Thread: DoD:S Rules and Policies

#1. Play with your team.

DoD:S is an objective based, team-oriented game. It's a shame that so many servers are full of one-man hero's and the idea that the only time to play as a team is in a match. This server exists to end all of that. If you want to be a rogue, or you think you play better alone‚ then go buy a single-player game, and go do that. On our server, you WILL play WITH your team, or you WILL be punished. Use your mic, follow the leader (or be the leader), and get the objectives completed.


#2. Communicate with your teammates.

There is more to do in an online game than to simply trudge through it solo. If you want to play by yourself, without saying, typing, or responding to anything‚ why are you doing that in a MULTIPLAYER SERVER? If a request is made of you, answer. If you are being spoken to, respond. If you want to talk with your friends through external VOIP to the detriment of communicating with your team, go play somewhere else. If the only communication skills you can muster are insults to your teammates, mutiny against the organization of the team, or to purposefully cause conflict, such as spamming your microphone with music or singing, be prepared for punishment by the admins. Nothing is taken more seriously than an insult to the team, and spamming your microphone with “Shutup! I'm in CAL. You guys are noobs" is about as bad as it gets.

#3. Pursue your objective, or die trying.

The objective is pretty simple. DoD is a game of flags and territory. Your objective is to work as a team to take all the flags and win the game. You CAN NOT kill everyone and win. You CAN NOT sit in your spawn the whole game and win. Focusing on your personal KD, or your own statistics while forsaking the team sets a bad example for team play, and is thus a problem for the server. Regardless of what you think the game is about, the fact is, if you don't get all the flags before the enemy does, you lose. Focus on the flags, and the killing will follow naturally. This involves many different strategies, including holding critical choke points, suppressing the enemy's ability to move freely within specific areas, and coordinating the team to take multi-person flags, set up defensive lines, etc.

It is difficult to define camping in the context of DoD, since the game requires complex strategies of defending and holding territory, stealth, and timing, so it will be judged on a case by case basis. Camping, by definition, is remaining in a specific area only to take enemies by surprise, however offering no strategic advantage to the team, other than to pad your personal KD. And, as said above.....KD's don't win games. Flags win games.

Some examples of camping would include:

- Being in a position to take a flag, especially when if it is not taken your team will lose, and NOT taking it, simply because you are worried about being seen, or dying. Even worse would be if it is a multi-person flag capture point, and you are in a position to assist, but do not. Worrying about LOSING should come BEFORE worrying about dying.

- Remaining in an area of the map that provides you with great cover and fire zones, but provides NO strategic benefit to your team (such as your spawn). Unless a flag is in your immediate fire zone, and you are justifably protecting it, you know damn well that sitting in the backfield isn't helping anyone but your KD. Find a similar place, with great cover and fire zones, but that ALSO provides your team with a strategic advantage, and you are in the clear as far as the rules go.

Camping is NOT simply sitting in one place for a long time. That is a definition for simpleton games like Unreal and Quake. It's an outdated definition that does NOT apply here. If you are able to hold your MG or sniping position for an extended time period because you have teammates guarding your flanks, offering you ammo, and keeping you supported, then you go ahead and give the enemy hell. You and your team's coordinated efforts are shutting out the enemy's ability to advance and take flags, which thus corresponds to your team's ability to hold flags and win.

Typically, if you are camping in a manner that does not benefit your team, you will know by the complaints and insults hurdled your way. If you know something that your team doesn't, such as WHY you feel you are JUSTIFIED in holding that position, all you have to do is speak up, calmly, and explain yourself. Your team, if they are true teammates, have a responsibility to listen to your goals and ideas just as much as you do to theirs. Teamwork is a two way street, so be sure to communicate, and do so often, especially if you think you may be considered a camper. If you are communicating and justifying your actions to your team, then you are immune from punishement from the admin. If the team feels that you are wrong, and a majority of them agree.......then you will will be dealt with accordingly. The admin is about making the server happy. Not individual players. Keep that in mind.

In addition, if you are consistently camping, promoting camping, and losing while camping, expect the admin to take notice and become involved. The admin will become involved immediately when outbreaks of unjustified camping occur, and will do what admins do by issuing warnings, slapping, slaying, and perhaps including kicks or bans. Though we are reluctant to punish any one player for doing as his team does, we will identify and persecute the chief campers quickly, and move down the ladder from there.

Keep in mind, we are NOT asking you to run off into your deaths. But we ARE asking you to play DoD. This is not Quake. This is not Doom. This is not Unreal. If you want to stand around and shoot at things, then go do it by yourself. We are a high traffic server with a LOT of people waiting in line to get on. If you don't play, and play hard, then why are you wasting our slots?

Get out there and play. Take those flags, set up those sweeps, and hold your ground. Call out desperately for reinforcements, set up your defenses, and win. Above all things, win.

A note on the definiton of "SPAWN CAMPING":

As has been highly discussed in our admin circles, it may be found that some definitions of camping that are legal, such as controlling choke points and suppressing the enemy's ability to move freely, could be stretched or construed to mean that the server and admins encourage spawn camping/suppression. This may or may not be true, but it is irrelevant. The server encourages winning. If a spawn is penetrable, and thus camp-able, it is that team's responsibility to ensure that it is protected. It is NOT the enemy's moral, ethical, or honorable responsibility to NOT attack it. If it is left exposed, and winds up with 2 or more enemy MG's cutting down everyone that is spawning......yes, it's horrible. Oh, the agony. Oh, the suffering and gnashing of teeth. Yes, you are going to lose. But before you cry out spawn camping, spawn raping, and asking the admin to save you.......think about what you are asking:

"Admin, slay these spawn campers!" in reality means, "Admin, please help me survive by slaying my enemies, so I can fight back, take the enemy's flags, and win."

This is something an admin can not do. It is not our job to help either side win or lose, or to perpetuate a game indefinitely by punishing the winning team and releasing the losing team from it's clutches.

If a player(s) is exploiting bugs and hacks, that is a different story, and the admins will punish these players before you probably even notice it is happening. Stacking players to climb fences and being creative in your negotiation of obstacles blocking a spawn entrance is NOT an exploit. It's a sign that the developers should have made a higher fence, since the developers are WELL AWARE of player abilities to jump, climb, and stack on one another. Don't blame the admins. Blame the map and game designers.

#4. Abusive conduct cannot be tolerated.

If you are an abusive player, with offensive sprays, insulting communications with your team, and purposely playing to lose, expect to be punished very quickly and harshly. However, since we are a mature server, occasionally it will be the responsibility of members of the team to speak out against slow acting, weak, or ignorant players (such as those not holding valuable territory, persistent campers, etc). The admins would GREATLY APPRECIATE the team to take care of it's own problems, rather than having to step in and start burning people alive and kicking problem players. All players are encouraged to speak clearly and calmly to get their team on the same page, however the server understands that some people just don't listen. In these cases, some yelling and sceaming may be involved. The admin will make a judgement depending on the circumstances for any case of abuse resulting in a hostile playing environment. Should you feel that the admin is the cause of the abuse, feel free to post such comments in our abuse forum.

If you are a player being berated by your teammates, instead of jumping up and shouting back, listen to their complaints. Did you block the door? Are you not assisting in taking flags when you are able to do so? Are you selling out the team strategy? Then you deserve to be criticized, and you should modify your playing style to help the team, rather than defending your non-teamplayer attitude. The admin can always solve the problem easily in this situation. The problem isn't the yelling and cursing....the problem is you, the non-teamplayer, and you will be removed from the server.


#5. VAC2 doesn't do everything.

Cheating is rampant in any multiplayer game. Though VAC2 is hopefully catching and banning a significant portion of hackers, that doesn't eliminate the need for admins to make their own judgements. Of course, speed hackers, spinning aimbots, and other such nonsense are easily dealt with; however, occasionally you meet a player who not only cheats, but knows how to do so without being very obvious. Though you may not know who the admins are, you should know that there is rarely a moment that the server is populated without at least 1 admin present. Should you feel someone is cheating, or you would like to speak to an admin while in-game, feel free to do so by typing "@ (message here)" in team chat.

Our decision to ban someone is based on a variety of things. Principally, it's based upon the opinions of SEVERAL admins, and at least all admins present on the server at that time. Rarely will anyone be banned by the decision of any single admin. Also, our bans are usually held off on till a larger investigation can be made into the suspicious player's statistics. Should that player be relatively new to the server, they are typically given the benefit of the doubt in order to give them more time to accrue statistics based upon their accuracy, kills per minute, and KD ratios. Most importantly, their statistics against more skilled, non-cheating regulars will weigh heavily for or against them. Once enough information has been gathered, either by admins spectating the player, questionable anomalies in the player's statistics, or other means, a decision to ban will be made.

It is important for us to point out that we don't want to ban anyone. We are not some punk server run by children who are here to pwn noobs and speek leet. We are here to play a game. If we banned everyone that was good, we'd have to ban half our admins. If you get banned, and you think we're crazy, by all means, make a post in the banned forums about it. We'll listen, and we've unbanned many players who made legible, clear, and open statements about their bannings.

Things to do that can get you punished, kicked, and/or banned on the server.

#1. Cheat, or refuse to reasonably explain yourself when questioned about cheating. Explanations do not include the phrases "Shutup noobs, I'm in CAL. I pwn."

#2. Say nothing but insults in the chat and mic, especially about teamplay. Spamming your mic, the text chat, or the voice command system with useless jabberings will be punished quite harshly.

#3. Refuse to help your team.

#4. Blatantly challenge the authority of the admin.

#5. Modify your displayed ping using abnormal rates.

#6. Exploit defects of the game to provide an unfair advantage over other players (such as burrowing yourself into the ground on certain maps).

#7. Outing an admin in-game. Our admins are to always remain anonymous.

*Pistol Switching is a means to avoid the reload animations of the sniper rifles (the scoped Kar98 and the Springfield). Doing so PREVIOUSLY gave you a rate-of-fire increase, something that would not occur on other weapons (skipping your MP40 reload animation simply means you have an unloaded MP40 when you come back to it). This has since been patched, and Valve put in an option to uncheck the "redeploy deployable weapon after use" option, thus eliminating any need to imitate this motion.

In the event that your account is banned by VAC, Punk Buster, or any other third party software installed on our servers, you will be required to appeal to those developers. Only then, if your ban is lifted you will be granted an appeal and be required to submit an unban request in the banned forums. If you are not able to resolve this issue with those developers, you are to remain banned from all TPG property indefinitely. TPG has zero tolerance for people that choose to cheat.

**UPDATED**

With the latest DOD patch a new error/glitch/exploit, or whatever you want to call it has been found with the Rocket class: when a Rocket class player is against a wall when firing their rocket, the rocket shot will immediately explode at the target location. Basically, the rocket has no air travel time... instead it immediately explodes where the player was aiming.

This is a glitch by the game developers and is an exploit!

I understand that it may happen by mistake from time to time, but if any player is caught using this exploit, you will be warned once that it is an exploit and you will be banned if you do it again. If you ignore the admin, then they are banned on site.

If an admin is caught using the exploit, they will immediately be banned/suspended.

We do not tolerate exploits at TeamPlayerGaming, and there will be NO exception made here.

**Information added**