Completed Duel: sticky traps (1 Viewer)

[Evert]

Hello

I recently received a 4h ban for using stickies, you can find the details in this thread: https://www.panda-community.com/threads/evert-from-spring-stickytrapping.10989

In the video are a medic and a heavy in their enemy's base (my base) when suddenly the medic gets killed by my sticky trap. He reported this violation on the forum and got me banned for 4 hours.
As I said in the report-thread: how is this fair? There is a heavy medic combo (vaccinator), 2 engineers and a pyro or demo in our base. We literally could not get to our own first floor for ten whole minutes!
Also notice that the heavy has a killstreak of 42!
Now I'm not saying high killstreaks automatically point to flaws in a map or rule design but it gives you an idea of the situation...

I used a sticky trap located at the deepest hallway of our spawn in an effort to reach the first floor and that resulted in me getting a 4h ban.

The rules state

• No close quarter sticky traps. This is defined as putting a sticky trap above or under a window or right around a corner in a hallway where they are too hard to see and counter to be deemed fair in a small map with little options like this one.

I completely agree! You can't counter sticky traps around windows and doorways, rendering this rule pretty much mandatory if fair gameplay is desired. However, the reason for this rule is to enforce fairness and I really feel like getting banned because I tried to kill a heavy medic combo with a 42 killstreak who had been dominating our first (!) floor for ten minutes, is not fair at all.

So that is why I made this thread, I would like to suggest clarifying the rules around the use of stickies. My personal suggestion would be to add an exception if a team has (severe) difficulty getting out of spawn.

Thank you for your time, I hope you understand that at this point there is an unbalance regarding stickies.

last note: sorry if the layout is not very readable, I'm new to this...

 

[Madact]

@The Death Stalker @MiroSlave @Stabbin

Thoughts?

 

[EvoWarrior5]

Just as a quick thought from me, I don't think it would be unfair to allow players to trap up the first corner (the one he trapped) if the condition is met that there is extreme difficulty getting anywhere for one of the teams.

 

[The Death Stalker]

This is one of those super awkward situations I wished I would never have to face.
Honestly, IMO, I would say that we need to lax up a bit on that rule. I mean like I said on the report, I am not sure if I would classify that as stickycamping.
While we are at this, I would also like a clear difference (if any) between sticky"trapping" and sticky"camping" to be defined which I always think of as the same thing (but opinions are different)
For me, I have always only banned those guys who laid stickies (4-5 minimum) around a corner, waited for like as much as it would take for someone to hop along (for no specific reason, unlike in Evert's case) to blow them up, which looks like this: http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...478/29F1818A4F69D05D66E0B7672AB2D9CCFAC30C17/
Thus my hesitation in banning Evert (he just laid no more than 3 stickies around the corner, was still laying them infact i.e he had only two when garde popped up, and blew them up quick as well; ofc I can't say what he would have done if Gardevoir hadn't showed up making them necessary to blow)
And like @EvoWarrior5 has said (thanks for the idea!), in case of severe spawncamp, I think it is only fair that the targeted team should be allowed to resort to any desperate measures and for that duration, stickycamping should be allowed atleast in the first floor so they can setup a solid counter ground (an engi with his buildings, medic-heavy pair, soldiers not worrying about getting blasted up if trying to walljump to the top ramp etc etc, there's hardly any movespace for counter prep otherwise). The most common defense setup for the invading team is on the 2nd floor btw that is 2 sets of stairs upwards.
Note: An Engineer cannot setup his buildings within the first hallway that leads directly out of the spawn so he needs to be on the first floor for his buildings to be of any value.

At the end, I would like to apologize for my somewhat stupid judgement, to anyone (especially @Evert, I never realised the context until you said it) if I have hurt their feelings, it was never my intention to do so. I always operated out of my instincts, and I suppose this ban was admittedly a bit more than just that, or it would have been probably not a ban.

That's all for now.

TL;DR: I agree.

 

[Evert]

Thanks for your consideration. I certainly do not have hard feelings towards you, Death Stalker, as you were just interpreting and applying the rules, which is your job.
You definitely didn't hurt my feelings haha, I just felt like completely banning the use of sticky traps to enforce fair gameplay while leaving other, some what OP playstyles untouched would be a contradiction regarding fairness... hence this thread.
I'm glad to see the positive reactions of some community members so far!

 

[Madact]

I was wondering...By the way it's described didn't the heavy and medic technically camp an area that blocks access from one of the spawns leaving points?

Wondering how loose the spawn camp rule is on duel.

 

[miro]

Wondering how loose the spawn camp rule is on duel.

Spawn camping isnt forbidden at all on duel, as far as i know. The map is very small and for me, you could basically call every kill a "spawn kill".

Regarding the report... I dont think we should change the rules, but maybe we, as admins, could be a bit more supportive, when it comes to the "gameflow".
Aka.:
- Tell people to not perma spawn camp at all times
- allow sticky camps in situations as it is explained by @Evert
- make sure that all players of the server have the same conditions
Its actually not a big deal, ill keep any eye out from now on.

 

[EvoWarrior5]

It has to be explained somewhere in some way, though. Nothing in the rule indicates that that corner would be exempt from the rule (under the condition that it is hard to get out of spawn). I think a lot of people would complain that it isn't in the rule; and rightfully so.

 

[Madact]

Idea for the edited rule 3 in Duel specific rules (Only put the word doorway in + Last sentence)
• No close quarter sticky traps. This is defined as putting a sticky trap above or under a window/doorway or right around a corner in a hallway where they are too hard to see and counter to be deemed fair in a small map with little options like this one. Only except to this rule is it situations of spawn camping.


Or purposed new rule if the top one doesn't take your fancy on the last sentence :
• Light spawn camping is allowed. It is only fair to give the opposite team a chance to take steps out of their spawn(from both main doors and hallway up to first floor).

 

[The Death Stalker]

Why not both?
There's a slight problem though; the second proposed rule LIMITS stickycamping in case of spawncamping from spawn doorways up to the 1st floor, while the changes in the first do not specify any place. I think it would be best to clear that point up. I am not sure which of these options I would be in favour of in case of spawncamping going on, best grab more thoughts.
Also, it would be best to define "light spawncamping". Do we allow medics to help the spawncampers? Do we allow more than 2 engineers? Do we let them camp the 1st floor excessively?
Anyways, I was talking with @MiroSlave (Edit: @Madact too, I forgot about that sorry ) the other day, and here's what I reckon we should also take into consideration:

• Moving the "do not cross" damage line on top of the first corridor right after exiting spawn upto the doorway that connects the 1st floor to the 2nd flight of stairs from spawn. More specifically -> https://i.clouds.tf/h94y/xtbl.jpg (the door labelled "to spawn" with an arrow facing to the right, thinking of putting the damage line there). Not sure if we should increase the damage or nah, since a full health soldier would not be able to find his way out alive from the spawndoor if we increase the length of the damage line. Regarding invincibility to the damage line:
  • The 'Godmode' RTD nullifies the damage for crossing that restricted line. What this means is that the lucky one can paste himself on the spawn door and spam rockets/bullets/pipes/stickies in there for almost 13-14 seconds. Death is inevitable in case of splash damage, but bullets can be avoided by the not-so-lucky ones in the spawn. So maybe we should make this particular 'RTD' unimmune to the effects of the damage line.
  • All other forms of invincibility (ubercharge) do not nullify the damage.
• Let's not kid ourselves, we know that its almost impossible to keep the skill levels balanced on both sides, and this can be a major factor in countering spawncamping. If the enemy team is too... 'newbish', I suppose it wouldn't hurt the more experienced players to join the other team in order to help counter the spawncamp (for the sake of fairness). For a scenario, let's say I and another player (RED team) are on a heavy medic roll in spawncamping (BLU base). If we see no progress on BLU's side in countering the spawncamp, we switch to BLU and help them take out the spawncamp. After that, leave it upto them to stay on BLU or go back to RED.

That's all I can think up for now.

 

[Madact]

At least my quick draw up is making a duel admin write up something so that we can move this along. Ok now we go over what you purposed to solve it;

• Move the damage line ( read the comment above to find details on this ) - This is an idea I also thought would work. I was wondering who made the map and if they have time to do this? I saw in another thread someone brought it up. A tag would be helpful
• (Not sure) increase the damage you get when you pass the damage line - Also acceptable. So long as it is not increased to silly level xD
• Make the RTD effect ' Godmode' not immune to the damage dealt - Unless you have a plugin master somewhere hidden n the depths of a panda's fur this is impossible for us.

The last part doesn't solve anything as expecting people to do that out of the kindness of helping the team is like asking a 13 year old to stop swearing. Depending on the person depends if they will and honestly I'm not going to depend on the players to solve this for themselves xD

 

[The Death Stalker]

Huh, duel admins are stereotypically inactive? Daym...
Well I guess the RTD thing isn't really a big deal, since its not really frequent.

You are right about the last part. But I meant if I or another admin is on the server. Most of the better players are regulars and they know us so I suppose we can talk to them about it. Its just that unless we let them (the newer players) walk up to the 2nd floor and destroy the nests, I am afraid they won't be able to do it even if we give them the maximum possible allowance. The map structure is admittedly newbie-unfriendly.

Regarding the 1st point (the damage line), I dunno much about this thing, but here is the GameBanana link: gamebanana.com/maps/172694 and the author is apparently someone called ImSpitfire.
Bah, I admit it: I don't know what you mean by the tag
Unrelated: (Somewhere deep within me, a lonesome, hollow voice echoes: Please, don't forget the medkits... )

 

[Madact]

Oh no just I want to get things done Sorry if it came across that way ^^;

Well that very thoughtful for the community for an admin to do that That's what I would like other admins to do to help this situation out

Ah I thought someone here created it. Well that's bad, I don't particularly think we can move the line unless the creator of the map OR someone with mapping skills can do it.

Only option we have is rule changes.

 

[Madact]

So is there anything that we can do to expand on the rules for now to prevent this from happening again?

@The Death Stalker @MiroSlave @Gardevoir

 

[Madact]

It's been solved, check rules.