FAF rules, or rather, their application has gone downhill for quite some time. I keep hearing about more and more completely ridiculous bans based on some very ridiculous rules (or how they are written).
I completely understand that rules have to be written rather broad to not have someone go around them. But improving on the current ruleset is imo the best first step to fixing this.
(FYI: this is a different and more broad topic compared to my overwork of the exploit-rules)
Here is the rules page: https://faforever.com/rules
So here are some rules and my recommended changes, including reasoning (going from top the bottom according to the rules page):
-> Friendly fire — Do not maliciously reclaim allied units or purposefully fire on allies
Reasoning is quite simple. Units are in the way of me building something (doesn’t have to be on the front, can literally be anywhere) – for example a random T1 air unit. In theory I get banned because I reclaim this if he doesn’t respond to pings. Not always can you just build somewhere else.
(Check rule-wording on the rule of “Helping enemy team” -> here the word maliciously is used, so I think its appropriate here aswell)
->
Not quite sure how to formulate a better rule here, because this rule shouldn’t even exist. A simple chat message like “Make Torps!!!” (based on a recent ban) can be bannable. You should be allowed to tell someone how to play, BUT not be toxic about it or spam it. Telling someone how to play, even if they didn’t ask for it, is completely normal, just like in any other game.
->
Another rule where I am not 100% sure how to formulate it correctly. But I think this is pretty nonsense, because 1) try to tell this to anyone on Dual Gap, Setons or Astro (literally the most played maps). If I take a mex which DOES belong to someone else, you can 95% of the time see him reclaiming it to get it back.
Or lets take a different example where there actually are no “reserved” mass extractors: Mapgen. So in theory I can get a spawn with 3 mex and try to rush some air with it, meanwhile the guy next to me takes every mex around me and doesn’t want to give me any. So how is this not game ruining for the player who doesn’t get any?
Tons of example more here but I think you get the point.
Here the point of lagging games or connection issues are missing. I have had games where the lag (for me) was horrible, and I did not want to play that. But apparently nobody else in this game shared this opinion and wanted to continue. So according to these rules I am forced to play, or I can get banned upon report. So, I think we can add:
- Leaving in case of very noticeable connection issues is allowed.
Do not self-destruct, also known as or “CTRL-K”, your base or significant quantities of units, unless your team agrees.
This was a big topic for me and others because of, shockingly, some more bans. My intention of changing the rule is that if the game is over the team can ctrl k their bases as they wish, as long as they all agree. Yes, that includes 1 person ctrl-k-ing his base and the rest continues playing, because the team should be able to do whatever they want with their bases as a team. The enemy team should have no say whatsoever on this, because why would they? How is self destructing a base more game ruining than recalling? In both cases you “take the fun of destroying the enemy base”.
- Exploits
I don’t think I need to mention it here, because there is an entire thread of this, which will (hopefully) at some point made into a proposal by me. Just wanted to have this here on the list to get an overview of what I’d like to get changed.
This rule is fine, but I just wanted to post this here for context for the actual rule I think needs changing:
So the first rule allows me to insult people if its not based on the reasons mentioned. But this rule means I must always be respectful. So, respectfully, fuck off (a joke).
I don’t want to imply here that I would like everyone to go mental and insult. But I would like some more leeway here.
Here is the chat-log of a recent ban. Now I don’t know if its because of toxicity or “controlling behaviour”:
Player 1 to allies: DO SOMETHYING
Player 1 to allies: STOP SLURPING AND PLAY
Player 1 to allies: YOU CLOWN
Player 1 to allies: YOUR OPPONENT IS NORTHH
Player 2 to allies: relax, we're doing fine
Player 1 to allies: no we are not
Player 1 to allies: he's drooling over his keyboard
Player 1 to allies: TORP NOW OR I QUIT
Player 1 to allies: 10 seconds to comply
Player 1 to allies: WALK THEM UP MID
Player 1 to all: can't play this with drool zone
But in my opinion even this should not be bannable for multiple reasons:
- whoever got “flamed” here did not reply or say anything (as in “stop” or something like that)
- There is a mute function
There are no direct insults anywhere in this (I sure hope we can at least call people a clown...) so I think the way to go about this is not moderation->ban but rather the mute function ingame. But if you disagree I’d love to hear why exactly, because this doesn’t even haven an insult (yes, its not necessarily respectful, but still “normal”).
- And here we have the biggest of them all:
The discussion of bans. The foe of all moderators (for some reason).
Jokes aside I don’t even know how or where to start here. Why is this not allowed? Is the reason to not have spam on the forum / chat that discusses bans? Basically this means bans are discussed everywhere but the FAF discord / forum. I get that the moderators don’t want to publicly reply everywhere something is posted regarding a ban, but this rule could simply be changed to moderators won’t do public statements regarding bans. This way moderators themselves can discuss it (if they want), but don’t need to and also don’t need to reply.
For these kind of discussions (and the exploit-thread) it is quite annoying to not be allowed to talk about the specific bans.
I don’t know if in other similar sized communities this kind of rule exists, but I can’t imagine so (feel free to prove me wrong though, this is just my opinion). I know this is not the intention, but what it actually feels like is that we have tons of ridiculous bans and then can’t talk about them (this is not just my opinion / feeling).
So I posted this specifically in the general chat and not association forum to get responses / ideas from all. I just hope it doesn't escalate into something again and then locked.
Im sorry 
