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| That Loving (FT) Feeling | ||
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| alcosatz |
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FT Classic Op
Registered Member #39
Joined: Fri Dec 02 2005, 10:30PMPosts: 1545 |
Front matter: it's pretty well established that I do a drive-by chatbox/forum post on this site every few months, and I wouldn't be surprised if I go to ground after making this post. You have been warned. That said, it's really fucking hard to not come back here and at least take a trip down memory lane from time to time. So... I'm looking through old forum posts and I'm trying to decide which feeling is stronger: my pride about all of the cool shit that we did, or the agony of pissing it away. What the fuck happened to us? I remember "buck-ul-nades." I remember desperately trying to hold long hall with my trusty AK and failing... usually pretty badly, but laughing about it afterwards with fetus or caveman (or any number of the suckers who would bait long hall with me!) If I got home from work early enough I could only hope to be mowed down by Cha during one his legendary long hall TMP massacres... I remember doing pistol garage rushes (and I fucking HATED playing as CT on cs_office) and doing a lot better than I ever expected to do. I also remember trying FT Surf a few times and doing a really shitty job of it, but everyone was super supportive of me trying to get out of the office. Oh yeah, I remember: lots of bickering and sniping about stupid shit; the roll-out of CS:GO, team balance (cTB!!!), hacking accusations (yeah yeah, we know who), people being upset that a damn good admin like Jesus dropped the banhammer, etc, etc, ad nauseam. I guess it can't be dick jokes and "buck-ul-nades" all of the time.  The anecdotal shit that I've mentioned doesn't even begin to describe what has actually happened on these forums and on our CS servers. It's really hard to give a summary, and perhaps that's why I find it so vexing. This place meant so much to me years ago and now it's painful to dig through the remains of a once-thriving CS community. So let's talk about our once-thriving CS community--CS:S dried up and CS:GO (we hardly knew ye!) was a non-starter for FT. I know some of you have gone off and done your own things or found non-CS ways of staying in touch with FT people. This is awesome, but then there are people like me who split from the whole program and gave up for lack of a good reason. What if we rekindled the fire? It really bugs me that I gave up you, FT. I lost that loving feeling, but I know that I am not alone. Can we find some kind of happy medium where we have an active gaming community but people don't burn out? I'm game if someone has some ideas about how we can get the gang back together again and rob banks, or shoot hostages, or exchange genetic material. I promise I'll be good to you, baby. Just tell me how. 
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| Madvillain |
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Registered Member #445
Joined: Sun Oct 01 2006, 11:42PMPosts: 2233 |
Epic moments in FT history off the top of my head: the Rollout of the clan Synfull, with Evilpig and others after a certain fallout KEVER is HACK! lol Kever musta played on our server for years, and every couple of months or someone would make her hacking a serious conversation, I think a couple times she was actually banned... This went on up until she was finally made a member...yay (no one ever said anything about Horsecock though, eventhough i thought some of his headshots were ridiculous @ times) In game I was all about rank, getting to number 1. which was impossible. straight up. never cracked top 5. Bastards like Kever, Horse, Cha, Kalibur, etc would keep me from gettin there. Theres a ton of people 2 that just vanished (Tastecoldsteel, Caine, Wildcard,) who were all great to have around I still recall the downfall of FT. I watched it carefully. It happened over the course of a summer (I forget which) when alot of us admin members had to leave for a summer and a bunch of new members were forcibly made admin (sla being top of this list) and then hearing alot of complaints on vent from long time regulars about admin abuse. That whats did it. The regulars is what kept it going, FT members worked more behind the scenes. But what can you do, little to do about it now, whats done is done, and ultimately the number of players that play CS in general (not just CS Go alone) is a fraction of what it used to be I don't know how to get back people, thought just havin the forum would be enough, and people have tried before to revive things but ultimately it never works. They say all good things must come to an end 
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| alcosatz |
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FT Classic Op
Registered Member #39
Joined: Fri Dec 02 2005, 10:30PM Posts: 1545 |
Thanks for responding. I was beginning to think that this thread would be absolutely devoid of replies. I'm giving you the full blockquote treatment, but I'm not going to give you lots of shit like I would normally do in any full blockquote treatment; I've changed! Plus, you're named "Alex" and there are too few of us out there. Madvillain wrote ... Epic moments in FT history off the top of my head: the Rollout of the clan Synfull, with Evilpig and others after a certain fallout Synfull was pretty awful if you ask me. EP was pretty cool afterwards, but I remember some feeling some intense, (legitimate!) butthurt over what happened there. Moving on... Madvillain wrote ... KEVER is HACK! lol Kever musta played on our server for years, and every couple of months or someone would make her hacking a serious conversation, I think a couple times she was actually banned... This went on up until she was finally made a member...yay (no one ever said anything about Horsecock though, eventhough i thought some of his headshots were ridiculous @ times) No comment / nothing to add. Too much pain over this topic. Madvillain wrote ... In game I was all about rank, getting to number 1. which was impossible. straight up. never cracked top 5. Bastards like Kever, Horse, Cha, Kalibur, etc would keep me from gettin there. You're a good person. I know this to be true, but you must not profane this thread with mention of Kalibur. Madvillain wrote ... Theres a ton of people 2 that just vanished (Tastecoldsteel, Caine, Wildcard,) who were all great to have around I miss wildcard. Madvillain wrote ... I still recall the downfall of FT. I watched it carefully. It happened over the course of a summer (I forget which) when alot of us admin members had to leave for a summer and a bunch of new members were forcibly made admin (sla being top of this list) and then hearing alot of complaints on vent from long time regulars about admin abuse. Not sure which server you're talking about, but yeah, FT admin delegation has always been a sore topic. Having to manage lots of competing interests meant lots of grief. Madvillain wrote ... That whats did it. The regulars is what kept it going, FT members worked more behind the scenes. But what can you do, little to do about it now, whats done is done, and ultimately the number of players that play CS in general (not just CS Go alone) is a fraction of what it used to be I'm tempted to agree with you but I'd like to think that there was more nuance to why FT failed. That said, I'm not in a mood to argue about the details. It sucks, and I'm curious if anyone has a positive spin on how to bring it back; clearly you don't. Madvillain wrote ... I don't know how to get back people, thought just havin the forum would be enough, and people have tried before to revive things but ultimately it never works. They say all good things must come to an end You're really bringing me down, man. I was hoping for something better than this. I'm not expecting a plan for how to time-warp us all back to 2007 when everything was thriving (and it's really depressing to think how many years have passed since then!) Just looking for some ideas on how FT can be more active. |
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| emerican |
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Registered Member #164
Joined: Tue Mar 07 2006, 12:07PMPosts: 3146 |
I've been looking for a good GTA V Online crew to play with, why don't we set up an FT crew? Does anybody else have it for 360? I think the only way to get the feeling back together is through consoles and not everyone has them. That's my two cents | ||
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| Knightrider |
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Meteor 2016
Registered Member #316
Joined: Mon Jun 26 2006, 09:14PMPosts: 3503 |
I still play CS:S, I'm a little high in the rankings for FnG's office server. It's a little different than our server used to be, but all-chat and lax rules on sound files played in the server make it pretty fun and unique to play at. I've had a few Fish Tank members play there from time to time, and Zero is a regular there if you all miss his redneck self. I run their lower-leveled admins that have the most play time. Their escalation procedure is taken directly from ours, so the same types of rules apply except that there is no racism (I think we enforced the same rule as well but doubt it was ever followed.) Prides me to say that a lot of our values were manifested into theirs, and they have been running strong since 2006. If I had to guess, the downfall of our community started with the annoying shit of switching providers. Back then, finding a great provider has been a nightmare. FnG runs off NFO, which in our brief stint back in 2012 was pretty easy to manage and was pretty reliable. Since the rates are forcibly set now, you can only achieve so much reg and for every plugin you run, the reg downgrades from there. We have a few plugins including noblock, team flash slap, Hostie slayer identifier, SM admin, etc. Anyways, a little off point there, but when we switched those providers we lost a lot of regulars in the process and it was hard to get them back. Combine that with the Synfull Fish Bowl shit, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster. I can only imagine that this bullshit combined with the haccusations of Kever lead to our demise. It didn't help that our core members grew up and went to college. Your unique personalities made the server really. When people like Wildcard, Fetus, and Bubble Goose disappeared, we lost a unique set of personalities in the server, and you need these kinds of people to retain a population. I think that's why the current server I play in is successful. There are a few people who crush a case of beer in a night until 2-3 a.m. cracking jokes, talking about politics, or other miscellaneous things that keep everyone else engaged. I also feel that when Alex sobered up, he lost a great deal of patience which lead to his inevitable exit. What does that mean? You should probably go back to Alcohol Powered. Only kidding But chalk me on the list of bad influences, as Alex and I's collaboration a couple years ago involved many nights staying up past 2 A.M. crushing many cans of beer to get us up and running. It was a valiant effort mostly on Alex's part, but the lack of players in a dying game is tough to come by. Hard for a reboot in that case.Fish Tank had a little too much of a competitive spirit, which took a lot away from the replay value as well. Remember FT-c? Tack that on the list of things that killed the community. There are a million different reasons why we could have failed, but the important thing is that this site still lives on. Content is slow, but you all keep coming back. I miss you all greatly, and wish that we could play together again. I'm still on Steam, I still play CS:S every day. If any of you want to play with me, message me. I go under the alias Devastator, but will change back to Knightrider if requested In all honesty, I think the only way we can ever have what we had before is to just find a server and play on it. Call us refugees, but no matter what, we will all still be there together again. The best part? When shit hits the fan, someone else will have to do the dirty work (unless you're me in my current office server).
Edited Mon Mar 24 2014, 05:39PM
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| alcosatz |
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FT Classic Op
Registered Member #39
Joined: Fri Dec 02 2005, 10:30PM Posts: 1545 |
I love you, but some good-natured joking follows. Please don't be offended. Knightrider wrote ... I still play CS:S, I'm a little high in the rankings for FnG's office server. It's a little different than our server used to be, but all-chat and lax rules on sound files played in the server make it pretty fun and unique to play at. I've had a few Fish Tank members play there from time to time, and Zero is a regular there if you all miss his redneck self. We get it, Nostie: YOU HAVE A GIRLFRIEND! Knightrider wrote ... I run their lower-leveled admins that have the most play time. Their escalation procedure is taken directly from ours, so the same types of rules apply except that there is no racism (I think we enforced the same rule as well but doubt it was ever followed.) Prides me to say that a lot of our values were manifested into theirs, and they have been running strong since 2006. That tickles the cockles of my heart. It's good to know that some part of FT (office) lives on, except for the regional KKK branch that we were running. Glad to hear that didn't live on. Knightrider wrote ... If I had to guess, the downfall of our community started with the annoying shit of switching providers. Back then, finding a great provider has been a nightmare. FnG runs off NFO, which in our brief stint back in 2012 was pretty easy to manage and was pretty reliable. Since the rates are forcibly set now, you can only achieve so much reg and for every plugin you run, the reg downgrades from there. We have a few plugins including noblock, team flash slap, Hostie slayer identifier, SM admin, etc. This is true. Switching providers was always hell, but Steam didn't support adding servers by DNS name way back in time. Maybe it does now, but that was horrible because we had to figure out how to communicate new IPs and actually have people pay attention. It also sucked how we financed our servers; not going to get into that, but we didn't do a great job with that. Having written server plugins, it's a battle trying to minimize processing of frames/game events. Some events aren't that bad, like when a round actually ends--other shit, like running plugin code when someone gets killed or (worse) hit by a weapon is just asking for lag. Knightrider wrote ... Anyways, a little off point there, but when we switched those providers we lost a lot of regulars in the process and it was hard to get them back. Combine that with the Synfull Fish Bowl shit, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster. I can only imagine that this bullshit combined with the haccusations of Kever lead to our demise. It didn't help that our core members grew up and went to college. Your unique personalities made the server really. When people like Wildcard, Fetus, and Bubble Goose disappeared, we lost a unique set of personalities in the server, and you need these kinds of people to retain a population. Well said. Knightrider wrote ... I think that's why the current server I play in is successful. There are a few people who crush a case of beer in a night until 2-3 a.m. cracking jokes, talking about politics, or other miscellaneous things that keep everyone else engaged. I also feel that when Alex sobered up, he lost a great deal of patience which lead to his inevitable exit. What does that mean? You should probably go back to Alcohol Powered. Only kidding But chalk me on the list of bad influences, as Alex and I's collaboration a couple years ago involved many nights staying up past 2 A.M. crushing many cans of beer to get us up and running. It was a valiant effort mostly on Alex's part, but the lack of players in a dying game is tough to come by. Hard for a reboot in that case.That's some rather, uh... candid advice? Your point is well-taken, though, and I think there were much better ways that I could have handled the various transitions of sobriety and Source-to-GO. Your new home sounds interesting. You have mentioned it to me before, and I'm considering whether to give it a try. I'll be brutally honest and say that it's probably not going to happen for me, but it seems like the best option out there for FT (office) folks to dick around on an office server. Knightrider wrote ... Fish Tank had a little too much of a competitive spirit, which took a lot away from the replay value as well. Remember FT-c? Tack that on the list of things that killed the community. There are a million different reasons why we could have failed, but the important thing is that this site still lives on. Content is slow, but you all keep coming back. I miss you all greatly, and wish that we could play together again. I'm still on Steam, I still play CS:S every day. If any of you want to play with me, message me. I go under the alias Devastator, but will change back to Knightrider if requested I agree, and I realized that cTB was (culturally) choking the shit out of our CS:GO server, sort of like it did our earlier CS:S office servers. It was such a fun programming exercise through 2007 that I didn't notice that the goal of a team-balance mod was headed in a very different direction than what most our FT office community wanted. I'm a pretty stubborn person (as if you didn't know!), so I just kept forcing it on everyone right until the end. Some folks spoke up and a lot of people just went with it. Either way, that was bad leadership on my part. I'm not trying to fall on my sword here, and lots of people will rush to my defense out of loyalty (which I appreciate--I find it more than flattering, trust me), but it's pretty obvious that a lot of my decisions didn't work out so well in the long run... hence our nearly dead community. Knightrider wrote ... In all honesty, I think the only way we can ever have what we had before is to just find a server and play on it. Call us refugees, but no matter what, we will all still be there together again. The best part? When shit hits the fan, someone else will have to do the dirty work (unless you're me in my current office server).And there it is. Find a server and play on it is probably the best advice. |
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| b4ndito |
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b4ndito
Registered Member #958
Joined: Fri Jan 04 2008, 06:59AMPosts: 3385 |
It's been second nature for me to check this forum on a near-daily basis since 2007. That's as sad as it is beautiful. I'm going to wax poetic here, and I do apologize for ignorance of brevity. There was a time in my life when I had no friends and no family and no direction and no girlfriend and nothing. I'd beaten HL2 and of boredom decided to play CS:S again for shits and giggles. I had a new apartment and too much free time. Randomly, I met Alex in FTC and found a niche where my eccentricities and defunct social and psychological tendencies were not only tolerated but encouraged. I found a community that would welcome my broken little teenage heart and nurture me into manhood. For all the memories of laughs and horseshitting we did in this community, nothing is more important to me than the friendships of a large group of people I have NEVER ACTUALLY MET IN PERSON. I can't even begin to remember all the weeping posts I've made, all of my alcohol-powered attention grabs, my varied declarations about my life and destinations and loves and such. Not a word from them was relevant, but nothing is more comforting than knowing that near-strangers read them and sympathized. In a time of my life when I needed grace I found my way into your strange little arms, and you all caressed me so gently, and erotically. It's well and good to dream about the past. I have a freeze frame in my head of the day my childhood died, and no matter what lens I look through, no matter how I try to recreate that view, it'll never exist in the same capacity. Counterstrike is dead, the FPS genre is dead. We can't recreate it, as we've learned over... four?... four attempts. The King is dead, long live the King. Find me an MMORPG and I'll build a new PC and join up with you all. I still regret my reluctance to play WoW with you all. It would have suited me better. |
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| gLiTch |
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Anal Assassin
Registered Member #455
Joined: Mon Oct 09 2006, 04:58AMPosts: 3848 |
Well isnt this the most depressing thread ive come across in a while. So many feels... such nostalgia... Ok no more Doge references. I still remember my first days stumbling onto the office server. I got so excited that this was a community clan and the only way to get in and become a member was to put in the hours, put in the community effort, make friends, and get someone to essentially sponsor you. Every clan i joined previously in CS:S and 1.6 always had competitive tryouts. It was cool but i was so done with that crap. I just wanted to frag and chill and kill time....and drink beer. Many of you prolly dont even know this but I even had my own server in 1.6 and created my own clan. WkK...the Wicked Killaz. It was a Dust and Dust2 rotation server. I went by the name of DJ gLiTch. I used to have that addon to allow me to play music over the mic...when that was a big hit at first. People always requested songs. The server became huge and was popping at all hours of the day...a lot like FT was in its prime. We made friends and would server crash this other clans server... qL clan. They were the Quit Life clan. We used to scrim all the time and we both helped each others servers out. It was a great time. I did that for a long while before eventually moving onto source once the server died. Believe it or not...few of the same reasons our died. qL|Lazky was accused of hacking much like Kever was and we never banned him because he was a regular and a friend of the clan for a long time. Also...he was really legit. Truly. Just really good. And people stopped coming around. Then some of the other clan members started to disappear little by little because they were much older. At the time i was a young lad and many of these guys were...yep you guessed it....going to college. Then we became competitive more than normal. Used to shut down our server for a lil bit every now and then to train for CAL-O. Regular didnt like that but we wanted the fame and glory. Bottom line is...people change. Lives change. Some people join the military. Others get arrested for child porn. Some get older and start families. Others go to college and drink and fuck bitches. All while new tech and new games come out. I remember the n0 Fear zombie clan. Me, Wildcard, Angrytoster...them were the days. And it was a hit for a while too. I remember me and Goose in long hall with the scouts. I could never match up with the master. I remember the first time i was coined the "Shotty Hotty" after i wrecked almost the whole CT team single-handedly and won the match...even taking down Kever. It was glorious and the beer couldnt keep me from shaking from the adrenaline. All those sleepless nights bullshitting with the clan until the wee hours in the morning. I remember how i used to BUG THE SHIT out of you Alex to put in the quake sounds...and at the very least have them have the ability to be enabled/disabled. Nothing gave me a hard on more than hearing LUDICROUS KILL after slaughtering people with my pump shotgun. lol i remember our Cal matches. They were just another excuse to drink and make fun of each other as we tried to be good at the game. Vent was hysterical. Noskill i think still has that youtube link somewhere with our vent recording of our first match. I remember one match i couldnt make it...i let everyone know in advance that i couldnt. Noskill was filling in for me but he fucking had issues logging into his steam account that day. SO he called me up to ask me for my steam account info so he could play as me. Well when he called i was taking a dump and i answered the phone. He had the phone on speaker the whole time and on vent. Man the noises that came out of me. It was hysterical. And when i flushed...that's when i heard the laughter in the background...and Noskill said that vent was listening in. Them were the good old days. I have tried several times as everyone knows to revive this clan...and i really thought we had potential with CS:GO. But it was overwhelming at first. The game was still new and people were having a hard time migrating over. And then life got in the way again. I keep saying this but....Destiny is coming out later this year on the consoles which could be an option to get behind. The only issue is we will all have different systems. I planned on getting a PS4...my first console purchase since PS2. I also pre-ordered Elder Scrolls Online...and will be playing that. I dunno what everyone wants to do. I miss you guys. |
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| nostie |
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Registered Member #185
Joined: Thu Mar 30 2006, 10:42PMPosts: 3167 |
Gotta send a quick reply here because my girlfriend is sitting right next to me and I have to yeah okay we get it i have a girlfriend I think the basic issue is that everyone got tired of CS:S and GO didn't catch on enough I know that I still maintain contact with a ton of FTers in some form of another outside of ftc.com (facebook, League of Legends, Steam, etc...)I do feel a bit sad sometimes that there isn't just a good old FT server so that I could log into GO some random day and see 10 people I recognize yet forget at the same time... |
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| b4ndito |
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b4ndito
Registered Member #958
Joined: Fri Jan 04 2008, 06:59AM Posts: 3385 |
I would pay money to listen to Glitch on the toilet again that was the best moment of this community | ||
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