May 24, 2017, 11:00 PM
What’s up,
While writing this I realised it’s becoming a pretty big story, but I’d like to begin this thread by saying that it’s been a year today since I became staff and while that may not be long relatively speaking to a few other staff members, a lot has still happened since my promotion.
I’ve been on limelight since the server first booted, and I’ve been playing CityRP for the better part of 3 years, coming up on 4. CityRP has been very dear to me, in the first 2+ years before the creation of limelight, I played on and off but during this time I always held CityRP in extremely high regard due to its values and the spark it had. There was always something exciting and new, be it a new discovery within the gamemode or a new RP set up by the players. More about this later.
It was a huge shock to me when I first got promoted as I actually originally thought I was getting demoted from teacher. While such is the ritual for many promotions, the staff created a somewhat believable circumstance in which I was literally bricking it in the moments before the rest of the staff team appeared.
I’ll be honest; I’d wanted staff for a while. I hadn’t always wanted it, since I was self-aware of my lack of experience previously, but at this moment and for a short while before I did want staff and was happy to receive the offer. This is something a lot of people seem to have a problem with but let’s be honest – how can you be a good staff member if you never wanted the role?
When I first got staff it was fun, I had so many new abilities to try out, and the concept of being able to watch players while they have absolutely no idea I’m there brought a unique sense of exhilaration. This faded as the months went by. Limelight was losing the spark it once had. Nothing seemed new or exciting anymore. Spending hours flying around, I felt like I’d seen everything. By the time I got moderator stage 2, my enthusiasm was already petering out and the long haul between stage 2 and administrator was even worse.
When I was promoted to administrator, it opened so many new doors for me in terms of what I could do. What I had the ability to change, what I had an actual input and effect on, as well as even more of the cool new tools that come with admin. I enjoyed these for a while, before I slipped back into my old pre-admin mindset. I realised not long after that this was the problem. I no longer viewed CityRP as a diverse gamemode shaped by the community, simply as a mechanism created by the limelight developers for me to romp around in. The key word being me, I no longer felt connected with the players and it was harder than ever to achieve this connection due to both the stigma and expectations that come with being an administrator. I couldn’t make many friends without dropping the pseudo-professionalism we were expected to uphold as staff, and it was even harder to just get into random roleplay situations which weren’t purely based on the fact that the players participating just wanted REPs. I feel like it’s not just me, but server-wide the idea of roleplaying for fun is lost. That’s not something I want to be a part of. Other than to a select few, some of which I might mention later in this post, I am now but a name that occasionally passes through the server, serving no purpose than to either ruin the fun of players or as a tool to give them their precious REPs. I couldn’t get over the feeling that every interaction I had with another player is just begging for something that contributes to their own benefit. Oh, and trust me, no matter how hard you try to mask your intentions, we staff still notice it.
I guess the point of this section was to send a message to anyone out there that wants to be staff like I did – It’s nothing like you think. Yeah I’m sure you’ve heard that before but it really is hard work. You’re expected to go through every topic on the forum and reply with your input while still keeping up a high standard of activity on the server, and then somehow leave time for having a life on the side to stop you from going completely insane. Honestly, seriously consider even approaching the notion of going for staff. Like I said before, it’s hard work and if you’re not careful it will change you as a person. You’ll be stuck in a web of pseudo-professionalism and a sense of false superiority, when in reality the staff should just be like players who are entrusted with the responsibility of upholding the ‘law’, for lack of a better term, on the server. This is not the case, and instead you get this no-fun attitude in which diversity within the team is shunned and any staff member with an unpopular opinion is forced to keep it behind closed doors. That said, you should still have some appreciation for the staff. Without them, your beloved server would fall into anarchy.
There are some big changes coming to limelight that I think some of you might like. This goes for both the gamemode and the staff team. I hope that these will change the course of limelight for the better so that I may one day return and be proud of the community I once administrated, because in my heart that’s what limelight is. While it is now a registered business, it will always be a community; my community. My home.
MOVING ON,
I’d like to give a mention to some of my peers whom I either admire, respect or appreciate the most.
Voluptious – You’ve pulled through for me on so many occasions it’s unreal. Without you I probably would never have become an administrator and I’m truly grateful for your help. I’ll always see you as the last stand of objectivity on the limelight staff team. Stay that way.
Disastrous – I haven’t known you for that long, but you’re a real dude and I’m glad I met you. You’re different to most of the other players I’ve ever interacted with to the point where you’re the first person I saw as a player and managed to change my perception of you to a friend. Keep it real.
Jono – Thanks for keeping me sane on the staff team. Also thanks for making me rich. ALSO thanks for being a good mate. You’re cool to mess around with and can take a joke, which I respect you for. Oy vey.
Enzyme – Admittedly, I thought at first that you were just another shill, a figurehead of destroying diversity of opinion in the staff team. But in reality, you turned out near the end to not be that bad. Perhaps one day, you’ll be the one to save the staff team from becoming something straight out of 1984. If you stop doing Brynn’s dirty work for him, people might change their opinion on you for the better as I have. Also, you better play Rising Storm 2 with me and Maniac on release day.
Maniac – I’ll go about this a little differently. I won’t address Maniac personally because he might not even read this thread, and personally I think he deserves his own section in this post.
Maniac is what I’d consider a very good friend, and has been for the better part of 2 years now. During this time, I saw his rise to moderator, his disappointing stagnation due to the constant flak he received for actually pretty minor events to begin with, and the absolute shitspree leading up to and after his demotion.
During the time that Maniac still performed his duties as a moderator, he was a role model for me. Due to the fact that after my first day I was practically thrust into a server which at the current time had few active staff other than the small team of moderators, Maniac taught me the fundamentals of moderation when it came to dealing with players, which is probably part of the reason I haven’t managed to fall into the rut like a few other staff members of being hated by at least one particular group on the server.
Without Maniac I don’t know where I’d be in a few aspects of life, not just my limelight staff career, but it’s thanks to limelight that I met him. It’s unfortunate that his name is now passed around as no more than a whisper – “Isn’t that the terrible moderator who got demoted for refusing to cooperate with other staff and trying to bring down the server?” That’s not what he wanted. Had he not flipped his lid at the staff team and were he still here today, I know he would be advocating saving individuality on the server which is something that even I, now, am walking away from because I feel I cannot achieve it.
Maniac, if you are reading this, I first of all hate to address you as your screen name but I feel you might appreciate the anonymity. You’ll always be my favourite NatSoc. Deus Vult. (Awwwwww)
I’d like to start to wrap this up by saying that this post isn’t intended to bash limelight in any way. As I’ve pointed out earlier in the post, I still hold this community in extremely high regard, I just think it’s going in the wrong direction currently and I no longer want to be a part of that movement, along with my own personal issue of no longer having an interest in administration.
I hope this post one day proves useful to any prospective or future staff out there. Not just the power, but the stigma and expectation that come with staff all corrupt you in their own way if you let them. I hope that by taking heed of my warnings you can resist these temptations to fall in line and become another robot. We’re all guilty of it, even my methods for a short time were robotic in nature, but perhaps a new generation of staff may one day be able to run things a little differently.
There will always be a small part of me that misses limelight. Not the limelight I experience today but the limelight I experienced when I was still a ‘freshie’, and I hope that after a long hiatus I can one day return with that same ‘freshie’ feeling. Perhaps even one day I can even return to a better staff team, one in which I find it enjoyable and liberating to administrate in.
If anyone wants to know more about anything I’ve brought up in this resignation, or something else, you’re welcome to add me on steam (
https://steamcommunity.com/id/MurdochMurdoch/) and I’ll do my best to give you as much information as I can without leaking.
I wish all of you the best, both my fellow staff and players alike, in making limelight great again.
For now, this has been me. Peace.
While writing this I realised it’s becoming a pretty big story, but I’d like to begin this thread by saying that it’s been a year today since I became staff and while that may not be long relatively speaking to a few other staff members, a lot has still happened since my promotion.
I’ve been on limelight since the server first booted, and I’ve been playing CityRP for the better part of 3 years, coming up on 4. CityRP has been very dear to me, in the first 2+ years before the creation of limelight, I played on and off but during this time I always held CityRP in extremely high regard due to its values and the spark it had. There was always something exciting and new, be it a new discovery within the gamemode or a new RP set up by the players. More about this later.
It was a huge shock to me when I first got promoted as I actually originally thought I was getting demoted from teacher. While such is the ritual for many promotions, the staff created a somewhat believable circumstance in which I was literally bricking it in the moments before the rest of the staff team appeared.
I’ll be honest; I’d wanted staff for a while. I hadn’t always wanted it, since I was self-aware of my lack of experience previously, but at this moment and for a short while before I did want staff and was happy to receive the offer. This is something a lot of people seem to have a problem with but let’s be honest – how can you be a good staff member if you never wanted the role?
When I first got staff it was fun, I had so many new abilities to try out, and the concept of being able to watch players while they have absolutely no idea I’m there brought a unique sense of exhilaration. This faded as the months went by. Limelight was losing the spark it once had. Nothing seemed new or exciting anymore. Spending hours flying around, I felt like I’d seen everything. By the time I got moderator stage 2, my enthusiasm was already petering out and the long haul between stage 2 and administrator was even worse.
When I was promoted to administrator, it opened so many new doors for me in terms of what I could do. What I had the ability to change, what I had an actual input and effect on, as well as even more of the cool new tools that come with admin. I enjoyed these for a while, before I slipped back into my old pre-admin mindset. I realised not long after that this was the problem. I no longer viewed CityRP as a diverse gamemode shaped by the community, simply as a mechanism created by the limelight developers for me to romp around in. The key word being me, I no longer felt connected with the players and it was harder than ever to achieve this connection due to both the stigma and expectations that come with being an administrator. I couldn’t make many friends without dropping the pseudo-professionalism we were expected to uphold as staff, and it was even harder to just get into random roleplay situations which weren’t purely based on the fact that the players participating just wanted REPs. I feel like it’s not just me, but server-wide the idea of roleplaying for fun is lost. That’s not something I want to be a part of. Other than to a select few, some of which I might mention later in this post, I am now but a name that occasionally passes through the server, serving no purpose than to either ruin the fun of players or as a tool to give them their precious REPs. I couldn’t get over the feeling that every interaction I had with another player is just begging for something that contributes to their own benefit. Oh, and trust me, no matter how hard you try to mask your intentions, we staff still notice it.
I guess the point of this section was to send a message to anyone out there that wants to be staff like I did – It’s nothing like you think. Yeah I’m sure you’ve heard that before but it really is hard work. You’re expected to go through every topic on the forum and reply with your input while still keeping up a high standard of activity on the server, and then somehow leave time for having a life on the side to stop you from going completely insane. Honestly, seriously consider even approaching the notion of going for staff. Like I said before, it’s hard work and if you’re not careful it will change you as a person. You’ll be stuck in a web of pseudo-professionalism and a sense of false superiority, when in reality the staff should just be like players who are entrusted with the responsibility of upholding the ‘law’, for lack of a better term, on the server. This is not the case, and instead you get this no-fun attitude in which diversity within the team is shunned and any staff member with an unpopular opinion is forced to keep it behind closed doors. That said, you should still have some appreciation for the staff. Without them, your beloved server would fall into anarchy.
There are some big changes coming to limelight that I think some of you might like. This goes for both the gamemode and the staff team. I hope that these will change the course of limelight for the better so that I may one day return and be proud of the community I once administrated, because in my heart that’s what limelight is. While it is now a registered business, it will always be a community; my community. My home.
MOVING ON,
I’d like to give a mention to some of my peers whom I either admire, respect or appreciate the most.
Voluptious – You’ve pulled through for me on so many occasions it’s unreal. Without you I probably would never have become an administrator and I’m truly grateful for your help. I’ll always see you as the last stand of objectivity on the limelight staff team. Stay that way.
Disastrous – I haven’t known you for that long, but you’re a real dude and I’m glad I met you. You’re different to most of the other players I’ve ever interacted with to the point where you’re the first person I saw as a player and managed to change my perception of you to a friend. Keep it real.
Jono – Thanks for keeping me sane on the staff team. Also thanks for making me rich. ALSO thanks for being a good mate. You’re cool to mess around with and can take a joke, which I respect you for. Oy vey.
Enzyme – Admittedly, I thought at first that you were just another shill, a figurehead of destroying diversity of opinion in the staff team. But in reality, you turned out near the end to not be that bad. Perhaps one day, you’ll be the one to save the staff team from becoming something straight out of 1984. If you stop doing Brynn’s dirty work for him, people might change their opinion on you for the better as I have. Also, you better play Rising Storm 2 with me and Maniac on release day.
Maniac – I’ll go about this a little differently. I won’t address Maniac personally because he might not even read this thread, and personally I think he deserves his own section in this post.
Maniac is what I’d consider a very good friend, and has been for the better part of 2 years now. During this time, I saw his rise to moderator, his disappointing stagnation due to the constant flak he received for actually pretty minor events to begin with, and the absolute shitspree leading up to and after his demotion.
During the time that Maniac still performed his duties as a moderator, he was a role model for me. Due to the fact that after my first day I was practically thrust into a server which at the current time had few active staff other than the small team of moderators, Maniac taught me the fundamentals of moderation when it came to dealing with players, which is probably part of the reason I haven’t managed to fall into the rut like a few other staff members of being hated by at least one particular group on the server.
Without Maniac I don’t know where I’d be in a few aspects of life, not just my limelight staff career, but it’s thanks to limelight that I met him. It’s unfortunate that his name is now passed around as no more than a whisper – “Isn’t that the terrible moderator who got demoted for refusing to cooperate with other staff and trying to bring down the server?” That’s not what he wanted. Had he not flipped his lid at the staff team and were he still here today, I know he would be advocating saving individuality on the server which is something that even I, now, am walking away from because I feel I cannot achieve it.
Maniac, if you are reading this, I first of all hate to address you as your screen name but I feel you might appreciate the anonymity. You’ll always be my favourite NatSoc. Deus Vult. (Awwwwww)
I’d like to start to wrap this up by saying that this post isn’t intended to bash limelight in any way. As I’ve pointed out earlier in the post, I still hold this community in extremely high regard, I just think it’s going in the wrong direction currently and I no longer want to be a part of that movement, along with my own personal issue of no longer having an interest in administration.
I hope this post one day proves useful to any prospective or future staff out there. Not just the power, but the stigma and expectation that come with staff all corrupt you in their own way if you let them. I hope that by taking heed of my warnings you can resist these temptations to fall in line and become another robot. We’re all guilty of it, even my methods for a short time were robotic in nature, but perhaps a new generation of staff may one day be able to run things a little differently.
There will always be a small part of me that misses limelight. Not the limelight I experience today but the limelight I experienced when I was still a ‘freshie’, and I hope that after a long hiatus I can one day return with that same ‘freshie’ feeling. Perhaps even one day I can even return to a better staff team, one in which I find it enjoyable and liberating to administrate in.
If anyone wants to know more about anything I’ve brought up in this resignation, or something else, you’re welcome to add me on steam (
I wish all of you the best, both my fellow staff and players alike, in making limelight great again.
For now, this has been me. Peace.
