{"id":540,"date":"2019-05-12T23:07:46","date_gmt":"2019-05-12T23:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rust.ars-insolitus.com\/?p=540"},"modified":"2019-05-12T23:07:49","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T23:07:49","slug":"trying-to-make-things-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rust.ars-insolitus.com\/?p=540","title":{"rendered":"Trying to Make Things Right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I spent the better part of the day yesterday thoroughly investigating all of the server logs, tracking every piece of loot, every explosion, trying to make sure I had a very full picture of the situation. In the spirit of transparency, I want to explain everything that has happened, how this entire situation came to a head, and how we\u2019re going to apply the lessons learned from this event to make sure we do better in the future. I\u2019m avoiding using individual names wherever possible, in accordance with my policy of avoiding a culture of \u201cname and shame\u201d wherever possible. By the end of this report, I hope that you\u2019ll see that I\u2019m making every effort both to ensure that this cannot happen again, and that those involved are held accountable for their actions.<\/p>\n

On or around May 3^{rd<\/sup>, a large group joined the server and began clearly, unequivocally declaring themselves as \u201crunning\u201d the server, being the \u201cnew alphas,\u201d and so on. \u00a0Several players expressed dismay at this, and when they did start raiding people on the 2^{nd<\/sup> day of the wipe, there were several complaints about this group. This almost immediately triggered conversations between myself and the server staff pertaining to this group, monitoring their activities, and preparing plans for how to deal with them if they proved to be toxic or hostile to the good form of the server. We\u2019ve been discussing the problems they posed, and as they became increasingly toxic, we began making preparations to act against them. Throughout this time and over the last several weeks, a staff member has been taking a more active role in administrative work, having primarily been working in a technical role previously.<\/p>\n}}

Last week, some players asked me if I would be upset with them for foundation wiping the zerg group, mostly as courtesy to prevent chasing people off of the server if I was trying to foster their support, etc. So, later the same day when the staff member approached me to ask what I thought about that group being foundation wiped, I believed this to be a reference to the earlier conversation, rather than sanctioning the group being wiped out. This is where I believe my main error occurred; I responded that I thought it was just fine, and I thought the rest of whatever was about to shake out would be interesting. I didn\u2019t consider that my response would or could be considered as tacit consent for what played out.<\/p>\n

Later in the week, a large sum of C4 was given to another group by members of COH. Yesterday, this member of COH logged on, taking more C4, and then began raiding the base in K11. Members from 2 other groups arrived to counter, only to find that COH was present and raiding.\u00a0 Another large sum of C4 was dropped off, COH\u2019s raider disappeared, and then things took a turn for the worse. C4 began being thrown up, from underground, at the base\u2019s foundations.\u00a0 Later, actual parts of the base were destroyed via admin commands. In response to this, the players present stopped raiding, deposited the rest of the explosives in a hidden location, and reported the events, along with video, to me. Because the video contains clan communications that don\u2019t pertain to the raid and specifically names players involved, I\u2019ve chosen not to present it at this time as part of this report. Most of the people involved firsthand in this situation have already seen it, and to keep sharing around the details would only serve to keep the cycle of drama and speculation alive; I much prefer to try and move forward from this and rebuild from the shaken trust. You\u2019re of course, welcome to visit the #rust-main-staff-action-ama channel on Discord, and I will be glad to address any questions.<\/p>\n

In the course of this situation, I\u2019ve learned that we need to stop including sulfur, charcoal, or gunpowder in the senior admin kits. Typically, these materials were available on my sleeper and intended for being able to quickly craft replacements of materials I accidentally wasted for someone, while avoiding the awkward questions later in the wipe of why I was summoning ammo or the sort, but because this material was just available on my body, any admin that teleported to my sleep location would have been able to access that material. Going forward, only the materials absolutely needed for store building will be included in the large kits, and when the time comes to include explosives as part of the shop\u2019s stock, it will be spawned separately to improve transparency and player awareness of what\u2019s there. Additionally, we are terminating the policy of letting admin staff play on Main when they aren\u2019t working a shift.\u00a0 From now on, staff can only play on the Warzone server, which doesn\u2019t have regular admin support like Main does.

Finally, there has been player sentiment that\u2019s sufficiently widespread regarding COH. It was expressed to me during this investigation from multiple people in multiple groups that the feeling is that when someone sees the COH clan tag, it means that someone is going to get banned because COH doesn\u2019t like them, or that some impossible loot is going to show up, suggesting that they are cheating or getting admin help. Rather than risking there being unfair play, the clan is going to be removed from Main, though they will still be permitted to play on the Warzone server, where there aren\u2019t other admins that could possibly be involved in anything untoward. The staff member is being immediately removed and suspended from administrative actions on the server, but will remain on staff in other roles.<\/p>\n

Passions run high. Feelings get in front of logic. People make mistakes. One of the things that makes Serenity Valley so special is how much people care about this community and its people, and sometimes when people are trying to do the best for everyone, some of those mistakes get made. Lord knows I\u2019ve made plenty of them, almost always with the best intentions. As they say, however, the road to Hell is paved in good intentions. None of what happened yesterday takes away from the thousands of hours that our staff have spent working rather than playing on the server, our network connections, our technology systems, or the fact that he has gone above and beyond to support the server and keep things running when I was unwell and otherwise unable to.\u00a0 Regardless of week\u2019s events, this does not take away from the tremendous contributions that this staffer has made to our community, and without him, we just as surely wouldn\u2019t be where we are today, just as certainly as if I was gone, too. This is the reasoning for a suspension rather than an outright removal. I\u2019m going to work hard to regain your trust, to make sure that we stand for fair play and respect. I will, of course, answer any questions that you have honestly, candidly, and will have a text channel available specifically for this purpose. You, our players, deserve better, and we will do better.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"