Culture of sG

[Destin 1958]

I wanna lay out some fundamental issues I have with the culture of sG, why it's an issue, and my solutions. 

 

1. Staff Culture

This one is a pretty glaring issue and I don't know how it's been going for so long. Staff have absolutely no customer service. Now I know what you're going to say, because it's said every time I bring this up, "Destin, sG isn't a business lol."

 

However, sG at it's core, is a business. Every single player that plays on our servers is a customer. I have an analogy I like to use, let's say sG is a retail store. We have CSGO and GMOD products, and we have foot traffic in our store. The best part about this scenario is that every player is a customer, they either pay with time or time and money. They visit our store all the time and eventually they apply for our Membership Program (which is currently a giant pain in the ass to do and should be reverted.) With hopes that the more they spend in our store they will be rewarded, in this case it's with free admin that gets better after time or exclusive events.

 

Now our store gains the benefit of this customer coming back to our store whenever they want to play CSGO or GMOD, but we could be getting more on our end of the deal. Members of our program have to wear sG | in their name which will advertise us and gain us more foot traffic. I think this alone would help a ton, and it's not outrageous other stores do this for their Membership program. 

 

Now let's keep this analogy going into the actual issue with our staff culture, customer service. This is something that is an huge issue but it's only evidence is sprinkled throughout in events that are considered inconsequential on their own. For example let's look at this thread: 

Our store hosted an event where you could come into the store complete challenges and get entered into a raffle to win prizes. Somehow one way or another, these customers were told that if they won a raffle they would receive an exclusive badge. However it turned out this was an internal communication error. Now in our analogy, these are all real people inside our store who were told and/or it wasn't clear that they would be receiving something they paid for (they came in our store, they told their friends you can read the thread some people said they were told by someone to sign up, they paid with time and effort.) In any normal store or other business they would apologize for the confusion and give them the badge anyways. Our store however had the CSR in charge of the event essentially tell them "Yea I made a mistake, but it's not my problem, screw off." This is completely unacceptable, especially in this situation where it costs literally nothing to give these customers what they were originally told they would get, and it would benefit our store by making them satisfied. However the CULTURE is the real issue in this situation. Our store and it's staff feel entitled about the prizes quoting "i may have not posted that in the thread, which was a mistake" "i dont think 3rd, 4th, and 5th "runner-ups" in a raffle should receive a badge" as if fixing this mistake would de-value the badge for the other 2 customers. 

 

There also this culture that the staff of our store seem to think the customers need the store, and not the other way around. If there are no customers, there is no store. Let's look at specific departments of our store and see what they're doing right in terms of customer service. War3 and bhop are two departments that in my mind are doing really well in customer service. I'm going to use war3 for this example. 

War3 is constantly receiving feedback and bug reports and applying that feedback into the department constructively, through race balancing and adding/removing maps. Customer satisfaction is doing so well in this department that they even have their own Subscription Program. These customers have seen the efforts put in and actually care enough to pay $4.99 a month, and they are even internally asked for feedback and get to have direct influence on the department. This also correlates with the fact that this department generates a large % of our foot traffic. If you think customer service is just a correlation and not a causation I direct you to the foot traffic statistics during the time period when @Face was not on staff and feedback was not being implemented as often if not at all. It was empty. 

 

If the staff of our store simply had better customer service on the forums and on discord, I think we'd see a lot of older members return and we'd see more new people signing up for our Membership Program.

    

The solution to this is to get rid of toxic staff members and have consequences for egregious actions, which brings me to the 2nd issue in staff culture.

 

It is way too hard to get demoted from staff. Straight up. You have to do something super fucked up or just do literally nothing for months get demoted. Staff is also not punished for mediocrity. I'm not saying demote people cause they have a shitty event or because they handled something wrong, but someone needs to be there to say "Hey, x was wrong, this is where you could've improved or done better." A good example of this is how SO's are currently being handled. The work has been compartmentalized into only being handled 2 or 3 days a month. I've said this before in the SO forums and I'm saying it again, SO's are the driving force behind foot traffic on the servers. Because of how important they are the role needs to be more competitive and more fluid. Changes NEED to be happening here frequently, I mean like weekly.  I absolutely do not agree with the way SO's are being handled, by making it more competitive and easy to get demoted/promoted I believe we will see more active and caring SO's who actually make the servers fun to play on and will help tremendously with our dead servers.

 

Also there's a pretty big lack of direction. I'm talking to @Mimic or @Moose or @bulletford for this one, Managers and JCS should actually have ideas for servers or things they want done and have them presented at weekly and/or monthly staff meetings to be completed by other staff members. Even something as simple as a goal, for instance: 1 new forum sign up for every RO and ADV, or "our goal for this month is to have jb consistently populated for at least 14 days, let's prioritize this." Or, "I'm working on xxx plugin for x server can x help me knock this out I'll get with you on a couple functions I wanna delegate down so we can do this faster."

 

 2. Community Culture

This one is a bit of a doozie in the sense that it's gunna take a lot of work in this section. Community Culture is currently dictated by the members who have been here longer and have a clique. Right now it's really toxic and doesn't support and environment for a growth of new players. From the outside it looks uninclusive and not worth it to join the membership program. First off the actual process of being accepted into the community is a straight dumpster fire. It should not and does not take an entire month for someone to join. You could easily take the exact system we have now, cut the number of refs down to like 7 or 8 and have applications open every Monday and close every Saturday night. 

 

Then there's the issue of our ranking system and older players being able to get away with things. If someone is being a shitty member we only have 2 routes atm, banning them or JP'ing them. There's no system in place for simply demoting members a rank or two as punishment. A good example of this is this exchange here: 

 

if some L1 or new person was going around targeting people cause "they have a funny reaction" they would be flamed by the entire community, and rightly so. However in our culture this is just tolerated cause we've circle jerked ourselves into these toxic cliques and uninclusive groups. This is why I'm filing this under "Community Culture" cause maybe we need to stop being "eks dee le trolls" and get rid of this roasting culture we've got going on, because from the outside looking in, I wouldn't wanna join this. Any member can help against this, if you see one of your friends or someone in your clique being an asshat just tell them "Hey dude, fr chill lol." If not then maybe staff needs to step up in this regard and just start demoting people or restricting discord/forum access.

 

Overall this downward trend we're in is just going to continue spiraling until all we've got left is oldfags and new members who are just here to try and get staff, war3, bhop, and gmod will be the only servers and then eventually we'll just be a discord and forum clan. 

 

 

 

 

TLDR:

• Staff has no customer service and seems to think players need sG, not the other way around.
• There are no consequences for staff who do nothing and no system in place to counsel staff who are not doing things as good as they could be.
• Staff has no higher up direction
• Community is uninclusive and toxic, new players don't want to be a part of it.
• sG is not getting proper advertisement and should require all members wear sG | tags
• Membership process is too long
• No system in place to punish members with tenure

If you want the solutions then just read the whole thing. Imma go get a milkshake from Sonic now.

[Dakota 4722]

Wow. You should apply for the clan. You'd make a great recruit. 

 

 

edit: Just got done reading. I'm surprised you've put this much thought into how we should change the clan after you rage quit it. I like my inclusion, taken out of context as if the whole shit in TMS was tailor made to target Vexer. Vexer's reactions to the reveal warranted mocking. It was a simple as "you totally fell for it" to send him into a rage. Sorry for laughing about it. 

[trav 6834]

This is a very valuable discussion with some great points but I think we should move this to Members Only to discuss further.

 

[fatb0y 1337]

I'm just gonna say your analogy was bad. I'm not going to bother thinking up a better alternative, but just that yours was bad. 

[Dylan 558]

EX.2 
https://gyazo.com/b1c6f29b34173f38125ad1cc2e8126e1

Coming from a Recruitment Officer, I am almost certain someone in charge of recruiting players and making sure players stay in line shouldn't be behaving in a manor like this.

H. Trolling - Trolling is defined as making a post or thread in order to provoke an angry reaction from a member/ group of members/ everyone. While some find this amusing, it is not allowed. Everyone has a little troll in them, and staff recognizes that, but as stated earlier, if you break the rules frequently, you will be punished more frequently and more harshly.
O. Bullying / Cyber Bullying - Harassing someone with the intent to make them leave the community, or organizing groups to do the like, will not be tolerated.  Members are encouraged to report bullying and other harassment, and to stay clear of any groups encouraging it.


Now this isn't the first time Sean and Beerman has Trolled/Bullied a community member and i'm sure the staff team is completely aware of that I hope, it shouldn't be allowed because ones a VET and the other is an RO. Boondock, Hoestomper and Naufrauge got JP'd for bullying/Trolling community and being a toxin to the community. hope this can show some light on situations.

[Dakota 4722]

6 minutes ago, vexer said:

EX.2 
https://gyazo.com/b1c6f29b34173f38125ad1cc2e8126e1

Coming from a Recruitment Officer, I am almost certain someone in charge of recruiting players and making sure players stay in line shouldn't be behaving in a manor like this.

H. Trolling - Trolling is defined as making a post or thread in order to provoke an angry reaction from a member/ group of members/ everyone. While some find this amusing, it is not allowed. Everyone has a little troll in them, and staff recognizes that, but as stated earlier, if you break the rules frequently, you will be punished more frequently and more harshly.
O. Bullying / Cyber Bullying - Harassing someone with the intent to make them leave the community, or organizing groups to do the like, will not be tolerated.  Members are encouraged to report bullying and other harassment, and to stay clear of any groups encouraging it.


Now this isn't the first time Sean and Beerman has Trolled/Bullied a community member and i'm sure the staff team is completely aware of that I hope, it shouldn't be allowed because ones a VET and the other is an RO. Boondock, Hoestomper and Naufrauge got JP'd for bullying/Trolling community and being a toxin to the community. hope this can show some light on situations.

http://www.joinsg.net/forums/forum/29-complaint-department/

 

We didn't realize it would make you angry when we pretended to fight. Sorry to you Vexer. Feel free to report us, though both of the rules you posted literally doesn't apply. We aren't trying to get people to quit, and we didn't do it to make people angry. 

Also, can we address what the fuck nothing but fail is talking about? lol

[fatb0y 1337]

delicate snowflakes are why we can't have nice things. 

[Dylan 558]

12 minutes ago, fatb0y said:

I'm just gonna say your analogy was bad. I'm not going to bother thinking up a better alternative, but just that yours was bad. 

his point in simple is

You walk into a bar, First thing you see is people beating the shit out of others then the people look at you, what are you gonna do? surely not come back right?

[Dakota 4722]

1 minute ago, vexer said:

his point in simple is

You walk into a bar, First thing you see is people beating the shit out of others then the people look at you, what are you gonna do? surely not come back right?

Tell me this isn't about me having my pool thing during your JB event. 
 

[Grayson Levi 610]

I like this post, Destin. Good way to prove you aren't just an edgy keyboard smasher who rq'ed for no reason.

Also, I feel like beerman has a place to be a troll. He usually keeps it in tms and if you're really that bothered you should talk to staff. I'm sure when you've been around for a while it gets boring not to have some fun with the community.

 

I don't mind Sean calling me out in discord because I was being super triggered. Being staff shouldn't take away from being a member imo. It's a casual gaming community, staff should be people too. I'm not mad that Sean is a staff member who made a comment. He would've without staff. 

 

Regarding the original post, I think that at least when I had SO, there was good communication some of the time. When I fucked up really badly with Dray for example I didn't get a lot of feedback and started a pm thread on my own. I know that people do things differently and they probably just went to Dray first, but it is stressful to know that several staff members are talking about you and you might be demoted. I wish the communication had been better. Staff had been a lot more laid back, and there wasn't the same feedback with SO updates every month. You knew with SO that clamps would watch you and the playtime would be recorded. (Does anyone still do that? If not I will, it's very valuable). If I still played the servers at all I would rather be an SO than staff based on the structure alone.

 

Tl;Dr: Leave beerman alone a little, staff are normal members still, and staff organization needs work. SO communication needs work too.

 

Also, there definitely is toxicity in the community. I've stopped posting almost completely because if people disagree with what I say it's just far too annoying. There are also much worse people than beerman who are actual cancer instead of doing it for fun.

[fatb0y 1337]

4 minutes ago, vexer said:

his point in simple is

You walk into a bar, First thing you see is people beating the shit out of others then the people look at you, what are you gonna do? surely not come back right?

This would be an analogy for the community culture.... which Destin didn't make an analogy for. 

Destin made an analogy for the way Staff runs things around here in terms of this place being a business. 

I noticed you have somewhat of a hard time forming grammatically correct sentences and spelling things correctly. Do you also have problems with your reading comprehension too? 

[Dakota 4722]

Does this mean I have to suck your dick my white knight Grayson. I thank you. 

 

But again. If Vexer had an actual complaint he can take it to my homeland, the complaint department. I'll be sure to block him discord so we don't interact I guess. And to think just last week he was wanting to form an alliance to overthrow @krony and @Dakka. Sorry for whatever I did Vexer. 

[TurtleFrenzy 2612]

8/10, needs more length and support

[yeet 1050]

nerds

[Terumi 219]

sG really does need the people more then them needing us. it gets boring really fast when there is so little people

[Sean 3760]

After talking with some staff members, I decided to assign badges to all members who won a raffle prize.

 

Since I took some time to think about it - I can understand why some of you would have been disappointed, it was obviously an internal failure and lack of communication between staff members, and it would suck to be told you're getting something - only to not get it.

 

That being said, I am pushing for stronger communication of staff, and I am pushing for accountability. I messaged ROs on numerous occasions within the past few months asking what is going on, what the next plans are, etc. 

 

I'm sure points here will be addressed internally, and obviously I need to reflect on a few things...

[Dakka 854]

Where's this toxicity that you're implying exists in our community?

 

All I see are clowns and trolls.

By the way, we should have a clown emoji on the forums just to spam Beerman's posts with.

@Beerman HONK.

[trav 6834]

Lots of good points and some unnecessary ones.

 

Recruitment and Ranks are fine the way they are. The month long wait is a probation period for recruits. See: Console. And with Ranks, I see no need for a change other than needing more people voting.

 

 

Overall I think most of the community is frustrated with the direction sG took with respect to our server population. Members take out their frustrations on other members or Staff who they think are ruining the community they love and have been a part of. We've seen this for about two years now.

 

Unfortunately as everyone knows, most servers took a nosedive due to the popularity of other games. Some people just got sick of CS:GO, some don't want to wait around for people to play with so they play other games and others are still fighting the good fight and trying to get their favourite server populated each day. You have to admire their commitment.

 

But one thing we have to remember is we're a gaming community. Our primary focus should be playing games together. If it's not CSGO, then play another game with someone else. That's what this community is for. It's a not-for-profit organization. Its goal isn't to make money, it's to provide a service for people in the community to be connected and play games together. 

 

Imo this community is far from dead. It's most definitely not as popular as it may once have been but it's still chugging along with people connecting in discord by chatting and playing games together. I mean just look at the traffic each day.

 

 

Unfortunately for most of us, we'll have to wait and see what comes next. Whether it be Source 2, or a new game our community can embrace fully with customized dedicated servers. Maybe then we'll see our community flourish just like when CS:GO came out.

 

But for the rest of our community, the ones still playing CSGO every other day on our servers, there are still Staff members and Server Officers dedicated to keeping the CSGO community active. However we do need more staff that want to help out with the servers (not just populate them). If you think you'd make a good Advisor to a server then start sharing your ideas and get your ideas known. And if the Advisor, Eng or Manager isn't responding to them then obviously a change needs to happen. Communication is the very least a staff member can offer.

 

 

It feels like we've had this discussion many times over, especially in the past two years. And it might be tough to see this community change but at least have fun with it along the way, if you're not having fun anymore then maybe consider doing something else with your free time rather than taking it out on someone in the community.

[SpartanSakaro 1977]

So what everyone is saying is that we should count discord posts as forum posts when making an application to join sG/Rank up?

 

Also it's hard to take seriously a complaint stating that the community is toxic when you show only one example, if you want to do it properly you should do like a proper scientist and post at least three different situations that have no relation between them other than being proof of toxicity. 

I won't add more simply because everyone else seems to have nailed this coffin. 

INB4 someone gets something i said as proof of toxicity 

 

[trav 6834]

Personally I think the banter between members is generally fine and there are rare instances in which it goes too far.

[Cman 469]

[Dakota 4722]

Krony's autistic screeching got himself a badge. That poor bunny is going to be the subject of masturbation for weeks to come. 

[Mark from Facebook 1285]

8 hours ago, Travesty said:

 

Lots of good points and some unnecessary ones.

 

 

Recruitment and Ranks are fine the way they are. The month long wait is a probation period for recruits. See: Console. And with Ranks, I see no need for a change other than needing more people voting.

 

 

Overall I think most of the community is frustrated with the direction sG took with respect to our server population. Members take out their frustrations on other members or Staff who they think are ruining the community they love and have been a part of. We've seen this for about two years now.

 

Unfortunately as everyone knows, most servers took a nosedive due to the popularity of other games. Some people just got sick of CS:GO, some don't want to wait around for people to play with so they play other games and others are still fighting the good fight and trying to get their favourite server populated each day. You have to admire their commitment.

 

But one thing we have to remember is we're a gaming community. Our primary focus should be playing games together. If it's not CSGO, then play another game with someone else. That's what this community is for. It's a not-for-profit organization. Its goal isn't to make money, it's to provide a service for people in the community to be connected and play games together. 

 

Imo this community is far from dead. It's most definitely not as popular as it may once have been but it's still chugging along with people connecting in discord by chatting and playing games together. I mean just look at the traffic each day.

 

 

Unfortunately for most of us, we'll have to wait and see what comes next. Whether it be Source 2, or a new game our community can embrace fully with customized dedicated servers. Maybe then we'll see our community flourish just like when CS:GO came out.

 

But for the rest of our community, the ones still playing CSGO every other day on our servers, there are still Staff members and Server Officers dedicated to keeping the CSGO community active. However we do need more staff that want to help out with the servers (not just populate them). If you think you'd make a good Advisor to a server then start sharing your ideas and get your ideas known. And if the Advisor, Eng or Manager isn't responding to them then obviously a change needs to happen. Communication is the very least a staff member can offer.

 

 

It feels like we've had this discussion many times over, especially in the past two years. And it might be tough to see this community change but at least have fun with it along the way, if you're not having fun anymore then maybe consider doing something else with your free time rather than taking it out on someone in the community.

 

 

 

 

 

I do agree with this point within the community. I've already had multiple conversations with some friends within sG and staff members, and whilst I agree that the community is not dead, there is also no influx of new members comming in often. And reason for that is mainly due to sG being mainly a CSGO community, and other games capturing most of the casual gamers (fortnite etc).

 

We still do have people that used to play in our servers want to come back , just the other day I saw someone in CD appeal a perm ban because he missed the community.

In the end of the day, sG is different from most of the communities out there, and as much as I agree with most points that Destin made, and we do have room to improve, its not like sG is in a terrible place currently.

 

Sure, we are not as popular as we were 2-3 years ago, our golden age, but that's because the game lost popularity. I do realize that HellsGamers aswell has maintained a solid population all around (checking their Game-me and Sourcebans) their servers maintains a solid 14-20 population on week days, I would say that we need to find a way to make our servers more populated, but the problem is no one knows how, and there is no real way to maintain the population.

 

Something that I wished I saw more were more active staff in the frontrunner. Not just RO's and the Occasional advisor interacting with people, showing they are active, but people within Manager/JCS ranks being a bit more.. alive?  I know Mimic is always in the shadows, and he is very active in the community behind the curtain, but at the same time, I only know that because when I was RO that is exactly how things were, but to those looking in, it just seems like they allow the community to slowly dwindle away.

 

And I must ask aswell, Destin, given how you have said yourself - You've tried out three other communties prior to comming back to sG. If we are such a toxic community, and so unwelcoming, what made you come back? Why didn't you just stay where you were? 

[Wolfshade 80]

I like This post But i have a problem with the Sean topic. Sean made a mistake thats gonna happen But also When do you actually see mistakes from our RO's? Its Very rare and i think the current RO's Do a good Job.

[Ironic 2278]

I agree with a lot of people that I believe the soul reason sG's servers aren't getting populated like they used to is due to the fact people are moving onto different games. Maybe in the future if GMod 2 ( or whatever it's supposed to actually be titled) comes out, we can make a few servers on that game and maybe be able to bring our population back up and then start growing again as a community.

I don't think any of the problem is to do with "toxicity" or "inactive staff". You're gonna have that with any community you try to join. Just like wherever you work. You're always gonna have superiors/bosses who don't give a shit, and you're gonna have toxic coworkers. That's just life.

I feel as long as we as sG members still play games together and just have fun with one another, I don't believe sG will die.

sG isn't based on our server population, it's the dedicated members who enjoy playing video games together.