TWLB Finals - WTF decision?

[Turban]

please remember that we in pandora do have our share of players who would've preferred to have a fair basing final, featuring the very best players, but it just wasn't meant to be due to staff and bot errors. we're not all trolls. this week was really, really unfortunate and dice has every right to feel down, it seems like most of you don't really care about the result unlike some people on our squad. i was thoroughly enjoying our javelin games, it was a blast, until third round happened with its lag issues. staff did make the correct decision, but it did swing the match into our favor when the game was about even. nevertheless, if they had let maketso play the game it would've just ruined the entire round, most likely resulting in a rematch if dice had won the round.

in my eyes dice has left a permanent mark in the zone history by being the most successful basing squad of all time. i wholeheartedly enjoyed spectating most of your finals while benching on various squads, including pandora, and would like to thank you for all those seasons you spent together. while we never were all that close, and i'm sure several of you do dislike me as a person, i still respected you as a group of players. i'm sure you can look back in time with a smile on your face, reminiscing about your past experiences together -- sharing both the good and bad times together and providing support to each other if needed, while having a great time doing that. i'd like to wish you guys the very best luck in the future, thanks for your contributions (those that are leaving); wish i had gotten to know you guys better.

[Turban]

once again no fking spacing. my god, this proxy isn't working that well.

i was under the impression that if a staff or bot error happens, the round would be completely voided (round 1) thus it wasn't a replay; it was a complete remake.

[Ephemeral]

There was nothing preventing us testing it except that it was changed the day-of. We still could have tested it. And I could have checked the code to make sure it would function properly -- then found that it wouldn't, and gone back and changed the CFG again.

To be clear: The change was untested due to 'not bothering.' Shame on us. Let's redouble our efforts to test everything before cutting it into production.

Or: let's try to do what we can as a ragtag volunteer group on a moribund space game. I've throw so many hours of my life into maintaining and working on this game. I get plenty out of it; I'm not complaining. I love this game. But sometimes you just don't have time to test everything. We pretty much test live or not at all.

In order to test this 30 second change, we would have needed to: get two full TWL squads together, OR create 2 fake TWL squads in the DB; have them add lineups; then have them play out a full 40-minute game. So we're looking at a minimum of 1 hour to test this 30-second change ... but of course, getting 2 TWL squads together, or 2 fake lineups, would probably take a couple of hours in and of itself, if it could even be done.

Of course, this is testing for a totally unforeseen bug arising from the simplest possible modification -- and therefore it would be unlikely we'd ever test this. That doesn't mean it still should have been tested. But: by whom? Where do you find the people to spend their time testing every feature on a very old botcore? We used to have TWBeta, waaaaay back in the day, who would help test new features and game modes. We just don't have the population to support this anymore, though.

Kind of a milquetoast response, I know. I admit we should have tested it. And yet ... where do we get the time to do it? I have to eat. I can't spend every minute testing features on SS. I'm sorry; just isn't feasible. And I'm not going to waste time feeling ashamed of myself for it, and I think you're being an overly idealistic ass for suggesting I should. (No, that's not true -- I do still feel a little ashamed. But you don't need to recommend it. Nor will it help us "redouble our efforts.") Summary is, I think you should stick to managing paid engineers.

Just in case you guys ever wonder why at any given time we have at most 3 active coders ...

Qan,
I’ll ignore your bullshit comment about me managing paid engineers since that is clearly just frustration on your part.

I do not understand how you mention ‘time’ as being a factor when considering how much time this cluster fuck has already consumed. Obviously it would have saved time to test it then to debate it and replay it.

Secondly, if time to test was an issue who was the guy who should have told those who wanted the change the scope of work and/or risk? IMO you should have told Reckful and/or whomever else wanted the time change that you didn’t have the time to test or delegate it to someone else to test. I KNOW that you know how to do things correctly even within a volunteer environment.

It appears to me that the issue here is that we allow too many changes, are too accommodating to change requests. The value a fellow like you brings to the table is beyond that of being a code jockey. The value of a guy like you lies in your development experience; the fact that you can accurately estimate the scopes of work and have the communications skills to make sure others understand what these changes really means in terms of cost and risk. If you talked with Reckful and informed them of the risks of rolling it out, if you recommended to not make the change and to stick with the known-good existing code/configurations, then you did a good job and shame on them instead.

The TW culture is to shot gun ‘new ideas’ with little consideration of the cost/risk/impact. Who better than you to make sure that everyone understands what is really involved in developing this stuff? If this is being an overly idealistic ass then so be it.
eph

[Vatican Assassin]

Typical Pandora trolling here. Anytime an event is disputed tactic = storm the thread by blaming everyone else and taking no responsibility. What can you expect from a squad that is led by Dipshits/message board/ingame trolls like Zidane and Vatican Assassin and has very few redeeming people like Myth. Good job running the league to the ground trolls.

You're a broken fucking record rule.

[zidane]

I was never angry at the decision M_M God, in the contrary after about 5 mins I said many times to just start the game at 0-0 without any 30 second advantage nonsense. Cape played round 1 so I had no idea what the issue of him playing again was. As Pandora "technically" won round 1 redoing the round was to our disadvantage. We then fairly won round 2 and then dominated round 3 before the bots "died". Dice managed to have all their players remaining for the whole match except Dwopple who had to be somewhere. It happens in TWL finals where not every player is able to show for the whole time, and we do not feel this was our fault or problem. Every pandora player who played feels they deserved to win and that we won fairly by outplaying Dice this weekend. Having said that, Pandora does not agree with what you have proposed M_M god. I feel there's too much emphasis being placed on feeling bad for dice/not wanting them to quit the game, if they can't take a loss that they obviously deserved by playing poorly then i'm not sure what the problem is. Redoing a finals that we clearly won just because it wasn't pretty is ridiculous and not something that would ever happen in the real world. When the lights went out in Superbowl 47 and the ravens were up 28-6 in the third quarter they didn't stop the match and say "ahh this match isn't perfect let's redo it next weekend and hopefully the lights won't go out". Mistakes happen, the game was restarted at 0-0 and then Pandora won the next 2 rounds fairly, I see absolutely zero reason to even consider this and find it troubling it's even being brought up after Reckful has already made a final decision. This kind of flip flopping from staff is probably one of the reasons a decision on Round 1 took so long to happen.

[Rule]

Laughs at Zidane. The guy is such a two faced coward - on one hand trash talking with no logic (all of dice are terrified of us lol) and on the other hand trying to act like he's a normal player who doesn't troll the zone and vets out of blue for years on end.

Thanks for the explanation M_M God. Clearly you guys are working hard and care about the zone and that is to be appreciated and respected.

Let Zidane keep his ddosed victory is my vote. If somehow a replay was managed you would never hear the end of his whining. He is not interested in winning games fairly. No integrity to him as a cap or a person and that's why I will keep coming into threads and dissing him when I see his pathetic behavior.

[Rough]

Laughable at M_M God writing on this forum and proposing this type of solution. First of all, MM you talk about surviving this dying zone and get it populated again but guess what...you are a total hypocrite. Not many people knew this but one of dice members actually paid M_M God through paypal so round 1 can get reversed which it did and now you are asking us to replay a 3rd round where we have a 8 minute lead and kept killing dice mid base? You sir are a coward. I am so fucking curious now if you are going to respond to my comment now since this is out.



The only real TWL OP here is Reckful who has been fair all season long.

[Rise Against]

Laughable at M_M God writing on this forum and proposing this type of solution. First of all, MM you talk about surviving this dying zone and get it populated again but guess what...you are a total hypocrite. Not many people knew this but one of dice members actually paid M_M God through paypal so round 1 can get reversed which it did and now you are asking us to replay a 3rd round where we have a 8 minute lead and kept killing dice mid base? You sir are a coward. I am so fucking curious now if you are going to respond to my comment now since this is out.



The only real TWL OP here is Reckful who has been fair all season long.

Fair is giving Pandora everything they want and letting turban get away with as much lag as he does yet penalizing maketso at a crucial time in TWLJ finals? Turban's performance in semis was outrageous and a huge reason for the win.. what did he get? 21 kills? making it 50-45 round 2?.. He also got to play in finals after that outrageous game where everyone was yelling "APPEAL" in the arena, he threw a couple of lag bombs in third as well.. better get out of a squad with zidane in it Rough, you're starting to sound as arrogant as him by saying Reckful is fair. How many appeals has he denied vs Pandora yet gives Pandora a nulled round 1 of TWLD cause they wouldn't stop crying? Zidane being a pussy and rejecting a fair rematch to prove once and for all if Pandora was the better squad Season 18 shows why I will never think Pandora is better than dicE in basing.. prove it with a fair match, or forever be doubted. Zidane, you are complaining that no one gives Pandora credit.. this is your chance, rematch or face the scrutiny, deal with it one way or another.

[M_M God]

Rough you and your insane accusations are a disgrace to this zone and everything you might represent. This isn't even laughable, so if this one of your failed attempts at an april fools joke, please gtfo.

[Hulk]

Were you guys even watching the same game for LJ. Turban ate like 1-2 bombs the entire semis in LJ while infrared and amnesti had more lag. You can even ask inf himself. As for finals, i don't know about maketso but stayon ate more bombs than all of pandora combined. Please stfu and let it rest already.

[Turban]

they just love to mention me every single time; stayon has the same lag as me yet no one talks about that guy due to him having a different play style.

[Rise Against]

Maybe the server routing issues and lag started earlier than TWLD despite what we initially thought, so based off this new evidence with lag, TWLJ and TWLB should be nulled like round 1 of Fierce vs Pandora twld.. is that what you're saying? .. Also, 1-2 bombs? You're either blind or on Pandora.

[Hulk]

Wait, so TWL staff knew the timer was off from the start but let it continue going. Good Job. Next, Cape wasn't allowed to play round 2 even though he showed up AT go?? How about you guys be more clear about what you want and just have specced him when we were adding people. I didn't even know you guys gave an announcement during round 1. Round 2 took fucking 30 mins to start and made dwopple leave. LD took like 45 minutes to start and even though we didn't have our starters myth/zid wanted to play it anyway.

[Rough]

Rough you and your insane accusations are a disgrace to this zone and everything you might represent. This isn't even laughable, so if this one of your failed attempts at an april fools joke, please gtfo.

You are a coward simple as that then you have the balls to write on how to save the zone. You are corrupt, get over yourself and buy yourself an IPad with that money slimeball.

[qan]

Qan,
I’ll ignore your bullshit comment about me managing paid engineers since that is clearly just frustration on your part.

If you talked with Reckful and informed them of the risks of rolling it out, if you recommended to not make the change and to stick with the known-good existing code/configurations, then you did a good job and shame on them instead.

Yes, it was mostly frustration -- compounded over a couple of days. I apologize. But one needs to vent, especially in these kinds of situations. Again, I acknowledge that it's the right thing to do (to test thoroughly) but it's not always the politically possible thing, even barring time constraints. Bot coders, even when in higher-up positions, are generally beasts of burden. That is to say, measuring risk is sometimes seen as a challenging of departmental authority. So: if people ask me to analyze risk, I'll do so; if not I'll get in whatever advice I can without while not stepping on any toes. In the end, coders are a resource. If non-developers want to manage the development process, which they usually do, they also take responsibility when they don't make full use of their resources.

Not many people knew this but one of dice members actually paid M_M God through paypal

They should have used something like skrill. The fee rates are lower :P

Wait, so TWL staff knew the timer was off from the start but let it continue going.

Nope. Earliest it was know was about 15min into the round IIRC.