What's Happened To The AoS Community?

[Sniper101]

I am 10.......

9 ... actually.

[tunaspirit]

And I'm 12.

I agree with most of what you said (bov930527).
Most immature players are below the age of 15, although that is not to say that if you are under 15, you are immature.

And define maturity.

[Sniper101]

I'll answer your question:

Maturity: The act of being mature.

[Space101]

@Danqazmlp: I know what you mean. Every time I log onto a sham's server (IF i manage to log on. Those things area full all of the time) it's 30 people out of 32 that are absolute noos/polaks/brs who I never saw before. As a result I don't tend to stick around in the game anymore and just log off, this making my average time spent playing AoS per week about 30 minutes. Comparing to the 20 hours I used to have back in the good old days of Sw prosperity.
So yea, the game has attracted some 'unwanted attention' since the good ol' times of 0.whatever it was in june.
and australians...

Before SW disbanded you guys were always on and was having clan meetings and other shit, in fact it was really annoying.
Atleast it's not as annoying as those polacks that have invaded it. :(

[Defaulter]

What happened to the community?....the internet happened, that's what.

[Fleischgeruch]

Before SW disbanded you guys were always on and was having clan meetings and other shit, in fact it was really annoying.
Atleast it's not as annoying as those polacks that have invaded it. :(

Annoying? We were trying to be active and striving to be slightly well known... How is that annoying? Yea, none of us knew how to make or server, or have the will to learn how, but having an own server is not what's really important.
At least we could actually be reasonable in the community and we provided plenty of votes for any decent votekicks, something that is not so common these days, and definitely not what polaks do.

[SICKfudge]

The problem with this is there is a fine line between being a good community and eliteism and some of the things you guys have suggested sort of cross that line. but yes, hopefully the registration system will help sort this out, and if Ben does start charging for it, it may improve as well.

[demo123]

I'm sure the fact that AoS is free has something to do with it. Once it goes payed we might lose some of those 'trouble' players.

We may even lose those good player too.

Barrier #1: Physical. Make the game cost money. This will physically force people that cannot get money or don't have a credit card in RL to quit playing the game. 90% of these people are below 18.

But what about those realy decent, teamworking, mature players that are below 18 for example me(though i tend to rage sometimes). Have you ever tought of the,. Or have you ever tought of those people in certain countries that cant even get a bit of money because they are unable to find a job(example- Croatia, Bosnia or many other countries). Have you ever tought of them. Well i guess you didnt.

Barrier one=bad

Barrier #2: Mental, ingame. Make the game harder. No sprint, have to jump all the time, slower reload times. When you read this, you might think "damn, this guy's crazy. no way i vote for this sh*t" . But let me tell, I would too find this game much more annoying if these things would get back. BUT, I would consider it a price worth playing if it would get rid of all the kids, because kids are usually impatient (which is why there were almost no kids when AoS hit 0.16. Good times...).

I agree with you on that one. Though i joined in 0.70 so i dont know what hapened in this game before i find this game a bit to easy(im still for the thing that rifle gets a better acuracy not for that it gets a worser acuracy). Sprint made it too easy to evade shots.

Barrier 2=Realy good

Barrier #3: Mental, geting the game. Making it that all players have a 2% chance to get on a server. That means you would get an error approximately 49 out of 50 times you try to log in. Just like in the good old days. Ohh, and make site randomly shut down at times and don't work for hours. This would also force impatient people to quit the game.

There is no point for that since most of the people have that problem(you should check the help section a bit)

Barrier 3=worthless

Who are impatient people anyway? Do they deserve to get "deported" away from this site? Yes. I believe so. Impatient people usually (not allways) are:

a) Kids below 15;

So you want to kick out all the people that are below 15. I know that you said usualy, and havent said allways(there is a difference between those two words) you aparently havent thought that most of the players in this game are under 15(plus i dont see a point since it is realy easy to falcificate imformation about yourselfe). I am under 15 myselfe(im not going to say how old i am exactly but i am going to be 15 in a year) and i know that some kids under 15 can be mature and reliable. So you think that most of "impatient" people need to be banned from the site. What about those good impatient people. Eh have you ever tought of `em. Did you. Well you havent. So you say that all of the impatient people are kids(you said usualy). But it sounded like you were saying that every impatient person is below 15. Well i find most of botters/hackers that i encounterd to be patient(by patient i mean very patient).



I have a tip for you. Before you post something like this think about it fully not superficially.

[Dom]

I've not been playing that long (maybe 8 months?) but If you've been on Shams Little Pony server, you've probably played against me:)

First off, I agree with the maturity issue, but I disagree with the age thing. Some of the best, most respectful, talented, modest and cooperative players I've played against have been under 15.

I also disagree with the suggestions about slowing it down or reverting back - that's sort of liking cutting off your nose to spite your face.

There's a lot of styles of play that people adopt that I don't like, e.g. just building pointless things ("stop shooting me I'm just trying to build") or griefing your own teams buildings just to see them fall, prolonged camping, but they're my personal opinions. I'm sure some people see these as valid tactics, and whilst I disagree with those opinions, I'll defend to the death their right to say them.

From an objective point of view, I think the only really damaging things to the community are:

a) insulting and closed minded people ("it's all the polaks") being offensive ("suck my £%&$ noob"), building offensive things (who HASN'T seen a swastika on AoS) and generally behaving in an uncivil, or intentionally bad way to either troll or just make people feel bad.

b) people that abuse the votekick system by starting pointless votekicks, or trying to kick people for aimbotting with no evidence, or generally calling hax for no justified reason.

Now problem a) is a tough one to tackle, and slightly subjective maybe: possibly some servers want this negative atmosphere. A solution for the servers that don't want this behaviour maybe for the ones that do to announce it, so the servers that don't want this behaviour can kick users or point them to a server where their behaviour maybe better suited. Closed minded and insulting people on servers that try and foster a civil community (such as Shams) should be warned and then perma-banned.
On a technical level, the perma bans and the whole ban block system might benefit from being modified to be based on MAC address instead. About half the time I see people get permabanned, they're straight back on after renewing their IP address. Although spoofing a MAC address is possible, it requires more effort. Again, also the registration system with e-mail validation may help with this issue too.

For problem b) I pose a socialist approach: education. A lot of people don't know how to use the anti-cheat features in servers that support it: things like the ability to check someones streak, accuracy, ratio etc. (type /accuracy name or /ratio name or /streak name.) Although this is not a hard and fast way of finding an aimbotter, it's highly unlikely that someone with a KDR < 2 is aimbotting (and yes, I've seen several people, I believe, wrongly kicked for aimbotting with a KDR < 2.)
As well as educating on the anti-cheat rules, education of the way the game works behind the scenes may also help. I regularly see people saying "I shot <insertnamehere> repeatedly in the head and they didn't die: HAX!!!" Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but hit detection is done server side, meaning unless the server is well and truly hacked (highly unlikely) then infinite health/ammo and other such hacks are near impossible. The only common hack I'm aware of for AoS (again, I don't claim to be an authority on the subject so correct me if I'm wrong) is aimbotting. Most other instances of what people would call hacking are typically down to the unfortunately poor bullet detection within AoS, but more commonly, lag, either on the server side, "hacker" side or accusers side.
On a technical level, first person spectator mode may help, if not catch aimbotters, reassure people. The 3rd person spectator mode is brilliant and fun, but for spotting an aimbotter, you can't really tell how quick a person is really taking aim. In 1st person spectator, it's a lot easier to tell because you can actually almost see it from the "hackers" point of view - e.g. no sway in aiming suggests maybe they're getting help from an aiming script.
Although none of these methods will definitively catch or stop hackers, they may help alleviate some of the issues caused such as unjust votekicks, and excess shouting "OMGZ HAXX0RZ!!1one!"

But for any of these suggestions to work, I believe the most helpful thing is having responsible admins round in servers. As pointed out in other threads, certain servers (naming no names) which have notoriously absent/lazy/rubbish admins are damaging to the community. If you go on one of these sorts of server for the first time you play the game, you see loads of cheating, nobody there that cares and nobody there that helps - what are you going to do? Most likely conclude the game is rubbish, and tell your friends the same. Whilst Shams servers aren't perfect (no server is,) the presence and behaviour of the admins (at least during normal UK play times) is an inspiration and a credit to the AoS community as a whole.

I think one approach we should be very wary of when trying to tackle problems discussed in this thread is discriminating based on age (or any other factor.) I know a lot of "older" people that are idiots and more immature than a lot of "younger" people, and vice versa. Discriminating based on age is almost, if not just as bad as discriminating based on race. Everyone is different. Never judge a book by it's cover (or age.)
Also, I think we should be weary of trying to "drive people away" from AoS, regardless of how they conduct themselves (with maybe a few exceptions.) Despite me personally not liking negative atmospheres, some people like that sorta stuff. Some people like being trolled, some people like just building. Although I don't like these things, I don't think these people should be stopped or dissuaded from playing AoS, they should just be informed of the servers and areas of the community that encourage, support and enjoy their behaviours.

Just my 2cents:)

Dom.

p.s. sorry for the essay!

[Articsledder]

I agree with setting up maturity behaviors, just not age based. AoS would lose at least 60% of it's players if we had an age limit, say 14. Instead, it should be based on how smart they are. If they are too stupid to do X thing, then they won't be helpful to the community.

[Fett316]

Have you been here without taking any major breaks from AoS? Because I quit since 0.46 and didn't join until, now really, 0.75. And I gotta tell you, it was like getting a "BAM!!!" in the head.

Yep, with the exception of a 2 week hiatus back in August. Elaborate on "BAM!!!", I don't understand.

And I see what you're talking about, and I know that those were real issues (especially hacking). I, though, did not encounter those too usually and actually, didn't find them too annoying either. And even then hackers and griefers themselves were mature! They would allways find funny ways to hack, like that youtube video. I actually laughed loud when I saw it. And it was not that usual too.

It stopped being funny when all of the good servers ended up that way. The lag from it didn't help.

All-in-all, I honestly disagree with all of you statements. And as you see, some people agree with me. That is why we should give those people a chance too. I say, give us back the 0.16 (without hacking off course) and let old timers enjoy it while those who wish can enjoy the newer versions simultaneously.

You say you disagree that the community is better, that the old forums sucked, and that overall, we're doing fine, if not better?

[Frostified]

I completely agree with some of the earlier posts.
Unless you go against <@> or some of the more well known players of AoS, this game is waaaaaay to easy.
This will probably never happen, but the only way to make this game difficult again would be to remove smg and shotty; and keep the rifle.
Let's take a look at the game before 0.53.
The rifle was the only weapon, if you could get a 3-5 kill streak with it, you were lucky. If you could get a 20 kill streak, you were a god. Back when I was known as flame I spent ages trying to make the best sight for my rifle so that I could play as well as I could.
I know I may be acting a bit nostalgic, but you have to admit that pre 0.53 were the golden days of aos, even if hacking was more of a problem.
IMO I'd rather be playing 0.52 with speed hackers dashing around than playing 0.75 which is a really easy game with gameplay that doesn't satisfy someones FPS appetite.

I must also say, that there are loads of mature players under 15, I don't think we can label immaturity with an age. It's just people who are immature.
Heck, I've played on servers with immature 16 year olds!
And i'm 14, and I'm pretty mature.

P.S To elaborate on the golden days, IMO AoS was at it's prime in 0.52.

[Paratrooper]

I'm sure the fact that AoS is free has something to do with it. Once it goes payed we might lose some of those 'trouble' players.

The same way that MW3 lost immature players for being paid? Oh wait...

[bov930527]

I'm sure the fact that AoS is free has something to do with it. Once it goes payed we might lose some of those 'trouble' players.

We may even lose those good player too.

Barrier #1: Physical. Make the game cost money. This will physically force people that cannot get money or don't have a credit card in RL to quit playing the game. 90% of these people are below 18.

But what about those realy decent, teamworking, mature players that are below 18 for example me(though i tend to rage sometimes). Have you ever tought of the,. Or have you ever tought of those people in certain countries that cant even get a bit of money because they are unable to find a job(example- Croatia, Bosnia or many other countries). Have you ever tought of them. Well i guess you didnt.

Barrier one=bad

Barrier #2: Mental, ingame. Make the game harder. No sprint, have to jump all the time, slower reload times. When you read this, you might think "damn, this guy's crazy. no way i vote for this sh*t" . But let me tell, I would too find this game much more annoying if these things would get back. BUT, I would consider it a price worth playing if it would get rid of all the kids, because kids are usually impatient (which is why there were almost no kids when AoS hit 0.16. Good times...).

I agree with you on that one. Though i joined in 0.70 so i dont know what hapened in this game before i find this game a bit to easy(im still for the thing that rifle gets a better acuracy not for that it gets a worser acuracy). Sprint made it too easy to evade shots.

Barrier 2=Realy good

Barrier #3: Mental, geting the game. Making it that all players have a 2% chance to get on a server. That means you would get an error approximately 49 out of 50 times you try to log in. Just like in the good old days. Ohh, and make site randomly shut down at times and don't work for hours. This would also force impatient people to quit the game.

There is no point for that since most of the people have that problem(you should check the help section a bit)

Barrier 3=worthless

Who are impatient people anyway? Do they deserve to get "deported" away from this site? Yes. I believe so. Impatient people usually (not allways) are:

a) Kids below 15;

So you want to kick out all the people that are below 15. I know that you said usualy, and havent said allways(there is a difference between those two words) you aparently havent thought that most of the players in this game are under 15(plus i dont see a point since it is realy easy to falcificate imformation about yourselfe). I am under 15 myselfe(im not going to say how old i am exactly but i am going to be 15 in a year) and i know that some kids under 15 can be mature and reliable. So you think that most of "impatient" people need to be banned from the site. What about those good impatient people. Eh have you ever tought of `em. Did you. Well you havent. So you say that all of the impatient people are kids(you said usualy). But it sounded like you were saying that every impatient person is below 15. Well i find most of botters/hackers that i encounterd to be patient(by patient i mean very patient).



I have a tip for you. Before you post something like this think about it fully not superficially.

You know, first I thought to answer your post in the exact manner you answered mine. But, seen as your text was filled with deliberate insults as a result of, not only puting words in my mouth (with no other purpose but to insult me on things I haven't even written), but also that you, perhaps out of simple missunderstandings (which I do not believe in, since you don't seem stupid) have gotten yourself a wrong idea out of my post.

So... I'm going to act mature and try to answer every terrible illogical argument that you have presented without been offensive.

1) I did think of people who could not afford to buy the game. Hence, barrier 2 and 3.
2) Barrier #3 isn't worthless because things were much more harder back in the days.
3) I'm verry sorry if you have missunderstood, but i didn't at all say that we should ban players below 15. I sad impatient players. Big difference. And it just happens that laws of nature work on humans in a way that makes us more mature and patient the older we grow.
4) I'm really sorry for this, but... I just have to quote you here:

"you aparently havent thought that most of the players in this game are under 15" --> Now I'm gonna be honest with you. The exact reason of me posting all of that, is because I have "thought that most of the players in this game are under 15". Back in 0.16-18 most of the players were above 15. Do you understand my dilemma now? I really hope that you do, because I have no better way to explain it.

5) "Good impatient people". "Impatience" is like a diametrical opposite to "good". Impatient = bad. You can go out on the street and ask people around. Most of them will place "impatience" under the list of things that you don't want in your personality.

Also demo, I have a tip for you too. If you are just looking for some flaming, go and read a good book instead. Cause I'm not gonna be troubling with you. That sad, I apologize if I have expressed myself in my previous, aswell as this post(s), in a way that was by any means offensive to you.


And to all you guys who say "Yea, I know some immature 16 years olds and mature 14 year olds", good for you. So, if I say 12 instead, will that make you happy? And if you gonna say "Well, I know some mature kids below 12..." then I'm just not even going to bother arguing. There is a reason why most of things, like marriage and alcohol, are only allowed once you've reached 18 or even 21 in some areas (not 15! No matter how "mature" you think you are)!. Maturity and patience comes with experience. And experience comes with age. Those are the laws of nature.

The reason as to why I picked 15 was because when I think of myself 3 years back (I'm 18 now) I cannot lie to myself about how dumb I was then compared to now. Just saying...

And, my actual suggestion (which everybody seem to just not read) is not to redo the entire community, and force youngsters/impatient/immature people out. It's actually to provide a ground for both groups. If none of you did not get this, please read the ending of my first post on this thread.


@Fett316:

1) "BAM!!!" = Shotgun, SMG, pyspades, aimbots, sprint, bigger clip, no teamwork, constant swearing on chat, server admins, and lots and lots of more. And the fact that you have been around all along explains why aren't able to see the actual development of the game. You see, it's like watching a tree grow. If you walk past a tree every day for, say, 20 years, you will notice how much it grows much worse than someone who would only come to see it once in 3 years. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? The small changes that went over time were unnoticed by you, but for me, they were added together into one really BIG change when I rejoined. And that caused the "BAM!!!". The interesting thing is, there is very little, next to nothing, wrong with each and every one of these updates. But added together, they result in a downfall.
2) I holeheartedly believe that the change I've experienced going from 0.46 to 0.75 is a very, very negative one. So yes, to answer your question, I indeed believe that community was a ton of times better before than what it is today.

[ThisFrickinSite]

I'm sure the fact that AoS is free has something to do with it. Once it goes payed we might lose some of those 'trouble' players.

^and some of the not trouble players like me... i have no pocket change and no money to spare in this house hold