Hi guys,
this is gonna be a long read, so please stay with me:
#utapug has had the following problems:
- IRC server was "hidden", not much promotion, newcomers had to connect to a different server.
- Newcomers weren't treated very nicely, because we were competitive and didn't care much.
- Newcomers found it hard to learn maps, no instructions or anything.
Pugbot problems there:
- Volunteer captain mode would sometimes take half an hour to find two captains.
- Rand captain would be afk for 10 minutes and we were all waiting.
- Signup process was very prone to being ruined: Somebody changed nick and it was dead, somebody got disconnected and it was dead, everybody was able to do !reset and everybody was able to do !setplayers.
- Siege and anything else that makes the server crash, that resulted in 1-2 time bugs which ruined 1-2 maps, and therefor ruined the pug itself.
- We couldn't implement other gametypes like proAS and instaAS.
So I contacted spydee, who coded the best pugbot I know in UT, and we was willing to help.
But that's not something that gets done within 36h, because it's just not top priority in his life.
And neither it was in mine. But the bot is at say 95% now, and when the last 5% are done we have this:
- No changing nicknames to sign.
- No !reset abuse.
- 30secs vol capt mode then random kicks in.
- If rand capt is afk too long he gets banned for 5 mins and pug is 11/12 again.
- No timebug.
- You can just sign up for whatever player amount you wanna play: 6v6, 4v4, 3v3. No asking "Are you ok with 4v4????"
- We can play instaAS, we can play proAS, we can play naliAS, we can play lowgravAS, we can play whatever the hell we feel like playing, the bot can set it all up for us.
Yes, I have announced earlier launches, but I thought that was necessary because Summer is coming.
Time was a factor for me so I just, you know, ran in there.
That hasn't ruined anything so far, it's not like you guys wouldn't play anymore if the launch was actually 2-3 weeks later.
We have had only 1 server, which was located in the UK, in the new channel we are gonna have several servers, in UK, DE and NL. AND we can add a new one within a matter of minutes, if its set up already. SWE, FR, we can play on any server.
That means we can play SEVERAL PUGS at a time!! 2v2 or 1v1 still going while people wanna play? No problem here!!
NEWCOMERS, they will be helped with A) YT videos which are done for like 15 maps already. And B) with a mod that enables the FLAGS on objectives by default, so they know where to go. That mod is being done by Quasi^ and it will contain other help for newcomers.
This was all spydee's, MyM's, Timo's and my work. That last thing is Quasi^'s work.
We will take credit for that and I/we will expect a decent amount of appreciation for the work, because this is how it's supposed to be in my opinion. Several people have thanked me already, which I was happy about and new I respect certain people some more.
Prize money explained:
- I haven't contacted anybody regarding sponsorship yet, I could and possibly will do it. ASUS was named some times as a PLACEHOLDER.
- VIP memberships on forums actually do work, many forums, for example porn forums, work very nicely with that monetization.
- I could sponsor money myself AND/OR my internet marketing projects. As in, "MLAS is sponsored by WEBSITE.com" and I would make the money back, I am very skilled at my work and it wouldn't be a problem. What could be a problem is that it might look like I'm exploiting the community, which is not my intention.
Why am I doing this? Do I have no life?
I care about AS, I care about its integrity. It has been my one and only game over the years, and the community has always been there for me to play some games.
But it's struggling in its current state, and Summer is coming. So I felt I needed to do all this here and "revamp" UTA.
I have a life, I have friends, I go out. A little less than when I was inactive in UTA, but it's still all there.
I am taking time off my regular work and put that time into UT AS.
BUT I am planning on relocating to another country after this very weekend. So I wanna get everything done before that, and after that it's supposed to be running on its own.
I am not looking to be the highest authority and everybody's go to guy, I'll want the 6+ appointed admins to handle that.
My actions as admin so far:
- DJ is worth very little to AS integrity and he has annoyed a lot of us, to be honest. I had plenty of fights with him and in my opinion he was a terrible admin and should have been replaced.
He said he would "flame me to stone-age" if he wasn't admin anymore, so that and other reasons is why he won't be welcome.
- Negative talk and pessimism I don't appreciate, so I smack that down, I do tell them to "fuck off" if they won't stop being negative. You might wanna argue about that method, but in my opinion it's the way to go, to establish trust with all the people who aren't negative. AND we do not want negative talk in the new channel, simply because the newcomers read it and possibly believe some of it.
This is why you will either be muted or banned for 1-2+ days if you start raging in chan that UTA IS DEAD WE ARE TOO LATE FUCK ALL OF THIS.
- Then there's the case of smant, he trashtalks too much, sure he is "smant being smant", I grasp that. But it's too much anyway. I don't want it and many other people don't want it. So either he tunes it down or he isn't welcome.
Ok, here's where we come to the tricky part. We have the following options:
- GlobalGamers only.
- QuakeNet only.
- QuakeNet AND GlobalGamers.
- Invite only.
- Open for Everybody.
- #assault.new Every can play 4v4 newcomerAS in there and if they do a nice job and are nice people, they get invited.
QN is mostly EU and GG is mostly US, but QN is sort of transitioning to GG atm, at least the process has started.
But there's still plenty of action on QN, too.
PACO and others run the show on GG. I have contacted him and explained my plans. I have done that in a blunt matter because that's how I do things. He disagrees with me and thinks I am a "full-blown idiot".
He trusts smant more than me, they do more planning, which differs from my methods. I, too, do a lot of planning, however I just run in there and go DO things already, too. That looks unprofessional to PACO, but I'm not sure he grasps our situation very well, because I have been in UTA for many years and he has not.
Either way, there's plenty of problems that we could run into.
Possibly total chaos, having to ban 15+ people, rivalry between channels, et cetera.
Be that is it may, I'm not entirely sure what options should be in the poll, but I'll put some in there, and see what you guys think about all this.
Thanks for reading this.
this is gonna be a long read, so please stay with me:
#utapug has had the following problems:
- IRC server was "hidden", not much promotion, newcomers had to connect to a different server.
- Newcomers weren't treated very nicely, because we were competitive and didn't care much.
- Newcomers found it hard to learn maps, no instructions or anything.
Pugbot problems there:
- Volunteer captain mode would sometimes take half an hour to find two captains.
- Rand captain would be afk for 10 minutes and we were all waiting.
- Signup process was very prone to being ruined: Somebody changed nick and it was dead, somebody got disconnected and it was dead, everybody was able to do !reset and everybody was able to do !setplayers.
- Siege and anything else that makes the server crash, that resulted in 1-2 time bugs which ruined 1-2 maps, and therefor ruined the pug itself.
- We couldn't implement other gametypes like proAS and instaAS.
So I contacted spydee, who coded the best pugbot I know in UT, and we was willing to help.
But that's not something that gets done within 36h, because it's just not top priority in his life.
And neither it was in mine. But the bot is at say 95% now, and when the last 5% are done we have this:
- No changing nicknames to sign.
- No !reset abuse.
- 30secs vol capt mode then random kicks in.
- If rand capt is afk too long he gets banned for 5 mins and pug is 11/12 again.
- No timebug.
- You can just sign up for whatever player amount you wanna play: 6v6, 4v4, 3v3. No asking "Are you ok with 4v4????"
- We can play instaAS, we can play proAS, we can play naliAS, we can play lowgravAS, we can play whatever the hell we feel like playing, the bot can set it all up for us.
Yes, I have announced earlier launches, but I thought that was necessary because Summer is coming.
Time was a factor for me so I just, you know, ran in there.
That hasn't ruined anything so far, it's not like you guys wouldn't play anymore if the launch was actually 2-3 weeks later.
We have had only 1 server, which was located in the UK, in the new channel we are gonna have several servers, in UK, DE and NL. AND we can add a new one within a matter of minutes, if its set up already. SWE, FR, we can play on any server.
That means we can play SEVERAL PUGS at a time!! 2v2 or 1v1 still going while people wanna play? No problem here!!
NEWCOMERS, they will be helped with A) YT videos which are done for like 15 maps already. And B) with a mod that enables the FLAGS on objectives by default, so they know where to go. That mod is being done by Quasi^ and it will contain other help for newcomers.
This was all spydee's, MyM's, Timo's and my work. That last thing is Quasi^'s work.
We will take credit for that and I/we will expect a decent amount of appreciation for the work, because this is how it's supposed to be in my opinion. Several people have thanked me already, which I was happy about and new I respect certain people some more.
Prize money explained:
- I haven't contacted anybody regarding sponsorship yet, I could and possibly will do it. ASUS was named some times as a PLACEHOLDER.
- VIP memberships on forums actually do work, many forums, for example porn forums, work very nicely with that monetization.
- I could sponsor money myself AND/OR my internet marketing projects. As in, "MLAS is sponsored by WEBSITE.com" and I would make the money back, I am very skilled at my work and it wouldn't be a problem. What could be a problem is that it might look like I'm exploiting the community, which is not my intention.
Why am I doing this? Do I have no life?
I care about AS, I care about its integrity. It has been my one and only game over the years, and the community has always been there for me to play some games.
But it's struggling in its current state, and Summer is coming. So I felt I needed to do all this here and "revamp" UTA.
I have a life, I have friends, I go out. A little less than when I was inactive in UTA, but it's still all there.
I am taking time off my regular work and put that time into UT AS.
BUT I am planning on relocating to another country after this very weekend. So I wanna get everything done before that, and after that it's supposed to be running on its own.
I am not looking to be the highest authority and everybody's go to guy, I'll want the 6+ appointed admins to handle that.
My actions as admin so far:
- DJ is worth very little to AS integrity and he has annoyed a lot of us, to be honest. I had plenty of fights with him and in my opinion he was a terrible admin and should have been replaced.
He said he would "flame me to stone-age" if he wasn't admin anymore, so that and other reasons is why he won't be welcome.
- Negative talk and pessimism I don't appreciate, so I smack that down, I do tell them to "fuck off" if they won't stop being negative. You might wanna argue about that method, but in my opinion it's the way to go, to establish trust with all the people who aren't negative. AND we do not want negative talk in the new channel, simply because the newcomers read it and possibly believe some of it.
This is why you will either be muted or banned for 1-2+ days if you start raging in chan that UTA IS DEAD WE ARE TOO LATE FUCK ALL OF THIS.
- Then there's the case of smant, he trashtalks too much, sure he is "smant being smant", I grasp that. But it's too much anyway. I don't want it and many other people don't want it. So either he tunes it down or he isn't welcome.
Ok, here's where we come to the tricky part. We have the following options:
- GlobalGamers only.
- QuakeNet only.
- QuakeNet AND GlobalGamers.
- Invite only.
- Open for Everybody.
- #assault.new Every can play 4v4 newcomerAS in there and if they do a nice job and are nice people, they get invited.
QN is mostly EU and GG is mostly US, but QN is sort of transitioning to GG atm, at least the process has started.
But there's still plenty of action on QN, too.
PACO and others run the show on GG. I have contacted him and explained my plans. I have done that in a blunt matter because that's how I do things. He disagrees with me and thinks I am a "full-blown idiot".
He trusts smant more than me, they do more planning, which differs from my methods. I, too, do a lot of planning, however I just run in there and go DO things already, too. That looks unprofessional to PACO, but I'm not sure he grasps our situation very well, because I have been in UTA for many years and he has not.
Either way, there's plenty of problems that we could run into.
Possibly total chaos, having to ban 15+ people, rivalry between channels, et cetera.
Be that is it may, I'm not entirely sure what options should be in the poll, but I'll put some in there, and see what you guys think about all this.
Thanks for reading this.