As some/many of you may know, I joined the Admin Team shortly after MoAre5 started, and I definitely enjoyed it a lot.
All statements below are my personal thoughts and opinions on some topics and drama that came up during the tournament:
Number of Players
Restricting this tournament to 64 players was probably the only option to at least try and finish MoAre5 in a reasoable timeframe. I personally like the option of a qualification stage, but with Christmas and New Years just before the start, you cannot expect this to happen.
Also, it was only around Christmas that this tournament reached 64 sign-ups. Let's hope for earlier sign-ups next time.
Single/Double Elimination
The biggest problem with Double Elimination is time/duration. Players from the Winners Bracket have to wait for their next opponents and the "hype" can get lost on the way to the Grand Finals (as some viewers have stated on numerous occasions). Then again, Double Elimination has allowed us to experience some of the greatest match-ups, Im thinking of TaToH vs St4rk in MoAre5 and also Viper vs MbL in MoAre3.
In my opinion, those were some of the greatest games these tournaments have given us. Thus the solution to go with a 16-player Double Elimination makes a lot of sense to me, even though it helped create THE meme of the tournament (more on that in the seeding topic).
Civ settings
Using the Captains Mode Draft was quite refreshing in this tournament. Maybe calling the Presets "MoAre5 Bo3" in Bo5 and "MoAre5 Bo5" in Bo7 settings wasnt optimal, but after the Ro32, most players knew how to do this. Finding interesting and balances Civ Settings for the rest of the games is not easy for non-experts like myself, even more so because the new civilizations on WololoKingdoms werent so well known before this tournament. Changing the settings while the tournament was already going should not be a problem in general, but the well-known drama from MoAre5 has taught us differently.
In future tournament, expert opinions should probably be heard and considered when creating civ settings.
Seeding: "ty gman" by MetalRTS
Everybody knows the ty gman Meme and most people probably know where it comes from. The seeding rules were clear from (almost?) the very start of this tournament. They werent perfect, but every signed up player knew about them and couldve made suggestion how to get a more appropriate seeding done. Metal still complained, and I can understand where that's coming from, but changing the seeding rules on short notice wasnt really an option.
With Double Elimination only starting in Ro16, quite a few players that I wouldve like to see in the later stages didnt make it, but there were still a lot of great games.
In retrospect, seeding wasnt all bad, as it lead to one of two/three things we will remember about MoAre5:
Viper won || St4rk vs CL Drama || ty gman
(Side note: It takes a whole lot of time to actually create a list of players in order of their seeding rate.
Making the seeding more complicated with 64+x sign-ups would probably double that time, if not more.)
Coaching: Feanor vs slam
Probably the first big upset that drew a lot of attention was Feanors win against slam in Ro32. As we learned afterwards, Melkor was in the room with Feanor and talked to him about the game while Feanor was playing ("giving him tips"). A lot of people considered this to be cheating and asked for an Admin Loss for Feanor. As the Irish brothers explained afterwards, they are used to this when playing just for fun, but they wouldnt do it again if it's considered cheating.
If something like this would happen in the future, I think it calls for "Admin action" (not to be confused with Admin decision). By that I mean that there should be a possibility for the involved players and the admins to talk about everything and then come to an agreement, for example, slam couldve asked for the game(s) to be replayed.
If no agreement can be reached, then Admin decisions can still be made.
WololoKingdoms 5.6/5.6.1/5.7: St4rk vs CL
The biggest drama in the tournament and also a really difficult situation to handle for the admins.
I want to review this from the beginning:
The tournament started with WK Patch 5.6 and everything was going alright. The update to WK Patch 5.7 (necessary due to the AoE2HD update) hit us (the admins) pretty hard.
The games on Friday January 26th were played with the unrated version of WK Patch 5.6. At this point, Gman announced to continue the tournament on Patch 5.7 starting in the next round. This decision was withdrawn when we got an update from TriRem that Patch 5.6 was rated again.
On Saturday January 27th (starting 12GMT), CL won his QF WB match against Feanor, not realizing that Incas missed their free Llama. That same day (starting 13GMT), Keif played against Melkor, discovered the Llama Bug and complained (with good reason; they played that game on WK Patch 5.7 then).
(Side note: To watch the recs of the previously mentioned games, you may need to choose "WK Patch 5.6 recs only".)
As far as I remember from here, TriRem released another bug-free version (Great job btw, you worked so damn fast!).
St4rk and TaToH updated their game version to what has become known as WK Patch 5.7.1 and played with that Patch on Sunday January 28th. At this point, I had no idea what Patch 5.7.1 was, Im assuming it had to be named that way to work on voobly (differing from Patch 5.7).
On February 4th 11GMT, St4rk and CL were supposed to play their SF WB games. Both players showed up at the scheduled time. The (for me unforeseeable) problem was that CL and St4rk had different versions of WK Patch installed (CL had 5.7, St4rk 5.7.1) and CL couldnt get Patch 5.7.1 installed. Within roughly 1h45min and with a lot of help from TaToH, Nili and others, it became clear that the Chinese Firewall didnt allow CL to download the updated version of the WololoKingdoms installer, so only after realizing this and using VPN, CL was able to successfully install WK Patch 5.7. St4rk though, getting more and more annoyed with time passing, went offline after 1h30min and asked for Admin Win on AoCZone.
Instead of AW, the games were rescheduled to be played Sunday 18th. Unfortunately, CL received wrong/old information there about the settings for G6 (old settings Celts Mirror, new settings Pick from three civs) and chose Celts against St4rk. St4rk then quit the game immediately, asked for Admin Win and advanced to the next round.
(Side note: No admins were able to be there when St4rk and CL actually played G6. I was travelling and Gman wasnt around either. Some people complained about this fact and said that at least one admin should be around - may be true, but as long as admins arent getting payed, real life still matters!)
Language problems
G6 between CL and St4rk brings me to this topic. It is not easy to communicate with players that dont understand or speak English at all.
When the tournament started, Renny Cheung was still around on AoCZone to help scheduling etc. with the Chinese players, but he resigned shortly after the tournament began and gave a perfectly reasonable explanation for that (thx for all you have done!). I have to thank Huehuecoyotl22 and Lanchi (and others?) here for helping out CL with scheduling, explaining the rules etc.
Something good came out of these language problems: Tournament rules will probably get translated (to Chinese, Vietnamese etc.) in future tournaments, as we can see in the Battle of Africa Tournament right now.
I will add a list of Civs in English and Chinese at the end of this post if you ever need it (I received in the late stages of MoAre5).
Conclusion
I learned a lot about the responsibilities, difficulties, struggles and workload that admins have to deal with,
but as an Arena enthusiast, I dont regret my decision to have accepted the offer and join the admin team.
MoAre5 has been a fantastic tournament with a lot of awesome games, some hiccups, some drama, but in the end with way more positive than negative features and aspects.
Special Thanks!
I want to thank everybody involved in this tournament:
- Admins G_ManStreams and Kigo!
- Jineapple and TriRem for their work on WK Patch
- voobly.com
- Userpatch-Team
- PkZ and moderators (AoCZone / AoEZone)
- Pip (Captains Mode for the Draft)
- All Players and people who signed up, hope to see you back in the next tournament!
- Donators (1000$+ prizepool, thank you very much)
- Streamers (afaik most coverage by MembTV, thank you for being there)
- All viewers for taking a big interest in this tournament
- My viewers on YT, thx for your support, comments, suggestions, etc.
... and everybody I forgot to mention here, thank you very much!
Preview:
St4rk made what I consider one of the best videos ever to concern the Arena community:
Meanwhile in Arena Players Association
For a few weeks, I have been thinking about hosting/co-hosting APAC ("Arena Players Association Championship")
I hope to be able to make it happen, but it will take some time. Stay tuned for more information to come soon.
Thx for taking an interest in my opinions.
Best regards
kc_Ereon
YT
Aztecs = 阿兹特克
Berbers = 柏柏尔
Britons = 不列颠
Burmese = 缅甸
Byzantines = 拜占庭
Chinese = 中国
Ethiopians = 埃塞尔比亚
Franks = 法兰克
Goths = 哥德
Huns = 匈奴
Incas = 印加
Indians = 印度
Italians = 意大利
Japanese = 日本
Kelts = 凯尔特
Khmer = 高棉
Koreans = 韓國
Magyars = 马扎尔
Malay = 马来
Malians = 马里
Mayans = 马雅
Mongols = 蒙古
Persians = 波斯
Portuguese = 葡萄牙
Saracens = 撒拉森
Slavs = 斯拉夫
Spanish = 西班牙
Teutons = 条顿
Turks = 土耳其
Vietnamese = 越南
Vikings = 维京
Team Random = 組隨機
Edit: Youre welcome to post any ideas on future 1v1 Arena tournaments here: Link
ty gman
All statements below are my personal thoughts and opinions on some topics and drama that came up during the tournament:
Number of Players
Restricting this tournament to 64 players was probably the only option to at least try and finish MoAre5 in a reasoable timeframe. I personally like the option of a qualification stage, but with Christmas and New Years just before the start, you cannot expect this to happen.
Also, it was only around Christmas that this tournament reached 64 sign-ups. Let's hope for earlier sign-ups next time.
Single/Double Elimination
The biggest problem with Double Elimination is time/duration. Players from the Winners Bracket have to wait for their next opponents and the "hype" can get lost on the way to the Grand Finals (as some viewers have stated on numerous occasions). Then again, Double Elimination has allowed us to experience some of the greatest match-ups, Im thinking of TaToH vs St4rk in MoAre5 and also Viper vs MbL in MoAre3.
In my opinion, those were some of the greatest games these tournaments have given us. Thus the solution to go with a 16-player Double Elimination makes a lot of sense to me, even though it helped create THE meme of the tournament (more on that in the seeding topic).
Civ settings
Using the Captains Mode Draft was quite refreshing in this tournament. Maybe calling the Presets "MoAre5 Bo3" in Bo5 and "MoAre5 Bo5" in Bo7 settings wasnt optimal, but after the Ro32, most players knew how to do this. Finding interesting and balances Civ Settings for the rest of the games is not easy for non-experts like myself, even more so because the new civilizations on WololoKingdoms werent so well known before this tournament. Changing the settings while the tournament was already going should not be a problem in general, but the well-known drama from MoAre5 has taught us differently.
In future tournament, expert opinions should probably be heard and considered when creating civ settings.
Seeding: "ty gman" by MetalRTS
Everybody knows the ty gman Meme and most people probably know where it comes from. The seeding rules were clear from (almost?) the very start of this tournament. They werent perfect, but every signed up player knew about them and couldve made suggestion how to get a more appropriate seeding done. Metal still complained, and I can understand where that's coming from, but changing the seeding rules on short notice wasnt really an option.
With Double Elimination only starting in Ro16, quite a few players that I wouldve like to see in the later stages didnt make it, but there were still a lot of great games.
In retrospect, seeding wasnt all bad, as it lead to one of two/three things we will remember about MoAre5:
Viper won || St4rk vs CL Drama || ty gman
(Side note: It takes a whole lot of time to actually create a list of players in order of their seeding rate.
Making the seeding more complicated with 64+x sign-ups would probably double that time, if not more.)
Coaching: Feanor vs slam
Probably the first big upset that drew a lot of attention was Feanors win against slam in Ro32. As we learned afterwards, Melkor was in the room with Feanor and talked to him about the game while Feanor was playing ("giving him tips"). A lot of people considered this to be cheating and asked for an Admin Loss for Feanor. As the Irish brothers explained afterwards, they are used to this when playing just for fun, but they wouldnt do it again if it's considered cheating.
If something like this would happen in the future, I think it calls for "Admin action" (not to be confused with Admin decision). By that I mean that there should be a possibility for the involved players and the admins to talk about everything and then come to an agreement, for example, slam couldve asked for the game(s) to be replayed.
If no agreement can be reached, then Admin decisions can still be made.
WololoKingdoms 5.6/5.6.1/5.7: St4rk vs CL
The biggest drama in the tournament and also a really difficult situation to handle for the admins.
I want to review this from the beginning:
The tournament started with WK Patch 5.6 and everything was going alright. The update to WK Patch 5.7 (necessary due to the AoE2HD update) hit us (the admins) pretty hard.
The games on Friday January 26th were played with the unrated version of WK Patch 5.6. At this point, Gman announced to continue the tournament on Patch 5.7 starting in the next round. This decision was withdrawn when we got an update from TriRem that Patch 5.6 was rated again.
On Saturday January 27th (starting 12GMT), CL won his QF WB match against Feanor, not realizing that Incas missed their free Llama. That same day (starting 13GMT), Keif played against Melkor, discovered the Llama Bug and complained (with good reason; they played that game on WK Patch 5.7 then).
(Side note: To watch the recs of the previously mentioned games, you may need to choose "WK Patch 5.6 recs only".)
As far as I remember from here, TriRem released another bug-free version (Great job btw, you worked so damn fast!).
St4rk and TaToH updated their game version to what has become known as WK Patch 5.7.1 and played with that Patch on Sunday January 28th. At this point, I had no idea what Patch 5.7.1 was, Im assuming it had to be named that way to work on voobly (differing from Patch 5.7).
On February 4th 11GMT, St4rk and CL were supposed to play their SF WB games. Both players showed up at the scheduled time. The (for me unforeseeable) problem was that CL and St4rk had different versions of WK Patch installed (CL had 5.7, St4rk 5.7.1) and CL couldnt get Patch 5.7.1 installed. Within roughly 1h45min and with a lot of help from TaToH, Nili and others, it became clear that the Chinese Firewall didnt allow CL to download the updated version of the WololoKingdoms installer, so only after realizing this and using VPN, CL was able to successfully install WK Patch 5.7. St4rk though, getting more and more annoyed with time passing, went offline after 1h30min and asked for Admin Win on AoCZone.
Instead of AW, the games were rescheduled to be played Sunday 18th. Unfortunately, CL received wrong/old information there about the settings for G6 (old settings Celts Mirror, new settings Pick from three civs) and chose Celts against St4rk. St4rk then quit the game immediately, asked for Admin Win and advanced to the next round.
(Side note: No admins were able to be there when St4rk and CL actually played G6. I was travelling and Gman wasnt around either. Some people complained about this fact and said that at least one admin should be around - may be true, but as long as admins arent getting payed, real life still matters!)
Language problems
G6 between CL and St4rk brings me to this topic. It is not easy to communicate with players that dont understand or speak English at all.
When the tournament started, Renny Cheung was still around on AoCZone to help scheduling etc. with the Chinese players, but he resigned shortly after the tournament began and gave a perfectly reasonable explanation for that (thx for all you have done!). I have to thank Huehuecoyotl22 and Lanchi (and others?) here for helping out CL with scheduling, explaining the rules etc.
Something good came out of these language problems: Tournament rules will probably get translated (to Chinese, Vietnamese etc.) in future tournaments, as we can see in the Battle of Africa Tournament right now.
I will add a list of Civs in English and Chinese at the end of this post if you ever need it (I received in the late stages of MoAre5).
Conclusion
I learned a lot about the responsibilities, difficulties, struggles and workload that admins have to deal with,
but as an Arena enthusiast, I dont regret my decision to have accepted the offer and join the admin team.
MoAre5 has been a fantastic tournament with a lot of awesome games, some hiccups, some drama, but in the end with way more positive than negative features and aspects.
Special Thanks!
I want to thank everybody involved in this tournament:
- Admins G_ManStreams and Kigo!
- Jineapple and TriRem for their work on WK Patch
- voobly.com
- Userpatch-Team
- PkZ and moderators (AoCZone / AoEZone)
- Pip (Captains Mode for the Draft)
- All Players and people who signed up, hope to see you back in the next tournament!
- Donators (1000$+ prizepool, thank you very much)
- Streamers (afaik most coverage by MembTV, thank you for being there)
- All viewers for taking a big interest in this tournament
- My viewers on YT, thx for your support, comments, suggestions, etc.
... and everybody I forgot to mention here, thank you very much!
Preview:
St4rk made what I consider one of the best videos ever to concern the Arena community:
Meanwhile in Arena Players Association
For a few weeks, I have been thinking about hosting/co-hosting APAC ("Arena Players Association Championship")
I hope to be able to make it happen, but it will take some time. Stay tuned for more information to come soon.
Thx for taking an interest in my opinions.
Best regards
kc_Ereon
YT
Aztecs = 阿兹特克
Berbers = 柏柏尔
Britons = 不列颠
Burmese = 缅甸
Byzantines = 拜占庭
Chinese = 中国
Ethiopians = 埃塞尔比亚
Franks = 法兰克
Goths = 哥德
Huns = 匈奴
Incas = 印加
Indians = 印度
Italians = 意大利
Japanese = 日本
Kelts = 凯尔特
Khmer = 高棉
Koreans = 韓國
Magyars = 马扎尔
Malay = 马来
Malians = 马里
Mayans = 马雅
Mongols = 蒙古
Persians = 波斯
Portuguese = 葡萄牙
Saracens = 撒拉森
Slavs = 斯拉夫
Spanish = 西班牙
Teutons = 条顿
Turks = 土耳其
Vietnamese = 越南
Vikings = 维京
Team Random = 組隨機
Edit: Youre welcome to post any ideas on future 1v1 Arena tournaments here: Link
ty gman
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