A new post/thread like this comes up every year it seems, but as she wrote, nothing has really changed each time. The reason being that there are next to no consequences on the TF2 platforms for engaging in harassment or hateful behavior, particularly in places like TFTV and ETF2L. As one example: there are multiple people that have been banned for harassment on RGL that are some of the most active posters on TFTV forums/discord. That’s a bad sign, and only leads to the perpetuation of harassment culture. If you are a person that brings harm to the community, you should be removed from the community through bans across the board from forums, leagues, pugs, etc. Sure that will not stop all off-platform behavior but it’s at least some deterrent. Trust me when I say that a lot of these kids are quite attached to competitive TF2 and would feel these consequences.

That being said, I do think RGL has been one of the only organizations that has been willing to put their foot down on this. It could always be better, but I don’t think any other organization has even come close. Some try to perpetuate a narrative that RGL is harming the community through a more hands-on approach, but it just doesn’t prove true when you look at the statistics and feedback collected through surveys. Always remember that often the most vocal critics are the exact people that engage in harmful behavior, so their motives to resist are clear, and almost a sign that you’re on the right path. It is the mostly-silent majority that are the real community of RGL. In a large part, I hope that these forums may help to bring some of those people forward once they know that they can actually engage in welcoming and constructive discussions here. This is how the culture changes, by opening the door to drowning out the negativity.

Competitive TF2 is a small community, and needs to be moderated more along the lines of a private club than as a public utility. We should be willing to shed the worst parts of the community that are dragging us down so that we can thrive in an environment that is wholesome, constructive, welcoming, competitive/game-focused, etc. We should be willing to lose a corrupted veteran in order to make way for a positive newcomer. In the long run, this will bear the greatest change. We’ve already seen how efforts to make TF2 more accessible have led to the great growth of RGL over the past year. For the sake of the competitive TF2 community RGL must stay committed to this goal.

Bodyshot them and move on.

Exciting stuff, and it’s looking good!

I miss the era of all-night high level pugs, and been waiting patiently for this system in hopes that it can deliver an experience like that.

@sigafoo said in Competitive TF2, Harassment, and Volunteering:

I would argue it’s the inverse, having lax policies and enabling bad behavior drives more people away than bans. This is one of the main reasons that RGL has grown in my opinion, is through our moderation. Every six months we’ve posted about 20-40% growth over the previous six months of the total registered player count in this “dead game” for the last three years.

This is the most important part that is often overlooked by those who claim their edgy behavior is benign. Through the cultural damage done by hateful conduct, it brings harmful repercussions to the entire community and league. What you may think is only relevant to the people in the server at the time can actually negatively affect the overall culture and perception of the community, which is essential to protect in order to maintain RGL as a place that is welcoming of new players. If someone is harming the league, it is perfectly reasonable for RGL to take action.

I quite dislike the current wording around the lack of scrutiny of off-platform behavior such as Steam/Discord PMs, as those can be some of the most potent tools bad actors will use to directly harass people, and can still contribute to the same problem of cultural degeneration.

Hoping the Halloween versions of Badwater and Upward are fun.

Glad to see so many people as excited about this project as I am. The showmatches were really fun, and it was only a glimpse of the fully fledged system. Once everything is all up and running it should be even better. Seems that among the next steps will be to gather feedback, fix bugs, and eventually run a larger scale test to start calibrating the ranking system.

Bit of feedback after looking around.

Sniper sightlines out of last-point spawn doors may be a bit too strong.

Extending this ledge on mid to wrap all the way around the corner would help for soldiers to have a spot to jump to when busting through choke. Shouldn’t be too strong for defense due to the back wall making it an easy spot to splash if people linger too long.

On 2nd point, a bit more height would help to promote more aggressive defenses around the choke, and also provide more options for soldiers as they bust through choke.

I picture a ledge here built from those giant pipes.

I picture a small pipe running across here.

Hope it helps. Map is coming along well!

Quaker Simply Granola

Gonna be taking a sneak peek into the RGL PUGs Technical Alpha tonight on my stream: http://twitch.tv/b4nny

We will be doing an overview of the site and its features, and running a showmatch!

Map plays well overall. Mid seems good. Last seems mostly good, though with a bit of awkwardness I can’t quite put my finger on, so I don’t feel confident making any suggestions there.

Main areas that need work are on 2nd point, especially the main choke area. Holding 2nd while down numbers is too difficult because the dry push options through choke and fountain are too powerful. Now that library has 2 exits and is much easier to push, this issue is only compounded. As a result, 2nd is often completely forfeited if defenders are down 2, or at best you can spam from a super passive position back on battlements. The map would benefit from changes that promote aggressive defenses on 2nd near the choke area, which is what my feedback will focus on.

Fountain exit should be made significantly shorter. Not quite as small as it was back in b7, but somewhere in between.

Make the cover around choke a hybrid of current and previous versions. Lower the hedge wall at choke back to how it was in b15, but keep the current tall see-through walls as they help a lot with sniper sightlines.

Revert the current pride-rock back to the old rock like in b15. Offer just a mini ramp to help with dodging spam. This will help to limit the options for attacks to flood into, and funnel them up the stairs towards the point, which is where some of the most exciting fights on this map used to take place. Current pride rock basically nullifies defending near the point, so it should be removed. This also happens to be better for sniper sightlines from the point into fountain.

Overall these changes would make the choke area have a better blend of heights, flow a lot better for fights, and offer better vision for both teams, and make defending 2nd a lot more viable against dry push flooding.

Hope it helps.

Bodyshot them and move on.

Glad to see so many people as excited about this project as I am. The showmatches were really fun, and it was only a glimpse of the fully fledged system. Once everything is all up and running it should be even better. Seems that among the next steps will be to gather feedback, fix bugs, and eventually run a larger scale test to start calibrating the ranking system.

Gonna be taking a sneak peek into the RGL PUGs Technical Alpha tonight on my stream: http://twitch.tv/b4nny

We will be doing an overview of the site and its features, and running a showmatch!

Exciting stuff, and it’s looking good!

I miss the era of all-night high level pugs, and been waiting patiently for this system in hopes that it can deliver an experience like that.

Map plays well overall. Mid seems good. Last seems mostly good, though with a bit of awkwardness I can’t quite put my finger on, so I don’t feel confident making any suggestions there.

Main areas that need work are on 2nd point, especially the main choke area. Holding 2nd while down numbers is too difficult because the dry push options through choke and fountain are too powerful. Now that library has 2 exits and is much easier to push, this issue is only compounded. As a result, 2nd is often completely forfeited if defenders are down 2, or at best you can spam from a super passive position back on battlements. The map would benefit from changes that promote aggressive defenses on 2nd near the choke area, which is what my feedback will focus on.

Fountain exit should be made significantly shorter. Not quite as small as it was back in b7, but somewhere in between.

Make the cover around choke a hybrid of current and previous versions. Lower the hedge wall at choke back to how it was in b15, but keep the current tall see-through walls as they help a lot with sniper sightlines.

Revert the current pride-rock back to the old rock like in b15. Offer just a mini ramp to help with dodging spam. This will help to limit the options for attacks to flood into, and funnel them up the stairs towards the point, which is where some of the most exciting fights on this map used to take place. Current pride rock basically nullifies defending near the point, so it should be removed. This also happens to be better for sniper sightlines from the point into fountain.

Overall these changes would make the choke area have a better blend of heights, flow a lot better for fights, and offer better vision for both teams, and make defending 2nd a lot more viable against dry push flooding.

Hope it helps.

Bit of feedback after looking around.

Sniper sightlines out of last-point spawn doors may be a bit too strong.

Extending this ledge on mid to wrap all the way around the corner would help for soldiers to have a spot to jump to when busting through choke. Shouldn’t be too strong for defense due to the back wall making it an easy spot to splash if people linger too long.

On 2nd point, a bit more height would help to promote more aggressive defenses around the choke, and also provide more options for soldiers as they bust through choke.

I picture a ledge here built from those giant pipes.

I picture a small pipe running across here.

Hope it helps. Map is coming along well!

lansky and habib

@sigafoo said in Competitive TF2, Harassment, and Volunteering:

I would argue it’s the inverse, having lax policies and enabling bad behavior drives more people away than bans. This is one of the main reasons that RGL has grown in my opinion, is through our moderation. Every six months we’ve posted about 20-40% growth over the previous six months of the total registered player count in this “dead game” for the last three years.

This is the most important part that is often overlooked by those who claim their edgy behavior is benign. Through the cultural damage done by hateful conduct, it brings harmful repercussions to the entire community and league. What you may think is only relevant to the people in the server at the time can actually negatively affect the overall culture and perception of the community, which is essential to protect in order to maintain RGL as a place that is welcoming of new players. If someone is harming the league, it is perfectly reasonable for RGL to take action.

I quite dislike the current wording around the lack of scrutiny of off-platform behavior such as Steam/Discord PMs, as those can be some of the most potent tools bad actors will use to directly harass people, and can still contribute to the same problem of cultural degeneration.

A new post/thread like this comes up every year it seems, but as she wrote, nothing has really changed each time. The reason being that there are next to no consequences on the TF2 platforms for engaging in harassment or hateful behavior, particularly in places like TFTV and ETF2L. As one example: there are multiple people that have been banned for harassment on RGL that are some of the most active posters on TFTV forums/discord. That’s a bad sign, and only leads to the perpetuation of harassment culture. If you are a person that brings harm to the community, you should be removed from the community through bans across the board from forums, leagues, pugs, etc. Sure that will not stop all off-platform behavior but it’s at least some deterrent. Trust me when I say that a lot of these kids are quite attached to competitive TF2 and would feel these consequences.

That being said, I do think RGL has been one of the only organizations that has been willing to put their foot down on this. It could always be better, but I don’t think any other organization has even come close. Some try to perpetuate a narrative that RGL is harming the community through a more hands-on approach, but it just doesn’t prove true when you look at the statistics and feedback collected through surveys. Always remember that often the most vocal critics are the exact people that engage in harmful behavior, so their motives to resist are clear, and almost a sign that you’re on the right path. It is the mostly-silent majority that are the real community of RGL. In a large part, I hope that these forums may help to bring some of those people forward once they know that they can actually engage in welcoming and constructive discussions here. This is how the culture changes, by opening the door to drowning out the negativity.

Competitive TF2 is a small community, and needs to be moderated more along the lines of a private club than as a public utility. We should be willing to shed the worst parts of the community that are dragging us down so that we can thrive in an environment that is wholesome, constructive, welcoming, competitive/game-focused, etc. We should be willing to lose a corrupted veteran in order to make way for a positive newcomer. In the long run, this will bear the greatest change. We’ve already seen how efforts to make TF2 more accessible have led to the great growth of RGL over the past year. For the sake of the competitive TF2 community RGL must stay committed to this goal.

Hoping the Halloween versions of Badwater and Upward are fun.