JB Megasuggestion: 6 Rulechanges to combat toxic CTs

aelius · October 28, 2019

Alright I know this is a long read but stay with me. TL;DR at the bottom, but I have six rule changes/additions I would like to suggest to prevent shitty CTs from abusing the current rules to farm kills. Here goes.

I used to love Jailbreak. It was my favorite gamemode to play in GMod or in CS:GO. On SG, I loved JB the best in early 2018; it started to become less fun heading into 2019, and around August of 2019, my feelings about the game on SG changed dramatically. It started as a fun game I could sink time into just fucking around and having a good time with other players, but now it's become a form of emotional roulette. I can have a great time, an O.K. time, or a rage-inducing, hernia-forming shitfest that makes me want to break my keyboard. And I'm willing to bet that if you play T, you identify with that 100%. There's several reasons for this, but the main reason is Jailbreak's rules are being used by a very specific type/set of CT player(s) to inflict as much damage and kill as many Ts as possible, to the detriment of all T players. This has caused a change in not only how the game is played, but the goal of this game. In this post, I will address how I believe the "goals" of JB have changed, the type of CT players that are abusing the rules and ruining the game for Ts, five common situations/rules that ruin rounds for Ts, and ways to mitigate these bad players' behavior. I know everyone won't agree with all the changes I suggest, so I'm hoping to engage a discussion on all the separate rule suggestions I bring up.

The "goal" of Jailbreak

At the top of the JB rules thread, the post says "The guards order the prisoners around, but can shoot them if they're following orders and not attacking. The goal is for Ts to rebel & take control of the prison by killing every CT." This shows the intended goal for Ts is to rebel and kill all CTs. But what does it say about the goal for CTs? I would say the goal for CTs would be to order prisoners around and kill the rebelling players, just like it used to be, and how many players would agree the game should be played. But some very specific people that play CT, who are disliked by a large amount of Ts for their playstyle, would say the goal for CTs is to "kill all prisoners." There's an important distinction there, one that I think the community, and many CTs, have forgot. When I say "these CTs", I mean the players whose sole goal is to rack up as many kills as possible, and confuse the Ts into doing just enough that they can say they're rebelling. These players give confusing orders, they shoot into stacks under the guise of "crossfire", they change the order they said to get damage in ("I said face west, not back!"), and they blatantly fk because they know an admin can't do anything about it if they didn't see it. For simplicity's sake, let's call these players the Epic Bosses. These Epic Bosses know that if an admin didn't see it, they can get away with anything. In fact, some JB players can vouch that these Epic Bosses have even bragged about their intentions when playing CT on the server when admins aren't on. These are the CT players that make the game terrible for Ts. They turn T gameplay from a game about following orders and eventually rebelling, to a game where you have to decipher their rules like decoding the Rosetta Stone and hope they don't freeshoot you even when you do follow their order.

Now, onto the common situations/rules that I believe make this game AIDs for Ts.

1) "It was crossfire, my bad. Not slaying though."

Crossfire is a rule implemented with good intentions, but has been delivering bad results. Crossfire for Jailbreak is just association for TTT. Now, instead of a CT making an effort to only kill the one rebelling T in a stack, it's all too common for a CT to target the T as much as possible, and if they kill anyone else in the process, "well who gives a fuck, I'll just claim crossfire and not slay". Yeah, the admin might have seen a CT just kill 6 people in the killfeed, but they didn't see it happen, so they can't act. Crossfire has also allowed for CTs/Epic Bosses to take more risky engagements against Ts with weapons. Before crossfire was abused, if someone had a pistol with other Ts in medic, you bring the Ts out, line them up, find the pistol, and take it. Now, Epic Bosses can try to fire into medic to kill the person with the pistol, commonly crossfiring other Ts that are being used as bait. I propose that a CT can only claim crossfire for either 1 or 2 collateral kills. Anything over that and crossfire should not cover them. If this rule change was implemented, not only could admins slay CTs who crossfire over that amount, but players can go back to policing other players to slay for crossfire like how it was before crossfire started to be abused. I play CT, and when I crossfire multiple people trying to kill a rebeller who is using them as bait, I slay. I don't have to, but I just ruined the round for the people I killed. I'd much rather be forced to slay for crossfire, then let the Epic Bosses use crossfire as an excuse to get a 4K.

2) "I'm not going to repeat the order. Do the order."

This happens to all Ts. Completely disregarding situations where people simply have bad mics or quiet mics, there are times where Epic Bosses maliciously change the way they deliver an order to make it unclear. Epic Bosses say the order as fast as they can so that if you're not listening intently to their $5 walmart microphone you can't hear them. When you ask them to repeat, they either do the same thing, or say "I don't have to repeat my order, just follow it." I'm not being figurative when I say every player on JB has an experience where an Epic Boss gives an order that sounds like Tom Hardy had cleft lip and was trying to speak in moon runes. No one can understand them, and then they sit there, warning shotting and killing the Ts until the LR sound plays and they laugh to themselves over mic about what a big brain play they pulled. It's either this, or they give a purposefully misleading order (that they can rephrase better to an admin) to get free kills. An example is the order "when cell doors open, bum rush to the bottom of under main cell stairs, crouch, and freeze." You might not have caught it at first, but there's a good trick in there that an Epic Boss can use to kill half of the Ts. If some Ts go under main cell stairs, and some Ts go to the bottom of main cell stairs, just warning shot then kill the larger group of Ts. As rules stand right now, CTs don't need to repeat an order when a T requests it (this rule is not on the rules page, but according to @fantastic "it's implied"). Any time a T is killed for standing still in their cell and typing in chat "repeat the order" or "what's the order" is just a bullshit kill that should 100% be treated as a freekill. I know the rules don't reflect this, which is why a rule should be added where orders have to be repeated at least once upon request. Now, you might ask, "don't we have a rule to prevent this behavior?" Well yes! There's "CTs must give reasonable orders", where reasonable orders are orders that are "straightforward, clear, to the point, easy to understand, not meant to confuse or trick, and gives the prisoners enough time to follow." Doesn't this address this issue? It does! Well I hope the admins are on, and if they are I hope they see it happen, or else you're out of luck. That brings us to situation 3!

3) "I didn't see it happen."

This sentence causes the second most emotional damage to me out of any sentence in the english language besides "I wish I had a daughter". I understand the logic of this, I really do, but there has to be some point where enough of the Ts have been complaining about a guard for them to be switched to T. Even if admins aren't supposed to take a Ts word when they use !fk, if a player named Harvard Business has !fk used on them by 12 out of 16 Ts in one map, they should get temporarily CT banned. I believe admins began to favor CTs in decisions way too much after gangs were introduced and the playercount is low, but it's not like that anymore. And even when the ratio is tilted toward Ts, I'd rather have a bunch of CTs that are bad at controlling prisoners then a bunch of CTs giving orders that allow them to turn the gamemode into some screwed up version of DM. If players are being routinely reported for freekill, and an admin doesn't see any of them, after a certain amount of reports the CT should be manually handed a temporary CT ban by an admin.

4) "I already gave you a warning shot, I can kill you."

Why does everyone think this? This isn't a thing! You can kill after warning shot for the same order, but it resets for a new order. If you think I'm wrong, then you're suffering from the Mandela effect. In the JB Rules page; "Warning shots (1 Shot, 1-99 DMG) are required unless the T is rebelling or blatantly disobeying orders. After a warning shot is given if the T keeps disobeying the same order they can be killed." The page's emphasis, not mine. This isn't so much of a matter of changing a rule as it is simple enforcement. I can't count the amount of times I've typed !fk, an admin questions the CT, the CT says "gave a warning shot" and the admin gives the CT a pass even if the warning shot was for an order 2 minutes prior. This excuse can be proven wrong just by looking at logs, because the reason for killing the CT just gave can be proved as completely wrong if the logs were used to show the warning shot was for a previous order and not the same. This is just another way the Epic Bosses abuse the rules to no repercussions.

5) "I'm not cheating in LR, since I'm not in your LR."

This brings me to my penultimate point which I can't believe doesn't have a rule attached to it. On the JB Rules page, there is the rule "A CT is not allowed to cheat or delay during an LR." This rule doesn't address other CTs outside of the LR purposely interfering in the LR, which happens enough to be a problem, especially with these Epic Bosses. They can interfere by standing in front of/next to/behind the player, blocking their movement, or standing in the player's line of sight (like in Gun Toss or Shot 4 Shot), picking up the player's deagle/getting shot by the player, and then killing the T for losing the LR. After looking around in forums and asking in Shoutbox, @Love_ swears there is a rule for this somewhere, but I cannot find it for the life of me. If it does exist, then it needs to be enforced and spread to the playerbase, because many players (including me until this post) aren't aware of this rule. If it doesn't exist, then there should be a rule to prevent CTs from purposely blocking a T from moving around during an LR, or preventing them from having a clear line of sight if it's an LR like Shot 4 Shot.

6) "LR in the next 15 seconds. I'm not going to accept your LR, but LR in 15 seconds."

My final situation makes my blood boil every time it happens. A CT tells the remaining prisoners to freeze and LR in a very short amount of time, then either the CT or other CTs deny the LRs, and they kill the prisoners after the assigned time passes. This is just a KOS order. That's all it is. A CT is telling a T to complete an action by a certain time when they need the CTs approval to complete the action, the CT prevents the T from doing it, and then kills the T. This is the same as telling prisoners to rush to big cage when cell doors are shut and then killing them for it. I've scoured the Rules page, the changelog, and question posts to see if there is a rule for this, but again there isn't one. This needs to be stopped, because it is never, ever dealt with. Epic Bosses give the excuse of "I set a time to LR by", and the whole freekill is forgot about. The rule I propose is "A CT cannot deny a standard LR if an 'LR by' timed order is given."

Most CTs don't do these things. There are CTs who are bad at being CTs, those who are good at it, and those who have some sixth sense about rebelling prisoners and will never lose a round in their life. And then there are the Epic Bosses. I don't want to ruin the game for CTs, or make it harder for them to win. I want rules to be added to prevent the Epic Bosses of the CT side from ruining the rounds of T players. The Epic Bosses are who this post is directed to; those who are bending the rules to essentially troll. Epic Bosses are the same type of people who come on to the server to mass freekill a bunch of CTs and leave, except Epic Bosses don't have the balls to do that. They take the long con, tip-toeing around rules they can manipulate to get extra kills. The Ts don't want them, the other CTs don't want them, and I promise the admins they don't want them either. The Epic Bosses are the reason why the server is toxic, and why many T players spam freekill when they die. Because if 50% of the time you're dying to Epic Bosses with their not-quite-freekills, the other 50% of the time you'll be expecting your death to be freekill.

Kind of a TL;DR (please read the actual post or each rule's section if you comment about it. I think the reasoning is as important as the rule in this case.)

There's a group of CT clowns I like to call the "Epic Bosses" who are the main source of problems T players experience. Here are 6 common tactics they use to skirt around freekilling, and rule changes for each tactic.

1: Using crossfire as an excuse to spray in stacks. Rule: Crossfire only applies for 1/2 collateral kills. After that, slay.

2: Giving super fast or confusing orders so they can get more kills, not repeating order when T players ask. Rule: Orders have to be repeated at least once upon request.

3: Players freekilling repeatedly where each time admins couldn't see it happen. Rule: If an admin sees a player reported (!fk) for freekill a significant amount of times in a map in situations where they don't have enough evidence to act, the player gets a temporary CT ban. I'm expecting this to be poorly received.

4: Using warning shots for past orders to justify giving no warning shot and killing for a new order. Rule: No new rule, just spread awareness of the rule that exists and enforce that rule.

5: Blocking a player from moving or having LOS in LR. Rule: CTs cannot interfere in a prisoner's LR if they are not in LR with that prisoner.

6: Denying given LRs when an "LR by" order is given, then killing the T for it. Rule: A CT cannot deny a standard LR if an 'LR by' timed order is given.

I would love to discuss each point and their validity as they stand on their own. I understand some of these changes sound far fetched, but there are some that should be relatively easy to implement, and would do a lot of good for the server. I know the SG Jailbreak stands out as a server that is easy for players to get to CT on, but these rules wouldn't harm that. They would simply help prevent bad CT players from making the game terrible for Ts.

Edited October 28, 2019 by aelius
formatting