Dear MM

[Coconutmilk]

Dear MM,

I have been an active Soldat player since 2005-2006. I have acted as an administrator in North American Soldat communities, namely Fractured and #sna.gather; I am a former SCTFL Helper; and I created #soldat.tv, which has streamed SCTFL Playoff matches on the twitch.tv platform since around 2010/2011.

When I was first told of the Soldat Discord, I was skeptical simply because SCTFL 29 had so little activity, and I couldn't imagine anyone returning. Boy, was I wrong! manofoneway stuck to his guns, and today we have a Soldat discord that is thriving, with gathers being played every day. Old players are returning in waves to reconnect and play. We have new blood joining the gather scene. It has been very fun and exciting to see people who haven't played in 5+ years playing competitive games with new people who have been barely gathering one month.

However, we have a problem: despite rapid "grassroots" growth, and strong efforts from community leaders to bring Soldat into 2018, the "official" side of the game -- THD -- is not reciprocating. The developer you gave us, Shoozza, is unresponsive; for two months (from 2017-10-08 to 2017-12-10) the community received virtually no official communication and 0 status updates. During this period, Shoozza also severed all contact with players and made himself invisible to the community. From 2017-12-10 to the present day, communications remain extremely limited. The developer you gave us is indifferent to what the active community sees in the future of this game, both in new platforms like Discord and Steam --  and in attracting a new generation with new assets/GUI/accessibility and a new vision. The developer you gave us is disinterested in realistic initiatives proposed by community members willing and prepared to contribute for free to projects advancing Soldat -- projects which would significantly lessen Shoozza's workload and increase the quality of the final release. The developer you gave us was a bad choice. Here are just a few instances illustrating what we feel is a profound failure on Shoozza's behalf to properly manage this game's future.

Prior to this event on November 19th, Soldat gather servers and public servers were being attacked using an exploit in the server-side client. Server owners were unable to do anything to combat this attacker. Shoozza was notified immediately, and he stated his intentions to release a hotfix, but no action was taken in the short-term; these attacks continued for weeks. On the day of the event, 32+ online players were left disappointed and unable to play because of this exploit. Earlier in the very same day -- instead of working on the hotfix -- Shoozza spent hours giving detailed instructions to the Discord staff regarding reordering and renaming channels. This perplexed many of the Gather Admins and Super Admins, since, as mentioned before, Shoozza had been aware of the attacks for weeks, but chose to waste his time randomly giving orders instead of working on the game. Thankfully the DDOS attacks have stopped and a fix was introduced by Soldat server owners, however this fix has broken helpful tools such as Soldatladder.

Shoozza has also received a near-continuous stream of offers from community members who desire to work on the game. Dicko, Sting, and Helloer have all offered help in the past. Some items on their respective agendas include: reviving the beta team and providing a project manager, bugfixes and netcode improvements, and development of a stable anticheat (since we cannot afford to pay for BattlEye anymore). However, Shoozza has turned everyone away. I am by no means an expert, but brushing off Dicko (whose real-life career is in game dev QA) seems more than foolish when we are a MONTH past release with no updates as to any sort of timeline. We also have spent years without an anticheat. Y E A R S.
This is the current list of banned hackers.
These are two (relatively) recent SCTFL finals that have been ruined by hackers.

Considering the competitive scene is a dedicated, MAJOR force in this game's survival, this is a pretty poor way to treat your community. We -- the competitive scene -- play Soldat because it offers something no other shooter offers. A fast paced shooter, where movement and aim are both required to reach the top. People have so many different styles of playing, and employ different tactics, from fast paced attacking to slow defending. What ruins this is when any person can get hacks off the internet and completely negate any hard work these players have put in to their game. It leaves a bitter taste in their mouth. We aren't asking for a VAC style anticheat, we understand and accept that we don't have the money and resources to obtain such a program. However, when you turn away Helloer, a person willing to try and create an anticheat that will catch the most public of hacks, it brings a major concern to many minds. Is your ego more important than the health of the game and community that has stuck by it for years? Not to mention the lost work on the native Linux/Mac versions.

If QB and DarDar can have a semblance of a relationship in trying to find the perfect WM for the next Soldat version, why can't Shoozza maintain a relationship with anyone who has attempted to help Soldat. Quit your beefing with Helloer, it's 2018.

The fact that Shoozza did some of the least work out of all the developers is telling. He was removed for a reason. Why is one of the people with the least amount of work done in charge?

As of today (1/23/2018), Shoozza has yet to rejoin the Soldat Discord. When he was here, he was inactive, treated players with contempt, and had no interest in what the staff said or suggested. He would randomly come online, make demands regarding how to run the discord and regarding how the community should behave, then abruptly leave. Speaking for the community, we have been this way for years. Yes we are toxic, yes we do flame each other, players who have played this game for years. We poke fun and banter with each other. However, we do have rules set in place for newer players; we do not aggressively flame new players. Players who violate this principle are punished or warned by gather admins. We understand we are not the best community on earth, but without us, this game would be much weaker -- and its chances for survival even lower. When Shoozza does things such as trying to eliminate all swear words from Discord, it shows how not only out of touch he is with the community, but how he uses his power for unnecessary things. Instead of fixing/developing the game, he wastes his time trying to change the gather community.

When Steam release does eventually come, we understand that this is the only chance we will get to bring new players from pubs into gathers, and hopefully into the clan scene. We want the days back where we had 100+ clans in SCTFL, all competing and having fun. With Steam release, we are hopeful for a little Soldat renaissance, with more old players returning and more new players coming in to give the game a shot. We have great momentum now, with 1,016 members in the Soldat discord.

The steam release was delayed to (end of) January but considering progress on my part and on the trailer/art I wouldn't necessary bet on it :/
I'm currently struggling to open up enough quality free time to make development progress in a pace that doesn't disappoint me and everyone else.

It's almost like a one man dev team can't do it all.

If things don't change, all this momentum will go down the drain. We will never have another season of SCTFL, old players that have come back will be crestfallen by the same-old stagnation, and the Steam release will be a flop. The game that was on its deathbed years ago will go back into the grave. I gave Shoozza weeks before I posted this to see if anything would change. Nothing did.

Please make the right choice.

Sincerely,
Coconutmilk
The People's Champion
Best Caster NA and EU

[Ricrylonten]

Thank you for voicing these anxieties and problems with where Soldat is right now. The People's Champion fights for all the PEOPLE of Soldat who are disillusioned with the current state of development. We can create a better future for this game, but things need to get back on the right track. I'm afraid that only MM can help us there.

[Shinobars]

The switch from IRC to Discord was one of the most controversial decisions in Soldat history. Most old players thought it would only splinter the community further, while bringing in no new blood. Yet the switch to Discord - and the amazing work put in by those who run it - is definitively one of the best choices made in this game's history. Gathers haven't been this active in ages.

It would be a shame to waste this momentum.

+1 for collaboration among peers.
+1 for camaraderie between the old players and the new.
+1 for the the people's champ.

[ginn]

If anyone should've been approached for steam release, it should've been Helloer.
From an outside perspective, Falcon appeared to do fine. Seemingly he did take a break, which did upset Helloer who had put in a lot of effort.

Falcon does seem to be much more approachable, and willing to cooperate. I can't see how either Helloer or Falcon is a worse option than Shoozza.
The person in "power" now, seem to be more concerned about being in power, rather than actually doing what's best for soldat (developing it in this case). However, that goes for a lot of soldats community. Some people are more in it for the power, the power to ban whoever they dislike, or decide things for soldat only for the reason that it's they who decide, rather than what's best for the community and the game.

As somebody who was banned for 5 years for flaming (originally permanent, but after 4.5 years it was reduced), as a teenager, from #soldat.gather, and then banned from #sna.gather and #na.gather for "obvious hacking" and "suspicious play". I think these permanent bans, and the length of the bans are excessive.
I believe a lot of the people who are banned now are banned for something they did half a decade ago, usually when they were mid teens, or have done now in their teens. To ban these individuals permanently for various reasons is just cruel (offenses that more liked people get away with), complete lack of empathy. In the cases of flaming, options such as muting could be explored.
I don't believe these people are fit to be admins, and whoever owns the discord channel should consider redistributing the admin power. Anyone can afford hosting the servers, it's something like 10euro a month, that is a non-issue when it comes to distributing the admin power.
This does include ricr, as he's one of the admins who have previously banned me for no reason, other than contempt. I can't quite tell who more, because I can't see the full admin list atm. I believe there's a fair few more who shouldn't have admin power.

If QB and DarDar can have a semblance of a relationship in trying to find the perfect WM for the next Soldat version

This unfortunately isn't happening. As for now, the extent seem to be going to is simply to avoid open hostility. Of course, I could be wrong, darDar could is just be too busy to answer messages, over a week or so.
As known, my opinion is, if he's too busy it would likely be better to leave it up to somebody else. This isn't a position which has been assigned by expertise, nor experience.

[Yumpy]

+1 I completely agree. Well said and written my friend!

[sumich]

This is soldat's last hurrah, this is the time in our epic history that we stand together and put aside bad blood for the good of the whole. Soldat means more to people than some are even willing to admit, it has impacted peoples lives in ways that other games cannot possibly. I have been playing the game in no lower than 216 ping often 50% of the time at 333 for 6 years, longer than i played it in glorious 30 ping sinply because nothing compares to this game, i would rather grind away like water against a stone at a game this amazing in 216 ping than any modern game that i can achieve 5 in; and lastly To not use the rich wealth of knowledge skill and expertise within the community of players that is being offered freely to us is absurd. Please for the love of the beautiful game you created MM, please make the right decision and help us.

god bless the peoples champ and god bless soldat.

[Akinaro]

Shoozza is not good choose for dev, but also not bad. He is not perfect at all, but messing with Soldat code is not like playing with Unity or UE engine, it need some self-denial to probably even start working with it... But still in those past YEARS, Soldat was under his hand and its obvious that in those YEARS Soldat should be WAY better optimized and prepared to evolve to something better.
Its, also true that he have no fricking idea how to cooperate with community and his workflow remind cat that dont know if he should sleep or take a nap, but he is not alone, Falcon was even worst at that(For both of them any negative comment or complain is "drama" or "hate speech")
Helloer is asshole, but somehow in a good way, so It was a bit sad that he was "not compatible" with soldat development that grow up for past years. And that lazy soldat development is a reason why no one really want to really get to the work with it. Soldat right now is filled with old players who "want changes" but "dont want changes". All those people who are still here, would rather play their private gathers, cry about WM, but dont really change anything.

I write about it many time, and I got bored by repeating it over and over. So I just say that once again in simple way:
-Soldat is not a game, its summer project of few friends. It will never rise up or even hit Steam properly because no one here treat it like a game.
-There is no proper marketing for it(no proper advertising no, fanbase communication, no system for supporting game via donations or patreon). Even 5 bucks a month is good way to spend on advertising.
-There is no proper development structure: Its basically one man job for most of time, and dev team almost always put big work to one man shoulders, like for example graphic and map making. Instead of separating it to smaller jobs and ask community for help.
-There is no one here who would encourage community to help, focus on getting new players, not nurse old players who will complain about even smallest changes.
-Dev team dont even consider getting help from outside(because they would do it long time ago). There is lots of people with experience who would like to put such game in their portfolio, even for free. Especially graphic aspect of game could be done by now. But they prefer getting one men(eg Monsteri) and ask him to do all work.


Overall, Soldat is F up, mostly because job that devs want to do now, should be made YEARS ago.
Its not like Soldat is year old, Devs had FRICKING YEARS to prepare optimize soldat and prepare it for new era. YEARS....
MM as author of Soldat also really suck at his job, Soldat have HUGE potential, and he just literally dump it. He dont really cared much about state of it, He didnt really direct dev team to move forward, to focus on making game better for new players that have their needs. because market is saturated with games, first minute of playing decide about everything, and even amazing gameplay of Soldat cant really fix first first impression: "the hell is that?!".

[Petterkowski]

This is the current list of banned hackers.
These are two (relatively) recent SCTFL finals that have been ruined by hackers.

[...]

However, when you turn away Helloer, a person willing to try and create an anticheat that will catch the most public of hacks, it brings a major concern to many minds.

The list is kind of incomplete. This is what actually HAPPENED during last SCTFL season when Helloer run his test version of his own antihack detecting public hacks. As you can see above, the banlist involved a wide range of players, most of whom advanced into playoffs. Luckily for the staff, Helloer's basic AC caught them a week before playoffs kicked off. I think i don't have to mention that those players would have probably hacked their way into the finals if it hadn't been for Helloer. so yeah.. that pretty much sums up the current situation and what we have to deal with.

And yeah, i agree with COCO, all these promises.. this is frustrating. Let this game develop to its full potential finally, god damn. I think MM doesn't even realise that this game is a hidden gold that is kept away from being discovered for some reason. I still think Soldat can be a big success

[CheeSeMan.]

I agree with COCO =)

If you can't deliver then just release source code and we will find out own developer.

[koooka]

100% agree with Coco

#MAKESOLDATGREATAGAIN

[soldat-game]

True True True Shoozza is very bad

Shoozza is not good choose for dev, but also not bad. He is not perfect at all, but messing with Soldat code is not like playing with Unity or UE engine, it need some self-denial to probably even start working with it... But still in those past YEARS, Soldat was under his hand and its obvious that in those YEARS Soldat should be WAY better optimized and prepared to evolve to something better.

Ohhh true!!! I watched how soldat lost its popularity and the optimization has worsened ... I'm not talking here about FPS...

[soldat-game]

How control hackers if player join to server player download weapon.mod and load mod. But this be end. Hackers can change download weapon mod and next can use modify weaponmod.
Player can also create simple radar hack change download bariable realistic = from soldat ini. Soldat decect this if player have variable change all time but if he set variable to last orgial value. I know how to do a simple antycheat, for 97% popular hack beyond anti aimbot. Players will be able to do a bypass but it will be for really skilled hackers.

The biggest problem is no start time, no bink, and no movement. All "pro players barrett" using this...

[Mayhem]

I've never say bad word to devs but it is just too much. Shoozza gave as a hope and some concrete informations about steam release date and then just dissapeared. There is nothing worse than it. I can understand that people may not have time for work like this but then, why you even agreed to become a devteam leader? If you can't manage to do these few things which you mentioned in to do list then please just leave it to somebody else. Coco did more by writing this post than you for a last few months. What are we waiting for atm? For MM's post about trailer competition? And then next year till somebody do it? Or there are more important things? But please dont tell us that some "bad things happens beyond the scene"

[DutchFlame]

Unfortunately everything that has been said right here in this topic is the hard truth.
We've waited waited and waited all of these years to reach a mountaintop. That tiny sparkling hope of getting what we all what.
SOLDAT in it's best form with a huge community finalized with great visuals and gameplay.

We as community have been let down so many times that it's actually unbelievable post like these still need to be made.
What drives us to do this? what has happened all these years that we're actually still caring about this game?
Have we gone insane? the thing we want is it impossible..? are we over our heads?

Why are we still here?

Questions like these should tell you enough.

The fact that so many people come back after the small invented change of getting gathers back up proves we're still all over this game. WE NEVER LEFT!

I'm not going to be some kind of riddle-man over here, but if any of those questions still have any value to you then please make a final decision about how you want this game to move forward OR put an end to it.
It is ridiculous to see that some people still deliver hard work for this game to keep it flowing and not giving up but with what end? We're being promised things and what do we get in return?

Don't waste our time and effort.

[Akinaro]

Also its good to mention that: Yes its free work in devs free time. But if someone accept to work with it he should do 100% in that free time he decided to work.
Not to mention that we talk here about years, even if someone would spend hour of work per week on it, soldat should be in WAY BETTER condition that its now. That tell us that for past years someone just screw things up.

If you know that you can barely spend time working on it. Leave it. It would be better to have no development than never ending comedy like we have now.

Also(Im saying this again) no one from devs treat it as proper game but some weekend project to mess with. If someone would have balls long time ago, when there is lots of people here ready to help, we would have proper dev team separated to do their jobs, everything would be clear and public available so people could discuss it.
There would be donation/patreon that would gather money for advertising/help.
There would be Open topic where devs would just ask for help doing contests to make stuff for game, and there would be willingness to get help in work from other places than players.


Also prepare for typical closing topic: DONT DO DRAMA.
Sorry, this is not drama, this is reality.
No one here should act like some CNN saint person calling every negative thing "hate speech" or "drama". Just deal with it and defend what you did.

[vinteek]

Everything Coco has said is the truth. Every game is being kept alive by it's competetive scene, also there are in fact games where developers work with and ask competetive scene for tips, because they are the factor that drives more and more people to play such game and become good at it. Soldat has been lacking significant changes for ages. Moving to discord was a good decision that in longer term would allow new players to step into competetive gameplay way more easly than it was with mIRC.

Being a part of competetive scene for ages now I have never felt that we, as a whole, had ever been listened to if it came to changing something in the game. Weapon mode was getting easier and easier each version and if it were not for my bad PC then I'd do the same what many people did - I'd leave. People don't spend hours, some days, some of us even years to become good at some game just to be forced to adapt to changes. No game ever does that. If they would change a pattern of recoil in CS GO the game competetive scene would probably ragequit and game itself would stop making money. Yes it is a way for the new players to step up but imho they should step up by training hard to adjust to what the game has been all the time. By changing something such crucial as is weapon mode you're only risking a drop of activity because old players might not like it and new players would play the game otherwise, wanting to adjust to competetive scene.

I know I'm not tolerated by many players due to my history with hacking, but I started to play this game in december 2007 and got caught hacking in november 2008. Since then I've been working my ass of in polish and international scene to catch as many hackers as I could. Players who might confirm that are no longer active unfortunately. However my doings are not the subject here. What I want to say is that Coco is right. I'm not into Soldat these days since the game lost it's appeal to me but if the fact that Shoozza rejected help in making an anticheat then I'm trully concerned if there is even a point of brining this game on Steam. It will be cool for several days, weeks, perhaps even months, but then it will cause a backlash, new players that will come up with Steam will quit as soon as they find out that this game will never have working anticheat. They will rate this game and the word will get out that downloading this game has no sense.

Hacking is the huge factor when it comes to Soldat being a decent game but not the highest. The thing that drove many of us insane and costed us so many nerves that we can no logner count it is hits. As far as I know this is the only game I have played in my entire life in which shooting player desn't actually mean we hit. I don't know how does it work exactly, if bullets are not registered to hit target or it's due to latency (ping) but I think it's just poorly coded. Back then when I stated to play this game in 1.4.2 there were no such things like surviving 3 nades, boosting yourself out of 3 nades or surviving your own m79 boost that went directly under your feet. As it game grew older the hits were worse and worse each damn version. The official version of why we (Insomnia) have lost SCTFL21 is due to M4ro hacking (I'd bet he wasn't the only one, Morvan, Wanted, Skuwer hacked too) but to be honest with you guys even them hacking couldn't stop us to win on that day. We knew from the start that the match was going to be very very hard since we all knew that M4ro and Skuwer were hacking and we had to face them. We managed to win 2 out of 4 maps and we got robbed of our victory or even a chance to play another map because of one fucking hit that made me quit this game forever (I did play it after but I never did it seriously from that point). Morvan was rushing top on Ash, we were all dead or smth (cant remember and there are no demos/streams to watch) but we did managed to throw 3 grenades on the flagspot. Clearly this wasn't enough for him to boost himself so he threw another 2 nades and got boosted top with half HP left. The hacks didn't cost us the win, the hit did. However I do not think it is entirely based on online gaming. I do remember hits playing vs. bots when I tested some shots with law/barret.

That being said we have to do few things in order to get this game playable again.
1. Take away Shoozza dev and give it to someone who actually cares. If no, make it open source so we can do this ourselves.
2. Fix hits or atleast if it is not possible make them less noticable, more rare. I do understand a chances of it happening playing EU vs NA when there is actually a big difference in ping but EU vs. EU should never happen.
3. Make any anticheat that will stop public hacks. Make some kind of permission for someone who will not play competetivly to search for hacks, test them offline, then online on designated server and report them so they can be stopped.
4. On this one we all have to focus and find out the solution. If we want Soldat to live long and well and become a golden that it trully might be, we must think of some way to make devs earn real money on it. Without money they can act like Shoozza and treat it like they playground for dumbest ideas. Microtransactions are golden when it comes to games. But given the fact we have graphics that would be of no use for microtransactions we have to come up with another idea. Ads in main manu, small ones, premium pass to block them. Possibility to buy (not rent) your own server and set it up however you want, option to rent servers if you cant afford to buy it. Add in game refferences to SCTFL since it's the longest living league community and it deserved to be called Soldat Official League. Add levels symstems which will give you nothing but opportunity to brag about it, make it possible to buy passes for getting xp quicker.
5. By using gathered money buy some prizes or find sponsors for them. Small ones like headphones/keyboards/mouses/pendrives/mousepads/servers or anything you thing is better. Use those to make people play your league/cup. Of course if it would be active we old fags would play it regardless of prizes just to show again who is the best.
6. Create official twitch/youtube channel for all the events. Create something like best  moments of the day/week/month yt movies. Encourage players to stream gathers/public games/event games because this is what people like about watching streams. To learn from it. Also use the donations if they will occure to support point 5.
7. Delete Rambomatch/Pointmatch.
8. Create cups/leagues using 2v2 and 3v3 format.
9. Make more maps or bring all those that you've rejected like Maya/Mayapan/Equinox and remake them so they can be playable.

It is a lot of work to do but if you want this game to be successful and even make some money (who knows). I do love this game for the time I spent with it and the people I met with whom I still have contact regardless thay are not playing it anymore neither do I. But it has been really painful to watch something with such potentail led to waste by some who doesn't care about it.

Cheers.

[jrgp]

I think it'd be a nice idea to cut Shoozza some slack here. Because of the community's reactions, he essentially has the weight of the world on his shoulders with little to no encouragement.

Also, it should be worth pointing out that despite no new releases/bugs being fixed, the discord gather community has been thriving.

I'm trying to not engage in drama or mudslinging and remain positive, because there are positives.

[homerofgods]

Shoozza is not the problem. He is doing this for free and for the love of the game, you guys are killing his love for the community and with it his will to do anything.
You think that he should work 100% on Soldat because he agreed to be lead developer, but I say doing something is better than doing nothing!

Have you noticed how much stuff the community actually asks for? I think some of you are self-centered, but just try to imagine for a moment that you would implement all the suggestions the community asks for through various forums, private messages and chat programs, while simultaneously deal with hackers, flamers, banning, urgent issues, updates, reading various forums, questions and discussions. I could go on trying to come up with all the tasks Shoozza has but you get the point.

However, I agree with you on one thing. Since the community obviously want bigger things for soldat than any one man can deliver for free, we should definitely ask MM to consider investing more into making soldat a grate game. I see plenty of old games making its way back to popularity, and with MM's current status as a game developer it shouldn't be too hard for him to find the right people for the job? I think ideally Shoozza should be working with soldat doing whatever he wants to do under a paid developer.

[Ekscalibur]

Dears,

I have 2 questions regarding to topic

I'used to be host servers back in 2008-2010 and I was taking care of another servers besides my own ones as an admin.Because at that time we really needed it when most people were hacking.Now after a long time later I have heard you still have these issues again. How come nothing changed in 8 years? (1)

If  we talk about the community it used to very active and right know i only see some old players but some of them not rest.Of course flaming had a huge effect upon the people who gave up and if you know it why are you still flaming each other?  (2)

(does not matter old or new people flame is a flame )

My last humble words ,,

I also strongly believe that MM doesn't care about Soldat. When we needed MM he was not there , the community there yet this whole topic proves it. In my opinion he doesn't care community he cares about money and reputation. Most of the people knows  that's why  they don't give him a oppurtunity. Yes something needs to be change and its MM.

Most of us as admins had years of experience in administrating. We had our server monitoring program, we had MSAC, we had the server logs. When someone used hacks, we detected it but after some time most of the people used hacks or 3rd party programmes so we just gave up because no one made a solution ( yet someone refused to pay money to Battleye ). People just got fed up of this hackers and gave up the soldat.

Kind Regards.

-Former admin of the public comat's servers
-Former admin of the pks's all servers
-Former admin of the tr and sk servers
-Former admin of some bazooka's servers
-Former admin of knife mode's servers


edit : I personally don't blame shoozza.

edit 2 : Shame on you MM!

edit 3 : Here's the list

Akinaro Criticizing Soldat Developer Team
Coco Yells for Help
Petter Explains Hacking Situation in SCTFL Community
DutchFlame Stands for Coco
Akinaro Predicts Why Topic Will Be Closed
Good Suggests with an Explanations by Vinteek
verbeia has no idea
Amazing Post Written by DarDar

[ginn]

Shoozza is not the problem. He is doing this for free and for the love of the game, you guys are killing his love for the community and with it his will to do anything.
You think that he should work 100% on Soldat because he agreed to be lead developer, but I say doing something is better than doing nothing!

Have you noticed how much stuff the community actually asks for? I think some of you are self-centered, but just try to imagine for a moment that you would implement all the suggestions the community asks for through various forums, private messages and chat programs, while simultaneously deal with hackers, flamers, banning, urgent issues, updates, reading various forums, questions and discussions. I could go on trying to come up with all the tasks Shoozza has but you get the point.

However, I agree with you on one thing. Since the community obviously want bigger things for soldat than any one man can deliver for free, we should definitely ask MM to consider investing more into making soldat a grate game. I see plenty of old games making its way back to popularity, and with MM's current status as a game developer it shouldn't be too hard for him to find the right people for the job? I think ideally Shoozza should be working with soldat doing whatever he wants to do under a paid developer.

He made a deal with MM, to kick Falcon as dev leader, and to make Shoozza dev leader. Now he's completely ignoring his position.
If he did not want to do this work he should not have made that deal with MM.