Thank You Letter to the RGL Admin Team
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There are numerous factors that go into retaining a player base for a competitive game, however one of the most important and relatively simple to control is the quality of the league. I’d argue the main factor involved is the quality of the admin team, and thank God RGL is second to none in that regard.
RGL admins clearly know when to exercise discretion with procedure to help this community: like giving a 3 month ban to a bottom scoring roamer because PREC broke and he couldn’t submit a demo. Discretion has no place in this community, or hell, any community. I’m sure the RGL admin involved in this had the sole goal of doing what’s good for the community.
The best way to run a league and grow a community is to pursue the strictest reading of procedure possible while not applying discretion even when it leads to players leaving the scene. I’m confident in the end people will hear about how our procedures are so strict no bad people are tolerated here, and we will all flourish.
Thank you for prioritizing banning potential cheaters while spending months to ban well known cheaters. But most of all, thank you for banning Antlers. He was one of the only people to run production for casting amateur/other lower divisions in the regular season, and we certainly don’t need any of that in our TF2 league to help retain players. Hell no. Your intelligent admin decisions will more than make up for that. I am certain this decision is good for the TF2 community and will help it grow.
Antlers should have known better than to cast Amateur games. Going through hours of effort messing with your config to shine a light on some of our newer players, just to have his hard work break PREC. Well, another cheater bites the dust. Three cheers for RGL.
Sincerely,
A Concerned TF2 citizen
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just looked this up and getting banned for 3 months for not submitting demos in main is really dumb, even if it is a repeat offense
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At first, I was like wtf you on about… then I read the post and realized you on about the same thing we all on about… Good job admins.
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This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really don’t see any excuse for not submitting demos on three separate occasions. If P-rec is not working, the built in demo recording works just fine.
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The point isn’t whether or not it’s easy to record demos, it’s about the goal of RGL as a whole. Should discretion be applied in a small community when it helps, or are you going to enforce the rules regardless of what it does to the small group of people running production and involved in the game.
Is the purpose of RGL to help TF2 or to be a judiciary for a series of rules created? Enforcing rules at the cost of the former is, frankly, idiotic which is what the point of the letter is.
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i disagree with a LOT of the decisions that admins make but this isn’t one of them, idk how u fail to turn in demos 3 times in a 1.5 year time span. if prec breaks once, that’s what the first offense is for.
he’s a main player, so i think the immediate assumption is “oh, he’s new, he isn’t familiar with how important it is to record demos,” but taking a quick look through his competitive history, he’s been playing comp tf2 since 2016 and should know very well that he has to record demos for all matches.
idk man like whats ur proposal, just have him be immune to not turning in demos upon admin request since he casts amateur games? and if a one season ban for breaking a rule 3 separate times is enough to disenfranchise this guy enough to leave competitive tf2 for good, dunno how committed he really was to it all lmao and it’s not like he can’t cast games while banned from playing. -
my friend got banned but please unban him please guys he’s a nice guy please unban my friend: the thread
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The rules are very specific and clear. [1008.5] - POV and STV Demos
This includes the penalties for doing so:
You are asking for discretion where there is none to give. Perhaps if you provide an actual valid reason why your buddy should have the ability to not have to follow the rules like everyone else, that would help your cause.
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I suppose you again misunderstood the point of the thread. I’m not arguing the rules nor am I arguing he should be unbanned under how things are currently done.
The clear intent was satire aimed at the entire point of RGL. To anyone who read that and thought “I’ll write about why you should be able to record a demo” you just misread the entire thing please try again :).
Again is RGL going to be a group that legislates useless rules until the bitter sweet end, or will it reorient itself to benefiting the community? I can’t make that choice, but you can.
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@Deltamarket said in Thank You Letter to the RGL Admin Team:
Again is RGL going to be a group that legislates useless rules until the bitter sweet end, or will it reorient itself to benefiting the community? I can’t make that choice, but you can.
Your ignorance to why these rules exist do not excuse your actions. Perhaps you should educate yourself a bit a spend some time thinking about the reasoning behind why these rules exist.
RGL Anti-Cheat Updates from 3/20/2020
Tl;DR: Random POV checks are a Anti-cheat issue and thus this rule directly correlates to helping stop cheating.
@Deltamarket said in Thank You Letter to the RGL Admin Team:
I suppose you again misunderstood the point of the thread. I’m not arguing the rules nor am I arguing he should be unbanned under how things are currently done.
The clear intent was satire aimed at the entire point of RGL. To anyone who read that and thought “I’ll write about why you should be able to record a demo” you just misread the entire thing please try again :).
Its fairly obvious this is just a rgl-hate circlejerk thread. However this is not the TFTV forums, and we actually require discussion on these forums.
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I would like to restate, the entire point of this is a discussion as to the fundamental mission of RGL, are you telling me I shouldn’t try and discuss fundamental point of the group stewarding NA tf2? Because I’m not mindlessly hating on RGL, I’m stating why I think it is failing to uphold it’s most important mission. You clearly disagree with that view, but please don’t call what a wrote or ascribe an intent to me I don’t have. I’ve stated my intent three times now, and none of them was simply hate on the organization simply a discussion on it’s mission.
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You are not trying to discuss the mission statement of RGL, you are trying to convince yourself and others that because Antlers was a Caster/Producer, he should not be held to the same standard as everyone else in this community.
If you want to have a discussion on it’s mission, then perhaps you should actually post what you think is wrong with the mission, or what needs to change instead of:
@Deltamarket said in Thank You Letter to the RGL Admin Team:
The clear intent was satire aimed at the entire point of RGL.**
If you want to have a discussion on something, make actual points with backing evidence instead of baseless comments.
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@Deltamarket said in Thank You Letter to the RGL Admin Team:
The point isn’t whether or not it’s easy to record demos, it’s about the goal of RGL as a whole. Should discretion be applied in a small community when it helps, or are you going to enforce the rules regardless of what it does to the small group of people running production and involved in the game.
Is the purpose of RGL to help TF2 or to be a judiciary for a series of rules created? Enforcing rules at the cost of the former is, frankly, idiotic which is what the point of the letter is.
It shouldn’t affect production at all though? Any banned rgl players can continue to run any production/event. antlers can still cast whatever match he wants. the only time he is “not allowed” to cast while banned, is if it’s the same match as rgl or another casting org. The RGL ban should only affect his ability to compete in the league. So it’s not hurting any casting organization in the slightest. If he chooses to withdraw from the scene after breaking the same well-established rule 3-times within a somewhat short time frame, then idk man. I don’t think that, in particular, is on RGL.
@Deltamarket said in Thank You Letter to the RGL Admin Team:
The point isn’t whether or not it’s easy to record demos, it’s about the goal of RGL as a whole.
I suppose you again misunderstood the point of the thread. I’m not arguing the rules nor am I arguing he should be unbanned under how things are currently done. The clear intent was satire aimed at the entire point of RGL.
I would like to restate, the entire point of this is a discussion as to the fundamental mission of RGL. I’ve stated my intent three times now, and none of them was simply hate on the organization simply a discussion on it’s mission.
I think having these kinds of discussions is really good, and that we should voice our criticisms! However, trying to have a conversation on whether RGL is fulfilling its “goal of helping the scene” isn’t a super productive concept to attack directly, because there are so many small areas and issues that you could pinpoint that could better draw the picture–while also allowing RGL to work off the feedback. And I don’t think invalidating/dismissing any counterargument that attacks one of your supporting arguments contributes to discussion either. If you recognize the validity of recording demos, then why should antlers be an exception to the rules? Should RGL always be laxer with rules towards community contributors than the rest of the playerbase?
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@Constantly My view is that admins should have a fairly large amount of discretion when making enforcement decisions within their own leagues, and each case should be considered holistically. Admins should consider how their actions will impact the league (as in, how likely is this to actually hinder a cheater, or some other bad actor). Let’s illustrate my view with an example that as far as I’m aware has happened in the past
One of the organizations where RGL casting rules apply (I think in this case it was CappingTV or extv but it doesn’t really matter) casted a game between two newcomer teams. Some of the players didn’t alias up, but the admin in charge of their league didn’t apply any penalty to them. Why is this? Probably because the admin realized it wouldn’t help anyone. The players were new, excited about their first cast, and didn’t read the rules so they didn’t alias up. But just a little bit of discretion, no one gets hurt, and these newer players can continue on with their lives glad to be a part of the community.
The framework still applies to more serious infractions. Let us look at how an admin could holistically consider the case of Antlers. He does run community production, it’s well documented and he had a cast just in the middle of week one matches. As we all know TF2 configs aren’t exactly perfect, so he truly believes his casting config changes he made before this season screwed PREC up. Secondly, Antlers hasn’t exactly been crushing players in his matches. Other players on the team had greater overall performances as well as flashier moments.
It’s not that a community contributor should get a free pass; it just so happens in this case being a community contributor (specifically a producer) provides information relevant to the infraction. The admin for the div should again, simply think two things “how likely is this to hinder a cheater”, and “are we removing someone who needs to be temporarily removed from the league.” In antlers case, he has frankly almost never performed mechanically impressive, had flashy plays or anything else triggering suspicion. Considering this with his PREC config issues, is it really that hard to imagine the league would be a better place if admins exercised discretion here? This ban does not help anyone, if admins and everyone else in the div are certain the player isn’t a cheater discretion could be applied even without the PREC config issue in my view.
Looking at enforcement actions holistically is possible in a small community like this.
Although I suppose it’s reasonable to see why some would be wary of this. Especially when you see moderators attacking other players baselessly it kind of makes me second guess giving them any discretion.
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I like how Daf got banned for the same reason a whole year after his first offense…
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@Deltamarket Yeah, I think those points are completely fair! Situations can affect teams and players completely differently, and for the benefit of the players it concerns, ideally there will be room for admin discretion–even for things that are clear-cut in the rules. Though, I do recognize that admins have hundreds of players to keep track of, and looking into specific cases is not realistically obtainable for the volunteers.
I think a decent middle ground would be for a player, such as antlers, to directly reach out(ideally through a support ticket where an admin response is guaranteed without hunting for an answer/admin) and for the admins to be willing to work with them, reevaluate, and reach a beneficial result for both parties.
I also think admins are right to be skeptical when giving exceptions since it opens up more paths to being considered bias, unfair, and “corrupt”. As well as any other consequences there may be.
Specifically for demo requests though, I definitely think it’s an area to be improved, but not really something I can comment on since I know AC has their reasons which they’ve publicly stated somewhere, but I’m too lazy to search for it
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s/o to all the closet cheaters currently playing because the AC team (2 people) is constantly swamped with demos of innocent players because…???
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@cayorne How dense are you? Do you really think the AC spends their time watching every single demo? If so, stay in school. The admins ask randomly for our demos to make sure we are recording in the event shit hits the fan. It’s also incredibly easy to record your demo and submit it. You literally have to be a plain dumbfuck to get banned for this shit.
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@JohhnyFromCali s/o to all the closet cheaters still playing because the AC team (still 2 people) is slow*
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if i was on the ac team i would simply ban all cheaters
