A proper farewell

I think the time has finally arrived.

	As an observer, and as someone who wanted a little bit more action for a while, I think I've seen enough. I've seen merely a small fraction of the "devotion to the cause", so to speak, but that small bit is pretty much the final piece of the puzzle I was looking for. The Cyberscore I had known, and gave so much time to, is well and truly dead. That's not something I can say lightly, and it's not an easy thing to say. Would you be strong enough to admit so quickly that, after putting a lot of time into something because you once believed in it, turned into something that you no longer recognize with no chance of it going back? Probably not, but then again, maybe it was far wiser to not put my heart that far into something to begin with. A lesson learned, I suppose.

	This kind of reminds me too much about a certain other site, whose administrative decisions led to its own effective demise. This too, happened some time after I put a decent amount of effort into being a part of that site. To have to go through a similar memory a second time is painful.

	I don't really even care to try to explain the many problems I could come up with anymore. I thought about sticking around and perhaps finding spots to do so, but what's really the point? What am I even fighting for at that point? Do I really care if the userbase is that generally dense that they just accept all these complicated changes while waiting extended amounts of time for game requests and proofs to be approved? Do I ever think the administration will change its tone on matters like perhaps thinking that all these special chart types inflate games far too much, or maybe thinking that submission numbers aren't everything? Do I care being *that* user that reports constantly? The answer to all these questions is a flat no.

	My observational conclusion is as follows: If something has gotten so over the top and unnecessarily complicated, ESPECIALLY when the goal posts seem to be moving all the time, it is best to stop engaging in it.

	I spent 2022 mulling over if/how I could still manage to compete if I separated myself from the chains of caring about the general boards, once I saw the horrors of what the piss-colored Incremental charts did to Cyberscore, and very well a number of the games I put time into. Some games are now full-on ruined because we just HAVE to know how many Pokemon you caught, or gems you collected, or dots you ate, so on and so forth. These stats are stuff you look at, say "oh, that's nice", and *move on with your life* afterward. Nobody cares that you spent 1,000 hours on one game or one part of said game, expressed vaguely to make it seem competitive. That is not what a competition site is.

	I then spent the last few months observing such things as devotion, how this is affecting the site, where stuff like investigations stand, where proof might stand, where game requests are, etc. The more I observed, the more I came to the conclusion that actual important stuff is being ignored or simply not worked on enough for other more minor nonsense like how certain chart types should be fully expressed, or how we need to ask about 14 questions about how exactly this chart should be on Cyberscore, all the while not even realizing the writing on the wall.

	I have no idea what the overall staff morale is currently, but I can't imagine it is very high. After all, the last several years have been an odd cycle of the administration pressing on with pretty much the same overall vision, hardly changed due to discussion (which likely was a gesture to begin with anyway), and everyone else just "taking the L", so to speak. Every time there's been some gripe, it's shut down because it is simply explained away. New features are written so nicely on paper, but in reality, no one really knows what's actually going on at all. So much effort is put into "making things neat" and "attempting to put charts nicely into a best fit" that I'm pretty certain things were entirely lost along the way. The more complex you try to make something, the more you lose people because it just takes so much more time to do the same things that were far simpler in the past, just because of an obsessive need for "completeness" disguised as "well, if people want to compete in this, why should we say no?". There are damn good reasons you keep that shit simple, and if that has to really be explained, get out of your fantasy and open your eyes first.

	You see, Cyberscore was not perfect in the early to mid 2010s, but there was just a different aura. People talked to each other on a level beyond the site. There were game nights and other community activities from time to time. Past administrations were interested in the people that showed up to some better degree than now. It's not something I am fully able to express in words, but feeling like a part of Cyberscore back then was something I liked to be a part of, and when I was first on staff, being a part of something bigger was a cool feeling.

	Today that just doesn't happen. Occasional random, generic praise that may not even be genuine and "be the change you want to see" doesn't cut it. Bonding moments have to involve the administration, in order for staff and users to be reminded of the fact that human interaction (even if it's not person-to-person) is still important. I get full well that I wasn't terribly helping with that, but I was also never a leader anyways :P

	But the obsession about the numbers definitely needs to stop. So, too, might people have to step away from certain all-consuming games to even be able to see what is really happening. I get that the site has to technically bait people into submitting as best as it can, but it could at least be less ruthless about it.

	I'm not going to explain this one because it should be obvious, but I also have a concern with the staff just trusting new people seemingly at will to do staff tasks. That's definitely going to be a shot in the foot later for sure, but when? Heh.

	So here's my summary: Cyberscore's not getting basic things done well at all (except for specific games at best, I wonder why?), the news is still incredibly late, there's no actual bonding with the staff (even staff to staff afaik) beyond shallow praise, there's not even so much as a group Among Us game just for people to hang out and have fun, there's plenty of disdain for the "new competitive order" yet everything gets explained away without a regard for where people are even coming from - causing fatigue and discouragement to press on, some games are basically *never* getting updated to "current" standard, some games get added or changed without proper explanation on-site, or have no rules etc., and yet I'm supposed to just ignore all that and submit? Nah. I'm good.

	I can't guarantee that I won't come back in the distant future for new observations/perspectives as things continue to change for what I firmly believe is the worse, but a) that assumes I'm not dead by then, and b) also assumes I wind up giving this place yet another chance.

Anyway, do leave me be. The last thing I'm gonna want after this is someone explaining afterward about how I'm totally wrong or ignorant or stupid etc. If you read this and think that way still, that's fine. I didn't write this to be convincing, I wrote this in the hopes that someone more willing than I could potentially still change the course before the site goes off a cliff.

Observational Unit Type-HS, signing off~
May your future travels be safe~

EDIT 25th Jan 2024: I see a certain decision was made. If you can't even handle speedruns properly, why even remotely bother taking you seriously? Incrementals are one thing, but leaving obviously unverifiable, "may as well be fake" times with charts that have no clear rules doesn't help in the slightest. I'm sorry I ever remotely believed in the site in the first place. Huge mistake. Hopefully one I won't make again. Keep your hollow empire, I'm sorry I ever thought I could be a part of it.

Oh, and if it's at all possible: remove my username. I'm not coming back to the Discord server just to do that. I grant pre-approval to the process. A change in administration won't fix the path, so there's no need to look back anymore.