Chewy

Someone might also want to consider actually updating the Rust server rules more than once a year. Just a thought.

Here's the current state of Anarchy, from my perspective: Server pop on Anarchy rarely goes above ~80-90 on a good wipe day, and then only for a few hours after school is out. It struggles to reach 75% of that on day 2 at peak times. Ghost town on day 3 (though that's not unique to Anarchy). I'd wager the majority of players are either solo or in duos, followed by trios. A very small percent of players run max team size. Even with the population and group sizes now, it is rare for any base larger than a 2x2 to still be intact after the first night. That's expected, it's a 1000x. A solo or duo can reasonably expect an easy restart vs a trio or even some quads. The map seeds are likely too big for the current population density and group sizes, so PVP outside of a raid or heli/bradley can be hard to find. There are frequent, recurring, and constantly reported server config and plugin issues (some that have existed for years) that can act as barriers for new players to even play. Points #4 and 5 are what I've seen as the primary limiters for pop stability and growth. Just my personal take on it from playing on Anarchy now and then. I'm trying to understand why removing the only balancing mechanism left (team size) was considered a good idea for server pop when current team limits are already infrequently met... but what is really confusing is how such a foundational change was made without any consideration given to existing quality of life and gameplay fixes first. What a crazy Rust world we live in.

This was my assumption coming into the manager role: Whoever ends up becoming the Rust manager would be allowed to manage every aspect of the Rust ecosystem, with the possible exception of actual server access (though that was a whole other conversation that needs to be had). My assumptions were eventually proven to be wildly inaccurate, and that's mostly a failure on my part for not communicating effectively with Garnet. While I was manager, here were my access levels: Forums - I could lock/move posts, nothing else. I couldn't edit existing posts to fix errors with things like server rules, chat rules, group/roaming sizes. etc. The only thing I could do was accept or deny applications. Discord - I could kick users. Nothing else. I couldn't create staff channels in Discord (which I wanted to do), or fix existing channels (when bots broke, for example), or ban people spamming chat with racial slurs/@ing every role possible. I couldn't assign roles to existing or new moderators. I couldn't even edit the post in the #-reports-and-appeals channel to fix the link so users could actually report someone. In-game - I had moderator access on 1 out of 5 servers. On the other servers, I had 0 permissions (in-game) and didn't even have the moderator title. BattleMetrics - this is server-side access to ban/mute. I could ban for various time frames and specific servers and give reasons, or I could permanently mute someone (no option to give a reason or time frame). I had no access to any other admin commands or permissions inside or outside the game. I couldn't assign roles to new moderators in Discord, or give them permissions myself in Rust, so every person I hired had absolutely no power to do anything except take screenshots, send them to me, and hope I was online. Of my 4 pre-existing moderators, 3 of them had moderator access on the 1000x . Of those 3, only 1 had access on any other server (Sierra 2x and the 5x). Again, these were all things I assumed I would be able to fix fairly quick, based off of what I thought my role should have been able to do - not what Garnet had in mind when he hired me. Another point of failure on my part with the communication between myself and Garnet. Garnet has his reasons for wanting to keep permissions the way they were, but as you can see - I had no power to make any changes for the actual community. Only Garnet has that power, and he's incredibly busy both in the real world and with GMod. I tried my best to keep communication open with him, I filled our Steam chat with permission fix requests, forum suggestions, discord requests and more before I finally created a shared doc, but by the time Garnet posted his thoughts here it was obvious to me (at the time) that I had failed to communicate everything effectively and that it didn't seem to have improved at all over the last month. My inability to communicate well with Garnet was a barrier that I didn't see being overcome quickly, so instead of continuing down that path and possibly holding back the community and the mod team, I stepped down. I have all the respect possible for Garnet and the work he has to do (and all the work he doesn't have to do, but does because of the community). I enjoyed the times we were able to chat and work together. I still play almost exclusively on Garnet servers, I still try to contribute to the community, and I still make sure I'm available to the mod team for any questions they may have or as a sounding board for ideas and suggestions they have. I enjoy this community and hope to be around to see it grow.

In-game name: Chewy Age: 37 Why am I qualified? I worked in K-12 (education) for 11 years, taught middle school for 4 of that. I've seen and survived the worst that puberty has to offer and how to manage those effected by it (teachers and students). I was in charge of staff training and education for several years, as well as creating policies and procedures whenever needed. I've handled hiring and scheduling for my departments in the past. Been a sysadmin for nearly 15 years, and in software development for 3. I'm very familiar with software and game mods in general, as well as how integrations and configurations can be done to help drive the community and staff forward. I've been playing multiplayer FPS games since Goldeneye on the N64, and on Steam since the days of DoD (Day of Defeat, for those not in the know). I've been a ranked tournament player in the days when those were still a thing, so I get the competitive aspect and how it effects behavior and how much a player enjoys their experience. Aside from the professional aspect, I've been playing Rust since just before the Alpha ended and have been playing it almost exclusively for the last couple of years. I've played on over a hundred different servers of all types (modded, community, vanilla, official) and gotten a pretty good feel for what qualities staff need to have in order to be successful and not hate their responsibilities. Rust is often an incredibly toxic community and if you start to enforce any sort of rules or behavioral expectations on players, you have to be ready to become a target for them. Staff/mods need someone who knows what they're dealing with, knows the struggle, and is always available to support them in many capacities. I haven't been in the Garnet community for long (I think I'm at around 2 months now?), but I have around 600-800 hours played on the 2x, 5x, and 1000x. I'm definitely the most hated mod on the 1000x, which I expected to happen as soon as rules started to be enforced. I've gotten a lot of support from players at the same time though, so I think we're finally making some progress on the 1000x as far as player interactions go. I want to expand that progress into all the other aspects of gameplay on the other Garnet servers, which will eventually build trust in staff and trust in the quality of gameplay we can offer. It all starts at the top, and I want to be the one helping pull the community and servers forward.