TWLJ - Fierce vs Pandora - Appeal

[shayde]

Ok so ive actually spent past 10 minutes reading this 8 page thread, really impressed it made it this far. First off if it was a member of Pandora that did it and it really did have some kind of huge effect on our twl match then I believe an appeal should be considered. I dont believe anyone should win by cheating, i actually left staff because i caught a staffer cheating and there was no ban or even a care that he was. I dont agree with it and if we won due to cheating then appeal this and get it over with. 24 your -1-10 is hilarious but to be honest has he ever done so badly? Obviously there was some issue i.e. the vent attack that had to do with it. If it was a member of our squad that was out to ruin your chances of having a fair game then I will make sure hes removed from squad and Ill back your appeal to the twl ops. If it wasnt and we are blaming my entire squad for cheating when none of us had any idea it was even happening, and i can vouch for that i heard nothing of this till after the game then stop already with this appeal. Either way prove who it was and if its someone on my squad that did this then I back this appeal and the guy will be removed along with w/e other things the TW staff has ready for the person. The dude does not abide.

[lilwade]

Rage

[KATC]

Spacebar - 1
Humid - 0

[Summa]

TWL Official Response

TWL Decision:

What happened:

During the Fierce vs Pandora TWLJ match at a score of approximately 10-11, the TW supported ventrilo server was attacked by a member of Pandora with the intent of causing disruption to Fierce. Fierce has a private channel on the TW supported ventrilo server. This, ip confirmed, player logged onto the ventrilo server and attempted to enter the Fierce channel twice using two separate failed passwords within 12 seconds. 4 seconds later he logged out of the server, and re-entered under the same ip and macid under the name '2PacZ'. From there he spent the next approximately 3 minutes repeatedly connecting and disconnecting from the ventrilo at a ridiculously rapid rate in an attempt to packet flood the players of Fierce. During the time that this occurred Fierce had established an insurmountable deficit, and consequently lost the match shortly thereafter.

Fierce's Appeal:

The content of Fierce's appeal, and subsequently what we, as TWL ops, have to judge off of is as follows:

1) Someone from Pandora attacked the TW supported ventrilo with intent of disrupting their play.
2) This attack caused “spam this loud sound of someone entering every time they enter, but it also starts to lag our computers” -24 or “My screens frame rate and spike was all over the place and it continued on for around 5 minutes during which conveniently we lost our lead from one or two of our players being knocked out. During this spam attack, I tried to alt+tab and close vent, but the server was so flooded that it didn't allow me to exit the program. When I clicked the "x" the vent program went blank white, freezing, and keeping me from closing.” - Havok
3) Based off of the above two, there was an intentional act committed by a member of the opposing squad on a TW supported ventrilo; and as a result that attack generated a significant enough server or local lag to cause a significant difference in the outcome of the match. As per rule 6.01: “6.01 If an unpredictable server crash, router failure, server lag, TWBot failure, or other event has a massive impact on a game in progress, the match will be cancelled and all current scores discarded. The game will then be replayed at a later time.”

TWL Response:

First and foremost we would like to establish that the TW public ventrilo server is an optional 3rd party software that TW staff supports and to some extent administrates, but is not paid for with TW money. As a result of this TWL staff has limited jurisdiction over what occurs on it. However, TW staff would like to formally apologize as there are settings in the ventrilo that could have prevented this situation altogether and we had not enabled them. So first an foremost, we apologize and it has since been changed so that this situation never occurs on that server again.

Regarding the specifics of the appeal, there is no denying (I have conclusive proof and have shown it to other smod+'s including a banG op) that the person who committed the attack was a member of Pandora and that it was done with the intent of causing a significant disruption of play. As a result of that, the offending player will be punished in a manner deemed appropriate.

Now that it has been established that the player was a) on Pandora, b) actually did attack the server, and c) had the intention of causing a massive impact on the game. Next we investigated the claims that Fierce made about how this effected their gameplay, and then tried to determine if it was significant enough of a an effect to be deemed a “massive impact on the game”.

1st) The sound issue: There is no doubt that if you don't personally have entry/exit binds turned off that this would indeed cause a loud and annoying sound, subsequently preventing the vocal communication advantage that the use of ventrilo is intended to provide. However, we do not feel that a loud and annoying sound constitutes a massive impact on the game and also does not have much impact on the game client itself.

2nd) Causing of latency/ping spikes: There was absolutely no evidence we could find of what happened causing a significant changes in the lag for the players of Fierce. There were 0 lagouts, and from what the host and other staffers in the arena he noticed no noticeable ping difference in the players. From this, we must conclude that what was done did not cause any significant changes in latency or ping.

3rd and 4th ) Inability to close ventrilo and Local/Fps lag: These two go hand-in-hand because they both require an explanation and have an extremely high burden of proof. After the appeal was received and I was given access to the server logs, I attempted determine who, not on Fierce, was also on the ventrilo server at the same time to attempt to get their perspective. The two people whom were on the server claimed that they did not notice any change in fps and one said that they “muted the sound and went back to watching youtube” and the other said that they simply closed the ventrilo within the first 15 seconds. There were two other active people online at the same time whom I did not get to talk to, so we decided to investigate further by attempting to re-create the situation on another ventrilo server. This was done on two separate occasions, once by Fis and Reckful and another time by myself.

Fis and Reckful tried a variety of programs and methods to attemptedly recreate the situation and observe its results. They reported that the worst that they could cause from this was that they could make it so that ventrilo would white out and be unable to be closed, however they could not create a situation where there was any in-game effect or change in framerates.

I took it upon myself after they reported this, to try it myself; on the grounds that they had only attempted it with a good computer. (Note: in the event that someone wants to watch this, I recorded it with Camtasia) I proceeded to try to recreate the situation using a few different methods starting from my computer at its best performance and dropping it all the way down to running at approximately a dual core processor on 2 gigs of RAM. I could very easily create the same situation that Fis and Reckful did which made ventrilo unable to be closed. However, only at the very worst settings I could put my computer at (which is the equivalent to the computer I owned in about 2002) could I even dent the framerate. I tried both windowed and fullscreen, and while you do have the standard frame dip when you task in and out on full screen, the most frame differential I could get was 22 frames (from 128 to 106); which did not cause a significant difference in play for me as I proceeded to play with no real difference.

As a result we could see no significant change in the game client's framerates from our attempts and there was no unbiased account saying that it effected their framerate either. So we can only determine that whatever, if any, frame lag was not enough to be considered a “massive impact” on the outcome of the game.

In conclusion, we have determined that the attack caused a very loud and continuous noise for approximately 3 minutes and that for some the ventrilo was unable to be closed. However, this did not cause a significant enough in-game change of play that we could find in order for it to be called a “massive impact” on the outcome of the game and hence not qualifying under rule 6.01. Thus, TWL staff will not be granting a replay of the match; however the player who was the offender will be punished heavily.

[shayde]

Well like I previously said I agree with the appeal if it had any huge impacts on fierces game which it didnt. Like I said before if it was a person from pandora which it was I would back you up on the appeal but you lied about the results, Im glad Humid took the time to find out what really happened. The fact you guys had to try and say it was fps issues when it was impossible for tw staff to come up with any fps issues is pretty sad. However like i said the guy that did this was removed from our roster and our apologies for the loud noises you heard during game. Next time you accuse an entire squad of cheating and ask for them to be disqualified from TWL all together please have a real reason because this is pathetic.

P.S. Nice -1-10.

[Pummel]

If ventrilo is an optional third party program like you say, why would an individual be punished for disrupting something that is completely unrelated to the game? On that note, the only people who should be 'punished' are those who make ridiculous appeals like this blatantly lying and dramatizing a situation in a desperate attempt to redeem themselves - wasting everyone's time. It is despicable to read these lies and claims that it caused them to lag etc etc...I have never and will never cheat IN GAME. To me, it is severely unclear (and I don't even think it's an official rule) that an individual can be banned because of some harmless trolling on ventrilo that has been proven (you guys tested it yourselves) to not have any sort of impact on the game. Had there been rules set in stone that clearly depicted the correlation between trench wars and ventrilo, I would not have done it. That being said, I don't think that you guys will recognize the error in your ways at this point and I am expecting full punishment - just wanted to throw some things out there.

[Welfare]

mo humid

[shayde]

[shayde]

[Ephemeral]

Was this appeal stupid? Of course, it was just as stupid as PL’s appeal last week. 95% of the regular season appeals are stupid but this should be no surprise to anyone who has played the game.

But where in the rules does it say that the game outcome has to be affected before a replay is granted? The closest I can find is in Rule 7.01 where it states; “If a squad feels that such factors as game referee decisions, staff involvement, server or router error, cheating, or other instances have affected the outcome and fairness of a game, that squad has the right to appeal to the League Operator.” Is ‘fairness of a game’ synonymous with ‘affected outcome of the game’? (No, it isn’t.)

By ‘testing’ the Vent server issue, and then using this as justification for the appeal decision, you have fallen into a very slippery slope. It is the same as saying an illegal substitution was made but a test was done and it was found that since the player being subbed was no better or worse than who had might have been legitimately played no replay will be granted. If a rule was broken the game is invalid, getting into the degree of impact is stupid.

Why is Vent even being promoted for use in TWL? TW makes a big deal about screen resolution and controls it to disallow anyone having a hardware advantage over another player, yet now supports it players using Vent? Where was the leadership when this decision was made to promote Vent with TWL? Why was it not tested THEN to see if it could be used to impact a game?

Section 7.04 states, “Appeals will be handled by the TWL ops collectively. The TWL ops will vote on acceptance/denial of each appeal. Their votes, along with a explanation of their choice, will be public information.” Yet I am not sure that I have ever seen this happen. Of course the rules also clearly state that teams cannot ask for additional time before a game unless they don’t have enough players yet extra time is given within 30 seconds of the game being announced. Obviously the rules are not really rules, the rules are really just ‘drama opportunities’.

Season 17 and rules are still being made ‘on-the-fly’. Decades of dealing with really poorly written rules. Season after season of myopic leadership who insist that it is not possible to improve the rules between seasons. No one can be this stupid, it has to be that those in control think that drama is a key component to the success of the league. Is running the league in a way that ensures endless time-wasting appeals and drama the better than just pulling the plug on it? Apparently so, it appears that the fate of TWL is to languish a slow and ugly death.
eph

[Jones]

these meme thingies in this thread are so ridiculously bad i havent seen anything like this since this last girl i dated started sending me 9gag links.

[Children]

BTW, its not just anyone if its a member of PANDORA. Squad disqualification should be considered if it is.

Whats funny is that you have no legs to stand on right now, but you keep retorting with the dumbest fucking attempts at jokes I have ever heard. Do us all a favor and find the nearest curb and crush your skull on it.

[renzi]

i think i got cancer from those god awful memes. amp's were funny doe.

[Zeebu]

the only rule necessary:

dont do idiotic things. if you or someone in your squad happens to do something that stupid, you get punished.

everyone knows when theyre being a fuckhead.



though im glad you once again got back on your soapbox eph. every season you clamor for a list of rules and punishments 9 miles long.

[Golden_Aim]

Season 7

Jessup

Round For - Vs K D
Pre-Season Week 1 Ancients - Grapevine 0 10

**New record holder**
Season 17

24

Round For - Vs K D
Week 5 Fierce - Pandora -1 10