[WPL2] Suggestions

[Aura (Zaffa)]

Don't understand the outcry for a map pool change. Imo, it is far less questionable than the WPL finals where a tie-breaker map that hadn't been played since week one was forced onto the two teams without any notice before hand or time to practice the map. Teams were simply told to "play on the map now or forfeit". Note that this was in conjunction with massive administrative delays that forced the teams to play a third map at 11 est. Half of one team was West Coasters (8 pm at the time) and half of the other team was Eastern Europeans (7 am).

Compared to that, this seems pretty harmless given how close the NA and EU pools are.

 

[Viktor]

Was actually one of the 0.01% who read the entire Marnid-Arys discussion and if I could say just one thing - whilst Orion was pretty aggressive in his posts, he made some fair points and for the sake of transparency, I don't think what he requested is a harsh 'demand', so to speak: "Care to give us some transparency here? I'd like to see how the topic (regarding the rule change) was introduced, any discussion the admins had on it, and how they all voted."

To provide some peace of mind, I think it'd be a good idea to allow the community to actually see the discussion that took place. You yourself said:

I'll show anyone involved in the tournament.

Everyone playing is indeed involved in the tournament. I'm not telling you to provide us with the dicussion, nor is anyone else. But not releasing it makes it seem like you have something to hide, which I'm sure none of you guys do. Just give the man what he wants, slap him on the wrist and tell him to stop flooding the thread so we can all go on with our lives!

 

[Gibby Jr]

Was actually one of the 0.01% who read the entire Marnid-Arys discussion and if I could say just one thing - whilst Orion was pretty aggressive in his posts, he made some fair points and for the sake of transparency, I don't think what he requested is a harsh 'demand', so to speak: "Care to give us some transparency here? I'd like to see how the topic (regarding the rule change) was introduced, any discussion the admins had on it, and how they all voted."

To provide some peace of mind, I think it'd be a good idea to allow the community to actually see the discussion that took place. You yourself said:

I'll show anyone involved in the tournament.

Everyone playing is indeed involved in the tournament. I'm not telling you to provide us with the dicussion, nor is anyone else. But not releasing it makes it seem like you have something to hide, which I'm sure none of you guys do. Just give the man what he wants, slap him on the wrist and tell him to stop flooding the thread so we can all go on with our lives!

There is no doubt all of the admins agreed to it although that in itself doesn't hold much weight as we saw in another incident.

There is no real issue here. Who cares that it was changed if both the teams were cool with it then what's the issue.

 

[Orion]

@Marnid
Congratulations.

Oh, thank you! Your entire argument against me is "who are you? you're just a troll, stop being mean, you aren't relevant, Arys put soooo much work in why are you pestering him, yaddayadda."

In other words, it's bull****. You don't even have any moral high-ground here to condemn me for my aggressiveness because of what you've said in the same post:

Who the f*** are you? I've joined the scene late 2014 and so far the only thing I've seen from you is your capacity to enter into endless forum fights, that you mostly end-up 'winning' not because you arguments make any sense but mainly because you clearly seem to have a lot of free time on your hands and like to spend it writting some novels. Surely you like to hear yourself talking, don't you?
...
By doing so, you ruined yourself your whole argumentation, acted as a pathetic moron and if you think you've gained anything, that's only the right to carry the so desired title of 'Retard of the Month'.

Don't lecture me on forum etiquette if that's how you're going to go about it.

But you do bring up one thing I should clarify, and despite what you've just said to and about me, I still think this is true: the admin team at large isn't at fault, and I don't have any ill feelings towards them. I feel that Arys may have manipulated the admin team for the purpose of his own goals - through misinformation or incomplete information, which is entirely plausible. I do have some information regarding this which I haven't shared yet because it is information pertaining to certain people who are directly involved and I don't have their permission to post it here.

I can see how my aggressiveness against Arys could be taken as an attack on the entire admin team, especially when what I've asked for is a record of a discussion they all took part in, but that is not the case. I think Arys may have tried to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. What's the harm in having complete information for all parties regarding this decision? If you still feel like I've gone after you unfairly and with great hostility, please consider the time constraint. The match is being played in just a few hours. Asking nicely and waiting politely wasn't good enough.

Like you and Arys have both said, I'm not involved in this tournament. I don't have anything to gain by being a nuisance here. Arys, however, does have something to gain in this situation. I, and I'm sure there are others, want proof that he isn't using his position to influence the outcome of the tournament in his favor.

Why is anyone opposed to that?

There is no real issue here. Who cares that it was changed if both the teams were cool with it then what's the issue.

Are they? But let's not forget, it's not just two teams here. There's also the 3rd place match, and in fact every match in the North American single elimination phase is questionable. I know I'm long-winded but I'll summarize why this is the case from my last long post.

The NA single elimination map pool was changed three times: once going into the quarter finals, once going into the semi finals, and once going into the grand final. The EU single elimination map pool was changed once, going into the quarter finals (the rules clearly allowed for this). The NA quarter finals and EU quarter finals did not have the same map pool, which could be considered fine on its own, but because the NA map pool changed every stage while the EU one stayed constant, it shows that the tournament was not handled fairly.

What makes me suspicious is that Arys is personally involved in the side of the tournament which is experiencing these asymmetric changes.

PLEASE prove me wrong. You have no idea how much I want to be proven wrong considering how many other tournaments Arys is and will be involved in.

 

[Gibby Jr]

Yes Arys is involved because he's an admin and a player. It's exactly the same for Calamity. You think he's pulling strings for his team too? But if they're facing each other then who's pulling the real strings and who thinks they're pulling strings but grabbed the wrong ones??? It's a flawed argument. The administration voted for the changes so if you want to criticise then go at the entire body rather than Arys. The rules allow for the pool to change each week so they weren't broken at all. There's no problem here at all.

 

[WilySly]

If there is anyone who carry the legitimacy to complain, its wK, and them only. They can, if they wish, ask the admin team to take a decision on the following matter, and Arys & Calamity, as they're directly concerned, would have been excluded from the following decision. They decided not to and will play the final regardless of what they think about Arys' change and we can only respect their decision which simply confirm their reputation, which is no longer to be praised.

Just as a point of clarification, this is expressly what we asked for.  As Arys and I were doing picks and bans, we had a conversation about the changes to the map pool.  I made the point that neither wK nor OE (or their corresponding admins) should have any say on map changes, since we're both involved in the Finals.  Arys confirmed that he had led the changes to the pool, so he agreed to send it to the admin team and proceed with their decision.  A few days later, Arys indicated to me that the admins had confirmed his changes to the map pool and that we were going to play the Finals with Nord Town and Ruins replacing Mountain Fortress and Castellum.  Not accusing anyone of anything, just clarifying our position.

That being said, my role as Team Captain is to coordinate my team and to win -- not **** with the map pool.  The implementation of the rules, the manipulation of the map pool, and adminship of the tourney are left to the Admins.  I'm disappointed that Marnid (instead of our 7 Tournament Administrators) is the only one who thought to challenge the intelligence of making changes right before a Finals match.  I'm a Team Captain, so I'll abide by whatever the administration decides and try to win within those constraints.  As an Admin team, I'd say you've certainly dropped the ball, at least in terms of transparency, if not also by shoving everything on to Arys and making a situation like this (where he has to make authoritative decisions to get anything done) possible.  In this context, if Arys was a scumbag, it wouldn't take any effort for him to think "My clan's awesome at Nord Town, we'll add it and make wK waste a map ban so that we get to play either Fort of Honor or Sandi" and make those changes, with little Admin oversight.

However, I don't think Arys is a scumbag and I think he's done a lot to help the community.  I think he's acted with integrity in the past and so I'll take him at face-value regarding the situation with the map pool.  My point is, all of you are Admins with a job to do.  That shouldn't be a rubber-stamp job and my respect for Arys' integrity and contributions shouldn't be necessary to determine whether a rule change is legitimate or not. One of the primary reasons to have all these people who get to call themselves Admins is to expressly avoid the conflicts of interest and allegations that Marnid's talking about.

 

[Orion]

Yes Arys is involved because he's an admin and a player. It's exactly the same for Calamity. You think he's pulling strings for his team too? But if they're facing each other then who's pulling the real strings and who thinks they're pulling strings but grabbed the wrong ones??? It's a flawed argument. The administration voted for the changes so if you want to criticise then go at the entire body rather than Arys. The rules allow for the pool to change each week so they weren't broken at all. There's no problem here at all.

Do the rules allow for that? If so, why wasn't the EU pool changed after the quarter-finals? I'd argue that the way the single elimination map pool rule is written, it's implied that one pool would be decided upon & announced for the entirety of the single elimination phase. My interpretation obviously carries no weight here, but I would like to know what the other admins think. Besides, as Scar first pointed out, wasn't the whole point of the regionals to have NA and EU exactly the same? You can argue that different map pools is OK, but that doesn't hold water when one map pool is changed regularly and the other is held constant. Either both map pools should have been changed at each stage or neither should have been changed, otherwise there's no consistency.

Now, what's this false flag **** about Calamity? If Calamity was doing anything of the kind, he would be also be exposed in a public disclosure. In principle, it doesn't matter who is doing the manipulation, the integrity of the tournament itself is what concerns me. It's just my opinion that Arys is the one responsible here. If that's not the case but someone else is at fault, then we'll see that as well. So much for "flawed argument."

 

[Gibby Jr]

Yes it's flawed because you're talking about Arys as if he changed the rules himself. The entire admin team, which includes Calamity, discussed and agreed with these changes. That's it. Your involvement doesn't go further than that.

I agree that it would make sense to keep them the same but by the rule set the admin team is under no obligation to keep the map pools the same. You can say it implies whatever you like but if the admin team acts within their own ruleset there's no issue. You're welcome to try and call out corruption if you think it's here but there's no reason at all for you to believe that. There are other players in the admin team so why are you ignoring the fact that the change in map pools could have benefited them? Instead you just focus on Arys as though he changed it himself. So yes, your argument is flawed.

 

[Calamity]

Yes it's flawed because you're talking about Arys as if he changed the rules himself. The entire admin team, which includes Calamity, discussed and agreed with these changes. That's it. Your involvement doesn't go further than that.

I did not agree with these changes. Don't put words into my mouth. I told Arys Nord Town was a bad map and to leave it as Mountain Fortress. But mine nor Arys opinion matter as this map pool is directed involved with our match.

 

[Gibby Jr]

If neither you nor Arys were involved in the decision then why is this even a discussion

 

[Arys]

Guys, I don't know why this is still a debate. I've already said it a million times, the admin team discussed the map pool, these map changes were voted in favor of (Calamity and I did not get to vote on this). If any participating player would like transparency in this matter, I will show them our discussion via PM.

Like, I'm not gonna post it here. It doesn't matter how many walls of texts Marnid writes, the decision has been made.

I'm not saying his points are irrelevant and you should ignore them, but if it concerns you than just contact me.

 

[Orion]

Yes it's flawed because you're talking about Arys as if he changed the rules himself. The entire admin team, which includes Calamity, discussed and agreed with these changes. That's it. Your involvement doesn't go further than that.

I agree that it would make sense to keep them the same but by the rule set the admin team is under no obligation to keep the map pools the same. You can say it implies whatever you like but if the admin team acts within their own ruleset there's no issue. You're welcome to try and call out corruption if you think it's here but there's no reason at all for you to believe that. There are other players in the admin team so why are you ignoring the fact that the change in map pools could have benefited them? Instead you just focus on Arys as though he changed it himself. So yes, your argument is flawed.

No reason at all for me to believe there's corruption? Alright, I can stop talking to you. You just dismissed all the evidence I've provided for my suspicion out of hand. You're just providing an echo-chamber for Arys.

Arys did change the rule himself. You know how I know that? His name is on the post, his name is on the edits. He put pen to paper even though the other admins are moderators of this subforum and could have done it themselves. As Wily has just said, Arys proposed the pool change himself. Arys pitched it to the admins on his & Wily's behalf, a change that was his own idea, and all I want to see is how he presented that idea to them and the admin discussion & votes that followed. I want to know if he led them on to believe something that wasn't entirely true. Or do you mean to tell me that presentation of an idea doesn't influence its reception? If that's the case, look at how many people are calling me out for being too aggressive and ignoring what I've said!

Guys, I don't know why this is still a debate. I've already said it a million times, the admin team discussed the map pool, these map changes were voted in favor of (Calamity and I did not get to vote on this). If any participating player would like transparency in this matter, I will show them our discussion via PM.

Like, I'm not gonna post it here. It doesn't matter how many walls of texts Marnid writes.

Every time you refuse to disclose that information, you look like you're hiding something. What does it matter who's asking for disclosure? You're accountable to more than just your players. You're accountable to your sponsors and the community for which you provided this tournament. Should I write to Logitech or Steelseries, see how they feel about how you're managing a tournament with their names attached to it? I don't give a **** what you think about me personally, but you owe transparency to the people involved in your tournament, players and sponsors.

 

[WilySly]

wK isn't accusing/suspecting Arys of anything nefarious - - I hope I've made that clear. My point was that these decisions and changes could have benefited from some admin oversight, which Arys and Cal couldn't/shouldn't provide due to their participation in the Finals.

 

[Orion]

And like I said before, I'd love to be proven wrong. Please show me that I'm just a blown-up ******* causing trouble in your tournament for nothing. I'd love that compared to the alternative.

 

[Arys]

Feel free to do what you want Marnid, like I've said. I said my piece.

And despite what you may think, I don't think anything of you. I barely know you, how could I? I don't have an issue with most of the points you're bringing up. They're valid concerns, which is why I responded and which is why I offered to be transparent about it.

You throwing a tantrum here won't change my mind, in-fact nothing will change my mind. The decision on the matter is final, if you have a problem with that - message whoever you want, run your own tournament, etc.

This is my last response to you on that matter.

 

[Orion]

Your offer of transparency is meaningless because you only offer it in a format where you have total control of the flow of information. That, by definition, makes it not transparent. Public disclosure ensures transparency, and if you mean what you say then you should have no problem posting it publicly.

And just so we're clear, what are your thoughts about the NA map pool changing at every stage of the single elimination while the EU map pool stayed constant throughout? What's that about?

 

[Arys]

I'm sure you won't believe me but I'm 100% sure that was done on accident, I most likely edited that thread (meaning to edit the finals one - you can see this by looking at the dates) and saved it when swapping out the maps.

The maps were the same as Europe's until the finals. I'm sure any player that played can confirm that with you.

 

[Orion]

I can believe that, but it's odd that only one of the two map changes was edited and that you 1) knew of the mistake and 2) didn't correct it at that time.

 

[Arys]

Well no, I didn't know of the mistake until you brought it up. If I did why wouldn't I just have corrected it. In my arguments against you I state the map pool was the same.

But yeah, like I said, any player can confirm that one for you.

 

[Orion]

Chronologically it doesn't make much sense. The quarter finals post was edited after the finals post. If you had already made the edit to the finals map pool, why would you go to edit it again later, mistakenly edit the quarter finals map pool, and not edit the finals map pool last?

You may think I'm grasping at straws here but this is the only defense you've offered. Everything else you've just ignored or explicitly excluded me from.