Z4ch I think you have been part of the community for a long time. You should be the community manager for CEVO.

+frag if you agree

#z4chformanager

I second this!! +frag!

openplugin is still vac-bannable afaik (unless someone remade the plugin to be vac safe) so that should remain a banned plugin in cevo in my opinion
tftrue is server-side so that shouldn't be a problem (although i wouldnt mind it being required for matches)

Big zach taking a stand

Z4ch really impressive taking the initiative right off the bat. I see great things coming.

Thirded.

Openplugin is a cheat though, you could see through walls with a high enough FoV. If you made your own plugin version of it, you could toggle it during matches. Also, you would have to disable VAC to enable the plugin, which a lot of people like to have just to filter out the known hackers (in addition to the AC client).

Will CEVO ban for using the low picmip "hack"? (Using ATI tray tools or Nvidia Inspector to set you picmip to a super low value)

Does doing that even give you an advantage, except a better framerate?

Nope.
And it really does not help your fps either.

The only advantage is slightly crummier/solid-ish textures. It's mostly a preference thing.

It's not VAC bannable, and the only reason it's banned in ESEA is because it turns off smoke, or makes it easier to see through (not sure which one) in CS games. So ESEA banned it for all Source games.

It seems like CEVO's more than willing to work with the community to establish their ruleset. If it doesn't give any real advantage for TF2, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to allow it.

No better time to speak your mind on how you would want a competitive TF2 league, because it seems if CEVO wants to succeed and seemingly increase their revenue stream they would listen to how to the community just wants it run.

from the original thread:

Questions that were not asked or addressed:

1) How does the Anti-Cheat work? Without "injection" into the game, how does CEVO approach the problem of catching cheaters who play in their league. I know demo reviews were brought up, but what is the client doing to help aid the process?

2) Which admins are doing demo reviews? Game specific admins? Anti-Cheat specialists of some sort or what? Furthermore, are these admins trained to any degree to be able to recognize cheating and if not how can demo reviews be a good method for detecting cheating in the league?

3) How are game specific admins chosen and what is the main function of these admins? Who are the current TF2 admins and what experience do they have with TF2 or gaming in general? What qualifies them for the job?

4) Are the admins compensated? Are they required to work a certain number of nights per week? If these admins are conducting day to day league operations for their specific leagues, how can the players in the league contact the admins to get issues handled? Will there always be a league admin online to handle issues that may arise?

5) In the event that an admin is ineffective, how are admins replaced or reinforced with more staff to handle league administration?

6) How is match rescheduling handled? Will matches be required to be played during the current week or will there be leniency in terms of when matches are actually played? How will the league address the issue of unplayed matches in either case?

7) When will we know more information about the potential pay to play divisions and prize pots for s4, obviously depending on team enrollment in the league. Would a prize breakdown be available prior to s4 registration ending, potentially in the form where a certain prize pool is guaranteed for certain amount of league enrollment.

8) Does CEVO require Social Security Numbers to distribute winnings?

9) How is CEVO ensuring that it makes good on paying out winnings this time around? Has CEVO made an effort to make good on past debts to players who did not receive their winnings? (I dont have specific examples however I have heard this about CEVO in the past)

EDIT TO ADD THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

10) Where are the CEVO provided servers hosted? Are there options available for a wide variety of locales, i.e. East coast, west coast etc? Is the number of servers available at one time such that servers available is an issue, as it is with ESEA? Will CEVO's server provider accommodate every match no matter what the time?

11) How are scheduling disagreements handled? Is there a default match time / location that is set if teams cannot agree? If teams do not play a match, how is the victor decided? (coin flip as in ESEA?)

12) What is required on a personal server to play a CEVO match? How will the stats system on CEVO's website be implemented if people are playing on non-CEVO servers? Is it a possibility to REQUIRE all matches be played on CEVO servers for paid divisions such that there is consistency in server quality and SourceTV availability?

Just for the record, nothing in your post (beside "OpenPlugin is a cheat") is actually true

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0fnXN2Feh4

OpenPlugin doesn't go above 130 fov, you can't change fov while in a server and the latest compile Casual made bypassed VAC without using -insecure (so you can play on VAC servers).

That's not openplugin lol

What browny is saying (that you guys are completely missing) is that anyone could easily modify open plugin to allow you to change your fov to 130+ and then use that. Open plugin is open source so, whats to stop someone from making their own version (which would be extremely easy to do) that would let you see through walls and stuff.

If they allow open plugin there's no real way of not allowing any modified version of it i.e. one that lets you see through walls.

We shouldn't allow any game altering modifications to be allowed because they can always be tinkered to give someone an advantage. Just leave it the way it is. People are always looking for an edge don't open up a can of worms imo.

It seems that, at least for the current season, teams are allowed to use personal servers, provided it meets this standard (from http://www.cevo.com/event/tf2-6v6/rules/ ):

The best approach for personal servers, if they continue to be allowed, is for CEVO to develop an official server plugin that's required to be used for matches, that automatically does everything needed (not like plugin for SourceMod, but a standalone one, like SizzlingStats or the SourceMod base).

It could provide STV and stats uploading (or just use Sizzling as well for the stats, but it'd be good to only require a single addon), and have features similar to the ESEA servers, like individual players readying up and the "match is live" stuff with the round restarts before it.

This would also be capable of forcing server configuration and whitelists and such, so that teams wouldn't have to worry if the server operator has properly configured their server. This IMO is better than the current approached used in both CEVO and UGC, which requires server operators to manually keep configuration files up to date, manually ensure sv_pure is enabled, and manually execute configs and reload the map before re-execing.

Well the OpenPlugin only allows fov up to 130. The only time you see through walls is if you're spectating another player in third person. Beyond 130 fov is when you begin to see through walls and have horrible screen tearing.

This is pretty much the only way I could agree with a decision to allow the use of non-cevo servers.

Can you guys even read my post? If you don't blanket ban all plugins, you're allowing people to use exploit plugins UNLESS they create a signature system like valve does and sign each OpenPlugin version as it comes out. And god forbid an update comes out that needs a new signature, and people complain they can't use the new OpenPlugin because it wasn't signed by CEVO yet. Or I use the OpenPlugin dll and during run time replace it in stack with my own code.

What exactly is stopping me from getting the OpenPlugin source and making into a real cheat? Heck, what's stopping me from taking the spectate plugin and toggling it to work while I'm not in spectate mode? Plugins are cheats until they get signed by valve (like P-REC), so why disable VAC just for people to force more verification and system checks through CEVO?

tl;dr Allowing OpenPlugin makes the anti cheat more complicated and likely more vulnerable.

SourceMod can be exploited really easily too, but I don't see people giving up their precious dm and mge mods on their servers anytime soon.

Any server can be technically exploited that's not CEVO's. Just having someone monitoring the server/checking for class changes and everything is a potential problem. Everything else though can generally by caught with demos (demos log all commands so you'd probably be able to tell, though I wouldn't guarantee it if it can be done remotely).

ETF2L allows the use of player servers, never had a problem with people utilising plugins to give themselves an advantage.

Yeah, but there are several other ways to call functions other than just hooking console commands. On top of that, it would be difficult to differentiate between a console command used to cheat and a script a player used. Also, I'm not sure never having a problem with it is indicative of it never happening.

Tl;Dr paid divisions should = cevo servers only

Agreed. I could spend ten minutes coding and have a SourceMod plugin causing any demoman jumping from map coordinates near the end rollout ramp on Process in the first 15 seconds of a round to receive either a bit extra or less vertical velocity, so they miss the choke slide and take fall damage, unless their STEAMID matches my own. There'd be no way to tell this is happening just by watching STVs/POVs/etc, it'd look like they fluffed their jump, and I'd be gaining an unfair advantage on every mid played on our server.

Unless there's a way to use a custom league server mod to have oversight over what other plugins are running, and compare something like plugins' checksums against an approved list, and someone willing to implement this, then using personal servers for a paid league is probably not a great idea.