Cream Tea
Banned
We must return Skial to its former glory.
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Declined Allow players to say "nigga" again as long as it's without negative context
- Thread starter Cream Tea
- Start date
Cream Tea
Banned
Likewise not everyone who plays on Skial believes that you should be policing the chat on an M-rated game that has its own chat filter since 2020. @Bottiger told me to "stop targetting admins and make suggestions instead" and that I should "ask the community" but when I do that you tell me that I shouldn't be making them. It's seems like a lose-lose scenario.
See below. Players can already go into their steam settings and enable the filtering of slurs if they want to be protected from "hate speech".
It's not even me who wants to say it but seeing others get muted for such is irritating because it's harming the numbers and isn't really solving much.
Is muting people for every -ism really good for the whole community? Go and look at the server numbers right now:
All you're doing is driving players away. Everyone joins the servers to have fun, you're right, so the last they thing they want is to be getting muted for saying certain words that could be filtered if you went into your Steam settings. Muting people for bantering on a TF2 server isn't going to make actual racism disappear. Zombie Escape, a gamemode that you manage, is basically dead and you're still worried about players making a few edgy jokes in the chat?
It should also be mentioned that it is half-term here right now, in other words schools are on break, yet the European servers remain empty.
>Our community is nearly dead but at least we stopped people from saying bad words!
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I have no opinion one way or the other .....but saying "hey guys come to Skial where you can say "nigga!"" seems like a pretty weak way to get people to come play on these servers.
That might make sense in a workplace where context is clear, people know each other, and everything is out in the open but it doesn’t translate well to an online server. Here, you’ve got anonymity, zero tone cues, and plenty of people eager to test the limits or twist the rule.+1
I am aware there are different cultures and those of their own race that wish to restrict the use of this word.
I used to manage a work crew of the represented demographic. Faces are covered to respect their privacy. I had 125 direct reports (associates) under my leadership, so this is only a small proportion being reflected. They were my supervisors and ambassadors. Taking a group photo altogether would require full attendance and a wide picture. 😂 I no longer work here.
While discussions were held previously about slurs, I just don't think that what is practiced in one jurisdiction should become the world (Skial's) order.
I never wrote an associate up for saying "nigga". 🤷🏻
I was reporting on here for the usage, but it was against my intuition, and I was wrong in doing so. I wasn't considering how it could also be lowering the player count when changes are being demanded nonverbally by the chart.
I still won't say it, regardless of how pressing this topic may be. That is simply not my style, as previously mentioned.
If others do, then let them as long as they aren't being cruel or actually being racist. It should be subject to perception rather than censorship in a mature game.
Another food for thought, casual is back to normal. We must tackle the reasons why players would resort to casual and make Skial the better option in the competition. We currently have a full selection of wearables or weapons for anyone to equip. We need to let this edge be a bigger pull than providing reasons to push away. I also think mass pardons should be within a year instead of a couple.
It’s a shame that you rather advertise Skial out now for this when you could’ve done so earlier. You have no consideration of the betterment to Skial’s reputation unless you can sway it in a negative light. It’s apparent that you rather bring Skial down. Either way, post the link when you make it sound because Skial needs the publicity to invite players in. Do it.
It doesn’t translate well to an online server, or to you? Players can do this on casual so we are reaping what we sow by continuing this. I can detect when it’s in good faith and not so. Not everyone will, just like how not everyone will be capable of conforming to Skial. I want what is best for Skial, and not a leak of players going to casual because they could not adjust to it’s culture. It’s needs to be more diverse or else we are catering to the select few that would rather shine Skial pessimistically and bring it further down for their delight of aura farming in a Reddit thread.
Not a good suggestion.
If this is what you think it takes to keep skial alive, then maybe we should just let it die.
-1
If this is what you think it takes to keep skial alive, then maybe we should just let it die.
-1
Mae Day
Notably Dangerous Demo-Knight
If you think removing the Wooden Dam we have to keep bad actors who hide everything behind layers of what they call "dark humor" or "irony" out is gonna "fix" Skial. I think you came to the wrong community.
I wish so much that the problem were just my own perspective that would make things so much simpler. Or that increasing the number of good, non-toxic players was as easy as opening the floodgates, allowing the N-word, and having Skial model itself after other soulless Casual servers.
What truly sets communities like Skial apart are reliable servers, transparency in how moderation decisions are made, accountability for those decisions, and regulars who are open and welcoming. (One could argue against my points, that’s fair.)
They’re saying the house is on fire, and the solution being proposed is to repaint the walls. They’re also saying there’s a drop in players but the game is almost 20 years old. Even the best-run organizations face rises and falls they can’t control. What matters is staying consistent in values, not panicking at every dip.
VentureDev
Sufficiently Lethal Scout
CT had this thought come to him once in the shower, and now can't let it go. The player base that would draw in would be a nightmare, on a side note.
Cream Tea
Banned
You laugh but that is partly what set Skial apart from the rest during the golden age. If I want to play vanilla TF2 then what real reason is there to come on Skial now? If I want to say whatever I want then I can go on casual but if I want strict chat moderation I can go on UGC and both options also allow micspam if the players don't mind which is something Skial is still uptight about for some reason.
You're not a bad person Steve but I feel like this is a lame take. Like seriously? You'd rather let Skial die than dare to allow a little more freedom? It must be said that the attitude of players on the custom servers is very different from the players on the vanilla servers. A simple way of putting it is that the vanilla servers are like reddit while the custom servers are like 4chan but you're trying to moderate them both under the same rules and it causes problems.
thats because youre not providing good suggestions for the community at whole, if you actually had good suggestions i would absolutely upvote it for you but not this one.
how is it irritating to see someone get punished for being a racist? thats like silencing the fire alarm thinking it will stop the fire — it only hides the problem instead of fixing it.
like i have mentioned before, ZE has been suffering loss of players due to constant changes to the game-mode over the years that i and many disagree with bottiger on.
the community knows when to not go too far with certain words and they still have fun when they can without having to be racist or a piece of shit.
making a few edgy is something they already do without having to involve making fun of races.
and i try everyday to find a way to get the ZE community's suggestions across bottiger, pushing for better quality maps, better performance hoping for good changes.
you forgot to mention though that TF2 as its entirety of a game is dying, many people have left and moved on to other stuff or games.
the only reason its still alive and has players is due to the community server players.
All in all, this is all speculative generalizations. (pretty weird how considering racism's roots, the becomer of what you destroy? So we are just casting stones from a glass house?)
Is there support on how this is currently a nightmare? I think it's a nightmare now. Please reveal how.
The dam is broken, and I am unsure how else this could be demonstrated. It isn't a dip, it's a steady decline. I already discussed how the small upticks are only from major updates.
Muffin has some good ideas, and artic with his maps, but hell they can't just be the only two carrying this weight.
"TF2 is already dying, so oh well." This defeatist attitude isn't solving the opportunity that is at hand right now. Casual is performing better. Not sure also how this is soulless genuinely.
Cream Tea
Banned
It is a slippery slope, my friend.
I don't always agree with this argument, but this time it is valid.
Today it's this word, tomorrow it is another word.
No one wants this community to die, but if this is what you think it takes to bring people in, maybe those aren't the kind of people we want here.
I don't play the custom servers, but I do not feel that this would be a positive change for the other servers.
You could amend this to only include custom servers, but as it stands, -1 from me.
Suppose for a moment that it is a good idea to loosen moderation and let more slide. I looked into whether that’s ever actually helped a community grow. The clearest case I found was X (formerly Twitter). After the acquisition, moderation rules were relaxed, and protections especially for LGBTQ+.
Before the takeover, Twitter had around 368 million monthly active users in 2022. By 2024, that number had dropped to roughly 336 million, about a 9 % decline.
So, if the goal was to attract more users by being “freer,” it didn’t exactly work out that way. Loosening the rules doesn’t necessarily bring more people in, and even if it did, is that really the kind of crowd we want to attract?
Before the takeover, Twitter had around 368 million monthly active users in 2022. By 2024, that number had dropped to roughly 336 million, about a 9 % decline.
So, if the goal was to attract more users by being “freer,” it didn’t exactly work out that way. Loosening the rules doesn’t necessarily bring more people in, and even if it did, is that really the kind of crowd we want to attract?