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Behind the Supraball Curtains (self.Supraball)

gonesupra が 投稿

Many knows, noone talks.

I had dilemma for choosing appropiate title becasue there are so many words that can describe this shady situation like The Naked Truth, SupraTruth, Fifty Shades of DavidM, Community Will etc. I eventually went with Behind the Supraball Curtains. I've been playing Deathball a bit and Supraball on NA/EU throught whole its existency and ever since, things were shady with the dev team. If you thought devs of some game you played are the worst, you clearly didn't meet Supraball developer team. This post is mainly adressed for new and future players. I want them to understand what really is happening before Supraball goes public on steam. I understand some guys will go 'mm that's really bad but game is cool'. At least they will know what's going on.

First things first, it all began with Deathball, mod for UT2004. Last year they decided to make new standalone game based on the mod and they called it as you already know, Supraball. Game is still in closed alpha but everyone can easily get key for steam version on supraball.net website without problems, this way we have a lot smurfing, trolling and ruining games. Logical, right? But it seems to be not a problem for our DavidM and his friends because they don't bother playing with 'new guys'. Moving on, they keep boasting on media, about not having enough free time for developing, yet almost whole team is sitting in lobbys playing the game 24/7 instead doing productive work. Procrastination is bad thing but then people wonder why dev team got such a slow production work. At first, Marenz the lead developer of Supraball didn't want DavidM on dev team for many various reasons, however realizing he's 'famous' he feel a need to hire him to be the face of Supraball. I was dissapointed by fact when there was certain move being op and they said multiple times it would be fixed but no, DavidM's team used that move throught entire ESBL (European Supraball League).

The funny part is they got it fixed just after league finished. Guess they make changes based around DavidM and his friends. You know kickstarter or indiegogo, right? Awful nest of frauds and broken promises. Of course dev team of Supraball posted their game on one of these sites. They started crowdfunding in form of flexible funding, which means they take everything even if goal wasn't fullfilled.

http://i.imgur.com/kELR9f7.jpg

This image brought a lot controversy. 250,000€ was the certain amount for everything described on the image above to be working (they changed it to 160,000€ by the end after receiving huge amount of negative feedbacks) for a game thats barely played by 50 people. This kind of is linked with Supraball marketing which is why I'm going to talk about it now. Wait, what marketing? Exactly. We will just wait till UE4 and players are going to appear out of nowhere? That's nice philosophy. You don't just take on world with only programming skills.

http://i.imgur.com/vLu8Ql9.gif

Game is not advertised, even less famous game websites don't mention Supraball at all. They're hanging on a thread made by big streamers like Lirik. Zero strategy, limited research, no promotion on sight. Only people from Deathball know about new game. Now you might wonder how they expected such big results with crowdfunding. Instead arranging social media content they prefer to worry about elo in a game they made. Theres one problem though - you absolutely need to have talented Public Relations skills, which as you can see on image below, is something DavidM lacks of.

http://i.imgur.com/Slu0xds.png

I mean this was pretty awesome when he left irc community because people didn't like his ideas. Considering irc was big thing in the era of non-steam Supraball, it was basically keeping the game alive in one piece. Going butthurt and turning away from players is not a solution.

Next we got what everyone was waiting for - toxciness of devs. Holy shit, never thought in my gaming career devs of multiplayer game would be so unfriendly to the point people are simply stopping playing anymore. Perhaps german mentality? This is highly discouraging. It's most important thing in this article. You should value and thank for every person playing your game, not treat him like some trash. Without them you are nothing.

http://i.imgur.com/tLBdAXo.png

Really? Don't you know the meaning 'speech is silver, silence is golden'? How on earth can you write stuff like that. One of the developers insulting players with bronze rank on social media. You really think that will go unnoticed? Wait, it only gets better. Hopped from lobby to lobby, talked with a lot people connected to this game also with the ones who retired, took various proofs. A lot of them were very nice and shared experience with me. Believe me, screens can't compare sad reality, sometimes it gets worse than what I'm about to post here.

http://i.imgur.com/jrio2a4.png

Let's insult new players that take afford to test and play during closed alpha! What could possibly go wrong, right guys? Guys? This is straight hilarious. These 'bloody beginners' are what made this game arrive to this point but theyre doing what they can to stop them from playing. Not everyone can be good and you know it. It's okay though, drama ensues!

http://i.imgur.com/K5OYqlx.png

Some guy took a time and went through trouble to make a tutorial video of fancy trick. Whether is it useful in actual match doesn't matter. What matters here is DavidM killing the joy of playing the game and/or being evnyous of trick because he can't swirl. GG team (DavidM, silw, strafe, their gk who I don't know real name because he changes it every 2 hours) literally only play together. They'd stack in one lobby, wait for random guys to form mixed team and play match. It truly takes a lot devotion and dedication to do it, which proves the actual top 3 player ranking. They refuse to play solo, without each other on balanced terms because they're afraid of losing rank and elo points in a game they made. But when they do, this happens.

http://i.imgur.com/R0RhfvU.png

http://i.imgur.com/st7nP4H.png

http://i.imgur.com/0PM6R0n.png

Last time I checked it was Supraball, not Suprasalt.

Now I want you to read rules of Supraball, especially rule no.3 and no.5. They're visible on every game lobby and everyone can read him.

http://i.imgur.com/1kHOx7V.png

Let's go.

http://i.imgur.com/OFr1j0l.png

http://i.imgur.com/to5IZw5.png

DavidM asking others to kick new players and asking them to leave because according to him, they play worse and don't deserve to be in this lobby. Moreover it's clearly written in rules 'Don't kick people for playing bad, they will never return to Supraball again!'. Breaking own made rules, seems legit.

http://i.imgur.com/hcknQ4w.png

Calling people who play his game 'noobs', refusing to play with them...

http://i.imgur.com/wo2vB0p.png

and threatening to ban them. Just wow.

Some different case...

http://i.imgur.com/meBYcht.png

Aaaaand my favourite.

http://i.imgur.com/htkptKO.png

My eyes hurt just from reading it. This comes straight from lead developer. Perhaps you are the one who should shut up for your own good. Lastly, I learned on lobby that some guy got recently banned. Was curious why, for what reason so I investigated myself further. We got a screenshot from him and it seems like he got banned for being 'rude to noobs'.

http://i.imgur.com/M93iLtl.png

First of all, notice the word 'noobs' in that text. Is that how you treat your customers? Rude to noobs. Isn't it what they have been doing the whole time? Second, from what I heard he got a week ban from just one match. Meanwhile guy like Lucjesem is still not banned considering the things he did or silw who left the game countless times. There were also reports on DavidM giving elo so people could join silver lobby to play vs his team. Now don't get me wrong. Game is cool and I loved to play every moment of it but after putting various perspectives, meeting the truth, realizing the true nature of devs it doesn't have future, seriously. Chaotic organization, toxic admins, laughable marketing, high expectations, weird ideas, continously breaking own rules, blatant lies. Community is toxic because devs give great example to players. Sometimes words mean much more than actions.

I wonder how many minutes this thread will last.

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[–]erozzion 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

http://i.imgur.com/Wb9yggl.gif

[–]DouchebagSlothDoody 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (0子コメント)

i really liked the constructive criticism of this post

[–]RyuusenganRyuusei 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm really glad this post is here, I was running out of salt at home

[–]Krowlen 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

My name is Jeff?

[–]rndftw 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I don't really agree to the first part of your text. I mean first of all, at the moment it's their decision how much time they are putting in the developing. If they want to play, they can play? It's "their" game? The marketing part... i don't know and you don't know their strat, maybe they don't want that many players atm? Priority for them is maybe finishing a decent version or something else and then presenting a nice game. But i totally agree on the behaviour part tho. That definitly needs a change!

[–]NickDootexDootex 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

What. The. Fuck. :D

[–]MarenzSupraball Lead Developer[M] -2 ポイント-1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Disclaimer: I am only responding so that new players don't get the impression the lies you spread are true.

At first, Marenz the lead developer of Supraball didn't want DavidM on dev team for many various reasons, however realizing he's 'famous' he feel a need to hire him to be the face of Supraball

I can't recall every saying this and I don't know where you get such things from.

Marketing sucks, yes, are aware, but we're still deep in development so I really have other issues for the moment. When it's time we'll take care of that. Yes the campaign was too early and badly planned & executed shrugs so what we still will do everything we said we would.

Okay, now that we filtered the truth out of that stuff, let's look at the other things.

Your nice picture quote here

http://i.imgur.com/htkptKO.png

Is a bit silly, I mean he makes a joke, I make a joke back. I doubt anyone thought I'd really ban someone for asking me jokingly "gimme elo". What kind of devious intentions you must have for taking such things out of context to prove points you don't really have. The picture that 'supposedly' proves that he was actually banned is out of context again. Maybe it was someone else, maybe something else happened other than the things you quoted, I can't really recall, but it surely was not because of what you posted. You do a great job at putting things here in contexts that make it look like they prove your points but you actually have nothing.

[–]DavidM1337Supraball Project Leader[M] -3 ポイント-2 ポイント  (10子コメント)

Hi Chicken,

I'm sorry that we had to ban your multiple accounts, because you are insulting people all day long. That behaviour was just very toxic for all involved players.

So much of the things you write are made up and taken completely out of context:

-Only a little minority of the developers is hanging out in the lobbies all day long. I am one of them, but I hardly play any matches, I am always checking out how things are going, watching if bugs happen, talking to people etc. And if we play a lot on some days, what's the problem? We love the game!

-Marenz didn't recruit me, I started the project and he was the first recruit. And we all love each other.

-Supraball wasn't started last year, it started in late 2011. It was ready for the first release in May 2014.

-The criticism about missing marketing: we do NOT want publicity right now. We have several things arranged that are ready to go, but they are waiting for us to give the "Go", but that will only happen when we think we have a version of the game that makes a very good first impression. The game isn't good enough yet for that. I think this approach makes perfect sense, because you have no 2nd chance for a 1st impression.

-There is no "move" my league team used throughout the entire SBL. You can watch the replays of all important matches on Youtube. As development team we were always trying to limit abusive moves. One was removed maybe 2-4 weeks after the league ended - not right after, as you claim. But we always worked on optimizing that stuff. Before the league, during the league and after the league.

-I did not leave IRC because people didn't like ideas of mine. I don't use it anymore, because the Lobbies in the launcher have replaced that. We had a few cases where people got really mad about changes we made to the game, and we always listened and fixed them as soon as possible. We can't make every single person happy.

-Then you post lots of pictures where you suggest, that we insulted noobs or tried to get rid of them or don't want to play with them. If you didn't take them out of context, you would see that nothing of it is true. In one case silw is mocking a friend in a funny way. Then there is a player who is blocking a spot to annoy everyone, he's been asked to leave in a friendly way for 15 minutes, and then we decided to kick him. Rest of the pictures is equally taken out of context.

-I call new players noobs. Yes, I'm a horrible person. Yes I asked someone what a certain tricky move is good for - so what. ;)

So I have a question: what do you try to achieve with these made up things? What would you like us to do? What would make you happy?

<3 David

[–]nixxxxxxx 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (1子コメント)

...because you are insulting people all day long. That behaviour was just very toxic for all involved players.

Chicken was always very nice to me and the other players when I started, one of my favourite community members. This is a total exaggeration.

I met SixtyNine on tf2 a long time ago, sounds like history is going to repeat itself.

[–]DavidM1337Supraball Project Leader -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's cool. When he speaks to me... well you see it above. When not in public he also speculates about my genital size a lot, to say it nicely.

[–]chicken-#supraball.na Admin 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (4子コメント)

Never said anything about a move you abused in the tournament, other than blatantly time-wasting and showing bad manners towards newer players in the process, something not any NA team even attempted to do cuz it's lame. The move I'm talking about is the ball boost you added AFTER the tournament, which you said was a new feature you came up with, when in fact it was in Deathball 2.4w.

Your nonsense about silw is just that, nonsense. I was there, you were not paying attention. He refused to ready up cuz a noob was in keeper and then tried to kickvote the guy.

We've begged you at certain points to add basic things, remove suckboosting, you only do what you think will piss off the most Americans half the time. A few babies complained about taunting...so instead of just disallowing during shooting for obvious balance reasons, you remove it entirely during everything but after a goal. This is what you wasted time on cuz of a few babies, the same few babies that whine about me and get me banned but that's beside the fact, you allow plenty of "toxic" players to play every day.

I've been the same way for 10 years now playing with and against you. You didn't seem to mind so much when you asked me to do voice-overs for tutorials which led to me going out and buying a brand new mic and mixer for the effort, which you never had me do anyway because the one good idea you came up with hasn't materialized at all. You can't even be bothered to write up some TEXT tutorial or a youtube video to help your new players.

You don't want advertisement but you make youtube videos lying to Epic games saying you have "10s of thousands of players".

You whine just as much when you play, you swap positions without asking anybody, you feel entitled to do whatever you want and people don't want to say anything because you're a dev. You ignored your players in deathball and lost 90% of them, you seem to be trying to do the same here.

You refused to give us 3v3, only when Euros wanted it was it finally added. You downplay significance of bugs such as the curve/spins not resetting after catching a ball, walls behind keepers behind awful, triangles in the wall that make the ball bounce randomly. You won't add overtime because Americans want it, it's that simple.

You talk shit about my rank when you didn't get yours by using the matchmaking, you ignore your teammates who talk shit on a daily basis but single out people when you don't like them.

I've paid for many, many servers for both of your games. You allow others to make multiple accounts and do nothing about it, but ban me after I play 4 games in a row with only Pogge/Pulsart and perhaps 1 other moron complaining about me which they will do for 100 years to come because that's what they do.

I guess it's ok to be a complete ball hog and turn people off teamwork completely in this game but not OK to tell them to stop playing with the wall and losing the ball and pass instead. It's ok for DavidM to sign up for defense and then just do whatever he wants after 5 minutes when he gets angry at new players on offense cuz the only thing he cares about is his rank in a game with broken matchmaking. He intentionally leaves games when he sees new players, he wants no part in playing with them or teaching them. I've paid for servers when you never did for Deathball, and Supraball. You wouldn't let people play this game, you only invited your teammates to cater the gameplay to what YOU like, leaving suckboosting in for months while everybody complained about it. Your baby teammate/dev Silw refused to participate in a FUN COMMUNITY EVENT NA vs EU because he can't attempt to play with the same ping I do and others do just fine. You were dominated even on your own server by Americans because you never got a chance to time waste and run the clock out while being scored on over and over.

TL;DR, DavidM is bad at his own game, gets outclassed by me with 130 ping and lies to advertise his game, while claiming he doesn't want advertisement. He consistently comes up with terrible ideas, most recently the shield update instead of actually working on anything the players ask for. He pays for no servers, hardly gives NA players any support at all, and absolutely left IRC when people got frustrated over his TERRIBLE ideas about spin unlocks and XP crap.

P.S. I just find it annoying that I now have to play on alt accounts because a few people are butthurt about being told they are ball hogs and should pass the god damn ball. For every 1 person you claim that hates me, I guarantee there are 4 more that hate your guts. Considering it's the same exact people whining about me all the time I'd say they have been fine continuing to play with me since 2008 when I started in EU.

[–]KoinuKojiKoji 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Holy shit. I just head chicken's mic drop all the way here in Arkansas.

[–]DoctorProfessorsonShammah 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Does this mean he'll stop talking? pleaseoplease

[–]suprasilwSupraball Developer 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

and i thought i won't get mentioned once.

[–]Krowlen 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

http://gyazo.com/0a48d1116b884262c36a88027fd530d9

[–]KriustKim Park 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hi Chicken

http://i.imgur.com/Nqg9dcq.jpg

[–]NotLucjesem 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Agreed with David he may not be my friend or anything. Chicken you just need to have respect and act normal like a man of your age.

[–]chicken-#supraball.na Admin 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

You are prime example of the type of person I shit talk. You consistently do stupid shit ON PURPOSE, hog the ball, lose the ball. DavidM himself agrees with me on this point and you deserve every damn word of my shit talk you little cunt.