Originally Posted by Morganan

As per Agga's request, I brought this to the forums...

From the rules...

"F4/giveup: Don't F4 at the end of rounds to sit in the readyroom while the match finishes. It's considered disrespectful (your intent is not relevant)."

Also

"* if even a single teammate wants to keep fighting, JOIN HIM. Otherwise, if 100% of your team wants the game to end, every single teammate should stop attacking. If the team does this, successfully, and still thinks the other team abusive in their end-game pace, send a forum PM to any admin requesting he review the server-recorded demo of the game in question. Include only a map name and approximate time of day. If you want to mention anything non-obvious about why the other team was out of line, please do. DO NOT include player names. The admins will review the server-recorded demo and act to prevent the future repetition of any inappropriate play we witness for ourselves."

The situation:

The entire alien team was all dead, the entire marine team minus the commander was in our hive knifing it down. I brought up that we should F4, and was told "that is against server rules". Yet apparently "giving up" is not under certain situations. Since we were getting killed as we spawned by their entire team, I saw no purpose to continue the fight and brought up that we should F4. Did I make an unreasonable request? No discussion was allowed, I was flatly told, "against the rules". Nobody brought an objection other then the "against server rules". Allowing the game to continue only added another minute or 2 to the game, with exactly the same result. Is this the intent of the rule, to draw out games in a situation where the outcome is obvious to even the newest of players? Games are meant to be fun, and a situation where your team obviously has no opportunity to do anything but drag it out another couple of minutes is far from "fun". (as the situation I mentioned for example) What is the difference between stopping attacking and dying as you spawn, to end the suffering a few minutes earlier?

I haven't played NS in a long time, since the 1.x version was current, can someone please explain the semantic differences between "giving up and letting them kill the hive" and "giving up via hitting the F4 key" since obviously things have changed since earlier versions? To me personally, the only difference since the end result is the same is the time frame involved in getting there. I am failing to see how it is disrespectful, it is admitting defeat and moving on to the next opportunity for victory. I fail to see why the team cannot choose to "give up". Notice I said team and not individuals. You win or loose as a team, individuals making these decisions for the team is wrong, but please explain how it is disrespectful to F4 as a team if the situation warrant's it?

First, thank you for bringing this up here, it's much easier to get a calm discussion here than while people are being spawn camped. The main two reasons that I like the rule against f4ing have both been mentioned here, so I'll just briefly reiterate them. First, I know how dissatisfying it is to win by the other team leaving, and this is one of the main problems that strikes me whenever I foolishly try to play on another ns server. Because of that, I don't want to deprive the winning team of their ability to actually win the game, rather than just watch the other team leave. Second, it does break the balance plugin by preventing it from recording a loss for those players who either f4ed or left the server before the game actually ended. Repeatedly doing this to artificially inflate your record will cause unbalanced games, which will not be enjoyable for anyone.

Finally, I just wanted to address the specific game that brought this topic up. It was actually a fairly early spawn camp that developed into most of the marine team being in the starting hive. I expect the comm had a couple of marines trying to secure the rest of the map while this was occuring, and did not initially expect that the spawn camp would be able to kill the hive. As I know how easy it is to lose a game that seems "in the bag" by being overly aggressive, I don't mind the other team choosing to take the more cautious route rather than going for the immediate victory (I have less patience with a team that prolongs the game to try to win in an 'unusual' way, ie. gl rushes, waiting for everyone to be able to onos, etc.). In this case, I didn't feel that the marines were being unreasonable, given how early in the game it was occuring, which I'm sure made it seem to the comm as though the aliens might recover if the spawn camp were broken by marines ignoring spawning skulks.