Vinny Mac

"We're running full steam ahead, all the while looking backwards, instead of forward."

I can no longer stand here and watch you keep running against the wall over and over again Destroy. To think you are like a brother to me, and you go on to do this kind of shit, is just unfathomable. You should know better, you do know better, and yet here we are. You were Muhammad Ali, a bright star in a ring filled with many contenders, but you set yourself apart from others. Now you're back in the ring, and here you are playing like a fink tries to play piano with one finger and both hands missing. This has become an embarrassment as far as I am concerned. I have no idea what happened in the time span you left here, but you clearly have a problem, especially considering how carelessly you are using your powers. I may not be a member here anymore, nor do I do as much admining as I did in the past, even I have a grasp on the rules better than you and know when not to step in other mods' jurisdiction. But this is about Fuzzy and Fuzzy alone, you're bringing up moot points from other bans that mean nothing and only make you look worse, this is about the call you made, and you made a bad one. The inconsistency of the rules is obviously an issue, but I rarely, ever see making death skycades a bannable offense, considering people know and are warned constantly to get off it before it gets un nailed, by literally EVERYONE active on the map, especially if they are a bystander watching. In regards to the other cases brought forth here, you stepped out of line, and then you almost kill a player when you could've simply teleported him down. You are mass gagging and muting on a ridiculous scale without giving one iota of a clear and concise warning. It isn't difficult to use CAPS or to speak clearly on the microphone so your voice is heard above others. You are supposed to warn people. Always warn people, and you have failed to do so on many occasions at this point. You failed to consult your fellow moderators and staff, and you took matters into your own hands. You are not some desperado acting sheriff in the fucking 1850s, you are a young college student who's clearly going through a power trip and has let not just your powers, but your ego cloud your better judgment. I have nothing but disappointment from you, and the fact you have yet to make amends or apologize for your actions is making this feel like this is some sort of fever dream. I remember the days where you were helping me keep HG clean the right way, not many may have liked it, but we cleaned up the community. This ain't the old days, ultimately more freedom is given due to just how the player base is, is there certain things against the rules still, yes. Are you supposed to just be the judge, jury and executioner? No. Hell no. This is ultimately on you Destroy, you are still my friend, but I refuse to sit here and watch you do this over and over again. Whatever happens from here, just know deep down I know you know better.

Usually I don't try to make the time to read posts on here anymore due to the fact that well, everything I've said has been tossed out the window. But at the same time, you've been on my radar, for the wrong reasons. Lot of the stuff you've done isn't right, and going out here and saying all of this won't make amends as quickly as you like. And yet, I can say I know what's it like in some ways, from my own experience, and my friends. No one is made of iron, and we are all fallible. I'm glad you found the courage to seek out help, but do not stop there, better yourself a person now, and show us there's more to this than your apology here.

You clearly said it in the video, and I will stand by my actions as I always have, that is very concrete evidence. What more can you say honestly besides metaphorically shooting yourself in the foot. Everyone in the server heard you when you proceeded to do it a second time on the server on zs_neigherhood, just a shame I didn't catch that in mind before exiting the game to upload the footage. You specifically told me to upload the footage and I did, and now you want to act as if this is an abuse of my power. I'm not a moderator, I'm just a player with Gold, who finds it in myself to step up to do the right thing occasionally. I have an extensive history of ban reports I've filled with the supervision of other moderators and staff members. Many of them involving racism. You clearly didn't say neighborhood, you said something else. You want more facts about it. The word you used, was two syllables, while the word neighborhood has 3, and we all know what word you used, because it's clearly linked in your report. You've done nothing but just prove I was right to ban you, and I hope you learn your actual lesson instead of being a child and trying to act like you did nothing wrong. Because that's when things will get worse for you.

@Northground I'm blessed to have you reply to this and I do thank you for your input. I understand you did all you could during your time and contributed many things. That plan of yours to recruit and bring in experienced ZS players into the fold, kinda as an advisory council would benefit the community for the short term, in long, it could be something bigger. But in terms of using them for their knowledge and grasp of the gameplay, is a remarkably ingenious way of keeping the source material fresh. @Snowyamur Eventually I figured you comment on here, and I gotta say, I'm almost astonished by the magnitude of this response you've written. You pretty much worded this better than I could. Provided, I didn't exactly have too many eyes on it before posting, but I wanted to put where I was coming from and was hoping others would to, so we can hopefully bridge that gap between the players and the members of HG. Recently I'm already seeing an olive branch in the form of the newly founded HG Discord server we recently put up, along with a nice update to the server that introduced groups as another means of connecting with other players and enriching the experience. But your allegory that compared HG and Nox to rivaling empires and factions akin to Stellaris is a breaktaking way of putting things much simpler than I did. I've seen many fallen communities in my time, many monuments sit in their stead, from FirewallCS.Net's Facebook page, to Plaguefest's old ZombieMod server finally disappearing from CSS's servers list. Yet not many of them took advantage of using this knowledge they all had. Noxious.net may not have been the most perfect example to follow, nor the most cordial, but all of that coding, all of that passion that the project did have, remains there for people to use and hopefully create something beautiful out of it. Many new things can be added or adjusted, l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶d̶i̶c̶a̶l̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶t̶g̶u̶n̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶a̶l̶l̶y̶, bringing in zombie types that were exclusive to them in terms of examples. I've heard talk of us implementing the teleporter system finally, now allowing us to safely travel across distances that would in other cases be total suicide. I know I'm not much in terms of street cred, but I have to say, I thank you for your input here and I'm glad you can see where I'm coming from. This was the whole point of the thread, for people to put forth not only their own interpretations of this, but to also give ideas or lay out the groundwork for the HG community and the ZS player base together as a whole. It's the only way I see this lasting for pretty much as long as any single one of us still have a burning passion for this.

@BOSCH Yeah, I'm kinda glad Pho came in and gave a nutshell summary of the primary issue here, of course there's other stuff listed, but the lack of community and union is a fairly big one that will of course take time, but I feel it started to divert a while ago, which is why I even went out of my way to post about it. So people can read suggestions such as yours and give it some thought. Of course I'm hoping others will post on here and keep this going, but I know not everyone browses the forums actively. I know Garry's Mod is out of your jurisdiction, but thank you.

There's good reason I want this post to get attention Fume, so people feel comfortable responding on the forums and they start to utilize it more. I want both HG and the player base to be able to express themselves without feeling as if it's a one way street. We all can figure out what's a joke and what isn't at this point, and some people on here have genuinely come up with excellent ideas that I do wish see the light of day. And if we have more people interacting on here, then a clearer picture can be painted for both sides.

I don’t think I have any better way to really start this whole discussion, but with one sentence: Complacency is the enemy of longevity. Many times, I seen this happen to servers I love, they fade away like a wayward dream, their existence only ever bearing in the memories of those who had fun there and made good memories there. It’s a fact, everything comes to an end at some point. Nothing is spared from the sands of time. So, when I see the warning signs and I’m flagged as a madman, or some sort of pest for attempting to motivate the crowd however I can, even if I had to resort to vulgarity, it gets me even more worried. Recently, I’ve noticed a greater influx of strong personalities, whose charisma has overtaken the server like a starlit singer at a pub. But I feel that some of those who come to the server, don’t come in with the right intentions. Most of those people who come onto the server and just dump their exposition and garbage into the server, bring it down further and further, demotivate the players and ultimately, kill whatever they liked for Zombie Survival, and they move on. Yes, you can argue that people’s interests change, and people come and go. When it feels like you’re only starting to see more regulars than new players, or anyone different for that matter; that feeling of comfort tends to go south. I think I see maybe one of two new players eventually become regulars. While the people who thought Roleplaying in the middle of a Zombie Survival round encouraged people to basically hop off the server and go there, ultimately kills the mood of the game mode, and devalues it. Provided, I understand the original creator of the game mode has very little association with the mode nowadays and the code is completely open source now. But I feel like, it has a certain legacy to it. There are a lot of game modes for Garry’s Mod: GMod Towers, Elevator Source, Stranded, Roleplay, Hide n’ Seek, Prop Hunt, and many other modes exist because of how open Garry’s Mod was at a point, to where the code gave people the flexibility to create something great, something beautiful. Zombie Survival stands as a testament to that, where at this point, HellsGamers is currently the king of that mountain. One of the longest standing Zombie Survival servers, thanks to user-friendly features and a sense of direction that captivated people to create more content and introduced many bright minds into the fold. Now, it feels stagnant, cold to the touch. I’ve seen this before, and you can say anything you want to hide the inevitable truth, all things come to an end. It’s about what we do to make the best of it. And I strongly feel, the server isn’t making the best of its time. Eventually, people will stop playing and move on to bigger and better things, or they will move on because other demands in their lives call for them to spend more time on that than video games. I know for me, that might be coming soon, I’ve personally been dealing with plenty of issues and I want to do more with my life than simply being a veteran at this point. But I want to be able to leave things on a high note, then to come back years later, only to discover it’s been wiped clean from the face of the web. The only thing that may document any of this is the Wayback Machine, and usually, that’s for things people won’t ever forget. What is the point of this post? It’s a call to action. We have so many players who are willing to give inputs, create content for the server and give back the love the server has given to the player. Something that can be agreed on, we keep coming back because we care, no matter how angry or embittered we seem at times. I’m a testament to that. There have been times I’ve given myself breaks from the server to try other games, or to deal with life issues, but I always come back. Because I enjoy playing on the server. But when I see these people with gilded smiles and foiled masks just wanting to bring the server down and bully the people from thinking differently, of course I get angry. I’m a confrontational person; I may be soft spoken at times believe it or not, but when it’s something that pulls my interest, or something I care about, I tend to react strongly. I do not lie when I say, I do quietly enjoy my time on the server, despite the things I’ve said. Now what I wanted to bring up is we need to start focusing on is more activity with the community, we need to find a means to reinvigorate the staff and higher-ranking individuals who have lost interest or is tired of Zombie Survival in general. A lot of the members got there for good reasons, most of them do care despite the contrary reactions they often have on the server. And one of the ways I was thinking about was a modification to the current standing rules of the server. This is probably the hardest part of all of this, finding the right balance between leniency and strictness. Now one of the key things I wanted to look at is zombies doing anything other than actively helping the team. This is arguably one of the biggest issues when you’re playing as a zombie, especially on low population. The zombies tend to get disorganized and choose to act more friendly towards the humans, or flat out ignore them. At one point, a recently banned player that went by Phooogie, was no joke, leading the zombie team in a RPing session in the middle of a round, leaving only the bosses to do any of the actual work and ultimately ruining the match for the players that wanted to play the game as intended. There’s nothing wrong with people having fun, talking about different things, or even goofing around, but there are far better ways to go about it. Not to mention, it’s entirely possible for players to be able to shoot the shit, and play the game as usual. One of the reasons we added groups was for that purpose; so, players can talk amongst themselves to ensure it doesn’t disrupt the flow of gameplay. We need a policy, if not already in place, that bars zombies from being friendly or neutral. Zombies should be attacking the cade or actively hunting humans to ensure the game mode doesn’t lose what little competitive nature the mode already has. Another point I wanted to bring up, is about Human players giving out false commands. Many could argue with me all day long on this topic, because “the players have a choice to follow it” or “if they fall for it, they’re gullible.” To put it simply, that’s Elitism. You’re basically saying at that point, “So what if they’re new to this or are unfamiliar with ZS, if they listen to the assholes screaming out troll commands, that’s on them and only them.” That is quite frankly a complete Neanderthal way of thinking about troll/ false commands. I’ve seen too many times players being led to their deaths or being told to basically walk into a deathtrap, to artificially inflate the amount of points those kinds of players can earn and to access higher tier weapons early on. In my opinion, stuff like that shouldn’t be tolerated in any setting, and should be aggressively dealt with. It’s only going to get worse if left unchecked and unregulated. It’s the norm at this point, a meme you can say, to do such things. Even the mods have participated in this behavior, only enforcing the idea that this is in any way acceptable. It’s not, it should be frowned upon, not praised. That’s what creates the Elitism attitudes, and that’s what creates the real toxic players. I pale in comparison to the venom they can produce. Sure, they can keep their little cade a secret still, no one has to know, we have settings in place so people can hide their resupply and arsenal crates from wall spy already, and it’s a matter of keeping it hush, hence why we have the group chats in the first place. I’ve seen a lot of people ask for it, and recently I seen a post on the forums about it, we need weekly events. Yes, we had that Sunday/Saturday thing we used to do, but I personally think that idea that was up there, would be perfect for the server. The server for the most part, even at its lowest, gets at least 30 players. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it empty, unless it crashes hard. We need people to ultimately feel as if we care, so in turn, they start caring. I’m not saying that we should have to bend over and let the player base go to town, rather, meet them halfway so we can get more activity on the forums. Because for the most part, unless it’s a hot topic, or it’s actively advertised, I don’t see too much activity for polls or any sort of requests or suggestions. Most posts are made by members of HG, or by people who hold a passion for the server that sit outside of HG. More communication and chances for players to interact with HG, and HG to interact with them in turn, will strengthen the player base, and may win over tougher customers. There is power in unity after all. I think I’ve said all I could here. Not much else I can say or suggest, besides maybe read some of my previous suggestion posts and give your thoughts. I want to hear what others think and see some actual input. Because without input, without interaction, without heart; the server will become hollow. It will slowly fade, and eventually, disappear like a dandelion ripped apart by the wind. If anyone takes the time to read all of this, I truly thank you, and want to hear your opinion on this. We need a more active community, and we need more interaction in general. Otherwise, this will all become nothing but a distant memory.