I bought Arma 3 about 5 years ago and after a few failed attempts at enjoying singleplayer mode, I joined the NAK Altis multiplayer server and - if you can believe it - had never played on another server since. Over the years, I had a great time and made several friends playing and participating on Teamspeak on week nights and weekends. I’m a middle aged dude with a family so the casual play style and community really appealed to me.
But after my experience last week, I won’t be playing on NAK again. I joined the server in the early afternoon to about a dozen or so players, most of whom I didn’t recognize, and after hopping in the pilot slot and transporting a few of them, it became clear they were new to Arma. Because it was quiet (and I was the only pilot on), I took an opportunity to teach the new players about the game, call in some AI/airdrops, and I guess do what will generally be come to known as “playing as infantry”.
About 30 minutes into it, an admin joined the game and announced in text chat that all pilots must be flying to be in the role. At this point, there was another pilot on the server, so I asked in team chat if the message was intended for me - that I heard it and wasn’t trying to disobey server rules on purpose. No response. Regardless, I did my best to remain in my chopper after reading that. 10 minutes later came another warning in chat, again not directed anyone and not said in Teamspeak (where the pilots actually are). Then I was randomly kicked while loading my helicopter with passengers.
What made it worse though, was the belligerent (possibly drunk?) rambling diatribe I had to listen to from the admin that pulled me into a private Teamspeak channel to berate me. Honestly, it sounded like an angry teenager who had a bad day at school (I have two myself, so I would know). It was the smallest amount of power I’ve ever seen go to somebody’s head. He bragged about how he was ‘flying around the map watching me’ which I found creepy and weird.
This post isn’t meant to antagonize anyone or start up drama. I just thought it was best to share with the community I enjoyed being a part of so much the reasons for leaving.
I’d like to say thank you for sharing your experiences and perspective while on NAK servers. And while it’s disheartening to me to see someone spend so much time here enjoying things, I won’t disrespect your rationale with counterpoints as what you decide to do from here out is based on your own unique perspective and I suspect it goes further than what you’ve conveyed here.
NAK is a community and communities are not flawless. Our flaws are just part of who we are as a community, and we strive to achieve “better”. No matter what we consider better to be at that moment, and we redefine better all the time. “We” is all of us, not just staff, but anyone who wants to be part of the community.
It isn’t easy for anyone to be better any more than to define better. It takes effort as an individual to do either, but also requires other community members to keep us on the path to “better”. We all screw things up, sometimes badly. Without someone pointing out when something doesn’t meet their standards, or defining “better”, no one can actually BE “better”… by any definition. And the community stagnates or even devolves.
So, thank you for sharing and reading through my long-winded response.
All pleasantries aside:
NAK has a process for reporting misconduct which includes both players and staff, and I don’t think I saw anything regarding this before now. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to consider this your misconduct report and let it go through our normal process. Again, assuming you’re willing at this point.
I would love to talk to you in TS regardless of your decision.
I had a talk with Sny about this issue and we would like to talk to you over teamspeak if that is possible.
Let us know if there is a time and date we can contact you.