AFKing, Petty Reports, and discussion of the most recent reports

Noticed a lot of shoutbox talk about these reports

felt like a forum thread where people could put their thoughts would be good so I (and staff as a whole) can learn from the situation

Feel free to put your thoughts down since posting in forum reports is a no-no.
Just keep it civil

 

Just put afks into auto spec after 2 rounds if they don't come back

 

3 players with one afk? I honestly think that's cause for RDM. Its a 50/50 I don't see why not

 

AFKing-) Don't allow the rdm of AFKs, but never do an unreported damage report because of it. If the AFK comes back he'll report you himself or he won't comeback so you saved the server from having to wait.

Petty reports-) Allow them. If you start punishing people for making 'petty' reports there'll be less reports being made because people will be scared of getting punished even if the report is valid.

 

If you rdm in this case where they're afk then def don't report unless the afk guy comes back and reports. Then that's fine. Its a gamble, but if you're willing to accept any slays afterwards then go ahead.

 

In a perfect world afk players would have around 3 rounds or so until the game forced them to spectate. Since it's clearly broken, moderators need to pay attention and fill that role but I think that's been forgotten by many as time has gone on (or the spectate plugins gotten worse?), which is something I noticed recently before this report. There is some players consistently AFK for multiple maps sometimes without being put in spectator. If it's low pop and your 1-2 t buddies are AFK, you are at an immediate disadvantage, or in the lower pop like Trash' situation forced to wait for the one of the players with the most AFK hours return. In high/med pop I just kill AFKs when I'm feeling lucky after they've been afk for 2+ rounds, because they're obviously not going to report and AFK roulette funny. Having been in Trash's situation several times with regulars/randoms at different points, it's a lot funner to just 1v1 each other because the other "player" isn't playing, won't fight back, and is only still in the game because server broke. I don't think a single time I've been in that situation the player has reported me because it's common sense waiting for a player whose been AFK for hours to attack isn't playing the game at all.

I think reporting in general is always petty and only really warranted if you're reporting someone who logged on to mass RDM and disrupt the game as much as possible. But I think they're equally petty - you can report for any reason, or any amount of damage, and those are the rules. I will never understand why you would but you can. Punishing people for an accident, or for killing in a situation like that, to me is bizarre and makes the game a lot less fun/encourages worse gameplay - a dumb move to me but I'll always think it should be allowed until this point: Due to the server bug not spectating AFKs, and Hellaflush historically AFKing for hours, Sanchez should've just spectated Hellaflush, but he didn't, which leads to his own RDM. Since the server already should've spectated him, the responsibility falls on Sanchez, after one RDM he could've force spectated Hellaflush to avoid the situation continuing and that ultimately makes it his own fault. Sanchez could've/should've checked how long Hellaflush's session was at the time through the server list, and known he's just there to farm points and not actually play, regardless if he actually had time to delay, he was likely AFK long before that with no intention to stop. Sanchez is cool and I don't think this is intentional abuse or anything like that, I think mods just have been too lax on fspec in general lately. I don't like the way this was handled though, Jabba's in the wrong for just dismissing it completely, I feel like there was more than enough reason to fspec Hellaflush and ways Sanchez could've seen how long Hella had been AFK for rather than just waiting for him to delay. At the very least I feel like this could've been a heads up to pay more attention to fspec AFK players to mods in general because while this is the extreme of this problem I think AFK players being allowed to AFK has been fucking up the game to a degree recently

 

I tried to solve the afk problem in the past. the default TTT afk thing is bad because it uses like player exact aim location AND their feet location and if I recall correctly, any of those can change and they are considered "not afk"..... so a single crowbar push on an afk would probably consider them not afk, let alone explosions, discos, aim punch, etc. This code will not be changed by Highwon because it's TTT base code. I believe @Lordyhgm and I talked about this, and Lordy IMO there should be a way to override this code, or just write similar code purely as an addon. You'd literally just take a hook for "round started" use lua to get all players and store some piece of info about them, heck maybe just using the TTT theory of player location + aim location (which in case it's not clear to anyone, returns as a weird 3d vector or something) but just make the thresholds better.

@H3ll4Flush IMO you should be punished for afking without forcing your account into spec mode. Another player accused you of doing it intentionally, if thats the case and staff don't do anything about it, wtf. If it's not the case, take the 2 minutes to setup a config file or something to solve this problem, you're constantly hurting rounds, I'm fucking toxic as shit and I've been pointfarming for tens of thousands of hours and I'd never consider leaving my acct off spec mode.

@ Staff, you're all terrible at moving players to spec mode. I believe there is a hidden staff directive to not do this, likely so if a new player joins they see more "players" instead of "spectators", if that's the case then I severely question the leads / highwon, and I'm a highwon simp. There has to be some reason us players aren't seeing for why the staff team has this mutual opinion that "it's not delaying the round". If there isn't a directive, and you're a staff member, set the precedent. You should ALL be TTT players on top of staff, and while AFKs can be nice for easy kills or credits (I'm sure some of my kill records included 3-4 afks, but I STILL DON'T WANT AFKS) they always hurt more than they help.

Petty reports is a dumb concept to try and consider, you all don't know someones feelings for something. A report should only be considered petty if we had an example like the player said in the report "tbh only made this to get attention" or something. But if a player is genuine and putting in effort to all their replies (borderline for yoamtrash but I think he wrote enough to show he was genuine) then you need to treat that with respect.

"id say when there's three players on the server, and one is AFK, you don't have enough players to play TTT and that any RDM report is retarded" this is an old comment from a staff member, this is extremely basic discretion people

@Jabba I don't care how you feel about a report not even addressing any of the NEW CONCERNS / COMMENTS and just acting like Lordy will solve all your problems would be pathetic from a lower staff member, but you're a lead and I've seen you act completely differently. You told me in DMs this is still Serious Garry's Mod, if I had written stuff like that on a report back in 2018 I probably could have gotten in trouble for it. I hope you are just going through some shit IRL or another thing is off, because your attitude lately doesn't match who I remember and you can't be taking this out on the playerbase and just dumping your fellow lead under the bus, now Lordy will have to come to you privately, and we know Lordy is busy as shit.

 

tbh i think that if a server have only 3 - 4 players its shouldn't be counted as rdm,
because its doesn't make any sense playing regular TTT with that low number.

 

I disagree for the most part, but I see your point. Its a grey area to me, but I understand your position on the RDM and feel its perfectly valid. Its really grey for the simple fact it was a 1v1 with the addition of an AFK. If it had been three active players, RDM rules full speed ahead.

Sanchez managed to get RDM'd three times. But never handled the report, nor issued a slay for it... being alone on the server. Like you said in your previous post, Trash did contribute to the problem. But if Sanchez had issued a slay, or executed some initiative guided by common sense, hellflush would've been in spec after a round or so and the situation would've resolved itself. Three reports stacked up on an empty server with no punishment handed down until another staff member joined to hand them down all at once.


For petty reports, all reports should be investigated and resolved if there is even a shred of credibility to them. Even for troll reports it isn't hard to get someone to write up a quick two line response to clear things up. I do agree with dealing with drama reports if they only induce drama and do not link back to a situation or concern that can be articulated for the betterment of the community. Those are usually cut and dry and the staff team tends to have a pretty good "sniff test" for them.

 

Staff members should not handle their own reports due to the risk of not being fully objective.

 

Something constructive out of a discussion thread!

In all seriousness, thank you both for being up front, acknowledging, learning, and moving forward.

 

A staff member shouldn't make it past TMod if they can't be objective for something as basic as their own RDM report.

 

At the end of the day, sgm has discretion and any basic staff member should understand totality of circumstances. As I said earlier, 3 players is NOT a valid game of TTT.

 

Gmod is just a video game...in terms of video games, I can understand getting butthurt over losing maybe like a tournament or something where you might have things at stake, but this is just TTT. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel like it would be too mentally draining just to go make some crazy report on staff and type out paragraphs upon paragraphs on why they made some outrageous decision. Just take a deep breath and brush it off. It's a video game. Being angry is such a waste of time too. Being happy or content is what's worth it. Trust me

 

This.
no insults but if you report for rdm while there are only 3 players then you are just acting like a baby about it.

 

Yes, that’s why he said that. Weird how that works!

The fact that someone was legitimately punished for something that happened with a 3 player game of TTT is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I understand it may be valid, I don’t think anybody is arguing the validity based on a pure interpretation of the rules, I believe the argument is more about how stupid it is to enforce this rule in a 3 player game, where one player has been AFK for several rounds. The argument “this afk player did not affect the game” is the dumbest thing I’ve read in a while. If the afk player didn’t effect the outcome of the game, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion would we???