Story The Life And Times Of The Badmin, or How King Arthur's Gold Ruined My Sanity

The Life And Times Of The Badmin;
or, How King Arthur's Gold Ruined My Sanity

An objective outlook on why most admins are assholes,
by thebonesauce

You've all seen it, or heard about it, or were told about it from some kid in the game. "OMG, ADMIN ABUSE! This guy totally banned me for building my 1 block wide wall that stretched into the heavens! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?! I'M GONNA RAGE ABOUT IT ON THE FORUMS!"

Well, allow me to share my experience as an administrator. It all started over a year ago when I was accepted into MOLE, and was given honorary administration rights as part of the MOLE server. I wrote down all the rcon commands and passwords on a Post-It note, and got really excited because I wanted to make a difference. And for a long time, I did.

I slowly started earning administrator privileges on other servers, Beo's being the first, and then making my mark on Action Unlimited, the Saiyan server, Voxxitronic's ZF mod servers, etc. I used to get such a rush out of catching griefers and hackers in the act. New players often looked up to us KAG veterans, many of them asking us for advice when it came to building adequate structures, fighting styles, archery techniques, etc. This was the golden age of KAG, where it seemed like everyone had a great time in game, and usually new players were competent and enjoyed the game, and always seemed eager to learn.

I'm unsure when it happened, some people blame the Reddit meetup, others blame YogsCast... Whenever it was, we began to see a sharp decline in the player base in terms of intelligence. It seemed as if every new player had the IQ of a tree stump and was far more interested in trolling than playing the game.

We actually had a theory back in the heyday of the MOLE server; the server saw a serious degradation in player skill and quality after 11 pm EST, a period of time we dubbed, "The Aussiepocalypse." I truly believe this is when admins began to not give a fuck. I think we all started off with the best intentions, back in a day where admin abuse was just that; an administrator abusing his power. Meaning, an administrator who freezes players so he isn't killed, banning people for killing him, or building elaborate, untouchable structures using the ingame editor.

Nowadays, with this huge decline in player intelligence/quality causing the overall playerbase to be subpar, admin abuse is constituted as anything a player doesn't like. Examples include being frozen for insulting an admin, banning someone for continuously building structures that hinder their own team, banning for glitch exploitation, etc. Gone are the days of legitimate administration as it seems we (as admins) cannot make a move without being labeled as abusive.

My sanity started to go around the time that the MOLE server began to die off. While many of us were used to fun, balanced, interesting and strategic games, the new players (who mostly came because the game resembled Minecraft in it's building senses) only seemed interested in building whatever they felt like, completely ignoring any and all advice/suggestions from more experienced players. We, the administrators, slowly became jaded. We had a bleak outlook on the future of the game because the playerbase had devolved into shit, and as such we went from being overly helpful to banning stupidity on sight.

And honestly, can you blame us? Our community went from a sweet balance of highly skilled players and newer players eager to LEARN from the highly skilled players, to a few highly skilled players and a massive crowd of new players that don't give a shit except for their own unique experience. It's a shame really, because KAG is MOST fun in groups. That's the entire point behind the game; it is a TEAM BASED EXPERIENCE. Too many new players are too interested in single player-style mechanics, which is why I believe so many new players are drawn to the Zombie Fortress servers. While it IS a fun distraction, it doesn't give what makes most of this game fun. I spent $10 on this game, and have played it for well over a year now. It has been worth every penny, though I can say that I've played maybe 10% of my total time on Zombie mode, and 90% of that time playing CTF/RTDM/Parkour/etc. Overall, the most fun I get out of this game is the competitive aspect, something that seems to be shunned by newer players.

I am all for being a helpful, productive admin, but there comes a point when you're ignored by so many people that you can't help but shrug and say, "What's the point? These people don't give a shit. They don't want to learn and they don't care about their team, so why should I bother?" This is the point where your average, friendly admin slowly turns to the side most of us have reached; we are bitter, cynical old bastards who just don't care anymore.

So what do you think? This is just my view on why most admins are assholes nowadays. We have endured so much that the general playerbase cannot even begin to fathom. I still become flabberghasted when I see admin applications on any server, because in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "Why would anyone WANT this?" The reason I'm an admin? Because I want to be able to provide players a fun, safe experience, free from assholes trying to ruin this experience. Most times, I do it because there's no one else to do it. Frankly, with how little the new members of this community seem to care, I can't imagine that there are many more "nice and helpful" admins.

 

I loved your post and I agree with most points you made.

That one almost made me tear up.

You can't blame anyone for this... The thing is though, it really depends on how you see your obligations as an administrator (or what your obligations are depending on the server in the first place) . It seems to me that the main problem you're addressing here is new players not wanting to learn, even if you're offering them everything they need to know. Honestly, I am yet to see such admins that would actually stop for a minute and teach a new player what to do, where to go and what to press.

Personally I have a more cold way of addressing these things. I only seek for rule breakers and give them punishment. I see every new players as a foreign teenager who doesn't understand what I'm saying to him and only does what he considers to be fun. I see them as people who don't realize the other moving characters in the game are actual people, having a break from living their life to share a fun, beautiful experience together with strangers all over the world. Rarely do the newcomers respond back, and if they do respond, there's a 50% chance it will be in another language I do not know (yet). I can only stop him when he's breaking the rules. If people call me cruel for not teaching them the basic rules before punishment, well... destroying buildings that your team has put effort into making is quite an obvious bad thing to do that you will have to pay for, if you asked me. It's a hard way of learning, but it's the best way. We learn from our mistakes.

Also: I don't know if the developers' intentions are still to bring this game up to the Steam network and community (I haven't checked their devlogs in a while), but if this is true, the massive hordes of new players joining the game will drop the bar even lower than it is right now. Big communities tend to do that; they change the mentality of new/inexperienced players. Fingers crossed!

edit: One objection. I wouldn't freeze the player for insulting an admin. Chat words get muted, in-game actions get frozen/banned. :)

 

But see, I USED to stop and give every new player the time of day... Now it's easier to assume they're building badly because they're shitty players. Because 99% of the time, that is truth.

 

Resign from adminstration positions if you start to get bitter cynical and become an old bastard who doesnt care.

 

Make server with whitelist and take only the old players

 

25

 

We have a lot in common, sir.

 

i just ban everyone who tries to stop me from getting the flag and then i report those who complain

 

I used enjoy being an admin... after a while I lost my sanity... you try to give people the benefit of the doubt and then they break something else. It gets to ya man. Sometimes I just want ever new playing to be forced into archer. They may be bad but at least they cant break anything. and then you know a builder knows what he is doing most of the time... hopefully.

 

What you say is veri sad. And very mean. And... true.

 

The reason I've mainly resorted to playing ONLY on KAG gather is because of these new players and the admins with the same attitude. Also, I've noticed a big change in attitude, skill level and team play on BC Flatmaps compared to the regular Australian servers.

I agree with your post thebonesauce.

 

I'm admin only on 3-4 servers, since whenever they see me as an admin somewhere, they immediately start shouting 'mod', 'admin', or 'pinixivin' etc. It's really annoying and I piss off when they start telling some random bullshit.
Once when I was playing in a ctf server as an admin, few ppl started building huge swatikas and penis in our base. I freezed them and warned, also used editor to destroy those buildings. Then some freezed one said: 'omfg holy shit a hacker.1!1!1! ddu how do u do dat. im reporting.' and left. Others did the same. Next time I'll just ban the ones who build swatikas or penis... without warning.... And if I ever play on that server again.

 

One of the most annoying things that occurs is when "Grieffer" or "Hacker" is shouted out. No name or location is given. Hell I'm even in spectator mode (Spectator master race) from time to time to ensure that the current match is running smoothly. When I ask for a name I get the reply in like ~10 minutes. A lot of changes happen in 10 minutes. Admining would be so much easier if they could at least give a name :(

 

Agree! People should start saying the name and maybe the location of the trouble maker. Going to spectators every time you see someone say "griefer" alone and not finding anything is not fun at all.