[La Flama Blanca]

I think it might be a good time to review the rule against teaming and the staff guidelines which set out several examples of what constitutes teaming and the appropriate punishments.

To save you a couple clicks, I have copied and pasted references to teaming included on our main TTT Rules page and on our TTT Staff Guidelines document. 

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Rules
5. Do Not Exploit, Hack, Metagame or Otherwise Avoid the Game's Intended Limits

• Do not team, which is aiding people you know are not on your team. 
  

Staff Guidelines
Metagaming/Teaming
Metagaming is defined as the use of outside information in the game while teaming is sort of an offset of metagaming. 

TEAMING EXAMPLES 

• Innocent players refusing to kill a completely obvious traitor that has done many traitorous things in front of them and is ignoring it. This is teaming.
  
• Defibbing innos as a T. This is teaming.
  
• Purposely letting innos in the T room, this is a form of teaming and is slayable. If they continue after a slay/warning, then a more severe punishment can be issued like a ban. Please make sure you have no doubts that they purposely let innos into a T Room if you are enforcing this.
  

Teaming Offenses Punishment
1 - 2 Week Ban
2 - Perm Ban

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Please feel free to add your thoughts about this rule. This thread is not officially sponsored by the staff. Rather, I am creating it as a way to gather some opinions regarding what the greater community (players and staff alike) might think is an appropriate rule regarding teaming. 

I'll be posting my own thoughts below, but I truly would like hear some diverse viewpoints. 

Some questions that might guide you in a response

• How often do you witness what would constitute "teaming" under the present rule?
  
• Does "teaming" under the present rule often go unpunished?
  
• Have you ever done something that would constitute "teaming" under this present rule?
  
• Do you consider all, or some, of the examples of "teaming" to be worthy of a minimum 2 week ban?
  
• Do you consider a 2 week minimum ban too strict? Too lenient?
  
• What might be a more appropriate punishment scheme?
  
• Should the punishment for "teaming" depend on whether it was a "moderate" or "severe" form of teaming? (Like we have for ghosting offenses)
  

Please add your thoughts. Thanks. 

[JesseTheUndeadCowboy]

You might go somewhere with the moderate and severe teaming but I’m not sure myself. I feel like it’s sometimes hard to classify teaming too. Like say for a instance a innocent sees a body bomb planted and picks up the body bomb and goes on to kill a group of innocents with it on purpose. Would that be considered teaming or rdm.  That’s just one example I thought of at the top of my head cus I have seen stuff like that happened.  However in some cases teaming can be easy to define too. Like say for example a guy is shooting innocents as a t and the guys friend helps him kills all the innocents. That is teaming I’m pretty sure but it also depends on the intention and the way the situation happened. It’s just depends really. I think staff discretion also comes into play here sometimes too. Moderate and severe teaming I can understand that maybe. Perhaps with moderate teaming it could be three strikes and you are out possibly, but I don’t know if that’s too strict or something, I don’t know how the ban lengths would work for moderate teaming though. Severe teaming on the other hand could probably. be just be two offenses until a perma ban, first offense 2 week and then perma for severe. Since severe teaming would mostly likely deal with malicious teaming and disregard of playing the game right.

[Alec]

imo i think a 2 week ban for teaming can be a little harsh. But hey rules are rules

[^aethy]

2 weeks is excessive

[JesseTheUndeadCowboy]

2 weeks is excessive

Yeah I kinda agree with aethor and Alec for some cases of teaming. I feel like moderate and severe teaming should be a thing because of this. Moderate teaming should have a shorter length of a first offense. But we would need to figure out how to define moderate teaming and severe teaming clearly.

[La Flama Blanca]

First of all, my decision to post this thread was obviously spurred by a recent ban request. However, this wasn't the first time I expressed a dislike for the teaming rules. Included are two past instances where I expressed such disdain, one yesterday and one over two years ago.

• Ban request on Crab and Lycan 10/12/2020
  
• Unban request for Cons 06/17/2018
  

My views below are substantially similar to what I've previously expressed (and I've done some copying and pasting to save myself time). 

I believe that the punishments for teaming are far in excess of what I think is appropriate. 

Of the three examples provided in the staff guidelines, I really only think one should remain as it is written. That would be the last one, where a traitor purposely lets an innocent into the T room. The other two are far too broad, in my opinion. I really think they should be amended to create a more specific "bad faith" requirement. Instances where defibbing an innocent friend as a traitor or choosing not to immediately kill them despite knowledge of them being a traitor is generally not done in an effort to ruin the game. Rather, it's usually done as a way to make the game more fun for oneself or their friend. And it doesn't necessarily cause a direct interruption to the gameplay. For a traitor defibbing an innocent, I believe that this needs to be accompanied by evidence showing that the revived innocent disrupted the gameplay - evidence of this may include them killing the traitor buddies of the reviving traitor in the middle of the round. Innocents refusing to kill an obvious traitor is just far too open to interpretation, in my opinion, to be sustained as an example of teaming. In fact, it may even encourage RDM. 

Expanding on a point stated above - I believe the teaming rules could be too expansive/broad. This a problem because it not only leads to selective enforcement but also leaves some players without fair notice as to what truly constitutes teaming. 

Some instances that might be construed as teaming might include

• Players using voice chat and "jokingly" ask traitors for traitor equipment.
  
• The server has just a couple players on and the traitor is known. However, the innocents choose not to kill the traitor because they are completing a map objective or just goofing off, like planting a ten minute C4 and playing C4 roulette. 
  
• A player, such as Prince Nicky, intentionally doesn't call out traitors. He may see traitors perform a traitorous act yet he doesn't call them out in voice chat or text chat. He chooses to refrain from doing so in order to get the kill himself so he can increase his score, win the map, and get Top Traitor. Does this help the traitors? It might - Prince Nicky could end up being killed before he has the chance to get the drop on the traitor he witnessed traiting. But is he intentionally trying to help the traitors? No, he is not. 
  

Now I don't think we need a bright line rule on what does and what does not constitute teaming. For the most part, I think it really requires a case-by-case analysis. That analysis could come either post ante (before the ban) such as using one's own professional judgment as a staff member or seeking the advice of administrators. That analysis could also come ex post (after the ban), where the community and staff alike have a chance to review the situation leading to the ban and the administrators can make a decision on an appropriate punishment. 

So there are three things that I would like to emphasize for inclusion in a potential revised rule (This is the TL;DR)

• Separate teaming offenses into those accompanied with "bad faith," or malice and those which are far more innocent. I think this could be done in a similar fashion as we have for ghosting offenses (separated into "severe" ghosting and "moderate" ghosting offenses). 
  
• Ask whether the teaming offense was disruptive to the gameplay. Was the round delayed significantly? Were T buddies killed by an innocent given an advantage? (let in T room, revived, given knife, etc.). If the teaming offense was not disruptive, it should fall into the category of an innocent teaming offense, rather than a severe offense. 
  
• Adjust the punishment scheme to account for innocent versus severe teaming offenses. I believe the innocent teaming offenses should be lesser than what is currently provided in the guidelines. I don't think the current guidelines are inappropriate for severe teaming offenses. 
  

[Salty]

Personally, I  think we should categorize teaming into two subcategories like how ghosting is setup, with moderate and malicious teaming. Malicious teaming would be someone who is ruining the round and experience for someone else, whereas moderate would be just people screwing around. 

[⋆ Fx ⋆]

I think instead of reporting people you see teaming give them a slay or a warn depending on the severity. If mass is involved then deal with it like normal.

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as for ghosting on my old server we would slay first and give them a warn and if they continue its a week ban.

[lacer]

Some instances that might be construed as teaming might include

• Players using voice chat and "jokingly" ask traitors for traitor equipment.
  I'm not sure how you could misconstrue this as teaming. For an act to be considered teaming, it has to actually happen. For instance, a traitor giving an innocent a bold booze and the innocent doesn't kill the traitor. Just asking the Ts for T items is, as you stated in quotations above, a joke.
  
• The server has just a couple players on and the traitor is known. However, the innocents choose not to kill the traitor because they are completing a map objective or just goofing off, like planting a ten minute C4 and playing C4 roulette. 
  Playing C4 roulette was never treated as teaming back when I started playing, and it certainly shouldn't be now. Ignoring the traitor to complete a map objective should not be considered teaming because it's not helping the traitor in any way (unless the map objective in question results in a win for the traitors, in which case it should be considered teaming)
  
• A player, such as Prince Nicky, intentionally doesn't call out traitors. He may see traitors perform a traitorous act yet he doesn't call them out in voice chat or text chat. He chooses to refrain from doing so in order to get the kill himself so he can increase his score, win the map, and get Top Traitor. Does this help the traitors? It might - Prince Nicky could end up being killed before he has the chance to get the drop on the traitor he witnessed traiting. But is he intentionally trying to help the traitors? No, he is not. 
  This is correct. I barely even touch my KOS bind anymore because I just want the kill, score, and map win. 
  

I'm on my way home so I'm just gonna respond to those and leave it
responses in red

[dong]

I called off work today and I'm off tomorrow, so I will dedicate my own time to go through both our guidelines and rules and see what revisions I could come up with. Will share them with Nicol as well and see what he thinks. So would like anyone to dm me on Discord dong#8491 for whatever suggestions you have.