@nabla said in RGL Conduct Survey #4 Results, Global Rule Edits, & 2021 March/April Bans:
Just because u make a long post doesn’t mean its of substance and admins need to reply. Your posts aren’t new ideas that nobody has ever argued before, and if you -really- cared about getting answers to your questions you would just talk to somebody in production instead of trying to gain traction by baiting outrage on the forums.
This is an issue that I genuinely care about, and I have outlined the issues with each point in RGL’s official stance. I don’t think it’s fair to say that I am baiting outrage on the forums. I haven’t cross-posted this thread anywhere and I’ve been careful to give the benefit of the doubt where I can, but it is frustrating to go several months with no reply when I know my posts are being seen. I’m not aware of anywhere else where the points I have made have been addressed. I have personally brought this up with RGL staff in the past, and I have only received dismissive responses along the lines of “we’ll look into it”, so I posted about it on this thread about the rule changes.
How is this meaningless, wtf are you saying? Giving STV info to random community members = a higher chance of somebody giving that to the group of idiots who try to disrupt casted matches. At least when its only shared between production and server ops we know who to hold accountable for leaking.
In order for the attack to play out like you describe, there has to be an exchange of confidential information from high trust to low trust. This exchange can exist with the same frequency whether or not the level of trust required to receive STV info is raised. If production or a server op is willing to give STV info to a lower trust, then the IP info can be given the exact same way. The issue is with the existence of the transfer of confidential information from high trust to low trust, not with the transfer of STV info itself.
The server info is already public unless everyone in the server hides their steam status, and this isn’t even a rule as far as I’m aware. Additionally, attackers can just compile a list of servers owned by invite players and RGL (or use the in-game server browser history), so worrying about STV access is just moot, and this is why I said the point was meaningless.
Give it to a bunch of “community content creators” though? not anymore lol
I hope that this attitude doesn’t exist within RGL staff. It’s supposed to be a community league?
You have enough info to ddos a server with just the STV info, it makes complete sense that its not just out there for people to see. RGL doesn’t have the ESEA budget for ddos prevention measures on their tf2 servers (or the budget to even own servers lmao). Its just not realistic to expect open stv information for the casted RGL games, especially considering the HL community has a decently sized group of people who think its Really Funny to disrupt match casts in whatever way they possibly can.
STV info doesn’t have to be public. The issue is with banning players for joining the STV or streaming the same match. For example, my friends who give me STV info are willing to do so because they trust me to not disrupt the match. There is a chain of trust from RGL -> server operator -> holders of STV info. RGL can explicitly state who in this chain is responsible for which events, and this limits the chain. Currently, this chain is cut too short.
These are non-solutions.
Did you watch the video exa linked? STV relays with enough people connected are literally unwatchable. You just move the problem down another step when you make a relay in terms of making the decision about who gets access to it, because clearly not everyone can be in it.
You can’t seriously think saying “just buy a better server lol” or “just fix the bugs in STV relays” is productive in any real way right?
The problem is that you think making a relay will just fix everything. You seem to think ignoring the problem that STVs and Relay Servers fold under the pressure of enough spectators will just magically make it go away. It doesn’t. Plus it gets even worse because the game server itself can also take a hit, which directly effects the match.
Given that relays aren’t a viable option (pretending they are doesn’t make it true), this is a valid concern.
Solution 1: Give official production the actual STV access while third parties are allowed to use the buggy STV relay if they wish. This allows far more people to spectate than currently possible, and eliminates this issue as a reason to ban players for spectating or casting.
Solution 2: Spend more resources on better servers to eliminate this issue as a reason to ban players for spectating or casting.
Solution 3: Spend more resources on investigating the STV bug to eliminate this issue as a reason to ban players for spectating or casting.
RGL should not want to ban players for spectating or casting the same match as an official production cast. These are a few ways to make it easier to remove the rule. If RGL is incapable of spending additional resources, then resources should be reallocated. This is a big problem, and the way RGL seems dismissive of it is indicative of selfish motives.
The league does not suffer because randoms can’t couch-cast a match. The league does suffer if its official cast is disrupted. There is a small benefit to allowing randoms to couch-cast (arguably the biggest benefit is placating angry forum posts and nothing to do with increased viewership of the matches lmao). Conversely, there is a clear demerit to not enforcing cast exclusivity (considering previous disrupted casts).
RGL is supposed to be a community league. Placing the interests of the league above the community is a problem in this case. RGL certainly can screw community content (which seems to be the case based on your earlier comment) to suit its own interests, but I have problems with that. It is for this reason that I made these posts. There are better ways to lower the frequency of cast disruption that don’t involve shutting down community content in a community league.
Of the viewerbase who know they want to watch a casted match, the fact that random community member X isn’t allowed to cast it won’t stop them from watching it. Of the potential viewerbase reachable, the official cast provides so much more outreach than our communities independent sources that they border on negligible.
There exist viewers who would only watch official casts and choose to not watch at all rather than a community cast. Likewise, there are viewers who would only watch community casts. There are also viewers who watch both at the same time. Twitch viewership is not a zero sum game. Community content does not necessarily take away from official casts, and the outreach provided by official casts does not necessarily decrease with the existence of other community content. Any additional outreach provided by additional community content should be encouraged.
RGL doesn’t really lose anything by restricting other streams
This is a sad statement to read, and I hope RGL doesn’t feel similarly.
and they prevent a LOT of headache for themselves. It is a willful denial of facts to pretend like open access to STVs hasn’t and doesn’t cause problems.
There is a middle ground between posting STV info publicly and banning anyone who enters. It doesn’t have to be headache inducing.
Players streaming their POV doesn’t create an issue for the production team, so its not a problem and not restricted. Similar logic for casts of other matches.
This contradicts the points given about taking away from community outreach, etc. of the official cast, and it shows why that point is a poor position to take.
Conversely, community members competing for STV slots with the official production (or other listed reasons) is an issue, so its restricted.
RGL should look into ways to fix this rather than banning players for entering STV. The burden should be placed on the league rather than against the community.
Did you really just say “this is a problem that should take precedence above plenty of other things RGL is doing” as if this specific issue is at all related to what any staff members ACTUALLY DO. Random Staff Members #1-100 don’t know anything about fixing bugs in the source engine.
If nobody with RGL has the ability to look directly into the issue, then RGL should look into that issue first by, for example, looking for people who have the ability or encouraging community involvement to find a solution.
until they fix an irrelevant bug of unidentified source?
This bug is not irrelevant if it is the one thing closing off a large area for community involvement and is used as justification to ban players for spectating. It’s got to be one of the most important bugs in the entire community.
“Official Casting Organizations” are allowed to cast the same matches as RGL because they are trusted to not create massive headaches for the official production team. Staff members use whatever criteria they have for determining who is an “official casting organization” they can trust to not cause headaches, but its not reasonable to extend that trust to the community at large. Call it favoritism if you want (it kinda is if you squint), but it should at least show you that RGL isn’t trying to be scummy and squash “competition” to their stream, they just want official productions to proceed smoothly.
A practical solution for you is:
Have a brand, make your casts something consistent with a high production value and sense of professionalism.
After demonstrating that you are serious by running like this for a while, contact dolphin/current head of production and appeal to be considered an official casting organization.
Done.
Bowl and some co-casters like myself tried to get picked up by TFTV but were removed within an hour because of RGL staff complaints. I understand if RGL doesn’t want its brand associated with any individual, but then there is no other avenue to pursue and your suggestion is impossible. I think there is some favoritism involved, but this is getting away from my point.
There shouldn’t be a need for me to develop a professional and high production-value brand to couch cast some match from high level spy POVs only. Content like that, in my opinion, is consumed by people more interested in the gameplay (and maybe commentary, but maybe not) rather than production value. Furthermore, it is very difficult to do what you are suggesting when 1) there are four matches a week, 2) there is typically only one good or relevant match a week, 3) RGL typically takes this match, and 4) the three remaining matches can be taken by another official cast if it decides. Even then, there is no guarantee to be accepted as an official casting organization; and after all that is done, then the core issue still exists in that the same match still cannot be casted from different angles, production philosophies, etc., and players are banned for trying.
If this is an issue that you take a stance on more generally (i.e. you believe community couch casts are important), you should find the solutions yourself (and maybe volunteer to staff to help implement them). Purchase the stronger server for RGL casts, wrangle the angry teams who Refuse To Play On Your Dogshit Server (aka: its not our server so we hate it), bugtest and figure out how (if even possible) to make relays stable for more spectators, and make a system that allows for you to give spectating information out without increasing the chance the resident dumbasses in HL use it to disrupt casts.
I don’t have the time or resources to do this, but I am also not in charge of running a league. I’ve put a lot of time into things like my posts here and a few suggestions elsewhere; but as I said earlier in this thread, it is hard to not disengage when I don’t even get a response. When you (in the general sense) resort to banning players for spectating rather than investigate this issue, the problem is on you.
In short: “I don’t care how you solve this problem. Here are plenty of suggestions from the top of my head, but banning players for entering STV is unacceptable.”
Its really easy to just say “do more work” when you aren’t the person who has to do the work, and apparently its also easy to convince yourself that RGL staff are a bunch of powertripping incompetents trying to Silence The Demands Of The Community because they made a decision that you didn’t like. I guarantee you its not that dramatic. All it takes is one disrupted cast for production to be fed up and put a stop to whatever caused it (and thats probably what happened).
Throughout this thread I have given RGL the benefit of the doubt, but it’s hard to take the silence any other way. I’d like to believe that RGL is just taking a hardline stance because of past issues, but the point of my argument is that this is too far.
I see the power tripping thing get handwaved a lot. I don’t think that there are any moustache twirling admins, but some of RGL’s decisions are ridiculous; and I’m not here to argue about that because I know it will go nowhere.
(This isn’t a staff response bc im not involved with RGL but its hopefully its better than nothing for you)
I appreciate the response. I and plenty of others still think that this rule is terrible. I think one of the big problems with RGL is that many of the people with good ideas aren’t willing to put in the effort to voice them (hard to blame them, look at this thread as an example of why people don’t), so RGL yolos on some pretty bad decisions.