- Jan 25, 2023
- 104
- 3
What is your type of punishment? Ban
What platform was the punishment on? Servers
What is your SteamID? 119872527
Who applied the punishment?
When were you punished? Mar 11, 2025
Briefly summarize what led to you getting banned. Why should we unban you/shorten your ban length? The ban states rule 19.
"Do not friendly during map testing sessions."
I can assure you I was never friendly in test sessions, and this is not the reason.
On todays testing session, towards the very end of the round, I found an out of bounds bug, because I often test for these, it’s part of my routine on maps I have never seen to explore them for a little bit to get an idea of the layout and test for common problems. In this case, this was at the very end of the round. I feedbacked it. I even left it in time before the round ended, could have been in there for like 30 seconds. But a user got mad at me on chat for always doing this (Being finding out of bounds bugs). I didn’t disobey the host; I literally left the spot and feedbacked it after the first time I found it. So how is this a warning? What am I being warned for, just finding a bug because I have a history of finding bugs? This is ridiculous. I am trying to help.
So please do not use rule 19 as I am not a friendly player and that is misleading to everyone. I think any regular player can vouch that I play seriously, as a matter of fact I was top scoring and defending the intel the moment I got banned.
This was stated to be a second warning and thus ban. So for context on the first one: I had discussed this with Brokk, about the first warning, which I felt was also unfair. We were playing on a map which spawn doors on a slope. I noticed that another engineers’ teleporter was making me hit the top of the door blocking me from walking directly forward, and figured out that spawn could be blocked with a teleporter, and placed down mine to check. This does not fully block the spawn door, it just made it so you could not walk forward; you could jump over it, and there was a second spawn door that was unobstructed. I went off to fight on the objective, and then I died. I was about to demolish the entrance because I spectated players getting stuck, but then I was immediately kicked, no warning, didn’t get told to delete the entrance or anything. I was planning to and would have immediately deleted the entrance if told. I rejoined after that and kept testing like normal.
Then in another map I found a bug where you could place buildings inside a small hole in the roof of spawn which had a hole in the clipping if you did a complicated sentry jump. I placed a teleporter and a sentry, and the sentry got destroyed because enemies could fire into that area. I then left the teleporter exit there to see what would happen after the spawns changed. Once the spawns changed, I took the teleporter and noticed that it would just cause you to teleport back to spawn because of a teleport trigger. I then announced in chat, “who wants to take the most useless teleporter” and placed an entrance, which Entropy took, and was then teleported back to spawn. I deleted the entrance afterwards. I was then given the warning. I talked to Brokk and was told that it was probably a miscommunication and that it “would be retracted unless anything else comes up”. So that’s the context for the first warning.
I enjoy testing. I enjoy finding bugs and exploits, and I report them properly every time. And I am not doing this all the time, I play seriously most of every match and if I find something I try to alternate between playing the objective or attacking enemies and reproducing the bug . I never use exploits to ruin the game, I never use them to kill enemy players.. At most I try to catch someone’s attention to show them what I found by firing sticky jumper stickies at them to catch their eye to show them the spot. That is it.
I do not know how it has come to this that I have to defend myself for finding exploits (Which I do not abuse) on a testing server. Finding bugs and exploits is one of the most important parts of testing. I feel like I’m going crazy getting people going after me for finding this kind of bug often. I thought this would be appreciated to find several map bugs to help advance map development. But I am here, getting banned from a testing server for doing testing.
I assume the reason this ban is using rule 19 is because if you are in an out of bounds area, then you are not killing enemy players for a few seconds. No, I don’t think this qualifies as being friendly or ruining the balance. The main advantage of a 24 player game is that a single player underperforming for 30 seconds will not affect the game massively, especially when on the enemy team someone will equally be underperforming. This is not a competitive server. This is not the final version of the map. This map has probably been tested several times most of them without me. It’s not that important for one player to be underperforming (specially if they make up for it in the rest of the match). This is a casual testing match on a server dedicated to testing early versions of maps which are often buggy and most imbalance comes from the layout itself. We are casually volunteering to test maps. If having every player try hard 100% of the time is that important, then go ahead and ban players for being AFK. Ban players for playing trolldier or an ineffective loadout. Ban players for being bad. Can you blame people for not being serious 100% of the time? On this game? When often the layout of the map is what mostly determines the outcome to a massive degree? Do people play seriously when there’s a massive sightline getting everyone killed the second they step outside of spawn, or an impossibly difficult objective that has lost the same team every time for 3 rounds?
We can’t all tryhard all the time, we are not robots. Even so I do most of the time. But I spend time testing for bugs, too, it’s just part of how I enjoy testing maps, and I would have thought it helped.
If you could quantify the behavior that got me banned into a rule, what would it actually be? If you find an out of bounds exploit, do not spend more than 10 seconds looking at it? One problematic area can often lead to the discovery of further exploits, I can often find like 3 in a row. I can tell you from direct experience I’ve found a second and third OOB exploits by going into the first one and then finding ways to re-enter the map, which reveal further holes into the OOB area. So yes, I do think exploring out of bounds areas is actually important.
Now another argument is to do this in the feedback round. I would love to, but it’s way more difficult and there simply is never enough time to explore and theory craft on what exploits the map may have. The grappling hook is very bad for this as you can’t hook to clip brushes and thus you never go high unless there is a visible wall, and the parachute is broken in this mode, which actually makes the majority of exploits impossible, actually. That and you also have to write the actual gameplay feedback you may have.
I was then told to do this in a single player by myself. This is simply ridiculous. I am not your map maid; I am not going to test the 30 maps submitted weekly in single player and look for exploits for the author, which would probably get ignored anyway and have no proper way of submitting the feedback, so it wouldn’t even help. I join a straightforward multiplayer server to have fun with other people and test with other people, where I can interact with others, and see interesting spots with other players and see how the match plays out, I’m not going to sacrifice my time in singleplayer finding 30 maps and manually downloading them and setting them up just for the slight possibility they might have clipping issues. That is not fun and that would be an actual paid job, try to convince literally anyone else to test everyone’s maps in singleplayer for free.
If you want to ban me despite all this, then please implement an actual rule specifying the behavior you don’t want instead of using rule 19. But I genuinely don’t know how you can word it other than “do not spend more than 30 seconds experimenting with a bug”.
You know, I was even self-conscious about it at the time. I suddenly feel anxious when I find a bug because I think a mod will get angry at me. That is why I left the area right afterwards. I don’t know about others, but I joined because I like finding bugs. It’s a special interest of mine. But I feel like I’m walking on eggshells because I found a funny spot and spent 30 seconds trying it out and a mod might get angry at me. It’s making testing feel a lot more like a chore, not just having fun with a lot of other mapping enthusiasts and helping mappers find bugs. I must try hard every single second. You wouldn’t even notice if someone’s AFK having the same effect until they get kicked by the timer. It’s awful and I feel like this is really unfair.
I am a person. I am not a robot. I am playing a silly game for fun. I am volunteering to test your maps for free. If I find an interesting spot, I’m not a machine that immediately goes !fb exploitable spot and moves on immediately. If I find an out of bounds area, I like to look around. I like to explore areas. I like to see how far I can get and if I can find anything else. But I am made to feel like a criminal for this, for spending less than a minute exploring a bug to help the mapper fix it. And *then* I move on and go back to regular gameplay. I don’t stay there for 30 minutes, no one would. If I find a funny spot, or a place where you get stuck, then maybe I spend 20 seconds trying to catch someone’s attention. I think that it is funny for other players to see me stuck in some funny spot, after which they move on or kill me. I am playing a silly game, and I tried to be silly for a few seconds without actually killing people. Maybe I’ll find a funny place to teleport to, and I’ll tell people that I made a funny teleporter, show them around, and *then* I destroy it, and I move on. This is what makes testing fun for me. If I just wanted perfect serious games every time, why would I play a server that’s made for testing buggy, early in development maps? I’m here to find bugs, because that is fun for me, and this is a testing server, so I really feel this ban and warnings are completely unfair.
I don’t know what you want me to do here. How do you want me to change my behavior here. I am a person who tries to think of ways to break the game. It’s my whole reason to play. I’m always trying to think outside the box and find some overpowered engineer spot, or some roof I can build on, or find a way to get out of bounds. It’s just part of how I play, it’s how I try to test and help map authors. Again, I never actually exploit any OOB bugs. So, what do you want for me to do? Am I banned from testing a possible OOB exploit during the match? If I ever see a possible spot, I immediately move on because if I spend 10 seconds on it I will be banned for ruining the balance? I don’t want to feel like I’m walking on eggshells every time I play just because of the way I try to find lots of bugs. Which, if you see a history of my feedback, there is a TON. It helps. They get fixed. No one else finds them and they stay for lots of versions until I mess around. So please, explain to me how do you want me to behave moving forward?
