Leaderboard

Hey! So I'll be the person to respond to this since I guess it's more appropriate given I'm more informed than my Divisional Staff simply because I'm more aware of what's going on in the community. To start off, Jailbreak was revived I believe in ~August 2020. A lot of people came back (including myself) and hadn't played JB in multiple years as it had been dead previously. Everyone was super stoked to see JB alive and well again and so we had like half a year where we had max pop almost every night. Multiple people (including myself) just started off as a normal player and grinded JB to the point to where we were considered for mod, then global mod, then staff, and so forth. While I thoroughly enjoy JB, I will acknowledge that I have burnt out to the extent that I have debated stepping down for about a month now. I have tried over the past month or so to get JB populated whenever I'm available in the evening and it seems that the drive and dedication to popping JB just isn't there anymore. This and some changes with how JB functions such as being able to purchase rep has really changed the mentality a lot of players had regarding JB. Using myself as an example, when JB first revived it seemed like the competition for gangs had redeveloped as they wiped all of the gang database and reset everyone. It turned into a year long competition to see which gang would rise to the top and win the "Gang war" that developed naturally in JB. After the rep shop came out there was no point in grinding JB or AFKing in the server, because think about it- you get like ~3 rep every 5 minutes for spectating in JB (I could be a little off- I haven't checked the actual number in a bit). Using that estimate you get around 36 rep a hour, and 864 rep a day. In the shop that equates to ~$1.30. So in a hour, you could get a dollar and thirty cents worth of rep. Why would you AFK grind when you can just go buy rep? The rep shop basically eliminated the eagerness to grind rep by AFKing in the server, and to get to my point, this effictively killed like 8-15 people spectating every day. That REALLY hurts our server population because when you look at the server list, it counts spectators in the total pop. So even at 4am, you would see our server with around 10 people on, which would entice people to join the server. Moving on from that point, another thing that I think changed my will to play would be how the JB environment felt after a year of playing. In the beginning there were TONS of old players who knew how to lead and were experienced in the "roleplay" aspect of JB. They were knowledgable about the rules and how to lead days or rebel well. This added a lot of spice and exciting moments into the gameplay of JB. Over time, what always happens is people grow out of specific things- in this case, Jailbreak. Over the year we lost a lot of great players who made (in my opinion) jailbreak more enjoyable. That was a major hit to our population because they were the main people leading days as well. A big contributor to our lack of server pop is the lack of people wanting to lead days in JB. I personally enjoy leading for about 2-3 hours, but then I like to relax on T and rebel. This is fine if you have 6 people who want to do that, but when you only have 1-2 it becomes more complicated, because then you have to rely on those two people to carry the CT side in the leading aspect, which burns them out way faster than when they can just lead for some time and then vibe on T. Another issue was our general lack of CT players. Jailbreak is enjoyable because the 1:2 ratio that's implemented. This however, is not enforced in terms of forcing an equal CT to T ratio. The 2:1 T to CT ratio is enforced, but not vice versa. What this means that while you can have 30 T's and only 15 CT's, you could also have 30 T's and like 8 CT's, which, is most of the time going to result in the CT side getting demolished, and people not wanting to play CT, and with no CT's you have no JB. To continue on, let me state that I am in no way defending the CS:GO Leadership right now. We are all burnt out, and we have a severe lack of drive (if any) to populate Jailbreak right now. I'm unsure what Gaming+ wants to do about this, as I've made it clear that we've felt that way for over 3 months now. With that being said I'm hoping that something will be worked out for JB sometime soon, because while I'm burnt out, I still want to see JB succeed because of how enjoyable it is and how many hours I've spent relaxing on it. Thats just my two-cents. If you have any questions or want me to elaborate further please ask. I love JB and I'm sad I'm this burnt out, but there's nothing I can do about it other than take a break.

It’s kind of funny that this post happened today, because very recently there has been chatter internally that JB has been dead for to long with nothing in the works. Below I’ll kind of write up my thought process with what went well with the JB relaunch and why I think JB is struggling currently. For all intents and purposes JB is a RP Server in my eyes. With that said, it’s important that there are good guards/leads to facilitate good RP and that there are internal systems in place to help continue to facilitate conflict/interaction in the server. Other than the round to round interaction, the best facilitator of interaction in our JB server is gangs/gang identity. With the relaunch last year and gangs having been reset all the way to 0 there was a huge surge immediately to claim a gang and begin grinding so you could be the top gang on the server. For me personally being in Rebooglites at the time this was some of the best weeks/months personally I have ever played on the server. The amount of time and energy we put into grinding/idling for our spot on the top of the leaderboard against Bald Men was truly something to behold. We actually at one point had a spreadsheet tracking our rep vs. Bald Men’s to see how close they were to their next level compared to ours. Some other gangs that have since made a name for themselves followed behind us on the quest to be on the leaderboards. Along with the groups and gangs grinding rep for their gang, there were also individuals that wanted to cash in on this wave of rep grinding by collecting rep and selling it to gangs for cash or steam items. This was totally fine in my eyes as rep was only able to be collected at a fixed rate and rep was limited by those willing to sell it and how much rep could physically be collected by an individual before it could be sold (besides people who used a vpn to play on multiple accounts to double their idle rep per hour. Who were then banned btw lmao), but once the cash shop rolled in for rep, I feel like that’s the moment the element of gangs was essentially depleted. Why would I grind/idle for weeks when I could buy the rep with a few hours off of my paycheck? With the cash shop rep became completely meaningless in the matter of a few weeks. Gangs with more money than time started climbing the gang leaderboards and the people that had spent hours and hours for their gang felt obsolete, because they could never afford to keep up. With the grind/identity of gangs being wiped out what incentive was there to play JB? Well we were simply back to round to round interaction and the hope that the leads would stick around. Unfortunately, by burnout or other means people started to not get on. People also seem to forget that we had a couple bad weeks of database issues (no one at blame just acknowledging it) that I think did more damage to JB then people realize. This along with leadership not being around as much (no way to sugar coat this one, they've been kind of mia one way or another). JB has fallen into a rut. I do really want JB to come back and be great again and I want it to be as fun as it was when it got relaunched. We have awesome devs and a kickass map, but when there aren’t any players playing why would they do any dev work on the server? Spawn/I and others have a lot of work to do, but I can say publicly that I really want to work on getting our JB back on top. A lot of what I wrote is from personal experience and might not apply to everyone on why they feel like JB is dead, but this is why I feel it has really taken a hit in the last couple months.

Frankly it seems like people have moved on to other games, like New World It also seems staff, mods, and the dL are too busy or burnt out of playing CS:GO. Not calling them out, just stating matter of factly, I think they would agree with me on that Also I personally don't plan to play it anymore, it got stale. There was a steady shift in Jailbreak culture, where all of the little kids came in and were annoying. The good leads left. I felt like a stranger in the server, so I didn't go back. I'd rather play with my actual friends than play a server that really isn't fun. None of my friends play it either, so I've got no intention of trying to populate a server, especially when there is only 4 or 5 people in it, with people who I don't know or people who annoy me. Sorry if it's harsh, but it's the honest truth.

As we know jailbreak had a sick resurgence over the summer and it was a blast for a ton of people either coming back or experiencing it for the first time. I personally had a great time and wish I could still pop in every once in a while and get that experience. This is bringing me to make this post.... where we at? I understand we could list many factors (as always) as to why jailbreak is not popping currently, but what's going on? I haven't heard anything or seen any posts with plans, ideas, brainstorming or anything regarding how we can revive HGs former most popular game mode. Have I just missed these initiatives/been out of the loop? I'm just asking for some transparency from leadership as to what the plans going forward for jailbreak are, and how they are planning on executing them. Do y'all need help? Is there something holding you back? All I have heard so far is "less people play games in the fall what are we supposed to do?" and "leadership has less time than over the summer due to school." Again I want to stress, I may just be out of the loop and there could be a ton of stuff going on that I am just not aware of. If so please let me know. Love, Rise Above (aqaq)

Good luck out there SWAT/TTAM, wherever you are.

That's horrible. I wish his family the upmost condolences to his family. Forever a HG Veteran, Never forgotten.

No way Will be missed, forever an HG vet!

RIP I am very sorry to hear this. I hope his family is handling it well. I've been trying to find his profile but there are a ton of different "Matt's", so if you find it we can move him over to Forever a HeLLsGamers Veteran. Thanks for letting us know Koth.

RIP. My condolences goes to his friends and family. FUCK CANCER

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[*] Forever a HeLLsGamers Veteran

Thanks @Lucas15 for the amazing newsletters you've put together, i wish you could keep doing them. I can't imagine the time it took to research and type these things down. i always appreciated how you've managed to present simple informations in a fun way. Can't wait to see who takes over the newsletter

CE is always recruiting new staff members ! Some big changes coming soon so come join and be apart of the movement !!! Also this was Lucas' last newsletter (dont worry theyre still gonna be newsletters, theyre just going to be written by somebody else) so everybody thank him for all the hard work hes put into the monthly newsletters !

Im not sure how many of you guys remember him, but matt has passed away from cancer. Please have him and his family in your thoughts.

Woinking's Recruit Application Game Division Counter-Strike Global Offensive In-Game Name Woinking Location Indiana How old are you? 16 Which games (servers) do you play on? CS:GO Jailbreak, TTT, and minigames How long have you been playing on our servers? I've been playing on and off since February 2021 What is your Steam ID? (This is NOT your Steam name!) STEAM_1:1:209621917 Why do you want to join HG? I've been playing on and off for a while and I would like to join the clan. All members are required to be on our TeamSpeak3 Server whenever playing on our servers. Will you agree with this rule? Yes Do you have any current VAC bans? No Who (if anyone) referred you to apply? Froggies Any other information you want to include?