Rant..........

[XDemonX]

This is to be discussed because I would like to hear from other players as I hope I am not the only one feeling this way.

I have been playing this game a long time, in fact longer than probably most the admin team. Also I venture to say I have spent much more hours than the admin team at this game (besides maybe JJ). As a outside player that was once sort of admin myself, I feel the admin team is doing a poor job and needs to be revamped.

I do strongly believe the admin team is capable of doing a great job I just don't think they have the time to do a great job. I understand real life is priorities are more important than SMR and whatever work admins do is volunteer work as they do not get paid. There are many players that would be willing to step up to take over some duties existing admins carry out.

These last few games have straight up sicken me to a point where I am about to walk away from the game myself. I have already seen MANY players walk away due to minor issues the admin team could of prevented.

I've recently got into a tussle with Jouldax concerning a lot of these issues. I am outspoken and I am not afraid to voice my opinion strongly towards the admin team so I will straight up call out people. What kills games are downtime. Good games have very little to no downtime. Any downtime means people may walk away to play a game that isn't down. Now you may be thinking "Well i don't remember the last time SMR was down". Downtime is also considered not a active round going on. Right now for example, is downtime. Look around your alliance, I bet majority of players do not login or are sitting on max turns. I bet not a single alliance even have a op planned.

I came forward to CoD last week because I felt the game was going in this direction as there were no point for alliances to op. Our alliance was bored. We owned just about every planet and CoD were playing from fed. I saw more and more people going inactive because of this. Who wants to op if we have to do nothing but port raid or bust empty planets? That is essentially playing against a non-existent team. When I initially brought forward these concerns to Bouncer, CK and Jouldax they agreed and a vote was put forward by both alliances to end the game.

Now here is where the issue presents itself, why is the admin team not getting maps ready BEFORE the round ends. They wait until the very last minute to start even planning a map. Once a new game starts, the process to get another map ready should begin. This SAME situation has happened many times before and the admins are too dumb to react to it. Hell, last game there was a full day or two where there wasn't even a game to move around because the admin team was not ready to start a new round when the old round ended on time.

This map was a good trial to see what works and what doesn't work. But you could potentially see the problems. Admin team could of recognized the problems immediately when SF, a very active alliance last round went almost completely inactive this round because of the setup. A lot of players were left out this game.

When I brought up these issues to Bouncer and Jouldax, their reaction "You don't understand, we are not head admins we can't push games forward only head admins can do that". I love GreyDeath and RCK but they're inactive as poop. Both of them don't even play the game and have not ACTIVELY played the game for some time now. It is not rocket science to become a head admin. If the head admins can't perform their jobs properly they should train Bouncer, Jouldax or Holti to do it as I am sure they're willing.

It is even more sickening whenever I bring up a issue with the admin team, they point fingers and talk crap about each other. "Well we have useless admins on our team" "Well they took away my map making powers so screw them see what happens". They don't even respect each other.

Admins ask players to give map ideas, maybe even mini game ideas for situations like these where the game dies and the admin team need more time to put together a new round. Okay, we did that. Bouncer and I completely figured out a mini game idea for ik'thorne to run along side a main game.. yet it doesn't happen.

I get so frustrated because SMR is a good game. There is a reason a lot of players keep coming back to play it. The biggest problem is playerbase and admins are doing sh** to even retain the active players let alone involve new players. I've seen way too many people walk away from the game who are mega active because of stuff like this. Orca and Sergei two of the best players to touch this game have walked away because of map issues and playerbase issues. Sterling talks to me all the time "Man, could you imagine if smr even had 200 active players how freaking awesome it would be".

Don't make excuses for inactive admins. Clearly sh** is not getting done. Change something or lose more players. Simple as that.

Edit: This is not directed towards Page, Bouncer, Jouldax or Holti. I strongly believe these four go above and beyond as admins to help the game.

[RCK]

FYI,

I've seen this and have read it. Will follow up with my comments later, or via discussions with GD.

[Grey Death]

Let me start by clarifying a few misconceptions about the admins.
• Last game starting late-Only the Lead Coder and Owner have the ability to make games go fully live.
o This is specifically so that Page and Spock can make any necessary updates to code and settings. This happened last round for updates to the game.
• Downtime does cause damage to the game but if major updates to the database are required then we have to make those changes between rounds.
• The admin team has developed end game parameters to be used to automatically end a game but this requires coders.
• The new map has been discussed and debated for weeks now so planning has been in the works.
• Goals since prior to last round were to have at least 1-2 maps ready at all times.
• Senior admins jobs are not to be playing 24/7 365. Admins are not required to play the game regularly. There are times where it is beneficial to have an impartial admin that has no “stake” in any of the current alliances in game.
• I (GD) did play almost the entire last round so this point is not relevant.
• Admin team dissension does occur because we are human. However, if an admin is complaining to you then please remind them to see me because they should be coming to RCK and I with these types of issues.
• New game ideas- new game ideas that require changes to the database because they vary from the normal parameters require a complete change to the database by Page currently due to the technology in place. Astax is working on separating these types of parameters from the main database so that we can have more customized games such as the Ikky idea running at same time. Again, this requires Coders. Know any that are willing to work for free?
• I agree that Bouncer, Jouldax, and Holti have gone above and beyond as admins. Page rocks as the Head Coder and also helps the admins when needed.

[jouldax]

We have talked about this issue at length. I don't disagree that downtime is bad for the game. Obviously new maps take a lot of time to make, and in some ways, I consider myself having dropped the ball by creating the concepts in the discussion forum after GD prompted me to get ahead of issues like this, and then never putting them in the unigen. With that said, in this particular case, the round was initially discussed to end more than two weeks early (we still had all 4 of our rocks that Monday). I expected to have my own downtime this week to make the map for the next round, but the end came ahead of schedule. I will say that I believe the maps I've been creating/trying out have helped keep activity in the player base rather than lose it on the whole, and that the old, standard maps were getting repetitive and dull.

I also believe it's worth it to spend the time to make more complicated maps, even if they get somewhat lost on the current player base or if we don't have enough players to recognize the full potential of the map. The great thing is we can always revisit these maps later. It's easy to put up a crummy map in a hurry, but the better solution I think you're getting it is to have good maps ready to go regardless of when the game ends. To that end, I don't think it's just the admin team, but the community as a whole that could help this process. I have many ideas, but it helps to get feedback from everyone else as well.

Overall, we could definitely do a better job as a team on the whole, but I also think this team has done a great job seeking out player feedback and trying new options. A lot of work gets done behind the scenes that many people don't see as well.

[Incognito]

I think the ikky map game can go forward soon. I'd like to initiate it after the new WB ship changes come out though, because I wouldn't want ships being changed in the middle of the round.

[XDemonX]

Let me start by clarifying a few misconceptions about the admins.
• Last game starting late-Only the Lead Coder and Owner have the ability to make games go fully live.
o This is specifically so that Page and Spock can make any necessary updates to code and settings. This happened last round for updates to the game.
• Downtime does cause damage to the game but if major updates to the database are required then we have to make those changes between rounds.
• The admin team has developed end game parameters to be used to automatically end a game but this requires coders.
• The new map has been discussed and debated for weeks now so planning has been in the works.
• Goals since prior to last round were to have at least 1-2 maps ready at all times.
• Senior admins jobs are not to be playing 24/7 365. Admins are not required to play the game regularly. There are times where it is beneficial to have an impartial admin that has no “stake” in any of the current alliances in game.
• I (GD) did play almost the entire last round so this point is not relevant.
• Admin team dissension does occur because we are human. However, if an admin is complaining to you then please remind them to see me because they should be coming to RCK and I with these types of issues.
• New game ideas- new game ideas that require changes to the database because they vary from the normal parameters require a complete change to the database by Page currently due to the technology in place. Astax is working on separating these types of parameters from the main database so that we can have more customized games such as the Ikky idea running at same time. Again, this requires Coders. Know any that are willing to work for free?
• I agree that Bouncer, Jouldax, and Holti have gone above and beyond as admins. Page rocks as the Head Coder and also helps the admins when needed.

GreyDeath I apologize, but this message just confirms to show how out of the loop you really are.

- Updates to the data are NOT required. The changes involve some port raiding changes and ship changes. A new round could of been started without having to implement these changes right away. This same instance happened two games ago where the game was delayed being started because we were sitting around waiting for a minor port raid change that increased the money changed. These updates are not that important to justify downtime.

- There are MANY great changes submited. Page is not superman he can't do everything. Anything that requires coding we can't bank on. Who knows how long a "end-game parameters" would actually be implemented.

- The new map has not been discussed and debated for weeks. I was talking to Jouldax and Bouncer about this daily. It started last week. "Umm so what sort of map should we do?". I wanted to just re-use a old map so we can at least get a new game going so people would have something to do.

- Admins, especially senior admins, should be required to at least play the game. I understand you're busy GD (and RCK) i don't expect you to drop real life committments to do SMR committments. I have been in your alliance each time you were "active". I had to bug you to just trade, you only made a couple ops, I wouldn't even consider that active. I would be shocked if you played the game for more than 5 minutes a day total. Multiple people can confirm this.

Main problem is, admins are fine with the activity of the game. If people login and play once every two days for 5 minutes then you guys are considering that active. I don't think the senior admins even know how important TS is (if you even know what TS stands for). You do realize because of this game alone more than 10 people have straight up quit? Doesn't seem like a lot but when the game has maybe 30-40 active people that is a big chunk.

Responses like these just show admins don't even notice the direction the game is going in. This will be a good time for me to walk away from the game. Enjoy next round (whenever it is).

[Grey Death]

Demon-

Updates to the game are needed. This game needs some evolution in order to have any chance of staying relevant. The changes Page has made have are taking us in the needed direction. That being said, We do not and will not make changes to the game mid round. It doesn't matter whether the game just started, is in the middle, or is about to end. Spock has set this as one of his specific rules. This means ALL changes must occur between rounds.

You are seeing my point on all the list of changes we would like. They require coders and Page has a life and commitments which means either additional coders or otherwise a number of changes you and others have asked for and wondered why they take so long to happen.

I suggest you go back and look at Jouldax's map thread. He first started discussing it OCTOBER 15th. That is hardly last week.

The activity level you are talking about is considered Hardcore playing as opposed to various level of casual playing. We will not dictate that any admin must be a hardcore player. While you may think it should be required, I see no justification at this time that shows we should dictate an amount of playing time to any of the admins.

Yes I know what TS is, I have been using TS and Vent for a decade now. TS and Vent are very valuable to running efficient OPS and provide instant response time as compared to IRC. Your comment around this is simply antagonistic.

[XDemonX]

Demon-

Updates to the game are needed. This game needs some evolution in order to have any chance of staying relevant. The changes Page has made have are taking us in the needed direction. That being said, We do not and will not make changes to the game mid round. It doesn't matter whether the game just started, is in the middle, or is about to end. Spock has set this as one of his specific rules. This means ALL changes must occur between rounds.

You are seeing my point on all the list of changes we would like. They require coders and Page has a life and commitments which means either additional coders or otherwise a number of changes you and others have asked for and wondered why they take so long to happen.

I suggest you go back and look at Jouldax's map thread. He first started discussing it OCTOBER 15th. That is hardly last week.

The activity level you are talking about is considered Hardcore playing as opposed to various level of casual playing. We will not dictate that any admin must be a hardcore player. While you may think it should be required, I see no justification at this time that shows we should dictate an amount of playing time to any of the admins.

Yes I know what TS is, I have been using TS and Vent for a decade now. TS and Vent are very valuable to running efficient OPS and provide instant response time as compared to IRC. Your comment around this is simply antagonistic.

So these changes are so important you believe downtime is okay. It is okay to see people walk away from the game? Okay solid admin right there. Why not just wait until the following round to implement the changes? This will give you more time to test them and make tweaks as needed instead of holding the game hostage until the changes are done. I'm f***ing sick of losing more and more players because some admins don't care enough about this game. I even heard one admin say "I wouldn't be surprised if SMR went completely dead in 1-2 months".

You haven't moved a sector all game this game. Last game you rarely ever even traded. I think you got a dev towards the end to fly around and do nothing in? That is not even considered casual. I consider casual players not having to be nagged by the leader to actually move. I use to have to bug you all the time to even trade. The most active game i've seen you in was my draft game and that game only lasted two weeks (all you did was trade). I wouldn't expect you to spend 5 hours a day playing smr, but you cannot even spend 5 minutes a day playing. You have no right to consider yourself a casual player.

[Freon22]

I would think that if downtime is need for code uploads then this time of the year is perfect. It is Christmas so most everyone has unless time to play with all shopping to do, gifts to wrap, all the normal Christmas things to do. I hope your not a bah-humbug type of guy.

[XDemonX]

meh, f*ck it. You win admin team. I'm done with smr.