Appeal Halo vs Unknown25

[Unlimited]

Damn wasn’t expecting this decision. The lag was longer in our game, though, or shit it really felt like it did.

[Zeebu]

lol

so what youre saying is if youre going to make an appeal at least be factually correct about it. especially if there exists video evidence that proves exaggeration on nearly every point that was made.

[Turban]

interesting decision when considering these facts:

• we were very dominant in the beginning of the match. there was only one time where our team were even remotely under danger and that was right when lag started kicking in. convenient timing for the opposing team.
• UNKNOWN25 got 45 seconds of free flag time (see 0:35) due to a flag jupe caused by server and/or bot related issues. we were not able to reclaim the flag which resulted in an easier cram break. one could argue we should have used the !jupe command, but as far as I know it is limited to captains and staff members. it doesn't help that most people simply do not know about it existing.
• the argument that kings was miraculously escaping is utterly ridiculous. the reason this situation even looked remotely bad was because ..
  • players were unable to attach to Kings due to server lag (see JURASSIC as an example). we could have easily balanced this situation out as we were more dominant throughout flag room battles.
  • shark repels were not displaying on other players screen. this allowed Markmrw to freely enter ear and mine it up which would never happen under normal circumstances (see 3:42 - 3:49). most spider bullet packets were also dropped during this period which also gave a significant edge to the opposing team sharks as they were in a positional advantage with far less issues.
  • spider bullets were not working. voice communications further prove this fact where one of our players claim to have hit GA five times in a row with absolutely no effect. our spiders could not shoot sharks either which allowed them to roam freely in flag room.
  • shark bombs by Markmrw and Hellkite (see 4:01 - 4:05) which eliminated our team had absolutely no counter play. morph repels were once again not displayed on our screens. this would also never happen in a normal game.

I hope this doesn't end up affecting tiebreaker situations with such a short season. the lag definitely impacted the game result - something you don't seem to disagree with - which was the reason for our teams appeal. the argument isn't that we would have won by 8 minutes, but that we (more than likely) would have won had this not happened in the game.

however I can somewhat agree declining the appeal based on Cripples initial post which was a gross exaggeration of the situation, but think the entire thread (and video evidence) should have still taken into consideration.

[Poseidon]

A couple of the statements in this appeal have been disproved by the recording. To summarize:

• Halo claims they had a 2 minute advantage prior to lag kicking in, when actually they were down by about 30 seconds.
• They claim that the lag started while in a flagroom battle, but in truth they were already on the ropes, and their terrier Kings miraculously evaded several deaths via bombs to the face, lagged ports, or the lag teleporting. At no point in this flagroom "battle" did it seem that the opposing terr, Golden_Aim, felt similar pressure nor utilized such miraculous escapes.
• Halo claims that the lag lasted for 6 minutes, which may have seemed true to cripple, but in my own game things resolved much quicker and I think most people would agree that it was fully resolved after about 2 minutes.
• Halo claims the lag prevented them from breaking cram for 6 minutes. However, after the Kings TeK at around the 4 minute mark, they quickly broke cram (back in FR by minute 6). The longer cram took place after the lag had more or less subsided.
• Halo later made back most of their time, but were unable to hold a 90 second cram to swap the win. In the subsequent flagroom battle, Halo failed to control flag for the remaining 30 seconds. They lost the most crucial fight fair and square.

I will agree about the following statements, as I feel somewhat the same way about my own game (we lost by 52 seconds).

• The lag affected the game in a way that might've hurt us by a minute or more. This is just impossible to quantify. Imagine if Kings had just lagged out at the start of the lag, rather than surviving for the majority of the laggy minutes. As great as the escapes some terriers pull can be, if there is no moment of safety where players can reattach and start controlling part of the flag room, then the survived minute is a wasted minute of pure Unknown25 flag time.
• The lag affected our team for more than 2 minutes. While I maintain the lag did not last much over 2 minutes towards the start of the match, the game is a mental exercise and it can be difficult to play as calmly and competently after an incident. However, I believe the ability to overcome the mental game is a crucial part of a veteran mentality, and this is partially why Unknown25 was able to march back in with despite being TeKed in the very late game. Combined with some mistakes on the part of Halo, and what could've been an easy hold turned extra messy.

My point in all that is, your close loss was not a measurable result of lag. It is just that- a close loss.

In the end, I see no significant evidence that demonstrates that if no server lag had occurred, Halo would've won the game (by far). This was the chosen appeal statement.

This appeal is rejected.

As with the other appeal thread, I will leave this open for a bit for further, civil discussion

you have done a thorough job with this appeal Willby, and i could see it going either way. there are some real qualms here however:

first id feel amiss if i didnt call you out for a certain aspect of your statement, and one that seems to have perhaps served as a significant basis for your decision. you are repeating behavior akin to your pass at GA where you snydly threw in his face the fact that he just wasted two appeals. nothing necessarily wrong with this, i found it funny in fact, but the way u are similarly forcing cripple's appeal to stand on the literalness of the language he chose (which was written while obv prob pretty heated and chargd about the whole issue) and thereby throwing it in his face seems... counter-productive. worse yet, you make it seem as if you are basing the rejection of the appeal on said language.

regardless of the articulation crip chose to employ in the heat of the moment it is obvious that he is not appealing to give his team a win, but appealing to replay so the winner can be determined in a fair manner whereby there is not a serious incident in play that lasted 4x longer than the amout of time his team lost by and which certainly may have changed the outcome of the game. to quote you for ease of reference: "In the end, I see no significant evidence that demonstrates that if no server lag had occurred, Halo would've won the game (by far). This was the chosen appeal statement." this approach you've elected of crucifying cripple upon the whimsy of his words does not seem like the proper way to go; there is an obvious and underlying idea behind his appeal which you seem to ignore.

you also did not seem to keep in mind that during lag like this everybody is experiencing different versions of the game as it is playing out whilst the server shits on itself - probably to a drastic degree in many instances. you are only seeing one vantage point by watching the video, and considering the potential in variation by which each player is being affected by and thus reacting to the lag, it is not fair to draw such specific conclusions as grounds for your denial of the appeal, and it is especially telling that these specifics are in essence the top/first listed point of your summary ... video evidence like this should very much be used only in the general to get a sense of how bad the lag was and how likely it was that the game may have turned out different without said incident; i havent watched the video, and my viewing of it is irrelevant to these complaints, but the way ur statement comes across certainly makes it seem like we have a situation where different players were experiencing likely substantially different scenarios playing out on their screens and you in turn are extrapolating determinations based upon too specific of details; this may or may not ultimately be the case; you very well could have reached a general conclusion first and are simply using the specifics to try to bolster your claim, but this regardless is not in good form. again for ease of reference, your second listed point: "[*]They claim that the lag started while in a flagroom battle, but in truth they were already on the ropes, and their terrier Kings miraculously evaded several deaths via bombs to the face, lagged ports, or the lag teleporting. At no point in this flagroom "battle" did it seem that the opposing terr, Golden_Aim, felt similar pressure nor utilized such miraculous escapes."

and further furthermore, there is a logic here of "welp, in the end, whoever wants it more is going to win so the incident in question which very well may have affected the outcome is moot". this seems very contrary to the spirit of an Appeal; it is hard to imagine coordinators of any serious sports league or e-sport taking this attitude. perhaps i am naive.

im not trying to come down on you with the boom of death willby and as ive said before i feel you are a fantastic league op... but as much as ive involved myself thus far i cannot in good conscience remain silent in my objections with the way this appeal has been handled, so here ya have it! seems like case closed regardless unless there is a process for crip to appeal the appeal, but perhaps in the future these are some things to be mindful of - again, each of these games carries an almost frustrating amount of weight for a league which can be as chaotic as this one (esp when ur team is at the bottom of the standings), where it often takes many of the otherwise potentially playoff worthy teams some time and some losses to gather their bearings and where a key player missing a single week can be the difference of life and death. and id like to reiterate that even with all this considered your decision of rejection could very well be a sound one at the end of the day - to repeat myself i personally was too lazy to do the dirty work of watching any videos and coming to my own conclusion so its nice there are people willing to do it for the good of the league.

[Flew]

My man Poseidon just wrote a 10 paragraph essay that nobodies going to read

[HellzNo!]

My man Poseidon just wrote a 10 paragraph essay that nobodies going to read

I read it and regretted it instantly

[WillBy]

you have done a thorough job with this appeal Willby, and i could see it going either way. there are some real qualms here however:

first id feel amiss if i didnt call you out for a certain aspect of your statement, and one that seems to have perhaps served as a significant basis for your decision. you are repeating behavior akin to your pass at GA where you snydly threw in his face the fact that he just wasted two appeals. nothing necessarily wrong with this, i found it funny in fact, but the way u are similarly forcing cripple's appeal to stand on the literalness of the language he chose (which was written while obv prob pretty heated and chargd about the whole issue) and thereby throwing it in his face seems... counter-productive. worse yet, you make it seem as if you are basing the rejection of the appeal on said language.

regardless of the articulation crip chose to employ in the heat of the moment it is obvious that he is not appealing to give his team a win, but appealing to replay so the winner can be determined in a fair manner whereby there is not a serious incident in play that lasted 4x longer than the amout of time his team lost by and which certainly may have changed the outcome of the game. to quote you for ease of reference: "In the end, I see no significant evidence that demonstrates that if no server lag had occurred, Halo would've won the game (by far). This was the chosen appeal statement." this approach you've elected of crucifying cripple upon the whimsy of his words does not seem like the proper way to go; there is an obvious and underlying idea behind his appeal which you seem to ignore.

you also did not seem to keep in mind that during lag like this everybody is experiencing different versions of the game as it is playing out whilst the server shits on itself - probably to a drastic degree in many instances. you are only seeing one vantage point by watching the video, and considering the potential in variation by which each player is being affected by and thus reacting to the lag, it is not fair to draw such specific conclusions as grounds for your denial of the appeal, and it is especially telling that these specifics are in essence the top/first listed point of your summary ... video evidence like this should very much be used only in the general to get a sense of how bad the lag was and how likely it was that the game may have turned out different without said incident; i havent watched the video, and my viewing of it is irrelevant to these complaints, but the way ur statement comes across certainly makes it seem like we have a situation where different players were experiencing likely substantially different scenarios playing out on their screens and you in turn are extrapolating determinations based upon too specific of details; this may or may not ultimately be the case; you very well could have reached a general conclusion first and are simply using the specifics to try to bolster your claim, but this regardless is not in good form. again for ease of reference, your second listed point: "[*]They claim that the lag started while in a flagroom battle, but in truth they were already on the ropes, and their terrier Kings miraculously evaded several deaths via bombs to the face, lagged ports, or the lag teleporting. At no point in this flagroom "battle" did it seem that the opposing terr, Golden_Aim, felt similar pressure nor utilized such miraculous escapes."

and further furthermore, there is a logic here of "welp, in the end, whoever wants it more is going to win so the incident in question which very well may have affected the outcome is moot". this seems very contrary to the spirit of an Appeal; it is hard to imagine coordinators of any serious sports league or e-sport taking this attitude. perhaps i am naive.

im not trying to come down on you with the boom of death willby and as ive said before i feel you are a fantastic league op... but as much as ive involved myself thus far i cannot in good conscience remain silent in my objections with the way this appeal has been handled, so here ya have it! seems like case closed regardless unless there is a process for crip to appeal the appeal, but perhaps in the future these are some things to be mindful of - again, each of these games carries an almost frustrating amount of weight for a league which can be as chaotic as this one (esp when ur team is at the bottom of the standings), where it often takes many of the otherwise potentially playoff worthy teams some time and some losses to gather their bearings and where a key player missing a single week can be the difference of life and death. and id like to reiterate that even with all this considered your decision of rejection could very well be a sound one at the end of the day - to repeat myself i personally was too lazy to do the dirty work of watching any videos and coming to my own conclusion so its nice there are people willing to do it for the good of the league.

I appreciate the feedback, and you raise a couple of good points I'd like to respond to.

Appeals must be submitted within 24 hours of the incident on the TW forums. A detailed account of the situation and the argument for the appeal should be provided in the thread.

These are the rules regarding appeals. A differently worded appeal would have justified different arguments. While I cant speak for everyone I spoke to regarding the appeals, my best means to remain objective is to enforce to the letter of the rules. I'm naturally sympathetic to this appeal, as I have absolutely lost games entirely due to lag before. But I've also won matches due to lag, whether I was aware of it or not. This is the root of my argument that lag doesnt have a quantifiable, measurable effect on the game, which was what cripple emphasized repeatedly in his appeal post. I recognize that TWDT is rarely as serious as TWL, but I encourage you to go read zidane's semifinal appeal from last TWLB to see the quality of appeal that can more easily be accepted (regardless of your thoughts on that appeal, it's well written).

I'm aware that lag affects everyone differently, but I was given 2 first hand accounts of the lag. My own experience, where the lag affected us minorly for a couple minutes, and the recording of the match. I was asked to overturn the results of the match, and I do not feel comfortable extrapolating how the lag might have affected others, definitely not to the point of overturning league matches. Again, I acknowledge that cripple and the rest of Halo may have had a different experience than myself, but the same is true for Golden_Aim and his team.

I think you have mischaracterized my response about the impact the lag seemed to have. Please watch the video if you arent sure what I'm talking about. Kings should have been TeKed shortly after the lag started, but he wasnt because of lag. My point isnt that unknown25 wanted it more, my point is that while Halo felt helpless to attach, unknown25 were robbed of 3 or 4 terrier kills. The lag affects both teams in ways that are hard to quantify.

[Turban]

I think you have mischaracterized my response about the impact the lag seemed to have. Please watch the video if you arent sure what I'm talking about. Kings should have been TeKed shortly after the lag started, but he wasnt because of lag.

I feel you are looking at this from the completely wrong angle while ignoring some very important details. Most of your focus seem to be on the enemy side while not paying attention to what transpired on our side which enabled all of their plays to be made. This comment reads to me as if you are under the assumption that ..

• Morph is a terrible shark. He will always let enemy sharks enter ear with no contention even when he has several repels available to him. He will never use repels to save your team while hovering around terrier out of spite. He likely averages roughly less than one repel per death.
• Halo spiders suffered some serious brain damage in the past and can not understand the concept of shooting enemy sharks or enemy spiders. They also like to take several extra seconds upon respawning to locate their attach key to rejoin the fray.

Unfortunately our basing team is full of seasoned veterans and not fresh players out of public arena. We have also both played enough base games to know that in 95 cases out of a hundred, given the positions of our players relative to theirs and timings of shark attaches, that this flag room battle would have more than likely balanced out rather fast. It was far from lost, and I daresay none of those "terrier kill attempts" would have happened had we actually been able to use our weapons.

Luckily, knock on wood, I don't think this appeal result will matter too much in the long run. Life goes on.

[Efhat]

So because I over exaggerated the times on my appeal out of anger we’re going to ignore the simple fact that server lag put my team at a severe disadvantage and costed us a game by 30 seconds.
This is outstanding logic to base your denial of an appeal.
let’s ignore every other factor that was contributed and harp on the fact that I was wrong with a time frame, although, it has been proven that the server lag lasted way more than a minute and my team lost by thirty seconds.

absolutely ridiculous and probably one of the WORST decisions made by an Op.

[Poseidon]

appreciate the response but im not interested in watching the video unless ud like me to make the final call. plus it will seem biased considering im on a squad with cripp and turb, tho i can assure you this is not why ive thrown my hat into this ring and i would have done it in the situation regardless of whose team - in fact, its pure arrogance and a desire to see things done right that keeps me truckin'. id rather take a step back from here unless you really want me to get involved, in which case i will fight for my stance to the death like a madman drunk on determination and full of fire - which would possibly not even need to happen as i might end up agreeing with the ultimate outcome of your decision. how you got there, however, i am not a fan of and find problematic, and you invoking the rulebook in regards to something so self-evident as a league op having the option of interpreting someone's appeal in a sane way instead of rigidly insisting it stick to the literal letter adds further frustration, though i understand you are defending an official statement of sorts

so ill make another slight pass and say this response of yours was not very satisfactory from where i stand, but you arent obliged to satisfy me and im fine with that. considering i cant be buggered to watch the video i dont have much ground to stand on as it is. im happy that you are open to listening and having the discussion, its a lot more than id imagine most league ops in the past have been capable of, and it goes a long way to building trust within the community and league. that being said, i trust turbans judgement of the situation and how the lag did or did not influence the game, regardless that he is on the appealing team, and he seems to pretty heartily disagree with you.

~~~~~~
flew believe it or not but that took me all of 15 minutes brother, mayb even 10. thx for the concern

and lets see... i dont remember what squad this insignificant chirper hellzno is on but id wage two of my pubes its GAs....
yup.

[Poseidon]

appreciate the response but im not interested in watching the video unless ud like me to make the final call. plus it will seem biased considering im on a squad with cripp and turb, tho i can assure you this is not why ive thrown my hat into this ring and i would have done it in the situation regardless of whose team - in fact, its pure arrogance and a desire to see things done right that keeps me truckin'. id rather take a step back from here unless you really want me to get involved, in which case i will fight for my stance to the death like a madman drunk on determination and full of fire - which would possibly not even need to happen as i might end up agreeing with the ultimate outcome of your decision. how you got there, however, i am not a fan of and find problematic, and you invoking the rulebook in regards to something so self-evident as a league op having the option of interpreting someone's appeal in a sane way instead of rigidly insisting it stick to the literal letter adds further frustration, though i understand you are defending an official statement of sorts

so ill make another slight pass and say this response of yours was not very satisfactory from where i stand, but you arent obliged to satisfy me and im fine with that. considering i cant be buggered to watch the video i dont have much ground to stand on as it is. im happy that you are open to listening and having the discussion, its a lot more than id imagine most league ops in the past have been capable of, and it goes a long way to building trust within the community and league. that being said, i trust turbans judgement of the situation and how the lag did or did not influence the game, regardless that he is on the appealing team, and he seems to pretty heartily disagree with you.

and damn me im letting ymself get dragged into this but ill respond to this last part

my point is that while Halo felt helpless to attach, unknown25 were robbed of 3 or 4 terrier kills. The lag affects both teams in ways that are hard to quantify.

this is why you replay the game - its hard to quantify and at least based on turban's testimony there seems to be more than just a slightly strong chance that the game could have gone either way had the lag not happened.

~~~~~~
flew believe it or not but that took me all of 15 minutes brother, mayb even 10. thx for the concern

and lets see... i dont remember what squad this insignificant chirper hellzno is on but id wage two of my pubes its GAs....
yup.

[Kings]

Ok, i'll try to be as clear as i can so that anyone can read this and still be a gentleman. See the remarks in red. I know it won't be overturned, but i love these kind of talks.

A couple of the statements in this appeal have been disproved by the recording. To summarize:

• Halo claims they had a 2 minute advantage prior to lag kicking in, when actually they were down by about 30 seconds. How can you not take the flag jupe into account? Had the flag jupe not occur, the result would be that and thus, Cripple statement about having a 2 minute lead was indeed correct in our reality (yes, the game that was played).
• They claim that the lag started while in a flagroom battle, but in truth they were already on the ropes, and their terrier Kings miraculously evaded several deaths via bombs to the face, lagged ports, or the lag teleporting. At no point in this flagroom "battle" did it seem that the opposing terr, Golden_Aim, felt similar pressure nor utilized such miraculous escapes. I would never have been in any difficulty during that lag had my team not missed any reps or killed the 2 enemies standing right in front of us. It started with a shark laying mines around that two of our spiders shot and did not kill? Then i ran to the ear because i saw a path to try and burst ga on the flag. But, oh surprise, ga was ghosting so what else could i do? i sit in the ear waiting for the lag to disappear seeing i missed my opportunity. And everything after that can be really hypothetical because before being killed, i would have gone left instead of right where i died have i seen my spiders alive there. So, clearly a non relevant point in the argument and i feel i would have had the upper hand on GA right there due to the enemy sharks just happy mining near me.
• Halo claims that the lag lasted for 6 minutes, which may have seemed true to cripple, but in my own game things resolved much quicker and I think most people would agree that it was fully resolved after about 2 minutes. You can clearly see in the video that we are in acute shock by what happened for at least 3 minutes despite what is going on. Questions are being asked and i was wondering if i should just spec the game. But being the players that we are, we can still move our fingers on the keyboard and be shocked. what kind of argument is that? Unless you have a degree in sport psychology and have the study to prove what is the exact timing of an average esport athlete response to stress, i wouldn't go there because this kind of stress has been proven to affect athletes over weeks. And it does not affect everyone the same way depending on the trauma (difference between the situation for both teams). Don't get me wrong, i do not think we are athletes, but brain wise, it is still very demanding and thus the emotional response is there for, let's say, at least 6 minutes. This has been proven worldwide already. For your own culture, here is a link to a paper which say the exact same thing. Journal of sport and exercice psychology
• Halo claims the lag prevented them from breaking cram for 6 minutes. However, after the Kings TeK at around the 4 minute mark, they quickly broke cram (back in FR by minute 6). The longer cram took place after the lag had more or less subsided. Again, this has no valid stand point as even with a clear emotional downside, we still managed to get in (which somewhat proves we are a strong team) and it does not prove anything about us not being impacted by the stress that the whole lag situation produced in our brain.
• Halo later made back most of their time, but were unable to hold a 90 second cram to swap the win. In the subsequent flagroom battle, Halo failed to control flag for the remaining 30 seconds. They lost the most crucial fight fair and square. As long as i would like to defend morph on this one, he clearly fucked up and gave the cram with his mine (if he did not, we clearly would have hold that cram for as long as needed) but that wasn't part of our appeal anyways. Why would you even get that into your analysis when it wasn't even in the appeal? It just seems to me you needed some words to add into your post.

In the end, I see no significant evidence that demonstrates that if no server lag had occurred, Halo would've won the game (by far). This was the chosen appeal statement. ok. lol

This appeal is rejected.

As with the other appeal thread, I will leave this open for a bit for further, civil discussion

[WillBy]

Thread closed.