Toxicity; The thing that is killing our community, and other things. #nOm_Rant

[diamond1]

There are a few problems that I would like to address. These problems are both well known or not much known, but if we continue to sweep it under the rug, nothing will happen for the better.
To the people that will cry to "not speak of these things becasue 'new players' will see this, I'd like to say to you that YOU are probably part of the problem.
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Let's start off with the largest topic and the one you were probably wanting to know due to the title: The Toxicity of the Community.
To be more precise: The toxic attitudes of several official faction leaders and their followers.
Here we go, again.
Ask anyone that is aware and they will most likely tell you (if they are not part of the problem) that when you get to being an offical faction, you will gain access into the INFAMOUS Offical Faction Leaders Chat on Skype. In here lies the den of all stink and fume that pollutes this otherwise great place to hang out in and have fun. In here, you will find bullies and rude individuals that love to pry on the weak. In here, you will find leaders that celebrate when they see people they hate leave the game. (A game that has a small community and really cannot afford to loose more members. Members including those that have proven to be influential to the activity of the server.) In here, you will find leaders that use their power to mock and humiliate other factions rather than help build them up. If you don't agree with this last statement, I point you towards myself and my own faction.
Oh yea, i knew one in particular. Wasn't fun being on the recieving end of the ordeal which lead to another issue a few months later. Kinda silly what the reasons behind them are though. But it's even hard in the first place with the famous drama that's caused one "major" issue at least a week it seems.
It's influential veterans like these that get away with this becasue they do all their dirty work over Skype, Teamspeak, and Discord. They go as far as to lie, twist facts and truth, or boarder-line troll eachother. I've only been in one faction so i wouldn't know, but this is pretty commonsense to be seen from anyone at all lately.For those unoffical faction leaders that want to gain officaldom, I highly suggest you NEVER enter the 'OFL' chat room. It's disappointing because these people in the end make it harder for those others to enjoy the game at a higher standard. What i want to know is who follows an idea like this. Shouldn't it be pretty easy to understand to stay with your own group before merging with another?You will often hear these people say that Faction Leaders have little control and not much leverage in terms of the server. I would argue that they have a highly influential role and that is to make this place fun, exciting, entertaining, and above all: a pleasant community environment. Being here for a while, i can see that. Could screw you over if you do the wrong thing too.

You can argue with me about this all you want, but time and time again I have had to witness people leave due to these types of people. They did not even have to actually be offical faction leaders, but the issue still remains that the the leaders who knew about the problem did not do anything about it. Disappointing. I've sorta noticiced this as well and it's pretty saddening to be honest.

Because here is the thing that you might not realize: The thing that makes this game so addicting is the friendships you build among other players. It's the memories you have that are not of you by yourself, but together doing something cool! Anyone that does something to break this or create a harsh environment for these things to happen will be ruining the game for everyone but themselves and their own friends that are part in the act. Unfortunately, it has gotten now to almost the HIGHEST level of influential people, with even a mod. This may be surprising,
but i've found that in many cases, being an indie is better for yourself to work with people than being in a faction as that causes more problems. And it's worked since being out of a faction recently while bringing a few mates with, we've been having more fun than ever since then. As seen from the faction leaders chat after another player had left:

"Another [insert] down. Several to go." - Quote from OFL Chat by an unnamed individual.
*Slow clap* Way to go.

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Another issue that I have been personally struggling with is creating events.
I am unsure if it is because of the above reason that it is not popular, or if it is about the next concern: A disproportionate advertisement system.
Figured this would appear sooner or later.
If you are reading this, you are highly likely to know about Spazzy's events. These events are highly popular becasue they are nicely polished and look more official. They have prizes that you cannot get your hands on anywhere else, they have the best advertisement by not only posting a thread on forums but also having it pinned on the home page, on top of every location on the forums, and ON TOP OF THAT there is also a randomly generated message on the server that occurs that informs people of the event. The events themselves need tuning to go around peoples needs instead of flat-out handing it towards them.

I'm not going to say that this is simply unfair, but the problem that I see is that people have become used to this sort of advertisement and event prizes to the point that they are not interested in anything else. People do not look over the event thread section like they used to when they want to join something. People would RATHER go to one event becasue it has admin prizes than go to another event, event if it is more to their play style. It is upsetting, frustrating and difficult to compete with this sort of thing.That's a fact. People go directly for the most valuble thing they can hold onto for their own needs to gain an advantage over other. during the cultist event, a mate and i scored ALL of the loot from one cultist boss and about 13 other players just tried to go straight for the base to get whatever they could find. This clearly told me something.

Additionally, it is really hard to get in contact with Admins influential to this, as they rather tend to ignore people like myself.

Before you tell me that 'no one likes racing', I'd like to point out that I've done other events other than racing with similar effects. It's been harder and harder to make events as people for more and more used to only going to admin-created events that are 'worth' going to. Hell.... even faction leaders push their members to go out and collect Scientific Data and all that. How could I blame them. The other funny thing is that these events are generally for cap-accessible factions which is another set of issues that is off topic from this. I think the point has been made enough times what caps are doing. There has been suggestions made since then in the threads themselves in relation to the event, i even made a suggestion to turn certain comodities into useful things for freighters.
While I am here, let me point out that in this 'Role Play Server', ordinary people have less and less influence from others. The classic example is the dev vs player situation but to be honest, it has not gone down to the worst level. Devs are open, after much debate and work on your own, to perhaps include something. That being said, you will most likely for example NOT hear about smaller factions in offical news or offical story-line development. It sucks that certain factions have more attraction than others in terms of this.
It's pretty hard to implement the full rules of roleplay to people when the whole point of the game is to kill things/trade. not many people are used to that kind of thing. As for factions, even if they have activity, they're causing most of the issues around here in the meantime. The smaller ones just get shot up to pieces.

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