Locked this post is targetted towards sand

[Winter Revel]

Welp. It's pretty obvious that things are going to be coming to a close here. 
This is a fitting post to leave this on, so I shall.

What once had the highest potential of any RSPS I'd seen in recent memory, is devolving due to personality flaws of the owner. 

07/17/2021 Sand accused me of being two faced essentially without stating any details. Was pretty random. 
A few days ago, 08/08/2021 I believe, he felt the need to bring my name into conversation with a distasteful comment related to the aforementioned accusation.
For some reason he didn't expect any hostility from me; somehow, he figured his passive-aggressive attitude couldn't possibly rub anyone the wrong way.
I'll tell you what.
I've dealt with the man's attitude for 3 years now. If it's not him drinking, it must be some sort of hormonal imbalance that empowers him to belittle anyone coming forth to him with a suggestion, issue, or help. It's all just a coin-flip when you speak with him. The only reason I tolerated it is due to the fact that the server had a great deal of potential. However, during the course of the last year it has become increasingly clear that he cannot deliver the experience many of us had hoped for.

Wilderness Griefing was something that was discussed in great detail, causing lots of flame and drama. I keep seeing that people just cannot conceptualize that there are multiple servers on runescape/osrs to avoid griefing. I consistently advocated for combat updates to at least make pvp decent if we were going to have pvp at all. Sand made some updates/nerfs to pvp damage here and there, but the main issue - griefing - was ignored. The result? Plenty of players logging out, not to log back in again. This server was ideal for PvE players. Making the wilderness dangerous could have been done in other ways, rather than enabling toxic behavior that is restricted in many games today. 

Sand has been entirely self-conflicted. He totes that this is a passion project. He doesn't care about the money.
Yet, suddenly he's worrying about player count, and revenue. I don't believe his child was the wake-up call. I don't think the child is a factor. 
He just doesn't know what he wants. This could be why the updates that we receive also seem to be either sporadic, or unfocused. 
He wants/wanted the game to be as Vanilla as possible, but refutes the knowledge that he must cut corners to deliver timely updates. (e.g. Look at the position we're in with Achievement Diary's, or bosses released out of order causing obsolete content, praesul codex's in prestige shop but no AOD, item passive effects breaking and not being returned to functionality, T90/92 equipment augmenting/dying problems with each update, etc.)
A server of this potential could not only be run solely off of passion. 
It required help. So many people offered help in different ways. Not everyone could help financially. Some people could only make extremely long suggestion posts.
We all know that he was worried about hiring additional coders as his server files could be leaked/stolen... but you know... you gotta ask yourself... why do you care about intellectual property when you're.... well?...Using others' intellectual property.. And don't get me wrong, I knew the rsps community pretty well, there were ofcourse risks associated. However, the net positive gain would've been astronomical in comparison to what we got.
He has had plenty of very positive individuals pass through this server over the years. Some people I would gladly game the rest of my gaming time away with, no matter what game we played. But every now and then, someone would feel passionate enough about something to attempt to bring it to his attention directly - and more often than not, they were dismissed with condescending remarks. Myself included. 

He has fallen upon on his community in times of dire stress, to complain, and to be sympathized with. I know quite a few of us have been around for him during some rough moments that he has had. I can only speak from my experience, that Advice that was provided, was dismissed while he continued his own self-destructive behavior. 

I cannot stress enough that You reap what you sow. 

Whether or not the server, & Sand, will recover from this, I don't know. 

What I do know, however, is that Sandstorm banned me from the discord because he didn't know how to cope with me confronting him on his passive-aggressive shit-talk.
I will be taking that as a queue that it is time for me to depart before Velmageddon. 

Know that I'll have accepted your apology, Sand, one day when you've knocked back more than you can handle and just have a few marquees rolling through the backdrop of your mind. 

I wish everyone well. 

Dueces. 

[Angel]

@Winter Revel @Sandstorm,

 

i know the both of you since long time, i really don’t know what happened but.. that’s sad.

I’ve been away for a while now, irl stuff ofc.

anyways,

i really like the both of you i know people go through tuff times, I’ve been through a lot my self, but in the end you guys both stood with me helped me, gave me advices when i was down. I would never forget these things.. because it means a lot. 
 

What i say, you guys need to talk and solve this, and i will be so glad to understand the situation even more, and get a solution for this… of course, if you both want that..

am really hopping that things get sorted soon. 
 

 

[F F S]

On 8/12/2021 at 7:44 AM, Arcadiez said:

Criticism can be delivered in many different manners, many which you have included as examples are demeaning and just rude. Try for once to see it from the other way around; you log in someone instantly bash you with "dude fix this shit", "fix that shit". "This sucks", "this is broken". You can't even enjoy a regular conversation without someone complaining, nagging and being a pure asshole. 

Sprout formulated it perfectly, ask for one thing and instead get push with irrelevant information and annoyance. He opened up the beta to get some help about 2h/oh adjustments, not to get how fucking bad the ecb spec is...Being already tired and a bit burned out and gets the opposite of what was asked. Of course you're gonna get irritated, that's how ANY human works. 

What sand needs is a real vacation, a vacation from work and away from the community. 

I don't think you guys understand the pressure and constant back-lash from players who lack empathy, feels like. This isn't a normal job, not a 9-5 job. 

I have seen many friends and family members gotten burned out from constantly having to focus on work or work related stuff. You expect a one man team to do everything every day with the out most passion and attitude? Yeah, you clearly haven't worked enough if you always are the nicest and friendlies person at work.

Sometimes you got to be supportive instead. 

I know he's a single dev and he has a family on the side. As the server grows, the pressure for him increased I'm sure. This may be easier said than done, but the man could've hired a second developer to cut the dev time he spends himself. After all this would help him health wise as well as find a pretty decent balance between work and spending time with his family and his health. This sounds like I'm blaming him for not hiring a dev.

This isn't meant to shit on him. 

There's plenty of times I've said I respect sand for the time he puts into the game as a single dev, it's impressive. But sometimes you just need to be faced with the actions you did and accept and learn from these. I've heard from some players that they would have made a similar post if they didn't fear the risk of getting a ban and since I don't necessary play the server anymore and just want the best for the community.

You act like I don't give a shit about a human being, atleast you make it sound like that. When it comes to people talking about how bad ECB spec is or ECB overall, you have to understand that this has been mentioned several times, ever since the release of ECB. Just like you try to teach me a lesson, I'll teach you one, if people feel like they don't get listened to, they either keep pushing the issues till they get their say or give up because why would someone waste time reporting something when it's not getting properly handled or dealt with or communicated about, whatsoever.

You make it sound like this is an one time thing that has happened, while the proof I came up is spread over months. I could've added worse things and I'm pretty sure you're aware of that as well and my first post would've been double the size atleast.

Just like you I'm just hoping for the best for the community and right now I've given up on trying. This was my last ditch effort.