- Interested in helping out RGL and being a part of the staff team? Open staff positions and applications for SUMMER 2024 can be viewed here. The 6s Staff team is looking for someone interested in joining as an admin or moderator!

- Click here to complete S14 Post-Season Survey! Survey closes in on Apr 9th @ 11:59PM EDT!

- Click here to complete RGL LAN 2024 Survey! Survey closes in Apr 7th @ 11:59PM EDT!

Update to RGL Staff Applications, Competitive Plugins, and April Bans

   exa   - 5/5/2020

RGL Staff Applications


Thank you for everyone that applied for the administrator and moderator positions for Traditional 6v6 and Highlander. Applications for these positions have ended and we are in the process of adding these new members to the team. The new 6v6 admins can be seen in the article here and the new HL team will be listed in the next Highlander article.

We are also opening up two positions: Marketing Director and Guide Writer.

  • Marketing Director - As a marketing director, you will help with seeking sponsorship and partnerships with different companies and organizations. This will be used to help support our existing formats, cups, and future LANs that RGL will plan to run. Previous experience in this field is recommended.
  • Guide Writer - As a guide writer, you will help with the RGL guides project. This may consist with helping with writing guides for new players, editing guides, tutorials, or doing voice-overs for videos. Players are expected to have previous competitive experience at a high level or have played TF2 for a long time to help with producing these guides.


Current vacant staff positions can be seen here.

If you would like to apply for staff, you can fill out a form

here

from there we will go through the submissions and potentially ask for a follow up.


Competitive Plugins


In the competitive plugins survey, this poll is to gauge player interest regarding these plugins that exist. The full results of the survey can be seen here. Please note that this includes results from players of all formats and divisions. Plans to display results for players of separate formats will be looked into.

For the competitive fixes (and some features), however, we are looking to implement them, but a few current logistical issues must be addressed before such are mandated in the league. These include having serveme contain the updated plugins and updating the RGL plugins to include them in a package for server operators to seamlessly install them to their servers. It should be noted that the TF2 Comp Fixes plugin only supports Linux servers, which can be another hurdle for players that use Windows servers. While we understand that players would like some of these plugins, the task of ensuring that servers contain the updated plugins is important, as many server operators may not know where to properly install them or know that they exist. We are currently working on addressing these issues to properly ensure that servers have them installed. A subsequent article will be released with more details in the future.

The fixes/features we aim to currently include are:

  • Ramp slide bug fix - Prevents players from randomly stopping while sliding up a ramp (88% yes - 696 votes)
  • Random fall damage fix - This fixes the RNG element to fall damage, which is multiplied by 0.8-1.2 (88% yes - 695 votes)
  • Sticky Delay fix - When enabled with sm_fix_sticky_delay 1, stickies will no longer fail to detonate when swapping weapons. (88% yes - 694 votes)
  • Ghost crossbow bolts fix - When enabled with sm_fix_ghost_crossbow_bolts 1, crossbow bolts will no longer pass through teammates when in close range. (90% yes - 717 votes)
  • Removes Halloween Souls - When enabled with sm_remove_halloween_souls 1, no souls will be spawned during the Halloween holiday events. (69% yes - 526 votes) (Due to the removal of souls not having any substantial impact on gameplay, this feature will be included.)
  • When enabled with sm_rest_in_peace_rick_may [1 .. 255], the commemorative Soldier statues will become transparent (values near 0 being opaque, 255 being invisible), and will not collide with players, shots or projectiles. (This was not polled, as the TF2 update came out after the survey. Leaving this unchanged has potentially large impacts on gameplay, so this feature will be included.)


NOTE: Server operators are encouraged to use sm_cvar tf_force_holiday_off 1 rather than "sm_remove_halloween_souls 1", as this command prevents holiday changes altogether.

For the remaining promod features, there remains insufficient testing in the North American scene for us to properly gauge the impact they have on affecting gameplay, as many players have not properly play tested in such an environment yet. These features additionally turn off settings enabled by Valve or revert changes in previous updates that alter the game. As such, we classify these as features and not fixes. Plans to have an offseason cup to test these variables will be looked at in the future.

Links to these plugins can be found here:

TF2 Comp Fixes
Ramp sliding bug fix
Random fall damage fix


RGL Global Rules Updates


The following rule has been moved to the global section:



The following rule has been updated to include that STVs must have at least a 90-second STV delay, rather than just a 90-second STV delay prior to this edit:




Bans


These bans were enacted before the release of this article. If you would like to file a report, you can do so on our site here. This form will be for appealing indefinite bans in RGL.gg and this form will be for appealing all other bans in RGL.


Cheating


The following players have been caught cheating by the RGL Anti-cheat team and will be banned.

  • TheFlandMan - 1-Year - Cheating / First cheating offense
  • Raptohr - Permanent - Cheating / Second cheating offense



Alting


The following alternate accounts have been caught connected to existing accounts in RGL by the RGL Anti-cheat team and will be banned:




Probation


The following players have been banned and placed on probation:

  • deceive - Minimum 3-months - Use of homophobic language and racial slurs during multiple RGL Scrims (3rd ban inside of RGL)
  • Focks - Minimum 6-months - Continued transphobic harassment of another RGL league player. (4th ban inside of RGL, 3rd ban for harassment).
  • Galaxy - Minimum 6-months - Sending death/bomb threats to players in the league.


In any situation involving threats to harm another player in our league, we have taken this seriously. This is listed out in our rules, where we explicitly state that threatening to dox or harm another player constitutes as harassment and are areas that we have taken reports in for:



It is important to keep in mind any report regarding harassment or threats that are sent in, we receive evidence from the reporter that is verified thoroughly and is kept within that party. Death threats are areas that we have taken very seriously, even if said individual does not block the other party. If someone is getting harassed, the recommendation of a person to block the other individual is the first thing that we ask users to do. It is the circumvention of the block by an individual to continue harassing to another individual that we place much more scrutiny in the report.

The length for these death threats are consistent with other cases that the league has dealt with and can be seen with the following individuals:

  • Gnral Grievous - 1 year - Player harassment and sending of death threats.
  • Isaiah - 6 months - Player harassment and sending of death threats.


After the minimum period has been served, the players can appeal to have the ban lifted if they can show that they've improved themselves and how they interact within the community.


Update on players that have been banned while on probation:

  • Scratchh - Minimum 8-Months - Making of unwelcome and inappropriate sexual remarks, homophobic and transphobic comments during RGL scrim and targeted harassment towards players in the league.
  • Drugstoner420_ - Minimum 1-Year - Use of homophobic slurs during RGL scrim. (5th ban inside of RGL, 3rd ban while on probation)
  • edin - Minimum 1-Year - Threats of harm against RGL Staff Members


This case is a pretty straightforward one, but we felt it was important to explain the situation around it. Edin was put on probation at the start of the year, due to his involvement with cases of harassment in the past. Since being put on probation we have received multiple verified reports of Edin but did not cross the threshold of what we believe would violate our conduct guidelines.



The league distances themselves from the behavior of any players in our league that threatens harm against any of our volunteer staff members. We strictly condemn this form of behavior. While the argument can be made that it may be a “joke”, the line was crossed when the individual delivered a threat to a staff member -- who has no connections to the individual.

In our rules around harassment we outline the fact that we typically do not review things outside of RGL, there are a few exceptions to this:



Other recent similar bans:

  • Galaxy - 6 months - Sending death/bomb threats to players in the league
  • Gnral Grievous - 1 year - Player harassment and sending of death threats.
  • Isaiah - 6 months - Player harassment and sending of death threats.


Given these recent incidents, the players previous infractions, and that they are on probation. They have been put on an indefinite ban with an additional minimum sentence. After this period has elapsed, they can appeal to have their ban lifted, provided they can show that they've changed as a member in this community.


League


The following individuals were involved with purposely throwing and undermining competitive integrity in the Invite Highlander Season 5 Grand Finals match. They were banned for 1-year and also were placed on probation. More details on this ruling can be found in the RGL Highlander Invite Season 5 Grand Finals - Ruling:



After further internal reviews, we are adjusting the ban length for a player that played in the match on the same team as the above players. In our initial investigation, we had issued the same length on chad, with the findings that they were involved with the match throw and undermining competitive integrity in the match.

The RGL team believes that the initial length we have issued on chad was not reasonable. Said player was a "ringer" in the match and subsequently had less of a voice in the situation that played out in their match. It should be noted that chad was also less involved with the actions that took place. While the player was complacent with what ultimately occurred, grouping chad with the actions of the rest of the team (additionally, they have never participated in Invite before) was not the correct decision.

We will be adjusting chad's length down to 4-months.



Additionally, the following player involved in the match throw subsequently was involved with a fraudulent attempted chargeback to RGL, as well as lying in the case in an attempt to get a chargeback to go through. They are placed on a permanent ban.




Sportsmanship and Spirit


The following players have/had been suspended for 1-6 weeks for their usage of racist slurs, homophobic or transphobic language, excessive toxicity and flaming, or derogatory language on our platforms. Repeat offenders will get longer ban lengths.

  • Seven1 - Use of homophobic slur on a RGL Platform - 2-weeks / First Offense
  • Minty - Use of racial slur in RGL Official Discord - 2-weeks / First Offense
  • lizard - Using a weapon with a racial slur during a scrim - 2-weeks / First Offense
  • akemi - Use of racial slur in RGL scrim - 3-weeks / First Offense (Increased length due to the player being in Invite)
  • PicoMiko - Excessive toxicity and racial slurs in a scrim - 6-weeks / First Offense
  • rvn - Using a racial slur in a scrim - 6-weeks / 2nd Offense
  • Sei - Use of a racial slur directed at another individual on the RGL forums - 6-weeks / 2nd Offense
  • lolguy - Inappropriate comments in RGL Scrims - 3-weeks / Second Offense in RGL Removed.



Demos


The following players have failed to provide a requested demo. First offenses are a warning in the regular season. Failure to submit a demo after subsequent requests in the regular season or a requested demo in playoffs will lead to bans.




You can read further details and context about each of the player's bans by viewing their discipline history on their RGL profile.