Spectating to avoid Team Randomizing.

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Postby Mayara » Sun Jul 28, 2013 10:42 am

Hello I'm somewhat new to TFP and earlier today I noticed a trend when team scrambling goes to happen. A group of people when a scramble vote would come up (full server) at the end of the round and they would instantly join spectator. Once the vote had finished and teams scrambled they would rejoin one team and continue the stacking. I tried to find some sort of rule/post on this but found none. Is this Acceptable on TFP?
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Postby Sicmendor » Sun Jul 28, 2013 1:13 pm

Well Mayara, I have to inform you that that is not acceptable on TFP. Here are the reasons from my point of view and how do I act as an admin in these moments (Important Note: How other admins acts in these situations may differ a little or greatly from how do I act.):

- Joining Spectator when the server is full without giving a Good reason (I enhance Good because some gave me a "that team sucks" and were kicked right away) is enough for me to give a fair warning to join a team or be removed (kicked) from the server in these moments if they didn't join any of the two teams. I do that due that the server is oftenly full and there are people waiting outside to get an open slot and then get in to play and enjoy. When someone join spectator in a full server on his own will, it gives me the impression that he will stack for sure.

- About joining spec when a scramble vote comes up: I didn't saw that happen too much, at least During the vote, but if it happens and the scramble succeeds, then I give those people a warning due to scramble evasion. Players are mixed between teams without any choice when scramble happens, and sitting in spec when that happens to then choose the best team is kind of discriminatory. Hence the warning in this case too, because it's stacking as well.

- Besides the case that you described to us, there are other cases were the player who stack teams receives a fair warning before kick. I'll cover these and answer questions when they come up here in the forums or inside the server when I'm present.

- There is in fact a rule that says that stacking teams on purpose is against the rules, however, it is explained in other words in the html motd of the servers, after the mic spam rule:
"Refrain from excessive, continuous mic spam (especially when All-talk is on)
Refrain from forcing autobalance via teamswitching".

And if any of the players is going to be afk for some moments, I strongly recommend them to say it in the main chat of the server or toward the admins by adding an @ while talking to the team, and then writing the message toward the admins. I'll give the ok to go afk if it doesn't take too long, however, you should ask in any case: I'm not the only admin here.

If you have any further questions don't hesistate from asking ^^, I'll gladly help.
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Postby Mayara » Sun Jul 28, 2013 2:29 pm

Thank you. There were several rounds this morning in which a select group of people would go spectator when a vote would come up for the scramble and after the scramble came up they'd rejoin as a group thus keeping their stacking going. If you like we can discuss this in private messaging or on steam to avoid drama.
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Postby Sicmendor » Sun Jul 28, 2013 3:51 pm

We'll better continue talking in Steam. I've sent you a pm about how you can add me.

I'll leave this topic open in case that anyone wants to ask something related about the rule of no stacking teams on purpose.
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Postby Bunny » Fri Oct 18, 2013 5:55 pm

I had a question/comment regarding stacking in general. What's the rule regarding friends constantly playing on the same team, either by stacking on one team in the beginning of a map or switching teams after autobalance? I understand that friends like to play with each other and I know that most people in TFP are friends or at least acquaintances but this question is more related to people that are either in the same clan, competitive team or have similar names and always stick together.

The reason I ask this is because if the players are highly skilled (which TFP seems to attract) and/or are on a competitive team together, they usually give that team a huge edge in player skill thanks to the synergy of those friends working together. I'm not saying that friends should never be allowed to play together but I do get a bit annoyed when some players will stack the same team, grab some steamroll victories and then complain that "I just want to be able to play a game with my friend(s)" when a scramble comes up - Usually ending with the players re-stacking with their friends whenever the opportunity arises.

I've been playing on TFP4 for a good two or three years now and I've seen unbalanced teams becoming more and more of an issue. It's not very fun when a team will roll the other three or four rounds in a row without a scramble vote coming up (assuming 50% or more of the people even vote for it) or top scores doubling, even tripling the top scores of the other team. I feel that the scramble vote is also slightly biased as well since not many winning teams want to give up their edge to win and many players believe that scrambling teams accomplishes nothing but shift the good players to the team that was losing.

On a related note, whatever happened to the server with random teams? I felt that server was the best in mixing up players of varying skill levels, making rounds a lot more enjoyable.
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Postby Sekh765 » Sun Oct 27, 2013 8:34 am

We have a large number of folks that like to play with their friends, and as this isn't really designed to be a competitive community, we don't do anything to stop them.

If abunch of friends are playing and steamrolling the server, then your team should vote to scramble. At which point if they go spectate to get back together, they are breaking the rules.


The server with the random teams was turned into a stock server since folks weren't using it enough, then the IP was changed recently and most folks haven't readded it to their list.
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