This thread is full of too many facts. New Dawn used to be a GREAT server to play on, so much so that I offered my services as an admin to help further the enjoyment of the server. It started off pretty good; slowly learning how things worked behind the scenes, and helping guide newer players to fit in with the server rules and the community. I was always under the impression that rather than punish players for doing something wrong, it was better to educate them and set a standard by example. This didn't work out as well as I thought it might however...
It didn't take too long to see a divide within the admin team itself. Due to my prior interactions on the server I had become friends with several members that some might consider 'trouble makers', and by 'trouble' I mean the kind of players that enjoyed driving antagonistic roleplay. Obviously, we all do what we enjoy right? I mean, why go out to eat Russian cuisine if it's not to your taste? You wouldn't. And just like culinary or musical tastes, taste in roleplay is subjective from person to person. Well it didn't take long to see a pattern emerging... Just like certain players on the other side of the fence enjoy making lesbian carpenters/blacksmiths (Get out into the real world btw, blacksmiths? Uhh, think you mean boilermaker, CNC machinist, or metal fabricator, but whatever!), my group of friends sure enjoyed making morally questionable characters with the intent of driving antagonistic roleplay, as was to be expected.
This is where my frustrations with the admin team REALLY started to grow. Day in, day out I'd open my skype and see an essay worth of complaints against these players. Ranging from some admittedly questionable behaviour and roleplay, to what I'd consider straight up stalking! One time I logged onto my admin character to check what the other 4 admins were doing on their accounts. Any guesses as to what they were doing? Well I don't think they knew either, cause it took 4 of them to watch Jack Bauer talk to himself in a shack for almost 2 hours! Of course Jack isn't stupid... He knew he was being watched. How? I told him.
Corruption you say? Well, that would be the most corrupt thing I did. Why? Because I was simply tired of seeing a player being victimized by the other admins all because his character might kill or harm one of their own characters or their friend. Now as mentioned by Lean Melon, the treatment was certainly different between groups. Another example involving Jack; his character found a rabbit and decided to keep it as a pet. So what? Well, he copped a strike towards an account ban because "having a pet wasn't mentioned in his bio". If this was the friend of any other admin, they would have had the bunny confiscated and been warned about it... Oh, and while we're on the topic of Jack, how about that time Mindgate went around telling all his friends which character was played by Jack, simply so his friends could come up with in-character reasons to kill him? The worst thing about that is the owner of the server found out and did NOTHING. That was it for me, I pretended to be too busy and just nope'd the fuck outta there.
I can go on and on about admin corruption. There was one time where Mindgates group kept trying to live on a glitchy part of the map and they all kept claiming items would get deleted when they logged in/out. A quick look through RCON would reveal the admins spawning in Alice Packs, grenades, boxes of ammo etc. One of my friends wants a cooking pot to make noodles pre-apocalypse? GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE! I don't think there was ever a day where I logged into skype and didn't see a squealing call-to-arms to ban someone I considered a friend, all the while filtering through excuses for their own friends attempts at manipulating the rules.
Seriously, I've been holding off in adding my opinion, but after seeing how much worse the attitudes of the admin team have become I simply cannot remain quiet. While I never really talked to VCarrasola, I always saw him around as an active, contributing member of the community. To see a player like that have his words twisted is rather sickening.
My post probably just further fuels the topic of divide between the groups, but how else would anyone act in my position? It got to a point where I felt like I had to be there to stick up for these players, lest they get banned for the simplest of mistakes. I may not have been a perfect admin but I can sure as hell say I was a FAIR admin.
Role Play Servers always have some of the worst Admins.
Yet some of the Best players.
And its mainly because there are so many things to mediate. And that the servers are so rule heavy that it just creates flaming.
Also I dont get Role play servers issues with killing on sight. Because this is a real life issue that happens in real life warzones so I dont see why an zombie apocalypse scenario is any different.
And then the rules create a dichotomy of players who want to raid or want to play house.
And create huge disputes over kills not being by the rules.
Instead of punishing people for killing in the apocalypse.
Idk maybe reward players who stick to the RolePlaying, with recognition maybe even admin magic or special admin controlled events.
And just put rules on griefing. Kill on sight is not. Griefing. Lighting someones camp while theyre ofline is.
And if you dont refine your rules then your server will hit an eventual huge drama block and the players will slowly begin to drop out.
I was never and have never been banned from AGN. I played on New Dawn on the orignal lore and was around long enough to see what it was, change into what it is now. However several admins on your staff refuse to learn and have been booted from the admin team several times. These people are known for abusing their powers to force the story in their favour and for general gain. They are still admins now.
It's very easy to blow off issues as people being trolls but there were some very serious issues that caused me to leave the server in the first place. The fact that someone was banned does not mean that what they say is untrue.
It's disheartening that as the current Head Admin you'd rather blow this off than address the issues presented.
Again I'd like to repeat that I am someone who was never banned from the server.
I didn't want to post in this but lol. Folks got banned because New Dawn got a new head admin like three months ago and they're just banning anyone who disagrees with them in a public setting. Doesn't matter if you've been with New Dawn or AGN for three years, for the great crime of having a differing opinion you shall be declared a troll and banned.
I know Vcassarola and he never deserved what he got and a lot of the older players know it and won't touch this server anymore.
They will not accept an applicant that threatens their grand plans for their characters that admins use their powers to make a reality with either blatant favorism / stupid events all about their own personal character and the rest of the server is supposed to follow them as they beat a drum to the tune of a world where they are the most popular hero.
Guess this thread is active because they can't ban us for expressing that players should run the story.
Compilation of Reviews
Hello everyone! Posting straight on here is none other than AGN's SuicideKamaKize. With the support of many, I was encouraged strongly to make a honest review of the server, being a player on here for two years. I will not only just include my opinions and reviews of the server, but include many others whom have already stated or agreed with points I'll raise or make. Below are only a few of the many records I hold of their opinions of the server.
Starting us off is Vcarrasola, a little bit about this guy, he's one of AGN's longest running players. He started off in Old Dawn before progressing to the New Dawn we know and love today. His review reads:
Another player I'll include is my good friend Emios. He's French and has recently started in the server about two months ago. He credits the server for increasing his ability to conversate in English in the real world. His review is similar to Carrasola's, except it provides much more in depth detail about the workings of the server.
Unfortunately, for some reason, these reviews weren't left for long on the New dawn forums website, so I took the liberty of saving those and personally spread it around for those to see. Needless to say, the two were great guys OOC and were capable of some good roleplay. Keep in mind however, they won't be alone. They'll be joining a lot of former, disgruntled AGN players in a number of games such as Neverwinter Nights, or spend their time in another community with each other. Truly the best roleplayers have left for greener grass. Luckily for me, I am now a part of this band of roleplayers. Shoutout to these former players, who all left or was banned for similar reasoning. [Jack Bauer] [Dylan] [FatherTimesGames] [Jesterphobia] [Pvt.Motherfucker] [Devon Roberts] [Killsoty] [Mr.Blue] [Zaak] [CandyBar] [PrincePaul87] [Emios] [Vcarrasola] [Stotch] [Pann] [Capture Point Crusader] - - These are the guys I currently still have on my friendslist / / remember due to their excellent roleplay and OOC behavior. All driven away for the same reason. Let us remember them with our old theme, the Emotional Titanic Flute Song.
I've no intentions of boasting, but for the sake of giving this review credit I must reveal a little bit about myself and the time I've spent here. Prior to NewDawn, I had been roleplaying for four years on multiple different communities and games. I came and spent two years before the inevitable death of Kamakize. During the two years here, I've spent time in four different lores, and each and every time I can tell you right now. It's very repetitive in a sense. The server is presented the same problems each and every time, but they do not provide any concrete solutions to these problems. So many good players have fled because of this, and after tonight marked a breaking point for me.
With all of these problems AGN is presented with, where do they come from? My main theory is from two things. The two being:
Playing To Win
When you are roleplaying, "winning" should not be a goal in your mind, but rather telling a story from the point of your characters. Players playing to win want the best for their characters, being that one (not) badass tough guy spouting out cool one liners, or that one guy all the (IRL MEN) ladies pine after. This itself isn't a problem, but this is where everyone done fucked up at. If at any point something doesn't go their way, they will try a number of slimy things OOC to attempt to get themselves out of a predicament which could potentially have them lose or shame their characters. This is a very broad statement that covers a number of things I will try to discuss in full details later on.
Out of Character Cliques & Rivalries
The destruction of roleplay itself, OOC cliques includes activities of holding & acting upon grudges because of one friend, meta gaming (sharing IC information OOC and acting upon it) and of course the subject I'll cover later admin corruption. These groups only do things to further their own gain and to keep their enemies down. Unfortunately for the server, when one group fills in EVERY admin slot on the server, that's when shit starts to go downhill.
With a basic idea of what the main roots are to many problems facing AGN, I will now discuss the problems branching off from it.
Combat Roleplay
Combat before and during the "Gunderson Lore" mainly took place in the form of mechanical fighting. The rules were simple, you did a countdown before you went ape shit crazy on each other, and KOS was only allowed if the two parties had some form of roleplay before hand. This was a very effective way of executing battle scenes in my opinion, there was no hold ups or any mass confusion during any fight scene with however matter of players. The system is part of the game, which means its concrete and cannot really be cheated on like text / roll fighting. It does have its flaws, one being the target automatically chosen is the one closest towards you. You may roleplay a character being decent with aim but mechanically can't hit shit. [I suggested having each players aim raised to lvl 3 because it's the apocalypse and I'm sure somewhere during road they've learned or handled one. As for players roleplaying things such as soldiers, have them raise it higher. For the guys like me who you hate for having high stats? Set a ca - -
Eventually after this lore mechanical fighting was taken away all together and that's when things went downhill quickly. Everyone quickly scrammed to become the world's greatest hand to hand fighter, as well as be the perfect shooter in all of Kentucky. Players would attempt to dictate where the shot would land at, both for other players and themselves. Despite accepting grievous injuries that would hinder basic movement, if not all movement, players would find themselves pulling off super human actions. Almost every person I've combat fought over this server had power gamed to a great extent leaving behind a mess of roleplay. I cannot stress how tired I was of seeing ten+ bullets graze a person at point blank range. I cannot handle seeing a man being beaten near death, only to somehow escape by running into the nearby forest because mechanically they could sprint away. People pick and choose what they like, which includes being able to mechanically sprint away while at the same time be offered protection from any incoming mechanical fire that may result in doing so. You shouldn't be able to choose where a bullet lands or barely misses, a system should do that for you. Admin intervention is necessary, but when the admins themselves barely know what would happen in a situation like that so many of these things go unnoticed. Not to mention how you'd get away with things if you're friends with them.
*Cartwheels away from bullets* *Drags large HAM radio after being starved and just given birth to child* *Shotgun blast close-range grazes leg, allowing him to run away*
While this is a roleplay server and while it is ideal for things such as combat to go through proper roleplay, the community itself cannot handle such a thing. The mindset of the majority is fucked up and no one will punish them for this behavior. While we're on the issue of combat, I'd like to address "pistol spamming." I'm in no way claiming to be a military expert whatsoever, but if you think a man sits still during a gunfight and carefully fires off one round at a time because he's some super soldier, you're sorely mistaken. Now, this is roleplay and I honestly don't care if your guy does that or not, but when you begin to harass the players who's characters fight a different way by "pistol spamming" that's when I get salty. If you've done a bit of research, learn the definition of fear roleplay, you'd know exactly how many rounds a normal person would go through in a gunfight. Even if this an apocalypse where supplies are low -NewDawn never replicates the starving environment.- the last thing on that guy's mind is whether or not he'll have more for later. That's my take on things here.
Another thought to think about is whether or not mechanical death has any meaning. Let me tell you, if your characters death didn't mean shit over mechanical fighting, it certainly won't mean anymore over text fighting. A lot of the people here like to romanticize things, including the death of their own characters which is stupid. The chances of you smiling after being shot a shit load of times and cracking some shitty one liner is so low. Realistically your guy would be crying, shitting their pants, etc, but since this is NewDawn and everyone wants to be that badass with the greatest heroic death, it never happens. Moments before your death, my character cannot see or hear some third world narration on your characters demise as well. It breaks the rule where you can't emote your own character's thoughts or feelings.
While this isn't related to combat, we should go over properly emoting things as well. Elitists, and some admins love emoting obnoxious thoughts OOC attacking the player/characters. It's so fucking sickening, I don't need to see three paragraphs on why your character is having fish tonight and why he hates another character. Just emote your actions like a basic human being and roleplay any visible signs of agitation or anger, thanks.
NEXT TOPIC
ERP
Anytime the word lesbian is thrown in any PZ chat wherever, the first thought that comes to mind is NewDawn. Now, in recent times ERPing and lesbians running out into the woods hasn't been an issue. It's a thing of the past really, but there's still ERPing or RP that cater towards that way. In my opinion, I'm actually indifferent towards this. If you're so immature or young that you can't see that type of shit, the fuck are you doing here in the first place? It's an apocalypse where fucked up shit happens like rape. Then there's the fact we murder and manipulate each other which isn't very child friendly. No, ERP itself isn't the fucking issue. It's isolation RP.
When I originally joined NewDawn, it seemed there was a large female character population that all surprisingly were homosexual. This didn't bother me at all, but the fact they all ran off together somewhere in the middle of the woods and didn't roleplay with anyone else, including new players pissed me off. Part of the reason why I did an entire lore of banditry was to rectify this. Drive them out of the woods, have them do some sort of conflict roleplay which would include other players. Simple right? Not so due to the fact they'd fight me not IC which would be good, but OOC. While there are so many details regarding this part of the post, it'd simply be enough to say, if the legendary bandit Edmund Gunderson didn't exist, the current lore would probably be similar to the ones in the past. Lesbians ERPing and a bunch of elitists talking shit around the campfire.
This ties in with us today, many of these players who had *ahem* ERPed or spent time together in these isolation camps have formed cliques. I don't need to name specifics, if you spent five minutes in NewDawn you'd know EXACTLY which players I'm talking about, because almost everyone else who isn't stupid and hasn't left has the same opinions such as me.
Corruption
This is actually pretty common in A LOT of roleplay servers today, AGN is no exception. We've had promises to clean house, and we did for brief times, however the admins that got kicked to the curb always came crawling back. Probably because of the lack of willing players, that's probably why the owner let them come back despite being exposed with evidence of their ill-wills toward players and activities. While I no longer have the screenshots, these guys are some of the nastiest elitists I've ever encountered. I've had several friends in the admin team working alongside them, and every day, they'd post some players information in the admin chat and would proceed to literally shit on them non-stop. If you didn't conform to their shitty roleplay standards it was basically over for you. They have abused item spawning, character resurrections and even turned a blind eye to cheating. (Item spawning, and skill boosting.) This all sounds relatively absurd, but when you pretend to be some fuckers friend and pretend you don't believe them, believe me, they'll start shelling out screenshots of their stats and items. I've witnessed admins follow characters during PVP initiations and hand out directions to their friends so that they may get the kill IC. I have seen admins even combat log and have their friends cry ignorance when the time came. (He was caught because we actually had one legit admin during this time.) Multiple players including myself brought this up with the owner, and he did nothing. There's so many stories I have there's simply not enough time and interest to go into details into each.
It was pretty much over for me since the beginning anyways, since I had aligned with a certain Jack Bauer and played multiple bandits with him. By ripping the virtual girlfriend off certain admins, they began their hatred of us and thus began their long line of corruption. They even began harassing us in whatever way they could, spawning zombies in near our base, etc. It even evolved to one point of them finding Jack's facebook and trying to "strike" him. [Funny actually coming from a squeaker, a gender-confused boy/girl, and their feminist friends LOL.]
Death of Kama
Because I'm a guy who likes realism and believes death is a good part of roleplay, especially in an apocalypse server (fuck me), I got handed the meat repeatedly multiple times and I've managed to put up with it. I originally planned to quit during my second lore but because of a friend I stayed, and I was planning to make this lore (4th) my final by the end of it all, but it looks like that ended for me prematurely which doesn't bother me at all really. I knew I was going to get some shit from the admins (especially when the new head admin is the actual GF of the lesbian girl IG of whom I've roleplayed killing their girlfriends and burning their farm). During another confusing gunfight, players began shooting at me with shotguns with their low rate of fire, firing at least six shells before I reacted and fired five shots back at them. Instant ban hammer, and who was going to stop it? Anyone from the admin team who's all besties? Nope. The owner? Nah that dude's out. So just like any death should be, I said two beautiful lines before passing.
((kk
((cya
Final Verdict
This server suffers from so many problems and the staff and players alike are not willing to change this. They're happy with what they have which simply isn't good enough for me. I loved this server to the point it kept me tied down to PZ for over two years. If you've kept up with my rambling through this post, I ENCOURAGE you to join this server. Just like every single roleplay server in existence, it has its flaws. The players are immature dumb asses, the admins are weird and judgmental, and so 7/10 times your role play is going to end with you arguing with some kid on who's characters dick's bigger. However, you're going to meet some pretty cool guys as a result of this, and as my dude told me, the small parts of the server that you laugh and enjoy about is enough to offset the rest of the bullshit. It's my end on this server and probably the PZ game. NewDawn kept me tied up for about two years, so I'm gonna lace them up with a 6/10. Shoutout to the guys who made this a good experience.
It's sad to see that most of the issues I tried to talk to the admins with during a stint as an admin on the server still apply. The below is a post I made privately to the other admins during this time.
The words of it may seem mincing as I was trying to get the point across and being blunt and direct about it just caused them to close up or dismiss the issues as it just being trolls,. This is what has sadly been done this time too, apparently.
I ended up leaving because I had enough of trying to talk with people who take someone trying to use critical thinking to make things better, as personally attacking them. That and the endless arguments and the many issues stated above by Leanmelon above.
I'd also like to add that ERP is a major issue this server and has been for some time. Due to is the very real possibility of what may essentially be paedophilia, due to adults soliciting cyber sex with people who could potentially be minors, because everyone knows it's not just adults who play these types of games. So sort this type of shit out before someone ends up going to prison for it. There's a reason I hate this shit in an RP game, or any game. Get it off your server.
As to the rest Leanmelon makes all the points I would like to about the issues with this server, and has done so in a way which can't be pushed aside as them simply being a troll. Thank you.
Finally for those who have enjoyed or enjoyed the server I hope someone can sort out these glaring issues as RP in Project Zomboid has been some of the most fun I've ever had, and I have New Dawn to thank for that. It's just sad that it's been taking over by admins who are known to abuse their powers for their own benefit and aren't willing to see what they're doing.
xero reacted to Jack Bower in New Dawn Heavy RP New lore