Why I Am Moving On From STW

All Good Things Come To An End

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If you don’t play Survive The Wild you can move on and not bother reading this post. It is time for a new era in my gaming life to move on and proceed to the next chapter. In case you haven’t heard yet, I stepped down from my role as a master on STW. There are many reasons for this, and I wanted to try to lay them out as specifically as I can without giving away too much. I don’t want people to have the wrong impression, and for that reason I’m writing this post for everyone to read.

Some Back story

I started playing STW back in December or January of 2015/2016, I don’t remember the exact date, but it was one of those two months. I picked up the game quite quick, and had done allot of what there was to do in the first couple few months. I met some pretty cool people, Naday, JimmyDub, Pyro, Amine, Hamada, Cocoa, and maybe even Sito. Sadly Naday moved on due to major issues with one person in particular, me and her share this common denominator. Anyway I’ll get more into that later in the post.

After playing for a few months, I realized allot of people always had the same series of questions when starting to play the game. Some was covered in the read me, but even more wasn’t. I started writing out documents I could copy and paste from to easily answer allot of these questions. Then at one point I realized it might be easier if there was a place people could go to get all the information. This was the first glimmer of an idea which eventually led to BSG. I talked over the plan with Jimmy and Pyro, we were in constant contact on TeamTalk at this point, and started to lay out a plan. The first idea was a spot for us to host our live streams when they were live, at the time twitch was inaccessible for many and you tube wasn’t a good option for others. So with these two plans in mind I set into starting to write the html for the site. It is nothing fancy, and that wasn’t ever the point, it is just a place for information, to consume it quick and get back to playing. No one wants to read a 50,000 word read me to learn how to play a game, you want your information quick so you can get to playing which is the whole point. After a couple months I had BSG ready to be released, crafting sections, directions, map descriptions, an item index, and a basic tasks part. Most of which all had audio as well as text guides so people could choose how they wanted to get their information.

After a few months I was running low on my STW motivation tank again, and was looking for something new to consider. I sent a simple message to Sam Tupy the developer who I had talked to a little bit in the past. I just asked him if he wanted someone to build maps for the game. He said yes and he set me to admin, he was very specific that it was my choice to either choose to just build maps or to do other admin duties as well. My intentions were honestly to just build maps, to give the players something new and fresh to experience, but at that point I wasn’t aware of how much of a cluster fuck the current admin system was. Honestly the admins were plain and simple cheating, there is nothing else to say about it. They would give their friends store bought items, they would randomly give people 100s of hard to get items, leaving out those who they weren’t friends with. I was on the receiving end of this as a player and at the time thought it was pretty cool. This changed however after I became admin and realize I couldn’t ever think of doing that. There were also no specific admin rules, many would copy Sam’s inventory making themselves un killable then going around killing people with PK on, again cheating. I couldn’t believe this was the way it was working, and Sam had no clue it was going on.

So long story short, I said fuck this and started to make my opinions very clear on how I felt about it. Through bitching, letting others know what admins were doing, and everything I could, I put it out there how unfair and bad this was for the game. I have only had one intention my entire time playing STW, to make the game better for everyone, and to increase the player base. It was easy to see, new maps and new stuff added to the game was not going to do shit if the players couldn’t play in a fair environment due to admins cheating. So I made The Windy Wolf Forest, my first map in just a few days, maybe a week. There were bugs however that required a client update before the map could be fixed, so release was delayed. In the meantime I was slowly trying to mold the admins into conforming to some sort of rules to make players trust them again. This sure didn’t happen over night, but overall it has been a complete success. When I was just a player we were lucky to see 30 people online, and I knew there was potential for more players to play and stick around. At first it was super busy with all the cheaters who had gone unchecked before, but after a dozen or so of them got banned it all sorted out to normal. I kept doing what I was good at, building maps. I built the Pk map, the battle marked and destroyed forest, then followed by the caves and Twin peeks. At the time my goal was to make the river in STW make sense and follow a path so I connected it from the mainland through to the mountain map. After this was done I started to think bigger, I wanted to fill out the entire STW world map, to make it a completed land mass.

This started the biggest Project to date I undertook with STW. I wanted dozens of new maps, scores of them to fill in the game world. I wrote out a plan, sketched out what maps I would do and left the others up to the other admins to work on. In total I forget how many maps I made for that update, but it was over 10,000 map lines I wrote for the update. Then came quests for the maps, nearly every admin wrote quests for the map they made, and we had a huge release ready for all the players. Somehow we managed to keep it some what secret, it was a big surprise for the players, something that took months to complete. The maps launched and the player counts spiked again, this always happens for a update however, with only a few new players coming around and staying because of the news of a big release. we were holding around 60 players online at peek times, but that slowly started to drop without any major game updates coming out. This map release was partially to fix that, and we sure had a spike, but the numbers are sadly falling again.

The last couple things I did was invented the Pk arena, a place for anyone to practice pk with a full combat inventory, and without the fear of losing anything from their main characters. This in combination with the BSG PK events have led to people enjoying Pk again as they should. It can be fun when you aren’t so afraid of losing all of your inventory. These were fun for me to run, a shit load of work yes but I enjoyed them all the same. Even this had it’s issues however, and it is just a part of my overall reasoning for stopping my time on the game. My most recent endeavor was to script a series of crafting recipes for a new type of shelter for the game. I did this along with rewriting recipes for other current in game items, and they will be released soon. I wanted to make crafting a more realistic process, and feel I’ve accomplished that, but all will see when they are released.

There was other stuff I’ve done, but I honestly can’t get into it much, the stuff above is the stuff I find to be most beneficial for the game, most of all getting the admins into a working group that doesn’t cheat and which can be trusted by the players. There is still the random person screaming that an admin cheated, but it always ends up being untrue after logs are checked, overall everyone understands STW is a game with nearly all good admins you can trust to keep the game fair. The only recent exception to this was one admin cheating using admin commands to give himself and a friend paid and hard to get in-game items, and as a result he was demoted and plopped in jail for a couple weeks. Of course he quit the game afterwards, it just isn’t fun if you aren’t cheating I guess.

I have put allot of time and work into STW, and I don’t regret it. I honestly believe the game is better now and more people can enjoy it, personally I cannot however. It has been this way for me for a little bit now, but recently I’ve realized it is just too much to deal with, both with certain people, and some of the very time consuming admin duties, one has just pushed me past the point of dealing with the other.

Why I am Leaving, & Why I am Not

I’m not leaving because of anything to do with Sam. Though people seem to have issues with him, on a personal level I don’t at all. He makes some stupid ideas at times, and I’m probably the only one who directly says to him. “Hey Sam, that is fucking stupid.”. I am not one who is going to beat around the bush when it comes to getting stuff done, if I am just talking to someone being friendly of course I wouldn’t, but when it is dealing with getting something done, I would just rather get to the point and be done with it. I also hope and would rather everyone say the same if they actually have good reasons for their statements. For me when dealing with getting stuff done, I’m not interested in my feelings, or those of others, I’m only interested in the best possible end product we are able to produce. However not all people are like this, though in my experience most find it refreshing to have someone who will not talk shit behind your back, who won’t try to be shady, but rather someone who just says everything to you directly. That is how I operate, I’m rough around the edges, I understand that, but I also have a tendency to get stuff done which is my only goal. Yes my means do justify the ends for me. I’ve always hated that saying anyway, if the end product is met, as long as you aren’t breaking laws in the process, yes they justify the means. As you can probably tell, not all are okay with this, some people are very emotional and they cannot separate emotions from getting stuff done. Everything anyone tried to do turned into it being a personal attack on one person, and I simply couldn’t deal with it anymore. It became too much of a hassle to discuss anything because I wasn’t going to use kid gloves to talk about topics and ideas. Granted, this was only with one person, and it was only specific to this one person, all other people were on the same page and they all worked the same way. This is not my only reason for quitting however.

The daily tasks of catching those who cheat in STW takes allot of work, I honestly mean allot. We are talking hours spent every day just to get enough proof to put someone in jail. We have super strict rules that there as to be complete proof that someone is cheating to put them in jail or to ban them. This has not always been the case even recently, and all I can do is apologize to those people who got banned by an admin some what recently for something as stupid as having a name that was not 5 letters long. This lead to one of the emotional discussions I talked about above when I learned about this. There are always cheaters on STW, and it is a constant job trying to catch them all. In case no current players have noticed, admins don’t play the game anymore, this is because they don’t have time. It is very rare you get to log in without having to fix or stop people from cheating, there just simply isn’t time to play the game without getting interrupted and having to spend an hour or two dealing with an issue. I simply don’t have the drive or ability to sit on the game dealing with it anymore. This has been the case for months now, it was just this in combination with other things I explained above that pushed me over the edge.

I also want to point out, I did not ask Sam to remove the problem, I didn’t even hint at it. In fact I was very obvious that is the last thing I wanted, and not my plan for me leaving. I know lots of shady people would do something like this just to make a point and get someone they don’t like removed, to make it a competition between them or the other person. That is not how I work, simply no. My time has passed, I have done allot for the game, and now it is time for me to move on. Honestly I am really looking forward to not walking on egg shells every time I am talking about something, and to focus more on some of the other things I have been wanting to expand more, the blog and BSG being two of those. No matter who is on the game or not, it doesn’t change the fact that I just don’t have the drive anymore, it has been nearly exactly 2 years now, and in that time I am happy with what I accomplished.

The future of STW on BSG

I won’t be on the game much if at all, but I have worked it out with Sam already. I will still have access to our beta server for recording audios for BSG. This should ensure that I can keep the site up to date at least some what with new things. Currently I’m working on completely re-recording everything at a better quality, updating all the new recipes in the game and ones coming soon, adding a text and audio guide on how to get back to the mainland from all the new maps along with old, and a getting started section in both text and audio. I’ll also be adding in some additional parts to the crafting and basic tasks sections to more fully cover some of the things in game. I do not like leaving anything undone, and I have nothing against Sam or the game so I won’t be doing that after I leave. For me this parting is on good terms, at least for me, Sam, and the Players along with most admins.

In conclusion

I know some are going to say this is for drama, but it really isn’t. Well I guess it is trading one drama for another. I don’t want people thinking I am leaving because of Sam or the game, it has nothing to do with that. I know if nothing is said that will be what others assume, but that is completely wrong. Again to just make it clear, I have no problem with Sam, this decision has nothing to do with Sam, it is me personally. I specifically did not mention any names of who I have problems with, and this is intentional, if you want to know who I am talking about that is just too bad. The individual person does not matter at all, I only laid it all out so everyone can understand this really has nothing to do with the game or the developer. I hope STW grows more and prospers, I have serious doubts however, I was a constant counterweight to some things, and someone else will have to step in and take that place to keep the game from being controlled by one admin. If I can leave everyone who plays with one bit of information. Don’t like an admin based on them doing you favors or giving you things, base it on their record and how they benefit the game, a good admin should never have to point out why they are so good, instead everyone should know it by default.

One last thing, don’t bother telling me thanks, that isn’t why I did anything for the game. I don’t need to be fulfilled by others showing me they are thankful or some such, If you enjoyed what I did, I already know it because you play the game. That means my goal was met, to boost the player base and make STW fun and fair for everyone who chooses to play it. I’ll still be around everywhere else I ever was, you know how to get in contact with me.

Also, this isn’t a main weekly post, just me explaining this situation away from the toxicity of other platforms. There will be a post tomorrow reviewing a new keyboard I recently got for all the non STW readers of the blog.