Hiiglane
Notably Dangerous Demo-Knight
Screenshot above is taken of an encounter about 1-2 hours ago on dr_boomershooter where admin Luigi123 threatened to ban a Hale who was standing still for "friendlying" after picking NIGHTMARE (auto) MODE.
If you are unfamiliar with DR, many maps have an "automode" where Hale's ability to press buttons is disabled and instead a map AI presses the buttons in reaction to the players (dr_gayrun), or all buttons are disabled and the map becomes parkour focused with difficult traps for the players to maneuver thru as seen in dr_boomershooter and dr_bootcamp.
Skial rules state as following on "Friendlying":
- Friendlying is not allowed on custom game mode servers except for idle and trade.
This is going to be a mess to write because of terminology and a lack of an actual definition provided by the servers on "friendlying." While I get the general idea of what its supposed to mean, an admin providing a concrete definition of what they are referring to would be great.
The immediate problem is that "Friendlying" is not a term that works with Deathrun at all. The most common and understood usage of "Friendlying" is to refer to players not attacking each other or solely taunting. In VSH, this term is used to ensure the Hale does not waste time by taunting for too long with reds or refusing to attack them. In the case of DR, this word is not immediately understood as taunting, slower movement, and dicking around near hale is a core part of the gameplay. At most, there are 31 players making progress towards the end so there is no immediate need to always be moving forwards. The term used is "delaying" as by being a group effort to get to the end, the only time "friendlying" matters is when the last player alive refuses to make progress towards the end. There are actual cases where "friendlying" can occur in DR (such as Hale refusing to kill reds in any maps arena minigame) but the current ones being reported are just not that. Looking through Creador's report log demos shows that a lot of cases of friendlying are singular players taunting near the start of the map while other players are progressing the map. Again, in the case of DR, when multiple players are moving towards the end, a lot of times there is no reason for everyone to be exerting the same effort. Rarely are there actual reported cases of players holding up the rounds intentionally which is what should actually be punished as "friendlying".
In the case of one player delaying the round by being stationary, taunting, or intentionally wasting time doing nothing, I think punishment is fair game, but in DR, as long as there is ONE player progressing the map, other players should not have to keep up pace with them nor solely focus on moving. Instances of this can be found en masse with maps such as dr_playstation where the final hale section is designed to auto-target players who enter Zerg's room, instantly killing them upon entry if someone has already started the boss. Leading to most players allowing ONE person to go into Zerg's room to fight him while others wait outside until he is killed. This would be considered "friendlying" in the precedent being set, but Playstation is a (poorly designed) map where there is no respawn feature upon reaching the end so players would be forced to walk into a room they know is going to instantly kill them solely because they can't "friendly" for too long.
"Friendlying" in its usage here breaks how deathrun is approached and in multiple examples shown by Luigi123, forces players to progress through maps by just running into traps and instantly dying as he has just made Hale aware that their only choice is to progress rather than using their time to strategically bait hale into hitting a trap early or late. Deathrun just isn't a mode where this term sticks, it's casual and focused on the fun and silly antics of the players while mixing a loose time restraint objective. Deathrun is not a mode that works when players are constantly 24/7 progressing to the end because the rounds are 30 minutes long and a lot of DR maps are repetitive. Deathrun as a mode would become a lot more boring and anti-user friendly if an admin was always there forcing every single player to progress at the same rate.
We should also address how the punishment for this has been an extreme overreaction (and griefing too but thats a story for another day)
Take for example: https://www.skial.com/threads/cani-friendlying.99384/
In this case, a user I know was banned for taunting during a spyro minigame in dr_playstation while two other users were actively progressing and were too low on time to even finish the minigame. This minigame is notably difficult for the spiders buggy AI and a lot of players simply refuse to move and let other players try to clear this one for its intense difficulty. For 30 seconds (at worst a minute if we assume Creador recorded late) of "friendlying", Cani received a DAY ban which also goes onto the users record. 24 hours for 30 seconds/1min is a huge overreaction and as seen in previous cases, players who've received a day ban for friendlying will receive a 3day into a week ban for further infractions which is just too fucking much for wasting little amounts of time for a behavior widely considered normal in DR.
Overall, this could just be an admin's misunderstanding gone horribly wrong, but considering these bans track back to a month ago now, I feel this extended past solely voicing concern over Luigi123 as an admin and needed to be addressed on a ruling level with actual moderation statements on it if possible. As a person who really only plays TF2 for its DR content, this change has pissed quite a lot of users off that I interact with and has only worsened the skial DR servers relationship to the moderation team as now they risk bans for wanting to well...have fun? Forcing players to always be non-stop progressing means DR becomes formulaic instead of a mode you can approach at your own pace. The maps in DR are too repetitive to warrant fully progressing on them over and over again, you need the interaction from other players to keep yourself interested in the mode. That and considering the server is rarely full, it's not like users being slower are stealing the spots of users that are joining solely to play DR for its objective of progressing towards the end.
