OCR TF2: New Server forthcoming - new server IPs and other stuff

[Vivi22]

Can someone tell me if the server is set to auto ban if someone's ping is too high? I'm all of a sudden banned at the moment and it seemed like some sort of auto ban but I can't recall the exact message it gave me. All I can figure is that it was because my wireless router was giving me problems and my ping was spiking as high as 1900 before this happened and I fixed my connection.

[Powerlord]

I didn't realize there was such an outrage from reading the last 5 or so pages of the forums. We do enjoy playing on the server, however it's quite a burden to stay tagged on public servers when you're from a competitive team. As soon as someone gets dominated they're going to cry hacks or if there are 2 on the same team the stacks and votescrambles roll in. I will admit over the weekend we were a little over the top so we'll try to tone is down. However, I personally work 40/hrs a week and play competitive during the week so it's nice to get together and rack up some doms sometimes.

I'm a bit disappointed in your recommendation of a blanket ban, particularly as one night I was on you sat in spectate for 2 entire map changes (~40 minutes?).

First of all, I rarely ever spectate. If I'm spectating, it means I'm

1. Watching specific players to see what they do or checking reading the console logs. This happened on Yukon this weekend, and only for part of the map. I'll get to this more in a moment.

2. Going AFK for a few moments (and the server will kick me when the idle time is exceeded).

3. Changing a server configuration file. This happened on mach4 last weekend.

As admin you have the power to scramble and adjust the teams as necessary or warn when the stacks occur and neither of those occurred during the time I saw you on.

I forced a scramble twice this weekend.

The first was on Granary. Immediately after the scramble, two people went spectator, unbalancing the teams. I can only assume this was to force it to team balance, so people could then (maybe) switch teams.

I also forced a scramble on Yukon. This was after I reviewed the logs and noted that only one of the three people I knew to be nQa guys choose a random team (and the other two joined RED, the same team the first person auto-joined).

After the scramble, I watched what happened, then left the server and began writing this post shortly after the third member switched teams to BLU (where the other two had been scrambled to).

This is not the first time nQa has been called out for this. The last time I saw was when Brushfire called this out (why I remember it was on Badlands I dunno). At that time several nQa members changed their nicks... which you guys have been doing ever since*.

So no, this is not the first time this has happened, and given that three of the people we have problems with are the nQa League Team group's 3 admins, no, I'm not going to stop and complain about them to themselves.

* until I called you out on it.

[fate]

First of all, I rarely ever spectate. If I'm spectating, it means I'm

1. Watching specific players to see what they do or checking reading the console logs. This happened on Yukon this weekend, and only for part of the map. I'll get to this more in a moment.

2. Going AFK for a few moments (and the server will kick me when the idle time is exceeded).

3. Changing a server configuration file. This happened on mach4 last weekend.

I forced a scramble twice this weekend.

The first was on Granary. Immediately after the scramble, two people went spectator, unbalancing the teams. I can only assume this was to force it to team balance, so people could then (maybe) switch teams.

I also forced a scramble on Yukon. This was after I reviewed the logs and noted that only one of the three people I knew to be nQa guys choose a random team (and the other two joined RED, the same team the first person auto-joined).

After the scramble, I watched what happened, then left the server and began writing this post shortly after the third member switched teams to BLU (where the other two had been scrambled to).

This is not the first time nQa has been called out for this. The last time I saw was when Brushfire called this out (why I remember it was on Badlands I dunno). At that time several nQa members changed their nicks... which you guys have been doing ever since*.

So no, this is not the first time this has happened, and given that three of the people we have problems with are the nQa League Team group's 3 admins, no, I'm not going to stop and complain about them to themselves.

* until I called you out on it.

At the time you were spec'ing you were pretty much just talking in game, I actually had to mute you after about 20 minutes because it was distracting.

I remember being on granary and the map was actually pretty stalemated. I don't see why you would scramble just because 3 people from a team were on the same side. At that rate, should every player who joins be autoing?

I'm not trying to start a fight or anything but let's be real.

[Bleck]

I don't see why you would scramble just because 3 people from a team were on the same side.

so have you been ignoring the 'no team-stacking' thing or do you just not speak very good english

[Dr. Tran!]

At that rate, should every player who joins be autoing?

Why shouldn't they? 'cause really, you can still have fun in this game if your friends are on the other team. I do it all the time.

[fate]

so have you been ignoring the 'no team-stacking' thing or do you just not speak very good english

The problem is people are equating having multiple people as stacked, if there are multiple it Can be stacked but that doesn't mean that it Is stacked. And why are you so angry?

[Bleck]

The problem is people are equating having multiple people as stacked

uh no the problem is that you guys have been teamstacking

if we join the server and there is three or more nQa guys on one team, that is teamstacking

we did not ask for your arguments as to what defines teamstacking, we are telling you to stop doing it

if you have a problem with this then there are hundreds of other servers out there that I'm sure can also function as your personal practice ground

[Dhsu]

I was under the impression that "stacking" implied an imbalance of skill. If both teams are equally matched, it seems pretty irrelevant who's on what side. We do it all the time in HoN that's for sure (and still lose).

I mean, what if all 24 players were just people from two clans? Under this arbitrary rule the entire server would be instantly banned.

[atmuh]

fate

a word of advice

just ignore bleck

[Remix04]

fate

a word of advice

just ignore bleck

I've begun to take a liking to this atmuh fella.

[Crump(Axem Green)]

if you have a problem with this then there are hundreds of other servers out there that I'm sure can also function as your personal practice ground

Do you honestly think this is practice for us?

Just my two cents..We've rolled your server for a month or 2 now with about 3-5 of our members. We enjoy playing together on a team every now and then. And up until this point it's all been fine. I've been involved with very few admin scrambles and I can't remember the last votescramble that past, even voting yes for some myself. But now that we've been "unmasked" as the nqa baddies everything in the world is wrong. I've never been approached by any member of ocr telling me about team stacking. I enjoy myself while on the server and tonight the 6 nqa of us that were on there were split between the two teams. We don't come to a server looking for an argument. We go to have a good time and play as a team, unless of course balanced off. I'll continue to play here until my ip is put on the ban list.

Good day, wankers

[atmuh]

Do you honestly think this is practice for us?

Just my two cents..We've rolled your server for a month or 2 now with about 3-5 of our members. We enjoy playing together on a team every now and then. And up until this point it's all been fine. I've been involved with very few admin scrambles and I can't remember the last votescramble that past, even voting yes for some myself. But now that we've been "unmasked" as the nqa baddies everything in the world is wrong. I've never been approached by any member of ocr telling me about team stacking. I enjoy myself while on the server and tonight the 6 nqa of us that were on there were split between the two teams. We don't come to a server looking for an argument. We go to have a good time and play as a team, unless of course balanced off. I'll continue to play here until my ip is put on the ban list.

Good day, wankers

ok this is where youre an idiot

you dont come waltzing onto this forum proclaiming how proud of yourself you are and blah blah whatever

and tbh there were a couple times ive been on where there werent any admins on (or in many cases there were but half of the admins dont know crap about all of the commands they have access to) but if i were an admin and being that i pretty much by this point know how ocr runs things and know how to actually run a server id have straight up temp banned (obviously permas are only for the server owners to decide) half of you idiots instead of forcing a scramble and calling it a day

so seriously shut the hell up youve just convinced me youre a bunch of idiots that think youre incredibly "skilled" (rofl ive played with plenty of nqa people) because you can roll a pub

[Bleck]

so seriously shut the hell up youve just convinced me youre a bunch of idiots that think youre incredibly "skilled" because you can roll a pub

thus begins atmuh's slow discovery of what being pro is

[Crump(Axem Green)]

ok this is where youre an idiot

you dont come waltzing onto this forum proclaiming how proud of yourself you are and blah blah whatever

and tbh there were a couple times ive been on where there werent any admins on (or in many cases there were but half of the admins dont know crap about all of the commands they have access to) but if i were an admin and being that i pretty much by this point know how ocr runs things and know how to actually run a server id have straight up temp banned (obviously permas are only for the server owners to decide) half of you idiots instead of forcing a scramble and calling it a day

so seriously shut the hell up youve just convinced me youre a bunch of idiots that think youre incredibly "skilled" (rofl ive played with plenty of nqa people) because you can roll a pub

I'm also not coming onto this forum to argue, merely state why we did what we did(myself at least). I apologize if I came off proud, that was not my intention. If the admins feel that I deserve a permanent ban (which you should be able to tell me due to your high knowledge of how ocr runs) then I will take it and play elsewhere, no more harm to anybody. I admit that a server rule was broken, and the best I can do is offer an apology and try to balance myself in accordance to other nqa members on the server at a time. However, one thing I will not back down on is being told that we do not play intelligently or without skill. As I believe powerlord stated, the reason why this was a decent issue was because we do play well.

[Powerlord]

At the time you were spec'ing you were pretty much just talking in game, I actually had to mute you after about 20 minutes because it was distracting.

I'm beginning to think you have me confused with someone else, because while I do have a mic, I rarely talk.

And rarely if I'm spectating, for the reasons outlined above.

Perhaps you have me confused with Brushfire?

[Trianine]

Set it up with us. We are always down for a friendly every now and then.

Actually I was thinking of something a bit less formal. I'm going to guess that you didn't notice that ZUZ also gets a lot of complaints because they are extremely good. Every so often we will see them all up on one team, predictably rolling down the competition. It would make this whole "teamstacking" issue a bit more fun if there were some contenders, eh?

However, I will forewarn that there is a 100% chance the teams will be stacked in this match, with a 0% chance of them getting scrambled.

Aren't you clever.

Instead of arguing with the moderators about how they are persecuting you, (and accuse them of not doing their jobs) maybe you should take a look and understand that your clan is developing a bad reputation for itself here, and try to understand why. Getting in a semantic argument over the word teamstacking, is not going to prove your case. The word is irrelevant, even in the face of the server rules. When nQa guys buddy up on a team the result is often very lopsided, whether it be 2 or 10. That is the complaint against you.

If you cannot understand that, you are just going to waste your time here. You guys are, for the most part, excellent players. And it is a shame that you are so good that you can ruin it for others when you want to relax on a team together. That is your burden and your responsibility though. When a community that has gathered together cannot have fun because of your presence, who do you think is going to be ousted?

If I saw that you guys had respect for this community, and interacted with it more than just to play-to-kill, I might be singing a different tune. ZUZ receives the teamstacking complaints that you do, but are highly respected among OCR, why? For one, they actually talk to us, participate in forum conversation as well as in-game. Second, they do not blatantly shirk the rules. They do enjoy playing together from time to time, sure. When a teamscramble happens, you don't see them jumping to spectate so they can switch teams. They don't have to be reminded not to sticky camp spawn doors, no matter how silly that rule is. At one point I found myself reminding an nQa person not to do that once each day. And I had to wonder how often it happened and was not caught.

Look, the rules are not hard. In my experience, they are only strictly enforced in cases of griefing or cheating. I can't speak for any of the mods here, because I am not one, but I feel that they are more than generous and often willing to give players some slack. The problems present with your clan are chronic, and have been since you guys started making regular appearances. Talk of a ban has come up because it has gone on long enough that your reputation for causing problems is now part of the mainstream here.

There is no reason for excuses. Own up to it, stop doing it, and give people here a reason to remember you fondly, and you will find that you can get away with all sorts of shit. This advice, BTW, is a general rule of life. People who like you will tend to forgive you.

If you do not like this and are unwilling to do something about it, chances are you are going to leave on your own or someone is going to make sure you don't come back.

Edit: In the making of this post Axem came to give his apology and promise, even if it was barbed with a condescending tone. It's a start, and I appreciate it especially cause he did not come to argue about why his clan is in this position. If I ever get to play again, I'd thank you personally Axem.

[atmuh]

thus begins atmuh's slow discovery of what being pro is

just because i for a small time agree with you doesnt mean that i dont still disregard what you say because your opinion is still skewed quite a bit

[Bleck]

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

[Rambo]

I was under the impression that "stacking" implied an imbalance of skill. If both teams are equally matched, it seems pretty irrelevant who's on what side. We do it all the time in HoN that's for sure (and still lose).

I mean, what if all 24 players were just people from two clans? Under this arbitrary rule the entire server would be instantly banned.

This. Thank you Dhsu.

Is the rule in the MOTD no clan-stacking, or no team-stacking? I can't check because I can't run TF2 at the moment. I should HOPE that it's no team-stacking. Though some people in the forums (bleck) seem to be under an impression otherwise.

Also, I think nQa's defense was going much smoother when Fate alone was representing them. lol

[Bleck]

I mean, what if all 24 players were just people from two clans? Under this arbitrary rule the entire server would be instantly banned.

I'm pretty sure incredibly unlikely situations do not prove something to be arbitrary

[Dhsu]

Did I say that it did? :/

What makes the rule arbitrary (or at least your interpretation of it) is randomly deciding that having three people from the same clan on the same team at the same time is a cardinal sin regardless of the outcome. I am pretty dang sure every last member of [OCR] should be on the banlist if that's the case.

[Bahamut]

This. Thank you Dhsu.

Is the rule in the MOTD no clan-stacking, or no team-stacking? I can't check because I can't run TF2 at the moment. I should HOPE that it's no team-stacking. Though some people in the forums (bleck) seem to be under an impression otherwise.

Also, I think nQa's defense was going much smoother when Fate alone was representing them. lol

It's no team-stacking.

[Vivi22]

Can someone tell me if the server is set to auto ban if someone's ping is too high? I'm all of a sudden banned at the moment and it seemed like some sort of auto ban but I can't recall the exact message it gave me. All I can figure is that it was because my wireless router was giving me problems and my ping was spiking as high as 1900 before this happened and I fixed my connection.

That's ok guys, I didn't really want an answer to this question; watching people argue about team stacking is much more fun than playing TF2 on the server anyway.

Still banned this morning for the record.

[Gaunt]

I feel like I need to jump in here as well. I've been lurking on these forums for a while now, before this team stacking thread even started. I think its important to point out a few things:

Instead of arguing with the moderators about how they are persecuting you, (and accuse them of not doing their jobs) maybe you should take a look and understand that your clan is developing a bad reputation for itself here, and try to understand why. Getting in a semantic argument over the word teamstacking, is not going to prove your case. The word is irrelevant, even in the face of the server rules. When nQa guys buddy up on a team the result is often very lopsided, whether it be 2 or 10. That is the complaint against you.

If I saw that you guys had respect for this community, and interacted with it more than just to play-to-kill, I might be singing a different tune. ZUZ receives the teamstacking complaints that you do, but are highly respected among OCR, why? For one, they actually talk to us, participate in forum conversation as well as in-game. Second, they do not blatantly shirk the rules. They do enjoy playing together from time to time, sure. When a teamscramble happens, you don't see them jumping to spectate so they can switch teams. They don't have to be reminded not to sticky camp spawn doors, no matter how silly that rule is. At one point I found myself reminding an nQa person not to do that once each day. And I had to wonder how often it happened and was not caught.

You guys need to understand that there are almost 80 active members of nQa. Scythe-Messiah and myself have been playing on your server the longest, and I like to think the two of us have a pretty good understanding of your rules, even if we find the enforcement of them to be uneven at best. When one or more of us joins the server, we're likely to be followed by other members that happen to be online that want to play with us. This is inevitably going to lead to people joining that have never been on the server before, never heard the rules before, etc.

And to take it a step further (and without trying to sound arrogant) some of us are going to have a much higher skill level than others. In other words, its is pretty unfair to assume that just because someone wears an nQa tag that they are going to unbalance teams one way or the other. Yes some of us play on a competitive team, but that number is a small fraction of our overall membership.

As far as switching to spec after a team scramble and then switching back to the old team, I have a news flash for you: every time I've witnessed a scramble I've seen 2-3 people pulling this move. Sometimes its an nQa member, but for every one of those, there is another non-nQa person doing it.

Brushfire has been happy to point out several times that even though there may be one team made up with 50% of the people wearing an OCR tag, OCR is just "a community of people that play together" so its not stacking. If you forget for a minute that that is a ridiculous statement, there are way more nQa members that fit this description then not.

The point I'm trying to make is this: There is no need to lump us all together because we are part of a community. If you see one person repeatedly flaunting your rules, then by all means take action against that person. I think you'll find if you treat us with the same respect you are asking us to show that we will be happy to contribute to your community in a positive way.

---------------

Since I've broken my trolling, some other comments I have about playing on your server:

I'm beginning to think you have me confused with someone else, because while I do have a mic, I rarely talk.

And rarely if I'm spectating, for the reasons outlined above.

Perhaps you have me confused with Brushfire?

I think this is probably right. Personally I am not a fan of the mic-spamming that your server seems to lend itself towards, and Brushfire is one of the biggest abusers of it. I also find him to be an overzealous admin - muting people arbitrarily, slaying people when his team loses, etc. But I just mute him and play my game in silence.

Also, your slot reservation system, with all due respect, sucks ass. You need to hide the 25th slot on the server so that it doesn't show 24/25 slots used in the browser. By having that 25th slot visible, people can't set themselves to auto-join a game when a slot opens. All they can do is repeatedly try to join until a slot opens. Also, I think the manner in which it frees a slot is not optimal. My experience is that it will randomly kick anyone it chooses from the server when it needs to free a slot, instead of someone that is specing, or the person that connected most recently. This is extremely frustrating - when I've been playing on the server for over an hour, and then get kicked mid-round for a reservation. I speak from experience with this, having setup our reservation system and dealt with similar problems.

Thats all I've got, if you've made it this far thanks for your time.

Gaunt aka Bababooie aka Gloryhole aka Bag of Fail aka Sun Tzu

[fate]

I'm beginning to think you have me confused with someone else, because while I do have a mic, I rarely talk.

And rarely if I'm spectating, for the reasons outlined above.

Perhaps you have me confused with Brushfire?

Sorry I think you're right I think it was Brushfire. I must've had you two switched because I think both were in the game at the time.

If I saw that you guys had respect for this community, and interacted with it more than just to play-to-kill, I might be singing a different tune. ZUZ receives the teamstacking complaints that you do, but are highly respected among OCR, why? For one, they actually talk to us, participate in forum conversation as well as in-game. Second, they do not blatantly shirk the rules. They do enjoy playing together from time to time, sure. When a teamscramble happens, you don't see them jumping to spectate so they can switch teams. They don't have to be reminded not to sticky camp spawn doors, no matter how silly that rule is. At one point I found myself reminding an nQa person not to do that once each day. And I had to wonder how often it happened and was not caught.

Actually the one night I got tired of sitting in spec after 2 minutes with 2 other ZUZ members that I just finally joined red instead of stacking so I do see them do it too.

Also someone please help vivi out lol