Ok let me see if I can address everyone's issues here.
To the people pointing out about client mutes: yes that's an option, but not a full measure of one. If I client mute someone, I am still hearing everyone else responding to them. If there is a significant amount of people responding (feeding the troll), I'd end up muting half my team and missing anything they might be saying relevant to the game. Also, if the person is spamming the mic bad enough, they shouldn't be able to pester all the Skial servers; that's where the voting comes in. At least for however brief a time they can't bother ANYONE and nobody has to expend any energy client muting, 5 seconds going into the mute menu for a mic spammer is 5 seconds too many.
On a related topic, thank you Tangy for pointing out the slash as opposed to the exclamation. I was under the impression it showed up either way as I was sure I'd seen people's /votemenu in chat before, but that might have been a typo I missed or some other oddity and that's why it showed up.
Also I would just like to point out again, and this has been backed by other users now, that I vote a lot because when a vote fails by 2% because someone is in a "I'm gonna make the vote fail for the lulz" mood, it's obvious the majority wants the vote to pass but it doesn't quite meet the server minimum. Therefore I wait and revote, and a lot of the time it does actually succeed the next time. Other times a vote will fail to start because it's something like a troll engie at spawn, and the other team has no clue they're back there trolling to begin with so they default to a "no" vote. I try to let people know when someone is griefing, but it doesn't always work out that first time. One other thing to consider is the people who hate votes regardless and will always vote "no" regardless of what is being voted on. I suppose there could be just as many that always vote "yes", but from my experience "no" seems to be the go-to vote.
Ginger - trolls come and go, there are lots of times you're not on but they are. I'm not saying you're not around because I know you are, I see ya all the time :) I also would hope I'm around when you are enough where you know I'd never outright consider a player a troll just from the get-go. I have on many an occasion, either in text or on mic, pointed out to a player who was doing something counterproductive a better way to do whatever they were trying to do, or why not to do what they were currently doing. Heck, my spray is even the PSA about rotating engie buildings. Now if the player in question doesn't respond, or responds negatively and continues to do things like putting a tele entrance and exit at spawn and never moving them, or running out of spawn as a scout and killing themselves constantly with the boston basher, then I start to think troll. If a lot of the players on the server do too, usually someone will start a vote against them.
I know spawn camping is no longer a bannable offense, but it doesn't mean it is good or sportsmanlike. I understand just as much as you do how so many new players come through DBLA, and that is why I plead with my team if they are spawn camping to be more sportsmanlike and pull back a bit. Even with non-new players it can lead to server death. I wouldn't kick or ban for it, but I would definitely be vocal about stopping it; nothing will make a new player not play Skial or not play TF2 at all like getting killed right out of the gate every time. These are public servers, you can't expect coordination like a competitive server all the time.
In regards to your issue with hackers: I know there are many many regulars who are on my "suspected hacker" list. I'm not going to name names because there's no point without hard evidence. I've spent many hours in spectator mode watching people, looking for twitches, spins, or kills that are more than coincidence, or any other number of signs of hacking. I have piles of demos I recorded while looking for evidence just to be thwarted by not catching anything super concrete. Here is one person I did catch, even made a nice annotated video with slow-mo and everything:
https://www.skial.com/threads/gibus-power-wall-hacking-seeing-a-cloaked-spy.52061/
As to the people looking at my chat and saying I'm hostile: I admit my fuse has been a bit short the past few weeks, just seems like the number of people out to wreck everyone's fun has spiked lately. I can't see how to look back in my chat anymore than about a week and a half in my stats page, and for someone who has been playing almost 1000 hours, that is a very small sample size. Yes, I could have handled things differently, yes I admit some of those trolls got to me, and yes I feel bad about it in hindsight. Who among you can say you've never had bad days though? It happens to the best of us. For me to type anything at all is actually a feat, I'll mostly just ignore and keep quiet, so someone must have gotten to me pretty bad to goad me into typing. To those with the blanket statements of me insulting everyone and being hostile "all the time" I'd ask for more evidence than a week and a half of chat logs out of over 3 years of playing. 1.5 weeks out of roughly 156 or so is about a 1% sample size, hardly enough to show a trend especially when it can be taken out of context. So please investigate my hostile chat further and gain some context. I'm not saying it was right to respond how I did, but maybe you can gain an idea of the bigger picture.
To the people who don't like my profile not being visible to the public: Steam is a social network just like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the rest. If I have those locked down to where only friends can see anything, why would Steam be any different? At a MINIMUM it stops me from getting random people wanting to friend and trade me stuff. Want to see what I'm up to? Come play with me, let me get to know you, and maybe we'll end up as friends!
I think that about covers anything, and if not I've given you guys more than a large enough wall of text to deal with for now lol. I do apologize for that, but I like to be thorough. If I missed anything please let me know and I'll respond to it.
One other thing I'd like to point out: Skial looks for people that can make friends on their servers to be considered to be admins. When I started playing on Skial I think I could count the number of people on my friends list on one hand. Now I have 155, and I'd be willing to bet about 90% of that came from Skial Dustbowl, the other 10% would be all my other games combined.
To everyone supporting me, thank you so much! I can't express my appreciation enough, I didn't know I was thought of so positively by so many.
To everyone PERIOD: regardless of how this application turns out, come on in to DB+LA and say HI! The more the merrier!
![[tkb] ginger](/data/avatars/m/25/25187.jpg?1418761557){kind=avatar}
