STOP TARGETING ME!1!!11!

Over the last 5 years, I have noticed an interesting (although not surprising) trend occurring among the CTF community that has started get out of hand. The title is just the subject of this trend, but the players behind it (more importantly, their logic) are what has morphed this issue into quite the predicament for staff members.

When I started playing MCPVP, I was still fairly new to the game itself; I didn't understand how somebody could be sO hEaRtLeSs and kill me just because they wanted to. I called out multiple regs for targeting, even hackusating some with that good ol "I can't be that bad" mentality. tl;dr: Ignorance causes havoc.

I have since become quite acquainted with the concept of team pvp, and most other players can say they have too. However, there is a particular group of players that have dug into the history of this conflict, and decided to take it 3 steps further... It's time to talk about the Batman1113 situation.

Please keep in mind that I am not trying to bully/harass this player, they are simply a good example to prove the point of this thread.

In July of 2018, this player joined Brawl for the first time. They started off like most other new players do, trying to attack all the enemies, and getting heavily farmed/targeted by bored/thirsty regs. Unlike most, they learned to avoid/escape this common practice instead of quitting, and eventually began learning to play objectively, even coordinating with other players. However, the farming continued, and slowly this player developed a serious victim mentality.
Around 3 months ago, things started to get out of hand. Over the course of a few days, they went from accusing perhaps 5 players a week to 5 a day... 10 a day... they began bending their definition of "targeting" so hard that eventually, about a month ago, he would claim every single death by a player as targeting. It doesn't matter if you fisted them off the edge, killed them while they were actually stealing & trying to capture; death = target, every time. Soon the player became enraged to the point of adding flame and other explicit content to his accusations, eventually leading to a ban for CRV (https://www.brawl.com/history/player/NerdSquadz). This player may be the most extreme example, but others follow closely in his footsteps.

At the end of the day, this player unfortunately was being targeted, sometimes for several hours at a time. If you don't believe be, stick around for a few hours each day, and you'll find plenty of regs spawn camping new players throughout the day; You'd be surprised how many times they let players get more than 20 blocks away on any given day, because I can probably count it on my fingers.

So, with all this said, I have two final messages for this thread:
- New players, please try to use common sense in your assessment of a player's interactions with you. We do receive your reports, and we try to catch targeters in the act, but we probably won't be at your beckon call if you report 25 players every day.
- Regs (you know who you are), give our new players an actual chance to figure out how to play. "I taught this one player how to tho!" "They'll figure it out when I log off!" Sorry, but this system has unintentionally accumulated members from all timezones, leaving rare windows during the week where one reg isn't on and ready to slaughter; And saying you helped a player is the equivalent of me only cutting off 9 of my fingers.

Have A Brawltastic Day!

 

If you care about your kdr, do what you believe is necessary to prevent it from dropping. As long as the player remains aggro, you are free to attack back. This does not mean you are allowed to kill them 2 seconds after they walk out of spawn; Stay a moderate distance from spawn (far enough that they can choose to take objective routes without running into you), and if they keep coming after you, have a field day.

 

Doesn't matter how well we know a player/how new they are, targeting is targeting. Staff members have discussions about players that are believed to target, and are dealt with according to the general opinion of the team (this of course exempts obvious targeters, i.e. if I /ninja and kill the same Assassin 150 times in a day I would be handled immediately). We use the same protocol for all players, but of course older players have a higher chance of having preexisting punishments for targeting, and thus said players would be monitored/punished faster due to their history.