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We want community opinions on Teaming to help guide future policy decisions.
A long-term solution is in the works with the Developers.
There are also plenty of reasons why the staff has hesitated making a rule against Teaming thus far.
There are questions at the very end that we'd appreciate a response to so that we can hear your opinions.
A long-term solution is in the works with the Developers.
There are also plenty of reasons why the staff has hesitated making a rule against Teaming thus far.
There are questions at the very end that we'd appreciate a response to so that we can hear your opinions.
Hello folks!
One of the hot topics that has surrounded MCSG since forever is the question of Teaming and whether it should be allowed, limited, or banned outright. There have always been very strong opinions for every side with a variety of valid rationale for each side. To make matters worse, any attempts to actually enforce a limit on Teaming would be incredibly difficult to enforce consistently, effectively, or fairly at any scale, which is one of the reasons why the staff has avoided taking any hard stances against it. This is a hot topic with no right or easy answers.
But as part of our commitment to improving our players' experience with our gamemodes, we would like to use this as an opportunity to explore the community's opinions and gather feedback to better inform the leadership team's decisions on this topic moving forward.
This is a prickly situation that is sure to be met with some passionate arguments, but I hope we can keep this civil and give enough rational arguments that can better enhance our decision-making process when we do decide to take a stand on this matter. We can't guarantee that we will implement everything the way you want it to be to the letter, but we at least want to see if there is a middle-ground that we can reach to improve things in the short-term.
The Long Term Solution: an MCSG Queue System
In the long term, the Teaming question will already be solved. With a few additional months of development, Chad and the Devs plan to implement an MCSG Queue System that is split between Casual and Competitive gamemodes. Emulating other successful popular games on the market today, this effective system will allow us to deliver the best of both worlds: a party-allowed queue for casual players who want to Team with their friends, and a No-Teaming randomized queue for competitive players to play against each other while only relying on their own solo abilities. We even hope to implement some level of skill-based matchmaking in a future version as well.
This queue system is one of our most innovative and exciting new features, and it has become a core development goal for the Development Team.
But while we will have a solution in the long term, we're here to talk about what we want to do in the short term. We are currently exploring options that would make people happy right now now while development continues on that future queue system.
The Teaming Dilemma
Everyone Teams for a reason, and everyone hates Teams for a different reason. The problem is that we often see and hear the same reasons and opinions coming from the same people; the only difference is what side of the Team they are on.
So this is the Teaming Dilemma:
Everyone likes to Team and win,
but No One likes to get Teamed on and lose.
The problem for us is balancing these two desires and outcomes in the same gamemode (a note about Solo SG below). If we ban Teaming, everyone who likes to Team will be upset. But if we allow for unrestricted Teaming, everyone who dislikes Teams will be upset. And often times, we hear both sides of the complaining from the same people, so any attempts at implementing any limits was previously seen as a lose-lose situation.
Why Would a Limit or Ban Be So Hard?
There are plenty of reasons why we haven't implemented a limit before, but here are the top arguments I see made. Reason #3 is my biggest concern.
- Reason #1: People really like to Team with their Friends.
Look, I really can't emphasize more how much Teaming is enjoyed by both casual and clan competitive players. People like to play with their friends, and something about the dynamic and semi-random nature of battle royale games only encourages players to cooperate in order to overcome weaker individual players. This aspect of the game is a big draw for people, and the rush of gratification that comes with an easy kill is intoxicating to many. Putting a limit or ban on teaming will be seen as us attempting to put a damper on people having fun with our game, and that drives people to be very hostile towards us as a staff and community, and may even result in many players leaving over this policy.
Heck, if we had a policy that banned Teams, then we would have effectively disbanded our entire Clan Battle community. If no one can Team, there's no point in having a clan and there's no way for clans to face off against each other. We'd be trading the pro-Teaming playerbase for the anti-Teaming playerbase, and I don't want to have a policy that resorts to such extremes.
- Reason #2: It's in the Books.
This is perhaps the oldest argument being made in Teaming's defense. It's an application of the cummulative property: MCSG is based on the Hunger Games, the Hunger Games had Teaming, therefore MCSG should have Teaming. I don't necessarily think it's the strongest argument to make, but I did want to put it here for all of the Hunger Games purists out there.
- Reason #3: It's an Exciting In-Game Dynamic.
If you drop solo into a match of MCSG, and you run into another player, can you trust them? When they duck repeatedly to signal a truce, you still have to ask yourself, "can you really trust them?" This exciting dynamic of potentially forming tenuous teams in the middle of a game with an unknown player adds quite a bit to the drama and enjoyability of a game of MCSG. Heck, some of our previous players met friends and clan mates by complete accident because they met up in a match and made a good Team. By removing or limiting Teaming, we remove or diminish the likelihood of this happening at all, and thus removes an exciting social element from the game in exchange for a solo survival experience.
- Reason #4: Enforcement would be incredibly difficult to do efficiently.
As a Community Manager, I see enforcement of such a rule as my biggest issue with any Teaming policy.
The nature of Teaming is different from hacking, swearing, insulting, or exploiting in that it is an action that is almost entirely determined by context; the series of actions you take on their own are innocent, but put together in certain circumstances, and they suddenly become a punishable offense. It isn't an action that is obviously detectable by any system automated system, and it will require human intelligence to parse through. Because of this dependence on humans and the nature of Teaming in general, validating an instance of Teaming will be slow, plausible exceptions and false positives will occur with some frequency (if an attack occurs with a third party attacker, would that be considered Teaming?), and the sheer scale of Teaming due to its popularity will cause a massive backup of Teaming offenses to be handed out.
Furthermore, collecting evidence that are punish-worthy won't be an easy task either. Simply put: how can you come up with a foolproof way of collecting evidence and proving that a group of players are Teaming? A picture certainly wouldn't do, but what would a video need to contain in order to definitively show Teaming? If a player gets attacked by two players at once, is it Teaming or simply a third-party attack? If we get a video of two players going for the same chest, emptying its contents, and then running off, is that Teaming or two players racing to grab gear before retreating? If two players are running and following each other around the map, are they Teaming or simply one player being pursued by the other? If we simply limit Teams to 2, what is there to stop a pair from having a third player following far behind in order to plausibly deny being part of the Team? If there is a Team but one player dies before being able to kill anyone, should they still be punished for being a Team? If a player dies to a giant Team but they have no video to show that, won't they still be as upset- if not moreso- that the Teaming occured yet nothing could be done about it? How long must a video be in order to definitively prove Teaming? And at the end of the day, if our staff has to wade through 5 minute videos each time someone reports a Team, those are 5 minute that aren't spent pursuing more serious rule-breakers like hackers and insulting players. These are all considerations that we have to make on a policy such as this, and there are plenty of holes in any strict policies that we make on this matter.
In the absence of any effective way of identifying Teamers, any sort of limit or ban on Teaming will create great difficulty for the staff team in enforcing that rule. That is one of the reasons why we have always been apprehensive about making such a rule: no matter what we do, it will be an eternal struggle for our staff team.
- Reason #5: SoloSG Exists.
No, seriously, why doesn't anyone play it? It's the mode everyone clamors for, it's an immediate solution to the problem we have here, yet no one plays it or can tell me why they don't play it. It's caught in the circular logic of, "No one plays it because the servers are empty, and the servers are empty because no one plays it."
But even with those five reasons given, we are willing to explore changes in our current policy if we feel that such a policy would benefit the network more than it would hinder it. That is the main motivation behind this thread: we want to know what you all think is a fair response to this issue.
Community Feedback: What Do You Think is Fair?
Now we get to the community feedback of the thread, the part where you tell us what you think. In addition to the poll above, I would love to hear your in-depth opinions and ideas for what our policy should be towards Teaming and why.
For the sake of making the responses easy to read, these are the questions I'd like you guys to directly answer to the best of your abilities. Feel free to copy and paste them into your response if that helps you format your thoughts.
- Should Teaming be allowed on MCSG? If so, what is the maximum number of players allowed to Team in a game?
- What would you consider undeniable and actionable evidence of Teaming if it were captured in video evidence?
- What do you think would be a justifiable punishment for those who violate your hypothetical Teaming policy?
- (Bonus Question) What can we do to make SoloSG more popular?
As mentioned before, the leadership team and I will be reading over all of the opinions posted here over the next few days in order to guide our decision-making process. So please do not spare any detail in your thoughts or throught processes, but please keep all discussions civil. We are here to learn what opinions the community has on this very controversial topic.