Posts made by shotaway

https://imgur.com/a/7hb5Jcu

why the clipping on the green hose was removed

i withdraw my support for region wars

i support another region wars

I propose that we give full MP for the winning team and 0 MP for the losing team. We could keep counters for rounds won/dropped and use this for any tie breakers. This seems like a natural and simple solution that rewards the teams that win with higher seeds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0qmkQGqpM8

in this thread, we talk about which TF2 classes would do something.

i’ll start:

which TF2 class would get the covid vaccine? I think definitely the soldier, but some of the classes like medic, spy, and engineer might avoid it. what are your thoughts?

@Alto it’s one thing to say it should be removed and another thing to remove it while claiming there were no gameplay changes

I can appreciate the intention and your dedication towards map improvement, but anything that changes gameplay shouldn’t be passed off so lightly and tossed right into the season. There is a difference between the visual feel and “creator’s vision” of the map (it was added in 2008 and last updated in 2013; the map should be considered out of the original creator’s hands) and its functional gameplay topology. Removing a sightline that doesn’t feel like it should be there might be a small fix in terms of aesthetic or QoL, but it could change the way the point or the whole map is played. For instance, if that sightline is no longer viable then teams might position completely differently, placing emphasis on different points altogether.

That soldier spot above B has been considered a legitimate gameplay option for years. Removing it eliminates that gameplay option entirely, reducing the map to something else. Severing a gameplay option is probably never isolated and will change the weights of other gameplay options. Spots like these either exist or they don’t and the fact that it might be an unintended pixel walk doesn’t change its existence as a gameplay option. If the goal is QoL, you could easily add some other prop up there to address it while also attempting to keep it functionally the same. If the goal is larger than this, then it should be dealt with as a gameplay changing update and not passed off as if it were a set of nonfunctional changes as it seems to have been implied. Maybe they are justified improvements, but if so then I think there should be more talk before it’s implemented.

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I’d like to add that I think adding another instance of separation from the vanilla game by creating a new map file for cp_steel is probably not the way to go, but this is besides the point and I’m sure many would disagree with me.

I haven’t fully read through this thread, but someone mentioned that there are no gameplay changes. However, cp_steel is well known for its many quirks that involve weird clippings and wall surfs that open up the map to a lot more movement options. Anything that affects clipping, particularly on this map, can be a big deal. That sniper window on B being filled in is a big change. Moving props around is a big deal. “Small changes” can change the dynamic of a point, cut off or add routes around the map for a subset of classes, or alter sightlines which seriously affects gameplay.

Maybe these changes are justified, or maybe they aren’t; but I’m not a fan of passing it off as some small non-gameplay affecting, minor bug fix “refresh” update.

Maybe I’m out of the loop, but who in invite outside of this thread is even aware that cp_steel got changed?

I know how frustrating this rule has been for me, and it’s a shame to see it affect others, especially those whose streams have a much wider appeal. The casting restrictions and strict adherence to it with no exceptions despite how well many people in this community know each other is just bad. I talked about it in another thread and got no official response, but hopefully this thread displays more community figures against the restrictions.

RGL should want the MCM cast to take place, even if it is concurrent to their own official cast; and so RGL should try to help it happen. Instead of pointing at obstacles as excuses to have these restrictions, RGL should internally want to see these obstacles as issues that need to be fixed. However, it sounds like this isn’t the case. For RGL to not want MCM to be able to cast is antithetical to a major point for many in HL to move from UGC to RGL, the “community league” aspect.

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I see that mothership linked the thread with my posts. Thanks. I would love for more discussion to exist in there because I genuinely want this rule to change. I think many others do too, but so many people disengage from this kind of activity. “I have years of pent up frustration over casting restrictions.” is a sentiment that chinatown shares with so many people.

what got changed

let’s just make it 10 slots and the whiny babies can deal with it lol. we need to solve the roster riding problem.

i tried to buy the pink scattergun shirt but I noticed that 4XL was all sold out. when will these be back in stock?

trelan was one of three players (iirc) permabanned at the start of RGL HL when several admins+players coordinated to move HL from UGC to RGL. these bans were mirrors from UGC. now, he has been unbanned from UGC for a long time, but his mirrored ban still exists here.

share them with each other here

@b4nny said in RGL Conduct Survey #4 Results, Global Rule Edits, & 2021 March/April Bans:

I am also not an admin responsible for the decisions made on this topic, but it does annoy me when I see this argument so I want to chime in. My understanding is that RGL is a “community league” because it is grassroots, built by players and members of the community, and isn’t owned by a major corporation, NOT because any decision it makes must empower every member of the community or that every decision must be made by community vote. Sometimes catering to the community is good, sometimes it is detrimental. In navigating that, the league admins should make decisions that are in its best interests that will benefit the success of the competitive scene, even if they may be unpopular with some members of the community.

I understand your point, and maybe this is the thought process that goes into a decision like this. If so, it would be better for someone at RGL to say so instead of ignoring the discussion. I’m not owed a response, but the alternative is that I disengage and discussions like these don’t exist. This argument exists on a different level from mine, and I still argue against the rule for the reasons I’ve given in this thread. I don’t think this rule is something that fits into a decision like you describe. I think it’s a bad decision for the league because it is a bad decision for the community; and I think that the idea that RGL should make unpopular decisions for the sake of the success of the competitive scene is not so strong that it justifies a decision like this.

I want a league to play highlander in. If RGL’s sole purpose is to grow the competitive TF2 scene, then there may be an argument for doing things like dropping HL to focus on 6v6 or disbanding a top team that is too dominant. RGL can certainly do these things using a similar justification, but I wouldn’t like these decisions and would be against them, even if they actually did somehow contribute to the success of the competitive scene.

Maybe a rule like this would be beneficial for 6s like you say, but I think the “community league” approach to HL is (or at least should be) different, and this might be where the disagreement is. Regardless, a “community league”, however you define it, shouldn’t be laughing off the idea of community content creators. RGL was started by community content creators.

@nabla said in RGL Conduct Survey #4 Results, Global Rule Edits, & 2021 March/April Bans:

If you want to make spy POV only casts of specific matches, just grab the STV demo later and cast from that. Nothing is stopping that in the RGL rulebook.

Sure, but this isn’t the show I’m trying to put on. I don’t think that it’s the same to do things like this from an STV demo as it is live, and this restriction exists unnecessarily.

It isn’t like admins haven’t considered other alternatives. Do you really think they just ignore that people are upset? I doubt it.

If they did ignore that people are upset, how would you expect people to respond? Like me? It seems like they have ignored me. What alternatives have they looked into? That’s the kind of discussion that I am looking for on this thread.

1.) Servers struggle with higher spectator counts. In the end, you will always have to resort to favoritism in terms of who gets access because giving it to too many spectators will have a detrimental impact on the gameserver/spectating experience.

I think that if RGL wanted to encourage things like this then they would look into ways to deal with the logistical issues. That could be better servers, investigating the relay issue, or even just setting up relays so that third parties can deal with the bugs while the official cast can sit in the base STV. Instead, RGL is giving up here and banning players for entering STV.

2.) Even if you bypass logistical issues, holding people accountable for match servers being ddosed / casts disrupted because of leaked info is always a worse solution than removing opportunities for that to happen in the first place.

That’s literally it.

I think that holding people accountable for casts being disrupted is not as hard as it’s being stated. Server operators can give STV info to players with high trust. If those high trust players give it out to lower trust, then RGL can talk to the server operator. The server operator knows who was given STV access, so the right person can be held accountable. Otherwise, the server operator would be held accountable and this fear would raise the bar of personal trust that the server operator requires for potential STV viewers.

I think that this is a moot point when the server IP and much more is essentially public in several ways:

1. The in-game server browser has built in search, favorite, and history functionality.
2. Game info can be viewed from the steam friends list. As far as I’m aware, it is not a requirement in RGL for players to hide this info.
3. Servers are constantly reused, and anyone can compile a list of frequently used servers.

Additionally, anyone willing to give STV to someone willing to ddos something is also willing to give the server IP to someone willing to ddos something. This includes server operators.

You also need to understand that this rule exists in such a harsh form purely because its an issue thats not just an isolated case and seems to always happen whenever a ‘popular match’ comes about.

Server ops would give their stv info to Bowl, vryktion, and other randoms who want to cast. Magically that info would then end up in the hands of people who want to disrupt the match. Crazy how that works.

Players have had to move servers because their original started to lag once enough STV clients connected.

Blanket restricting STV is a very simple solution to an annoying set of problems you would otherwise forever play a game of whack-a-mole with, and removes an avenue for admins to abuse their power with favoritism.

I think that it’s too harsh and that there are better and smarter ways to prevent these things while still maintaining a culture of community content creation. Blanket banning anyone who enters STV might be a simple and easy solution for league admins, but that doesn’t justify it.

@Maven said in RGL Conduct Survey #4 Results, Global Rule Edits, & 2021 March/April Bans:

I also want to add that nobody in RGL wants to ban anyone. Ideally nobody does anything that gets them banned.

This is a nice sentiment, but it doesn’t mean anything. RGL does want to ban some players, but that’s a discussion for a different thread. “Ideally the players we want banned don’t exist.” RGL should want to ban cheaters. RGL should not want to ban players for entering STV.

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It takes a good amount of time to make these posts, and it seems like the answer is just “no”, and I’m wasting my time. So, I probably won’t be posting much here unless there is a significant post. Thanks for the discussion so far.

@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.

do you guys have any ideas for the future of TF2? post them here.

No response since May? Surely, you must have seen this thread. Are you just ignoring me? Has RGL given any thought to this? It would be pretty cool to have things like the spy cam for playoffs / grands. This rule just needlessly shuts down extra content.