intend it, then you must pay more attention to what you post.

Because in your post, there is no reference to your friends or anything (which didn't come up till later), beyond you soap-boxing that "no one wants a gritty and darker game".

So if you don't want people to yell at you for speaking for the community, don't word things like your speaking for the community.

[NoShamNoWow]

It just came across as that. And as much as we have taken the consideration of all differing views of the playerbase in the past, I'm inclined to say that you and, what I'm assuming are a few of your Sanctum pals, should at least be more transparent about who is arguing that we don't need a dark and gritty game. Because you're operating under a guise of you having a disagreement, and an untold number of other people, which sounds like bullshit. So unless you plan on naming names or have people actually backing you up that you talked to, that's how it comes across.

Yea all i'm doing is giving ammo for you to shoot. Done posting in the thread since everyone likes to assume and imply people are entitled to shit. Also, please stop with the "Sanctum Pals" shit, literally, we have been friends before that.

[monkeysfist101]

There's a group of people who unanimously liked the sprites and supported Fridge making them. They're called the Development Team. If you don't like the new sprites, either make constructive points as to what you don't like or learn to sprite/code/map and apply to join the dev team. I'm sick of reading all this bullshit every time LITERALLY ANYTHING is changed. I'm disappointed in how many of our regulars' first instinct was to act like children who've just had a toy taken away.

[Desolane900]

There's a group of people who unanimously liked the sprites and supported Fridge making them. They're called the Development Team. If you don't like the new sprites, either make constructive points as to what you don't like or learn to sprite/code/map and apply to join the dev team. I'm sick of reading all this bullshit every time LITERALLY ANYTHING is changed. I'm disappointed in how many of our regulars' first instinct was to act like children who've just had a toy taken away.

My reaction to any change is always going to be the same "schism between staff and playerbase" because that's all it is.

I'd also love to point out Skycave was banned for being upset he inadvertently got shit on in front of a lot of people for saying something our host didn't agree with. Whether or not it was meant to, Apophis embaressed him and I think that's a little fucked up. What's more fucked up is the distinct lack of empathy coming from people on this thread.

[Westhybrid]

My reaction to any change is always going to be the same "schism between staff and playerbase" because that's all it is.

I'd also love to point out Skycave was banned for being upset he inadvertently got shit on in front of a lot of people for saying something our host didn't agree with. Whether or not it was meant to, Apophis embaressed him and I think that's a little fucked up. What's more fucked up is the distinct lack of empathy coming from people on this thread.

Where was the empathy for Fridge and the Devs? Don't set the bar low if you want the rest of us to play nice.

[Desolane900]

Where was the empathy for Fridge and the Devs? Don't set the bar low if you want the rest of us to play nice.

Because everyone has opinions and they are allowed to, but goddamn. Public embarrassment is not okay.

[Feweh]

Because everyone has opinions and they are allowed to, but goddamn. Public embarrassment is not okay.

So, in an attempt to be 100% clear. We placed a 1-week ban on Skycave for his original comments in the opening thread. We are open to criticism and discussion, however:
Is 100% not acceptable. On other communities, this would have been a permaban from the community overall, and I know some people think I'm insane for just making it a single week.

Come on Desolane, read.
You're really starting to completely discredit your own opinions and turning to consistent shitting.

[lucashunter608]

Is this vietnam? lets just accept it, our community is slowly becoming insane.

[Desolane900]

Come on Desolane, read.
You're really starting to completely discredit your own opinions and turning to consistent shitting.

Atleast someone gets it.

[apophis775]

My reaction to any change is always going to be the same "schism between staff and playerbase" because that's all it is.

I'd also love to point out Skycave was banned for being upset he inadvertently got shit on in front of a lot of people for saying something our host didn't agree with. Whether or not it was meant to, Apophis embaressed him and I think that's a little fucked up. What's more fucked up is the distinct lack of empathy coming from people on this thread.

No skycave wasn't banned for being upset. He was banned for his excessive freakout and the specific wording he did. But guess what, if you went to hippie, paradise, goon, or even bay and did the same thing, you'd get banned and the population would laugh.

I banned him, for a single week for very specific reasons I even outlined.

He may have been upset, but he went too far. And I also apologized, as again, I didn't mean to call him out. I literally grabbed the first response I saw and copypasted it.

But you know, I suppose it's OK for people to demonize me, call me Hitler, shit all over my game, complain about the updates that take us hours to make, and bitch about me "ruining CM" (when this CM has lasted longer than ANY OTHER ITERATION EVER), but the second call someone out for it it's all "OH MA GERD, HE SAID HE DIDN'T GIVE A FUCK AND COPY-PASTED SOMETHING SOMEONE SAID. Better get to the forums!".

[Fritigern]

1. Good that you have experience as a staff member in a community similar to CM (which is actually, around a thousand total). But, what your missing, is that SS13 is by far, one of the most toxic environments for development and advancement of anything at all. If you REALLY don't see the massive amount of toxicity, spend about 5 minutes on the r/ss13. Is SS13 the MOST toxic? No, but it's definitely up there. Despite being a "free" game, there's this weird sense of entitlement that players get, where they feel they need to have input in every major or minor decision or upgrade.

2. These updates were discussed in the past and if you search through the general forums, you'll probably find the original topics hanging about. This was no means "out of nowhere". I mean, the Tier Limits has been dicussed for MONTHS, and same with the upgrade system.

3. I run CM development, similar to professional (as in, not volunteer) teams I've worked on before. You don't see WoW or League taking the salty topics people create (as a result of humans at a base level hating change) as the direction they need to go with the server. And we aren't doing that anymore either. Really, the big "wake-up-call" was when an infrequent player created a massive drama train a bit back, and then was going to provide a name-by-name list of exactly what he didn't like about specific staff and how they needed to change. That was the moment I realized I was doing this wrong. I do this in my free time, because I enjoy development, not to cater to the whims/whines of random people on the internet. So what the Dev team is doing, is making this the game WE want to make. Because if we take every single player feedback issue into play, we'd never get anything done, or what we come up with, won't be what we want to present. Would you goto an artist who's making a painting and tell him "you should use another shade of blue for the sky"? No. And at the end of the days, that's what games are. Art (and don't try to argue with me on this unless you are prepared to read the MASSIVE blocks of text I'll to shoot at you in reply, as I've been fighting for "games are art" for nearly a decade and it's one of the things I base teaching game design on).

Here's the bottom line:
SOME people don't like the new sprites. THey are the LOUDEST.
MANY others do like sprites, but they are silent about it.
This thread was created, because I picked a comment at total random and pasted it along with not giving a fuck, because the sprites were the new sprites.

And at the end of the day, this isn't the "communities" game. This is OUR game (the dev and staff team). It's the game we are making and developing. I have no problem taking actual criticism and using that as a method to improve, but this thread is literally greytide levels of drama-cancer and honestly, we aren't going to really take anything from here into account. Now, that OTHER thread about sprites (the one, where everyone isn't being a total shit), I've been reading and reviewing. That thread, has several good points, we are going to take into account.

1. Yes, I know a server like CM generates about a thousand unique visitors a week, as did my own community. No need to measure dicks there. Also no, I've been all over the internet and apart of many communities, and I don't find SS13 to be anymore toxic than anywhere else. A lot of people parrot that in the community but it's just something people say to try and set themselves apart from other gaming subcultures. "My community is so shit, but here I am anyways!" Nah, not really, that's just the internet mate. I find that argument especially funny around here because words and thoughts expressed outside the byond client itself translate to punishments and bans in-game. Pretty easy to silence the dissenters and trolls that way.

2. I was talking specifically about the sprite changes. Those weren't previewed at all, and they are the major point of contention in this update. The last big change was resin cuffs, which were introduced with little to no warning and is something people are still vocally pushing back on existing. Myself being one of them. And if we go back further we'll see other examples of surprise updates, for both good and ill. I should stress that it doesn't matter if the big huge changes end up being great or bad, it's the whole process in which they are released is often done in secret, or just spontaneously. It's not healthy for the players or the staff members.

3. Your example is actually completely, 100% false. Both WoW and League of Legends use public testing realms/servers to showcase upcoming changes, often providing huge amounts of statistics, documentation and reasoned arguments for the things they are creating. They want player feedback. And, depending on vocal player feedback, make changes before making their upcoming content live. Sure, the direction of the game may not be swayed, but I can pull down a dozen examples of Riot Games agreeing with player outrage over, appropriately enough given this conversation, artwork and changing it based on feedback. I guess riot games never had a problem telling its artists to fix Lee Sin's fucked up thumb face.

As for your final points: No, I think it's quite obvious that the vast majority of players are unahappy with the new sprites in some shape or form. If people like the sprites then why are your own staff members already publicly discussing their own dislike and changes they'd like to see being made? Seems indicative of the view of the community at large in that situation.

Also, I mean.. it's KINDA your game, I guess? I mean, you're basically operating your entire server in a very grey legal area where you're using the intellectual property of others to fuel your development. Not that I'm complaining, but I'd just like us to be honest with what the situation is.

[MrJJJ]

As for your final points: No, I think it's quite obvious that the vast majority of players are unahappy with the new sprites in some shape or form. If people like the sprites then why are your own staff members already publicly discussing their own dislike and changes they'd like to see being made? Seems indicative of the view of the community at large in that situation.

The best way to gather a majority opinion, is to listen to what they say in discord/dsay/looc about sprites, in game, and you be suprised just how many people don't really care, sure they do need some improvement, but really, staff members are still people, they have opinions, some like them some don't, and the staff is always usually like barely even 10% of the community, i mean common, i know we all like to use the *speaking as the community thing, myself included* but do we really need to go on about this?

[Ocnjak20]

I am not certain how people can dislike new sprites over cartoonish and not serious old sprites, I must give big thumbs up for devs for that and new update for Xenos which allows them to waste Marines which are also known as Turtles. I mean IC-ly, you are supposed to search for surv's and set up FoB then investigate whats going on. By that time Aliens go to Mature form, depending on how the bridge staff is handling briefing which can be done in various ways.

Instead of 3 hour round they last around and hour and half or two hours because Marines can't turtle anymore and they get soooo salty over that. I think that players in general should consider tactics as CO and bridge staff instead of just "Okay we are going down there, making FOB and waiting for them to come at us.".

On Sky's salty topic, well all I can say is that he can remain salty all he wants but staff here is fair and they do not ban people for nothing, CM aint shit as they still have large community and over 100 players, so what is one more childish fool on the ban list for them. You break the rules and pay the price for that. Cheers.

[Adjective]

Can I mention that the Graal Online Server he is talking about is a player hosted version of the Eurocenter game Graal and that the stats of the server signify it has 40 players on average a week and 200 variations of unique IP's per week. History of the server detail it has had 115 players maximum online at once and 8185 unique variations over its entire existence.

My brother works for Eurocenter and has been their official Head Spriter, Head Admin, and Server Police. All of which are paid roles by the corporation that lets hosts of the player servers rent slots of their servers to "host".

Graal is similar to CM in the flow of players but they are not similar at all in creation. In Graal the largest majority of "dev" work is new weapons all under the coding type Gani which is all a pre-requisit recode small pieces for small change "new stuff". And spriting which is for the largest majority respriting over a variation of a gun, hat, player, clothing item of hat or body, and shield templates.

Not to disqualify his credentials, but his idea of "dev work" is actually more equivalent to what CM "Mappers" and "Assistant Spriters" do.

Sources -Thajj Cumberpatch (iJester)(Manager of Delteria) and Ryan Lapse Kratos(Ryan Kratos)(Former Head Design Admin of Graal Zone) both of which are current and former Eurocenter(Company that owns and runs anything Graal) employees.

EDIT:

I also asked the Graal Zone Dev Team and Graal Era Dev team how they go about implementation, apparently the Developer team just Gani's and sprites what they want or what they are asked to make and a manager pushes it to publish. There is no community feedback at all. If any sort of spriting leak occurs involving holiday items before release, the item isn't released. (Somewhat similar to CM other than the not releasing things part.)

[Grypho]

Lol, I am pretty sure that if Apophis threatened to shut down the whole server, after 2 weeks most of the people salting here about the new sprites would regret this whole thread and actually demand less. "If you are rich, you aren´t grateful until you are gonna lose it". People were complaining even less 2 years ago when colonial marines wasn´t even properly developed and there were bad glitches and grey areas. People still enjoyed that stuff with out complaining.

[Fritigern]

Can I mention that the Graal Online Server he is talking about is a player hosted version of the Eurocenter game Graal and that the stats of the server signify it has 40 players on average a week and 200 variations of unique IP's per week. History of the server detail it has had 115 players maximum online at once and 8185 unique variations over its entire existence.

My brother works for Eurocenter and has been their official Head Spriter, Head Admin, and Server Police. All of which are paid roles by the corporation that lets hosts of the player servers rent slots of their servers to "host".

Graal is similar to CM in the flow of players but they are not similar at all in creation. In Graal the largest majority of "dev" work is new weapons all under the coding type Gani which is all a pre-requisit recode small pieces for small change "new stuff". And spriting which is for the largest majority respriting over a variation of a gun, hat, player, clothing item of hat or body, and shield templates.

Not to disqualify his credentials, but his idea of "dev work" is actually more equivalent to what CM "Mappers" and "Assistant Spriters" do.

Sources -Thajj Cumberpatch (iJester)(Manager of Delteria) and Ryan Lapse Kratos(Ryan Kratos)(Former Head Design Admin of Graal Zone) both of which are current and former Eurocenter(Company that owns and runs anything Graal) employees.

EDIT:

I also asked the Graal Zone Dev Team and Graal Era Dev team how they go about implementation, apparently the Developer team just Gani's and sprites what they want or what they are asked to make and a manager pushes it to publish. There is no community feedback at all. If any sort of spriting leak occurs involving holiday items before release, the item isn't released. (Somewhat similar to CM other than the not releasing things part.)

The Valikorlia player server on Graal Online is about 15 years old. It predates facebook and its latest cash cow incarnation. I don't know how far back the stats you're picking up go, considering the age of server and its various incarnations, but I know the 115 figure to be incorrect. I suspect that number comes from the latest server we swapped to many years ago, and not the original. I was an on-again off-again staff member from 2002 to present day. Its heyday, as I mentioned before, saw nightly numbers from 100-150 during the 2001-2006ish era, with spikes and dips along the way even til today. I never said it was that huge now, but if you understood the history of the server you'd know why. The unfortunate part of working in the Graal Online client is that you are subject to oversight by the owners, and they appointed a series of mentally unstable managers who ran the server into the ground (Think if someone from Byond came to CM and took the server away from Apop and gave it to Bill Carson). Server still exists and does okay for itself, but we're more close knit than CM is and we're fine with that.

Also I find it amusing how you try and downplay the coding work that is done in the game, or 'dev work'. Yes the work has been streamlined for small things like weapon ganis so that almost anyone can do it, but other systems on the server require code to be written from scratch over tens of hours. I know it's not as complicated a programming language as CM and other games are working with but the workload on large projects is the same, and we often do such things when working on new events for players.

As for the sprite 'templates' you were talking about, that's really only true in the case of other servers that don't frequently expand upon their level designs. In the two screenshots I shared just about everything was drawn by hand by various artists. If you want I can share the dev work we're doing now for an upcoming event on the server? I've got an entirely new city design with never before seen graphical layout and a fat bipedal dragon wearing a pimp hat. He looks pretty sweet. Pretty sure we didn't follow any templates for those.

Also every server works differently. Valikorlia is a roleplay focused server, the only one of its kind in the Graal community, and faces problems similar to CM. We aren't monetized and we aren't trying to hide our work from our competitors (I can walk through just about every other graal server and point out the things stolen from us ad nauseam). We aren't worried about 'leaks' we're just trying to make interesting stories for our players to enjoy. We are very open with our regular players and share our work with them whenever possible, and that was the route I was suggesting to Apop.

[Feweh]

The Valikorlia player server on Graal Online is about 15 years old. It predates facebook and its latest cash cow incarnation. I don't know how far back the stats you're picking up go, considering the age of server and its various incarnations, but I know the 115 figure to be incorrect. I suspect that number comes from the latest server we swapped to many years ago, and not the original. I was an on-again off-again staff member from 2002 to present day. Its heyday, as I mentioned before, saw nightly numbers from 100-150 during the 2001-2006ish era, with spikes and dips along the way even til today. I never said it was that huge now, but if you understood the history of the server you'd know why. The unfortunate part of working in the Graal Online client is that you are subject to oversight by the owners, and they appointed a series of mentally unstable managers who ran the server into the ground (Think if someone from Byond came to CM and took the server away from Apop and gave it to Bill Carson). Server still exists and does okay for itself, but we're more close knit than CM is and we're fine with that.

Also I find it amusing how you try and downplay the coding work that is done in the game, or 'dev work'. Yes the work has been streamlined for small things like weapon ganis so that almost anyone can do it, but other systems on the server require code to be written from scratch over tens of hours. I know it's not as complicated a programming language as CM and other games are working with but the workload on large projects is the same, and we often do such things when working on new events for players.

As for the sprite 'templates' you were talking about, that's really only true in the case of other servers that don't frequently expand upon their level designs. In the two screenshots I shared just about everything was drawn by hand by various artists. If you want I can share the dev work we're doing now for an upcoming event on the server? I've got an entirely new city design with never before seen graphical layout and a fat bipedal dragon wearing a pimp hat. He looks pretty sweet. Pretty sure we didn't follow any templates for those.

Also every server works differently. Valikorlia is a roleplay focused server, the only one of its kind in the Graal community, and faces problems similar to CM. We aren't monetized and we aren't trying to hide our work from our competitors (I can walk through just about every other graal server and point out the things stolen from us ad nauseam). We aren't worried about 'leaks' we're just trying to make interesting stories for our players to enjoy. We are very open with our regular players and share our work with them whenever possible, and that was the route I was suggesting to Apop.

I played Graal probably 10-15 years ago so I know exactly what youre talking about. Shoutout to Dalmar and Bridgeton! Not to mention the countless hours i put into kingdoms.

Believe i quit once the owners stopped focusing on the PC version and the player POP died. My sister Jessica was heavily into ERA, did a bunch of work on there. Before i moved out years ago I thinks she was the head of admins or something.

Good times.

Edit: As adjective said the DEV work was super streamlined and often just re-skins of maps and other icons.
Staff there took very little feedback and followed their own personal Agendas. Fuck was the staff team corrupt as fuck on every server. Being friends with staff often ment you got free shit all the time.

[Fritigern]

I played Graal probably 10-15 years ago so I know exactly what youre talking about. Shoutout to Dalmar and Bridgeton! Not to mention the countless hours i put into kingdoms.

Believe i quit once the owners stopped focusing on the PC version and the player POP died. My sister Jessica was heavily into ERA, did a bunch of work on there. Before i moved out years ago I thinks she was the head of admins or something.

Good times.

Edit: As adjective said the DEV work was super streamlined and often just re-skins of maps and other icons.
Staff there took very little feedback and followed their own personal Agendas. Fuck was the staff team corrupt as fuck on every server. Being friends with staff often ment you got free shit all the time.

*Bridgeton fist bump.* My bridger.

Also I might know your sister? Hard to say, was a lot of Jessica's around.

[apophis775]

1. Yes, I know a server like CM generates about a thousand unique visitors a week, as did my own community. No need to measure dicks there. Also no, I've been all over the internet and apart of many communities, and I don't find SS13 to be anymore toxic than anywhere else. A lot of people parrot that in the community but it's just something people say to try and set themselves apart from other gaming subcultures. "My community is so shit, but here I am anyways!" Nah, not really, that's just the internet mate. I find that argument especially funny around here because words and thoughts expressed outside the byond client itself translate to punishments and bans in-game. Pretty easy to silence the dissenters and trolls that way.

2. I was talking specifically about the sprite changes. Those weren't previewed at all, and they are the major point of contention in this update. The last big change was resin cuffs, which were introduced with little to no warning and is something people are still vocally pushing back on existing. Myself being one of them. And if we go back further we'll see other examples of surprise updates, for both good and ill. I should stress that it doesn't matter if the big huge changes end up being great or bad, it's the whole process in which they are released is often done in secret, or just spontaneously. It's not healthy for the players or the staff members.

3. Your example is actually completely, 100% false. Both WoW and League of Legends use public testing realms/servers to showcase upcoming changes, often providing huge amounts of statistics, documentation and reasoned arguments for the things they are creating. They want player feedback. And, depending on vocal player feedback, make changes before making their upcoming content live. Sure, the direction of the game may not be swayed, but I can pull down a dozen examples of Riot Games agreeing with player outrage over, appropriately enough given this conversation, artwork and changing it based on feedback. I guess riot games never had a problem telling its artists to fix Lee Sin's fucked up thumb face.

As for your final points: No, I think it's quite obvious that the vast majority of players are unahappy with the new sprites in some shape or form. If people like the sprites then why are your own staff members already publicly discussing their own dislike and changes they'd like to see being made? Seems indicative of the view of the community at large in that situation.

Also, I mean.. it's KINDA your game, I guess? I mean, you're basically operating your entire server in a very grey legal area where you're using the intellectual property of others to fuel your development. Not that I'm complaining, but I'd just like us to be honest with what the situation is.

1. I've been in gaming communities, for over 2 decades at this point. I've been around the internet for nearly 25. I have a degree in game design, where I did spend time studying gaming communities. I can tell you, that SS13 community is BY FAR one of the most toxic. Yes, other communities are becoming more toxic as well as it's the internet and it's how it's happening, but SS13 is still by far, one of the most toxic I've seen, comparing to minecraft/LoL levels.

2. We don't preview everything, and we have no binding reason or real reason at all to preview them for the players. I'm not bound or forced to present anything before we do updates. Do Bay or Goon preview anything? No. They drop updates and move on. That's what I'm doing now.

3. Yes, wow and League run test servers, but they don't listen to every single salty topic. They gather the data and make decisions based on that. I mean, if wow listened to ANYONE other than their own pocketbooks, it wouldn't be in such a shitty state right now.


And again, your trying to speak for the community and no offense, but I don't even know who you are besides someone trying to be an internet tough guy claiming you previously ran a big community.


And yes, it is OUR game. We aren't in a legal grey area (I'm experienced in copyright law from my dual degrees in Game Design and Film Producing). We function, legally, under chapter 107, article 17 USC. We are a non-profit parody that does not affect the normal market for the subject matter we are parodying.
If your referring to closed source, we used the final publish that allowd closed-source prior to the change in licensing, and I've contacted both Goon and Bay about this and they were fine with us.

So please, before you insinuate we are doing something illegal or operating in a legal grey area, learn the actual copyright laws and maybe, contact the copyright office to confirm (like I did).

[apophis775]

And, after Skycaves recent evasion and explosion, he's been permabanned.

I'm locking this thread and moving it to the archives so it may DIE.