Mic Spamming Clarification

Soupy

Soup Kitchen
Joined
Apr 10, 2008
Messages
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Last night during the admin open house, we were talking about mic spamming and I asked the question, "What if the person is spamming hot key messages like MEDIC MEDIC MEDIC MEDIC and NEED A DISPENSER HERE over and over and over and over?" Someone stated that the servers are set up to stop this type of spamming. Is there a delay between times they can spam? How far is too far with this type of spamming? Can we w/k/b for this?
 
IMO, you can't necessarily ban for in-game character voice spam. It can get annoying, yes, but it's nowhere near as detrimental as mic spam.
 
I know I've had to admin this type of spamming in CS:S and we w/k/b if it got out of hand.
 
TF2 stops you from spamming voice chat too much. I've never had to admin it, never had anyone complain and never have seen anyone have a problem with it.

You shouldn't need to admin anyone for using voice commands.
 
I think it's built into TF2

You have to wait 4-5 seconds after doing it 5 times.

There was this one time where I automatically got kicked from the server for "Spamming commands" while filling, because I apparently hit enter too many times per second when joining.
 
While there is no explicit rule against it, it would fall under General Rule #1. General Rule #1 is the unwritten rule that is the underlying principle behind all the written rules. In a nutshell General Rule #1 is "If it disrupts the server you shall take action against it."

You can spam the hot keys, w/k don't usually need a ban :P
Not usually, but it could escalate to that. Some players may deliberately ignore your warnings and continue their behavior. Some players may come back after a kick and continue their behavior. Most of them are doing it just to push you and test the limits of your authority. It's like the toddler seeing just how many times mom will say "stop that" and "I'm going to count to 10" before getting smack/spanked/grounded/put in timeout/beaten with a stick/having their hand put on the stove. Warnings are just that and do not actually stop or prevent anything. Kicks and bans do that. You have those powers and should not be afraid to use them to enforce General Rule #1. To summarize Foucault*: power is an action, hence power unused is not power at all. Ask yourself if you are willing to ban for this behavior? If the answer is no, then don't bother warning.


*Yes, I realize that mentioning Foucault runs the risk of summoning Caelestis to this thread.
 
I have never seen this bother anyone and it has never bothered me so I am not doing anything about it unless its causing a problem with the people that are playing the game. IMO its a ridiculous thing to admin without other players complaints or unhappiness.
 
Before I was an admin, I did have someone harass me this way before. He spammed Medic key when fully healed and did it over and over and over for entire maps. I asked him nicely to stop and then he started intentionally trolling me with it. I stopped playing medic because of it and I was a demo and he was engie and continued to run in circles around me pressing Medic over and over as much as the game would let him. He would wait the few seconds until he could do it again and then come after me again. He did this to me for 3 days straight until I stopped playing on Dustbowl.

He bothered me so much every time I was on, I even remember his name. He's the only person I ever muted in game (and after getting my G, I unmuted him in case he comes back).

For clarity: I'm saying this is a good discussion because now if I saw someone doing what he did to me, I would w/k for it but then if he continued, would an O back me up for the ban? Because back then when I was an e, I called for help 3 times before leaving on my own because I couldn't play with this person anymore.

The first two times: no one came.
The third time: I was told "Nothing wrong with using in-game chat commands."
 
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before getting smack/spanked/grounded/put in timeout/beaten with a stick/having their hand put on the stove.

I wasn't expecting those last two :P

And Insomnia, that specific case falls under the "griefing" category, which is w/k/b procedure. If you ever see him doing it again, feel free to take action.
 
Yeah, what Maserati said.

With CS:S, I don't believe there's a delay between how many times you can spam radio commands, so over there it's an issue and I have warned and kicked for that before.

In TF2, obviously there's an anti-spam delay between voice commands and I would not warn or kick at all. This is totally fine.
 
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Also, I personally wouldn't have posted this thread here.


I was just thinking the same thing... Was kinda wondering if someone was gonna move it :P

Good question, though. I was just talking to tomain about it because it sometimes irritates me as a medic to hear a full health medic spamming when I'm trying to heal the people on fire an such.


Sent from my owl using howler
 
I know it could be seen as an admin issue but since I experienced this issue when I was still an e, I was actually kind of glad to see it here. And I think the original questions were "Is there a delay between times they can spam? How far is too far with this type of spamming?"

So I think it makes a good discussion for the community. How much IS too much? We all have different tolerance levels. How do we find a good threshold for when it would require admin action? If someone is intentionally being griefed, then that needs action. But maybe the spamming player is just new or young or had too many Mountain Dews that day or something and a private message to tell them to cool it just a little might make everyone else on the server have more fun.

*shrug*

I don't have all the answers but I think it's good discussion.
 

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