【 decision 】 Paladen, Fork and Racka

[Turban]

we have granted an appeal below on the basis of staff/player miscommunication where staff had two rounds to enforce the rules and warn the players/squad, but instead did nothing but monitor the situation.

At first we thought only about inviting Paladen to TWLD, but after considering it only make sense to extend an invitation to Enemy as our last remaining seed to even out the team numbers. Nine is an awkward number to deal with, and Enemy would have surely complained about favoritism. Anyhow, this should increase the overall competitiveness of the league and it rewards Paladen for their activity in TWD, thus in my eyes it's a win/win situation. We are not going to have ten squads in TWLJ.

What this means is that we are going to have more games in the TWLD season. There is going to be five weeks where we will see a total of 12 TWLD games, and another three weeks with 10 TWLD games in an eight week season. If it is possible, we are going to skip the replay weekend to shorten the season by a week to have the TWL Finals on December 14th. The decision about that will be announced at a later date.

As a friendly reminder, squads should try take advantage of the Saturday games as they remain to be an option. This would really help staff out with the hosting burden and would probably make the league more interesting.



Now to the more important news. We are trying to move away from punishing entire squads this season during the qualification period and will instead punish the players who broke the rules.

RacKa will be banned from competing in TWL for a total of three weeks for feeding against Paladen when the ladders were about to lock. He openly admitted that he was going to feed in the match which further solidified this case against his favor. This TWL ban take effect immediately, meaning that he can't participate in the Pre-Season Week 1 of TWL, and it will end after Round 2 matches finish. He will be eligible to play in Round 3. We are going to add some clarification to the TWL rules regarding the TWL qualification period either during this season or shortly after the season ends.


Fork will be banned from competing in this TWL season. He was abusing his position as a captain of Paladen and Play to help his main squad to qualify in TWLD and TWLJ. We had to remove a grand total of five games in TWJD and four games in TWDD that happened this week. We are sorry for not reacting on time with the Play / Paladen case which is one of the main reasons why we extended an invitation to the squad. Nevertheless, captains of the squads should be punished harshly if they are breaking any rules and he is set as an example for this reason.



We are being very lenient this time. Try not to break any rules during the TWL season as we won't be as forgiving when the season starts.

[Turban]

cry away. you can appeal these decisions.

[Turban]

we also received appeals about feeding during the TWL qualifications. while they were mostly small timers, we should still make it clear that that type of behavior should not be acceptable during the qualification period should we keep this old system in the next season.

the players in question are Eren, SNSD Sooyoung, Heaven, Stayon and 7<e$ha

[fatrolls]

The reason Play played against Paladen is because all the other squads are too good so it was to make it beatable on both sides. All the players of Play seemed to like the idea of playing Paladen and it wasn't really feeding they gave it their best shot everytime the only problem was they were never lucky enough to win.. Fork tried to make both squads have fun and train up, since wbduels/javduels no one takes seriously you have to jd/dd to actually get any training.

Idk what to say but Fork is a very good person, and he tries very hard to play jd's he should atleast be able to play in jd league although I don't think Paladen or Play made it to JD anyways.

And wasn't Play and Laser made for the first reason to train new players from pub, you can't train against the best players it would be considered feeding to every squad then.

IDK whats the deal with RaCka first time hearing it, I think he was joking around too no idea why Thunder would want to help Paladen? they see us as trash anyways.

[Turban]

racka admitted that he fed on purpose to help Paladen as he thought they deserved the TWLD spot over LEGO. this doesn't make it okay to feed games even if "others are doing it" as well.

[field]

Fork went 20-10, 17-5 in some of the games (if I remember correctly). Idk how you can call that feeding really.. if anything, he violated staff's trust when he started TWDing his primary squad (which he knows not to for obvious reasons).

EDIT: In the jds, not dds.

[Dreamwin]

Stayon? Da fk u talking about. Dudgeon has never threw a game.

Also, sigh for all this wb attention. Still don't understand who can play that ship seriously

[Geio]

You want to sit here and talk about whats best for zone and making it more "Competitive" than you turn around and ban RaCka for "Three" games???? Sorry that is absolutely the dumbest and most absurd thing I have ever seen. I agree with the Fork thing. I say a 1 week ban would maybe suffice. Three weeks? Come on now.

[but...why...per...]

It is 2 twl matches, he is still free to play in TWD as far as I am aware so it is not like he can't practice. Though I have no idea what the schedule is like considering we can't even agree who is playing in it yet.

[Turban]

racka is appealing the decision based on the fact that no one officially warned him for 'feeding' during the game which is a valid point that no one told me about. it looks like staff handled the situation poorly and let the game run without informing Thunder to stop. we will make the decision tomorrow; we are also deciding the fate of the aforementioned players, but it is likely that racka will have his punishment lowered by one week of regular season instead of two.

[Turban]

alright.

i heard last night, after we had made the decision as a group of six people, that staff actually handled the situation poorly and never gave an official warning to Racka or Thunder to prevent them from feeding in the match. i was under the impression that this had been done, and thus felt that the original punishment was nothing but fair, even if it looked harsh to some of you.

this was confidmed by Undercut, who was the one in charge of the match and also handled the TWD ladder lock. there was a total of two cheater calls sent about Thunder feeding points to Paladen in their match which were taken by staff, but none of them actually did anything but monitor the situation until it was too late to act. nevertheless, this doesn't RacKa's situation any better as he got caught and even openly admitted that he was feeding on purpose. however, in the light of the new evidence that i did not have at hand, we are going to lessen his ban by a small amount due to the staff miscommunication issues. thunder was also claiming that 'others have done it too in the past, why would you start punishing players now for it?', but if you admit that you were feeding on purpose, that kind of works against your favor no matter how you put it. now is as good time as any to set an example for the future TWL seasons to prevent this from happening in the next season.

we are going to address the miscommunication issue between staff and players and will set clear rules that can be viewed and should be followed by both the staff and players during this season or shortly after the season ends. these rules will include the punishment(s) that a player, or squad, will face depending on the severity of their case.

we are lowering the duration of RacKa's TWL ban from three weeks to two weeks, and anyone else found guilty for the same reason will face the same punishment this season. this duration might change in the future seasons, and repeat offenders / captains will be punished harder.

7<e$ha and Eren joined Play from Paladen to play against their old squad a couple of times before leaving, but this by itself isn't illegal and no one actually reported these two players for it. it would be unfair to ban them without any evidence, thus they are innocent until proven guilty.

Fork apparently recorded the Sweet vs Dudgeon match and has solid proof of Stayon claiming that he will feed and throw the game against Sweet to assist them in their TWLJ run, and then proceeded to catch bombs on purpose. if this evidence is submitted to the TWL operators within a couple of days, and he is found guilty of feeding on purpose, Stayon will serve the same punishment as RacKa. no action will be taken until evidence is provided.

SnSd SoOyOuNg and Weak were playing well in the TWLD game, and actually giving some effort, thus should not be punished in my opinion. Weak dropped 18 kills in the first round and went 5-1 in the second round before getting substituted to Heaven who did fairly well. SnSd SoOyOuNg also performed decently, based on what i have heard, and thus no action will be taken unless sufficient evidence and more eye witness reports are given to us.

hopefully the communication will be smoother between the involved parties and me in the future.

[Ephemeral]

Turb,
While I have always respected you and the effort you are putting into this I must say that you need to grow some balls. Caving over ‘a warning’? Are you shitting me? These players exploit the game, the rules, and zone and the victims are all of us. Dumbass rulings and leadership like this is exactly what leads them to do this shit, they know they can get away with it with virtually no impact to themselves of their squads. I really thought you had more common sense then this and would do the right thing here.

When will this zone wake up and understand that some players will exploit every single thing they can find? Doesn’t matter if we are talking about the stupid team-killing rule in Pub or the TWL qualification process. It is a given. The ONLY real protection the zone has, given that the rules are so fucking stupid and full of holes, is applying common sense when enforcing them.

So when a Pub team killing call comes in everyone knows that some staffer will wander in and ’watch’. Then the processes demands that a ‘warning’ is given. Guess what? It is too fucking late, every player who wants to can team kill at will and exploit this process. And they do. Literally thousands of good, competitive basing games have been ruined due to players exploiting this process.

This makes how many times that the TWL qualification process has been exploited over the years? And we are still handing out warnings? Racka is indeed a fucking dumbass but even he is not that stupid. Everyone in chat was laughing at how obvious it was, comments were made between rounds and he acknowledged the behavior. What is next? Some player cheating and then pleading that even though they got a warning they don’t speak English as first language they didn’t understand? With poor decision making like this no one will ever be held responsible for any actions.

Season 19 and we still are using ‘warnings’ and can’t figure out how to enforce the rules correctly. What a fucking joke. The entire decision reeks of desperation and stupidly. Playing in TWL is not a ‘right’, squads are invited. It is like holding a party at your house and asking people to behave properly. They don’t have ‘rights’, you can force them to leave for whatever fucking reason you want. Racka came into your house and acted like a complete fucking moron and is saying he shouldn’t be asked to leave because you should have warned him first? LOL

And we wonder why the zone is in such sad shape? I really thought this season might be different with you leading it. You always seemed to have vision and understand the ‘big picture’ of what needs to be done for the long-term health of the league and the zone. But after caving first on not allowing this abuser to miss ‘preseason games’ (are you kidding me, what kind of punishment is missing a fucking preseason game?) and now reducing it even more you have shown yourself to be just like the other pussy-whipped leadership who is enslaved to the desperation of low population numbers.

The message here that you have sent is clear. It is open season on acting like assholes and getting away with it. Fuck with the league and zone anyway you want because there is no leadership with a backbone or a brain that will do anything about it. The ‘bar’ here is easy to understand; what would happen if all players decided to pull this type of shit? Have enough staffers to ‘warn’ them all? Would the league and zone still be running if everyone acted like Racka did? Of course fucking not. You are carving out exceptions for whatever warped 'due process' reasons and it is not good leadership. Get a grip and do the right thing here. Not what is right for a single, dumbass fucking player but what is right for the league and zone.
Eph

[Turban]

there isn't a single rule that says what kind of a punishment should be set if a player breaks that rule, ephemeral. it's something that needs to be addressed in the future.

i was under the impression that my TWL operators handled the situation correctly, and warned Thunder in after the first round had finished. however, i was proven to be wrong as Undercut was too annoyed/tired at the situation to actually give an official warning to Thunder and waited too long.

if i had been there, i would have given a stern warning to Thunder during Round 1, and if they had continued to feed i would have been forced to take drastic measures had RacKa stepped on my toes.

[Turban]

i've made it clear that any rule that is broken during the TWL season will be dealt with zero tolerance, no bias, and the punishments will be harsh depending on the severity of the rule break.

we are using still a flawed qualification format, and while we wanted to move away from that, the apparent lack of developers forced us to use this one. either way, we want to have as much competition as possible, and with this current structure, one shouldn't punish an entire squad harshly for breaking a rule that has not been enforced in ages (since season 3-4) and players/squads have absolutely no clue what the punishments are for breaking the rule. it comes down to the TWL operators to decide what is right and what is wrong, and how long one should be punished.

TWL qualifications is not the same as TWL season/playoffs and should not be treated as harshly. that's how i see the situation, but maybe my point of view is wrong. however, if we had moved to a different, better qualification format and only allowed four to six squads in a short league, it would be a different story altogether.

uh, phrasing off again. too lazy to fix.

[Kim]

Teamkilling, racism, spamming, teaming are all infractions that require warnings in advance before punitive actions are taken. Cheating should never require a warning. Qualifying for TW's premier league is something that should be raised to the highest priority. The great thing about feeding in TWD is that the behaviour is all too predictable. It seems no team has the foresight or motivation even 7 days prior to the ladder lock to make a move. Staff should set an example with cases like this and all future possible cases that none of this behaviour is tolerable. Even questionable activity on TWD during this sensitive period where cheating will most likely occur should be brought to the forefront and have EVERYONE know about it so that it discourages other teams from doing this. At the end of the day, removing one player from TWL is not going to be a game changer for any squad.