Improving calculatedChaos

[MrKerplunkers]

It has come to the attention of the management that there are many players and regulars that are unhappy with the current state of things in calculated Chaos. The problems I've heard have ranged from complaints about the current playerbase, poor server management, and an overall unresponsive management in general. With the forums now functioning properly, I'd like to take the time to move all discussions on this topic to this thread to make it easy to find, read, and manage.

There have been previous discussions on this in various places, such as the facebook group and steam group. (If anyone has a better way of linking to the facebook thread let me know.)

Bear in mind that this thread is not just for listing the problems but also a thread for finding solutions and volunteering to impliment them. A lot of the management has been out of touch with the server and may be unable to indentiy specific causes to many of the social problems present on the servers and will rely on trusted regulars for help on the issues as the come up. I'll keep the OP updated as we find solutions to various problems.

Now let's find a way to clean this hole in the internet up and make it presentable again.

[yuki]

I think the most agreeable change needed is a wide cleaning-up of the map list. I propose deleting all of the old, outdated versions of maps like melee forts and breakfloors and melee_checkers, etc.

In my personal opinion, I think some of the more disliked maps should be removed, too. Like koth_rainbow, and ones of similar leagues, if that makes any sense. See asylum's map list here for some more maps worthy of removal (with reasons why as well).

In a similar vein, LaN made a list of good custom maps to be added here.

[katattackk]

I think that maybe a few new high admins would be nice. We don't have very many left that still visit the server regularly. Maybe we can get votes up or something to upgrade some of the lower admins? I'm not sure how that whole process gets figured out...

[Kriegsmarine]

I think the most agreeable change needed is a wide cleaning-up of the map list. I propose deleting all of the old, outdated versions of maps like melee forts and breakfloors and melee_checkers, etc.

In my personal opinion, I think some of the more disliked maps should be removed, too. Like koth_rainbow, and ones of similar leagues, if that makes any sense. See asylum's map list here for some more maps worthy of removal (with reasons why as well).

In a similar vein, LaN made a list of good custom maps to be added here.

We should keep b5 and b6 of breakfloor and maybe put them on the nominate list.

And what about the first breakfloor that was made before arena mode? Shit was cash

[PhrozenFlame]

Travis and I have discussed this once before. calculatedChaos is either in a state utter lethargy or there's a whole bunch of shit going on on Facebook that I'm not aware of because Facebook sucks.

Now, I can't fix the Facebook issue, but I'm certainly here because I like the people more than the games. I don't really care too much for TF2 anymore (I got burned out about 500 hours ago), but I still play occasionally. A lot of people play like LoL or DoTA2 now, which I don't care too much for either.

We obviously have a strong community, so I think we should branch out. Play more multiplayer games. Maybe a free-to-play MMO? I mean, as shit as that game was, I had fun playing Dungeon Fighter Online with Doghouse and Surnem. Preferably something not Korean.

If you like Tron's lightcycles, there's a game for that. 32 player, even. If you like the hacking game Uplink, there's a fan multiplayer beta. There's a game for pretty much everything out there.

I just think we need to do more. As horrible as it is, the Bad Anime Club is... I refuse to say fun, because Jake yells too goddamn much. Right now, we're just a bunch of people who play games. Not necessarily together. This is almost like Alcoholics Anonymous for gamers. Let's just do more. Once everything's stable with the forums and we get server improvements settled, anyway.

[_Pipeline]

Aside from removing all the shitty maps, I think it's especially important that we add more good ones. LaN's list has a fuckton of good suggestions for new maps, and they've just been sitting there for months and months now. If we could restart the tradition of map play tests on a weekly or at least monthly basis, that would certainly help, I think.

Also, kat's idea for new high admins sounds interesting, but I think it's more important that we make it so that more people besides just Flamin have the ability to add new maps to the server. Billy Mayzing brought this issue up in an older thread about a year ago, and I think it deserves more attention.

[katattackk]

I also think that as well as adding/removing maps, maybe we could check and see if any of the maps we want to keep, have been updated, and maybe we can get them updated to their newest versions.

[Tampashrew]

Travis and I have discussed this once before. calculatedChaos is either in a state utter lethargy or there's a whole bunch of shit going on on Facebook that I'm not aware of because Facebook sucks.

Now, I can't fix the Facebook issue, but I'm certainly here because I like the people more than the games. I don't really care too much for TF2 anymore (I got burned out about 500 hours ago), but I still play occasionally. A lot of people play like LoL or DoTA2 now, which I don't care too much for either.

We obviously have a strong community, so I think we should branch out. Play more multiplayer games. Maybe a free-to-play MMO? I mean, as shit as that game was, I had fun playing Dungeon Fighter Online with Doghouse and Surnem. Preferably something not Korean.

If you like Tron's lightcycles, there's a game for that. 32 player, even. If you like the hacking game Uplink, there's a fan multiplayer beta. There's a game for pretty much everything out there.

I just think we need to do more. As horrible as it is, the Bad Anime Club is... I refuse to say fun, because Jake yells too goddamn much. Right now, we're just a bunch of people who play games. Not necessarily together. This is almost like Alcoholics Anonymous for gamers. Let's just do more. Once everything's stable with the forums and we get server improvements settled, anyway.

I'm kind of liking this idea. I'm wanting to do things with the community now that it's being revamped but I have little to no interest in playing TF2. I still do some World of Warcraft from time to time if anybody ever wants to try and do that. Highly unlikely anybody will, but worth a shot.

[MrKerplunkers]

Also, kat's idea for new high admins sounds interesting, but I think it's more important that we make it so that more people besides just Flamin have the ability to add new maps to the server. Billy Mayzing brought this issue up in an older thread about a year ago, and I think it deserves more attention.

I actually wholeheartedly agree with this. The maplist has been stangnant for a really fucking long time and needs a much update. As for flamin, from what I understand he seems to add mods to the funserver more or less on a whim. If this is the case, do people think it would be better if mods were submitted on the forums in a similar way to maps?

I just think we need to do more. As horrible as it is, the Bad Anime Club is... I refuse to say fun, because Jake yells too goddamn much. Right now, we're just a bunch of people who play games. Not necessarily together. This is almost like Alcoholics Anonymous for gamers.
Let's just do more. Once everything's stable with the forums and we get server improvements settled, anyway.

I've actually been wanting to do more with badime club lately. I've been thinking about directly downloading an couple episodes and putting the anime on an actual livestream. The biggest problem I have with this is bakabt being a prissy bitch about my seed rate from like 3 years ago and basically won't let me download anything unless I "donate". I should be able to get my hands on some really unredeemable shit from other sources though.

The other alternative would be me streaming some actually decent anime I have sitting in my harddrive.

I also agree with just expanding the community into other games. We haven't been an exclusively TF2 community for a while now and maybe we can rework the forums to reflect that and make it more adaptable for other games.

[Kamen Rider Blaze]

I feel like there's not much more I can add to this, so I'll just add my concerns/opinions on the subjects at hand. The reason I'm completely lacking and less frequent mostly comes down to map choice. The maps are awful and way to repetitive. I remember back in the day it seemed like there was a healthy rotation of maps and shizz... but I could totally be remembering wrong. I think and really wish like, every month or two there be a rotation of maps. Just weed out what's not being used and give players something new, or more relevant. The change in admins might also be needed. The only thing I can suggest with that is give the power to the players who really show charge in the forums/server. I'm not sure how much this will actually help, but I at least wanted to voice my opinion. Good luck on the clean up guys!

[Kriegsmarine]

Travis and I have discussed this once before. calculatedChaos is either in a state utter lethargy or there's a whole bunch of shit going on on Facebook that I'm not aware of because Facebook sucks.

Now, I can't fix the Facebook issue, but I'm certainly here because I like the people more than the games. I don't really care too much for TF2 anymore (I got burned out about 500 hours ago), but I still play occasionally. A lot of people play like LoL or DoTA2 now, which I don't care too much for either.

We obviously have a strong community, so I think we should branch out. Play more multiplayer games. Maybe a free-to-play MMO? I mean, as shit as that game was, I had fun playing Dungeon Fighter Online with Doghouse and Surnem. Preferably something not Korean.

If you like Tron's lightcycles, there's a game for that. 32 player, even. If you like the hacking game Uplink, there's a fan multiplayer beta. There's a game for pretty much everything out there.

I just think we need to do more. As horrible as it is, the Bad Anime Club is... I refuse to say fun, because Jake yells too goddamn much. Right now, we're just a bunch of people who play games. Not necessarily together. This is almost like Alcoholics Anonymous for gamers. Let's just do more. Once everything's stable with the forums and we get server improvements settled, anyway.

Counter Strike server anyone?

[Celtic]

I've been gone for months and months due to work and just being burnt out from online games but I'd be interested in helping out in any way I can.

[Haunwulf]

I really would love to see cC involved with more games. But it's been really hard to find one that doesn't get awfully boring on the first day. As for Coop games don't even get me started. ugh. Anyone wanna tell me about Cube World? That might be a thing, I've heard some good things about it.

[Psither]

Spiral Knights?

I mean, they did update it to make it pretty much 100% free to play unlimited play per day, and we already have a guild that's way too large, which we can't support because no one has realized this yet and we don't collect money from people.

So I guess Tgame is going to be remaking it and people can join in now that they have a place to be and shit.

I guess I'm never getting admin on TF2 anyways, since Flamin won't touch the admin database or tell anyone else, so I might as well enjoy SK.

[giggles]

I think cube world was a thing in the Skype call for a night and then they got bored of it.
Im down for league whenever n__n

I think might make a list of things that need to be changed on the forums. We def don't need the twitter thing and who even watches the YouTube channel.

[PhrozenFlame]

I just think we need to do more. As horrible as it is, the Bad Anime Club is... I refuse to say fun, because Jake yells too goddamn much. Right now, we're just a bunch of people who play games. Not necessarily together. This is almost like Alcoholics Anonymous for gamers.
Let's just do more. Once everything's stable with the forums and we get server improvements settled, anyway.

I've actually been wanting to do more with badime club lately. I've been thinking about directly downloading an couple episodes and putting the anime on an actual livestream. The biggest problem I have with this is bakabt being a prissy bitch about my seed rate from like 3 years ago and basically won't let me download anything unless I "donate". I should be able to get my hands on some really unredeemable shit from other sources though.

If you really care that much, you can grab something like xSplit or Open Broadcaster Source and just steam the anime directly from a website, either by using the screen region function or just going full screen and streaming it that way. Sure, the quality won't be great, but it'd the Bad Anime Club for a reason. I don't think anyone would really care.

[krubby]

I think that we just need to do more stuff together as a whole. I'm pretty sure the reason why everyone loves cC is because we're less of a community and more just a group of friends. If we can just play games together and stuff like that easily, all will be fine. Pretty much every game I've ever played with cC was great just because it's so much fun to be with everyone.

Do what you want with the funserver. I don't think it matters much.

Also, the Bad Anime Club needs more action cuz it's hellz of fun(z).

[Kamen Rider Blaze]

I really would love to see cC involved with more games.

I love this idea a lot. Even if there was just a collection of what other people play, like in the form of a topic I guess. But other than MMO, MOBA, and FPS, there really isnt much that others are into. I could see TF2 players also enjoying CS, since it's Vavle and all. But MMO games can get rather tiring after the initial interest of the game. League seems to be popular amongst a lot of cCers, maybe gather a list of them?

[giggles]

I really would love to see cC involved with more games.

I love this idea a lot. Even if there was just a collection of what other people play, like in the form of a topic I guess. But other than MMO, MOBA, and FPS, there really isnt much that others are into. I could see TF2 players also enjoying CS, since it's Vavle and all. But MMO games can get rather tiring after the initial interest of the game. League seems to be popular amongst a lot of cCers, maybe gather a list of them?

we've actually got a somewhat list here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2942136 ... 962054513/ of people that do play league but it might be better to like make a thread here for league where we can post our names/favorite lanes etc and maybe a skype/steam chat people can just pop in and out to see whos up for league.

[PhrozenFlame]

The problem with just making a big list of what people play is that it would be a gigantic list. Like, huge. And there would have to be edits for when people get new games, so it would be a lot of work to keep it up-to-date, and if it's not up-to-date, there's no point in having it.

I'm not big on Counter-Strike, myself. MMOs require a certain level of dedication to keep the interest going, which is why people really just try everything until they find one that clicks with them. I find it hard to believe that we'll find one that works for EVERYONE, but we could try.

As for MOBAs, I can't really get into them, be they relatively simple like LoL or more complex like DoTA. I've tried playing them on several occasions, but every time has just been kind of meh. It's not a genre for me. I wish it were, everyone else is playing, but everyone else is also using Facebook, and me using that is not happening.

[FierySnake]

Bear in mind my writing skills are general horrible but I'll try my best.

For starters, I am sorry that I haven't been involved with cC as much as I could had but I'll try to help as much as possible.

We should have more events in general. Over the course 5 months we only had one main server party, according to our groups announcements. Unless we have a specific time that you guys meet up everyday that I am unaware of, I am going on what we post on the steam board due to me not participating during the year. Before we had at least one event per month when everything was better and I hope we can host more events to have fun. I like Krubby's idea when he hosted that synergy lets play and I believe that we need more of those events whether if its Synergy, LoL, DotA2 etc.

[Kamen Rider Blaze]

The problem with just making a big list of what people play is that it would be a gigantic list. Like, huge. And there would have to be edits for when people get new games, so it would be a lot of work to keep it up-to-date, and if it's not up-to-date, there's no point in having it.

I'm not big on Counter-Strike, myself. MMOs require a certain level of dedication to keep the interest going, which is why people really just try everything until they find one that clicks with them. I find it hard to believe that we'll find one that works for EVERYONE, but we could try.

As for MOBAs, I can't really get into them, be they relatively simple like LoL or more complex like DoTA. I've tried playing them on several occasions, but every time has just been kind of meh. It's not a genre for me. I wish it were, everyone else is playing, but everyone else is also using Facebook, and me using that is not happening.

I agree whole heartily with this. Like the thing is, a list of games is nearly impossible, and finding one the everyone would jump on board with would be even harder. Although, I would love to see cC branch in to other games, it's probably setting that should be left up to an individual basis. Whether that just be someone starting up a topic in the forums and trying to ban together a clan or what have it, a mass grouping is honing to be tough. I feel like I've helped de-rail this topic from the matter at hand which is, "how do we make what we have now better."

Hopefully we can just get a change in high admins and map rotations going, an see where it takes us. Hell, I wish there was more of a presence on the main server, too! Whenever rankings are involved I seem to get more in to things (As long as people are having fun and not beig total asshats. Ducking hate when people get shorty an have to be ultra dicks when competing.). Since the main server has that, maybe we can do some like tournament or something. Or have a monthly ranking thing. Idk, just food for thought though.

[LaN]

Something I wouldn't mind is more gamemodes to break the staleness such as Prophunt or Szf. That way we can mix it up.

[Kriegsmarine]

We have pseudo prophunt on cc dorm, we just need to make it actual prophunt

[ThereforeIAmNot]

Does anyone like dodgeball? I think that would be fun to play sometimes.

[the asylum]

Dodgeball's cool, but in small doses

[Haunwulf]

Dodgeball's cool, but in small doses

Very, very small doses. I got furious when I was told that airblasting other pyros is not allowed after my absense in the mod.
Actually, just about half of the regulars I know are bound to airblast others. I can see it now.

[LunarFlame]

Spiral Knights?

I mean, they did update it to make it pretty much 100% free to play unlimited play per day, and we already have a guild that's way too large, which we can't support because no one has realized this yet and we don't collect money from people.

So I guess Tgame is going to be remaking it and people can join in now that they have a place to be and shit.

I guess I'm never getting admin on TF2 anyways, since Flamin won't touch the admin database or tell anyone else, so I might as well enjoy SK.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat? When did this happen? I might start playing SK again, that game was hella fun except for the P2W part of it.

[LaN]

Dodgeball's cool, but in small doses

Very, very small doses. I got furious when I was told that airblasting other pyros is not allowed after my absense in the mod.
Actually, just about half of the regulars I know are bound to airblast others. I can see it now.

Dodgeball on the funserver would be chaos and madness.

I love it.

[krubby]

I think we should have some more high admins on the funserver. There aren't any problems that low admins can't solve anyway, but I think if the right people are upgraded then we can just do more fun stuff on the server. I think one of the main reasons why the funserver is popular is because good high admins like TgameP and Flaminsarge often use their powers to change the play style to different interesting things. I think that people like Haun, Zarik, Scrambles, Kat and _Pipeline would be good for something like that.

I'd like to also say myself but that would be presumptuous and conceited and I can't really judge if I'm a good admin if I'm not a third party.

I know there's the cynical concept we share that the funserver isn't fun, but it really is, and we wouldn't be going there if it wasn't. Sure, a lot of stuff sucks, but it still is a fun place, and I know the good admins are a big part of why. Even if almost all of us are abusive.