Toxic ingame community will be the death of spring.

[brainfart]

There is a serious problem with bullying. A lot of us play spring to kick back and have fun. Outrageous levels of silliness is normal but in this case it descends into pure malice. The auto hosts are heavily abused by a clique of experienced players to bully people that are new or haven't been playing for a while or regularly. I've gone from being in the position of this needs more people I should try to help with that to this is not a game I would recommend people play because the established players are abusive and you wont have a pleasant time. Why would I invite someone new if I know they are going to be treated like shit?

This is a serious put off for anyone new to the game or returning. I don't have much free time and there's sometimes only one main game running. This game is dying because of a lack of new blood and the community is contributing to that. If you ban someone from the main autohost you pretty much deprive them of being able to play at all much of the time. I just finished work after some ridiculous tasks such as fixing a program with a hex editor because someone lost the source code and have a bit of spare time to play just a few games and the first thing into the game there is nothing but a flurry of abuse.

Recently I got banned from the main autohost because a core clique of regular players insist on harassing other players to the point that they can't play. It's not purely an autohost abuse problem. It's that you've allowed out of the few remaining holdouts a small group of people that are an exclusionary ingroup to dominate what's left of the ingame community.

You don't get any kind of reasonable attitudes or negotiation anymore. You just have players ganging up and demanding you go on this start spot or use this strategy declaring themselves all powerful and superior because of things like TS which some players really don't care about. It's no longer a cooperative game.

Other players keep screaming down my ear to do things and being really malicious in a number of ways. On one map someone took all of my mexes when I started a bit forward but with no chance of expansion leaving me with 2 mexes to his 5. These players simply wont let you just play and insist on being puppetmasters over other people. They constantly spam notices all over your base disrupting your field of thought and are never polite or reasonable. This also gets in the way of my build plan. It reaches the point you end up doing badly not because you're new but because people one your own team wont stop harassing you to the point of sabotage.

Three times now where I have had incidents in autohost where I didn't start it but because it's consensus based people just go with who or what they like. One time someone draws crap over my base and it escalates from there. Another time the player goes up an dguns me. Another time a player takes my spot after I already took it and readied then they move to kick me for it. There's a refusal to let people learn or improve. I haven't been playing much after years and years. I only just started recently. Since I started playing the levels of in game shitbaggery are greater than I have ever seen before.

I am an experienced veteran developer that might have ended up contributing to TA Spring but with this I am most likely going to instead throw in the towel and instead play supcom. I would like to keep playing but if there's constant abuse and the established players can't just play without getting in your face then it's a huge waste of time. A lot of us aren't students anymore and don't have unlimited time to throw away on bullshit like this.

You might take the position that this is not a problem for you to in anyway be engaged in but if you don't sort out this kind of abuse you're not going to have an easy time growing the community and not only will you lose players but you will lose potential contributors.

[ThinkSome]

Hello BrainFart,

There is a serious problem with bullying. A lot of us play spring to kick back and have fun. Outrageous levels of silliness is normal but in this case it descends into pure malice. The auto hosts are heavily abused by a clique of experienced players to bully people that are new or haven't been playing for a while or regularly. I've gone from being in the position of this needs more people I should try to help with that to this is not a game I would recommend people play because the established players are abusive and you wont have a pleasant time. Why would I invite someone new if I know they are going to be treated like shit?

One does not "play spring", one plays one of many games built on top of the Spring engine. Now, the issues you are having are primarily in that the lobby is heavily unmoderated or rather, autohosts/rooms are considered owner's responsibility. Until the later changes, there is not much anyone can do, especially with alleged DDoS of alternative hosters (mentioned here viewtopic.php?p=582099#p582099).

This is a serious put off for anyone new to the game or returning. I don't have much free time and there's sometimes only one main game running. This game is dying because of a lack of new blood and the community is contributing to that. If you ban someone from the main autohost you pretty much deprive them of being able to play at all much of the time. I just finished work after some ridiculous tasks such as fixing a program with a hex editor because someone lost the source code and have a bit of spare time to play just a few games and the first thing into the game there is nothing but a flurry of abuse.

You are not the only one who is busy with real life.

Recently I got banned from the main autohost because a core clique of regular players insist on harassing other players to the point that they can't play. It's not purely an autohost abuse problem. It's that you've allowed out of the few remaining holdouts a small group of people that are an exclusionary ingroup to dominate what's left of the ingame community.

You don't get any kind of reasonable attitudes or negotiation anymore. You just have players ganging up and demanding you go on this start spot or use this strategy declaring themselves all powerful and superior because of things like TS which some players really don't care about. It's no longer a cooperative game.

But the issue here lies with those players who do not care about trueskill and are playing in a competitive setting: The more an allyteam cooperates, the higher are the chances of victory. Not caring about TS basically means that you are not interested in cooperating towards winning the match and most likely means that you are not interested in making up a plan and sticking to it. Don't be suprised if you are consequently not accepted well in a competitive setting or rather, yelled at by these all powerful players. You probably meant that it is no longer a /fun/ game and you are right, it is not fun for both you and the teammates in unneeded stress because someone is their team decided to not cooperate.

This brings us back to the original problem of unmoderated lobby. If it were moderated and spectator/max player counts were sufficiently decreased, you could have simultaneous large "for fun" and "competitive" matches, possibly with separate ratings (these would still be needed for balancing).

Other players keep screaming down my ear to do things and being really malicious in a number of ways. On one map someone took all of my mexes when I started a bit forward but with no chance of expansion leaving me with 2 mexes to his 5. These players simply wont let you just play and insist on being puppetmasters over other people. They constantly spam notices all over your base disrupting your field of thought and are never polite or reasonable. This also gets in the way of my build plan. It reaches the point you end up doing badly not because you're new but because people one your own team wont stop harassing you to the point of sabotage.

One possible solution to the mex sharing problem is a shared resources system, where the income from all mexes divides evenly among all players. We practice this by default in Spring:1944.
Have you shared your build plan and general strategy with your teammates before start? I don't know what happened, but like I said above, if you are not prepared to cooperate with your team then better be prepared to get yelled at :D.

Three times now where I have had incidents in autohost where I didn't start it but because it's consensus based people just go with who or what they like. One time someone draws crap over my base and it escalates from there. Another time the player goes up an dguns me. Another time a player takes my spot after I already took it and readied then they move to kick me for it. There's a refusal to let people learn or improve. I haven't been playing much after years and years. I only just started recently. Since I started playing the levels of in game shitbaggery are greater than I have ever seen before.

Where are you, spring lobby moderators? This would clearly violate some items in the spring lobby signup agreement, no?
And again you are throwing all games into the same basket as we at Spring:1944 support newbies that wish to learn. I agree that this is not possible in larger games, but our promotional material clearly states that you should come to our channel and ask for 1v1 games / guidance / help / ... and we have paused larger games in the past to explain things to newbies. I'd guess that there are other sub-communities in the spring community that have similar attitudes as well.

I am an experienced veteran developer that might have ended up contributing to TA Spring but with this I am most likely going to instead throw in the towel and instead play supcom. I would like to keep playing but if there's constant abuse and the established players can't just play without getting in your face then it's a huge waste of time. A lot of us aren't students anymore and don't have unlimited time to throw away on bullshit like this.

Perhaps you can help in resolving the technical difficulties the above mentioned moderators might have in making spring a better place?
Such as ... https://github.com/spring/uberserver/issues/78

[Silentwings]

incidents in autohost where .... draws crap over my base .... dguns me .... takes my spot .... kick me ....

Where are you, spring lobby moderators?

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=28199

Autohosts are run by other spring users, they are not run by Spring, or Spring moderators

...

Because we do not own these servers, we do not tell those that do own those servers what rules they do/don't have to enforce. Autohosts are a service provided to you for free by other spring users, and they have the right to provide that service in whatever way they personally prefer.

[MasterBel2]

incidents in autohost where .... draws crap over my base .... dguns me .... takes my spot .... kick me ....

Where are you, spring lobby moderators?

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=28199

Autohosts are run by other spring users, they are not run by Spring, or Spring moderators

...

Because we do not own these servers, we do not tell those that do own those servers what rules they do/don't have to enforce. Autohosts are a service provided to you for free by other spring users, and they have the right to provide that service in whatever way they personally prefer.

Well could this be changed? Because the autohosts are the face of the community, essentially. And we're letting them be whatever we want? Why can't we revise the rules, notify the host owners etc, and clean up the community?

[Silentwings]

Well could this be changed?

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=36185#p582193, viewtopic.php?f=16&t=36185&start=20#p582202, etc.

[BadgerMyBadger]

brainfart this is well said and I can't understand how it falls on such deaf ears