Following a nasty event we had last night, the admins banded together and talked out a few things and I've come up with what I feel is the best way to handle this problem we've been having lately with serious players clashing with not so serious ones.
I want to first start off by highlighting the difference between tryhards and serious players. Try hards are always try hards, ones who get too obsessed with the game and the competitive nature, these people are still on my do not care list and aren't the subject of this debate here. We're talking about people who just come on to play the game that is provided for them, people who simply want to do good at what they're good at and have an honest game.
The problem I've been facing here is that we have this group, then the group who don't really care. Those who just come on to walk around, spy crab, sandvich heavy, stuff like that. These players do not contribute to the gameplay and in a serious game, cause imbalances and essentially can throw off the teams. In a small game of 5 or so people, of course you're not going to get anything done. But I've been seeing games of 8, 10, 12 people or more, where a majority of those in game are just sitting around amongst each other.
I cannot ban people for simply coming on and not taking things seriously, we are not a try hard group and if I started to do so, we'd easily get recognized as such. But I also cannot allow it to continue. If we're trying to fix population issues and get people interested in playing with us to keep the servers going, we cannot show everyone that we're not here to do anything at all.
It's even worse when fights break out, because I cannot side against those who are arguing the point that yes, we are here simply to play the game and these people aren't letting us. So after talking it over and thinking things out, I've come up with the only solution that I feel works.
We are going to take Vanilla which remains the quietest, and display it as a "Hangout server". However I'm still undecided as to the map, I feel Mario Kart is a tad cliche but I'm open to suggestion. The rules will just be that you go there, hang out and such and keep it clean, it's not a brothel >:c
This way Rainbow can stop being regarded as a non serious server. Rainbow was made with the intention to give everyone a multi modded server since not everyone likes Dodgeball or Prophunt and such. With Vanilla being a hangout location, I'd like to see people utilize the serverhop plugin. I had it updated to show the next map of the respective server and the time left till their map changes to help people plan their next time chunk. You could be hanging out with your friends, see Rainbow is going to Dodgeball and go off and join them.
As we hopefully bring in new people for everyone to make friends with, we'll get rid of as many problematic areas where everyone argues with each other. My overall goal here to make everything fun and comfortable for everyone **Except douchebags and try hards >:( **. If you feel I'm doing something wrong or have an idea or input, please talk to me! My door is always open. :3
I've already started the conversion, and we'll launch it up tomorrow!