Table of Contents
- Prologue
- Abbreviations
- General Feedback
- Wiki & Guides
- Clog Rule
- Penalty Points System (PPS)
- Vouch Request Procedure (VRP)
- Postponed ELO Score (PES)
- Anonymous Player Report System (APRS)
- Moderator Handbook
- Administration’s Comments
- Rule Updates
1. Prologue
Thank you very much to all 34 of 91 vouched players who participated in our survey. The results are now publicly accessible here. You can read our replies to your feedback and questions at the “Administration’s Comments” section.
The brain-storming for the reform process started around the 28th of March. The following changes are the results of our discussions and will be effective immediately starting next season. Changes will be monitored, reviewed, and analyzed. Based on the tests, findings, and feedback from the community and moderators during the upcoming season, we will make small adjustments if required or rollback features after a sufficient trial period.
2. Abbreviations
DCP = Disconnection Penalty
PPS = Penalty Points System
PES = Postponed ELO Score
VRP = Vouch Request Procedure
APRS = Anonymous Player Report System
3. General Feedback
The amount of moderators currently on staff seems to be fine for the community. While they might not be always present in-game, the administrative processes will be supported by the troika. Furthermore, with new changes, we will be shifting some of the workload from the moderators onto our players encouraging active voicing to shape the community.
The community is neutral (47.1%) about how the community is being run while it is nearly a tie between those who think it got worse/better. We hope to have a positive impact with our reform on the community. Perhaps the next survey will have a clearer voting.
4. Wiki and Guides
Most users would read guides and most are willing to participate in helping writing them (or at least give their opinion on it). While the first idea was to migrate the guides to the wiki, players will now get their own forum section to meet the voting's result ("keep things on the forum"). Armed planned to write a few guides, so we hope that you will actively support him! The players and season page will get updates as the wiki was mentioned to be the preferred method to visualize data.
5. Clog Rule
The clog voting was as controversial as any other clog discussion topic. The staff voted internally before the survey and with the survey having a tie of 23.5% for option 1 & 3, we have decided to implement rule 3 (!ff) as our official rule:
- Value has to be above half of the recommended value
- There cannot be two consecutive clogs happening (clog defined by general definition). If so, team must !ff.
6. Penalty Points System (PPS)
Instead of ban durations when rules are broken, we will be using fixed penalty points. The penalty scores will be publicly accessible here. Here are the offenses we have labeled:
Account Sharing 5
AFK 2
Anti-Stuck Abuse 3.5
Command Abuse 3.5
Dark Green/Pulling 1.5
Disconnecting 0.20 + DCP
Rage quitting 3.5 + DCP
Dodging a Game 2
Dodging an Unvouch 10
Flaming 1.75
Ghosting 8
Intentional Clogging 3
King Juggling 5.5
Maphack 10 + ban on all ENT bots
Mercenary without leaving 4
Mercenary immediate leaving 0 + DCP
Unintentional no heal 1
Intentional no heal 2.5
Not Drawing 2
Pause Abuse 4
To avoid rule benders and possible abuse of the system, we will add an overlap period (anti-exploit measure): 2 weeks before a season ends and 1 week after the next season starts. If you violate any rules during the last 2 weeks of a season, your points will be migrated to the next season - instead of getting reset to zero. However, if you do not violate any rules in the first week of the next season, your points will be reset to zero. We hope that there will be no one who will attempt to exploit the penalty point system.
7. Vouch Request Procedure (VPR)
The VRP consists of three steps: First, the validation process: The administration will do a background check concerning applicant’s ban history (flaming & game ruining) and whether all of the vouch criteria are met. Second, the review process: Moderators will review for fundamental LTD skills, strategies, and concepts. If basic skills are missing, application will be denied. Moderators will post their review result and whether they approve or deny for trial. Third, the trial period: Applicants will be given 2 weeks to adjust and show their capability within LIHL. League players are encouraged to mentor and guide applicants. Once the trial period is over, moderators will decide whether the applicant should be permanently vouched for the season.
New Format:
Code: Select all
[b]Tell us what other previous league or in-house experience you have:[/b]
[b]Provide a list of aliases. These are names that people might recognize you as:[/b]
[b]If possible, provide a list of LIHL players who might know you or that you are acquainted with:[/b]
[b]Attach at least two LTD Mega 3.41 game replays (one as yolo, other as a holder) that represent your skill (do not provide replays where you go merc, cross-build, double-build or aura swap as these tactics are not allowed in LIHL):[/b]
[b]Provide 5 lihl games you have observed as an observer:[/b]
[b]Take a random wc3 screenshot, attach it, and private message it to recipient “LIHL Moderators” (LIHL Guide -> SS-Test):
[b]Any additional information that you would like to provide:[/b]8. Postponed ELO Score (PES)
Punishing players for their disconnections with ELO will manipulate their ELO score during the season. Therefore, we will be collecting the dc penalty ELOs and apply them at the end of the season: your season elo - the accumulated dc penalty ELO = your final season ELO. By doing so, the punishment only exists virtually without affecting one’s ELO which should solely approximately represent a player’s skill. Once the new season starts, your ELO will be wiped anyway. The “correction” of your ELO is only for documentation purposes (e.g. wiki).
The DC penalty tool will no longer be used. This suggestion should fix the 2nd leaver dc-penalty problem: (ex. a player leaves before a merc picker). To avoid unfairness between the dc player and remaining players in a game, the game must be !drawn once a player leaves/disconnects regardless of what level is active (revised !draw rule). Knowing that moderators cannot take notice of every disconnection, we would like to encourage players to get active with our Anonymous Player Report System.
The data will publicly be accessible here. Every few weeks, the ELO penalty score will be calculated, so you know where you are. Once the season is over, the final score will be calculated.
9. Anonymous Player Report System (APRS)
To encourage players to report others without getting flamed or "starting dramas", we will be using an online form. Moderators will no longer accept whispers, private messages, or forum topics. If you want to report something/someone, you will need to use this form. There will be no name of who reported; only the violated rule, the game ID, and other report criteria. The moderators will check reports every few days and if approved, they will post a topic in the LIHL archive to make it an official punishment. The punishment will then be applied via our new PP-S. Players should feel obligated to report those who ruin their games or forcing them to !draw as moderators cannot observe every game.
The data will be publicly accessible here.
10. Moderator Handbook
The very first step in our reform process was to create a handbook for league moderators, just like the one for ENT staff administration. Here’s a quote from the handbook’s prologue:
“The LIHL handbook is a guideline created by the Enterprise Gaming Administration in collaboration with the League moderation, explaining and elaborating the duties of a moderator and the tools necessary to do so. The purpose of the guide is to help shape a coherent enforcement of the rules among moderators.”
11. Comments
In the following paragraphs, we will be commenting on your feedback and wishes in a form of a FAQ. Your comments will be labeled as ‘Q’ and ours as ‘A’. Commentaries including insults and flames towards players have been removed from quotes.
The following FAQ is about your general feedback.
Q: “If there is a clog report, I think 3 mods should watch the replay and then discuss whether or not they think it is intentional clog or not. They need to come up with an informed decision and then pose a united front. At the moment it seems the regular players have too much power over mods. Talking back to mods should not be allowed, there should be a section to complain about admins and a red name should look at it. This business of attacking mods in open forum is not healthy. Especially since most of the time it is done in a rude way.”
A: So there seem to be two suggestions: 1) to have many mods review a case = This requires more administrative bodies to accomplish, so considering current number of LIHL mods, this is not feasible or productive. 2) We cannot really control who talks to whom. We do rely on moderators' professionalism to be un-biased. However, since the LIHL mod team is rather small, decisions are usually communicated well and team-oriented. As for recent bad-mouthing and insults incidents, we will not permit further ill-mannerism and disrespect towards bodies of this community. The troika will help resolve moderation conflicts.
Q: “Mods need to focus more on the game play, and rather penalize the abusers(people who repeats abuses like un-hosting games, building to snipe other lanes units, clogging)”
A: With structure changes, creation of the staff handbook, and new suggestion implementations, moderation, overall, should be more transparent and agreeable.
Q: “In my oppinion should be harsher on handling rule-violations. All this "first time = just a warning" or "but he is an active player ..." and stuff like this is just unfair and not reasonable.”
A: With the new Penalty Points System (PPS), this should no longer be a problem. As well as with the new mod handbook which has clear guidelines on how to deal with cases.
Q: “Command abusers. " !lihlabort and such..”
A: While the mods already take care of these cases, players should actively be involved and report violators. We will be implementing a report procedure. PMs and bnet whispers reporting a violator will no longer be acceptable.
Q: “People don't listen to good players and don't get punished for playing bad and doing non optimal builds just because it works out.”
A: It should be natural to realize who is better between one another. Newbies should be willing to learn and veterans should be open to teach newbies during their trial period. If newbies refuse to listen and learn, you can report their behavior and this may influence their chance of getting permanently vouched. However, the way some players talk to others, it isn't surprising why anyone would want to listen to a rager. Explain the wrong choices, explain the best choices. No need to bad mouth the player. Give them a better strategy for next time if they are unfamiliar with a specific units. There is no need to rage on them. We find that being respectful first and give tips and hints to the players builds is more effective than just hammering them yelling "wtf you doing".
Q: “If somebody goes to report another player, he/she is often getting flamed by this player and also his friend, though he/she just wanted to make sure all are playing accordingly to the rules.”
A: We have created a new procedure for this: requests will stay anonymous.
Q: “stop implementing so many rules. it lowers the fun factor for which i play for”
A: A league is a competitive place. It is already sad to even have the demand for adding rules such as command abuse or afking. If players would step up to the level which is required, we could drop many rules. It isn't gonna happen so soon though.
Q: “protect the pro play (cause on last season they protect the noobplay and we force to play like pubs to not get banned”
A: It used to be "pro" to juggle the king, to merc, cross/double build, to anti-stuck abuse all in order to win. The league is designed to play single lane without any abuses of game mechanics, glitches, hacks, etc. The best way and most professional way to play this game is not to abuse these mechanics.
Q: “we cant respect mods since they r not good on game we did respect diablo cuz since he is here he is on top and play a good game”
A: This is simply a no-go and sadly reflects a major issue of this league: the lack of respect towards each other. ENT mods aren’t chosen by skill and LIHL mods either. Of course, you need a basic knowledge of the game and it is true that if you understand the game better and are practically also good, it is a plus. However, moderators do not necessarily need to be top players to enforce rules which are not based on gaming skills. They do the boring administrative work and for that they invest some time of their lives; and get bad-mouthed anyway. The sooner you learn to respect one another including mods, low elo players or anyone else, we will have a better gaming community.
The following FAQ is about the punishment system and duration.
Q: “disconnecting should be 1 point if there will be no dc penalty also no heal should be 1 or 2 points”
A: 1-2 points for dc seems too much in that disconnection frequency varies greatly by player’s geo-location. It is also true though that a player who disconnects too often should not be playing and continuing to play while knowing that one’s internet is unstable should be considered game ruining. We will apply a 0.20 point for disconnections.
Q: “if this points system, then only in combination with the current temporary ban/unvouch system. or the smart lihl player will abuse the rules in the last days of the league as long as he hasnt enough points yet. for the combination i would vote Yes.”
A: Mixing the PP-S with the unvouch makes it way too complex, so no.
Q: “i complain only for mermecary..we have to put it out..cause its a % to press it by mistake when have lag“
A: How can you press on an icon by mistake unless you hysterically click around? We have adjusted the merc rule: If a user chooses a merc (intentionally or not) and leaves immediately as per our rule, dc penalty will be applied and only DC ELO points will be given. All other players will receive elo for their “inconvenience”. Further penalty points will only be given to those who refuse to leave as merc and game ruin. The ELO changes will be made according to our PES.
Q: “ppl will abuse this, by committing just enough rule breaking to stay at 9 points, or wait till end of the season to break rules”
A: We have set up countermeasures to such scenarios. Read about our finalized implementations.
Q: “i like the idea but the no heal penalty should be at least 2.0 since players tend to miss heal very often which can make a 100% won game into a loss and that basically makes it a lot worse than pulling”
A: While it can ruin a game, it often happens "by mistake" (see above regarding merc). We have separated no heal to “intentional” and “unintentional” no heal. Those who refuse to heal will be penalized for game ruinning and those who are “not focused” or “forget” to heal, will also receive small penalty points as a warning (should still be effective if repeated).
Q: “Why not make it elo based ? people lose elo, instead of points. Maphack and and the other stuff like that, gives unvouch anyway.”
A: ELO is an approximate measure of skill. It is a rating system, not a penalty system. Do note about our new PES procedure.
The following FAQ is about the vouch procedure.
Q: “vouches need to be trials for a season, and be reviewed at end of season”
A: One season is too long. Two weeks seems like a reasonable time length for a newbie to adjust to the league and show his potential.
Q: “if the above were to be implemented it would have to be at least 70% positive votes to get accepted to avoid players to vote in unskilled friends for the format it should require at least 4 replays with good yolo plays and at least 1 well played hold”
A: We considered accepting newbies for a trial period if personally vouched by several (5 players) players from the league, however, we have concluded that feedback and comments are enough. Vouch requirement will be changed to at least two submitted replays (one as yolo, one as a holder) + two random replays picked by moderators.
Q: “it is hard to say. Cause replays that people are being judged by are almost never like lihl games, people have to send in pub replays. and i personally think that mods should just look into, basic skills needed to start in lihl, and then maybe focus more on the trial periods.”
A: Basic skills are already a criteria. Despite pub games not being the same as lihl games, the fundamentals are the same: what towers to build for certain levels, when to overbuild to hold and prepare against sends, when to push, when it is reasonable to leak, tower balance, teamwork, player behavior, send decisions, etc. We will also start to check applicant’s ENT ban history to judge whether a player is suitable for the review process.
Q: “I think possible vouches should have one mandatory LIHL game with LIHL players. Even if the game was drawn at the start so there was no elo involved. Showing replays is fine, but LIHL is insanely different to public.”
A: Not sure whether enough lihl players will agree to play a no elo game for a player who has not even been trial vouched. Plus, it also seems unfair to ask a newbie to prove himself in his first LIHL game when he has never played an LIHL game before. We will however make it a vouch requirement to observe at least 5 games.
Q: “Previous bans on the "pub-bots" and the "overall-behaviour" of the player should have a bigger impact.”
A: As mentioned above. Should be part of the "are you suitable for the review..".
Q: “Yes. Most player who get vouched, link there top 5 replay with archer/aqua etc against an outrolled noobteam at 1100 server. Watching this replay we know nothing about their skill in general. Some ideas from he: mods should judge on X random replays and X linked replay. also some replays which show how player handel bad rolls. Maybe also new players should forced to obs some lihl games.”
A: 2 submitted replays, 2 random ones will be required for more accurate review and to keep the amount of replays to review manageable for mods. Vouch requirement will be changed to at least two submitted replays (one as yolo, one as a holder) + two random replays picked by moderators.
Q: “when he get vouch he have to obs at least 10 games so he can see how towers works at lihl with startegy and team play”
A: We will be making it a requirement for applicants to observe at least 5 lihl games.
12. Rule Updates
The following rule updates will be enforced starting Sunday (19th April, 2015).
- Unsigning during player drafting is considered game dodging.
- Rooting bosses with an Ent tower in order to stuck them and thereby stopping the movement is considered a glitch exploit.
- The observer spot can be denied to players who are not in the vouch trial phase or a moderator if there're at least
- 1 veto in 2vs2
- 2 vetoes in 3vs3
- 3 vetoes in 4vs4
The following two points are merely recommendations to improve the quality of the league and are not to be seen as rule updates. They are thereby not officially binding and are not subject to punishment.
- To avoid playing a game format you dislike, make use of the !players command to check the game in queue before !signing into the game. Do not hastily !sign after a game to ensure a spot. If you do !sign and the game is auto-hosted right away, you will be obligated to play the game.
- We ask you to yield the observer spots to non-league players, especially vouch request applicants, who are interested in LIHL.
The next survey will be in the next season's halftime or at the end of it.
Thank you very much to all users who have participated in the survey and to the staff members who have actively helped writing this reform.
-LIHL
