Declined TF2 Trade, TTS and You

This is gonna be a veeeeery long-structured suggestion, no tl;dr included, sorry

Introduction
Dating back at Sep. 23, @Pudgey made a proposal/suggestion regarding text to speech usage on the servers be made forbidden. I'm making this thread to revoke this rule and mold it to my liking, that is of course, if it gets implemented!

Backstory
Before I dig deeper on letting you know of my intentions with this proposal, here's a little backstory to its short-lived grace. Released on the 18th of June, TF2 text to speech (TTS for short) quickly became a hype for regulars AND new players. The minute I received a copy of the software, I immediately went to my favorite FoG server - Trade. It was extremely well-received first time the server regulars encountered it and it was all nice and civil. Unfortunately, that came with a price... there were times when people would go on and do racist remarks, spam letters, all due to the fact it was turned public, and most crucially - the visibility of the command to trigger it, being !tts >text here<

The problem
I feel like that is what really made Pudgey fire out such a proposal, the fact that despite the ability to ban/restrict access to TTS to people for spamming/inappropriate language, they would still go on and use the command, !tts respectively as to retry over and over again, making this huge flood of unnecessary chat spam. After talking to the creator of the software, I was granted access to mold the software to what I feel like, or add something to it.

My part in this
Upon receiving such privilege, I came with a solution to the chat command issue. The command to trigger it is currently an exclamation mark [ ! ] ; I intend to change it to a slash [ / ] with the intention of making it so when used, the chat is untouched. There's so many SM commands hidden with a slash for alternatives to their original usage with an exclamation mark made with the purpose of reducing chat spam.
e.g !resizeme (visible in chat) and /resizeme (invisible in chat) !slay and /slay etc. etc.

TTS on CSGO grounds
Being a fuckboy of a person, I did go on the CSGO servers and took TTS for a spin. The game itself not being free to play, I came across some very mature players on the surf server (can't remember which one) and everyone had a blast! The fun was at its peak but unfortunately for me, duty called and I had to leave. Though along the way I became acquainted with @Dark Red and we both came to an agreement to propose to @n0name to temporarily allow TTS usage on the CSGO servers. IIRC he agreed to it as long as there were no complaints aaaand seeing no real report made against me for micspamming.. I'd say noone really had anything against it, though I do feel like for some people who don't feel like filing a report and muted me manually straight away - COULD use the benefit of not seeing the !tts command in chat.. Because you see, muting me manually DOES get rid of the micspam, but what of the chat spam from the side players?
It's still visible.

Trade server
Recently, it's been empty for hours on end, many admins resigned, many regular players switched to those BLW copycats... but that's a thread for another day.
I've tried to brainstorm some ideas on how to revive it...
And here's what came to my mind. (I wrote a large portion of it on the discord server gonna do a little copypaste with some touches here and there)
-Expanding the slots to 33 players
-Organizing an event
-Get the manpower from somewhere to fill those 33 slots
-Make it so the event is so rad It'd have an imprint of people joining every day, till late nights still filled with 33 people
***For old time's sake, fighting for being the 33th player,
as in waiting impatiently for playernumber to drop to 32/33
Like @Faggot said
"I dont think n0 will expand the slot amount on a server that rarely even reaches 12 players
And the people joining for the events would probably want prizes and once those are gone they'd leave"
Here's what I replied
"True.. though the fact it's currently at 24 narrows things down for regulars, perhaps this may be one of the reasons behind its downfall... as 33 players gives the impression of an active server."
I had @Maestro back me up on this one

TTS Admin access
What's the point of having a command that literally does nothing? Well.. this may sound selfish BUT here goes nothing. Having the command trigger changed from ! to / - a TTS user can simply save the burden of fearing a shitstorm of chat spam. Or make it even better, make it so the /tts command is only available to admins and admins only to supervise, as in make it usable by all players on the server, or the admin alone. Such actions are held through a third-party software, so no complicated work involved. In case you haven't noticed.. I intend to apply for administrator at a later time.

The proposal
What I expect from the founder and its moderators(?) ... in case this gets implemented is to simply, in SM, add a command which literally does nothing. Yeah, that simple. Basically, when having typed /tts >text here< make it so it's not visible in chat. Just like I said, the proposal is VERY simple, just a command that does nothing.
I'm actually writing this down with zero confidence on whether adding blank commands even IS possible, but hey you never know if you never even try! As for the trade server, If things go as planned... who knows maybe we'll get a good taste of the meme that is OVERFLOWED RELIABLE BUFFER, whose eruption is due to too much fun being had on the server it literally crashes for a brief moment!

This thread's length is only a fraction of my affection for FoG's trade server, I've had so much fun for the past two years (somewhere around that number), met many great people I talk to this very day, and I intend to keep this up for future visitors.

Thank you very much for hearing me out.
-Hayden Storm

 

Highly against TTS. Especially in CSGO where kids from JB go when they are bored. I have played a lot on the surf servers and know its community. People are abusing SLAM and it has gotten to the point where it is far from funny. Now even the thought of tts brings shivers on my back. Thinking that there are mature players on csgo because its not free to play is just naive. TTS is does not serve a proper purpose I am willing to accept. Hence thats a no from me dawg. (yey dead memes)

 

The thread itself is mainly oriented around TF2 - a game you barely even play IIRC.
The CS part was merely an example of the good sides TTS as a whole has to offer.
Probably wasn't convincing enough the fact I don't care for CS at all,
just a quick experiment how things would turn out. Heck I even want a refund.

 

Here's why I think this would be useful:
As we know Zombie Escape is a weird place, sometimes we have a lot of players, sometimes we do not. My opinion is that TTS would be useful when the server is dead or lacking in population. So my plan was that in the meantime we could use it to entertain people so they stay on the server, having a bit fun for a while. As more people join, the better is the population. Of course we would stop using it if we are enough players to play again, if somebody is breaking any rules with the program i would pause it or shut down completely and tell them the rules and so on. But overall i think it could be helpful for the Zombie Escape server.

I know this has nothing to do with TF2, but I propose this be allowed on the Zombie Escape server.

-Dark Red

 

As a fellow tf2 player myself I'm very against this idea as well. It's just so unnecessary. It was fun at first but now it's just everyone typing !tts for like saying "xDDDDD" and really noone is in to that. I really do not see any upsides of this, perhaps to have a quick laugh. But it becomes boring and most of the time higly abused by some players. Of course there are soms mature players but they can also just type via the chat or talk via voice chat. I don't see the point :/.

 

I do agree with @Dark Red this would be very useful for the zombie server

 

Yea i agree we could try it out in the zombie server. It could help populate the empty server faster and get people to stay. If only admins have the power of using it theres not really a downside to it. And if everyone can use it i still wouldnt think there would be many people abusing it zombie community is pretty chill and if somebody is abusing it admins could just gag them ?

 

Just seen this, I am just writing to say that I am backing what Avaritia, I think it has no place on the servers.
We have enough problems on servers with mic spammers and adding TTS is literally asking people to abuse it, sure there may be 2-3 people who use it well, but for the rest of the people it will probably annoy the hell out of them, or be a tool to be annoying.

I think it is just a silly thing to add, the voice itself is annoying to listen to and even if it could be helpful, it just has no place. Furthermore, I feel like it would only end up being a pain on the servers as admins would have to try and stop people from spamming it for no reason, as it would be seen as a "OH LOOK A NEW FEATURE THAT IS COOL" "Lets spam stupid comments on tts" and not being a useful tool.

As I recall, discord servers used to have this enabled on most servers and now is completely disabled, it is a novelty that just annoying after hearing it a few times.

-1

 

Requesting this thread be marked as rejected and locked.
No point in keeping a thread open for replies, which I don't even expect to receive, seeing how people pay attention only to the latest posts/new threads
Really disappointed to not see people give their say in the matter, let alone form an opinion of their own.