Plants10000

Mildly Menacing Medic
So Jailbreak was removed due to inactivity, yet the question hasn't been asked about why it became so inactive in the first place.

The answer is pretty simple, it boils down to one admin in particular: Luke.

Before Luke was made an admin the Jailbreak community pretty much regulated itself and called admins if necessary. However even while an admin was present if somebody had broken a Jailbreak rule they would usually be given a softer punishment, especially if it was by accident. Of course if a skial rule was broken it was dealt with normal punishments.

The reason being Jailbreak was very different to any other skial servers because the gamemode only worked if everybody co-operated and followed the rules, which most regulars always did. If somebody freekilled somebody by accident the user was simply slayed. If you were too harsh and banned people instantly just for a minor rule breaking then people would just not bother playing.

So what does Luke have to do with this? Well after he became admin people used to get long bans for accidently breaking the rules, keep in mind it's easier to break a jailbreak rule than a skial rule.

Admins are there to enforce the rules, I agree. But is an admin there to be so bloody minded, banning people for the maximum lengths for the most minimal offences, to the point that the server dies and people no longer find it fun to join? I don't think so. It's counter productive and just turns it into a game of "be careful cuz if you just accidentally kill the wrong person you might be banned from skial for a whole month".

That's why we stopped joining, and we are really surprised that Luke is still allowed to be an admin after he killed an entire server.
 

vhristofer

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
Contributor
Luke is the reason why jailbreak was ruined for so many people. He really did ban people for small things. I bet if you met him in real life and looked at him funny, he'd tackle you into a pit of spikes. Yes, he IS that bad.
 

Meebas

Sufficiently Lethal Scout
Mapper
Let me note something: Bottiger will remove a map from FF2 regardless of what people think about if it he thinks it empties out servers. He looks at the stats and makes a judgement. Okay, that's fair. It makes sense to try and keep the popular custom servers healthy especially since quickplay was removed. Now Jailbreak had like... 2 maps we liked to play on. But when we got the bad maps we still played on them because jailbreak is fun and we can still have a great time regardless. But Luke actually changed all of that.

It might sound like an exaggeration, or some pathos propaganda BS I'm throwing out there to get those unaware of what happened to agree with me. But I'm really not exaggerating. There are a plethora of rules for Jailbreak and that is completely understandable considering how tricky of a gamemode it is and how unfamiliar many are with it. As such we should take a lot of peoples' grief infractions on the server with a grain of salt, because even regulars have the tendency to unintentionally break the rules. For instance a lot of the times I would play Warden I'd make up silly or stupid fun gamemodes for my prisoners that, a lot of the time, skimmed the rules and were fairly edgy about them. And you know what? We all had a great time with it. No one really freaked out about "oh wait is this legal???" because we were all having fun. If someone really had a problem with it I'd save no hesitation to make sure we're following the rules that the server is attempting to keep chaos out.

So it absolutely keeps us in check when we get too comfortable with "just having fun" because yes, other people want to follow the rules because a lot of the time they don't like what we're doing. (Unfair minigames for example) But Luke didn't have any sort of gradient for this type of behavior. Any slight crack in the rules and people would be paying for it. New players that freekilled were getting banned for 30 minutes and never returning. Regulars that were doing their typical Warden days that we loved were no longer allowed to do just that, what they, and we, wanted. It became the same old "line up, do map-minigame, LR" sort of deal and it's no wonder everyone got sick of it. The most interesting minigame at that point was Trivia and even then it was mega restricted what you could ask. A bunch of times people would get framed like guards pressing buttons, or warden freekilling guards, and just those simple misunderstandings made everyone uneasy because we were afraid someone was gonna get banned for it. Luke was very active in the server too and would seldom need be called to help. If a map gets removed because a game slowly empties, then why can an admin effectively kill an entire server with no recourse for the players?
 

chairius✿

Wicked Nasty Engineer
FF2 Balancer
+1. Never really played JB that much but the times I did and Luke was on the server, I saw his overenforcement in action.
 
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ck24

Server-Clearing Cynic
The only reason why I think he became trade mod. Is because it would be harder to remove him. Because he knew he would be get blamed on for what him did to jb.
+1
 

Bottiger

Administrator
It was already asked. Did he make some people leave? Probably. But was he the main cause beyond a doubt? No.

I told him to stop moderating the server months before it closed and removed most of the rules and the server still did not recover.

If the server is dead already even after doing all that, why would we remove an otherwise loyal admin? It isn't going to bring jailbreak back.
 

Zappheus

Spectacularly Lethal Soldier
+1

The amount of agreements this thread got is a bulk. Yet, it still got declined. I see signs of abuse!

Anyway, I would see it as a great decision to kick and ban Luke.
 

Blade D_Hero

Moderator
Contributor
+1

The amount of agreements this thread got is a bulk. Yet, it still got declined. I see signs of abuse!

Anyway, I would see it as a great decision to kick and ban Luke.
Yeah it's actually impressive how many people can be wrong at once.
 

Bottiger

Administrator
If he's been irresponsible even a few times he should have lost admin a while ago.

He was not "irresponsible". He just had a interpretation of the rules which was probably too strict for the jb players we had. For all the complaints we had about freekilling one would have thought we needed more strict enforcement.

As I have said already, removing him from admin is not going to bring jb back. The players themselves are also to blame for it dying the last time after I removed most of the rules and told Luke to stop moderating months before we removed it.
 

True Darkian

Wicked Nasty Engineer
Contributor
He was not "irresponsible". He just had a interpretation of the rules which was probably too strict for the jb players we had. For all the complaints we had about freekilling one would have thought we needed more strict enforcement.

As I have said already, removing him from admin is not going to bring jb back. The players themselves are also to blame for it dying the last time after I removed most of the rules and told Luke to stop moderating months before we removed it.
The original Skial JB plugin was replaced by a public plugin too, Most of the regulars we're complaining about that.

We rather had the good old custom Skial JB plugin.
 

Bottiger

Administrator
The new plugin did everything the old one did after I edited it.

The only restriction it added was when someone picked a preset last request. You could still type in a custom last request if desired.
 

True Darkian

Wicked Nasty Engineer
Contributor
The new plugin did everything the old one did after I edited it.

The only restriction it added was when someone picked a preset last request. You could still type in a custom last request if desired.
The new plugin caused for glitches sometimes.
The LR was glitchable.
 

Kael

TF2 Admin
Contributor
Nah, the real problem is that admin Kael. You guys gotta remove him, he's the real reason JB died! I haz proof!