This is mostly an admin abuse complaint, but it's just kind of a general critique. I have been permanently banned for a similar scenario in the past, which was later lifted after review of the battle recorder footage clarified that my actions were not illegal.
Let me start by saying that in my opinion the HOG server has the best continuous playerbase currently for a North American server. Whenever I play on another server, while not always a bad experience, I generally facepalm more and harder than I do on HOG. However, whenever anyone attempts to advise HOG on a best practice or give them some constructive criticism, it always ends up turning into a flame war and a hate thread. You become the ungrateful entitled ******* who can play on any server you choose. I've been playing PR for 10 years now, and I've spent over half of that time being an admin. In this thread :
=HOG= Forum - TOPIC: Suggestions for Mapvotes (1/3) You can see how basically the entire point of what I am saying is completely disregarded, and possibly the least friendly thing I have to say about their style of admining becomes the entire basis for the rest of the thread. And the worst part is the map votes haven't gotten better, they've just changed to a different shade of bad. But that isn't the point of this post.
First I'll set the up the scenario. It's Khami alt, and we (the US team) had capped both flags within the city, while having one of our flags (I believe Warehouse) neutralized at our point of cap. Therefore, in order to cap their (MEC) last flag (Bridge), we would have to move warehouse from neutral to capped on our end. So at this point the MEC objective was the 2 flags in the city.
Last night on Khamisiyah I was the victim of the classic admin being mad cuz bad scenario. I was temp banned for killing an enemy asset within DOD. However, the AAV which I killed was not in the DOD, and was in a stationary position supporting a piece of armor (BMP2). While I was gun running the BMP2, I noticed a stationary Gopher which I decided since it was in line with the BMP2 I also hit. Afterward, I was tempbanned for engaging within DOD. However, I'd like you to review both the battle recorder and the chat logs from last night, as I was not in the wrong. I generally keep 3 grids from main, but when you have a Gopher sitting stationary outside of DOD but clearly within firing range and capable of stopping CAS from covering the city flags, it's probably going to be engaged.
http://64.237.49.109/br/demos/demos/aut ... 10.bf2demo
I will admit that the points of engagement were near their main, however, because of the flags that their team was designated to cap, and the clear view distance from their positions to overwatch the city, it is quite clear that it is reasonable to engage the MEC forces moving in the desert north of city to as they will be attempting to cap the 2 city flags.
But the best part of the round was watching Druid try to use the "I WAS LANDING" defense and being an absolute ******* in all chat, which everyone knows how much HOG admins love all chat. His "shot down while landing scenario" was actually a hilariously lucky tank round shot while he was flying nap of the earth back to main. However, when you review the battle recorder you will see that our tank was in no way in a baseraping position, and that his Frogfoot was still on the east side of the river. Furthermore, even if he had been killed over main, you will see in the BR that he is constantly running back to it, as if it's some sort of safety net to get you out of being killed in a dog fight.
Lastly, their team attempts at the start of the round to build a fob west of US main and south of VCP, which is clearly with the intention of baseraping our aircraft. I'm not sure who set that fob up, but our tanks dealt with it and it never became an issue. What did become an issue for me, after I began watching the battlerecorder, was watching people launching shoulder fired AA from MEC main, in order to defend the MEC jets as they flew back to their safety net.
Following my temp ban you can see from the chat logs that Druid switched teams and continued talking shit in team chat. An admin also stated that the AA that I engaged in DOD was placed as bait to get our CAS to engage within MEC DOD. However, the Gopher that was set up as bait was actually placed outside of DOD, making the kill legal. That would be like if Chris Hansen used adults who claimed they were adults and still tried to get the guests to "take a seat right over there." Again I will admit that the engagements which culminated in my temp ban were close to main, I view them as completely legitimate based upon the flag progression and the general nature of the MEC attacks at the time. I just think it's a little ridiculous that I was temp banned for something that technically is not against the rules because the admin was mad over getting tank shotted in a totally legitimate position. And at the same time there were people on the admin's team that were doing things completely against the rules.
Some of the admins are good. Everyone hates Jevski, but at least the dude admins shit. Other people just use their admin to help their cause. While HOG has, in my opinion, the best playerbase, they have by far the worst map votes, along with spotty and often self serving admining practices