Hekko
Master Knight
I am finally fed up with the idiotic way this community is ran by. The way justice and bans are handled, the way threads and criticism is met, how people are promoted within the community and the hypocrisy of the top level leadership.
Lets first discuss the current events. The choice to retire the 51st name, it was a ridiculous proposal and was both unpragmatic and unfair. Lets focus on the unfair bit though since pragmatism ultimately is of less consequence when discussing the fundamentals of the community. The 51st are getting a special privilege for the sake of their contribution to the game. Lets get one thing straight, the reason the 51st has contributed to the dlc is because of the closed-shop nepotistic ways of the developers got help for it. I am sure that the mapping done by 51st members could just as well have been done by people from the 84e or the 1er etc, as long as they would have been granted the Chance to do so. What few people know is that the 51st during the beta actively impeded allot of testing by being hellbent on playing commanderbattle whenever more than 4 people were on. I came to the beta fairly late, yet still the game had a gamebreaking flaw of a fixed height up-stab, which meant that you could duck under the up-stab by holding in a downstab. However, since I didn't belong to the cool kids I was ignored at first when pointing out that this was a serious problem. Infact I was probably the most active poster about gameplay in the beta, and alto of the stuff I posted about has gotten implemented since, just that it took several months after the release for it to be done. Once again because I didn't belong to the cool kids. All the while the 51st happily played commander battle and said that everything was fine. So I don't know if this is a legacy to protect. Post-release their saga is quite known to everyone. They hardly ever played and only popped onto the forum to state how much more awesome than everyone else they are. They then did the ultimate kick in the bollocks by leaving the community a couple of months after launch, essentially a statement that the game sucks. Now the top-level administrative staff is kicking everyone else, true fans who actually have stuck with the sub-par game, by protecting the rights of people who don't care about their rights, nor the game inventing new rules as they go. Regiments such as the 1er, 84e, 15e, 13e, 91st, 92nd, 59th, 63e, 8Lr and other regiments, have all contributed more to the betterment of the community than the 51st, infact the aforementioned regiments have designed and ran tournaments, they have hosted events for years, they have taken newcomers under their wing, and generally been a force of good in the community, and by singling the 51st out you are waving a huge middle finger in the face of the rest of the community.
Then we have the case about appointing admins. Apparently it's okay for Vince to appoint Kitty to a very senior adminposition by virtue of being his girlfriend, while when CarolusRex applies through normal channels, gets a bunch of +1 ones from current admins, he is denied based on the fact that he was a member of the 15e. Irregardless of the fact that he is competent and the fact that the 15e does no longer exist. So nepotism and cronyism is fine, where as using the reverse version to block a competent admin is apparently fine as well.Inconsistency at it's finest!
While on the subject of admin appointments, usually in an organisation one is promoted based on merit, FSE must have been asleep during that bit of the management seminar. Because FSE seems to promote admins rather on lack of merit than actual merit. Some of the senior administrative positions are/were held by people that were in no way competent to hold them. Lets first discuss Cenzii. The man abused his admin while being a normal admin to turn of lancers, change maps etc. Just because he was fed up with them. Something that under normal circumstances gets you removed from the administrative team, instead with the FSE group it gets you joint-head admin. His forum posting was also of an appalling character, the man who is supposed to calm down the community when the NW launch didn't go entirely to the satisfaction of the community, instead he makes an inflammatory post in all caps, pissing even more people off. I even confronted Praetorian the then head admin about it, as well as with some questions regarding the professionalism of the administrative staff now that it went from a mod to a paid DLC, as you can see from the screenshots Praetorian ultimately tries to say that Cenzii isn't affiliated with the FSE, so at least there have been some senior FSE representatives with some sense.
Cenzii also issued wonderful precedents regarding regiments such as the precedent that one does not need the permission of someone to make a regiment with the same name as long as it's done in a different timezone, this precedent has been countermanded since then, but it still shows how singularly unfit he was for that position.
Then we have Donald. While Donald is quite fit for normal run of the mill admining he is completely unfit if he ever is in a position where he has a stake in the matter. The incident where some was parodying 92nd names for instance springs to mind, or incidents where people have been temporarily banned because they have asked whether or not he was pissy when he issued a ban. Sure admins should be respected, but it swings both ways, since the admin has more powers and tools they should also explain their reasoning when doing stuff if challenged, even if it's done in a less than polite way.
I have not that much experience with the US administrative policy, some of the recent choices make me wonder though how the American side chooses admins, and from what I have heard from other admins that play on US1 at times as well, is that some of the new US1 admins are tripping balls with their new adminpowers, waiting for opportunities to flex their strength for the least offence.
I don't think I need to even mention Olafon, however, at least he was honourable enough to admit to being wrong and stepping down as a result of his misbehaviour. (Although it has happened before as well).
Finally we have Vince&Deo who through their behaviour as admins moved from being the impartial mediators solving the issue about who has the right to the 51st name to a position where they antagonize unrelated parts of the community and become the perpetrators in the conflict. Vince also has a nasty habit of arbitrarily shutting down discussion simply for the sake of shutting it down. A bit in congruent that discussion on a forum for discussion gets locked.The biggest kicker here is that he locks threads as soon as he has replied, which is of course something an admin should do, but when the thread is concerning his administration of the forum he probably should leave it up after he has replied otherwise it looks, and in this case is, because he know his argument does not stand up to scrutiny. So essentially he makes an unfair ruling, when people try to question the ruling, he forces them into breaking the rules and then has them community banned. Well trolled Vince. You say that there is so much **** regarding regimental names etc, and that's why you try to stop it to the best of your ability, do you know why there has suddenly is a **** storm? Because you stirred it up!
As seen in my discussion I was hoping that with the move from MM to NW we'd have allot more of professionalism on the administrative side of things, turns out I was sorely mistaken. The community is dying, partly because of the design of the game (I am quite convinced that FSE has no idea of what ultimately made MM so loved, because as always the focus for the development seems to have been on pipe-tunes and other such stuff rather than gameplay, but that is a different matter). But also partly because of the way the community is being run. You are upsetting people that have donated money to the development of your next game and have been pro-FSE for a long time, so you are even hurting yourself by your incompetence. I made a post in the donators board about you needing an investor to get the funding. I had another reason for it, that I might as well divulge now, and that is the fact that it makes you answerable to someone, someone who only cares about profits, and satisfied customers, fans and community makers is a part of maximizing profits.
I have been running the two biggest recurring competitive events for NW, I was a beta tester, I helped to improve the melee (almost all changes to melee have been present in my state-of-melee threads and beta feedbacks, albeit slowly and reluctantly), I have hosted a number of smaller events, I have been administrating the official servers and I have been running a regiment for most of the existence of NW. So you can say that I was a fan, I did my bit for the community, but you have now lost my support and respect, and I know that allot of other people feel the same way.
I'll give credit where credit is due, FSE are amazing coders, amazing modelers and Rejenorst is brilliant at getting the sounds together, however, you are completely and utterly unfit to run and administrate a community and all the evidence points to the point that you are unfit at running a company and designing the gameplay of a game.
I am fairly sure that I will be removed from the administrative team, I am fairly sure I will be banned from the forum, I am fairly sure that I will be banned from the official servers, I am fairly sure I will be banned from the official linebattles (not that there are any) and I am fairly sure that I will be banned from the official TS. Still, I do this because someone needs to stand up and let you know that you are driving off a cliff and you need to sort your **** out, or the market economy will sort you out, and you are stuck writing code for a soulless automated trading program. So for the sake of the community and yourselves, change something.
Lets first discuss the current events. The choice to retire the 51st name, it was a ridiculous proposal and was both unpragmatic and unfair. Lets focus on the unfair bit though since pragmatism ultimately is of less consequence when discussing the fundamentals of the community. The 51st are getting a special privilege for the sake of their contribution to the game. Lets get one thing straight, the reason the 51st has contributed to the dlc is because of the closed-shop nepotistic ways of the developers got help for it. I am sure that the mapping done by 51st members could just as well have been done by people from the 84e or the 1er etc, as long as they would have been granted the Chance to do so. What few people know is that the 51st during the beta actively impeded allot of testing by being hellbent on playing commanderbattle whenever more than 4 people were on. I came to the beta fairly late, yet still the game had a gamebreaking flaw of a fixed height up-stab, which meant that you could duck under the up-stab by holding in a downstab. However, since I didn't belong to the cool kids I was ignored at first when pointing out that this was a serious problem. Infact I was probably the most active poster about gameplay in the beta, and alto of the stuff I posted about has gotten implemented since, just that it took several months after the release for it to be done. Once again because I didn't belong to the cool kids. All the while the 51st happily played commander battle and said that everything was fine. So I don't know if this is a legacy to protect. Post-release their saga is quite known to everyone. They hardly ever played and only popped onto the forum to state how much more awesome than everyone else they are. They then did the ultimate kick in the bollocks by leaving the community a couple of months after launch, essentially a statement that the game sucks. Now the top-level administrative staff is kicking everyone else, true fans who actually have stuck with the sub-par game, by protecting the rights of people who don't care about their rights, nor the game inventing new rules as they go. Regiments such as the 1er, 84e, 15e, 13e, 91st, 92nd, 59th, 63e, 8Lr and other regiments, have all contributed more to the betterment of the community than the 51st, infact the aforementioned regiments have designed and ran tournaments, they have hosted events for years, they have taken newcomers under their wing, and generally been a force of good in the community, and by singling the 51st out you are waving a huge middle finger in the face of the rest of the community.
Then we have the case about appointing admins. Apparently it's okay for Vince to appoint Kitty to a very senior adminposition by virtue of being his girlfriend, while when CarolusRex applies through normal channels, gets a bunch of +1 ones from current admins, he is denied based on the fact that he was a member of the 15e. Irregardless of the fact that he is competent and the fact that the 15e does no longer exist. So nepotism and cronyism is fine, where as using the reverse version to block a competent admin is apparently fine as well.Inconsistency at it's finest!
While on the subject of admin appointments, usually in an organisation one is promoted based on merit, FSE must have been asleep during that bit of the management seminar. Because FSE seems to promote admins rather on lack of merit than actual merit. Some of the senior administrative positions are/were held by people that were in no way competent to hold them. Lets first discuss Cenzii. The man abused his admin while being a normal admin to turn of lancers, change maps etc. Just because he was fed up with them. Something that under normal circumstances gets you removed from the administrative team, instead with the FSE group it gets you joint-head admin. His forum posting was also of an appalling character, the man who is supposed to calm down the community when the NW launch didn't go entirely to the satisfaction of the community, instead he makes an inflammatory post in all caps, pissing even more people off. I even confronted Praetorian the then head admin about it, as well as with some questions regarding the professionalism of the administrative staff now that it went from a mod to a paid DLC, as you can see from the screenshots Praetorian ultimately tries to say that Cenzii isn't affiliated with the FSE, so at least there have been some senior FSE representatives with some sense.
Cenzii also issued wonderful precedents regarding regiments such as the precedent that one does not need the permission of someone to make a regiment with the same name as long as it's done in a different timezone, this precedent has been countermanded since then, but it still shows how singularly unfit he was for that position.
Then we have Donald. While Donald is quite fit for normal run of the mill admining he is completely unfit if he ever is in a position where he has a stake in the matter. The incident where some was parodying 92nd names for instance springs to mind, or incidents where people have been temporarily banned because they have asked whether or not he was pissy when he issued a ban. Sure admins should be respected, but it swings both ways, since the admin has more powers and tools they should also explain their reasoning when doing stuff if challenged, even if it's done in a less than polite way.
I have not that much experience with the US administrative policy, some of the recent choices make me wonder though how the American side chooses admins, and from what I have heard from other admins that play on US1 at times as well, is that some of the new US1 admins are tripping balls with their new adminpowers, waiting for opportunities to flex their strength for the least offence.
I don't think I need to even mention Olafon, however, at least he was honourable enough to admit to being wrong and stepping down as a result of his misbehaviour. (Although it has happened before as well).
Finally we have Vince&Deo who through their behaviour as admins moved from being the impartial mediators solving the issue about who has the right to the 51st name to a position where they antagonize unrelated parts of the community and become the perpetrators in the conflict. Vince also has a nasty habit of arbitrarily shutting down discussion simply for the sake of shutting it down. A bit in congruent that discussion on a forum for discussion gets locked.The biggest kicker here is that he locks threads as soon as he has replied, which is of course something an admin should do, but when the thread is concerning his administration of the forum he probably should leave it up after he has replied otherwise it looks, and in this case is, because he know his argument does not stand up to scrutiny. So essentially he makes an unfair ruling, when people try to question the ruling, he forces them into breaking the rules and then has them community banned. Well trolled Vince. You say that there is so much **** regarding regimental names etc, and that's why you try to stop it to the best of your ability, do you know why there has suddenly is a **** storm? Because you stirred it up!
As seen in my discussion I was hoping that with the move from MM to NW we'd have allot more of professionalism on the administrative side of things, turns out I was sorely mistaken. The community is dying, partly because of the design of the game (I am quite convinced that FSE has no idea of what ultimately made MM so loved, because as always the focus for the development seems to have been on pipe-tunes and other such stuff rather than gameplay, but that is a different matter). But also partly because of the way the community is being run. You are upsetting people that have donated money to the development of your next game and have been pro-FSE for a long time, so you are even hurting yourself by your incompetence. I made a post in the donators board about you needing an investor to get the funding. I had another reason for it, that I might as well divulge now, and that is the fact that it makes you answerable to someone, someone who only cares about profits, and satisfied customers, fans and community makers is a part of maximizing profits.
I have been running the two biggest recurring competitive events for NW, I was a beta tester, I helped to improve the melee (almost all changes to melee have been present in my state-of-melee threads and beta feedbacks, albeit slowly and reluctantly), I have hosted a number of smaller events, I have been administrating the official servers and I have been running a regiment for most of the existence of NW. So you can say that I was a fan, I did my bit for the community, but you have now lost my support and respect, and I know that allot of other people feel the same way.
I'll give credit where credit is due, FSE are amazing coders, amazing modelers and Rejenorst is brilliant at getting the sounds together, however, you are completely and utterly unfit to run and administrate a community and all the evidence points to the point that you are unfit at running a company and designing the gameplay of a game.
I am fairly sure that I will be removed from the administrative team, I am fairly sure I will be banned from the forum, I am fairly sure that I will be banned from the official servers, I am fairly sure I will be banned from the official linebattles (not that there are any) and I am fairly sure that I will be banned from the official TS. Still, I do this because someone needs to stand up and let you know that you are driving off a cliff and you need to sort your **** out, or the market economy will sort you out, and you are stuck writing code for a soulless automated trading program. So for the sake of the community and yourselves, change something.
