Spamming will NOT be tolerated in league matches

[Mythril]

As the playoffs are set to begin, it's been brought to my attention that we need a harsh penalty for players who attempt to ruin games by spamming players in PM. Although it's never happened to me, I can remember enough instances in the recent past that make such rules necessary. As such a pathetic act's intention is to negatively affect a player's performance, it's only appropriate that we treat it as a form of cheating.

If you are caught spamming a player during a league match, you will be facing, at a MINIMUM:

• 30 Day Netban
• Disqualification from the current league (no medals if your team wins)
• Disqualification from your eligibility in the next league (which in this case, is TWL)
• Possibility of further punishment, as deemed appropriate by Upper Staff and League Ops.

Some of these pieces of shit are well versed at avoiding staff's reach by way of spamming from other zones or using longer names. Qan has detailed exactly what's required from the player being spammed in order for staff to bring these nerds to justice.

IF YOU THINK YOU'RE A POTENTIAL TARGET OF SPAMMING:

• It's crucial that you type ?namelen=24 before the match, or as the player is spamming you. If you can't identify the full alias, it will be far more difficult for staff to track the spammer down.

IF YOU ARE BEING SPAMMED DURING A LEAGUE MATCH:

• Immediately take a series of 5+ screenshots with the chat window open, as fast as possible (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ?namelen=24). Press Esc and then PrintScreen 5+ times.
• Make a ?help or ?cheater call if possible to alarm staff that someone is attempting to spam you.
• After the game, post these screenshots to the TWDT forum ASAP so upper staff can begin tracking down the offender.

I certainly hope that this isn't going to be an issue this season. Spamming has been a problem for far too long, and staff has notified me that they're going to punish any offender with a heavy hand. This is unacceptable in our community, and you will be subjected to severe penalties if you choose to disobey the rules. Do not be foolish enough to test your luck. This will not be tolerated any longer.

[Lupin]

If you are caught spamming a player during a league match, you will be facing, at a MINIMUM:

• 30 Day Netban
• Disqualification from the current league (no medals if your team wins)
• Disqualification from your eligibility in the next league (which in this case, is TWL)
• Possibility of further punishment, as deemed appropriate by Upper Staff and League Ops

Damn this is serious. Fully support it!

[Falconeer]

As the playoffs are set to begin, it's been brought to my attention that we need a harsh penalty for players who attempt to ruin games by spamming players in PM. Although it's never happened to me, I can remember enough instances in the recent past that make such rules necessary. As such a pathetic act's intention is to negatively affect a player's performance, it's only appropriate that we treat it as a form of cheating.

If you are caught spamming a player during a league match, you will be facing, at a MINIMUM:

• 30 Day Netban
• Disqualification from the current league (no medals if your team wins)
• Disqualification from your eligibility in the next league (which in this case, is TWL)
• Possibility of further punishment, as deemed appropriate by Upper Staff and League Ops.

Some of these pieces of shit are well versed at avoiding staff's reach by way of spamming from other zones or using longer names. Qan has detailed exactly what's required from the player being spammed in order for staff to bring these nerds to justice.

IF YOU THINK YOU'RE A POTENTIAL TARGET OF SPAMMING:

• It's crucial that you type ?namelen=24 before the match, or as the player is spamming you. If you can't identify the full alias, it will be far more difficult for staff to track the spammer down.

IF YOU ARE BEING SPAMMED DURING A LEAGUE MATCH:

• Immediately take a series of 5+ screenshots with the chat window open, as fast as possible (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ?namelen=24). Press Esc and then PrintScreen 5+ times.
• Make a ?help or ?cheater call if possible to alarm staff that someone is attempting to spam you.
• After the game, post these screenshots to the TWDT forum ASAP so upper staff can begin tracking down the offender.

I certainly hope that this isn't going to be an issue this season. Spamming has been a problem for far too long, and staff has notified me that they're going to punish any offender with a heavy hand. This is unacceptable in our community, and you will be subjected to severe penalties if you choose to disobey the rules. Do not be foolish enough to test your luck. This will not be tolerated any longer.

Netbans should only be used for cross zone harassment and ?ignore evading. Spamming one time without being ?ignored does not constitute a netban. And anyone running leagues should be completely separate from Moderation staff, including Beer Hunter/Henry Saari. In other words if you did have a valid reason to Netban someone the league staff would not be doing it, but reporting it to the mod online instead.

A player might login and spam someone because they are being dumb and not realize the person they spammed is in a league match in another arena. I don't see why ?ignore wouldn't be tried first, or ?lines=0 especially since Rab and Ogron are big supporters of ?ignore.

There's also a chance the netban wont work... so you might never get rid of the person or this problem. Remember moderation doesn't actually solve problems, talking to people can though.

Also what happens if those spammers go in pub and tell everyone to PM Mythril during his league game "Hi"... so he gets 50 hi's? You would have to prove they did that somehow, and then would you ban all the people who pm'ed? there are various ways to spam that are outside the current ruleset.

[ogron]

Excellent work, thank you Mythril.

• Disqualification from your eligibility in the next league (which in this case, is TWL)

Olde spammed me on aliases during the TWDT 2018 Finals, but he isn't good enough to play TWL. Is that really a punishment?

[afghan]

Falconeer trying really hard to lighten the punishment for his planned sabotage..all youre doing is making yourself look like a troll with these horrendous attempts of "innocent hypotheticals"

[Falconeer]

Falconeer trying really hard to lighten the punishment for his planned sabotage..all youre doing is making yourself look like a troll with these horrendous attempts of "innocent hypotheticals"

A netban is a serious action. You are effectively removing a player from the game for as long as the netban lasts. This is not something anyone should want to do to another person if they see other people as still being valuable and have some empathy. What i'm actually saying here is to make sure it's absolutely necessary, and to try and talk to people before you are forced to use a netban as a last resort. I agree with a netban in situations of harassment just make sure that's actually the situation and the netban can't be avoided.

I believe that punishment should never be additive and based on a players history but only on the present moment. I also believe punishments should be as often as is possible proportional to the offense committed; so a text offense would net you a text punishment like a silence. In other words, I don't like excessive force. I have never agreed with or been apart of griefing, which is using actions to disrupt the game; an example of that would be team killing intentionally or prac leaving. I have never liked spam or copy and paste and believe in typing everything, nor have I ever spammed anyone in PMs in the game. I do not use macros. I do not report people for trolling me. Feel free to spam me, I won't even ?ignore you.

An interesting fact is that even though there is probably no love for me in Subspace, I've never been spammed? Like ever, no one has sought some sort of revenge on me, so I don't know what you guys are doing to bring this upon yourselves... just be nice to people and they will be nice back usually.

I do not support threats of violence or trying to find out and expose peoples personal information. Nor have I ever threatened anyone or given out personal info. I do not consider subspace nicknames personal info. I do not consider the country or state you live in as personal info. Since this is not personal info for myself... I don't use aliases often and I don't care if people know my aliases. I live in Toronto Canada and I use only one name in game 'Falconeer' and have never evaded an ?ignore. I will talk to someone who has me on ignore for hours, weeks, months, and years.

Finally, I don't actually talk in PMs or by private means very often. I find this sets you up to be attacked or framed for things (from 20 years of dealing with assholes and liars). I like to say everything publicly and keep it out in the open, and the reason for this is because i'm very direct and honest. I don't say one thing in public and then an entirely different thing behind the scenes. I'm as real as it gets.

I also back up every public post I make and keep copies, in case they are deleted and I get banned and someone makes up lies about what I posted. Yes it's happened on discord, and on subspace related forums, as well in other communities.

I believe in helping new players and I love to help people.

Lastly, there are people who can verify different parts of these claims. Like eridu, gibbit, tm_master, saiyan etc. saiyan actually told me the other day he used to be so pissed at me in DSB because he had me on ignore and i would still talk to him and other people who ignored me rofl.

[qan]

The reason for the harsh punishment is that's not considered spamming. Rather, it's attempting to influence the outcome of an official league match and gain an advantage/apply a disadvantage by disrupting and in some cases essentially disabling communications for a particular player.

For this reason we don't consider it spamming, but cheating. As a result, regulations for cheating are followed, rather than regulations for spamming. (Note that generally, our policy does follow the philosophy that if players are acting out in text, they're silenced rather than banned, and this is the case for normal spamming, racism, and so on.)

This has been happening pretty consistently in our league finals, and our response hasn't matched the level of severity that should be accorded with attempting to gain advantage in one of the zone's most important matches of the year. We want to make it abundantly clear that it won't be tolerated this time around. We have the tools to catch you, and you will be punished. There's nothing unfair about this. The punishment for attempting to influence the outcome of a finals match by spamming has been announced. If you still attempt to cheat in this way despite knowing the punishment, you don't have any reason to complain when it's applied.

[ogron]

Thanks to Qan, Mythril and whoever else for the work on this. Appreciated.

[Grasps]

I like it but you are requesting people who get spammed to do quite a bit in the middle of a game.. While I think this is great and am happy we are taking the right steps to ensure the integrity of games played, the fact it was said there will be NO games replayed for TWL makes me nervous.

Say someone is spamming me, say this guy is Steadman, he's spraying me with quotes in PM from shit I said in elim like 5-6 weeks ago now in TWL over and over on how I joked to RacKa saying he is only now relevant in 2019 (thanks to Ease) and has a massive ego because of it. I then take the appropriate steps to ensure he is caught, wow that's great. Go staff!

Problem is, I am putting myself at a severe disadvantage doing all this in the middle of a game. If Steadman is found guilty for trying to fuck my game like I did bursting his lil bubble when I popped it, that is awesome but it probably will cost my team the game if I do as requested ON TOP of dealing with being spammed from Steadman who's butt hurt from what I said in jest.

Can we at least agree that games need to be replayed if someone is LEGIT caught spamming a player, Steadman in this case? Thanks fam. Much luv.

[Falconeer]

The reason for the harsh punishment is that's not considered spamming. Rather, it's attempting to influence the outcome of an official league match and gain an advantage/apply a disadvantage by disrupting and in some cases essentially disabling communications for a particular player.

For this reason we don't consider it spamming, but cheating. As a result, regulations for cheating are followed, rather than regulations for spamming. (Note that generally, our policy does follow the philosophy that if players are acting out in text, they're silenced rather than banned, and this is the case for normal spamming, racism, and so on.)

This has been happening pretty consistently in our league finals, and our response hasn't matched the level of severity that should be accorded with attempting to gain advantage in one of the zone's most important matches of the year. We want to make it abundantly clear that it won't be tolerated this time around. We have the tools to catch you, and you will be punished. There's nothing unfair about this. The punishment for attempting to influence the outcome of a finals match by spamming has been announced. If you still attempt to cheat in this way despite knowing the punishment, you don't have any reason to complain when it's applied.

Interesting, i didn't know league players and other league teams do this to each other? So what happens if it's actually found to be a pub player spamming and there is no proof it's league related other than they were spamming during a league match?

Also grasps makes a good point. Perhaps all that's required here is a netban that lasts the duration of the league match. Which can then be lifted, and the other punishments can apply.

Furthermore if the spam continues after the league match and after the netban was lifted, then it's harassment. And you can apply a longer netban. So make the intial netban require less evidence, but be very short (league match length only) and act as a warning.

I'd be down for that.

P.S Also maybe squads could start using voice chat to communicate in the league final... just a thought =) they do that in Infantry a lot.

[qan]

Say someone is spamming me, say this guy is Steadman, he's spraying me with quotes in PM from shit I said in elim like 5-6 weeks ago now in TWL over and over on how I joked to RacKa saying he is only now relevant in 2019 (thanks to Ease) and has a massive ego because of it. I then take the appropriate steps to ensure he is caught, wow that's great. Go staff!

Problem is, I am putting myself at a severe disadvantage doing all this in the middle of a game. If Steadman is found guilty for trying to fuck my game like I did bursting his lil bubble when I popped it, that is awesome but it probably will cost my team the game if I do as requested ON TOP of dealing with being spammed from Steadman who's butt hurt from what I said in jest.

Basically, if you think there's any chance you might get spammed, have ?namelen=24 already applied before the match, or macro it. Then all you really need to do is hit Esc and mash printscreen 5 times. We get that sending a cheater call in the middle of the match could place an unreasonable burden on you, and though it would definitely help if it's possible to send one mid-match, technically you can also wait until it's over if you have to. The key thing is to get the series of screenshots with the chat window open (also make sure you have write permissions on your Continuum folder, which you may not if you're running newer versions of Windows and installed Continuum to Program Files). Then post them immediately after the match finishes.

Then you can try ?ignore or ?lines=0 to deal with them during the match, though again, it's no perfect fix, and that will require you to take some time to issue the command, which could also cost you in terms of your performance. PMs sent between players are unreadable by staff, which is quite good in its own right, BUT also puts us in these kinds of situations. There's no easy answer. If you have an idea about how we could handle it better, all ears.

As far as replays go, that's the territory of league ops, so I won't comment.

Interesting, i didn't know league players and other league teams do this to each other? So what happens if it's actually found to be a pub player spamming and there is no proof it's league related other than they were spamming during a league match?

We can cross that bridge if we ever get there. Unlikely to come up. Context would be the deciding factor.

[Falconeer]

I was thinking if someone thinks they will be targeted, or was targeted in the past that they could actually run a twitch stream of their league game and send the links to the Mods, while also having ?namelen=24 enabled. Basically moderation could then happen in real time, without much more effort from the league player since they setup the twitch stream before their game.

I also just want to reiterate... if it's a cheating issue and the goal is to curb cheating... which by the way shouldn't actually have more importance over harassment, then... ideally you want to have the netban happen during the league match in question, and not so much afterwards. And that means the goal would just be to stop the behaviour during the time in question, so if it were possible a netban shouldn't actually last longer than the league match since the objective was completed... and I think being ostracized from league is a good follow up punishment and deterrent, since most people doing this to cheat probably care about league...

but as always with me it's my opinion, that i hope you think about... with the group involved in deciding these issues... perhaps they could have a netban that only gets applied during league matches or something too... which seems nit picky... but whatever... i get that these people are disrupting the game, but part of me likes to believe people can be better and change and someday if something bad happens to someone like rab or ogron they might be glad someone is in their corner..

[Vys]

It is really quite simple guys...if you don't spam, you won't get banned.

[Heaven]

It is really quite simple guys...if you don't spam, you won't get banned.

someone give this guy a medal already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

also falconeer if u have no plans or spamming nor breaking any of the rules mentionned above why are u so butthurt man...makes no sense. you're wasting your time trying to be an attention whore going up against mods/league ops with no real purpose. the rules are clearly set back by both branches of staff yet you still write paragraphs, grow up and move on with your life my man

p.s. this is not an issue you'll be facing anyway

[Tiny]

As the playoffs are set to begin, it's been brought to my attention that we need a harsh penalty for players who attempt to ruin games by spamming players in PM. Although it's never happened to me, I can remember enough instances in the recent past that make such rules necessary. As such a pathetic act's intention is to negatively affect a player's performance, it's only appropriate that we treat it as a form of cheating.

If you are caught spamming a player during a league match, you will be facing, at a MINIMUM:

• 30 Day Netban
• Disqualification from the current league (no medals if your team wins)
• Disqualification from your eligibility in the next league (which in this case, is TWL)
• Possibility of further punishment, as deemed appropriate by Upper Staff and League Ops.

Some of these pieces of shit are well versed at avoiding staff's reach by way of spamming from other zones or using longer names. Qan has detailed exactly what's required from the player being spammed in order for staff to bring these nerds to justice.

IF YOU THINK YOU'RE A POTENTIAL TARGET OF SPAMMING:

• It's crucial that you type ?namelen=24 before the match, or as the player is spamming you. If you can't identify the full alias, it will be far more difficult for staff to track the spammer down.

IF YOU ARE BEING SPAMMED DURING A LEAGUE MATCH:

• Immediately take a series of 5+ screenshots with the chat window open, as fast as possible (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ?namelen=24). Press Esc and then PrintScreen 5+ times.
• Make a ?help or ?cheater call if possible to alarm staff that someone is attempting to spam you.
• After the game, post these screenshots to the TWDT forum ASAP so upper staff can begin tracking down the offender.

I certainly hope that this isn't going to be an issue this season. Spamming has been a problem for far too long, and staff has notified me that they're going to punish any offender with a heavy hand. This is unacceptable in our community, and you will be subjected to severe penalties if you choose to disobey the rules. Do not be foolish enough to test your luck. This will not be tolerated any longer.

What does this do to the game you're in? Too bad so sad, but we will ban the player, but your game is fucked? I loooooove bringing up old stuff. You guys remember when pummel spammed on teamspeak (being promoted by TW at the time), during a twl match and got himself banned? Funny thing about that was nothing was done about the game. The guy did enough to get banned, but not quite enough to get a replay. Make sense? No, because he should have either been banned and replayed the game or not have been banned at all. If it is a punishable offense to this magnitude, it will affect the outcome of the game. Icing on the cake, he was a recently non-member of the team he was spamming and current member of the team they were playing. GOOD TIMES!!!!