Introduction

Hey Folks, long time no see, first my apologies to you for my absence between September and early November. I’ll make the most of the opportunity of the recents gather’s events to let you know what’s going on regarding the gather part of the ENSL. I’ll talk about several points here : the gather team, the general atmosphere while gathering, the rules, the bans and in overall, our new modus operandi, but before that I'll give you informations regarding the upcoming NightCup.

Nightcup

This Saturday (January 2nd) the nightcup will be held, the signups have been open all week. The Nightcup will start at 19:00 (7PM) CET. Depending on how many teams play, the format will be changed but we plan to make it last a decent amount of time (Maybe double elimination brackets). The seedings for this tournament will be randomized so blame RNG if you get bad seeds please, either way its a tournament meant for fun. You can check the teams that signed up here.

Gather Team

Right now, our roster is led by myself with the help of loMe, we are taking care of the problems which are reported to us by players and gather’s moderators who are BauerJankins, mst3kld and our newcomer Cr4zy. That’s the big picture, however, all admins are actively participating to help us to solve various issues directly related to the gathers. But each important decisions are validated either by loMe or myself depending of each one immediate availability. If you feel responsible and want to help us in managing gather, feel free to contact me by email or Steam or pm on Slack.

General Atmosphere

Recently,  the number of issues/reports regarding abnormal behavior has increased. This activity won’t be tolerated any further. Players are supposed to act as adults for the most part and should have knowledges of basic etiquette. To the players that persistently act arrogant and spiteful towards other players and continuously try to bend the rules when caught : there won’t be any tolerance during the next month regarding that kind of matter. Remember we are here to have fun while promoting a competitive way of gaming in a learning and friendly atmosphere. There is an old saying that goes: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I invite every player to participate in this initiative and to report every abuse to the gather team, with some evidence (Screenshot/ShadowPlay/Twitch VOD/TeamSpeak recording) and a thorough summary of what happened with a list of other players who can backup what happened.

Disclaimer: If we find out that some players lied to us with the intention of manipulating or providing  false claims to charging someone, this won’t be overlooked.

The Rules + The Bans

1. When you join a gather, show up and play until the end.

• Ban - Min: 1 day  ; Max: 1 week

2. Make sure you check if you are a captain and pick quickly when you are.

• Ban - Min: 1 gather(45min) ; Max: 1 day

3. If you cannot play, get a substitute.

• If you are in a middle of a round and need to find a merc :
          -Pause the game. You have the time of pause to get a merc of the same
          skill level if possible. If you didn’t find a merc at the end of the pause, you’ll
          be banned.
          -After the first pause, if the leaving player did not find a player, his team can
           have 1 more pause time to find a merc, so after the second pause if no
          mercs are found (here on server (not teamspeak)) the gather ends and
          players are authorized to leave the gather without consequence.
• Ban - Min: 1 day ; Max: 1 week

4. The 1st map is mandatory, but the 2nd map is voluntary.

5. You have to play with the same Steam ID as the one on the NSL website.

• Ban - Min: 12 hours ; Max: 0.5 weeks (84 hours/3.5 days)

6. ENSL Rules section 3(Code of Conduct) applies to gathers.

• Ban - depending of the observed behavior, length will be discussed internally.

7. Listen to your captain's orders.

• This rule will change to “Listen to your teammates”
• Note: Some players are not native english speakers, so accept that some of them can’t understand you at all or partially when you are speaking fast, so I’ll ask native English speakers to try to slow down when they are giving instructions/orders to other people, and I’ll ask to non native English speakers to ask them to repeat if you don’t understand something.
• Ban -  Min: 1 gather ; Max: permban. (this game is about playing as a team.)

8. Do not join a new gather when you are already in one.

• Ban - Min: 1 gather ;  Max: 1 day

9. Super obvious, but for the sake of completion: "Don't be a dick". This includes speaking in English if you have people in your team who don't understand other languages.

• Ban - variable.

10. Players can't be forced to be commander, but if you're the current commander of your NSL team or if you're known as a commander, please specify you don't want to command in the Gather chat beforehand.

11. Join the ENSL TeamSpeak + NS2 Server in less than 10 Min.

• If some repeated abuses are spotted, we will enforce a ban on that too.
• Note: If you are not here after 15min the Rule n°1 applies.

12. Using Exploits to gain or not lose some ELO points is forbidden. This includes switching teams last minute.

13. Using F4 to accomplish anything other than “surrendering a game” will result in an instant 1 day ban for the first incident.

Modus Operandi

I want to clarify the method used here.

First I will explain the right method to make an official report to the gather’s team.

You need to use the ISSUE reporting system ( http://ensl.org/issues/new ) . In the ticket, you need to specify various things as:

• Date + Time of the beginning of the gather (which is seen on the gather page)
• People involved.
• who can testify/confirm what you are saying (if this is possible).
• n° Rules which are broken.
• an url link to the evidence material if you have some.

Then, send the ticket. The gather’s team will investigate your problem as soon as possible. And as soon a conclusion is reached by the admins, we will notify the concerned players about the outcome of the problem, then we will apply a ban if necessary. Then we will close the ticket.

Ending words

Keep in mind that our team is always researching a way to improve the gather system.

Thanks to Chris we can improve the tools you are using to make it better with more features, more logs, more musics or awesome backgrounds ;-).

Regarding the current rules, if you think somewhat some rules can be improved, don’t hesitate to contact me through steam or by mail (see the Staff ribbon for mail address).

I also remind you that we are all volunteers here and our goal is not to ban players but we want to provide you a way to play all together in the best atmosphere possible.

I also take this opportunity to send you my greetings for the next upcoming year and wish you a happy new year. Cheers Everyone.