[Resolved] Wave of "Team Stacking" bans

In-Game name: Flammable
Time of Ban: 27.08.24
Date of Ban: 22:16
Steam ID: STEAM_0:1:22484836
Reason for Ban: Team Stacking
Additional Comments:

Hello, before we start I wanna say, I am open to discussion about what happened recently, and I tried to deescalate and get information on this matter yesterday, but noone seemed to wish to talk to me, instead I was called names. It's up to you if you want this discussion to be short or at length.

Recently me and bunch of my friends was banned for "Team Stacking". And I gotta admit, the rule is there, and we did violate this server rule by having over 14 people on server and changing map, when at least 6 other players wanted to scramble teams and seperate us. But I swear, not me, and none of my friends knew it was something you'r not allowed to do. I was sure, that you can play any team you want, when you want, and how you want. And only then when we all got banned, I went to forum and finaly found that rule #5. And yeah, I dont like this rule, but rules are not to be liked, it's to be agreed and followed if you wanna play on the server.

And from the moment I saw that rule I agreed to follow it, because I like tf2 classic, and it's not a big sacrifice if I have to play against my friends too, to balance things out. My ban is 2 weeks long, and to avoid future conflict I need more information on "Team Stacking", specifically numbers. How much friends I am allowed to have in same team at the time? Or do I just stop resisting team scramble? There's some obvious things like do not rtv if got scrambled like the last time, but can you explain more?

As I was saying, I did not came here to make a storm, to troll ppl and make someone feel bad because they lost a game to a coordinated team. I'm not a bad actor. I first joined in summer of 2022, and I instantly fell in love with TF2C, and I even promoted it on my channel, here's my short review:


I was always telling everyone to switch to TF2 Classic from official TF2, in TF2C I felt at home, like it's 2008 again, and I'm young and happy. And that's why I do all of this. I appriciate this game, and it's server. I do have my own server, but it's a headache to host it, and even more headache to consistantly hold players on it. And that's why I want to keep playing officialy, and bring my playerbase with me, it's approximetly 15 to 20 active players.

What happened on that day is not nice, and I was rude, i was screaming in microphone to "enjoy rtv and arena maps" but I did it only because I thought I was in the right, I was not even aware of term "Team Stacking". We activly played for the last month, and only half of the games we won, and only a little part of this winnings was crushing and without a chance to the opposite team. We often lost even being in same team. We are not some pro's, while I do tryhard, most of my friends play casualy. And I promise to abstain from talking to people who annoy me, and just ignore them instead making drama.

Let's sum it up, I was not aware of this rule, that's why I admit we broke it. I need more information in "team stacking", to avoid future conflict. I like tf2c and I'm ready to follow your server's rules, and to be nice.

PS. Two of my friends tried to ban evade, and it's their fault, I told them to wait for 2 weeks, it's their fault and now it's up to them to appeal their bans.

PS2. Some ppl claim i'm pro-war, since I'm russian, and it's a lie! I was always against it, from the day this nightmare began.

Your appeal has been received, we'll review the details and get back to you, usually within a few days.

~Vintage

Thanks for your patience.

To address some of your questions, the threshold for "team stacking" is somewhat nuanced, but it is a pretty extreme occurrence when the context amounts to "the entire team are my friends". I think this is the first time we've had to deal with something on this scale in the ~12 years we've been around as VF4, so the situation is a bit unprecedented.

At the end of the day it's more about the player experience for everyone in the server, and this is why it's itemized under "Rule 5" which is intended to cover the spirit in which we want our servers to be enjoyed by all players.

Consider 2-3 friends playing together on the same team- this isn't necessarily a problem if the game-play is reasonably balanced. In contrast, if they are the top players on the board and have more points than the other players combined, there is a problem, especially if an event (scramble vote, forced scramble) separates them and they actively try to negate said scramble or auto-balance. It takes a combination of factors including unbalanced gameplay, active intent, and the scale of the incident to determine if something needs to be acted on as a team-stack.

The situation changes somewhat when you have ~14 people since that's now a server majority and it sounds like there was some collaborative effort to resist scramble votes and stack the map nominations, to the point our staff were getting complaints about it. From what I've seen, people generally have to feel things are pretty out of hand to be actively trying to scramble a game or report the situation to staff; it also doesn't help the perception of your intentions if a staff member forces a scramble and everyone participating in the issue disconnects to leave for a different server and pile back on the same team. That's effectively getting into "pubstomping" territory, and it becomes griefing if it's abused to spawn-camp the other team and/or drag out the game by not working towards map objectives.

One of the incidents I reviewed appeared to be a group of these players just idling in spawn for the first round or so of the map trying to all get on the same team by swapping to spectate and abusing the inbuilt auto-team balance to facilitate actually being able to change teams. That's not an organic situation where we'd accept "I didn't know" - it is actively manipulating things to get around the game's restrictions, repeatedly. Further investigation by our staff revealed there was a history of this sort of thing (among other concerns) beyond an isolated incident, and this is what precipitated the ban.

The ban was escalated to a second-tier (order of weeks instead of days) punishment because there are other contributing factors that we found in our review - such as your chat history where you are hostile and disrespectful towards other players. I can't speak for the duration of the bans issued against the other members of the group as I have not reviewed them individually, but my suspicion is the staff witnessed enough that they felt the punishment should be equal for all involved.

It's unfortunate you ended up learning about our rules "the hard way" but given the extent to which events transpired I don't think it's something we can just wave away on the basis of ignorance. If you are indeed now fully aware of our rules around this, then once the ban lapses, it will be in the past and won't be an issue unless there are further transgressions.

VintagePC said:

Previous message.

Click to expand...

Hello, thanks for responce. I understand why ban stays, afterall I made this thread to avoid conflicts like this happening future. Almost all of my people find this rule to be absurd, but we dont have any alternatives to VaultF4, other then making our own server. And we did made server, and I will mostly continie to play there instead, because it's impossible to keep such a large group of ppl to stay civilised and follow all the rules. But here is the thing, I want to be able to play TF2 Classic at anytime, including night time, when all of my friends sleep and I can not gather any of them to play at my server. Playng 3v3 is miserable!

Maybe this situation was unavoidalbe, maybe it should have happened, because today I had 25 people in voice chat, and it's just too much. Better if we stay at MEGAXAPOW, instead of overcrowding VaultF4 and "pubstomp" it in the process. I understand why staff saw us as organised group of trouble makers, but we are just a large crowd of players.

Anyway, despite creating my server, I still wanna be a part of VaultF4 playerbase! This week was hard for me, I wanted resolution of this, I wanted to fix what we did, I realy felt and still feel bad about being banned. Especialy considering the fact, that I'm the only one who trully deserved ban, my subscribers was just following my orders to stay in the same team, for team expirience, which I desired. But I seek peacefull solution, that's what I'm trying to say.

And another thing, about me being rude. That's true, and I'm sorry for being that way, my apologies if I ruined someone's mood. I'm the type of guy who likes to taunt the enemy after every single frag. And I have made a decision, to keep my mouth shut from now on, and to speak to other players only if nessecary. Same with my friends, I informed everyone to keep quiet, and to never disrespect someone, and to not draw something stupid using sprays. I promise to be respectfull in my future interractions, you will not hear something bad from me anymore. I will keep my interractions short and game-related.

And back to the main topic, I have a proposal about this whole situation, to avoid drama/confcilt/pubstomping/extrime team stacking all of that. If i'll have 8 or more people in my voice chat, we do not bother anyone at VaultF4 with a large crowd, and we stay at MEGAXAPOW, doing our own thing. But if I want to play TF2C at time when my friends are unable to join me, lets say 7 people or less, then we go to VaultF4, and play normally. Maybe in same team, maybe seperated, but we will not resist team scramble and team auto-balance anymore! We will be respectfull and follow server rules. If our team is too strong, I will seperate us myself, and ask half of my friends to join the opposite team if it's nesecary. But no longer we will stack our votes to avoid team scrambles and change map on demand like we did last time, at the day we got banned.

Please tell me what do you think about my idea, about 8 or more, and 7 or less people. And I gotta say, banning was not necessary. Simple warning - that would have been enough. So I ask you, VaultF4 staff, if you think we are doing something wrong, please just tell me! Communicate with me istead of banning. First half of the day when we got banned, i sincerely believed you did it with no reason. And only the next day i visited this site and found the rules. Anyway, thanks for your attention, waiting to hear what you think of my proposal. No hard feelings if we could achieve peace, it's the only thing i want, to play TF2C in peace.

I'll think on your proposal for a bit and whether we can see it working. As explained before, it's a fluid situation I am not going to put hard numbers down (ex to say that X is okay but Y is not) but we may be able to find something workable within a set of stipulations. I fully recognize there are limited populated places to play TF2C at any given time, but of course we are also not keen on what seemed to be a hostile takeover of a server from a group of players almost large enough to be their own community.

Flammable said:

. So I ask you, VaultF4 staff, if you think we are doing something wrong, please just tell me! Communicate with me istead of banning. First half of the day when we got banned, i sincerely believed you did it with no reason. And only the next day i visited this site and found the rules. Anyway, thanks for your attention, waiting to hear what you think of my proposal. No hard feelings if we could achieve peace, it's the only thing i want, to play TF2C in peace.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry you perceived it that way; our rules are posted and summarized in many easily accessible places places including our MOTD panel with regular reminders in text chat that they should be read if playing in our servers. While we may offer warnings as a courtesy, we generally don't accept a lack of familiarity with our rules as an excuse, and can opt to skip a warning if we feel the circumstances are reasonably straightforward.

Based on the information I have, it was pretty clear - the players not in your party were trying to unsuccessfully trigger a scramble to the point a staff member had to intervene. They joined, triggered a scramble and said something along the lines of "that should fix the problem", and I think an explicit staff intervention like that is sufficient warning/indication that rules are being broken.
Had things stopped there we likely wouldn't be having this conversation. However, your entire party opted to disconnect, head for another of our servers, and repeat the same behaviour.

I'll follow up soon.

~Vintage

VintagePC said:

I'll think on your proposal for a bit and whether we can see it working. As explained before, it's a fluid situation I am not going to put hard numbers down (ex to say that X is okay but Y is not) but we may be able to find something workable within a set of stipulations. I fully recognize there are limited populated places to play TF2C at any given time, but of course we are also not keen on what seemed to be a hostile takeover of a server from a group of players almost large enough to be their own community.

Click to expand...

Yes you'r right, and that's what I'm offering, to see how it's gonna work. I'm just asking to be warned by staff, in case something is wrong, instead of being banned on the spot. No more hostile takeovers, as i promised i will stay at my place if i'll have too many players.

VintagePC said:

I'm sorry you perceived it that way; our rules are posted and summarized in many easily accessible places places including our MOTD panel with regular reminders in text chat that they should be read if playing in our servers. While we may offer warnings as a courtesy, we generally don't accept a lack of familiarity with our rules as an excuse, and can opt to skip a warning if we feel the circumstances are reasonably straightforward.

Click to expand...

I admit, i broke the "brown hat rule", and it's totally on me, my fault. I did not read the rules before it's my fault. It does pop up in MOTD, but instead of checking it out I just always instantly skipped it, as I got used to having ADs or useless stuff in MOTD most of the time i play source games. But it is still my fault i broke the rule, I'm just telling I did it only because I was not aware if it, still my fault, but if i knew.. As you said we likely wouldn't be having this conversation.

VintagePC said:

Based on the information I have, it was pretty clear - the players not in your party were trying to unsuccessfully trigger a scramble to the point a staff member had to intervene. They joined, triggered a scramble and said something along the lines of "that should fix the problem", and I think an explicit staff intervention like that is sufficient warning/indication that rules are being broken.
Had things stopped there we likely wouldn't be having this conversation. However, your entire party opted to disconnect, head for another of our servers, and repeat the same behaviour.

Click to expand...

Yes, what happened this day is the worst we could have done at this point. I ignorantly resisted team scramble and took over map votes, having majority of votes at the moment. Right now I see how bad it was, and I'm not protesting our current bans, I just want to avoid future bans, as i feel we are now under biased attitude for our previous violations. And I guess I should have stayed after forced team scramble and talk to staff and ask why our teams was scrambled anyway. But i rage quitted and we went on Custom Maps 1 to play against each other, as we had 14+ people at voice chat at this moment.

Okay, let's sum this up, and thanks again for taking your time to answer to all of this, Vintage, I'm very satisfied with what you told me, it's reasonable and understandable.

Let's see how presence of me and my friends will go on further, i predict everything is gonna be fine, because we will follow rules and accept team scrambles if vote for it passed.
My fault for breaking brown hat rule, I realy did not knew, but it's my fault I did not took my time to visit MOTD or this site to properly read it.
Things that we did at the day of our ban will never happen again, I promise.

I understand that some of you might be sceptical about me. But please see it for yourselves, I will be just a normal player with a few friends playing time to time. I will not bring "an army" anymore, when all my friends awake i will keep them at my place. I'll play at VaultF4 only when just a few of them online, when the majority sleeps. I'm sorry if my previous actions ruined someone's game expirience, hope we can move forward forgetting grievances.

I have spent some time thinking on this over the past few days. I do not think there is really a hard number at which things become "okay" vs "not okay" since it's just as possible to do some of these things with e.g. 5-6 people as it is with 12 or more.

One of our staff made an excellent comment in this regard, which summarizes the entire issue at hand, and which probably serves as a good rule-of-thumb when considering the group's impact in a server:

If the other players can notice they are acting as a large group, or it interferes with their normal gameplay, then there is a problem.

Click to expand...

Taking this into consideration I think we can break things down into the following examples and specifics - it may not be exhaustive and I'm sure you can think of some additional ideas yourself to keep things flowing smoothly, but these are the main ones that address the issues that resulted in the bans:

• Spread as evenly as possible across both teams by default, and do not circumvent or undo the results of scrambles/autobalances. (However, if a scramble or balance event puts more of you on the same team, it's permissible).
• Keep the group's collective nominations to 1 or 2 maps at most, to allow others to suggest gamemodes or maps for the vote.
• If you have enough players to make a majority map vote, I would probably suggest not making nominations at all or limiting them to one every couple of maps; if you really want to play a less popular map or gamemode for an extended duration as a group this large then it might be time to make use of your own server instead.
• You should generally be working towards the map/game mode objective. One of the complaints we received was in relation to a spawn camp of the opposite team which was being extended abnormally by deliberately not capturing control points.

More than likely if there is a problem you will hear or see the other players complaining about it (or otherwise trying to do something about it - scramble votes, RTVs, etc) well before any staff need to get involved, so that would be something to be mindful of when the group is larger.

Does that sound reasonable?

VintagePC said:

Spread as evenly as possible across both teams by default, and do not circumvent or undo the results of scrambles/autobalances. (However, if a scramble or balance event puts more of you on the same team, it's permissible).

Click to expand...

We were playing in a large group, for about a month before it got problematic, as numbers of people who i convinced to try TF2C got bigger. For the most part even when my whole team contained only my friends, games was balanced and fair. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost, it was around 60% wins and 40% loss. But occasionally it was unplayable for the enemy team, and now when I see how things can turn out, I will do more effort to balance things out. If my team gonna win easily I will move myself and my best players to the loosing team if necessary. If players demand !votescramble and vote has passed, I will not resist it, and play in team the game put me on. If enemy team will have less players and someone from my group got auto-balanced, i will tell this person to accept results of auto-balance.

And I suppose it is hard to put a number on it, but i'll still stick to 7-8 formula eg. if 7 or less we play VaultF4, if 8 or more we play MEGAXAPOW. I think you can imagine how difficult it could be to control a huge crowd, and I will not have to do that on my server, since it's anarchy in there, the only thing that's gonna get someone banned is cheats. And I dont mean to say that it sucks to play on VaultF4 when i had over 20 people in voice chat, the month of August 2024 was one of the coolest gaming months we had in a while! Lot's of memories made, lot's of games great played. But when i can fill my own server with my friends to the brim, I don't see any reason to bother someone else with it, when i can provide that service myself. So in the end of this sentence, I will visit VaultF4 as single player, or with just a few friends, who will not bring trouble.

VintagePC said:

Keep the group's collective nominations to 1 or 2 maps at most, to allow others to suggest gamemodes or maps for the vote.

Click to expand...

VintagePC said:

If you have enough players to make a majority map vote, I would probably suggest not making nominations at all or limiting them to one every couple of maps; if you really want to play a less popular map or gamemode for an extended duration as a group this large then it might be time to make use of your own server instead.

Click to expand...

No problem, I usualy do not care which map or gamemode is it, it's all great! I only do not like arena, but many does not, so i will play whatever it is on server, or whatever other players choose with their votes.

VintagePC said:

You should generally be working towards the map/game mode objective. One of the complaints we received was in relation to a spawn camp of the opposite team which was being extended abnormally by deliberately not capturing control points.

Click to expand...

At the day we got banned, the game was very unbalanced, and I thinking there's nothing wrong with my actions, resisted player's effort to scramble teams. I dont know why I thought it's better that way, guess I was hoping for the enemy team to finally strike back and to get great gameplay, instead i made the game unplayable for the enemy team. Sorry for that, it was the only time we avoided map objective, and I will not do that again. I will always do the objectives and if victory gonna come easily I will move myself and my best players to the loosing team if necessary to balance game.

VintagePC said:

More than likely if there is a problem you will hear or see the other players complaining about it (or otherwise trying to do something about it - scramble votes, RTVs, etc) well before any staff need to get involved, so that would be something to be mindful of when the group is larger.

Does that sound reasonable?

Click to expand...

Yeah, sounds good. I will be watching game chat, if someone get frustrated over game balance, or if I see myself that the game is unbalanced I will try to make the situation better.