Ice was not wrong to lock the threads, they start alright but devolve into ways to punish specific players more than anyone else. How would you feel if you were targeted because of the way you choose to play? Yes, some players break rules more than others, usually those with a lesser grasp of the English language than the rest of us, but that doesn't mean we just target them. All of your posts have been about doing exactly that, targeting a player; Nagi, lesuk, vasok.
You're right, we had ~38 people on, the most I've seen in the past few months. 38 people with our current rules, rules we try not to change too much. You are making huge assumptions though when it comes to people switching just to learn tunnel locations. I've switched teams manually before, sometimes by accidently hitting the other flag, sometimes because the other team is getting slaughtered, although not often as I leave the server to do its thing and depending on the map, me changing isn't going to have much impact. I couldn't tell you where the tunnel was any time I did it, and a lot of the time they don't get moved anyway. The more you post about it, the more it seems like you want to protect your own style of play (moving tunnels), which is fine, but not at the expense of others. The same goes for enforcing the rules; we do it fairly for everyone, we don't decide x player is more deserving of punishment and slap a higher ban time on them as a result. The base issue you seem to have is with the reporting system though, that's something I can fix, or try to. I've already said evidence is not required for most reports, although it is preferred, and that should help once more players catch on.
mRoRange is right, we can add rule after rule and all it will do is penalise legitimate players more as those that want to break them will find a way and everyone else will accidently fall victim.
I get that you want to give admins the ability to decide punishment, but deliberate or not there will be a bias. Because it's their friend, because they are talking to the person on TeamSpeak and know it was an accident, because they don't like that specific type of gameplay much and what to put an end to it. etc. etc. By having a fixed system in place, none of that is possible. Players don't have to worry about being treated differently or targeted and admins don't have to worry about falling victim to any bias they may have or treating people unfairly. If an admin is having a bad day, they get annoyed and decide the next time something happens they are going to make sure the punishment is longer, then they do it and it really wasn't fair because x players prior only got a warning for the same thing, so the admin is now at fault; that wont help us. Having a set course of action, a system for dealing with trouble makers, is the best thing for all of us.
I know I've felt that way in instances where people complain about an issue that doesn't exist. When players claim an admin killed them for their benefit, made them get switched and so on, it annoys me a lot because it's just not true, and no matter how much reasoning you do they wont believe you. I could tell someone 1000 times it's a bug in the game that they died, they'll still blame the admin, and it might not break any rules, but if I knew I could get rid of them just because...then I'm not going to say I would, but the thought would be there. I'm not concerned about the admins deliberately breaking rules, I think I've only had 2 instances of that in my entire time here, my concern is them unintentionally doing it.
If people are switching teams just to find the tunnel, destroy the tunnel, find a player location, steal an aircraft etc. then that's disruptive gameplay. There's nothing fair about it and it should be stopped.
My issue is twofold.
1. I don't want to drive off what's left of the player base with more and more rules and longer and longer bantimes. Or by targeting specific players moreso than others. We already deal with a child like Hash, we don't need to make it any more difficult for people to play.
2. I don't want to make admins obsolete by making reporting players significantly better at getting troublemakers dealt with than when an admin is in-game.
So here's what I've come up with with Ice.
1. Rulebreaking where a warning can not be given before the damage is done no longer needs warnings, but we reduce the ban time. This includes destroying the tunnel when you are NVA, switching to find the tunnel and destroy it, destroying friendly vehicles , taking a vehicle to give to the opposing team, switching team to find the location of an enemy player etc. The bantime for each instance when a player is reported is 2 hours. (Yes, it's not much, bear with me here)
2. Warnings are no longer required for any rule if a player has received a ban in the last 14 days. (Subject to change, lets see how this goes). This way those the break the rules will find they are easier to ban, without anyone being targeted. As soon as the player's first ban has been given, the ban times go back to normal for that period. They destroy a tunnel in this period, it's not 2 hours, like above, but 24 hours + 1 hour per destroyed tunnel in line with our
player reports system. The same for all the other rules. As soon as they have this first ban, there are no warnings needed for that 14 day period.
I hope this helps somewhat. It makes reporting players easier if the player has done it before, but it ensures that any player that gets reported is dealt with in the same manner.
