On August 17 2010 06:52 Klive5ive wrote: This is the best possible response from ESL, we should surely be content with that.
Idra's response of "their fucking idiots and tell them that" warrants a penalty point but they were sensible and made it so he can still play in the masters. The mistakes they made can't be undone and so all we can do is accept this response (it's the best they could do) and hope they learn from this issue.
So let's look at the mistakes: 1) It is silly to force players to allow streamers. The lag situation will only get worse as Korean's/Liquid in Korea join tournaments in Europe. Plus we are bound to get issues with stream watching. It's completely uninforcable, drama is incoming if this continues. So it must be optional to allow streamers or just cast replays later. The wasted time trying to get into games is silly anyway, just get the replays sent straight out and it's "as good as" live anyway. 2) Be more consistent / set the rules down early. I was on Idra's side in this incident but clearly you have to sort out bad manner in the games. Why not ban all chat? (except it's lagging etc..) It's simple and effective. If someone is bad mannered to an admin, immediately screen-shot it and post evidence. 3) Lack of communication. You need to get all players on MSN or something. It's not hard just get it sorted before the games. Lack of communication nearly always plays a part in these dramas.
I disagree with this, and since you mention Liquid I think as a manager/player of the Liquid squad that is moving to Korea it's an good post for me to comment on.
Most of the time if a tournament is hosted then under normal conditions they should allow a player to play without casters/obses if the lag is very bad. Playing condition should be very high on the list of things tournaments should care about. However! Tournaments do rely on broadcasts. They can suffer an occasional unforeseen lag scenario and still be fine. It really sucks if it's in the final but replays can still be used. If however lag appeared in every single game, then this tournament will lose it's right to exist because they can't broadcast anything during their promised live casting hours. Think of a 16-man invite with 5 players participating from Asia all telling the casters to leave. Tournament popularity=dead. Keep this in mind.
If, by rules, they allow a tournament to be open to players from Asia this means there is a good chance these players will claim lag in every single game, and thus they won't have a single game of the Asian players casted. If this is how it is going to be this leads to one very simple change: the exclusion of Asian players. Tournaments will realize they can't perform up to par when Asian players tell their casters to leave the games. If we keep up with the 100% absolute attitude of player always deciding this will be the end of live-broadcasted international tournaments. That is a worst case scenario for tournament host, player, and fan.
If players, that know beforehand that they will lag, do not play with obses in live broad-casted tournaments they very directly endanger the state of the tournament. For example if we did another TL:I a 16-man invite tournament, and we would have Idra start in the Ro16 play without casters all the way to the final to win it without a single casted game. This is beyond acceptable for tournaments. It will kill every tournament out there so in the long run kills e-sports for the players. Players need to more understanding for tournaments as well as tournaments showing more understanding to players.
This definitely should not apply to a $100 open tournament, but in bigger tournaments it seems reasonable to me that you should not be allowed to play without obses if you pre-tournament know you are a guarantee to cause lag. With that in mind I will make sure that Liquid players in Korea take into account the scope of a broadcast and tournament in order to make up their mind in each occurring situation. If it's a $100 tournament and they tell a caster to leave; they have my full support. If they willingly joined a $10k invitational on the US server then if the tournament insists on casters in the game then my players will agree with this.
For large invitationals and the like there needs to be a rule that if you are playing from another server you endanger the broadcasts in such a manner that you should be forced to play with obses. And that you willingly submit to the potential lag that you cause by participating.
For yesterdays $100 tournament it seems a rather small deal to play without casters a few games, and it seems completely reasonable to ask casters to leave due to lag. For a bigger tournament for example an invitational that relies on live broadcasting, you should pre-tournament agree to playing with casters or not play at all, in case your location is a guarantee for lag. If your location was no indication of potential lag happening then the tournament can suffer a few of these instances and use a much more free stance with regard to players lagging and playing on their own server.
As a conclusion I would like to say that replays can and will be used for tournaments, but that this is not always possible for every tournament. The rapid speed of play means one day invitationals would suck for trying to do this with replays. On the other hand TSL and HDH do fine with replays because they develop so slowly, something which only the really big tournaments are able to do without losing fan interest. It can also be in a sponsors best interest to require a live setting. Or it can be an organizations believe that e-sports can only grow into a real sport if we do it live just like every other major sport in the world. There are many reasons why certain organizations and tournaments want to, or need to, be done in a live setting.
On August 17 2010 07:20 LawGQ wrote: Is it so much to ask to just fire BigT?
You gotta meet the players and viewers somewhere.
If you ban Idra, you need to fire BigT.
It's easy.
Considering IdrA wasn't banned that's not really an issue then is it?
As for BigT's status, he doesn't work for us. We allowed him to cast.
This makes no sense. How on earth was Idra penalized 2 points if BigT doesn't work for you? Obviously BigT must have had some kind of official status if he was able to punish Idra for not letting him in the game.
On August 17 2010 07:25 Shatter wrote: Well I wasn't happy with what happened last night. But as everything developed though, this just seems to be a case of error of one or two admins and the error has mostly been amended by further review by other esl officials. For all the miscommunication and complicating matters surrounding the situation, this is a pretty good outcome.
Would people like esl to own up to any mistakes? Probably yes but I can see why they may not want to. I think we can at least take comfort in the fact that this will be a learning experience for everyone involved.
Side note: I agree on casting replays instead of live games in the future. It is so much better for the players and really no different for the audience.
(btw <3 midway, I appreciate everything you have done for esports. Your work with gotfrag and CS is what got me into esports before I ever heard of professional starcraft)
I feel we have been clear about the entire situation and "own up" our mistakes. Are we going to go into detail about what was said between admins and IdrA? Of course not and there's no way any league would do that.
As for casting live versus replay. The audience clearly wants to see it live, comments here disagree but the actually interest and behavior of fans want live matches.
And thanks for support from the old days with GotFrag. I feel like I'm back in the middle of old DoG/GotFrag flame war threads.
I read through most of the pages of this thread, I found it rather interesting. Here are some observations:
1) A caster of a tournament (sanctioned) called a player a "1a zerg". This is completely unprofessional, given that he was asked to cast by ESL. Thoughts need to be made for having a code of conduct for casters, as well as considering how to resolve such situations in the future (perhaps having casters that don't disparage the players).
2) A player after playing several games, found out that he had to replay them. This is not an ideal situation, and frankly, there needs to be some controls in place to prevent this from happening. As a player, I would be irate if I found I needed to replay several games because the tournament staff can't verify wins.
3) A player choses not to have casters in the game because of latency issues. Given that the caster disparaged him, there were probably other valid reasons for not having the caster in the game, but this went against the rules of the tournament, and as such, was justified.
4) A player disparaged the tournament admins privately to another player (as I understand it). While there are rules in place to protect the image of the tournament, penalizing the player for these comments drew more attention to it rather than letting it slide. Poking a bear with a stick, then wondering why it attacks and making a big show of it isn't the best way to handle the situation. Stones, glass houses and such.
Hopefully the ESL will have some valuable learning points from this event, as they made many mistakes and a lot of this drama is their own causing. I hope they welcome community feedback instead of becoming defensive about it.
On August 17 2010 04:59 starcraft911 wrote: Penalty points for BM? Seriously? The winner should be the best at the game not the best at manners. ESL sounds like it's turning into a garbage organization.
Every sport has penalties for swearing or insulting other players and referees. Its time to tell the little IdrA fanboys that BM isnt cool and kicking him in the [somewhere where it hurts = his ego and his wallet] is the right way to do.
Personally I would prefer for him to be uninvited for the IEM global challenge at the Gamescom, but its too late for that. IdrA is simply a bad face for Starcraft 2 as an eSport.
I always like to remind everyone about the definition of "Gosu" as it is written in the Liquipedia and that includes superior manner in addition to the playing skills, so IdrA is 100% NOT gosu.
On August 17 2010 07:28 motbob wrote: This makes no sense. How on earth was Idra penalized 2 points if BigT doesn't work for you? Obviously BigT must have had some kind of official status if he was able to punish Idra for not letting him in the game.
IdrA's PP had nothing to do with BigT. It could have been Day9 casting and we still would have given IdrA PP for not allowing a caster in.
The issue people seem to be focused on is BigT. Honestly as Nazgul pointed out Live broadcasting must be enforced. IdrA said he didn't want people in his match no matter who casted it. After the fact, the issue was focused on BigT because he was one of the casters who did IdrA's match later. If we can get past the issue of BigT, the focus on the PP was around IdrA's refusal for any casters and his comments which were later on in the day after the casting.
On August 17 2010 07:01 KingRajesh wrote: Midway is picking and choosing what he responds to, he obviously won't touch the REAL issue here that you've brought up.
It's already been discussed. What more do you want me to say? Let me repeat. We made some mistakes, we admit to it. We have done our best to fix it while at the same time punishing people who deserved it.
No, no you haven't. The issue we want addressed is why Idra was given that additional penalty point. The first everyone has accepted is due to not letting casters in and mostly everyone agrees that it is an appropriate action given the rules. You claim this point was awarded because of what happened on his side of the bracket(having to replay games) and not due to any other reasons. You said
Later a separate issue happened that had nothing to do with IdrA besides the fact that he was playing on the same side of the bracket.
However this does not reflect what is shown on your website along with what your other admins stated last night. On the website it says
1 Point Repeated Offence Unsportsmanlike conduct throughout the cup ingame against players and casters and against esl on forums
This can easily be seen here We want accountability for what it was that caused this point. And you have dodged every question that has asked for this. So until you answer this the issue will not be closed.
On August 17 2010 07:32 Fraud wrote: I read through most of the pages of this thread, I found it rather interesting. Here are some observations:
1) A caster of a tournament (sanctioned) called a player a "1a zerg". This is completely unprofessional, given that he was asked to cast by ESL. Thoughts need to be made for having a code of conduct for casters, as well as considering how to resolve such situations in the future (perhaps having casters that don't disparage the players).
2) A player after playing several games, found out that he had to replay them. This is not an ideal situation, and frankly, there needs to be some controls in place to prevent this from happening. As a player, I would be irate if I found I needed to replay several games because the tournament staff can't verify wins.
3) A player choses not to have casters in the game because of latency issues. Given that the caster disparaged him, there were probably other valid reasons for not having the caster in the game, but this went against the rules of the tournament, and as such, was justified.
4) A player disparaged the tournament admins privately to another player (as I understand it). While there are rules in place to protect the image of the tournament, penalizing the player for these comments drew more attention to it rather than letting it slide. Poking a bear with a stick, then wondering why it attacks and making a big show of it isn't the best way to handle the situation. Stones, glass houses and such.
Hopefully the ESL will have some valuable learning points from this event, as they made many mistakes and a lot of this drama is their own causing. I hope they welcome community feedback instead of becoming defensive about it.
1) He requested to cast, we didn't "ask" him to cast.
2) One one game forced to be replayed in regards to IdrA, his quarterfinal win. As he decided to go to lunch after he won this match he wasn't penalized for this, he still earned his top 4 qualifying spot.
3-4) We upheld the rules of the tournament which we fell are in the best interest of SC2 as an eSports.
On August 17 2010 04:25 Psiclone wrote: What an embarrassment. There should be 0 tolerance for berating players and staff.
hey if I say your gay? does that make me a noob at starcraft? does that make my game lest enjoyable to watch? does that HAVE ANYTHING to do with starcraft and electronic sports?
BigT isn't the only person streaming the ESL, so if you can't stand the guy, go watch the other streams. I believe puremiss and iccup people stream games as well.
On August 17 2010 07:28 motbob wrote: This makes no sense. How on earth was Idra penalized 2 points if BigT doesn't work for you? Obviously BigT must have had some kind of official status if he was able to punish Idra for not letting him in the game.
IdrA's PP had nothing to do with BigT. It could have been Day9 casting and we still would have given IdrA PP for not allowing a caster in.
The issue people seem to be focused on is BigT. Honestly as Nazgul pointed out Live broadcasting must be enforced. IdrA said he didn't want people in his match no matter who casted it. After the fact, the issue was focused on BigT because he was one of the casters who did IdrA's match later. If we can get past the issue of BigT, the focus on the PP was around IdrA's refusal for any casters and his comments which were later on in the day after the casting.
I do not think it should be enforced in $100 open tournaments. Doing that is a mistake in itself. Open tournaments always have very little control over games because it is impossible to have referees and admins observing everything. This is understandable and acceptable and those should be the conditions to keep in mind when determining whether to hard-enforce rules.
From my experience the lack of (again understandable) moderation in open tournaments means they gather so many shitty casters that it becomes a complete clusterfuck for players, who should at that point have the right to tell all the casters to leave. I do not feel it is justified to willingly accept bad player conditions in a tournament with 400 participants and a $100 prize. IEM is much larger than some broadcast of a single game in a small qualifier and definitely didn't rely on every single game of this tournament being casted, in which case I will always side with player conditions.
On August 17 2010 07:28 motbob wrote: This makes no sense. How on earth was Idra penalized 2 points if BigT doesn't work for you? Obviously BigT must have had some kind of official status if he was able to punish Idra for not letting him in the game.
IdrA's PP had nothing to do with BigT. It could have been Day9 casting and we still would have given IdrA PP for not allowing a caster in.
The issue people seem to be focused on is BigT. Honestly as Nazgul pointed out Live broadcasting must be enforced. IdrA said he didn't want people in his match no matter who casted it. After the fact, the issue was focused on BigT because he was one of the casters who did IdrA's match later. If we can get past the issue of BigT, the focus on the PP was around IdrA's refusal for any casters and his comments which were later on in the day after the casting.
ITT: How to try and misconstrue posts of others in your favor.
If you wanna play the Nazgul card, he said he supports IdrA ESL is so unprofessional, its pretty fucking funny. Damage control failing at its best
Edit: go away nazgul, i was supposed to post first
On August 17 2010 07:42 naonao wrote: No, no you haven't. The issue we want addressed is why Idra was given that additional penalty point. The first everyone has accepted is due to not letting casters in and mostly everyone agrees that it is an appropriate action given the rules. You claim this point was awarded because of what happened on his side of the bracket(having to replay games) and not due to any other reasons. You said
1 Point Repeated Offence Unsportsmanlike conduct throughout the cup ingame against players and casters and against esl on forums
This can easily be seen here We want accountability for what it was that caused this point. And you have dodged every question that has asked for this. So until you answer this the issue will not be closed.
"IdrA then received an additional PP for his verbal abuse of both admins and fellow players. IdrA has been previously warned for his behavior in the tournament including his verbal harassment in earlier cups."
It was in the initial post. There's been numerous posts of mine and others saying those details won't be released and why. Hopefully that clears it up for you.
You know who IdrA remind me of? Ok this is just a curious analogy so no one get angry for this analogy, but I believe IdrA to esports is like Muhammad Ali to boxing.
He has undeniable world class skill. He's representing a minority in the pro gaming scene (not just Caucasians, but also the seemingly underpowered Zerg). AND... last but not least, he speaks his mind. Some may call this BM. But really, in my honest opinion, its his straightforward personality speaking out.
OK it isn't a perfect analogy but I thought I'd throw it out there lol.
Anyways, from reading the posts and the article on ESL's site, I seem to get the feel that ESL attitude toward IdrA is a result of personal reasons / anger. Maybe he insulted ESL in an inappropriate way. Maybe ESL is just abusing their power over the tournament and, whether they know it or not, are not providing optimal conditions for players. We can't truly tell because we don't know the details. But one thing is for sure - IdrA is one of eSports most charactered and skilled players, with a ton of following. I hope ESL and IdrA will work something out.
On August 17 2010 07:45 Liquid`Nazgul wrote: I do not think it should be enforced in $100 open tournaments. Doing that is a mistake in itself. Open tournaments always have very little control over games because it is impossible to have referees and admins observing everything. This is understandable and acceptable and those should be the conditions to keep in mind when determining whether to hard-enforce rules.
From my experience the lack of (again understandable) moderation in open tournaments means they gather so many shitty casters that it becomes a complete clusterfuck for players, who should at that point have the right to tell all the casters to leave. I do not feel it is justified to willingly accept bad player conditions in a tournament with 400 participants and a $100 prize. IEM is much larger than some broadcast of a single game in a small qualifier and definitely didn't rely on every single game of this tournament being casted, in which case I will always side with player conditions.
And we didn't penalize him in previous $100 Cups. But as this is his 3rd $100 Cup and he continues to not follow the rules we had to step in and establish the rules considering in three weeks we will have the Group Stage with the top 16 players. This is a decision as a staff we had already made going into the event and the enforcement of this rule was something no one besides IdrA has had a problem with. Many players from South American and Korea haven't expressed the same issue nor denied casting.
Also I'd like to note IdrA never approached anyone from National ESL about the issue. Instead of agreeing to cast later matches or working with us at all he simple refused all the way along.