Meeting Minutes (September 3, 2009)

I would like to add that admins do not have the ability to change maps. They have the ability to vote for maps according to the rules and guidelines that are already in place

Kaz-Ka said:

As of last night, they do (at the descression of what the PC VP says). And I already told him that they could. I mean hell, why not, especially if it is hurting the server?

It has admin abuse written all over it

Maybe I’m a little confused. We have never done this before, why now?

But you dont give all the admins that power you give it to a few admins you know can handle it

And how was my name not added as one for the css cl i had voiced mine in time and according to hubert it was in the vote

not trying to be negative nancy but they Treasurer position is not a current chair. This was reconciled with the creation of the 2 Vice-Presidents, last i can remember… (going to go look at past minutes and check back)

Kaz-Ka said:

I was not told that you wanted to run for CSS CL and you did not post on the forums that you wanted to run for it (this thread was up for about a week and I wrote everyones name down that wanted to run for stuff). If Lemm doesnt want the position, you can have it Ex, otherwise you can’t, sorry.

then you might want to speak to Hubert as hes the one that said that me wanting the spot had been voiced and it was decided i would get it so how were you not told about this . That makes no sense and when i asked in irc where this nomination stuff was posted on the forums that i hadn’t seen anything about it i was told that the nominations was being done at the meeting and then . Hubert told me that if i wanted to run for it to give me name and handle of witch i did and he came back and said he had voiced my nomination and that is when he told me i had the cl spot . And he said he was speaking on behalf of you kazka so hmmmm .

Kaz-Ka said:

Because Ive received complaints from several people that some of the CS servers are losing people because of the map selection. If we give them the power to change it for the better, it might bolster our population on the servers. And you guys thought I didnt care about the PC side

PM me the people who complained….

sure..ill go ahead and give all the admins the ability to change maps at will

adam37 said:

PM me the people who complained….

 

sure..ill go ahead and give all the admins the ability to change maps at will

Ill get the list compiled tomorrow. Thanks for the help

JamestheDoc said:

Aw poop sandwiches, can’t believe I missed the meeting! D:

 

Am I still allowed to come to future meetings? O:

OH COURSE YOU CAN! Everyone can come to the meetings.

Kaz-Ka said:

As of last night, they do (at the descression of what the PC VP says). And I already told him that they could. I mean hell, why not, especially if it is hurting the server?

If I was still the PC VP this would not be happening.

It’s a TERRIBLE idea and will be abused constantly. Complaints should have come to the people who had the power to make changes and to be honest I’m disappointed that the first I’m hearing about complaints like this is the day after I’m voted out of office.

It’s nothing personal but it was a *edited* poor decision to keep the complaints from me and other CLs and to be honest it’s not your job to dictate policy on the servers themselves. The last time a president made a policy decision for the servers against the recommendation of the CL it nearly destroyed the CSS server and barred a number of execs from playing on it.

Maybe it’s best I’m not going to be CL this semester because this is a headache I wouldn’t want to have dealt with on a daily basis.

As you know, this decision is entirely up to the new execs, but having been around the block a few times it’s a trend I don’t like the look of…

Just because CS is “dead” on campus, does not mean that the game is dead overall. It is still one of the top competitive shooters out there. The reason it’s dead on campus is because of failure to advertise our servers. All the other games tend to fade in and fade out. WC3 still stands strong amongst RTS’s, but I don’t believe there is a necessity for that server. Before you make judgments on a game’s status (especially if it is based on personal opinions of your friends) do you research first.

And secondly, admins WILL abuse the change map rotation to change it to maps that they WANT to play. What needs to happen is weeding out of admins now, then develop a tier system in which only a select few admins (the CL, and a select few at the CL’s discretion in which admins have shown their dedication and integrity on the server for an extended period of time). This isn’t some power that should be given out freely.

Oh and did I mention that these fliers have been hung back up and have been up for at least a week now? I dont know guys, does this seem like advertising to you or is there another word for it? lol.

Lemm said:

Here’s my $0.02.

 

Steam’s List of Players Per Game Playing Now… Top 5 (source: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ )

1. Counter-Strike Source – 30,836

2. Counter-Strike – 20,453

3. Team Fortress 2 – 18,634

4. Left 4 Dead – 11,160

5. Football Manager 2009 – 5,636

 

Top 5 Games played on Xfire in minutes played (source: http://www.xfire.com):

1. World of Warcraft – 17,768,815

2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – 11,895,295

3. Call of Duty 2: Multiplayer – 5,993,754

4. Counter-Strike: Source – 2,405,586

5. Battlefield 2 – 2,201,841

 

I’d like to point out that since Steam has it’s own messenger service, CS:S players usually don’t use Xfire and it’s still #4 on the list. I understand that the players on campus matter more, but this might make a difference.

And I am happy that CS is doing great right now and I hope it stays that way. And honestly, I would like to help bolster those numbers even more. But the big picture Im trying to show is that if we make a change to a few things, we may even be able to up those number even more. If we could revive the PC side of the club on campus, that would be great and we would all be happy. And I would like to try a few new things and a few old things so if you guys could just bear with me and give this a go that would be nice.

Nickname makes an excellent point.

Kaz-Ka said:

If we could revive the PC side of the club on campus, that would be great and we would all be happy. And I would like to try a few new things and a few old things so if you guys could just bear with me and give this a go that would be nice.

I’d like to know which gamers you’ve been talking to because they either only play Warcraft related games (which don’t appeal to the majority of gamers) or don’t play online often. If you want a basis of how popular gaming styles are use the Xfire and Steam lists like Lemm mentioned. Over the last 6 years the Xfire list has been dead on with the popular games at the time and shifts from year to year as games are phased in and out.

As for campus, you won’t revive the PC section with Warcraft 3. The VAST majority of gamers hate Starcraft and Warcraft with a passion because only the elite of the elite ever have any fun playing it online. I used to play WC3, still do ocassionally, but I also hold that opinion. I like the game but hate playing online because I either get dominated extremely fast (IE not fun) or the other player quits before I win (IE not fun).

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that you somehow managed to attact all those WoW players to the club but you’ve got to keep in mind that the population of them wasn’t sought out for a reason. We could have pulled most of them in last year, probably quite easily, but I didn’t for a very good reason. The WoW gamers are not healthy for the PC side of the club. From a raw numbers standpoint sure they’re great but the games they play are directly incompatible with the games everyone else plays and while you may pull in 20-30 of them there’s a good possibility that you lose that many at the same time.

Also, I’m not sure if anyone’s actually run the numbers on this but if you have 20 people playing WC3 in a single elimination bracket you’ll have a total of 19 games. Figuring that each one takes 15 minutes that tournament alone will take almost 5 hours. Factor in getting them ready, having them find each other’s servers and connecting, breaks in between games this one game will easily take 7 hours. Unless you do something funky with the brackets to shave the number of matches down you just committed yourself to only 2 games at the LAN. That’s the direction ASU went with their PC LANs, trust me, you don’t want to go that route. Oddly enough WC3 was also their tipping point.

Ever wonder why the PC side hasn’t sent a team to ASU in years? It’s because the drive isn’t worth only playing 2 good games. Having talked with a number of others the same can be said about the next WCU LAN. You have to make the LAN worth the 6-10 hours of driving and so far, at least for about 5 of us I know of, that’s just not the case. The ASU players we pulled in on the PC side were there for CS/CSS (and were *edited* good too) and most of the Clemson guys were there for similar reasons. I can’t speak for any of them but my fear is that once we lose the off campus players we may never get them back. You may have more overall but keep in mind this club wasn’t founded to bring people in the door, it was founded to bring people onto campus. While those goals aren’t mutually exclusive, there’s a very fine line you have to walk to achieve both.

Btw, if we’re going to be shifting to games we can’t host servers for we need to decide now because if Keith buys us a new server and we don’t expand in that direction we’ll never get anything from him again. I can’t tell Keith we need a new server when I’m not sure we’ll even need it and sure as hell can’t ask him to spend $5000-6000 on a server when the only games popular on the current one are being phased out.

Also something to keep in mind. You may not want to “pander” to those who aren’t on campus but just remember that the club you have now was directly created by us. Many alumni have continued to support the club even after graduating and many will continue to do so until you *edited* them off and they leave. We’ve all been around the block and know what works and what doesn’t. When so many have said this won’t work and you do it anyway, you won’t be garnering any pity when you fall. You’ll just be on the ground with a skint knee and have no friends to help you up.

My intention isn’t to *edited* you guys off but I find it extremely interesting that the PC side takes such a drastic change of direction once I leave and a primarily console player takes the VP slot.

Btw, I just realized we’re arguing in Ephraim’s thread again.

Kaz-Ka said:

Mitch I dont understand why you think this is such a terrible idea. Just because someone can abuse something does not mean they will. Every person is not just looking after their wants and needs, and I CLEARLY told everyone at the meeting that if I see any sort of bias or got complaints about them they are going to be booted out of their position. I know you guys have had some bad experiences with this sort of thing in the past, but just because it failed in the past doesnt mean it will fail now (maybe it was the admins you guys elected making the *edited* poor decisions, I dont know). Our servers are getting hit pretty hard because of Map decisions, and the people that play on these servers (the admins) with these people that join them should know what is popular and change them accordingly.

I think this is a terrible idea because I’ve been admining CSS servers for over 4 years. Because they can abuse it, they will, and they won’t do it when other admins are on or when they know someone might be looking. In PC gaming, to assume someone won’t abuse a power they’re given is just naive. The vast majority of players don’t report admin abuse, they just leave and go someplace else. The only way the CL will find out about the abuse is when someone comes to the forums to report it but for everyone person who reports it there’s 50 that don’t. The CL will end up having to comb through the logs on a daily basis to see who’s abusing and who isn’t. After about a month he’ll quit finding the time to deal with it and just ignore it. After enough complaints on the forums he’ll turn the admin power off without your permission. Que the Bitey/Liam/MasterP arguments over who really controls the servers and you’ll have a CL resign over it, just like your predecessor did. There’s a reason I fought so hard to specify who has what powers on the PC side and this is the very reason why. The second CLs lose any aspect of control over a server they’re tasked with managing you not only frustrate and *edited* them off but you bring into doubt every power they assumed they had. A CL shouldn’t have to wonder if a setting or decision he makes will be overruled the next day by the execs, he should have the complete authority to make any call he deems necessary for the well-being of the server. If the CL makes a bad call then he’ll answer for it at elections but if the execs are making the bad calls then he’ll be the one that takes the fall for it, not the execs who forced him to do it. That’s wrong and is not how this club was envisioned to be run.

Our server isn’t taking hits because the maps are bad. Sure it’s playing a part but that’s not the reason. Everyone who is complaining about the maps quit playing for the summer break and are now magically upset that the server is empty. It doesn’t take a genious to put two and two together to deduce that when everyone quits that the server is empty. What’ll end this is the CL putting a new mapcycle on. It’ll still have maps people don’t want to play and it’ll also have maps that clear the server. Nothing will really be different but like all new mapcycles it also won’t have complaints being PM’d to the execs so I guess it’s a semi-win.

The alumni are here because we want to see the club be successful. My fear is that you’re taking advice from players. Sure their advice is nice but if given the choice between acting on the advice of players or server admins the decision should be easy. Players remain players for a reason and admins float to the top for reason. You need to heed the advice of the few at the top of the “knows wtf is going on” pyramid and ignore the massive pile at the botton that doesn’t. Those at the bottom will tell you where they want to go but it’s the people at the top who have the experience to tell you how to get there.