Forums

ChatGPT did most of the work, I just went thru it and made it more heartfelt and emotional. You may not want to cut onions when reading this sad guide.

I rate this guide a GPT/10

The Ultimate Guide To Be The Best Player on Aether Welcome to the official guide on how to work your way to the top on Aether. Whether you're brand new to the server or already struggling to survive off your starting cash, this guide will teach you the most effective and scientifically proven strategy for achieving success.  This guide has helped countless players completely transform their gameplay experience and reach levels of happiness they never thought possible. Let’s begin. Step 1. The first step is simple: join Aether. At first, everything may seem overwhelming. You’ll probably notice several things immediately: You have no money, you have no AB, somebody is yelling in OOC about how Bee RDM'd them. This stage is completely normal, many newer players don't realize that it takes time to get to where the top players are in the server. BUT don't wory! I have the solution for you!   Step 2 Grind time At this point, you may begin searching for the best money making jobs like, meth, cigarettes, banker, gambling everything away, asking players for “just 1m bro”. While these methods technically work, they require effort, consistency, and basic human perseverance. After a while of doing this, you will come to a critical realization: "im too much of a fat chud to put in the effort for this" Well do not worry, you are a fat lazy chud and are too impatient. Luckily I can solve this.   Step 3 Now before you panic, this is where the guide separates casual players from true intellectuals. Uninstalling Garry’s Mod is one of the most important steps in the entire process. Studies conducted by "beware" have shown that uninstalling Garry’s Mod from your computer can significantly improve: Mental health, sanity, physical wellbeing, and a bunch of other things Many experienced players initially reject this step because they are “too committed to the grind.” This is a common mistake, trust the process.   Step 4 Install Counter Strike 2 Once Garry’s Mod has been successfully removed, install CS2. This is where your true happiness comes out. After launching the game, you should immediately queue for Premier matchmaking. During this you will encounter: Teammates without microphones, teammates with microphones that talk too much, people who think every round is the major finals in Berlin and they're on prime Astralis, one player going 2-17 while blaming everyone else for losing because he can't seem to understand that HE is the issue, a very talented enemy on a brand new account. This experience is essential for personal growth.   Step 5 Play 10 premier matches This is the hardest step in the guide. Complete your 10 matches and receive your Premier rank. During this process, you will become very demotivated. Do not worry, CS is like an abusive relationship that you can't stop going back to. Eventually, you will discover what only the best CS players seem to understand. Premier SUCKS   Step 6 Switch to Competitive At first, you may wonder "Why didn’t I just do this earlier?”. Because Premier is favored by Valve for some reason. Competitive offers a fun universal experience for only the top tier CS players. However, if you are anything higher than Silver you may need to skip this step. Competitive also includes a reduced chance of developing long term psychological damage.   In conclusion Congratulations. By following this guide correctly, you have successfully escaped the Aether grind, and ruined your mental health instead. Was this actually a good decision? Probably not. But at least now you can blame your teammates professionally. In all reality you should probably read this guide backwards and delete CS and keep GMod instead.  Thank you for reading this guide, and good luck on your journey to becoming successful on Aether.      

I think this discussion has shown that a lot of the concerns being brought up are less about alts themselves and more about the current gameplay loop surrounding AFK farming, harvesting, and economy inflation. So I don’t necessarily think alts will create that problem though they can potentially amplify systems that already need balancing regardless.  If Aether ever did experiment with this, it could easily start as something heavily restricted and temporary rather than instantly becoming hell.     My main point was never that every player needs to suddenly run alts to benefit themselves — it was that Aether deserves more visibility than it currently gets, especially considering the amount of effort and uniqueness behind the server compared to others, who already use this method and have greatly benefited regardless of the stigma yal might have around it, (NOT ADVERTISING) I'd encourage a look into what i mean with those servers. That can be seen as a cheap way to promote the server, but what else can Aether do, we have the consistent updates, staff/community regularly contributing, with an owner/high staff actively involved with both gameplay and development. The quality and uniqueness is absolutely there, and yet why isn't it up there with those servers I listed? I don't think it's a coincidence that they use alt accounts. Though honestly, if the discussion ends up exposing bigger issues with harvesting, AFK culture, or progression balance, that’s probably still a productive conversation to have regardless of whether alts are ever allowed or not.

About Vetes's points. When I mentioned a server being a ghost town, I was referring to the example I gave with Garnet, during the period where they removed alts, not Aether. Aether has active players, but mostly inside bases/banks/forests actively or afk farming, that can be an issue since I've also noticed plenty of people joining asking where everyone is, but it's an issue outside of alt accounts. Like Jouaram said having an alt help with farming isn't very different from having an afk player to help, maybe this calls for another look into the farming methods or what to do outside farming, especially with your point about the servers economy. To me, that suggests the root issue is more connected to the actual farming systems and gameplay loops.    A lot of these concerns are things that could be adjusted through rules and balancing rather than reasons the idea itself couldn’t work. The economy is inflating and we don't even have alt accounts, which has happened in the past already.. and yea I see what you mean with harvesting for one. I'm already not really a fan of that system to be honest, could maybe use a nerf, not automatically teleport people there, set a daily limit, etc. A lot can be discussed and done, Jouaram has his own system for tagging alts, other servers already do that easily too and don't deal with people avoiding punishments or transferring their stuff to an alt to wipe warns, by having the alt and the mains warns be linked to each other, I can look into what tools they use.    I'm not complaining about the server being a ghost town during off peak hours, of course that's just how it is, but I'd argue against their on peak not being much better than ours, with my experience when I was for one looking through servers just yesterday to see which of the top servers allow alt accounts and keep a high pop, which it's pretty much a 9/10 ratio, I don't think it's a coincidence.     With Armana's point I agree with that completely, I personally wouldn't be using any alts I never have, and can possibly be discouraging to people who can't run them. Though I think that would only be a big problem if alts were really gonna be that meta, they don't have to be. That's also just a common thing across most servers, I've seen and even taken part in buying someone's alts off of them, or loaning alts to players who can't run multiple sessions of Gmod, these servers have come up with ways to balance everything out with alt accounts. Though, I can see why players and staff wouldn't even want to consider/deal with it.