Buckwalter

I must say, I'm surprised by people's political leanings here. Keep up the civil discourse. Woot.

No matter your political affiliation, this is amusing.

Okay, I've gone ahead and updated your information and hopefully you should be all set now. If it doesn't work when you try it now, please give me the IP address shown on that page when it says "character data not found." But you should be all set now.

Don't be edging in on C4NT's turf dude. Brick killed a guy with a trident. Not to be trifled with. Ah the feels, I miss old Asylum.

Yeah, not really fair. My bus would smoke that shit. But only on H1 during rush hour. There's a bus only lane, but he doesn't know that.

I had an 06 TJ for 6 years. Did a fair amount of rock crawling and what not with it. Excellent cars and a lot of fun, but it felt like something broke every other month. Maybe it was just mine.

That is some crazy shit right there. But it just goes to show, for every nice reasonable person on the internet there's a person ready to drive cross country and burn down your trailer because you called them a nerd.

There seems to be some confusion about what constitutes toxic behavior vs non-toxic but still unfriendly behavior. Admittedly it's somewhat subjective, but just so we can all get on the page I'll delineate between the two. Non-toxic but still unfriendly: This would account for the gross majority of what goes on in side chat. General shit talk and good-natured competitive provocation. Most gangs are do this regularly, though some engage in it more often and seem to revel in it more. But hey, if people's egos are wrapped up in their video game personas, let them have their fun. This would be your average taunting, bragging, insults and what not. It forms rivalries which ends up deepening people's gang experience with an extra competitive element. For the most part, this is the category that old bad blood would fall under. A few people behaved obnoxiously and were really unpleasant people to deal with in game at times, but they weren't toxic. They were just acting like people act on the internet. Grating as it may be at times, it's pretty benign. Toxic: Behavior that makes people want to leave the server or the community. This would be things like racism, mocking people's dying parents, digging around for people's personal information in order to publicly ridicule them, or really any behavior that is intended to directly harm someone or their experience in the community. Toxicity is purposefully malicious the vast majority of the time. Now obviously these are just general definitions and there is certainly some crossover. TL;DR: Non-toxic: Rude, obnoxious, insulting but ultimately all in good fun. Toxic: Going out of your way to make other people's time here worse.

Want to race for pink slips? My bus vs your Mercedes?

No advice here. Just as a former jeep owner, how many major repairs have you done in the past year?

I have a number of those as well. But this was a thread about cars, since mine is fucked, I ride the bus. And since you can't bring surfboards on the bus, it's really a mess. But hey, since you asked. Bask in their beauty Newest members of the family: See what you've done ranger.

My camry is having transmission issues, so this is my whip for the time being.

This right here is the fundamental disconnect man. It's not about some cyber bullying horseshit. It's about having a pleasant experience in a video game. People have thousands of options, why would they come to the one where they have to listen to prepubescent, virtual tough guys throwing their insults all over the place? It's kind of like the reason dave and buster's does better than chuck-e-cheese. Because the ball pit at Dave and Buster's isn't full of little kid vomit. Some people are too sensitive, some people need to learn some basic courtesy. If we can meet in the middle, our community will be better for it.

Alright, this thread is rapidly turning into a dumpster fire. Let's see if we can get this back on track. Or at least a little less off track. 1) Toxicity is out of hand. I agree. If the community would like to see change in this area, you have several options. Lobby the CM's for stricter behavioral guidelines. Make a conscious effort to not propagate this type of behavior, e.g. not giving the desired response when this stuff goes on in side chat. Lastly and perhaps most effectively, the community comes together to boycott this toxic behavior. Condition people to understand that acting like an ass, gets you precisely nothing. No fun fights, no fun roleplay, no reduced tickets, no attention of any kind. If you want to act like an ass, enjoy being a pariah. 2) It is a concern that some people use the APD as a vehicle for messing with people they don't like. Ultimately that's probably not going to be an easy thing to change. It's a large issue that is very difficult to control for. However, if everyone could just acknowledge that everyone, even people they don't like are just trying to relax and enjoy a game, I think we could see some major improvements in this area. As for admin bias, there are some cases where we could improve on this. We often are too lenient with veteran players. It's not intentional, but it seems to go that way. As for banning people we dislike, most of the time if there is a player we have an issue with, we simple hand the matter to a different admin. But incidents involving personal feelings are so incredibly rare, it hardly merits a mention. After a while, all bans and reports just become numbers and letters. You look at the evidence, you see they broke a rule, you look at their prior history and assign the appropriate number of days. It's not a matter of like or dislike, it's a matter of did or did not. There can of course be significant discrepancies in the appeals process however. But 99% of the time, that comes down to a disparity in personal skills. Someone who is contrite and affable will fare much better than someone who comes in with an attitude and starts bandying about their innocence in the face of clear proof. So most of the time, it comes down to understand of the rules, attitude and likelihood of recidivism. 3) Agreed. It's a pain to take it all away, it's obnoxious when people are like, "wait wut? I cant hazz 40 million cash? i dinn no!!" And considering how easy it is to get caught, it's not worth your time to hide it. Just don't. 4) Gang life dying is a complex and debatable issue. The super gang style is dead. It's just not feasible anymore. Many would contend that this is a good thing. However the health of more moderate gangs is a concern at the moment. Some contend that lacking financial incentives and inability to stockpile money is the primary factor, others assert the toxic environment to be causal. I personally believe that it has more to do with fighting other gangs being highly unpleasant, but can agree that cartel incentives are perhaps a touch thin at the moment. But that's really an issue deserve of it's own discussion, entirely divorced from the chaos of this thread.

When these things come to our attention, we do take action on them. No matter the circumstances, when it turns into real world harassment we take it extremely seriously. If you see this sort of thing taking place in game, on teamspeak or here on the forums. Report it immediately. The whole reason Asylum is named Asylum is that it's supposed to be a safe haven for people. A place where everyone can come, play some video games and have a pleasant experience. Free from administrative abuse and free from a toxic community. The fact that we have a lot wrapped up in that is one of the reasons why the growing gulf of mistrust between players and staff is so frustrating and the same can be said for the recent bent towards all out, no holds barred toxicity from player to player. It's a really sad situation and it's my hope that everyone can take a step back, treat each other well and those who are unable or unwilling to do that, will be swiftly removed from the community. People shouldn't have to avoid playing a video game (A FUCKING VIDEO GAME) because they don't want their personal information shared, their realworld appearance mocked, or to be harassed incessantly because they won a virtual firefight. That right there, is something that simply will not be tolerated. If you see that, report it. Please.

And adding insult to injury, after the very first Asylum laser tag tournament finals, TRAV gave you a fuel truck to cruise around in....for about 30 seconds before he zeus bolted it. @TRAV is a monster.

Again the issue here is that usually someone is assuming they've been banned for something and they attempt to recreate it legitimately, but they've been banned for something totally different. So it ends up being irrelevant. I understand why you are hesitant to simply take my word on these matters. That mistrust has been a growing issue in our community as evidenced and inflamed by the cavalcade of #freeWhomever campaigns that litter forums signatures and teamspeak descriptions with increasing frequency. However if I can put it really bluntly, the easiest way to test the veracity of my claims is this: Grow your gang, progress your skills, remain in community and see what happens. I can guarantee with 100% certitude that no matter how good you get, if you play within the rules, you'll have no issues with us. No matter how many people grumble, no matter how many people call hacks, if there is nothing there to find, we can't ban you. A) We wouldn't want to B ) Motown, Bamf and Paratus wouldn't let us. A lot of people believe that where there's smoke there's fire, but with regard to our evidence procedure, smoke doesn't count for anything. If we can't find the fire and prove it empirically, there's no fire. There's been a great deal of talk in this thread about other people who have received permanent bans for various reasons. Some of those situation certainly look strange or unjust from an outside perspective. They only see the final ban not the 20 prior bans, 5 verbal warnings, and 2 "last, last chances" to amend the behavior. Or in the case of people who have been banned for cheating, they only see the hackusations then the ban itself. They don't see the laborious efforts of our team, carefully observing this player in game or combing through logs. These situations are often complex and if I had to estimate the average investigation length is about 6 weeks. So all I'm asking is that you be circumspect about the claims of banned players and that you continue to advance and progress and see firsthand that we don't ban people for being good or because someone accused them of cheating.

Often times we aren't receptive towards offers to go through someone's computer because they are likely to have removed any offending files or created a clean virtual machine. So you can see why in our minds, this wouldn't be a productive use of time. As for the second scenario about recreating conditions, generally this doesn't carry much weight as there is no way to control for all the variables. But beyond that, it is usually a refutation of something that has nothing to do with the ban. People assume they were banned for this instance or that and try to prove those specific incidents valid. However since we don't make evidence public, they are usually completely unaware of the concrete evidence that a recreation simply couldn't nullify. And again, I empathize with people's frustration. Especially those close to the person who believe them, absent any evidence they would of course assume the worst about our process. But for now, that's a necessary evil. And especially in an environment where people disseminate their own narrative of a situation publicly, it's important to be fastidious about what is or is not likely to be true. For example, your assertion that you've seen someone banned for no recoil because they know how to pull the gun down; you haven't seen the evidence that led to the ban, you've only heard the narrative that is spread after the fact. And those carefully constructed deflections often lead to the idea that people are banned for next to nothing. Which is unbelievably frustrating for the admin team. A perfect example was directly after aidzo was banned. Someone was on twitch defending his honor and talking about how he was banned for being good. I sat there, having seen all the evidence watching people rally to the defense of someone I could prove guilty with no question. But had to keep quiet due to policy. It's frustrating for everyone and it really harms the relationship between server staff and the player base. I'd just like to address something in respect to that ban wave. And I'm not sure if this has been made public or not, hopefully I'm not overstepping by saying this. But that ban wave was the result of unilateral action by one individual. It didn't follow our sufficient evidence guidelines, nor go through the necessary CM approval stage, which is why the bans were over turned immediately and even stricter standards were set. I realize that incident significantly harmed our reputation, destroyed trust and frankly made us look foolish. But I want you to know that this is not how we operate and when mistakes are made, we work to correct them immediately, and then take the necessary steps to prevent such occurrences in the future.

Firstly, I'd like to point out that Nex has been here forever. Prior to the garage change 18 months ago, he had the last surviving fuel truck in his garage (asylum used to have fuel trucks). As to the larger issue at hand, while I appreciate your attempt to avoid specifics and keep things conceptual, it's made it somewhat difficult to distill down your point. If you're suggesting people are being banned for cheating willy nilly because someone accused them of cheating, I can assure you that isn't the way we operate. Motown and Paratus would not tolerate such an approach. Continuing, if your assertion is that hackusations end up getting people banned, the answer again is no. That being said, when someone is suspected of cheating, more and more people will record and report which eventually can lead to more thorough administrative investigation. But even then, we have thorough evidentiary requirements that must be upheld. Which is why there is often frustration in the community about "inaction" against people that are broadly suspected of cheating. If we don't have the evidence, we don't ban. Further, I understand many people are left feeling unsatisfied with the outcome of these investigations as the evidence is never made public, not even to the player in question. So their friends and associates are often outraged and decry the entire process as unfair and corrupt. However this is done simply to ensure that people don't know how they were caught and cannot easily avoid detection in the future. Lastly, yes these things seem to be happening with increased frequency. People get in these weird feuds with other players, a lot of shit talk in side chat, egos on the line, burnt out and apathetic, etc etc and they decide to cheat. Or use other insidious means of securing an advantage. Then they get caught, then they get banned, then the silent majority sights in relief while the individual's friends go apoplectic on the forums. If I have failed to address your specific concerns, please let me know and I will attempt to do so. But the broad point I'm trying to make is that this is a video game, sometimes people cheat and as a result we have to ban them. I know that it's frustrating and the policy of secrecy exacerbates that, but we're all trying our best to ensure a healthy, fun and cheater free experience for everyone who plays asylum. As for your concerns about toxicity, I'm in complete agreement. I think it's gotten worse and frankly out of hand. The amount of outright ugliness that people throw at eachother is unbelievable and it's a shame. But there isn't much we can do currently to get people to interact with eachother with a little basic decency.

Now I wasn't present for your appeal so I'm just speculating here, but it bears mentioning that any discussion of "killing yourself" over the course of your appeal was almost certainly in reference to your in game character as repeatedly committing suicide (along with a few other things) is one of the most common manners in which people dupe. So while I can understand how this may have been misunderstood in that context, I can all but guarantee that it wasn't directed at you personally but instead was in reference to your actions in game. As for the conduct of our administrative staff, we strive to be fair, professional and polite in our dealings. However we have rules to uphold and enforce, so many people take the enforcement of those rules personally and assume their ban is the product of malice or abuse. The reality is far more banal. We ban people because they've violated the rules. Some people may not appreciate the tenor of their ban appeal, they might resent the way in which they're held to account for their actions or dislike the stern manner in which they are treated. However the nature of those discussions is dictated entirely by your attitude and willingness to cooperate in the process. Our ultimate goal is the enforcement of the rules, we aren't out to punish anyone. So if you go in there and say, "Look, I messed up, I thought this that or the other thing, I'm very sorry. What can I do to make this right?"; things will go much more smoothly than shouting indignantly about abuse and injustice. Or perhaps worse yet, denying your culpability. We're far more interested in modifying behavior than we are in punishment. So generally, people who recognize what they've done wrong are treated with some degree of leniency, however that is entirely predicated on our confidence in an individual's ability to follow the rules going forward. So hopefully this helps you and others to better understand our position in the appeals process. And hopefully this clears up any confusion about someone treating you poorly or telling you to kill yourself. If you wish to appeal your ban, file an appeal on the forums or wait in the "help, I've been banned" channel on teamspeak.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. -George Orwell, 1984

This. Even though they all have real world counter parts, the futuristic weaponry of Arma 3 just kind of sucks. I'd like to see modern realworld weaponry, AK's, M4's, HK416's, SCAR 16&17's, maybe some modern pistols.

The navid makes me sad. I miss the days when I thought the Zafir was overused in KOTH...

All weapons in asylum allow zeroing with iron sights. But once you put a fixed range optic on there, no more zeroing. As for the specific mod choices, definitely some good suggestions in here. Especially that TRYK clothing mod, hot damn those look nice. Who knows what will end up being used when all is said and done, but keep the good suggestions coming.

Ultimate solution, Sneaky gets CoP on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and Atmosphere gets it Tuesdays and Thursdays. On weekends there will be a raffle.