Guilt By Association

This rule is singlehandedly the biggest oversight I believe I've ever seen on a server before, across all gaming. I've been playing for a week after taking a long break from Gmod, and have been killed roughly 8 times and the report has been thrown out the window due to this rule. 2-3 of those were probably actually from association, but at least 4 are complete lies. My reason for taking this to general discussion is because I've discovered anyone can blatantly claim GBA, write a fitting story, and nothing can be done about it. Why? Because there is no way any staff without seeing actual proof can disprove or prove GBA.

For example:
If I were to walk into a room, kill a T, then walk into the next room and kill someone completely random, I can claim GBA because the logs will simply say "Dako killed a T" and within a few seconds "Dako killed an innocent." The latter wont matter because I killed a T and claimed GBA. Certain people have figured this out, type up a bit of a story saying "Innocent wasn't firing at the person I was firing at, therefore they were clearly associated." What I don't understand if I walk into a room and I see two people shooting, I'm NOT going to join in because I have no idea who is who. I might gun down and innocent and get an RDM report, then get killed by the actual traitor.

How is that an acceptable event? Putting players in a loss/loss situation unless they take a 50/50 shot at killing the right person.

 

This is why evidence is required in certain cases like this because the player could be loophole trolling just to get out of punishment, which will only result in a greater punishment when discovered and taken in consideration by the administration.
If you don't have anything to prove that the player you reported is lying, the staff cannot take action upon the troublemaker since there was not any substantial evidence recorded by the reporter or even a witness.
The staff cannot just take your word over the other. That would be absoulutely unacceptable and abusive for them to do.
If you have a problem with a player, tell the moderator, admin or any staff online on the server to keep an eye on this player, so that they can be aware of their toxic behaviour and have it removed immediately.

 

Sounds like you got a WvW issues + trolling, if that's the case. Take it upon yourself to gather evidence and smack a ban on those who are lying in reports by making a forum report.

GBA is totally legit man. If a traitor starts going ham on everyone, and you have someone in a corner just WATCHING and allowing this to occur without happening, why shouldn't you kill him. Same goes for if a T killed someone and another person witnessed it and the T left the body unid'd.

It's like people responding with "Unid'd" bruh. Get evidence, get them banned for lying, done.

 

What you are describing is called loophole trolling, when people use the rules to lie about the situation to get away with killing random players. They take advantage of the fact that logs aren't perfect and moderators can't watch the entire map at once.

There's a very simple solution. Record while you play. If you go into console and type record filename a .dem file with the filename you chose will be created and record everything from your perspective. If you find someone is trying to lie to get out of a slay, feel free to load the .dem file on dropbox and share it with a mod or make a report on the forums and share it there. The .dem files will record everything from your perspective including the chat logs and voice chat.

If you do not feel like doing that, then do as Alpha Wolfy suggested and tell a mod. We'll keep an eye on suspected players the best we can and if caught loopholing will contact an admin to deal out a harsher punishment than if they had just accepted the slays.

 

The player is not the issue. I don't want to run a video software program 24/7 to try to argue a still extremely difficult to prove rule. Even if I had video proof, it can be interpreted in either way. So long as you're NEAR a terrorist, you're guilty of GBA. The logs have very little insight to situations.

 

I suppose I'll have to just keep OBS running nonstop then, as much as I hate recording myself. It seems like a lot of extra work for staff as well as players.

 

Even though it may be a lot of work, its the best way to stop the people loop holing out of punishments such as slays and bans. It is recommended so that whenever they come back from the first ban they received for lying, hopefully they change and actually play by the rules. If they continue to do this, a longer ban would be placed and less RDM since they like to RDM and lie in reports to keep doing it.

 

Type record (videoname) in console. When you're done, type stop in console. Then go to your gmod folder and submit an online report against that player. Once your folder seems a bit heavy, just clear out the old demo files.
I felt the same way when someone told me this idea but it's really efficient.

 

This situation is similar to someone killing people and giving out the excuse of walking past an un-id with malicious intent. There's no way for moderators to confirm what happened unless they saw the situations themselves (which is rare), and it would not be fair to believe one story over the other due to the fact that it's very possible that the victim may have indeed walked past an un-id. As stated above, this is loopholing, and while it can be a hassle, recording is pretty much the only reliable way to catch loopholers.

The logs can give us simple, straightforward facts about the situation, but unfortunately more complex situations that require human comprehension, such as GBA, are much more difficult to implement (if possible at all) or can cause issues such as extensive strain on the server, which is why the logs are very limited in these types of situations. If another effective system to catch loopholers presents itself without serious drawbacks, I'm sure we'd be more than happy to have it implemented. However, at the moment, this simply doesn't exist. Quite a few loopholers have been caught due to player recordings, which means the efforts are not wasted. There's not much of a choice in how we can catch loopholers; recording, notifying staff, and waiting to see if the future brings anything useful are the only options we really have.

 

Personally, I think a reported player should have to describe the GBA situation and that description should have to fall into line with the logs for the round, or the "GBA" would be considered RDM. Just posting "GBA" after being reported should be an instant slay.

Almost everyone that uses GBA as a reason for killing people should have a fairly good understanding of the rules and this shouldn't be very hard to implement.

EDIT: Also, someone may happen to get away with RDM by using GBA as a loophole, but by doing this they are taking a massive risk. We do not take loopholing lightly here and eventually they will be caught and handed a hefty ban.

 

A good example of GBA is a round I had yesterday.

I was on with Nena and Azure with another two Mods. We were playing at the bank. I heard someone die by the vault and saw two people walk out from the vault. There was an UnID'd body. I calmly glanced back, grabbing the two peoples names as they followed me in and I waited. We all looked at eachother and I quickly ID'd the body and turned, shooting one of the guys. His friend paused and politely he let me reload. he replied over mic going, 'Good job.'

I proceeded to then gun him down as well. He was also a T.

This was me killing them both for leaving he body Un'ID,d but also killing his T Buddy for not helping me kill the T and also not IDing the body. They did multiple things wrong here and really, should have gunned me down as soon as they could because I was going to shoot them both for GBA and not Identifying the body.

 

Kinda makes sense that of you're hanging around someone that's committing a traitorous act and not doing anything, you should be killed.

Could you imagine if this rule was taken away?! Let me stand next to my t buddy that's shooting people and have immunity, even though everyone would know that I was a traitor.

I think it's all about play style. You need to learn when to get away from a t buddy that's committing a traitorous act when you don't want to help him and you might want to learn to shoot first and ask questions later.

 

I think that you forget that this used to not be a rule. God it hindered common sense when it didn't exist.

My best example is 1 player (who won't be named) used to play T rounds by not killing anyone. They would just tag along with their T Friends and ID all the bodies basically as they were falling over. He would report anyone who was killing him because he technically hadn't committed a traitorous act.

I don't think anyone wants go back to those dark times. *shudders*

 

People can lie in a bunch of different ways other than GBA. So if you want to remove the rule because of that then you should remove:

• Unid
• Crossfire
• Hiding traitor equipment
• etc

 

Exactly! Whenever I kill for GBA, I don't just say "GBA". I explain the situation. e.g. "You were with someone holding a mp7, since you did not kill him for the traitorous act, you were GBA" or "You watched someone burn a body with a flare gun and ran off like nothing happened. GBA"

 

I am locking this thread, currently it is just being used for an uneeded argument that will end up in the same place it started. If you wish to continue this conversation with anyone please take it to PMs.