[Resolved] Ban Appeal (kind of)

[Cortex]

In-Game name: Cortex
Time of Ban: 03:26
Date of Ban: 05-29-21
Steam ID: STEAM_0:1:50086532
Reason for Ban: Inappropriate Language


Hello. I'd like to ask you to investigate whether it is possible to change my entry ban to communications ban only, perhaps even for a longer period. I don't have anything against the blocking itself, it's absolutely fair and reasonable.

To give context: this is my second ban (the previous one was comms block for three days in February), and it was again because of my meltdown caused by HLStats. The meltdown itself was caused by an extremely bad luck of facing and dying to wrong players. I try to keep it as a rule to play until I get out of negative daily score, if I get into it. At the moment I was banned I had been playing for about three and a half hours trying to win my points back, but for the whole time I had been quite consistently 100-150 points down. I started raging at people after about two hours of my attempts. I fully understand, and even understood at that point, that it wasn't their fault, but all things considered (I was expecting no more than a mute for a week or two) I decided that going for insults and thus cooling down was overall the best option for me.

Language aside, I always play fair and never spoil other people's game (at least gameplaywise), no matter how hard I am frustrated. I suppose that you've banned me that way not to specifically stop me from joining your servers, but rather to better discourage me from talking like that. If that's the case, then, as I've mentioned, I would prefer to trade my ability to play on your servers for a longer mute period.

And speaking of discouraging: please let me know how long the next ban will last in case I get reported for bad language again, so I don't just hope for the best.

Thank you in advance for your time.

And sorry for mistakes, if any. I've done my best to proofread it, but I've probably missed some.

 

[VintagePC]

Hello,

Your ban appeal has been received and I'll review the situation. I'll let you know the outcome in (typically) 24-48h.

~Vintage

 

[VintagePC]

Hi there,

We've reviewed the situation and your explanation, and we think the request is reasonable. We're willing to commute the punishment from a complete ban to a comms ban only - especially since it appears the issue was just general negativity and anger as opposed to a targeted or malicious attack at others.

Tell you what - why don't you reply and propose a length of time you think is reasonable in exchange?

Unfortunately I can't really offer a lot of insight into what the length of a future infraction would be. Generally, the staff will use their judgement and consider a number of factors including the severity of the infraction, specifics of the incident, and general impact to the experience of others in the server (I think this one probably weighed heavily in your situation). We also consider a record of prior infractions as something that warrants an increase in duration.

As an additional note - while most folks find the ranking system a fun curiosity or use it for healthy competition, if you find it is causing too much frustration in your gameplay, it is possible to disable this via the "hlx_menu" command in game. If memory serves you can either disable your ranking entirely or choose to just not be notified of points changes.

I've been in the same boat a few times where I hit a bad streak against some new players and drop several hundred points for a while. It's not fun but I usually find that I'll regain those points within a session or two against a different set of players or in a different server. For me if I get frustrated I'll take a break and do something else rather than try to make up the loss; with how I play I just end up taking silly risks and losing even more points

If it helps with your understanding - it's much harder to maintain a given score in a server full of newbies than it is if there's a wider range of skill present - and it's specifically designed that way so that it is hard to remain in a high-ranking position just by going full on meat-grinder mode against significantly lower-ranked players. This can also be somewhat confounded by the fact that everyone (even skilled players from TF2 coming over) start at 1000 points and still have to work their way up. We see about 1-200 new players in a given 24h period and this is something that should even out more over the longer term as every player achieves rankings that are more inline with their actual skills.

Best,
~Vintage

 

[Cortex]

Wow. Honestly, I didn't expect such detailed reply. Thank you!

Speaking of duration – to tell the truth, when I was playing that day, I estimated it as 5-10 days of comms block. I remembered that my previous block had lasted three days, and since I tried to be at least a bit more behaved than that time (and you're right, I indeed tried to refrain from personal attacks and focused more on enemy team in general instead), I thought that, be it my first ban, it wouldn't be anything more than three days of mute. And since it was going to be my second one, I expected it to be around two-three times longer. Round to some nice numbers, and there you have it: 5-7-10 days of mute. Had I known it was going to be more severe, I would've almost certainly kept playing silently until dawn and then gone to sleep in anger. Anyhow, I can't propose it.

However, yesterday I gave live TF2 a try and played on a 24/7 Dustbowl server for a while, on which I used to play really often before TF2C. Surprisingly enough, it turned out to be not as trashy as I remembered it So now I think I'm fine with two weeks of ban as it is now. I'll entertain myself in live TF2 for this period, but will come back quicker as a fully functioning member of society, so to speak.

As for the ranking system – I know that at least the notifications can be disabled, and I even used to play with them turned off. It worked at first, but I ended up playing with my stats page opened in a browser and refreshed after every death But I don't recall having an option to disable the ranking entirely, will look it up again on my return. Anyway, I think the core of the issue is not in the ranking system itself (thought I still believe it's far from perfect). Somewhere around winter-spring of 2020 I suddenly started playing almost all FPS games, from TF2 and BF1 to CS:GO and Quake, much better (in terms of aim) than I used to, and in autumn this magical skill boost disappeared as suddenly as it had come. By suddenly I mean in a span of several weeks. I don't know what it was and why it happened, but I hate that now I again miss tons of shots, and even more I hate the fact that I can't blame anyone or anything for it. Since that I've started paying more attention to my rank and stats, because basically HLStats was the only thing that gave me the feeling of progression, and that's why I rage that much when I get into big negative scores and fail to get out of them. I guess that's what is wrong with me.

And again, thank you for your time.

 

[VintagePC]

You're welcome - I do my best to treat every appeal independently, fairly and with transparency - it doesn't help anyone if the appeal comes back as just a yes or no from behind closed doors. Everyone makes mistakes and it's how we handle them that makes all the difference. Sometimes all we need is a bit of a wake-up call to realize there is something that could be addressed. I'm glad this turned out well as it makes my day when a potential conflict such as this is resolved amicably.

I can appreciate that you have changed your mind and are now okay with sitting out your punishment as-is; either way the offer still stands if you wish to come back from live TF2 sooner.

I definitely relate in terms of using the ranking to look at progression; there's that sense of accomplishment when you move up the ladder and earn awards or get a sweet kill on someone who's got a few thousand points more. I do know I saw a "no ranking" type option somewhere - either in game or perhaps it was on the staff back-end - so if you decide you'd like to go that route and can't find it yourself just let me know and I'll see what I can do for you. Another suggestion I can offer is perhaps if you feel you're getting too caught up in the points you can try focusing on some of the other progression options instead like the daily ribbons for certain activities. I've always found them satisfying to earn and it gives me a chance to get practice at things I might nor ordinarily choose when I feel like trying something new.

See you soon,

~Vintage

 

[Cortex]

Thank you. See you again in two weeks