If you look at this situation from the other side, you may come to some interesting conclusions. When we (those who are named "tryhards" nowadays) came to this game, we saw players killing enemies, doing objectives, making sick plays... We thought that THIS is how this game should be played and so we played the same way. Some people like those are still here and throughout the years they've accustomed to playing like before. They expect a challenge, teamwork, enemy resistance...
At some unknown moment and for unknown reason (maybe since EP7 hype?) the new, fresh population of players arrived. As they haven't heard about MBII before and have most likely come here after having tried battlefront, one can suppose that these are the players that are more of a casual playstyle and another kind of having fun. And that fun doesn't involve trying to kill enemies, doing objectives, teamwork. It involves fucking around and chatting. So nowadays, when new players arrive, what do they see? 15/32 people on the server are SS7 guys just fucking around, crouching, taunting and spamming voice commands. What does the player decide? Just like us in ancient times, he thinks that this is how the game is played. The players who expected some competitive gameplay leave and MBII is left with people who tolerate this kind of behaviour and later may join the SS7 ranks.
So me and other "tryhards" nowadays just play "our" game just like it was played before. This is my fun. I get fun from having a challenge. But for the majority of the modern players, I'm a tryhard. Alright.
You can see that these are just two different views on the same game. I doubt that forcing punishment on people would do the trick. Involving automated forcespec and, god forgive your soul, tempban with rangeban is never a good idea. I think that the easiest solution would be to popularize the old gameplay style as it was before. Organizing competitive events, streaming PUGs and scrims... Give them some taste of another MBII. So that people who come to this game and seek challenge can actually SEE that there's some for them and it's not just 15/32 people trolling and hugging each other. The point is not to get rid of trolls and people who think that this gameplay is how the MBII is played, but to get them interested in the competitive gameplay. Because nowadays what they see is some salty ego score tryhards just not letting them PLAY THE GAME AS IT SHOULD BE PLAYED (hugging and spamming crouch).
I'll let myself advertise the discord server where the PUGs are organized weekly (or, if we have more people, more often).
Ознакомьтесь с сообществом «Movie Battles II RU Community» в Discord. Весело проводите время с участниками сообщества, которых уже 322 чел., и пользуйтесь бесплатным голосовым и текстовым чатом.
discord.gg
Don't be scared of Russian, pug-related conversations are always held in English. There are two channels dedicated to PUGs and they're hidden unless you have a "PUG'ers" role. Feel free to ask moderators, admins or ad.ppl clan members to give you this role, should you be interested.
It would also be cool to have an official promotion to the PUGs with like streaming and stuff. To be thought on