Free Candy Van

[Stolt_Yugoslav]

Yo people you can't just ban others because some dickhead says !r.
This guy I was with randomly disconnected from the cas we were in and it blew out by itself as soon as he DC:ed.

Then he comes back and !r me and even though I didn't have a single negative point on my score and was about equal to the SL I was with you guys banned me.

And I remember people telling me that "oh we can't have a community kick system because players don't investigate things"...jeez.

I have no idea what happened, probably one of many bugs.
You can check my alias (use a different one to the one on the forums), I got banned just 3 minutes ago for team killing.

Please unban, thx.


edit: Thanks, unbanned. Probably a timed ban.

[Bluedrake42]

Yo people you can't just ban others because some dickhead says !r.
This guy I was with randomly disconnected from the cas we were in and it blew out by itself as soon as he DC:ed.

Then he comes back and !r me and even though I didn't have a single negative point on my score and was about equal to the SL I was with you guys banned me.

And I remember people telling me that "oh we can't have a community kick system because players don't investigate things"...jeez.

I have no idea what happened, probably one of many bugs.
You can check my alias (use a different one to the one on the forums), I got banned just 3 minutes ago for team killing.

Please unban, thx.


edit: Thanks, unbanned. Probably a timed ban.

Probably a mistake during a time with low admin population, I'll look into it. We usually don't issue permanent bans in cases such as that, just to be on the safe side. So it was probably only temporary.

[granderslice]

Bluedrake,
FCV has been a welcomed addition to the realm of PR since its inception not too long ago. The more servers, the better for a game struggling to broaden its player base. HOWEVER, more often than not the admins are either too heavy handed or non-participatory.
EXAMPLE #1:
Today: 9/18/15 at 1:30 PM PST
Map: Fallujah West
Full server
Admin on: Ducky21
Issues: Multiple reports sent for intentional TKing by numerous players. Force TKs (walking over VOIEDs) and just shooting teammates point-blank.
Ducky21 did nothing. Not a warning, not a kick, not even recognizing the reports. In essence, Ducky21 is a "lame duck" admin (pun intended).
If you are unable to acquire adequate administrators, ones who understand the reporting system, ones who take action, ones who recognize and see TKs happening and take appropriate action, then perhaps FCV needs either an auto-admin at all times or to be put down until adequate admins are acquired.
PR is a small and dedicated community. But it has grown recently and NEEDS admins to control the unruly and unlearned. I'm sorry to have to write this, FCV has become the "go-to" server for everyone that has been banned from HOG and PRTA. And admins like Ducky21 are not doing anything to maintain the class and demeanor you (Bluedrake42) want and expect from your server.
"Just Games, No Bullshit" should read "Just Bullshit, No Fun"

[Bluedrake42]

Bluedrake,
FCV has been a welcomed addition to the realm of PR since its inception not too long ago. The more servers, the better for a game struggling to broaden its player base. HOWEVER, more often than not the admins are either too heavy handed or non-participatory.
EXAMPLE #1:
Today: 9/18/15 at 1:30 PM PST
Map: Fallujah West
Full server
Admin on: Ducky21
Issues: Multiple reports sent for intentional TKing by numerous players. Force TKs (walking over VOIEDs) and just shooting teammates point-blank.
Ducky21 did nothing. Not a warning, not a kick, not even recognizing the reports. In essence, Ducky21 is a "lame duck" admin (pun intended).
If you are unable to acquire adequate administrators, ones who understand the reporting system, ones who take action, ones who recognize and see TKs happening and take appropriate action, then perhaps FCV needs either an auto-admin at all times or to be put down until adequate admins are acquired.
PR is a small and dedicated community. But it has grown recently and NEEDS admins to control the unruly and unlearned. I'm sorry to have to write this, FCV has become the "go-to" server for everyone that has been banned from HOG and PRTA. And admins like Ducky21 are not doing anything to maintain the class and demeanor you (Bluedrake42) want and expect from your server.
"Just Games, No Bullshit" should read "Just Bullshit, No Fun"

Alright so I'm gonna say this here, and just point to it again when someone inevitably brings this up.

We're lacking in experienced admins, and there is not much beyond what we are currently already doing to combat this. I've been constantly asking other experienced admins from other communities to assist in administrating our server, but no one is interested in helping. So this is us doing the best with what we have.

Ducky is probably one of the only admins willing to help at 3AM-11AM EST, a region we are poorly understaffed for. If you come on in the evening from 5PM-1AM EST that's probably when you'll see our server at its best. Additionally, Ducky is a trainee admin for a reason... and for a good reason. This is why he can't do much... and if we made him full admin... you'd probably come back complaining that he's abusive.

So let's get some background on where we are, why, and what can be done.

Free Candy Van started as a new community under myself and Brennan. We pulled a large number of administrators from =DRK= and its surrounding playerbase, and over time trained an exceedingly strong administration team. However, during a drastic move to merge Free Candy Van with PRTA (which I did not support) PRTA NA was created, and our administration team kept with that entity.

After some time, I decided to leave PRTA (as did Brennan) and since Brennan didn't have the time to effectively manage a new community, I reinstated Free Candy Van under =DRK= to save time. This was because I was the only one with the time and money to manage it appropriately. However we had lost our entire initial administration team to PRTA, and I had to start back at square one.

We have had to build a new administration team from =DRK= and its surrounding playerbase, and while its taken some time... I'm expecting we will be able to build just as effective an administration team as we were before.

So perhaps you're saying, why not get admins from other communities to help? Okay well... lets talk.

PRTA has a monopoly on most of the admins, and following my departure... their leaders have explicitly asked me to not try and recruit back any of my original staff or they'll start banning members of my community. So I can't recruit any of those admins for our server, which rules out practically 90% of our potential good admins.

HOG has probably a more concentrated group of more experienced admins, but in my opinion they're exceedingly brutal in how harshly they administrate. Which is like... why they have so many people that dislike them. They're like the LAPD of PR Administration. Intensely loyal to their small dedicated group, but also self serving and prejudiced. Not that they'd work with us anyways.

CIA would be a decent candidate, but they're not happy with Project Reality has a whole... and just generally not particularly dedicated to helping administrate a server in general. Much less FCV.

And lastly... TacticalGamer is like the nice grampa that everyone likes but no one wants to spend all the time to actually go visit, so he sits there wondering why he's so lonely all the time. They barely have the time or energy to keep themselves up, so they aren't going to have that energy for us either.

This is all a shame... because while an exceeding amount of Project Reality's current server administrators who could help us (like PRTA NA) actually originated from our original community, Project Reality as a whole is too splintered and gated to call on anyone other than ourselves for help.

So...

The only option we have left, is slowly build back our own team again from =DRK=. Which is going to take time, and a lot of effort. We already have a core team of about 5-6 great administrators, and despite Project Reality's waning popularity... I think we're maintaining a pretty stable playerbase and player environment. It needs work of course... but its pretty damn good given the situation.

Also no, we're not going to shut down the server just because we're having some problems. We're not going anywhere. Project Reality is a free game, and our staff work for free. We're doing the best we can with what we have, and if you want to see us do better... maybe take a hand in helping. You're lucky to have servers at all, even more so to have administrated communities that work for free. If we shut down, the players will go to servers with even less administration... and you'll have even more to complain about.

Also FYI, while I appreciate the feedback... your petty insults to our slogan and server don't do anything for anyone, besides add on to the aimless bickering that got us here in the first place. If you want to see a positive change to the server community, maybe start with yourself.

Thanks.
~ Bluedrake

[3ti65]

Would you mind activating the BR on the server? There's some fishy people that only play on this server for this exact reason. Go figure.

[Bluedrake42]

Would you mind activating the BR on the server? There's some fishy people that only play on this server for this exact reason. Go figure.

We're looking into that, we've been having a lot of issues with BR in the past... but hopefully we'll be able to stably implement that in the near future.

[MikeDude]

PRTA is like the evil big cooperation
Good luck getting your server up again! Lets hope you get some nice ones!

[Bluedrake42]

PRTA is like the evil big cooperation
Good luck getting your server up again! Lets hope you get some nice ones!

I mean... not evil. We did lose a majority of our administration to them though through a series of political blunders. So it makes things more difficult. However, I understand their position. Just being up front with why things are the way they are right now.

[Frontliner]

PRTA has a monopoly on most of the admins, and following my departure... their leaders have explicitly asked me to not try and recruit back any of my original staff or they'll start banning members of my community. So I can't recruit any of those admins for our server, which rules out practically 90% of our potential good admins.

What's with this bullshit power play? Say, if someone from PRTA NA(which is now defunct btw.) decides to admin on FCV, what would they have done? Conclude that you did persuade him to do that and ban your community members? What the fuck is this shit?
I don't know who said that to you, but I would've done two things: 1.) Tell whoever it was to go suck a **** and 2.) bring it to Spec's attention we have this sort of thing going on, that a community threatens to ban a different community from their servers to bully and force someone to behave a certain way.

@Dear PRTA management involved,

are you a bunch of 5 year olds? Or are you applying for a job in big business where the only chance for your company to grow is to kill of a competitor?

[camo]

It's a fairly common rule for servers to ask others to not try to recruit in their forums or in-game. It's a bit harsh i agree but most servers do it.


Threatening to ban a whole community over it is a bit drastic though. But then again they're not the first to do this ay bluedrake?

[Wicca]

We never said we were going to ban all of FCV if bluedrake tries to recruit. We asked him not to recruit on our teamspeak, game server and forum.

[Bluedrake42]

It's a fairly common rule for servers to ask others to not try to recruit in their forums or in-game. It's a bit harsh i agree but most servers do it.


Threatening to ban a whole community over it is a bit drastic though. But then again they're not the first to do this ay bluedrake?

We never said we were going to ban all of FCV if bluedrake tries to recruit. We asked him not to recruit on our teamspeak, game server and forum.

Okay woah, I never said PRTA threatened to ban our entire community. Let's nip this in the bud. I said members. Including myself, Brennan, and any other FCV staff who attempted to ask our original members to rejoin us. In fact if I'm not mistaken you already banned Brennan, and he wasn't even recruiting (among a few others iirc.)

I'm not holding this against anyone either, but its to the point where we need to be transparent on why we're in the situation that we're in. We're lacking in effective staff, we have no recourse to recruit our original team, and people seem concerned that this is due to a lack of effort or caring on our part. Its not.

Let's go over some other major factors that are causing problems for us.

Since Project Reality's huge influx of players after going standalone, the general playerbase has shrunk by around 75% (back to about its original size) which means our administration team has taken a big hit too.

Also, since school has started we've lost a large portion of our staff to their real-life duties... and since the playerbase is now as small as it ever was, our potential pool of administration recruits are slim to none.

Combined with the fact that we lost a majority of our long-term dedicated staff to surrounding communities during the merger, hopefully this explains why we're having trouble. I'd ask for help, but I've already done that multiple times to no avail.

Right now our senior administrators (BKB, Stephen25, Greatdane, Etc.) are revamping our application process to better filter quality applicants. So I'm waiting to make a larger recruiting campaign on my channel and our surrounding fan groups until that is finished.

Additionally, for whatever reason... Free Candy Van is the #1 server in both Project Reality and the entirety of Battlefield 2 right now. Don't ask me why, that's just what Gametracker says. So not only are we the most popular Project Reality server, but we're also the server who gets the least help from the surrounding community.

If other servers were full as much as we were ALL THE TIME, I guarantee you they'd be having staff issues as well. The only server I can respect for maintaining as dedicated an administration team as us that is approximately the same staff size (and it pains me to say this) is =HOG=

PRTA may be overall more populated across all their like... 9 servers in whole, but they're also huge. They have almost 20x the staff count to deal with approximately the same number of players. Its difficult for us to compete with that.

Every other server may have great administration... for the few hours a week that they're up. Again... I feel like people disregard the volume that we're dealing with here. We don't decide to make our server filled to the brim every day, that's just what the players want. Go figure.

So TLDR

Our server is huge. Its populated all the time. There are a variety of factors that are impacting our ability to maintain a large enough staff to handle the volume at all times of the day. If you are an experienced administrator from the community, we'd appreciate your help. If you don't want to help, then stop complaining about our lack of staff and how hard it is for us to handle our unceasingly populated server.

Feel like this is a pretty reasonable response. Managing this server is like trying to ride a rabid dog sometimes. Wish everyone would have a little more sympathy for that. Which I'm sure no one does, but okay... that's fine. That's why we're in this situation anyways. Hopefully we'll be able to deal with it in time, in the best way we can.

[KillJoy[Fr]]

Sometimes it's good for a veteran player to stay away from elitist servers and start playing on FCV, especially the INS rounds it's so fun.

[Wicca]

Bro. Just go on the gameserver, and invite everyone to your clan by joining your teamspeak and be active there. That is basically what I do..

[Aleon]

FYI: Not sure if you changed anything, but it appears that the connection issue with your hosting seems to be gone for now.

Edit: And it's back

[PatrickLA_CA]

Amazing server, one guy on US CAS team shot an enemy jet over MEC base and our entire squad got !killed and therefore the other 2 jets got wasted for no reason.

Where can I report the admin (Ducky) who did this because he was so mad the F16 killed him over main that he decided that all our CAS needs to be punished when me and another guy in the F15 were on the ground for 5 minutes and 10 seconds after we took off we got !killed.

[Bluedrake42]

Report him here please ? Post a Report |

[Arsonist123]

Why is there no server ?

[Bluedrake42]

Server was down for maintenance. Will be up again later today.

[Bluedrake42]

Staff update: Ducky21 aka DuckyGR effective immediately has been removed from the admin team. This is following a large volume of complaints, and issues. If you require any other info about this decision please get in touch with myself or any other senior admin.