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Dear MM

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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.


--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.


--- Quote from: Coconutmilk on January 23, 2018, 10:28:16 pm ---If QB and DarDar can have a semblance of a relationship in trying to find the perfect WM for the next Soldat version
--- End quote ---
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!

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