And thus... It begins.

[Rad Blackrose]

First of all, I request that everyone read the second part of the description for this specific file, that way you get a sense of what I am talking about…

http://www.lucasfiles.com/index.php?...on=file&id=111

Now for my rant.

Most of us have probably not touched Jedi Academy for a 24-hour period, and those of us who have; I admire your insomnia and dedication (unless you happen to be one of those fools who think people who don’t bow or use a certain saber hilt are lamers). I’m going off topic again.

To make things brief, I told you to read the second section of the description for the reason that Admin Mods will be returning for JA. It was inevitable that it would happen. However, with it coming this soon, I have a feeling JA will decline faster then JKII. This reasoning also goes hand in hand with the people who left around the end of 1.02/beginning of 1.03, most whose primary concerns were the rotating DFA, drain abusing, etc., not the honor code/ASC, and definitely not VAM (Vulcanis Admin Mod). These people will be coming back expecting to be able to play their $45 game they picked up, and instead be victim to the new “ragdoll physics.” Or have to take on someone with invulnerability to force powers while using an uber overpowered double-bladed saber.

Having quite a bit of knowledge of the Jedi Academy mod and its power for both “anti-laming,” as well as large scale administrator abuse across the board, releasing an admin mod with the said problems above carrying over from JKII at this time is perhaps the most retarded thing I have ever seen in any game I have had a presence in when it comes to multiplayer. I pose this question, “Are we seriously looking to **** up JA right from the get go?” JA is supposed to be the redeemer for JKII’s massive screw-ups. However, the way it is going right now, its seems that these people who release these admin mods are attempting to secure popularity, at the expense of any sort of competitive community, and much more, denying people the right to enjoy the game which they paid for (to the people who cried lamer, this is one of your argument right back in your damn face).

Right now is the deciding factor for the future of Jedi Academy. Either we can reject the admin mods and the ill they brought to JKII, or we can have another $45 chat session in which I guarantee if another game in the Jedi Knight series is ever made, you can forget about anyone picking it up for any sort of competitive play. We can have good old-fashioned ass kicking fests Star Wars style, or we can have a bunch of lack of skill pansies crying “OMGZ! J00 haev no honer! Banzor him admen!!1” followed by a ton of hypocritical procedures being invoked. We can take a step forward and ditch one of the main things that made JKII blow, or think we are living in a little perfect world and remain with our heads in the ground.

In closing, I’d take a game in which everyone enjoys beating up everyone else, and not have some egotistical 13 year old /amslap everyone in sight, rather then have to deal with a bunch of prepubescent bastards cry mommy everytime someone with the slightest skill forces them to take a dirtnap. I don’t want a chat room, I have mIRC for that reason.

As Mills Lane always says, "Let's get it on!"

[the weiner dog!]

Damn good post amigo.

The thing is with these admin mods, especially the later versions, banning people became so easy for these childish admins that the amount of banned players went through the roof.

People were banned from servers in record numbers simply because the admins enjoyed the "power trip" it gave them when abusing people then banning them for no reason other than their own sadistic petty enjoyment.

Now I know there will be plenty of the standard "if you don't like a server go somewhere else" replies from fans of these mods but consider this:

Not everyone who is buying Jedi Academy was around in the later days of Jedi Outcast.

A very large portion of these players are simply going to be trying to enjoy a game they just bought only to be screwed with by admins or immediately banned from almost every server they connect to simply because they tried to play the game they just bought.

Patches will come and game play will change and people will come and go, but if the average player is banned from almost every server they try to connect to or screwed with by admins on a power trip, there is no other way faster than this to kill this game right out the door.

If you people do want admin mods please take the stupid empowerment out. It's no different than a client side hack and is abused exactly in the same way as one.

The same goes for the punishment commands.

Are people in Jedi Outcast/Academy really that egotistical that they need to stand over people "asleep" insulting them?

Does not /clientkick # solve the problem of "troublesome players"?


Does not banning them if they keep coming back work?

And as for banning, yes do leave it but please require some type of high level access similar to true "rcon" for it.

When you basically allow almost anyone and everyone to ban people trust me when I say it does get abused when that power is put in the hands of a 12 year old star wars fanatic.

I do think it is very sad how the author of this mod turns a blind eye to the problem and harm his mod causes to players but I guess it's like the same ego boost the guys who make OGC get when their hack gets them popularity in Counter-Strike.

[cheeto101]

Heh i dunno, Personally, admins or not, im stickin around For the Mods. the JO modding comunittee was pretty damn good considering the lack of tools, i think this'll be 10 times better.

[Rad Blackrose]

Originally posted by cheeto101
Heh i dunno, Personally, admins or not, im stickin around For the Mods. the JO modding comunittee was pretty damn good considering the lack of tools, i think this'll be 10 times better.

Funny, the only mods that were worth the play time were the ones that changed things in order to encourage new styles or gameplay (Style over Substance, ProMod, Masters of the Force, etc). Otherwise, 75% of the mods in JKII were a rehashed JediMOD or VAM.

[wassup]

Originally posted by Rad Blackrose
Funny, the only mods that were worth the play time were the ones that changed things in order to encourage new styles or gameplay (Style over Substance, ProMod, Masters of the Force, etc). Otherwise, 75% of the mods in JKII were a rehashed JediMOD or VAM.

Hopefully some of the SP mods that are in production (AOTC, Dark Forces remake, etc.) will compensate for the lack of originality in MP mods.

[cheeto101]

actually, there was quite a few saber mods bein made, then they figured out they couldnt add animations, so they all died. (Yeaahhh Go Style over Substance , rad, your my new best friend ). Im thinkin though with all the tools and such, theyrll be a bunch of saber mods addin new stances and such to the game. Which will def add some longevity to the game (at least long enough for a major mod or two to come out, maybe a remake of jk1??? hopefully,)

[acdcfanbill]

I have only one thing to add, if i may...

Amen.

[Rad Blackrose]

Originally posted by wassup
Hopefully some of the SP mods that are in production (AOTC, Dark Forces remake, etc.) will compensate for the lack of originality in MP mods.

We can only hope.

And yes, I'm definetly looking forward to the DFTC.

actually, there was quite a few saber mods bein made, then they figured out they couldnt add animations, so they all died. (Yeaahhh Go Style over Substance , rad, your my new best friend ). Im thinkin though with all the tools and such, theyrll be a bunch of saber mods addin new stances and such to the game. Which will def add some longevity to the game (at least long enough for a major mod or two to come out, maybe a remake of jk1??? hopefully,)

I'm not going to comment on the new saber stances and such until I see the editing tools Raven will be giving out. Hopefully the problems involving animations will be resolved.

[Darth_Misery]

Excellent post, Blackrose. You hit the nail right on the head.

The best thing that we, the player community (and by "player" I mean those of us who just want to play a good game competitively) can do is to reject the inevitable onslought of upcoming JA admin mods.

The JK2 admin mods drove the competitive gamers away. No competitive gamer will stay around and support any title where servers are chatrooms or emote parties. Competitive gamers want to play a game.

Let's revisit some history here so that we don't repeat it.


JK2 1.02 out-of-the-box:

The servers were busy. A lot of people from other communities (Q3, UT, Half-Life, etc) were showing up, playing and staying. This was JK2's best period.


JK2 1.03 patch:

The Pull bug and the one-hit kill backstab/backswing were in and competitive play was out. The competitive gamers all but left and never came back. The servers emptied and the game died.

While on 1.03, mods were cropping up (I think that was the first appearance of Vulcanus Admin Mod). Some mods addressed the bugs in the patch while keeping the game competitive (ProMod comes to mind). Any and just about all competitive game mods were generally ignored by the existing player community. More players were interested in the bug exploits than anything else. More servers emptied and more players left.


JK2 1.04 patch:

Most bugs fixed. No more one-hit kills. Too late. Improvements to competition play mods like ProMod were released but not supported by the community. Admin mods were ruling the server lists. JK2 turned into a chatroom and an emote party.

Those of us who stuck around because we still liked playing the game became increasingly rare. Joining a server was like joining an OpenGL version of IRC.

Post 1.04: Rules, "lamer!" and the bitter end.

Good servers were out there (maybe 3 or 4 out of 100+) where folks joined to play and have fun. RPG'ing and admin abuse were in and competitive play was spread out so thin that you really couldn't even call JK2 multiplayer a "game" anymore.

Then we had rules, rules, and more rules. Just about every server running (with very, VERY, VERY few exceptions), whether they meant to or not sent this message out very loud and very clear:

"You will play like WE want you to or you just won't PLAY"

...and, if you didn't play like THEY wanted you to, you were a "lamer!" Using features in the game engine would garner you that title. Not bowing before duels (can we PLEASE get rid of this....it's a bit tired) made you a "lamer!" Not conforming to some clan's ridiculously narrow view on lightsaber combat made you a "lamer!"

In the end, JK2 should have been repackaged with this caption as the tagline on the box:

"Intense chatroom action in the Star Wars universe. Not recommended for gamers."

On a positive note, there are JK2 servers out there (few that they are) where you can still join and just play. Servers who defiantly stand in the minority and promote gameplay (Hunting Wabbits and Chopshop come to mind) over all of this other nonsense. Salutes to those server admins for keeping the "game" in JK2 multiplayer alive.


...so, how do we, the gamers who want to play JA for fun and competitive gameplay, avoid this nonsense for the future? Here's a laundry list of ideas:

1. Support mods that enhance competitive gameplay versus detracting from it.

2. Reject admin mods and the clans and server admins that abuse them.

3. Keep a running list of servers with a rating system designed to identify the good and the bad in the JA server lists. This will help us as a community to be better informed which servers should be garnering our support. A running thread in the forums or a webpage would work.

4. Once and for all, get rid of all the ridiculous practices and rules that drove JK2 into the ground. Take the EA Sports approach..."if it's in the game.... it's IN THE GAME!" Or adopt these 2 simple rules: A) Saber off=quick death B) Join the game to play or go elsewhere.....and bow as you leave.

5. Promote gameplay as the #1 factor in the JA online experience. Let's leave the chatting to some other piece of software.

We have a new game and a fresh start. Let's not make the same mistakes again.

[PrimoSidone]

well we heva new taunts now... so i pretty much bet that bowing will be gone.. and about the no saber peace stuff... i think its nice to respect that if people are watching a game on a ffa server... if they aint watching and just running around the map... attacking and then turn off the sabers... they should be slaught

[Rad Blackrose]

Originally posted by PrimoSidone
well we heva new taunts now... so i pretty much bet that bowing will be gone.. and about the no saber peace stuff... i think its nice to respect that if people are watching a game on a ffa server... if they aint watching and just running around the map... attacking and then turn off the sabers... they should be slaught

I'm still waiting on /amflipoff. Who's willing to deliver!?

Misery: Your timeline is right on. And yes, VAM was 1.03.

EDIT: Just to add under your 1.02, the reason why 1.03 and 1.04 came into existance was the mass whining against the rotatable DFA, and the power that was Force Drain (for those of you that forget 1.02, you could drain an entire force bar and still have enough to Force Grip a guy). Those were the top 2 reasons for 1.03 to come around, and instead of attempting to balance gameplay like they should have, they dumbed it down. Instead of being able to reward enginuety, they gave the whiners that which they pleased.

A friend of mine once said, "Saberists are now like ravers with glowsticks." It seems that mentality has carried over to JA.

[traj]

haha...i had that binded...

/amgiveyouthefinger

this works too

..|.. ^_^ ..|..

[zeroslay]

Interesting post(s) Rad. And nice replies. Makes you think about how servers should be ran this time around.

-= IDS =- Zero Lightbringer

[MasterNeo]

Rad! We meet again! How's it goin buddy?

I totally agree with you. Although being an rcon and am admin on several different 20 person servers, I notice liberal use of these admin powers greatly reduces the fun.

As you know Rad, our old IDS server turned into a 50$ a month CHATROOM. Foolish admins would itch to hit that "slapgun" button they binded if anyone so much as sneezed on somone who didnt have their saber out. So what ended up happening was the transformation of a server into a 24 hour chatroom. Noone fought, dueled or did so much as ignited their saber.

This change ended up occurring on the majority of other servers throughout the JK2 universe.

My solution? Dont waste your time coming up with new ways to punish people. Things such as "empower" or "sleep" or "bunny" are completely and utterly UNNESSECARY. Kick the fool, ban him if he comes back and GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE! No mod needed for that crap. Raven already gave you more than sufficent means for dealing with lamers. The rest is utter popycock which serves only to attract power hungry abusers and fools who want to get some kind of power trip by ruling over their server with an iron fist and humiliating anyone who gets in their way by "bunnying" them.

Although I respect the right of modders to mod the game, and server admins to put on their server whatever the heck they want, I DO NOT respect that right (although I know I have no power over this) if it turns the entire JK3 universe (which I PAYED 50$ in hard earned money for), into a chatroom where you cant even play unless 2 people have the guts to ignite their sabers, in which case those 2 people turn into the "oddballs" who are watched and followed by admins for any mistake they may make, just because they are playing the game in the way it should be played.

[Rad Blackrose]

You should have been there when Nb agreed to turn back on force... There were some good old times once it was flipped back on.

[MasterNeo]

Oh I was! It was very fun when he did....

Provided there were other IDS on...since everyone still basically sat around and did nothing. n00bs were the saving grace of the server, I actually praised the man called "Padawan" who came in, lamed two people and started the first heated FFA Id seen in a long time on the server.


If you're reading this,Thank You Sir for bringing a little fun back into our server ^_^

[Mordred]

Yes all the admin stuff did suck when in the wrong hands (which was very offten) and all the chat room servers were annoying.

but i want this game mostly for Siege which will hopfully aviod all that kind of crap if it happens again.

altho i will still play other modes, so heres hopeing

[Agen]

I say, if that crap ever comes about again, that we make a list of good servers and bad servers to play on so we can all avoid the crazy power fiend admins and the queue of meditating 9 year olds.

[Sabre9]

Originally posted by Agen_Terminator
I say, if that crap ever comes about again, that we make a list of good servers and bad servers to play on so we can all avoid the crazy power fiend admins and the queue of meditating 9 year olds.

[Sabre9]

Originally posted by Agen_Terminator
I say, if that crap ever comes about again, that we make a list of good servers and bad servers to play on so we can all avoid the crazy power fiend admins and the queue of meditating 9 year olds.

[JaledDur]

Blackrose, Misery, and all the rest, I totally agree with your assesment. I played competitively in Jedi Knight, and was looking forward to it in Jedi Outcast, but it never really came. And after a while, the 'OpenGl chatroom' developed, which was just SAD.

In fact, I even went as far as making a player group comprised of those who did not want to be binded to the 'honor code' that most of the community seemed to be imposing on everyone. We were still NF saber folks, but without the BS and with a much higher damage scale . Although, a great deal of you chose to insult and shun me when a whiner came here whining (what a shock) about how he was unfairly banned (because he refused to PLAY and wanted to walk around with his saber off looking cool). I hope no one that is advocating the position of the 'gamers' was one of the people that joined in on the "lets smack around Jaled like a piniata" bandwagon.

If this crap happens again, I'll end up creating another community of like minded players...

But I think, like you have said, at this point, we simply cannot afford to have that type of player overtaking the actual gamers.

[MasterNeo]

Im all for it guys ^_^

[MuRaSaMuNe]

Oh lord, it has already begun. I was in a server today with a bunch of people talking German and just standing around taking turns at duels. I was just wandering around them with my saber out taunting them and they wouldn't attack. So one guy started doing taunts back so I slashed him to death and they all went after me! I started an FFA and I was happy but then they started a vote to kick me..... and I got kicked. So it begins.

I really do agree, RCON is enough to punish... I really don't mind the no saber rule to a certain extent, I just hate it when people abuse it such as FFAing with someone and then he puts his saber down and runs for health and if you kill him he goes whining to the admin and gets you kicked. That has happened to me before. As long as there is an FFA going, some duels going I'm happy... just hope someone doesn't run into it with empower

[JaledDur]

Well MuRaSaMuNe, I officially invite you to my exclusive club of people that like to kick other people's asses at random. har.

Oh and I think health has no place in saber matches. If you got hit its your own damn fault, and you have two options:

1) Die.

2) Kill me before I kill you.

[StaffMaster]

You know I never sat down and articulated my feelings on why Outcast multiplayer seemed to just die after awhile and turned into an evil Romper room for manic depressive 10 year olds with a itchy trigger finger on the admin/slap button.

You just saved me the trouble.

that being said I think its up to those of us who enjoy the skill matchup the game offers us even more so with academy.To maintain an active and open network of competitive servers running.

Where we can all go pick a fight and not have some retarded grade schooler slappin you into oblivion.

[JaledDur]

I agree to a point, but we have to be careful how we approach it. We dont want to create a situation where its difficult to get a new server started simply because it doesn't have the stamp of approval yet.

[Khier]

Ugh, this couldn't be worse for a player of my situation. I was 100% converted from the admin mod bull**** by the time JO had died. I was just beginning to get into the full force CTF/TFFA scene. So I was getting kind of excited about getting a new computer in a month or two now so I can try and get into some competitive play for JA. It comes out, and I come to these forums to see all the major competitive guys explaining that the MP portion has gone to hell, removal of JO kicks and whatnot. I really hope something is done to boost the competitive community, because I just seemed to have come around at a really bad time.

[Dart Zaidyer]

From the number of like-minded replies I see here, it shouldn't be as hard as I previously thought to crush lame gameplay-crippling before it begins. But we have to do it actively on all major fronts, or it's going to be an uphill war.

If anyone at Raven is reading this thread, take it to heart and warn your coworkers about listening to complaints of unbalanced gameplay, and for the love of god, don't capitulate to the hot new "Jedi Etiquette" of the day by giving it official support. That's what started the trainwreck that was JKII multiplayer and forced you guys to work even harder on something that should have stayed final from the get-go.

[JaledDur]

Keep in mind, Dart, that this forum is not a true sample of the JA community. Although I'd like to hope we are in the majority, it is possible that we are not.

[Prime]

Originally posted by Agen_Terminator
I say, if that crap ever comes about again, that we make a list of good servers and bad servers to play on so we can all avoid the crazy power fiend admins and the queue of meditating 9 year olds.

[Rad Blackrose]

Pardon me, I happen to be wasted right now, so if I sound a bit off, do not mind me.

Originally posted by StaffMaster
You know I never sat down and articulated my feelings on why Outcast multiplayer seemed to just die after awhile and turned into an evil Romper room for manic depressive 10 year olds with a itchy trigger finger on the admin/slap button.

You just saved me the trouble.

that being said I think its up to those of us who enjoy the skill matchup the game offers us even more so with academy.To maintain an active and open network of competitive servers running.

Where we can all go pick a fight and not have some retarded grade schooler slappin you into oblivion.

For once, we agree on something. GG man.

Well MuRaSaMuNe, I officially invite you to my exclusive club of people that like to kick other people's asses at random. har.

Oh and I think health has no place in saber matches. If you got hit its your own damn fault, and you have two options:

1) Die.

2) Kill me before I kill you.

This already exists. Its called the Anti-Saberist Code.

Which by the way, the reason why this post exists is because its the official "reintroduction," so to speak.

I'll talk more later when I'm sober.