Server State Commentary

I got banned from the NUBS server this morning and I wanted to provide some commentary. I know that this forum isn't "officially" associated with the server, but I generally consider the communities to be indistinguishable.

Firstly, I don't want to "contest" my ban or make absolutely any excuses for my actions. I recognize that this thread/forum wouldn't be the appropriate place for that kind of post. While not malicious, I knew that my actions were probably against the rules. I have absolutely no hard feelings for whatever group of individuals made the decision to enforce their server rules in the manner that they did. I'm humble enough to not bring any feelings of entitlement to a server that I don't pay for or maintain. And as someone who has donated their time to making this mod better, I know how much time can be spend on boring maintenance that no one ever seems to thank you for and that can feel pretty shitty.

However, I think I've been distant enough from this community to provide a potentially valuable "outsider" perspective (and I'd be lying if I tried to pretend that I didn't feel the tiniest bit of angst...).

For context and transparency, I'll briefly run through the events:

• I received a mass steam message from Tama to play some 4v4 Empires.
  
• I have maybe a dozen hours in past couple months, but I joined the district match right as it ended. It switched to palmbay.
  
• There were only around 4 players of the ~10 total that thoroughly knew the rules of Empires and even fewer that could command.
  
• Before I get around to joining a team, there is a request for an NF commander with less than a minute in the com vote and I hastily volunteered to take one for the team.
  
• Only about 2 of my 4 players had a good handle on how Empires works, but I have many many hours of experience commanding a losing pub match. I can deal.
  
• At our peak, we only build an embarrassing 2 refs beyond the starting ref in main (you can guess which players built those refs...). No one really requested rax or armories, but I plopped down a couple reserve spawns in the typical places - I'm quite used to the process of planning to get pushed back.
  
• So BE controls basically the entire map and NF has absolutely zero ability to gain any ground. Around this time, the teams had increased to roughly 6v6-ish (maybe more), but BE generally benefited from this with reliable players like Doc while NF gets no-names. There are fantastic players like Mr. X sitting in spec.
  
• You'd expect BE to just strangle NF and end the suffering in a couple minutes. No harm, no foul, just a bad roll of the team balance dice. It happens. Instead, I get harassment scouts in jeeps and that dreaded "blockade" where the enemy just semi-passively contains a much weaker team to toy with them.
  
• I've commed pubs enough to recognize this match-destroying bullshit and I can't put my team through that. I immediately start a dialog with the team about throwing in the towel to cause a map switch. A surrender vote is out of the question as about 2/3 of my team isn't cognizant enough to vote on anything (to accept or deny). The only option is to put the CV in the water and then get to play a fairer match. So after repeatedly announcing to my team that I was about to end the match over the span of about a minute with no objections, I do that.
  
• BE freaks out because they don't get to realize their impromptu power fantasy, spends a couple minutes ungriefing the NF CV and feeds NF with a couple BE players so they can justify continuing this elaborate ritual. I fully admit to what I did and the general consensus from other players is that "this kind of imbalance is just how Empires is now and you have to deal with it." I eventually get banned from the server some time after leaving.

I fully realize that the written rules were applied consistently and fairly based on historical precedent. This is undeniable, but it's not the point.

If those players were correct when they talked about the "new norm" of constant team imbalance, then servers probably need new rules to go with that new population dynamic.

• There are tons of ways for a com to intentionally (and often maliciously) cause his team to lose, but none of them are against the rules as "griefing" except literally killing your own team's CV.
  • In the context of the above mentioned situation, I could've moved to spec and let my team suffer. I would argue that's worse than "ending the misery", but I've never seen anyone call that "griefing".
• If we expect the "losing" players to stodgingly continue (and fairly enforce it as mentioned above), then I think it's reasonable to expect the "winning" players to aggressively try to win.
  • If teams aren't balanced, then that ends an unfun match sooner so there's a new opportunity for more balanced teams. This bullshit of intentionally "holding" back while you pool resources and research is despicable.

If this wasn't a community of only like 200 people, then you couldn't enforce this kind of thing. But being that it's about as tiny as a functional community can be, and everyone pretty much knows everyone else, then this is feasible.

And I also think it's important to mention that I'm no saint, so I try to be humble and not accusatory. Sure, I've spent hundreds of hours in the chore of comming pubs, but I've also done as many terrible things as any other regular. The point isn't to "slut shame" the folks that do sneakily naughty things that are technically "not against the rules", but to recognize that we all have the capacity to do these things and to structure the enforcement of the rules to make things better rather than be comfortable with rules that we all can easily skirt.

If my perspective isn't quite matching up with reality, then that's fine and the status quo oughta work great. But if things really are as different as some folks are saying, then maybe the status quo isn't going to cut it. I've donated way too much out-of-game time to this mod to have anything but positive feelings for its well-being, so I just hope that things go as well as they can go. Good luck.

EDIT I just want to say that I try really hard to never "call out" players and it looks like I mentioned Doc & X. I want to clarify that I only mentioned them personally to communicate to the audience that I was talking about capable and reliable players. I think their names & reputations convey those traits.

 

griefing under any circumstances is against rules. griefing is defined by anything hurting your own team whether it be driving a cv in the water to destroy it, a comm leaving in mid game, or a comm going to spec and leaving their team w/o a comm.. blocking your own vf spamming jeeps etc etc etc.

With griefing there is no gray area. We can't make exceptions to griefing unlike other rules that are broken because it effects everyone in the server.
btw its just a 1 day ban

 

next time try surrender or rtv even if you think your team is not capable of voting ya neva know.

 

Going swimming with the CV is pretty much textbook griefing so its hard to argue against even if it was a mercy suiciding. Basically, if I'm comming a horribly stacked against team, I have two options:

1. Turtle as much as possible in hopes that enough good people join to turn it around
2. Try a last ditch APC rush (spam MG-APCs from VF, recycle all other spawns, yell at team to follow you to their CV)

If your tired of comming, 2 is a good option as it usually ends the game quickly one way or another.

 

I like parachuting with my CV from the ceiling I mean sky

 

its karma from when you loved to give out infractions on the forum

 

Spartacus tried to end the suffering faster thus making the game more enjoyable for everyone instead of the shitfest that it was. He shouldnt be banned for that.
Loads of vets know when a game is lost and when the enemy is just stalling and being cunts, I think he did the right thing here, he couldve just joined spec like he said and waited for it to end slowly and painfully. This semantics bullshit where people get banned for random stuff they shouldnt be getting banned for is derp as hell and especially prominent in this new era of empires ( 2015-2016 ). People get banned for "direct"griefing ( with good intentions ), but other people dont get banned for other kinds of "indirect" griefing ( with bad intentions ) cause the admins are too lazy.

 

I'm going to agree with Scardy. You force a last ditch APC rush and end the game that way. 90% chance your CV dies but at least you gave it a shot. It's much better than just dumping the CV.

 

Spartacus, first saying, I like you.
But dafuq?

Is Empires the only game we ever played?
Let's switch to any other game you play, what do you think when someone starts feeding enemy because "he thinks" there's no hope?

I play League of Legends (Diamond I) and I swear to god if you grief my ranked game, I'll fucking stab you.(well not literally but that's how much I hate you.)

You CAN disconnect, I might assume you have a fire alarm or something, I wouldn't hate you as much.
But if you ACTIVELY grief, that's ridiculous and bullshit.

There's surrender, there's disconnect, nothing's worse than griefing.
Let's not even mention that driving CV into water is not even "feeding", it's 20 times worse, you lose the game DIRECTLY.

Spartacus, you've been here long enough to know that people are REALLY fucking bad at expressing themselves, you know perfectly that people aren't going to tell you "no, don't grief", especially if they don't know what's up.

There's only one circumstance that I think a grief is "okay" : Literally the entire team stops working. There's surrender, and if it doesn't pass, that means 1/3 players want to give it a shot, if you grief that's called being a dick, don't sugarcoat that with "I am trying to close the game so we can have another."

You know I still like you Spartacus.

 

You have to draw the line somewhere and this one's pretty obvious.
Else it's all subjective as to when a comm deems a game unwinnable.
Sure sometimes a prolonged game where you are unlikely to win can empty a server, but that's the nature of the game, especially at really low pop - but at the same time someone might join and turn it all around.

It is one of the reasons commanding or even playing with a low number of players is unappealing.

Bottom line is that the game is far from perfect and it is kind of a problem, there are a few things you can do - make a riskier play like trickster said, among others.
Drowning the CV can't ever be anything other than a line in the sand as far as the rules go, though there probably isn't a person here who can't relate to the frustration.

Personally I'd ask an admin to throw up a vote to change to a more suitable map, trouble is that is just as likely to piss off half the server and empty it too. It's a familiar situation for admins and I don't know there are any real solutions other than just accept what that game is - a bit of a grind but those clueless players are probably having a just fine time working out how to use the mortar or what not.

 

Yay, the same issue again (if you would provide screens of the scoreboard I'd be thankful) - vets having masochistic fun from killing fun of other team.
Another example of the same thing - match on duststorm around 1.10
NF - has 2 rax, vf, radar being ran over by jeep over and over and over again (at one moment there were 10 jeep carcasses near the rax)
BE - players such as LT running as scout with shotgun and Hide or Grenadiers harrasing the base
when I joined, the first time i did was entering comm and recycling one rax, becasue we had no res input
then i went to build ref, but guess what, BE having heavy tanks for sure was still running jeeps so we couldnt build anything with continous harass
after try to build rax in NW i came back to main, to try build ref in NE close to main
but after around 10~ mins of being harrased and Combine justifying his actions that 'he is only comm he cant tell people what to do' and failed attempts to convience LT that it's griefing and bad for community
this is a fucking joke, you all should be fucking ashamed

 

i just want to clarify that i dont think he shouldve been banned but i think its funny he was

 

I was one of the few guy's that actually tried to play the match!
i wasn't aware of all this drama because me and someone else tryed to cap refs on the NW part of the map and com didn't react at ~10min after start and then griefs CV by driving to BE, wich was very sad in that mom.!
but if the description of the events is true, i can totaly understand that he don't want to com this mess anymore nor saw any reason to keep wasting time with an intentional passive enemy to "play around" - wich might be fun for them but very frustrating for the loosing side!
so if...
- a majory of the own team is rather stupid and doesn't react (3/5 minimum)
- the enemy isn't serious for intention to "play around"
i wouldn't call it griefing to just end this mess and stop wasting time! - but indeed after SEVERAL try's to communicate with the team, starting a !surrender vote and not befor the match have reached 20min!

i once had the same situation, but on tropic vendetta - where you are a sitting duck as com!
D.D.D. Destroyer said that playing com has responsibility - wich i agree! - but being player too! (a team without com can't win on classic maps, or only if the enemy team&com are rather stupid!)
a team consist of 1 com and several players, if a majory of them is unable to play the game (doesn't call for skill!) then why you should waste another 20min of your time commanding that pack? (i spend the whole 30min befor i gave up and join spec btw!)

but i love the rax recycling/armor apc drive idea - will use that in such situations now!
(AFTER trying to communicate with the team over and over for 20min!)

something you could consider too - most matches are sadly NOT won by skill, but by misstakes in the team!

Spoiler: Coresponding Sgt.Security

but we are not playing LoL or any other statdriven ranked multiplayer game! - don't forget that ;-)
we playing just for fun and should aim for nice/great matches instead of "push the shit through"!
(i freaking hate it when ppl complain about surrender votes - tough i can understand that it isn't as satisfying than to actually destroy the CV, but that thing is durable as fuck and can't escape anyway so there is no big deal killing it - just a massive waste of time at most matches!
all you need to do is to destroy all rax, weak apc's and then trap CV and cause much damage - it even can't defend itself anyhow but driving over/roadkilling poor infantry!
the only part where you need skill is to trap it - espeacially with the "enemy to near" feature - wich sadly is bugged -.-#)
so i start surrender votes whenever it is absolute clear that we can't win anymore! (and i love to fight switching the tide!)

 

Spoiler: Coresponding Flasche

just untrue - was ~10min after game start! (already build 1 ref and destroyed another 1)
if he left there already - gz, not even tryed xP (but i think it was where someone stole the CV - but as i said, i was on the other side of the map! - idk what exactly happend there, just that the com doesn't react to our requests and someone stated that our CV got griefed - wich i wouldn't call it if the majory of the team sitting around at main! - in that case i would have driven it into the sea and requested my 1 day ban! - if ppl would say "fuck you com" by doing nothing i would say "fuck you team" by sinking the CV - done - sad for the 2 ppl on the other side of the map that try to play the game tough, and i personally wouldn't do that seriously in most cases - but can totally understand it!)
the keyword in all that mess should be "intentional harmfull to the team" and not "griefing" - tough it's the same but atm the rules doesn't reflect it! (so "griefing" if refering to the actual server rules and the correct term if calling actually "hazardous" behavior!)

destroyer - changed
actually i can read 4 letters, 5 letters or even 6 letter long sentences - i just have problems with 2 and 7 letter long sentences - but 8 is okay again - freaking derp!

 

Spartacus if you really wanted to end the game like that, why not recycle everything? Cant undo that like you can misplacing a cv.

// mistaking me with destroyer is hilarious though. I happen to shave you know.

 

Hot damn.

Spartacus' experience is very relatable these days in my opinion... though I've never griefed. I tend to be the guy comming that team that just doesn't have that special something, and it can be a chore. Not only that, but your experience tells you that the light at the end of that tunnel will be an empty server leaving you completely unhappy.

I'm not joking when I say this - start of a match with 9 people on my team I tell the entire team using both voice and chat to go east, and even explain that east is to your right. Not a single person went east. 2016 is like some kind of personalized torture for commanders.