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WinterMute

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    An Open, Constructive Platform Discussing The Current Issues Within Ahoyworld

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    This has diverged significantly from the actual point and has definitely lost the constructive and mature vibe that @Xwatt was going for (easily forgotten, 18 months-ish later).

     

    If people weren't truly part of the community, then there is no point complaining about "losing" them, or them being "recruited" away, because they were never part of the community, right? You can't both have problems with people not joining in and simultaneously declare they've never been part of the community. 

     

    As for monitoring people's activity in other places, that's just really weird. Not singling anyone in particular out for this, as I know a number of people were doing it, seemingly long after everyone else considered this issue dead and buried. I would rather they had put this effort into actively promoting AW in places such as /r/FindAUnit and on Twitter etc, as unfortunately Arma 3 is an old game, and only new players find communities via the server browser. AW's strength has always been the sense of community and friendship that is centred around Arma, though ends up going in myriad directions with other games being played long into the night until people remember they have "real lives" to wake up for in the morning and they should probably get going. There are subgroups within AW, but by and large we could all get along enough to make a decent game of Arma happen 9 times out of 10.

     

    I implore you all, as the unintentional centre of this storm, to stop taking this stuff personally and to - more broadly speaking - just communicate properly. My decision to play with another group was not personal, it was simply practical (I don't like Arma that goes outside of the range of "modern history to near-future", and there was a Star Wars campaign happening, so I had an Arma day free.). My decision to become far less involved in the community has been mostly a result of people taking this kind of thing personally, and feeling like people were observing me and taking notes constantly. It left me feeling like there was no place in AW where I could continue as I always had been without someone in the room waiting for me to slip and say something that definitively broke a rule, just because they'd taken it personally. Hell, if they weren't in the room, it felt like they would be monitoring who was in the same room as me and that in itself would be a crime.

     

    Soon after I started playing with this group, I let @MidnightRunner know, in case there was any issue from a staff PoV. He let me know there isn't, and that other people in AW play with other groups and that's alright (and I know that eg. @Norris was aware of at least one such other group and was fine with it) . As soon as anyone had taken any sort of issue with it, eg. discord rich presence, or that I'd streamed some games with them, etc, they were more than free to just ask me about it, and they'd have found me just saying "I want to play Arma set around nowish, with people who do things differently to us, to see if I can improve how I play Arma as I've only played it with you guys", and we'd have been sorted. 

     

    tl;dr: It's nothing personal, AW needs to play to its strengths to attract new players. All Arma communities cycle through players, but the ones that survive or grow replace them by attracting new ones. You've got a really fucking gorgeous unique mission that I strongly believe that people need to know about - Frontlines. It deserves to be up there with Antistasi and Liberation in the lists of co-op game modes people should play. You've also got the DCS players that really have something good to push forwards with as well. I'm sure that there is plenty of good stuff for AW to be doing rather than shouting angrily at an 18 month year old thread.

     

    @SiegeSix - there are better places to start the discussion on CS activity than in a thread dedicated to a different topic.

    An Open, Constructive Platform Discussing The Current Issues Within Ahoyworld

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    This has been a really long month for those of us embroiled in this directly. I do not appreciate the peanut gallery and backseat drivers for making this needlessly more complex, and I am immensely sad that people who I respect immensely have made the decision to leave the staff team. I feel this has made Ahoyworld measurably weaker, but I implore you to not be strangers.

     

    I think that no staff are above scrutiny and I willingly have presented CS many records of past events in the belief that truth will out and that they can only act on complete information.

     

    This information is not available to people below CS by design. Nobody below the CS grade has the full information - not even the person that made the report or the people who were reported. I can happily inform you that the first notification I had to say that I was reported was after action had already been taken against me. This is not our procedure here.

     

    This thread has revealed some incredibly incorrect information that is being repeated as truth. This is only possible if people have been discussing something without the full information and allowed it to prejudice them. If this incorrect information was actually correct, then some of the conclusions that people have arrived at would be correct. However...

     

    Objective and impartial due process is all that matters when making decisions as a moderator. If we start moderating based on gut feelings we lose the ability to function as a community where people feel safe to have different personalities and are all interesting as individuals - and this is one of the big draws of Ahoyworld. The community is fantastic.

     

    I am disappointed that some people with concerns did not make efforts to make them known as soon as they became concerned. Your watchful inaction meant there was more to blow up when things eventually went wrong. I do not know if things would have gone better if the CS reaction to the report had been more comprehensive before a decision was made, but what's done is done.

     

    I have also thanked Artemis for her report, as I want to foster a culture where we are all accountable for our actions. Nobody that submits a report that they feel is for the betterment of Ahoyworld can or should be blamed for what happens as a consequence of that report, and I am completely confident that she had Ahoyworld's best interests at heart.

     

    I am not going to bear grudges from this, and I will be happy to see any of you in TS or in game.

     

    In the spirit of communication, my DMs are open, either here or on discord.

    AWE POLL: Arma DLC Ownership

    in Enhanced Server Information And Discussion

    Posted

    This poll runs for 1 week! Please take a few moments to find out what DLC you have and vote here. Pick every option that applies.

     

    We have traditionally avoided missions that will require DLC to be purchased. There's been a few things that need DLC, but primarily we've used mods on AWE.

     

    Some of the DLC content is very nice, and we want to know how many people have it! This will help mission makers get an idea of whether it's worth making a mission that will use DLC content (mostly thinking maps, but who knows!)

     

    Knowledge is power.

    [Tweak] Adjust ACE Medical

    in Approved

    Posted

    2m30 seems like a good cardiac arrest time. Long enough for a team to pull together and get you back up, but not so long that you get bored in a mascas where nobody can get you back up. We would need to consider the effect on the vortex role as reinserts will be less often (hopefully!) and so that role would need to expand to keep it entertaining - maybe it would become light CAS - in vanilla Arma terms, changing the role from flying Ghosthawks and Hummingbirds to flying Orcas and Hellcats.

     

    Surgical kits are weird at the moment - medics typically carry one (because it's not a commonly used item, it's not worth carrying more than one) and when they are used, they just stop the stitching process before the kit gets consumed (because they only carry one!). I think this change would justify their use far more and make "the quiet bit between engagements" a more useful time for getting healed up and repacking mags etc, than it currently is, where you can get a bit bored.

    Heavy Armament Abuses -Denied-

    in The Ideas Box

    Posted

    There is no way of enforcing this kind of rule that doesn't involve significant human intervention, as automating is it not feasible.

     

    There are people (anyone with Zeus) who can tweak the balance of gameplay, without making it a formal rule, by providing a threat to tanks etc that normal AI won't do. (Though if they are crafting a mission somewhere, they may not do so, but you will have access to a handcrafted mission very soon after so it's swings and roundabouts :D )

     

    An organised infantry squad (hell, organised individuals even) on-server can also choose to communicate with heavy-weapons users to help them target things that are preventing the organised infantry from advancing into positions that force the heavy weapons user to cease fire.

    Operation Bugout 27/12/2020 @ 19:00 UTC

    in Events

    Posted

    For the sake of keeping this thread on topic of useful mission feedback to the mission creator I am not going to comment on player actions (that I mostly didn't witness) in it. I know that our attack on that BTR was somewhat forced by circumstance and I didn't have any helpful ideas in that instant so don't worry - not slagging you off @SiegeSix when I commented on that decision. It was Alpha's only mistake imho. Considering the 90 other decisions you made that Op, not bad going!

    Operation Bugout 27/12/2020 @ 19:00 UTC

    in Events

    Posted

    Not entirely sure how I survived that without taking a single bullet - either from a Russian or from one of our circular firing squads around the digger-anomaly.

     

    I enjoyed that, though personally I am not a fan of anomalies and stuff in a pseudo-realistic setting - but I was semi-expecting them because a) that image, b) I had an error message about something not loading "toxic sound" or something, and the mod set... (I would like all ops to include those mods just so that we can't second guess when we might want to have a zombie/alien op tbh)

     

    Had a lot of fun in Alpha, we worked well. Some interesting decisions ("let's concentrate fire on a BTR gun with our 5.56 rifles" 🤣) but the mission kept us busy, moving around, plenty of enemies to shoot and lovely ambient noises.

    Operation Sidestep 18/12/2020 @ 19:00 UTC

    in Events

    Posted

    Well, that was an interesting one from my perspective. First time going Vortex for an Enhanced op so thanks for people being patient with me.

     

    This is pretty much what happened from my end (hmm this is actually a bit of a novel):

    Spoiler

    Initial inserts went ok. I didn't properly set down on first landing and might have squeaked a bit but no harm done overall. The heli was stable until the passenger weight dropped (from dismounts) and it started to move. Second insert I spotted a wide open LZ that was covered in little rocks that I didn't want to get tangled up on. I went for a low hover, I am not sure but I think the intent of the passengers was to fast rope. Well, they got down ok, I don't think there were any injuries from the jump down but I was concerned about it.

     

    Then me and Chicken took 1 chopper and hovered off the west coast to try and get some intel on the ground situation. A mix of fog and not wanting to be the cause of the enemy being alerted (ahem) meant we weren't super effective but managed some work.

     

    Returned to base, Chicken waited at base then with his chopper while I was tasked to take 1 insert (Who had apparently been trying to reach us, but we were the other side of the island and low level, so probably couldn't get signal.) and a load of explosives over. That went entirely unspectacularly, which is perfect really.

     

    Then we sat back at base for quite a while (this bit was quite boring, but it was nice listening to the radio and watching the map, and I expect this kind of thing as a support element. Also, I did not want to be making loud noises near the island...) waiting for reinserts, but the infantry were doing a really good job so there wasn't much to do.

     

    Then we got called in to do an extract and transport across the island. Flew in fine, waved off my first approach to the LZ. Frames went a bit to shit on the approach which unsettled me a bit. Then I came around for landing 2, I saw Chicken had got down but couldn't see where, so I tried to extend the landing into the 2nd clearing, but overextended, tried to slow down and descend too hard and entered vortex ring state. Me and Norris had a few seconds of calm contemplation of our doom, then things got a bit louder... and then went black.

     

    Then after a few minutes of people saving both of us from dying (definitely from a gameplay perspective death would have been the easier option to get me back airborne) and getting extracted so I could get a new bird from base, my internet crapped out. I was really quite annoyed as I didn't want to give the impression that I'd alt-f4'd after the crash.

     

    Internet came back quite soon, I got back in server, and had to go try doing some transport. I needed to get back on the horse really, prove to myself at least that I had both the ability to fly, and a solid internet connection. Managed the final transport across the island fine, then as I was flying away at about 10m off the sea... there was bright flash and the chopper started shaking, and my radio made weird noises. Managed to get in touch with the FAC who said they suspected a nuke went off, I confirmed I would not return until requested as they were alive.

     

    Finally the extract. @chicken_no6 and I landed nicely in formation, loved the comms between us in flight the whole op tbh, good co-ordination, and waited as people madly ran towards us and started digging in. I first had to lift the squad Norris was in, and god the chopper doesn't like having so many passengers. He heard the low rotor RPM beep and started considering swimming, but I got them back to base. Second extract was less eventful.

     

     

    Lessons for me (and anyone considering going Vortex for Enhanced, but never has😞

    1) Familiarity with the aircraft. I was flying advanced flight model, I enjoy the challenge, but I need to be aware of how the bird performs both loaded and unloaded (and you'll never catch me flying an unfamiliar aircraft with AFM on). Nearly dunking an entire squad into the sea after they survived the operation is not ideal! I think I should have skipped flying Vortex in EU1 earlier in the day and just tried things out in the editor for that time.

    2) Going around on a landing is much more time efficient than having a successful crash in the LZ, especially when it makes the entire island go "what the f was that noise?"

    3) Establish procedure for when Vortex is not at base and reinserts are needed. Either "fly within LoS of base" or "Make sure Command/FAC knows to relay requests over terrain".

    4) Don't worry, I'm changing ISP on Tuesday

     

    Feedback is appreciated, especially from anyone that flies a lot of AFM. I was lucky (?) to have @Norris in the doomed-seat for my crash, I'm sure he was wishing he could grab the controls during that! I would either like direct feedback on the mission performance or from a passenger at some point if anyone is willing.

     

    Feedback to Gambit:

    Really, really gorgeous setting. Love the map choice, the atmosphere, and after a poke around in the editor, the little setpieces that Vortex in-mission would never see like the mass grave.

    3 Vortex would have been useful - maybe have the 3rd slot available and only allow a 3rd pilot if player count exceeds n. Could probably have done the insert in 1 flight (command spread out over the 3 birds, they had spare seats with an entire squad aboard) and in the event of "emergent situations" then there is less risk of mission pace getting totally messed up. Also allows reinserts to be managed while another bird is doing observations.

    A TV back at base for when people are good at not dying. Honestly the need for stealth in this op made it sensible to have birds grounded when not absolutely necessary. I was constantly worried our observation flight would be noticed.

     

    I have not replayed a mission in my head so much for a while.

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